PRAYING AND NOT FAINTING
Hebrews 12:3; 2 Corinthians 3:18; 4:1; Luke 18:1
At the prayer meeting last night, we sang that we should ‘Faint not here, but walk in love’ (Hymn 231). In times of sorrows and pressures, and all that might affect the spirits of the brethren, there might be the tendency to faint, and it is interesting to see how we have a divine provision for that. It is especially attractive to see what God does so that we should not faint in our minds or in our spirits. In these two passages in Hebrews and Corinthians, God distinctly draws our attention to Christ, “For consider well him”. You could say that there are many other and greater reasons for considering Christ well. How great and attractive it is to have our eyes on Him! But the way in which God would set this before us in these verses is “that ye be not weary, fainting in your minds”. If you occupy yourself with the troubles, with failures within yourself or with anything else in this scene, there will be fainting, turning aside, the inability to maintain your place in the testimony. The only thing that will maintain you is to have Christ and Christ alone constantly before you, to consider the way in which He endured.
Think of the sufferings of the Lord Jesus; the way in which He endured so much at the hands of men is particularly set before us here. “For consider well him who endured so great contradiction from sinners against himself”. You see the features that came out in all their beauty and perfection in the One who did not turn aside, the One who met everything that was facing Him in the power of the Spirit and in the power of the word of God. So He was going forward. There was never such a concentration of contradiction from sinners against anyone. Jesus was the object of that contradiction, and yet He always had the consciousness of His links with His Father so that He could go forward. There could never be any fainting in His mind. What an example He is for us, and what food He is to sustain us, that we should “be not weary, fainting in your minds”.
In Corinthians, we see this same glorious Person presented in all His majesty and glory. I especially had in mind the reference to “having this ministry, as we have had mercy shewn us, we faint not”. That would be the ministry of the new covenant. Jesus is presented especially to our view as having the place of the Mediator of the new covenant. There is what is expanding and coming out from the heart of God. It would give us liberty. The Lord Jesus Christ, the Mediator of the new covenant, is the One in whom it all rests, the One who is the Centre of that outflow of divine affection and grace towards us in mercy. As our eyes are upon Him, we are transformed; we have some experience of that as we gather for the Lord’s supper and all that flows from it. Christ is before us and there is a transformation that comes in. But then in the area of testimony where mercy is needed, it is the same One; He remains as the Mediator of the new covenant. He is the One who can give us what is needed to maintain us and to sustain us, so that having “had mercy shewn us, we faint not”.
Christ’s own word to His disciples is helpful too, especially in this matter of prayer. In Luke 18, “he spoke also a parable to them to the purport that they should always pray and not faint”. We probably all have had the experience of something coming before us, and we pray for it with fervency and maybe some enthusiasm, and then the exercise fades. There is a need to persist, and we need to be encouraged; the Lord would encourage us to persist. We see how persistent the widow is in the parable that follows. She is persistent in her prayers and it would be a word for us. For myself, I could do with this help, this encouragement from the word of the Lord here, that we should “always pray and not faint”. Keep up the prayers, maintain the prayers. What you prayed for, continue praying for.
I know that there is a reference later in Corinthians to the apostle Paul praying three times that his thorn for the flesh might be removed, and then he received the Lord’s word that it would not be (2 Cor.12:8,9). I think that is different. One difference is that Paul got a specific, direct answer from the Lord, so he ceased praying after he made these three requests. A second difference is that Paul’s prayer related to himself and his own personal needs, desires and wants. It may be that we pray for something that is our desire or wish, and maybe there comes a time when we have to stop; it is not being answered because it is not the Lord’s will. But so far as the testimony is concerned, as far as the Lord’s people are concerned, so far as what is in the divine mind is concerned, pray and do not faint.
I would encourage all the brethren with these simple words.
Word in meeting for ministry, Edinburgh
12 October 2014
D.C. Brown