Derek Prince - Israel: What Is The Best Thing To Pray For?
This is an excerpt from: How To Pray For Israel
My next suggestion, number four, is identify with God's ultimate purpose, which is what? Why has God tolerated the appalling wickedness of humanity for hundreds and hundreds of years? What is He waiting for? My answer is He's waiting for a people for Himself. That's what God is going to get out of history. Not an institution, not a lot of buildings, not a lot of government schemes, but a people for Himself. Ruth and I have had impressed upon us Titus 2:11–14, which we will now say: The grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts we should live soberly, righteously and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous for good works.
That's what God intends to get out of history, His own special people, zealous for good works. That's why He waits with endless patience while wickedness runs its course, because God has a chosen remnant, both Jew and Gentile, and He's not going to let history close till every one of them has come to Him through Jesus. So when you pray for Israel, don't start by praying for political issues. You can do that but that's not primary. What's primary is that Israel will become the special people that God is after. He's going to go on until He gets it. The next principle is connected with that, based on Zechariah 4:6. This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel. Not by might, not by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts. That's the Lord of armies.
So, if it was a question of might or power, God has it all. But might and power, laws and military power will not do what needs to be done because what needs to be done is to change the heart of men and women. The only agent that can do that is the Holy Spirit. So, you can get very upset about the political situation in Israel, and we often do. But, bear in mind that God is tolerating a lot of things He doesn't approve of because He's waiting for His own special people. And the only power that will accomplish that is the mysterious, invisible power of the Holy Spirit.
In 2 Corinthians chapter 3, verse 3 Paul brings out this principle. In this chapter he's kind of stating his qualifications to be a preacher and it impresses me that he didn't say he studied under Gamalian. He doesn't trot out his degrees but he says, "If you want to know my message, go to Corinth". He said, "Because when I arrived there no one had ever heard the gospel and it was a wicked city full of every kind of immorality and wickedness". But he said, "Go and look at the people that have heard my message and then you'll know what I believe".
You see, that impresses me, pastors and others here, the real justification of your ministry is what you believe. Paul could have said all sorts of things about his rabbinical learning but that wasn't what interested him. He said, "If you want to know whether my message works, go to Corinth and there you'll find the demonstration of the results of my ministry". And then he said to the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians 3:3: You are manifestly a letter of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh of the heart. That has become so vivid to me. The only agent that can write on human hearts is the Holy Spirit.
And if the Holy Spirit isn't in our preaching, we can lecture people, admonish people, challenge people, accuse people, but nothing will happen. It's only in the measure that the Holy Spirit flows through us that people's hearts can be changed. God is looking for a people whose hearts have been changed from hard stone to vibrant, responsive flesh. And He'll wait till He's got it. It'll often inconvenience us, we'll have to deal with awkward people who get in our way and interfere with our pleasures, and make life difficult for us but God says, "Too bad. I'm waiting till I've got the people that I'm looking for". That will only come by the Holy Spirit. One of the greatest and most effective intercessory prayers is to pray for the release of the Holy Spirit upon Israel. It's beginning to happen but it needs a great deal more.