Typed by: Carolyn E Kent+
ckent@centex.net July 19,1999
This book is in the
public domain.
WITH
CHRIST
for
the
Ministry of
Intercession
BY
Lord,
teach us to pray.
NEW YORK CHICAGO
TORONTO
Fleming H. Revell
Company
Publishers of Evangelical
Literature.
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f all the promises
connected with the command, 'ABIDE IN ME,' there is none higher, and none that
sooner brings the confession, 'Not that I have already attained, or am already
made perfect,' than this: 'If ye abide in me, ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall
be done unto you.' Power with God is the highest
attainment of the life of full abiding.
And of all the traits of a life LIKE CHRIST there
is none higher and more glorious than conformity to Him in the work that now
engages Him without ceasing in the Father's presence--His all-prevailing
intercession. The more we abide in
Him, and grow unto His likeness, will His priestly life work in us mightily, and
our life become what His is, a life that ever pleads and prevails for
men.
'Thou hast made us kings and priests unto
God.' Both in the king and the
priest the chief thing is power, influence, blessing. In the king it is the power coming
downward; in the priest, the power rising upward, prevailing with God. In our blessed Priest-King, Jesus
Christ, the kingly power is founded on the priestly 'He is able to save
to the uttermost, because He ever liveth to make intercession.' In us, His priests and kings, it is no
otherwise: it is in intercession
that the Church is to find and wield its highest power, that each member of the
Church is to prove his descent from Israel, who as a prince had power with God
and with men, and prevailed.
It is under a deep impression that the place and
power of prayer in the Christian life is too little understood, that this book
has been written. I feel sure that
as long as we look on prayer chiefly as the means of maintaining our own
Christian life, we shall not know fully what it is meant to be. But when we learn to regard it as the
highest part of the work entrusted to us, the root and strength of all other
work, we shall see that there is nothing that we so need to study and practise
as the art of praying aright. If I
have at all succeeded in pointing out the progressive teaching of our Lord in
regard to prayer, and the distinct reference the wonderful promises of the last
night (John xiv. 16) have to the works we are to do in His Name, to the greater
works, and to the bearing much fruit, we shall all admit that it is only when
the Church gives herself up to this holy work of intercession that we can expect
the power of Christ to manifest itself in her behalf. It is my prayer that God may use this
little book to make clearer to some of His children the wonderful place of power
and influence which He is waiting for them to occupy, and for which a weary
world is waiting too.
In connection with this there
is another truth that has come to me with wonderful clearness as I studied the
teaching of Jesus on prayer. It is
this: that the Father waits to hear
every prayer of faith, to give us whatsoever we will, and whatsoever we ask in
Jesus' name. We have become so
accustomed to limit the wonderful love and the large promises of our God, that
we cannot read the simplest and clearest statements of our Lord without the
qualifying clauses by which we guard and expound them. If there is one thing I think the Church
needs to learn, it is that God means prayer to have an answer, and that it hath
not entered into the heart of man to conceive what God will do for His child who
gives himself to believe that his prayer will be heard. God hears prayer; this is a
truth universally admitted, but of which very few understand the meaning, or
experience the power. If what I
have written stir my reader to go to the Master's words, and take His wondrous
promises simply and literally as they stand, my object has been
attained.
And then just one thing more. Thousands have in these last years found
an unspeakable blessing in learning how completely Christ is our life, and how
He undertakes to be and to do all in us that we need. I know not if we have yet learned to
apply this truth to our prayer-life. Many complain that they have not the power
to pray in faith, to pray the effectual prayer that availeth much. The message I would fain bring them is
that the blessed Jesus is waiting, is longing, to teach them this. Christ is our life: in heaven He ever liveth to pray; His
life in us is an ever-praying life, if we will but trust Him for it. Christ teaches us to pray not only by
example, by instruction, by command, by promises, but by showing us
HIMSELF, the ever-living Intercessor, as our Life. It is when we believe this, and go and
abide in Him for our prayer-life too, that our fears of not being able to pray
aright will vanish, and we shall joyfully and triumphantly trust our Lord to
teach us to pray, to be Himself the life and the power of our prayer. May God open our eyes to see what the
holy ministry of intercession is to which, as His royal priesthood, we have been
set apart. May He give us a large
and strong heart to believe what mighty influence our prayers can exert. And may all fear as to our being able to
fulfil our vocation vanish as we see Jesus, living ever to pray, living in us to
pray, and standing surety for our prayer-life.
ANDREW MURRAY
WELLINGTON, 28th
October 1895
PREFACE................ 2
Table of Contents 4
FIRST LESSON. 7
'Lord, teach us to pray;' 7
Or, The Only Teacher.
7
SECOND LESSON.............. 11
'In spirit and truth.' 11
Or, The True Worshippers. 11
THIRD LESSON.............. 14
'Pray to thy Father, which is in secret;
'....... 14
Or,
Alone with God.
14
FOURTH LESSON 18
'After this manner pray;' 18
Or, The Model Prayer. 18
FIFTH LESSON.............. 22
'Ask, and it shall be given you;
' 22
Or, The Certainty of the Answer to
Prayer. 22
SIXTH LESSON.............. 26
'How much more?' 26
Or, The Infinite Fatherliness of God. 26
SEVENTH LESSON.............. 30
'How much more the Holy Spirit; 30
Or, The All-Comprehensive Gift. 30
EIGHTH LESSON.............. 34
'Because of his importunity;'... 34
Or, The Boldness of God's Friends. 34
NINTH LESSON.............. 38
'Pray the Lord of the harvest;'......... 38
Or,
Prayer provides
Labourers. 38
TENTH LESSON.............. 42
'What wilt thou?' 42
Or,
Prayer must be
Definite. 42
ELEVENTH LESSON.............. 45
'Believe that ye have received;'......... 45
Or, The Faith that Takes. 45
TWELFTH LESSON.............. 49
'Have faith in God;' 49
Or, The Secret of believing Prayer. 49
THIRTEENTH LESSON.............. 53
'Prayer and fasting;'......... 53
Or, The Cure of Unbelief. 53
FOURTEENTH LESSON.............. 57
'When ye stand praying, forgive;'......... 57
Or,
Prayer and Love.
57
FIFTEENTH LESSON.............. 61
'If two agree;' 61
Or, The Power of United Prayer 61
SIXTEENTH LESSON.............. 65
'Speedily, though bearing long;' 65
Or, The Power of Persevering Prayer. 65
SEVENTEENTH LESSON.............. 70
‘I know that Thou hearest me
always;’......... 70
Or
Prayer in harmony with the being
of God. 70
EIGHTEENTH LESSON 74
‘Whose is this image?’......... 74
Or,
Prayer in Harmony with the
Destiny of Man. 74
NINTEENTH LESSON.............. 78
‘I go unto the Father!’......... 78
Or,
Power for Praying and
Working. 78
TWENTIETH LESSON.............. 82
‘That the Father may be
glorified;’......... 82
Or, The Chief End of Prayer. 82
TWENTY-FIRST
LESSON.............. 86
‘If ye abide in me;’.. 86
Or The All-Inclusive Condition. 86
TWENTY-SECOND
LESSON.............. 91
‘My words in you.’. 91
Or, The Word and Prayer.
91
TWENTY-THIRD
LESSON 95
‘Bear fruit, that
the Father may give what ye ask;’..
95
Or,
Obedience the Path to Power in Prayer. 95
TWENTY-FOURTH
LESSON.............. 99
‘In my
Name;’ 99
Or, The All-prevailing
Plea. 99
TWENTY-FIFTH
LESSON............ 104
‘At that
day;’ 104
Or, The Holy Spirit and
Prayer. 104
TWENTY-SIXTH
LESSON............ 108
‘I have prayed for
thee;’ 108
Or,
Christ the Intercessor. 108
TWENTY-SEVENTH
LESSON............ 113
‘Father, I
will;’ 113
Or,
Christ the High Priest
113
TWENTY-EIGHTH
LESSON............ 117
‘Father! Not what I will;’....... 117
Or,
Christ the Sacrifice. 117
TWENTY-NINTH
LESSON............ 121
‘If we ask according
to His will; 121
Or, Our Boldness in Prayer. 121
THIRTIETH LESSON............ 126
‘An holy
priesthood;’... 126
Or, The Ministry of
Intercession. 126
THIRTY-FIRST
LESSON............ 130
‘Pray without
ceasing;’....... 130
Or, A Life of Prayer. 130
GEORGE MULLER, AND THE
SECRET OF HIS 134
POWER IN PRAYER........... 134
PRAYER AND THE WORD OF
GOD........ 137
PRAYER AND THE WILL OF
GOD........ 138
PRAYER AND THE GLORY OF
GOD........ 142
PRAYER AND TRUST IN
GOD........ 143
'And it came to pass, as He was praying in a certain place, that when He
ceased, one of His disciples said to Him, Lord, teach us to pray.'--LUKE xi.
1.
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HE disciples had been
with Christ, and seen Him pray.
They had learnt to understand something of the connection between His
wondrous life in public, and His secret life of prayer. They had learnt to believe in Him as a
Master in the art of prayer--none could pray like Him. And so they came to Him with the
request, 'Lord, teach us to pray.'
And in after years they would have told us that there were few things
more wonderful or blessed that He taught them than His lessons on
prayer.
And now still it comes to pass, as He is praying
in a certain place, that disciples who see Him thus engaged feel the need of
repeating the same request, 'Lord, teach us to pray.' As we grow in the Christian life,
the thought and the faith of the Beloved Master in His never-failing
intercession becomes ever more precious, and the hope of being Like
Christ in His intercession gains an attractiveness before unknown. And as we see Him pray, and remember
that there is none who can pray like Him, and none who can teach like Him, we
feel the petition of the disciples, 'Lord, teach us to pray,' is just what we
need. And as we think how all He is
and has, how He Himself is our very own, how He is Himself our life, we feel
assured that we have but to ask, and He will be delighted to take us up into
closer fellowship with Himself, and teach us to pray even as He prays.
Come, my brothers! Shall we not go to the Blessed Master
and ask Him to enrol our names too anew in that school which He always keeps
open for those who long to continue their studies in the Divine art of prayer
and intercession? Yes, let us this
very day say to the Master, as they did of old, 'Lord, teach us to pray.' As we meditate, we shall find each word
of the petition we bring to be full of meaning.
'Lord, teach us to pray.' Yes, to pray. This is what we need to be taught. Though in its beginnings prayer is so
simple that the feeblest child can pray, yet it is at the same time the highest
and holiest work to which man can rise. It is fellowship with the Unseen
and Most Holy One. The powers of
the eternal world have been placed at its disposal. It is the very essence of true religion,
the channel of all blessings, the secret of power and life. Not only for ourselves, but for others,
for the Church, for the world, it is to prayer that God has given the right to
take hold of Him and His strength.
It is on prayer that the promises wait for their fulfilment, the kingdom
for its coming, the glory of God for its full revelation. And for this blessed work, how slothful
and unfit we are. It is only the
Spirit of God can enable us to do it aright. How speedily we are deceived into a
resting in the form, while the power is wanting. Our early training, the teaching of the
Church, the influence of habit, the stirring of the emotions--how easily these
lead to prayer which has no spiritual power, and avails but little. True prayer, that takes hold of God's
strength, that availeth much, to which the gates of heaven are really opened
wide--who would not cry, Oh for some one to teach me thus to
pray?
Jesus has opened a school, in which He trains His
redeemed ones, who specially desire it, to have power in prayer. Shall we not enter it with the petition,
Lord! it is just this we need to be taught! O teach us to
pray.
'Lord, teach us to pray.' Yes, us, Lord. We have read in They Word with what
power Thy believing people of old used to pray, and what mighty wonders were
done in answer to their prayers.
