To the foe my word is always, No

The history of the church in China shows that M. E. Barber was the first strong witness in China. She lived purely before the Lord and knew much of the cross and the Lord's life. Her deep experiences are evident in the hymns she wrote. One reads, "If there's less of earth joy, / Give, Lord, more of heaven. / Let the spirit praise Thee, / Though the heart be riven... / Lonely though the pathway, / Cheer it with Thy smile; / Be Thou my companion / Through earth's little while" (Hymns, #377). Another hymn she wrote is "He faileth not, for He is God" (Hymns, #693); this hymn is familiar to many people in Christianity. In addition, she also wrote other hymns, such as "Deep down into the depths of this Thy Name" (Hymns, #671), "Via Bethlehem we journey" (Hymns, #628), and "To the foe my word is always, 'No'" (Hymns, #880).

After singing, we should pray one after another. Sometimes, when the allotted time for a prayer meeting is long, we need to use a hymn to fill the time, stir up the saints, and maintain the spirit. We can sing Hymns, #890, "Hallelujah! Christ is Victor." However, it is better not to sing the whole hymn; rather, it is sufficient to sing only one stanza and the chorus. We can also sing Hymns, #880; this hymn strengthens the brothers and sisters in their inner feeling to oppose Satan. After the prayer, when the spirit has been released to the point that our utterance has been exhausted, we may express this feeling through a hymn. When everyone is released in the singing, a brother needs to add a prayer. At this time it may seem that the meeting is over. But if the meeting has a lingering taste, and there is a need to send people off, we can sing the chorus of Hymns, #890 again. This can be compared to wrapping a gift perfectly and then adding a beautiful bow. If the saints attend this kind of meeting, they will surely like to continue meeting.

We must be watchful in prayer and not allow Satan to disrupt our prayer with his deception. Satan will often accuse us after we fail a little and cause us to analyze ourselves while we pray so that we cannot open our mouth to God. When God's answer seems to be far away, Satan will cause us to become disappointed and discouraged, and he will take away our strength to wait on God. Brothers and sisters, if our prayer is to be according to God's will, we have to persist in our prayer until the end. Even when we fail, we can come before God through the blood of the Lamb; there is no need for Satan to interfere with us. We have to be like the widow who prayed until the judge had to avenge her (Luke 18:7). We have to be like the Shunammite who would not leave Elisha until he went with her (2 Kings 4:30). We believe that a delay in answers to prayer can help us know something we did not know before, and it can help us learn lessons we were ignorant of. We must never allow Satan to cut off our prayer or damage it.

Here we can sing more hymns concerning spiritual warfare, such as hymns #880, 775, 876, and 893.

The self and Satan match each other and work together. If a single brother begins to be anxious about marriage, Satan will suggest that it would be foolish not to forsake his service in order to take care of his marriage. We often do not discern the source of our thoughts. A serving one must beware of himself. When an anxious thought comes, we need to call on the name of the Lord, tell the self to be silent, and tell Satan to get away from us. Hymns, #880 says, "To the foe my word is always, 'No, ' / To the Father it is, 'Yes. '" This hymn was written based on experience. We are constantly bothered by the self and the self's companion, Satan.

We have a hymn in our hymnal which says, "To the foe my word is always, 'No,'/To the Father it is 'Yes'" (Hymns, #880). We have to learn to say "yes" to the Father and "no" to the devil all the time. But often our experience is the opposite of this. We say "no" to the Father and "yes" to Satan. When the sisters see something on sale in the newspaper, there is a struggle within them. Something within is urging them to go buy it, and something within is telling them not to go. Thus, they have to decide what to say. Will they say "no" to Satan and "yes" to the Father? They may say to the Lord, "Lord, I ask You to give me the freedom to go this one time. I will never do it again." All of us have this same "illness." We read the Bible, but do we keep the word of the Bible? We should be those who keep the Lord's word with absoluteness.

Our being, our self, our natural life, our flesh, sin, and Satan are all one entity. They are like many eggs in one nest. In a nest a mother bird may have a cluster of eggs. When these eggs are hatched, they will form one family, one entity. Our being, our self, our natural life, our flesh, sin, and Satan are like one family in a nest. To die to self means to die to the entire family.

For this reason the Lord said in Matthew 16, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me" (v. 24). To deny the self is to die to self. The first two lines of a hymn translated by Brother Nee express this same thought: "To the foe my word is always, 'No,' / To the Father it is 'Yes'" (Hymns, #880). To say "No" to Satan is to die to self. When we die to self, our natural life, our flesh, sin, and Satan are finished. When we die to self, Satan is defeated. This is why Satan is afraid of the cross.

There was another brother whose relative was sick. This sister again wrote and said, "You have to be responsible for prayer. You should not allow this sickness to go on." Consequently, this brother also received help from her. Once she herself was sick in bed. Her co-worker was away in another place. She was out of money, and her cook also went home for some reason. She prayed continuously, asking God, "Why does this sickness come upon me?", and God showed her that this was not from Him, but this was Satan's attack. She said, "If this is due to my own problem, I can remain sick. But if this is Satan's attack, let the sickness be gone." She had been ill for four days with a high fever, but she stood up right after she prayed. At this time she wrote a song: "To the foe my word is always, 'No,' / To the Father it is 'Yes.'" We have this song in our hymn book. When she finished writing this song, she went out to work, and her sickness was over.