Even though our individual prayers matter to God and form the basis of our personal relationship with Him, God also wants us to pray with other believers, loving them and lifting their burdens. He wants us to humble ourselves to other believers so that they can pray for us (James 5:16). Often there is a demonic component that we are not even aware of, or a sin (that we are blind to) has a grip on us that we don’t fully comprehend. That grip is expelled and dissolved when it is verbalized to another human being who will pray for us.
Satan knows this to be true and tells us that we cannot tell anybody about what we are struggling with because it’s too personal. I have found that the more personal it is, the more likely that others are struggling with a similar issue. Being humble also helps other people to share their own struggles, even if the struggles are completely different. This is especially true if people see a believer set free and transformed as a result of other people praying for them. Everyone needs victory in their Christian lives, and God has purposely made it impossible to walk in complete victory without interacting with other members in the body of Christ to bring about maturity (Ephesians 4:13).
We have power in uniting in prayer as believers.
The number one thing that Satan attacks in the church is unity. He causes factions, dissensions, disunity—so that he separates us—so that we cannot combine together in the body of Christ to move forward in the will of God. If he can destroy the unity in the church, he destroys the church because it is powerless. Satan renders the church impotent when we allow him to set us at odds with each other, allowing our minds to entertain negative thoughts about any other person. This is our downfall.
What causes strife among you? (James 4:1-3) Is it not because you want to be well-respected? We need to be humble as we serve rather than wanting ourselves to be elevated. It’s so easy for the enemy to come in and make you feel like you’ve been slighted by somebody, or you take something wrong that somebody has said to you. The enemy will twist the truth, and then that thought will eat away at you like a cancer, causing division in the body of Christ. It corrupts the church from the inside out. The dissensions we hold against each other are the fruit of the flesh, not the fruit of the Spirit. You can see the fruit of the flesh in Galatians 5:19-21.
In the same way that unity is vital in a marriage for a marriage to function properly—so it is for believers in the body of Christ to be unified in order to function the way God designed us to function.
What makes prayer so powerful when we unite together in prayer for a specific cause? How is this achieved? How can believers have one essence?
In John 17:21, Jesus cried out to God for the unity of believers. “Make them one, even as You and I are one”–this is one of the most shocking Scriptures I have ever read. God the Father and God the Son are one essence. For believers in the body of Christ to be one essence like that just blows my mind! And yet I’ve experienced this unity several times while praying with other believers.
How do you achieve this? The closer you are to Christ, the more unity you will have because Christ is one. Different believers who are right with God (with no unconfessed sin) can combine in the Spirit and pray full blast with 100% of their beings. At that point—Boom! The Spirit of the Lord shows up in mighty measure and moves in phenomenal ways. You have one mind, one heart, one purpose (Philippians 2). The Spirit of God is present so tangibly when this happens. We all draw close to the heart of God, discover God’s will for us, and ask God to bring to fulfillment His will.
We are not imposing our own will onto God; instead, it’s the reverse. Know God. As you pursue Him full-tilt, He will reveal His will for you, and you obey and pray in line with God’s will to fulfill what He has asked of you.
Several times (which I describe in the audio below), I have had one essence with a small group of women as we prostrated ourselves in the dust before the Lord. We could each hear the heart of God because of deep prayer in our personal lives, since we had spent tons and tons of time on our faces before the Lord in private. So all of our hearts were one before we even met. Then when we began praying—Boom! God showed up from the very beginning because we already all could hear the heartbeat of God and were asking the right things of God. God changes the way we pray, the closer we are to Him, because His requests become our requests, and then He moves mightily to complete what His will already was.
All prayer and all the desire of our hearts should be about God being glorified. God will not use you (and you cannot pray this way) unless you understand that you are nothing (Galatians 6:3). To be full of the Spirit, you need to be empty of yourself—your own agenda, your own selfishness. His will in you is way better than your own will. God is looking for people to share His heart with, so that we will pray according to His will.
Here is the audio that describes how uniting in prayer with other believers can be powerful. (To download, right click “Save as” and choose “Desktop”):
Also, I’ve started a series of short prayer videos on my prayer page.
Tags: Christian Living, church, prayer, unity
Thank you for sharing what happened when you prayed together! I don’t regularly pray with others besides in church. I guess I need to be better about this!
Praying with other believers has so many benefits. It really helps to unify the church!
Thank you for going so in depth as to the benefits of praying together! I also love your line, “I have found that the more personal it is, the more likely that others are struggling with a similar issue.” – I think this is so true!
This is because human nature is similar, and the temptations we face are similar.