And if this took place under the Old Covenant, in the time of
preparation, how much more wilt Thou not now, in these days of fulfilment, give
Thy people this sure sign of Thy presence in their midst. We have heard the promises given to
Thine apostles of the power of prayer in Thy name, and have seen how gloriously
they experienced their truth: we
know for certain, they can become true to us too. We hear continually even in these days
what glorious tokens of Thy power Thou dost still give to those who trust Thee
fully. Lord! these all are men of
like passions with ourselves; teach us to pray so too. The promises are for us, the powers and
gifts of the heavenly world are for us.
O teach us to pray so that we may receive abundantly. To us too Thou hast entrusted Thy work,
on our prayer too the coming of Thy kingdom depends, in our prayer too Thou
canst glorify Thy name; 'Lord teach us to pray.' Yes, us, Lord; we offer ourselves as
learners; we would indeed be taught of Thee. 'Lord, teach us to
pray.'
'Lord, teach us to pray.' Yes, we feel the need now of being
taught to pray. At first
there is no work appears so simple; later on, none that is more difficult; and
the confession is forced from us:
We know not how to pray as we ought. It is true we have God's Word, with its
clear and sure promises; but sin has so darkened our mind, that we know not
always how to apply the word. In
spiritual things we do not always seek the most needful things, or fail in
praying according to the law of the sanctuary. In temporal things we are still less
able to avail ourselves of the wonderful liberty our Father has given us to ask
what we need. And even when we know
what to ask, how much there is still needed to make prayer acceptable. It must be to the glory of God, in full
surrender to His will, in full assurance of faith, in the name of Jesus, and
with a perseverance that, if need be, refuses to be denied. All this must be learned. It can only be learned in the school of
much prayer, for practice makes perfect.
Amid the painful consciousness of ignorance and unworthiness, in the
struggle between believing and doubting, the heavenly art of effectual prayer is
learnt. Because, even when we do
not remember it, there is One, the Beginner and Finisher of faith and prayer,
who watches over our praying, and sees to it that in all who trust Him for
it their education in the school of prayer shall be carried on to
perfection. Let but the deep
undertone of all our prayer be the teachableness that comes from a sense of
ignorance, and from faith in Him as a perfect teacher, and we may be sure we
shall be taught, we shall learn to pray in power. Yes, we may depend upon it, He
teaches to pray.
'Lord, teach us to pray.' None can teach like Jesus, none but
Jesus; therefore we call on Him, 'LORD, teach us to pray.' A pupil needs a teacher, who knows his
work, who has the gift of teaching, who in patience and love will descend to the
pupil's needs. Blessed be God! Jesus is all this and much more. He knows what prayer is. It is Jesus, praying Himself, who
teaches to pray. He knows what
prayer is. He learned it amid the
trials and tears of His earthly life.
In heaven it is still His beloved work: His life there is prayer. Nothing delights Him more than to find
those whom He can take with Him into the Father's presence, whom He can clothe
with power to pray down God's blessing on those around them, whom He can train
to be His fellow-workers in the intercession by which the kingdom is to be
revealed on earth. He knows how to
teach. Now by the urgency of felt
need, then by the confidence with which joy inspires. Here by the teaching of the Word, there
by the testimony of another believer who knows what it is to have prayer
heard. By His Holy Spirit, He has
access to our heart, and teaches us to pray by showing us the sin that hinders
the prayer, or giving us the assurance that we please God. He teaches, by giving not only thoughts
of what to ask or how to ask, but by breathing within us the very spirit of
prayer, by living within us as the Great Intercessor. We may indeed and most joyfully say,
'Who teacheth like Him?' Jesus
never taught His disciples how to preach, only how to pray. He did not speak much of what was needed
to preach well, but much of praying well.
To know how to speak to God is more than knowing how to speak to
man. Not power with men, but power
with God is the first thing. Jesus
loves to teach us how to pray.
What think you, my beloved fellow-disciples!
would it not be just what we need, to ask the Master for a month to give us a
course of special lessons on the art of prayer? As we meditate on the words He spake on
earth, let us yield ourselves to His teaching in the fullest confidence that,
with such a teacher, we shall make progress. Let us take time not only to meditate,
but to pray, to tarry at the foot of the throne, and be trained to the work of
intercession. Let us do so in the
assurance that amidst our stammerings and fears He is carrying on His work most
beautifully. He will breathe His
own life, which is all prayer, into us.
As He makes us partakers of His righteousness and His life, He will of
His intercession. too. As the
members of His body, as a holy priesthood, we shall take part in His priestly
work of pleading and prevailing with God for men. Yes, let us most joyfully say, ignorant
and feeble though we be, 'Lord, teach us to pray.'
'LORD, TEACH US TO
PRAY.'
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Blessed Lord! who ever livest to pray, Thou canst
teach me too to pray, me too to live ever to pray. In this Thou lovest to make me share Thy
glory in heaven, that I should pray without ceasing, and ever stand as a priest
in the presence of my God.
Lord Jesus! I ask Thee this day to enrol my
name among those who confess that they know not how to pray as they ought, and
specially ask Thee for a course of teaching in prayer. Lord! teach me to tarry with Thee in the
school, and give Thee time to train me.
May a deep sense of my ignorance, of the wonderful privilege and power of
prayer, of the need of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of prayer, lead me to cast
away my thoughts of what I think I know, and make me kneel before Thee in true
teachableness and poverty of spirit.
And fill me, Lord, with the confidence that with
such a teacher as Thou art I shall learn to pray. In the assurance that I have as my
teacher, Jesus who is ever praying to the Father, and by His prayer rules the
destinies of His Church and the world, I will not be afraid. As much as I need to know of the
mysteries of the prayer-world, Thou wilt unfold for me. And when I may not know, Thou wilt teach
me to be strong in faith, giving glory to God.
Blessed Lord! Thou wilt not put to shame Thy
scholar who trusts Thee, nor, by Thy grace, would he Thee either. Amen.
'The
hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in
spirit and truth: for such doth the
Father seek to be His worshippers.
God is a Spirit: and they
that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and truth.'--JOHN iv. 23,
24.
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HESE words of Jesus to
the woman of Samaria are His first recorded teaching on the subject of
prayer. They give us some wonderful
first glimpses into the world of prayer.
The Father seeks worshippers: our worship satisfies His loving heart
and is a joy to Him. He seeks
true worshippers, but finds many not such as He would have them. True worship is that which is in
spirit and truth. The Son has
come to open the way for this worship in spirit and in truth, and teach it
us. And so one of our first lessons
in the school of prayer must be to understand what it is to pray in spirit and
in truth, and to know how we can attain to it.
To the woman of Samaria our Lord spoke of a
threefold worship. There is first,
the ignorant worship of the Samaritans:
'Ye worship that which ye know not.' The second, the intelligent worship of
the Jew, having the true knowledge of God: 'We worship that which we know; for
salvation is of the Jews.' And then
the new, the spiritual worship which He Himself has come to introduce: 'The hour is coming, and is now, when
the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth.' From the connection it is evident that
the words 'in spirit and truth' do not mean, as if often thought, earnestly,
from the heart, in sincerity. The
Samaritans had the five books of Moses and some knowledge of God; there was
doubtless more than one among them who honestly and earnestly sought God in
prayer. The Jews had the true full
revelation of God in His word, as thus far given; there were among them godly
men, who called upon God with their whole heart. And yet not 'in spirit and truth,' in
the full meaning of the words.
Jesus says, 'The hour is coming, and now is;' it is only in and
through Him that the worship of God will be in spirit and
truth.
Among Christians one still finds the three
classes of worshippers. Some who in
their ignorance hardly know what they ask:
they pray earnestly, and yet receive but little. Others there are, who have more correct
knowledge, who try to pray with all their mind and heart, and often pray most
earnestly, and yet do not attain to the full blessedness of worship in spirit
and truth. It is into this third
class we must ask our Lord Jesus to take us; we must be taught of Him how to
worship in spirit and truth. This
alone is spiritual worship; this makes us worshippers such as the Father
seeks. In prayer everything will
depend on our understanding well and practising the worship in spirit and
truth.
'God is a Spirit, and they that worship
Him, must worship Him in spirit and truth.' The first thought suggested here by the
Master is that there must be harmony between God and His worshippers; such as
God is, must His worship be. This
is according to a principle which prevails throughout the universe: we look for correspondence between an
object and the organ to which it reveals or yields itself. The eye has an inner fitness for the
light, the ear for sound. The man
who would truly worship God, would find and know and possess and enjoy God, must
be in harmony with Him, must have the capacity for receiving Him. Because God is Spirit, we must
worship in spirit. As God
is, so His worshipper.
And what does this mean? The woman had asked our Lord whether
Samaria or Jerusalem was the true place of worship. He answers that henceforth worship is no
longer to be limited to a certain place:
'Woman, believe Me, the hour cometh, when neither in this
mountain, nor in Jerusalem, shall ye worship the Father.' As God is Spirit, not bound by space or
time, but in His infinite perfection always and everywhere the same, so His
worship would henceforth no longer be confined by place or form, but spiritual
as God Himself is spiritual. A
lesson of deep importance. How much
our Christianity suffers from this, that it is confined to certain times and
places. A man, who seeks to pray
earnestly in the church or in the closet, spends the greater part of the week or
the day in a spirit entirely at variance with that in which he prayed. His worship was the work of a fixed
place or hour, not of his whole being.
God is a Spirit: He is the
Everlasting and Unchangeable One; what He is, He is always and in truth. Our worship must even so be in spirit
and truth: His worship must be the
spirit of our life; our life must be worship in spirit as God is
Spirit.
'God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship
Him in spirit and truth.' The
second thought that comes to us is that the worship in the spirit must come from
God Himself. God is Spirit: He alone has Spirit to give. It was for this He sent His Son, to fit
us for such spiritual worship, by giving us the Holy Spirit. It is of His own work that Jesus speaks
when He says twice, 'The hour cometh,' and then adds, 'and is now.' He came to baptize with the Holy Spirit;
the Spirit could not stream forth till He was glorified (John i. 33, vii. 37,
38, xvi. 7). It was when He had
made an end of sin, and entering into the Holiest of all with His blood, had
there on our behalf received the Holy Spirit (Acts ii. 33), that He could
send Him down to us as the Spirit of the Father. It was when Christ had redeemed us, and
we in Him had received the position of children, that the Father sent forth the
Spirit of His Son into our hearts to cry, 'Abba, Father.' The worship in spirit is the worship of
the Father in the Spirit of Christ , the Spirit of
Sonship.
This is the reason why Jesus here uses the name
of Father. We never find one of the
Old Testament saints personally appropriate the name of child or call God his
Father. The worship of the
Father is only possible to those to whom the Spirit of the Son has been
given. The worship in spirit is only possible to those to
whom the Son has revealed the Father, and who have received the spirit of
Sonship. It is only Christ who
opens the way and teaches the worship in spirit.
And in truth. That does not only mean, in
sincerity. Nor does it only
signify, in accordance with the truth of God's Word. The expression is one of deep and Divine
meaning. Jesus is 'the
only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.' 'The law was given by Moses; grace and
truth came by Jesus Christ.'
Jesus says, 'I am the truth and the life.' In the Old Testament all was shadow and
promise; Jesus brought and gives the reality, the substance, of things
hoped for. In Him the blessings and
powers of the eternal life are our actual possession and experience. Jesus is full of grace and truth; the
Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth; through Him the grace that is in Jesus is
ours in deed and truth, a positive communication out of the Divine life. And so worship in spirit is worship
in truth; actual living fellowship with God, a real correspondence and
harmony between the Father, who is a Spirit, and the child praying in the
spirit.
What Jesus said to the woman of Samaria, she
could not at once understand.
Pentecost was needed to reveal its full meaning. We are hardly prepared at our first
entrance into the school of prayer to grasp such teaching. We shall understand it better later
on. Let us only begin and take the
lesson as He gives it. We are
carnal and cannot bring God the worship He seeks. But Jesus came to give the Spirit: He has given Him to us. Let the disposition in which we set
ourselves to pray be what Christ's words have taught us. Let there be the deep confession of our
inability to bring God the worship that is pleasing to Him; the childlike
teachableness that waits on Him to instruct us; the simple faith that yields
itself to the breathing of the Spirit.
Above all, let us hold fast the blessed truth--we shall find that the
Lord has more to say to us about it--that the knowledge of the Fatherhood of
God, the revelation of His infinite Fatherliness in our hearts, the faith in the
infinite love that gives us His Son and His Spirit to make us children, is
indeed the secret of prayer in spirit and truth. This is the new and living way Christ
opened up for us. To have Christ
the Son, and the Spirit of the Son, dwelling within us, and revealing the
Father, this makes us true, spiritual worshippers.
'LORD, TEACH US TO
PRAY.'
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Blessed Lord! I adore the love with which Thou didst
teach a woman, who had refused Thee a cup of water, what the worship of God must
be. I rejoice in the assurance that
Thou wilt no less now instruct Thy disciple, who comes to Thee with a heart that
longs to pray in spirit and in truth.
O my Holy Master! do teach
me this blessed secret.
Teach me that the worship in spirit and truth is
not of man, but only comes from Thee; that it is not only a thing of times and
seasons, but the outflowing of a life in Thee. Teach me to draw near to God in prayer
under the deep impression of my ignorance and my having nothing in myself to
offer Him, and at the same time of the provision Thou, my Saviour, makest for
the Spirit's breathing in my childlike stammerings. I do bless Thee that in Thee I am a
child, and have a child's liberty of access; that in Thee I have the spirit of
Sonship and of worship in truth.
Teach me, above all, Blessed Son of the Father, how it is the revelation
of the Father that gives confidence in prayer; and let the infinite Fatherliness
of God's Heart be my joy and strength for a life of prayer and of worship. Amen.
‘But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thine
inner chamber, and having shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret,
and thy Father which seeth in secret shall recompense thee'--MATT. vi.
6.
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FTER Jesus had called
His first disciples, He gave them their first public teaching in the Sermon on
the Mount. He there expounded to
them the kingdom of God, its laws and its life. In that kingdom God is not only King,
but Father, He not only gives all, but is Himself all. In the knowledge and fellowship of Him
alone is its blessedness. Hence it
came as a matter of course that the revelation of prayer and the prayer-life was
a part of His teaching concerning the New Kingdom He came to set up. Moses gave neither command nor
regulation with regard to prayer:
even the prophets say little directly of the duty of prayer; it is Christ
who teaches to pray.
And the first thing the Lord teaches His
disciples is that they must have a secret place for prayer; every one must have
some solitary spot where he can be alone with his God. Every teacher must have a
schoolroom. We have learnt to know
and accept Jesus as our only teacher in the school of prayer. He has already taught us at Samaria that
worship is no longer confined to times and places; that worship, spiritual true
worship, is a thing of the spirit and the life; the whole man must in his whole
life be worship in spirit and truth.
And yet He wants each one to choose for himself the fixed spot where He
can daily meet him. That inner
chamber, that solitary place, is Jesus' schoolroom. That spot may be anywhere; that spot may
change from day to day if we have to change our abode; but that secret place
there must be, with the quiet time in which the pupil places himself in the
Master's presence, to be by Him prepared to worship the Father. There alone, but there most surely,
Jesus comes to us to teach us to pray.
A teacher is always anxious that his schoolroom
should be bright and attractive, filled with the light and air of heaven, a
place where pupils long to come, and love to stay. In His first words on prayer in the
Sermon on the Mount, Jesus seeks to set the inner chamber before us in its most
attractive light. If we listen
carefully, we soon notice what the chief thing is He has to tell us of our
tarrying there. Three times He uses
the name of Father: 'Pray to thy
Father;' 'Thy Father
shall recompense thee;' 'Your Father knoweth what things ye have need
of.' The first thing in
closet-prayer is: I must meet my
Father. The light that shines in
the closet must be: the light of
the Father's countenance. The fresh
air from heaven with which Jesus would have it filled, the atmosphere in which I
am to breathe and pray, is: God's
Father-love, God's infinite Fatherliness.
Thus each thought or petition we breathe out will be simple, hearty,
childlike trust in the Father. This
is how the Master teaches us to pray:
He brings us into the Father's living presence. What we pray there must avail. Let us listen carefully to hear what the
Lord has to say to us.
First, 'Pray to thy Father which is in
secret.' God is a God who hides
Himself to the carnal eye. As long
as in our worship of God we are chiefly occupied with our own thoughts and
exercises, we shall not meet Him who is a Spirit, the unseen One. But to the man who withdraws himself
from all that is of the world and man, and prepares to wait upon God alone, the
Father will reveal Himself. As he
forsakes and gives up and shuts out the world, and the life of the world, and
surrenders himself to be led of Christ into the secret of God's presence, the
light of the Father's love will rise upon him. The secrecy of the inner chamber and the
closed door, the entire separation from all around us, is an image of, and so a
help to that inner spiritual sanctuary, the secret of God's tabernacle, within
the veil, where our spirit truly comes into contact with the Invisible One. And so we are taught, at the very outset
of our search after the secret of effectual prayer, to remember that it is in
the inner chamber, where we are alone with the Father, that we shall learn to
pray aright. The Father is in
secret: in these words Jesus
teaches us where He is waiting us, where He is always to be found. Christians often complain that private
prayer is not what it should be.
They feel weak and sinful, the heart is cold and dark; it is as if they
have so little to pray, and in that little no faith or joy. They are discouraged and kept from
prayer by the thought that they cannot come to the Father as they ought or as
they wish. Child of God! listen to your Teacher. He tells you that when you go to private
prayer your first thought must be:
The Father is in secret, the Father waits me there. Just because your heart is cold and
prayerless, get you into the presence of the loving Father. As a father pitieth his children, so the
Lord pitieth you. Do not be
thinking of how little you have to bring God, but of how much He wants to give
you. Just place yourself before,
and look up into, His face; think of His love, His wonderful, tender, pitying
love. Just tell Him how sinful and
cold and dark all is: it is the
Father's loving heart will give light and warmth to yours. O do what Jesus says: Just shut the door, and pray to thy
Father which is in secret. Is it
not wonderful? to be able to go
alone with God, the infinite God.
And then to look up and say:
My Father!
'And thy Father, which seeth in secret, will
recompense thee.' Here Jesus
assures us that secret prayer cannot be fruitless: its blessing will show itself in our
life. We have but in secret, alone
with God, to entrust our life before men to Him; He will reward us openly; He
will see to it that the answer to prayer be made manifest in His blessing upon
us. Our Lord would thus teach us
that as infinite Fatherliness and Faithfulness is that with which God meets us
in secret, so on our part there should be the childlike simplicity of faith, the
confidence that our prayer does bring down a blessing. 'He that cometh to God must believe that
He is a rewarder of them that seek Him.' Not on the strong or the fervent feeling
with which I pray does the blessing of the closet depend, but upon the love and
the power of the Father to whom I there entrust my needs. And therefore the Master has but one
desire: Remember your Father is,
and sees and hears in secret; go there and stay there, and go again from there
in the confidence: He will
recompense. Trust Him for it;
depend upon Him: prayer to the
Father cannot be vain; He will reward you openly.
Still further to confirm this faith in the
Father-love of God, Christ speaks a third word: 'Your Father knoweth what things ye
have need of before ye ask Him.'
At first sight it might appear as if this thought made prayer less
needful: God knows far better than
we what we need. But as we get a
deeper insight into what prayer really is, this truth will help much to
strengthen our faith. It will teach
us that we do not need, as the heathen, with the multitude and urgency of our
words, to compel an unwilling God to listen to us. It will lead to a holy thoughtfulness
and silence in prayer as it suggests the question: Does my Father really know that I need
this? It will, when once we have
been led by the Spirit to the certainty that our request is indeed something
that, according to the Word, we do need for God's glory, give us wonderful
confidence to say, My Father knows I need it and must have it. And if there be any delay in the answer,
it will teach us in quiet perseverance to hold on: FATHER! THOU KNOWEST I need it. O the blessed liberty and simplicity of
a child that Christ our Teacher would fain cultivate in us, as we draw near to
God: let us look up to the Father
until His Spirit works it in us.
Let us sometimes in our prayers, when we are in danger of being so
occupied with our fervent, urgent petitions, as to forget that the Father knows
and hears, let us hold still and just quietly say: My Father sees, my Father hears, my
Father knows; it will help our faith to take the answer, and to say: We know that we have the petitions we
have asked of Him.
And now, all ye who have anew entered the school
of Christ to be taught to pray, take these lessons, practise them, and trust Him
to perfect you in them. Dwell much
in the inner chamber, with the door shut--shut in from men, shut up with God; it
is there the Father waits you, it is there Jesus will teach you to pray. To be alone in secret with THE
FATHER: this be your highest
joy. To be assured that THE FATHER
will openly reward the secret prayer, so that it cannot remain unblessed: this be your strength day by day. And to know that THE FATHER knows that
you need what you ask; this be your
liberty to bring every need, in the assurance that your God will supply it
according to His riches in Glory in Christ Jesus.
'LORD, TEACH US TO
PRAY.'
-----0-----
Blessed Saviour! with my whole heart I do bless Thee for
the appointment of the inner chamber, as the school where Thou meetest each of
Thy pupils alone, and revealest to him the Father. O my Lord! strengthen my faith so in the Father's
tender love and kindness, that as often as I feel sinful or troubled, the first
instinctive thought may be to go where I know the Father waits me, and where
prayer never can go unblessed. Let
the thought that He knows my need before I ask, bring me, in great restfulness
of faith, to trust that He will give what His child requires. O let the place of secret prayer become
to me the most beloved spot of earth.
And, Lord!
hear me as I pray that Thou wouldest everywhere bless the closets of Thy
believing people. Let Thy wonderful
revelation of a Father's tenderness free all young Christians from every thought
of secret prayer as a duty or a burden, and lead them to regard it as the
highest privilege of their life, a joy and a blessing. Bring back all who are discouraged,
because they cannot find ought to bring Thee in prayer. O give them to understand that they have
only to come with their emptiness to Him who has all to give, and delights to do
it. Not, what they have to bring
the Father, but what the Father waits to give them, be their one
thought.
And bless especially the inner chamber of all Thy
servants who are working for Thee, as the place where God's truth and God's
grace is revealed to them, where they are daily anointed with fresh oil, where
their strength is renewed, and the blessings are received in faith, with which
they are to bless their fellow-men.
Lord, draw us all in the closet nearer to Thyself and the Father. Amen.
‘After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven.'—Matt.
vi. 9.
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VERY teacher knows the
power of example. He not only tells
the child what to do and how to do it, but shows him how it really can be
done. In condescension to our
weakness, our heavenly Teacher has given us the very words we are to take with
us as we draw near to our Father.
We have in them a form of prayer in which there breathe the freshness and
fulness of the Eternal Life. So
simple that the child can lisp it, so divinely rich that it comprehends all that
God can give. A form of prayer that
becomes the model and inspiration for all other prayer, and yet always draws us
back to itself as the deepest utterance of our souls before our
God.
'Our Father which art in
heaven!' To appreciate this
word of adoration aright, I must remember that none of the saints had in
Scripture ever ventured to address God as their Father. The invocation places us at once in the
centre of the wonderful revelation the Son came to make of His Father as our
Father too. It comprehends the
mystery of redemption--Christ delivering us from the curse that we might become
the children of God. The mystery of
regeneration--the Spirit in the new birth giving us the new life. And the mystery of faith--ere yet the
redemption is accomplished or understood, the word is given on the lips of the
disciples to prepare them for the blessed experience still to come. The words are the key to the whole
prayer, to all prayer. It takes
time, it takes life to study them; it will take eternity to understand them
fully. The knowledge of God's
Father-love is the first and simplest, but also the last and highest lesson in
the school of prayer. It is in the
personal relation to the living God, and the personal conscious fellowship of
love with Himself, that prayer begins.
It is in the knowledge of God's Fatherliness, revealed by the Holy
Spirit, that the power of prayer will be found to root and grow. In the infinite tenderness and pity and
patience of the infinite Father, in His loving readiness to hear and to help,
the life of prayer has its joy. O
let us take time, until the Spirit has made these words to us spirit and truth,
filling heart and life: 'Our Father
which art in heaven.' Then we are
indeed within the veil, in the secret place of power where prayer always
prevails.
'Hallowed be Thy name.' There is something here that strikes
us at once. While we ordinarily
first bring our own needs to God in prayer, and then think of what belongs to
God and His interests, the Master reverses the order. First, Thy name, Thy
kingdom, Thy will; then, give us, forgive us, lead
us, deliver us. The
lesson is of more importance than we think. In true worship the Father must be
first, must be all. The sooner I
learn to forget myself in the desire that HE may be glorified, the richer will
the blessing be that prayer will bring to myself. No one ever loses by what he sacrifices
for the Father.
This must influence all our
prayer. There are two sorts of
prayer: personal and
intercessory. The latter ordinarily
occupies the lesser part of our time and energy. This may not be. Christ has opened the school of prayer
specially to train intercessors for the great work of bringing down, by their
faith and prayer, the blessings of His work and love on the world around. There can be no deep growth in prayer
unless this be made our aim. The
little child may ask of the father only what it needs for itself; and yet it
soon learns to say, Give some for sister too. But the grown-up son, who only lives for
the father's interest and takes charge of the father's business, asks more
largely, and gets all that is asked.
And Jesus would train us to the blessed life of consecration and service,
in which our interests are all subordinate to the Name, and the Kingdom, and the
Will of the Father. O let us live
for this, and let, on each act of adoration, Our Father! there follow in the
same breath Thy Name, Thy Kingdom, Thy Will;--for this we
look up and long.
'Hallowed be Thy
name.' What name? This new name of Father. The word Holy is the central word
of the Old Testament; the name Father of the New. In this name of Love all the holiness
and glory of God are now to be revealed.
And how is the name to be hallowed?
By God Himself: 'I will
hallow My great name which ye have profaned.' Our prayer must be that in ourselves, in
all God's children, in presence of the world, God Himself would reveal the
holiness, the Divine power, the hidden glory of the name of Father. The Spirit of the Father is the
Holy Spirit: it is only when
we yield ourselves to be led of Him, that the name will be
hallowed in our prayers and our lives. Let us learn the prayer: 'Our Father, hallowed be Thy
name.'
'Thy kingdom
come.' The Father is a King and
has a kingdom. The son and heir of
a king has no higher ambition than the glory of his father's kingdom. In time of war or danger this becomes
his passion; he can think of nothing else.
The children of the Father are here in the enemy's territory, where the
kingdom, which is in heaven, is not yet fully manifested. What more natural than that, when they
learn to hallow the Father-name, they should long and cry with deep
enthusiasm: 'Thy kingdom
come.' The coming of the kingdom is
the one great event on which the revelation of the Father's glory, the
blessedness of His children, the salvation of the world depends. On our prayers too the coming of the
kingdom waits. Shall we not join in
the deep longing cry of the redeemed:
'Thy kingdom come'? Let us
learn it in the school of Jesus.
'Thy will be done, as in
heaven, so on earth.' This
petition is too frequently applied alone to the suffering of the will of God. In heaven God's will is done, and
the Master teaches the child to ask that the will may be done on earth just as
in heaven: in the spirit of adoring
submission and ready obedience.
Because the will of God is the glory of heaven, the doing of it is the blessedness of heaven. As the will is done, the kingdom of
heaven comes into the heart. And
wherever faith has accepted the Father's love, obedience accepts the Father's
will. The surrender to, and the
prayer for a life of heaven-like obedience, is the spirit of childlike
prayer.
'Give us this day our
daily bread.' When first the
child has yielded himself to the Father in the care for His Name, His Kingdom,
and His Will, he has full liberty to ask for his daily bread. A master cares for the food of his
servant, a general of his soldiers, a father of his child. And will not the Father in heaven care
for the child who has in prayer given himself up to His interests? We may indeed in full confidence
say: Father, I live for Thy honour
and Thy work; I know Thou carest for me.
Consecration to God and His will gives wonderful liberty in prayer for
temporal things: the whole earthly
life is given to the Father's loving care.
'And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.'
As bread is the first need of the body, so forgiveness for the soul. And the provision for the one is as sure
as for the other. We are children
but sinners too; our right of access to the Father's presence we owe to the
precious blood and the forgiveness it has won for us. Let us beware of the prayer for
forgiveness becoming a formality:
only what is really confessed is really forgiven. Let us in faith accept the forgiveness
as promised: as a spiritual
reality, an actual transaction between God and us, it is the entrance into all
the Father's love and all the privileges of children. Such forgiveness, as a living
experience, is impossible without a forgiving spirit to others: as forgiven expresses the
heavenward, so forgiving the earthward, relation of God's child. In each prayer to the Father I must be
able to say that I know of no one whom I do not heartily
love.
'And lead us not into
temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.' Our daily bread, the pardon of our sins,
and then our being kept from all sin and the power of the evil one, in these
three petitions all our personal need is comprehended. The prayer for bread and pardon must be
accompanied by the surrender to live in all things in holy obedience to the
Father's will, and the believing prayer in everything to be kept by the power of
the indwelling Spirit from the power of the evil one.
Children of God! it is thus
Jesus would have us to pray to the Father in heaven. O let His Name, and Kingdom, and Will,
have the first place in our love; His providing, and pardoning, and keeping love
will be our sure portion. So the
prayer will lead us up to the true child-life: the Father all to the child, the Father
all for the child. We shall
understand how Father and child, the Thine and the Our, are all
one, and how the heart that begins its prayer with the God-devoted THINK, will
have the power in faith to speak out the OUR too. Such prayer will, indeed, be the
fellowship and interchange of love, always bringing us back in trust and worship
to Him who is not only the Beginning but the End: 'FOR THINE IS THE KINGDOM, AND THE
POWER, AND THE GLORY, FOR EVER, AMEN.'
Son of the Father, teach us to pray, 'OUR FATHER.'
'LORD, TEACH US TO
PRAY.'
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O Thou who art the only-begotten Son, teach us,
we beseech Thee, to pray, 'OUR FATHER.'
We thank Thee, Lord, for these Living Blessed Words which Thou has given
us. We thank Thee for the millions
who in them have learnt to know and worship the Father, and for what they have
been to us. Lord! it is as if we
needed days and weeks in Thy school with each separate petition; so deep and
full are they. But we look to Thee
to lead us deeper into their meaning:
do it, we pray Thee, for Thy Name's sake; Thy name is Son of the
Father.
Lord!
Thou didst once say: 'No man
knoweth the Father save the Son, and he to whom the Son willeth to reveal
Him.' And again: 'I made known unto them Thy name, and
will make it known, that the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in
them.' Lord Jesus! reveal to us the
Father. Let His name, His infinite
Father-love, the love with which He loved Thee, according to Thy prayer, BE IN
US. Then shall we say aright, 'OUR
FATHER!' Then shall we apprehend
Thy teaching, and the first spontaneous breathing of our heart will be: 'Our Father, Thy Name, Thy Kingdom, Thy
Will.' And we shall bring our needs
and our sins and our temptations to Him in the confidence that the love of such
a Father care for all.
Blessed Lord! we are Thy scholars, we trust Thee;
do teach us to pray, 'OUR FATHER.'
Amen.
'Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and
ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: for every one that asketh
receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh
it shall be opened,'--MATT. vii. 7, 8.
'Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask
amiss.'--Jas. iv. 3.
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UR Lord returns here in
the Sermon on the Mount a second time to speak of prayer. The first time He had spoken of the
Father who is to be found in secret, and rewards openly, and had given us the
pattern prayer (Matt. vi. 5-15).
Here He wants to teach us what in all Scripture is considered the chief
thing in prayer: the assurance that
prayer will be heard and answered.
Observe how He uses words which mean almost the same thing, and each time
repeats the promise so distinctly:
'Ye shall receive, ye shall find, it shall be opened
unto you;' and then gives as ground for such assurance the law of the
kingdom: 'He that asketh,
receiveth; he that seeketh, findeth; to him that knocketh, it
shall be opened.' We cannot but
feel how in this sixfold repetition He wants to impress deep on our minds this
one truth, that we may and must most confidently expect an answer to our
prayer. Next to the revelation of
the Father's love, there is, in the whole course of the school of prayer, not a
more important lesson than this:
Every one that asketh, receiveth.
In the three words the Lord uses, ask, seek,
knock, a difference in meaning has been sought. If such was indeed His purpose, then the
first, ASK, refers to the gifts we pray for. But I may ask and receive the gift
without the Giver. SEEK is the word
Scripture uses of God Himself; Christ assures me that I can find Himself. But it is not enough to find God in time
of need, without coming to abiding fellowship: KNOCK speaks of admission to dwell with
Him and in Him. Asking and
receiving the gift would thus lead to seeking and finding the Giver, and this
again to the knocking and opening of the door of the Father's home and
love. One thing is sure: the Lord does want us to count most
certainly on it that asking, seeking, knocking, cannot be in vain: receiving an answer, finding God, the
opened heart and home of God, are the certain fruit of
prayer.
That the Lord should have thought it needful in
so many forms to repeat the truth, is a lesson of deep import. It proves that He knows our heart, how
doubt and distrust toward God are natural to us, and how easily we are inclined
to rest in prayer as a religious work without an answer. He knows too how, even when we believe
that God is the Hearer of prayer, believing prayer that lays hold of the
promise, is something spiritual, too high and difficult for the half-hearted
disciple. He therefore at the very
outset of His instruction to those who would learn to pray, seeks to lodge this
truth deep into their hearts:
prayer does avail much; ask and ye shall receive; every one
that asketh, receiveth. This is the
fixed eternal law of the kingdom:
if you ask and receive not, it must be because there is something amiss
or wanting in the prayer. Hold on;
let the Word and the Spirit teach you to pray aright, but do not let go the
confidence He seeks to waken: Every
one that asketh, receiveth.
'Ask, and it shall be given you.' Christ has no mightier stimulus to
persevering prayer in His school than this. As a child has to prove a sum to be
correct, so the proof that we have prayed aright is, the answer. If we ask and receive not, it is because
we have not learned to pray aright.
Let every learner in the school of Christ therefore take the Master's
word in all simplicity: Every one
that asketh, receiveth. He had good
reasons for speaking so unconditionally.
Let us beware of weakening the Word with our human wisdom. When He tells us heavenly things, let us
believe Him: His Word will explain
itself to him who believes it fully.
If questions and difficulties arise, let us not seek to have them settled
before we accept the Word. No; let
us entrust them all to Him: it is
His to solve them: our work is
first and fully to accept and hold fast His promise. Let in our inner chamber, in the inner
chamber of our heart too, the Word be inscribed in letters of light: Every one that asketh,
receiveth.
According to this teaching of the Master, prayer
consists of two parts, has two sides, a human and a Divine. The human is the asking, the Divine is
the giving. Or, to look at both
from the human side, there is the asking and the receiving--the two halves that
make up a whole. It is as if He
would tell us that we are not to rest without an answer, because it is the will
of God, the rule in the Father's family:
every childlike believing petition is granted. If no answer comes, we are not to sit
down in the sloth that calls itself resignation, and suppose that it is not
God's will to give an answer. No;
there must be something in the prayer that is not as God would have it,
childlike and believing; we must seek for grace to pray so that the answer may
come. It is far easier to the flesh
to submit without the answer than to yield itself to be searched and purified by
the Spirit, until it has learnt to pray the prayer of
faith.
It is one of the terrible marks of the diseased
state of Christian life in these days, that there are so many who rest content
without the distinct experience of answer to prayer. They pray daily, they ask many things,
and trust that some of them will be heard, but know little of direct definite
answer to prayer as the rule of daily life. And it is this the Father wills: He seeks daily intercourse with His
children in listening to and granting their petitions. he wills that I should come to Him day
by day with distinct requests; He wills day by day to do for me what I ask. It was in His answer to prayer that the
saints of old learned to know God as the Living One, and were stirred to praise
and love (Ps. xxxiv., lxvi. 19, cxvi. 1).
Our Teacher waits to imprint this upon our minds: prayer and its answer, the child asking
and the father giving, belong to each other.
There may be cases in which the answer is a
refusal, because the request is not according to God's Word, as when Moses asked
to enter Canaan. But still, there
was an answer: God did not leave
His servant in uncertainty as to His will.
The gods of the heathen are dumb and cannot speak. Our Father lets His child know when He
cannot give him what he asks, and he withdraws his petition, even as the Son did
in Gethsemane. Both Moses the
servant and Christ the Son knew that what they asked was not according to what
the Lord had spoken: their prayer
was the humble supplication whether it was not possible for the decision to be
changed. God will teach those who
are teachable and give Him time, by His Word and Spirit, whether their request
be according to His will or not.
Let us withdraw the request, if it be not according to God's mind, or
persevere till the answer come.
Prayer is appointed to obtain the answer. It is in prayer and its answer that the
interchange of love between the Father and His child takes
place.
How deep the estrangement of our heart from God
must be, that we find it so difficult to grasp such promises. Even while we accept the words and
believe their truth, the faith of the heart, that fully has them and rejoices in
them, comes so slowly. It is
because our spiritual life is still so weak, and the capacity for taking God's
thoughts is so feeble. But let us
look to Jesus to teach us as none but He can teach. If we take His words in simplicity, and
trust Him by His Spirit to make them within us life and power, they will so
enter into our inner being, that the spiritual Divine reality of the truth they
contain will indeed take possession of us, and we shall not rest content until
every petition we offer is borne heavenward on Jesus' own words: 'Ask, and it shall be given
you.'
Beloved fellow-disciples in the school of
Jesus! let us set ourselves to
learn this lesson well. Let us take
these words just as they were spoken.
Let us not suffer human reason to weaken their force. Let us take them as Jesus gives them,
and believe them. He will teach us
in due time how to understand them fully:
let us begin by implicitly believing them. Let us take time, as often as we pray,
to listen to His voice: Every one
that asketh, receiveth. Let us not
make the feeble experiences of our unbelief the measure of what our faith may
expect. Let us seek, not only just
in our seasons of prayer, but at all times, to hold fast the joyful
assurance: man's prayer on earth
and God's answer in heaven are meant for each other. Let us trust Jesus to teach us so to
pray that the answer can come. He
will do it, if we hold fast the word He gives today: 'Ask, and ye shall
receive.'
'LORD, TEACH US TO
PRAY.'
-----0-----
O Lord Jesus! teach me to understand and believe what
Thou hast now promised me. It is
not hid from Thee, O my Lord, with what reasonings my heart seeks to satisfy
itself, when no answer comes. There
is the thought that my prayer is not in harmony with the Father's secret
counsel; that there is perhaps something better Thou wouldest give me; or that
prayer as fellowship with God is blessing enough without an answer. And yet, my blessed Lord, I find in Thy
teaching on prayer that Thou didst not speak of these things, but didst say so
plainly, that prayer may and must expect an answer. Thou dost assure us that this is the
fellowship of a child with the Father:
the child asks and the Father gives.
Blessed Lord! Thy words are faithful and true. It must be, because I pray amiss, that
my experience of answered prayer is not clearer. It must be, because I live too little in
the Spirit, that my prayer is too little in the Spirit, and that the power for
the prayer of faith is wanting.
Lord!
teach me to pray. Lord
Jesus! I trust Thee for it; teach
me to pray in faith. Lord! teach me this lesson of today: Every one that asketh receiveth. Amen.
'Or what man is there of you, who, if his son ask
him for a loaf, will give him a stone; or if he shall ask for a fish, will give
him a serpent? If ye then, being
evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your
Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask Him?'--MATT. vii.
9-11
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N these words our Lord
proceeds further to confirm what He had said of the certainty of an answer to
prayer. To remove all doubt, and
show us on what sure ground His promise rests, He appeals to what every one has
seen and experienced here on earth.
We are all children, and know what we expected of our fathers. We are fathers, or continually see them;
and everywhere we look upon it as the most natural thing there can be, for a
father to hear his child. And the
Lord asks us to look up from earthly parents, of whom the best are but evil, and
to calculate HOW MUCH MORE the heavenly Father will give good gifts to them that
ask Him. Jesus would lead us up to
see, that as much greater as God is than sinful man, so much greater our
assurance ought to be that He will more surely than any earthly father grant our
childlike petitions. As much
greater as God is than man, so much surer is it that prayer will be heard
with the Father in heaven than with a father on earth.
As simple and intelligible as this parable is, so
deep and spiritual is the teaching it contains. The Lord would remind us that the prayer
of a child owes its influence entirely to the relation in which he stands to the
parent. The prayer can exert that
influence only when the child is really living in that relationship, in the
home, in the love, in the service of the Father. The power of the promise, 'Ask, and it
shall be given you,' lies in the loving relationship between us as children and
the Father in heaven; when we live and walk in that relationship, the prayer of
faith and its answer will be the natural result. And so the lesson we have today in the
school of prayer is this: Live as a
child of God, then you will be able to pray as a child, and as a child you will
most assuredly be heard.
And what is the true child-life? The answer can be found in any
home. The child that by preference
forsakes the father's house, that finds no pleasure in the presence and love and
obedience of the father, and still thinks to ask and obtain what he will, will
surely be disappointed. On the
contrary, he to whom the intercourse and will and honour and love of the father
are the joy of his life, will find that it is the father's joy to grant his
requests. Scripture says, 'As many
as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the children of God:' the childlike privilege of asking all is
inseparable from the childlike life under the leading of the Spirit. He that gives himself to be led by the
Spirit in his life, will be led by Him in his prayers too. And he will find that Fatherlike giving
is the Divine response to childlike living.
To see what this childlike living is, in which
childlike asking and believing have their ground, we have only to notice what
our Lord teaches in the Sermon on the Mount of the Father and His children. In it the prayer-promises are imbedded
in the life-precepts; the two are inseparable. They form one whole; and He alone can
count on the fulfilment of the promise, who accepts too all that the Lord has
connected with it. It is as if in
speaking the word, 'Ask, and ye shall receive,' He says: I give these promises to those whom in
the beatitudes I have pictured in their childlike poverty and purity, and of
whom I have said, 'They shall be called the children of God' (Matt. v.
3-9): to children, who 'let your
light shine before men, so that they may glorify your Father in heaven:' to those who walk in love, 'that ye may
be children of your Father which is in heaven,' and who seek to be perfect 'even
as your Father in heaven is perfect' (v. 45): to those whose fasting and praying and
almsgiving (vi. 1-18) is not before men, but 'before your Father which seeth in
secret;' who forgive 'even as your Father forgiveth you' (vi. 15); who trust the
heavenly Father in all earthly need, seeking first the kingdom of God and His
righteousness (vi. 26-32); who not only say, Lord, Lord, but do the will of my
Father which is in heaven (vii. 21).
Such are the children of the Father, and such is the life in the Father's
love and service; in such a child-life answered prayers are certain and
abundant.
But will not such teaching discourage the feeble
one? If we are first to answer to
this portrait of a child, must not many give up all hope of answers to
prayer? The difficulty is removed
if we think again of the blessed name of father and child. A child is weak; there is a great
difference among children in age and gift.
The Lord does not demand of us a perfect fulfilment of the law; no, but
only the childlike and whole-hearted surrender to live as a child with Him in
obedience and truth. Nothing
more. But also, nothing less. The Father must have the whole
heart. When this is given, and He
sees the child with honest purpose and steady will seeking in everything to be
and live as a child, then our prayer will count with Him as the prayer of a
child. Let any one simply and
honestly begin to study the Sermon on the Mount and take it as his guide in
life, and he will find, notwithstanding weakness and failure, an ever-growing
liberty to claim the fulfilment of its promises in regard to prayer. In the names of father and child he has
the pledge that his petitions will be granted.
This is the one chief thought on which Jesus
dwells here, and which He would have all His scholars take in. He would have us see that the secret of
effectual prayer is: to have the
heart filled with the Father-love of God.
It is not enough for us to know that God is a Father: He would have us take time to come under
the full impression of what that name implies. We must take the best earthly father we
know; we must think of the tenderness and love with which he regards the request
of his child, the love and joy with which he grants every reasonable desire; we
must then, as we think in adoring worship of the infinite Love and Fatherliness
of God, consider with how much more tenderness and joy He sees us
come to Him, and gives us what we ask aright. And then, when we see how much this
Divine arithmetic is beyond our comprehension, and feel how impossible it is for
us to apprehend God's readiness to hear us, then He would have us come and open
our heart for the Holy Spirit to shed abroad God's Father-love there. Let us do this not only when we want to
pray, but let us yield heart and life to dwell in that love. The child who only wants to know the
love of the father when he has something to ask, will be disappointed. But he who lets God be Father always and
in everything, who would fain live his whole life in the Father's presence and
love, who allows God in all the greatness of His love to be a Father to him, oh!
he will experience most gloriously that a life in God's infinite Fatherliness
and continual answers to prayer are inseparable.
Beloved fellow-disciple! we begin to see what the reason is that
we know so little of daily answers to prayer, and what the chief lesson is which
the Lord has for us in His school.
It is all in the name of Father.
We thought of new and deeper insight into some of the mysteries of the
prayer-world as what we should get in Christ's school; He tells us the first is the highest
lesson; we must learn to say well, 'Abba, Father!' 'Our Father which art in heaven.' He that can say this, has the key to all
prayer. In all the compassion with
which a father listens to his weak or sickly child, in all the joy with which he
hears his stammering child, in all the gentle patience with which he bears with
a thoughtless child, we must, as in so many mirrors, study the heart of our
Father, until every prayer be borne upward on the faith of this Divine
word: 'How much more shall
your heavenly Father give good gifts to them that ask
Him.'
'LORD, TEACH US TO
PRAY.'
-----0-----
Blessed Lord! Thou knowest that this, though it be one
of the first and simplest and most glorious lessons in Thy school, is to our
hearts one of the hardest to learn:
we know so little of the love of the Father. Lord! teach us so to live with the Father that
His love may be to us nearer, clearer, dearer, than the love of any earthly
father. And let the assurance of
His hearing our prayer be as much greater than the confidence in an earthly
parent, as the heavens are higher than earth, as God is infinitely greater than
man. Lord! show us that it is only our unchildlike
distance from the Father that hinders the answer to prayer, and lead us on to
the true life of God's children.
Lord Jesus! it is fatherlike
love that wakens childlike trust. O
reveal to us the Father, and His tender, pitying love, that we may become
childlike, and experience how in the child-life lies the power of
prayer.
Blessed Son of God! the Father loveth Thee and hath given
Thee all things. And Thou lovest
the Father, and hast done all things He commanded Thee, and therefore hast the
power to ask all things. Lord! give us Thine own Spirit, the Spirit of
the Son. Make us childlike, as Thou
wert on earth. And let every prayer
be breathed in the faith that as the heaven is higher than the earth, so God's
Father-love, and His readiness to give us what we ask, surpasses all we can
think or conceive.
Amen.
NOTE.1
'Your Father which is in
heaven.' Alas! we speak of it only as the utterance of
a reverential homage. We think of
it as a figure borrowed from an earthly life, and only in some faint and shallow
meaning to be used of God. We are
afraid to take God as our own tender and pitiful father. He is a schoolmaster, or almost farther
off than that, and knowing less about us--an inspector, who knows nothing of us
except through our lessons. His
eyes are not on the scholar, but on the book, and all alike must come up to the
standard.
Now open the ears of the heart,
timid child of God; let it go sinking right down into the inner most depths of
the soul. Here is the
starting-point of holiness, in the love and patience and pity of our heavenly
Father. We have not to learn to be
holy as a hard lesson at school, that we may make God think well of us; we are
to learn it at home with the Father to help us. God loves you not because you are clever
not because you are good, but because He is your Father. The Cross of Christ does not make God
love us; it is the outcome and measure of His love to us. He loves all His children, the
clumsiest, the dullest, the worst of His children. His love lies at the back of everything,
and we must get upon that as the solid foundation of our religious life, not
growing up into that, but growing up out if it. We must begin there or our beginning
will come to nothing. Do take hold
of this mightily. We must go out of
ourselves for any hope, or any strength, or any confidence. And what hope, what strength, what
confidence may be ours now that we begin here, your Father which is in
heaven!
We need to get in at the
tenderness and helpfulness which lie in these words, and to rest upon
it--your Father. Speak them
over to yourself until something of the wonderful truth is felt by us. It means that I am bound to God by the
closest and tenderest relationship;
that I have a right to His love and His power and His blessing, such as
nothing else could give me. O the
boldness with which we can draw near!
O the great things we have a right to ask for! Your Father. It means that all His infinite love and
patience and wisdom bend over me to help me. In this relationship lies not only the
possibility of holiness; there is infinitely more than that.
Here we are to begin, in the
patient love of our Father. Think how He knows us apart and by
ourselves, in all our peculiarities, and in all our weaknesses and
difficulties. The master judges by
the result, but our Father judges by the effort. Failure does not always mean fault. He knows how much things cost, and
weighs them where others only measure.
YOUR FATHER. Think how great
store His love sets by the poor beginnings of the little ones, clumsy and
unmeaning as they may be to others.
All this lies in this blessed relationship and infinitely more. Do not fear to take it all as your
own.
1From Thoughts on
Holiness, by Mark Guy Pearse.
What is so beautifully said of the knowledge of God's Fatherliness as the
starting-point of holiness is no less true of prayer.
'If ye then, being evil, know how to give good
gifts unto your children, how much more shall the heavenly Father give the Holy
Spirit to them that ask Him?'--LUKE xi. 13.
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N the Sermon on the
Mount, the Lord had already given utterance to His wonderful HOW MUCH MORE? Here in Luke, where He repeats the
question, there is a difference.
Instead of speaking, as then of giving good gifts, He says, 'How
much more shall the heavenly Father give THE HOLY SPIRIT?' He thus teaches us that the chief and
the best of these gifts is the Holy Spirit, or rather, that in this gift all
others are comprised The Holy
Spirit is the first of the Father's gifts, and the one He delights most to
bestow. The Holy Spirit is
therefore the gift we ought first and chiefly to seek.
The unspeakable worth of this gift we can easily
understand. Jesus spoke of the
Spirit as 'the promise of the Father;' the one promise in which God's
Fatherhood revealed itself. The
best gift a good and wise father can bestow on a child on earth is his own
spirit. This is the great object of
a father in education--to reproduce in his child his own disposition and
character. If the child is to know
and understand his father; if, as he grows up, he is to enter into all his will
and plans; if he is to have his highest joy in the father, and the father in
him,--he must be of one mind and spirit with him. And so it is impossible to conceive of
God bestowing any higher gift on His child than this, His own Spirit. God is what He is through His Spirit;
the Spirit is the very life of God.
Just think what it means--God giving His own Spirit to His child on
earth.
Or was not this the glory of Jesus as a Son upon
earth, that the Spirit of the Father was in Him? At His baptism in Jordan the two things
were united,--the voice, proclaiming Him the Beloved Son, and the Spirit,
descending upon Him. And so the
apostle says of us, 'Because ye are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of His Son
into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.'
A king seeks in the whole education of his son to call forth in him a
kingly spirit. Our Father in heaven
desires to educate us as His children for the holy, heavenly life in which He
dwells, and for this gives us, from the depths of His heart, His own
Spirit. It was this which was the
whole aim of Jesus when, after having made atonement with His own blood, He
entered for us into God's presence, that He might obtain for us, and send down
to dwell in us, the Holy Spirit. As
the Spirit of the Father, and of the Son, the whole life and love of the Father
and the Son are in Him; and, coming down into us, He lifts us up into their
fellowship. As Spirit of the
Father, He sheds abroad the Father's love, with which He loved the Son, in our
hearts, and teaches us to live in it.
As Spirit of the Son, He breathes in us the childlike liberty, and
devotion, and obedience in which the Son lived upon earth. The Father can bestow no higher or more
wonderful gift than this: His own
Holy Spirit, the Spirit of sonship.
This truth naturally suggests the thought that
this first and chief gift of God must be the first and chief object of all
prayer. For every need of the
spiritual life this is the one thing needful, the Holy Spirit. All the fulness is in Jesus; the fulness
of grace and truth, out of which we receive grace for grace. The Holy Spirit is the appointed
conveyancer, whose special work it is to make Jesus and all there is in Him for
us ours in personal appropriation, in blessed experience. He is the Spirit of life in Christ
Jesus; as wonderful as the life is, so wonderful is the provision by which such
an agent is provided to communicate it to us. If we but yield ourselves entirely to
the disposal of the Spirit, and let Him have His way with us, He will manifest
the life of Christ within us. He
will do this with a Divine power, maintaining the life of Christ in us in
uninterrupted continuity. Surely,
if there is one prayer that should draw us to the Father's throne and keep us
there, it is this: for the Holy
Spirit, whom we as children have received, to stream into us and out from us in
greater fulness.
In the variety of the gifts which the Spirit has
to dispense, He meets the believer's every need. Just think of the names He bears. The Spirit of grace, to reveal and
impart all of grace there is in Jesus.
The Spirit of faith, teaching us to begin and go on and increase in ever
believing. The Spirit of adoption
and assurance, who witnesses that we are God's children, and inspires the
confiding and confident Abba, Father!
The Spirit of truth, to lead into all truth, to make each word of God
ours in deed and in truth. The
Spirit of prayer, through whom we speak with the Father; prayer that must be
heard. The Spirit of judgment and
burning, to search the heart, and convince of sin. The Spirit of holiness, manifesting and
communicating the Father's holy presence within us. The Spirit of power, through whom we are
strong to testify boldly and work effectually in the Father's service. The Spirit of glory, the pledge of our
inheritance, the preparation and the foretaste of the glory to come. Surely the child of God needs but one
thing to be able really to live as a child: it is, to be filled with this
Spirit.
And now, the lesson Jesus teaches us today in His
school is this: That the Father is
just longing to give Him to us if we will but ask in the childlike dependence on
what He says: 'If ye know to give
good gifts unto your children, HOW MUCH MORE shall your heavenly Father give the
Holy Spirit to them that ask Him.'
In the words of God's promise, 'I will pour out my Spirit
abundantly;' and of His command, 'Be ye filled with the Spirit' we
have the measure of what God is ready to give, and what we may obtain. As God's children, we have already
received the Spirit. But we still
need to ask and pray for His special gifts and operations as we require
them. And not only this, but for
Himself to take complete and entire possession; for His unceasing momentary
guidance. Just as the branch,
already filled with the sap of the vine, is ever crying for the continued and
increasing flow of that sap, that it may bring its fruit to perfection, so the
believer, rejoicing in the possession of the Spirit, ever thirsts and cries for
more. And what the great Teacher
would have us learn is, that nothing less than God's promise and God's command
may be the measure of our expectation and our prayer; we must be filled
abundantly. He would have us ask
this in the assurance that the wonderful HOW MUCH MORE of God's Father-love is
the pledge that, when we ask, we do most certainly
receive.
Let us now believe this. As we pray to be filled with the Spirit,
let us not seek for the answer in our feelings. All spiritual blessings must be
received, that is, accepted or taken in faith.1
Let me believe, the Father gives the Holy Spirit to
His praying child. Even now, while
I pray, I must say in faith: I have
what I ask, the fulness of the Spirit is mine. Let us continue stedfast in this
faith. On the strength of God's
Word we know that we have what we ask.
Let us, with thanksgiving that we have been heard, with thanksgiving for
what we have received and taken and now hold as ours, continue stedfast in
believing prayer that the blessing, which has already been given us, and
which we hold in faith, may break through and fill our whole being. It is in such believing thanksgiving and
prayer, that our soul opens up for the Spirit to take entire and undisturbed
possession. It is such prayer that
not only asks and hopes, but takes and holds, that inherits the full
blessing. In all our prayer let us
remember the lesson the Saviour would teach us this day, that, if there is
one thing on earth we can be sure of, it is this, that the Father desires to
have us filled with His Spirit, that He delights to give us His
Spirit.
And when once we have learned thus to believe for
ourselves, and each day to take out of the treasure we hold in heaven, what
liberty and power to pray for the outpouring of the Spirit on the Church of God,
on all flesh, on individuals, or on special efforts! He that has once learned to know the
Father in prayer for himself, learns to pray most confidently for others
too. The Father gives the Holy
Spirit to them that ask Him, not least, but most, when they ask for
others.
'LORD, TEACH US TO
PRAY.'
-----0-----
Father in heaven! Thou didst send Thy Son to reveal Thyself to us, Thy Father-love, and all
that that love has for us. And He
has taught us, that the gift above all gifts which Thou wouldst bestow in answer
to prayer is, the Holy Spirit.
O my Father! I come to Thee with this prayer; there
is nothing I would--may I not say, I do--desire so much as to be filled with the
Spirit, the Holy Spirit. The
blessings He brings are so unspeakable, and just what I need. He sheds abroad Thy love in the heart,
and fills it with Thy self. I long
for this. He breathes the mind and
life of Christ in me, so that I live as He did, in and for the Father's
love. I long for this. He endues with power from on high for
all my walk and work. I long for
this. O Father! I beseech Thee, give me this day the
fulness of Thy Spirit.
Father!
I ask this, resting on the words of my Lord: 'HOW MUCH MORE THE HOLY SPIRIT.' I do believe that Thou hearest my prayer; I
receive now what I ask; Father! I
claim and I take it: the fulness of
Thy Spirit is mine. I receive the
gift this day again as a faith gift; in faith I reckon my Father works through
the Spirit all He has promised. The
Father delights to breathe His Spirit into His waiting child as He tarries in
fellowship with Himself.
Amen.
1The Greek word for receiving and taking is the
same. When Jesus said, 'Everyone
that asketh receiveth,' He used the same verb as at the Supper,
'Take, eat,' or on the resurrection morning, 'Receive,' accept,
take, 'the Holy Spirit.' Receiving
not only implies God's bestowment, but our acceptance.
'And He said unto them, Which of you shall have
a friend, and shall go to him at midnight, and say to him, Friend,
lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine is come to me from a journey,
and I have nothing to set before him' and he from within shall answer and say,
Trouble me not: the door is now
shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give thee. I say unto you, though he will not rise
and give him because he is his friend, yet because of his
importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth.'--LUKE xi.
5-8.
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HE first teaching to His
disciples was given by our Lord in the Sermon on the Mount. It was near a year later that the
disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray. In answer He gave them a second time the
Lord's Prayer, so teaching them what to pray. He then speaks of how they ought to pray, and repeats
what he formerly said of God's Fatherliness and the certainty of an answer. But in between He adds the beautiful
parable of the friend at midnight, to teach them the two fold lesson, that God
does not only want us to pray for ourselves, but for the perishing around us,
and that in such intercession great boldness of entreaty is often needful, and
always lawful, yea, pleasing to God.
The parable is a perfect
storehouse of instruction in regard to true intercession. There is, first, the love which
seeks to help the needy around us:
'my friend is come to me.'
Then the need which urges to the cry 'I have nothing to set before
him.' Then follows the
confidence that help is to be had:
'which of you shall have a friend, and say, Friend, lend me
three loaves.' Then comes the
unexpected refusal: 'I
cannot rise and give thee.'
Then again the perseverance that takes no refusal: 'because of his
importunity.' And lastly,
the reward of such prayer: 'he will
give him as many as he needeth.'
A wonderful setting forth of the way of prayer and faith in which the
blessing of God has so often been sought and found.
Let us confine ourselves to the chief
thought: prayer as an appeal to the
friendship of God; and we shall find that two lessons are specially
suggested. The one, that if we are
God's friends, and come as such to Him, we must prove ourselves the friends of
the needy; God's friendship to us and ours to others go hand in hand. The other, that when we come thus we may
use the utmost liberty in claiming an answer.
There is a twofold use of prayer: the one, to obtain strength and blessing
for our own life; the other, the higher, the true glory of prayer, for which
Christ has taken us into His fellowship and teaching, is intercession, where
prayer is the royal power a child of God exercises in heaven on behalf of others
and even of the kingdom. We see it
in Scripture, how it was in intercession for others that Abraham and Moses,
Samuel and Elijah, with all the holy men of old, proved that they had power with
God and prevailed. It is when we
give ourselves to be a blessing that we can specially count on the blessing of
God. It is when we draw near to God
as the friend of the poor and the perishing that we may count on His
friendliness; the righteous man who is the friend of the poor is very specially
the friend of God. This gives
wonderful liberty in prayer.
Lord! I have a needy friend
whom I must help. As a friend I
have undertaken to help him. In
Thee I have a Friend, whose kindness and riches I know to be infinite: I am sure Thou wilt give me what I
ask. If I, being evil, am ready to
do for my friend what I can, how much more wilt Thou, O my heavenly Friend, now
do for Thy friend what he asks?
The question might suggest itself, whether the
Fatherhood of God does not give such confidence in prayer, that the thought of
His Friendship can hardly teach us anything more: a father is more than a friend. And yet, if we consider it, this
pleading the friendship of God opens new wonders to us. That a child obtains what he asks of his
father looks so perfectly natural, we almost count it the father's duty to
give. But with a friend it is as if
the kindness is more free, dependent, not on nature, but on sympathy and
character. And then the relation of
a child is more that of perfect dependence; two friends are more nearly on a
level. And so our Lord, in seeking
to unfold to us the spiritual mystery of prayer, would fain have us approach God
in this relation too, as those whom He has acknowledged as His friends, whose
mind and life are in sympathy with His.
But then we must be living as His friends. I am still a child even when a wanderer;
but friendship depends upon the conduct.
'Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you.' 'Thou seest that faith wrought with his
works, and by works was faith made perfect; and the scripture was fulfilled
which saith, And Abraham believed God, and he was called the friend of
God.' It is the Spirit, 'the
same Spirit,' that leads us that also bears witness to our acceptance with
God; 'likewise, also,' the same Spirit helpeth us in prayer. It is a life as the friend of God that
gives the wonderful liberty to say:
I have a friend to whom I can go even at midnight. And how much more when I go in the very
spirit of that friendliness, manifesting myself the very kindness I look for in
God, seeking to help my friend as I want God to help me. When I come to God in prayer, He always
looks to what the aim is of my petition.
If it be merely for my own comfort or joy I seek His grace, I do not
receive. But if I can say that it
is that He may be glorified in my dispensing His blessings to others, I shall
not ask in vain. Or if I ask for
others, but want to wait until God has made me so rich, that it is no sacrifice
or act of faith to aid them, I shall not obtain. But if I can say that I have already
undertaken for my needy friend, that in my poverty I have already begun the work
of love, because I know I had a friend Who would help me, my prayer will be
heard. Oh, we know not how much the
plea avails: the friendship of
earth looking in its need to the friendship of heaven: 'He will give him as much as he
needeth.'
But not always at once. The one thing by which man can honour
and enjoy his God is faith.
Intercession is part of faith's training-school. There our friendship with men and with
God is tested. There it is seen
whether my friendship with the needy is so real, that I will take time and
sacrifice my rest, will go even at midnight and not cease until I have obtained
for them what I need. There it is
seen whether my friendship with God is so clear, that I can depend on Him not to
turn me away and therefore pray on until He gives.
O what a deep heavenly mystery this is of
persevering prayer. The God who has
promised, who longs, whose fixed purpose it is to give the blessing, holds it
back. It is to Him a matter of such
deep importance that His friends on earth should know and fully trust their rich
Friend in heaven, that He trains them, in the school of answer delayed, to find
out how their perseverance really does prevail, and what the mighty power is
they can wield in heaven, if they do but set themselves to it. There is a faith that sees the promise,
and embraces it, and yet does not receive it (Heb. xi. 13, 39). It is when the answer to prayer does not
come, and the promise we are most firmly trusting appears to be of none effect,
that the trial of faith, more precious than of gold, takes place. It is in this trial that the faith that
has embraced the promise is purified and strengthened and prepared in personal,
holy fellowship with the living God, to see the glory of God. It takes and holds the promise until it
has received the fulfilment of what it had claimed in a living truth in the
unseen but living God.
Let each child of God who is seeking to work the
work of love in his Father's service take courage. The parent with his child, the teacher
with his class, the visitor with his district, the Bible reader with his circle,
the preacher with his hearers, each one who, in his little circle, has accepted
and is bearing the burden of hungry, perishing souls,--let them all take
courage. Nothing is at first so
strange to us as that God should really require persevering prayer, that there
should be a real spiritual needs-be for importunity. To teach it us, the Master uses this
almost strange parable. If the
unfriendliness of a selfish earthly friend can be conquered by importunity, how
much more will it avail with the heavenly Friend, who does so love to give, but
is held back by our spiritual unfitness, our incapacity to possess what He has
to give. O let us thank Him that in
delaying His answer He is educating us up to our true position and the exercise
of all our power with Him, training us to live with Him in the fellowship of
undoubting faith and trust, to be indeed the friends of God. And let us hold fast the threefold cord
that cannot be broken: the hungry
friend needing the help, and the praying friend seeking the help, and the Mighty
Friend, loving to give as much as he needeth.
'LORD, TEACH US TO
PRAY.'
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O my Blessed Lord and Teacher! I must come to Thee in prayer. Thy teaching is so glorious, and yet too
high for me to grasp. I must
confess that my heart is too little to take in these thoughts of the wonderful
boldness I may use with Thy Father as my Friend. Lord Jesus! I trust Thee to give me Thy Spirit with
Thy Word, and to make the Word quick and powerful in my heart. I desire to keep Thy Word of this
day: 'Because of his importunity he
will give him as many as he needeth.'
Lord!
teach me more to know the power of persevering prayer. I know that in it the Father suits
Himself to our need of time for the inner life to attain its growth and
ripeness, so that His grace may indeed be assimilated and made our very
own. I know that He would fain thus
train us to the exercise of that strong faith that does not let Him go even in
the face of seeming disappointment.
I know He wants to lift us to that wonderful liberty, in which we
understand how really He has made the dispensing of His gift dependent on our
prayer. Lord! I know this: O teach me to see it in spirit and
truth.
And may it now be the joy of my life to become
the almoner of my Rich Friend in heaven, to care for all the hungry and
perishing, even at midnight, because I know MY FRIEND, who always gives to him
who perseveres, because of his importunity, as many as he needeth. Amen.
'Then saith He unto His disciples,
The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few. Pray ye therefore the Lord of the
harvest, that He will send forth labourers into His harvest.'--MATT. ix.
37-38.
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HE Lord frequently
taught His disciples that they must pray, and how; but seldom
what to pray. This he left
to their sense of need, and the leading of the Spirit. But here we have one thing He expressly
enjoins them to remember: in view
of the plenteous harvest, and the need of reapers, they must cry to the Lord of
the harvest to send forth labourers.
Just as in the parable of the friend at midnight, He would have them
understand that prayer is not to be selfish; so here it is the power through
which blessing can come to others.
The Father is Lord of the harvest; when we pray for the Holy Spirit, we
must pray for Him to prepare and send forth labourers for the
work.
Strange, is it not, that He should ask His
disciples to pray for this? And
could He not pray Himself? And
would not one prayer of His avail more than a thousand of theirs? And God, the Lord of the harvest, did He
not see the need? And would not He,
in His own good time, send forth labourers without their prayer? Such questions lead us up to the deepest
mysteries of prayer, and its power in the Kingdom of God. The answer to such questions will
convince us that prayer is indeed a power, on which the ingathering of the
harvest and the coming of the Kingdom do in very truth
depend.
Prayer is no form or show. The Lord Jesus was Himself the truth;
everything He spake was the deepest truth.
It was when (see ver. 36) 'He saw the multitude, and was moved with
compassion on them, because they were scattered abroad, as sheep having no
shepherd,' that He called on the disciples to pray for labourers to be sent
among them. He did so because He
really believed that their prayer was needed, and would help. The veil which so hides the invisible
world from us was wonderfully transparent to the holy human soul of Jesus. He had looked long and deep and far into
the hidden connection of cause and effect in the spirit world. He had marked in God's Word how, when
God called men like Abraham and Moses, Joshua and Samuel and Daniel, and given
them authority over men in His name, He had at the same time given them
authority and right to call in the powers of heaven to their aid as they needed
them. He knew that as to these men
of old, and to Himself for a time, here upon earth, the work of God had been
entrusted, so it was now about to pass over into the hands of His
disciples. He knew that when this
work should be given in charge to them, it would not be a mere matter of form or
show, but that on them, and their being faithful or unfaithful, the success of
the work would actually depend. As
a single individual, within the limitations of a human body and a human life,
Jesus feels how little a short visit can accomplish among these wandering sheep
He sees around Him, and He longs for help to have them properly cared for. And so He tells His disciples now to
begin and pray, and, when they have taken over the work from Him on earth, to
make this one of the chief petitions in their prayer: That the Lord of the harvest Himself
would send forth labourers into His harvest. The God who entrusted them with the
work, and made it to so large extent dependent on them, gives them authority to
apply to Him for labourers to help, and makes the supply dependent on their
prayer.
How little Christians really feel and mourn the
need of labourers in the fields of the world so white to the harvest. And how little they believe that our
labour-supply depends on prayer, that prayer will really provide 'as many as he
needeth.' Not that the dearth of
labour is not known or discussed.
Not that efforts are not sometimes put forth to supply the want. But how little the burden of the sheep
wandering without a Shepherd is really borne in the faith that the Lord of the
harvest will, in answer to prayer, send forth the labourers, and in the
solemn conviction that without this prayer fields ready for reaping will be left
to perish. And yet it is so. So wonderful is the surrender of His
work into the hands of His Church, so dependent has the Lord made Himself on
them as His body, through whom alone His work can be done, so real is the power
which the Lord gives His people to exercise in heaven and earth, that the number
of the labourers and the measure of the harvest does actually depend upon their
prayer.
Solemn thought! O why is it that we do not obey the
injunction of the Master more heartily, and cry more earnestly for
labourers? There are two reasons
for this. The one is: We miss the compassion of Jesus, which
gave rise to this request for prayer.
When believers learn that to love their neighbours as themselves, that to
live entirely for God's glory in their fellow-men, is the Father's first
commandment to His redeemed ones, they will accept of the perishing ones as the
charge entrusted to them by their Lord.
And, accepting them not only as a field of labour, but as the objects of
loving care and interest, it will not be long before compassion towards the
hopelessly perishing will touch their heart, and the cry ascend with an
earnestness till then unknown:
Lord! send labourers. The other reason for the neglect of the
command, the want of faith, will then make itself felt, but will be overcome as
our pity pleads for help. We
believe too little in the power of prayer to bring about definite results. We do not live close enough to God, and
are not enough entirely given up to His service and Kingdom, to be capable of
the confidence that He will give it in answer to our prayer. O let us pray for a life so one with
Christ, that His compassion may stream into us, and His Spirit be able to assure
us that our prayer avails.
Such prayer will ask and obtain a twofold
blessing. There will first be the
desire for the increase of men entirely given up to the service of God. It is a terrible blot upon the Church of
Christ that there are times when actually men cannot be found for the service of
the Master as ministers, missionaries, or teachers of God's Word. As God's children make this a matter of
supplication for their own circle or Church, it will be given. The Lord Jesus is now Lord of the
harvest. He has been exalted to
bestow gifts--the gifts of the Spirit.
His chief gifts are men filled with the Spirit. But the supply and distribution of the
gifts depend on the co-operation of Head and members. It is just prayer will lead to such
co-operation; the believing suppliants will be stirred to find the men and the
means for the work.
The other blessing to be asked will not be
less. Every believer is a labourer;
not one of God's children who has not been redeemed for service, and has not his
work waiting. It must be our prayer
that the Lord would so fill all His people with the spirit of devotion, that not
one may be found standing idle in the vineyard. Wherever there is a complaint of the
want of helpers, or of fit helpers in God's work, prayer has the promise of a
supply. There is no Sunday school
or district visiting, no Bible reading or rescue work, where God is not ready
and able to provide. It may take
time and importunity, but the command of Christ to ask the Lord of the harvest
is the pledge that the prayer will be heard: 'I say unto you, he will arise and give
him as many as he needeth.'
Solemn, blessed thought! this power has been given us in prayer
to provide in the need of the world, to secure the servants for God's work. The Lord of the harvest will hear. Christ, who called us so specially to
pray thus, will support our prayers offered in His name and interest. Let us set apart time and give ourselves
to this part of our intercessory work.
It will lead us into the fellowship of that compassionate heart of His
that led Him to call for our prayers.
It will elevate us to the insight of our regal position, as those whose
will counts for something with the great God in the advancement of His
Kingdom. It will make us feel how
really we are God's fellow-workers on earth, to whom a share in His work has in
downright earnest been entrusted.
It will make us partakers in the soul travail, but also in the soul
satisfaction of Jesus, as we know how, in answer to our prayer, blessing has
been given that otherwise would not have come.
'LORD, TEACH US TO
PRAY.'
-----0-----
Blessed Lord! Thou hast this day again given us
another of Thy wondrous lessons to learn.
We humbly ask Thee, O give us to see aright the spiritual realities of
which Thou hast been speaking.
There is the harvest which is so large, and perishing, as it waits for
sleepy disciples to give the signal for labourers to come. Lord, teach us to look out upon it with
a heart moved with compassion and pity.
There are the labourers, so few.
Lord, show us how terrible the sin of the want of prayer and faith, of
which this is the token. And there
is the Lord of the harvest, so able and ready to send them forth. Lord, show us how He does indeed wait
for the prayer to which He has bound His answer. And there are the disciples, to whom the
commission to pray has been given:
Lord, show us how Thou canst pour down Thy Spirit and breathe upon them,
so that Thy compassion and the faith in Thy promise shall rouse them to
unceasing, prevailing prayer.
O our Lord!
we cannot understand how Thou canst entrust such work and give such power
to men so slothful and unfaithful.
We thank Thee for all whom Thou art teaching to cry day and night for
labourers to be sent forth. Lord,
breathe Thine own Spirit on all Thy children, that they may learn to live for
this one thing alone--the Kingdom and glory of their Lord--and become fully
awake to the faith of what their prayer can accomplish. And let all our hearts in this, as in
every petition, be filled with the assurance that prayer, offered in loving
faith in the living God, will bring certain and abundant answer. Amen.
'And Jesus answered him, and said, What wilt thou
that I should do unto thee?'--MARK x. 51; LUKE xviii. 41.
|
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HE blind man had been
crying out aloud, and that a great deal, 'Thou Son of David, have mercy on
me.' The cry had reached the ear of
the Lord; He knew what he wanted, and was ready to grant it him. But ere He does it, He asks him: 'What wilt thou that I should do
unto thee?' He wants to hear from
his own lips, not only the general petition for mercy, but the distinct
expression of what his desire was.
Until he speaks it out, he is not healed.
There is now still many a suppliant to whom the
Lord puts the same question, and who cannot, until it has been answered, get the
aid he ask. Our prayers must not be
a vague appeal to His mercy, an indefinite cry for blessing, but the distinct
expression of definite need. Not
that His loving heart does not understand our cry, or is not ready to hear. But He desires it for our own
sakes. Such definite prayer teaches
us to know our own needs better. It
demands time, and thought, and self-scrutiny to find out what really is our
greatest need. It searches us and
puts us to the test as to whether our desires are honest and real, such as we
are ready to persevere in. It leads
us to judge whether our desires are according to God's Word, and whether we
really believe that we shall receive the things we ask. It helps us to wait for the special
answer, and to mark it when it comes.
And yet how much of our prayer is vague and
pointless. Some cry for mercy, but
take not the trouble to know what mercy must do for them. Others ask, perhaps, to be delivered
from sin, but do not begin by bringing any sin by name from which the
deliverance may be claimed. Still
others pray for God's blessing on those around them, for the outpouring of God's
Spirit on their land or the world, and yet have no special field where they wait
and expect to see the answer. To
all the Lord says: And what is it
now you really want and expect Me to do?
Every Christian has but limited powers, and as he must have his own
special field of labour in which he works, so with his prayers too. Each believer has his own circle, his
family, his friends, his neighbours.
If he were to take one or more of these by name, he would find that this
really brings him into the training-school of faith, and leads to personal and
pointed dealing with his God. It is
when in such distinct matters we have in faith claimed and received answers,
that our more general prayers will be believing and
effectual.
We all know with what surprise the whole
civilised world heard of the way in which trained troops were repulsed by the
Transvaal Boers at Majuba. And to
what did they owe their success? In
the armies of Europe the soldier fires upon the enemy standing in large masses,
and never thinks of seeking an aim for every bullet. In hunting game the Boer had learnt a
different lesson: his practised eye
knew to send every bullet on its special message, to seek and find its man. Such aiming must gain the day in the
spiritual world too. As long as in
prayer we just pour out our hearts in a multitude of petitions, without taking
time to see whether every petition is sent with the purpose and expectation of
getting an answer, not many will reach the mark. But if, as in silence of soul we bow
before the Lord, we were to ask such questions as these: What is now really my desire? do I desire it in faith, expecting to
receive? am I now ready to place
and leave it in the Father's bosom?
is it a settled thing between God and me that I am to have the
answer? we should learn so to pray
that God would see and we would know what we really
expect.
It is for this, among other reasons, that the
Lord warns us against the vain repetitions of the Gentiles, who think to be
heard for their much praying. We
often hear prayers of great earnestness and fervour, in which a multitude of
petitions are poured forth, but to which the Saviour would undoubtedly answer
'What wilt thou that I should do unto thee?' If I am in a strange land, in the
interests of the business which my father owns, I would certainly write two
different sorts of letters. There
will be family letters giving expression to all the intercourse to which
affection prompts; and there will be business letters, containing orders for
what I need. And there may be
letters in which both are found.
The answers will correspond to the letters. To each sentence of the letters
containing the family news I do not expect a special answer. But for each order I send I am confident
of an answer whether the desired article has been forwarded. In our dealings with God the business
element must not be wanting. With
our expression of need and sin, of love and faith and consecration, there must
be the pointed statement of what we ask and expect to receive; it is in the
answer that the Father loves to give us the token of His approval and
acceptance.
But the word of the Master teaches us more. He does not say, What dost thou
wish? but, What does thou will? One often wishes for a thing without
willing it. I wish to have a
certain article, but I find the price too high; I resolve not to take it; I
wish, but do not will to have it. The sluggard wishes to be rich, but does
not will it. Many a one wishes to
be saved, but perishes because he does not will it. The will rules the whole heart and life;
if I really will to have anything that is within my reach, I do not rest till I
have it. And so, when Jesus says to
us, 'What wilt thou?' He asks whether it is indeed our purpose to have what we
ask at any price, however great the sacrifice. Dost thou indeed so will to have it
that, though He delay it long, thou dost not hold thy peace till He hear
thee? Alas! how many prayers are
wishes, sent up for a short time and then forgotten, or sent up year after year
as matter of duty, while we rest content with the prayer without the
answer.
But, it may be asked, is it not best to make our
wishes known to God, and then to leave it to Him to decide what is best, without
seeking to assert our will? By no
means. This is the very essence of
the prayer of faith, to which Jesus sought to train His disciples, that it does
not only make known its desire and then leave the decision to God. That would be the prayer of submission,
for cases in which we cannot know God's will. But the prayer of faith, finding God's
will in some promise of the Word, pleads for that till it come. In Matthew (ix. 28) we read Jesus said
to the blind man: 'Believe
ye that I can do this?' Here,
in Mark, He says: 'What wilt
thou that I should do?' In both
cases He said that faith had saved them.
And so He said to the Syrophenician woman, too: 'Great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou
wilt.' Faith is nothing but
the purpose of the will resting on God's word, and saying: I must have it. To believe truly is to will
firmly.
But is not such a will at variance with our
dependence on God and our submission to Him? By no means; it is much rather the true
submission that honours God. It is
only when the child has yielded his own will in entire surrender to the Father,
that he receives from the Father liberty and power to will what he would
have. But, when once the believer
has accepted the will of God, as revealed through the Word and Spirit, as his
will, too, then it is the will of God that His child should use this renewed
will in His service. The will is
the highest power in the soul; grace wants above everything to sanctify and
restore this will, one of the chief traits of God's image, to full and free
exercise. As a son, who only lives
for his father's interests, who seeks not his own but his father's will is
trusted by the father with his business, so God speaks to His child in all
truth, 'What wilt thou?' It is
often spiritual sloth that, under the appearance of humility, professes to have
no will, because it fears the trouble of searching out the will of God, or, when
found, the struggle of claiming it in faith. True humility is ever in company with
strong faith, which only seeks to know what is according to the will of God, and
then boldly claims the fulfilment of the promise: 'Ye shall ask what ye will, and
it shall be done unto you.'
‘LORD, TEACH US TO
PRAY.’
-----0-----
Lord Jesus!
teach me to pray with all my heart and strength, that there may be no
doubt with Thee or with me as to what I have asked. May I so know what I desire that, even
as my petitions are recorded in heaven, I can record them on earth too, and note
each answer as it comes. And may my
faith in what Thy Word has promised be so clear that the Spirit may indeed work
in me the liberty to will that it shall come. Lord! renew, strengthen, sanctify wholly my
will for the work of effectual prayer.
Blessed Saviour! I do beseech Thee to reveal to me the
wonderful condescension Thou showest us, thus asking us to say what we will that
Thou shouldest do, and promising to do whatever we will. Son of God! I cannot understand it; I can only
believe that Thou hast indeed redeemed us wholly for Thyself, and dost seek to
make the will, as our noblest part, Thy most efficient servant. Lord! I do most unreservedly yield my will to
Thee, as the power through which Thy Spirit is to rule my whole being. Let Him take possession of it, lead it
into the truth of Thy promises, and make it so strong in prayer that I may ever
hear Thy voice saying: 'Great is
thy faith: be it unto thee even as
thou wilt.'
Amen.
'Therefore I say unto you, All things whatsoever
ye pray and ask for, believe that ye have received them, and ye shall have
them.'--MARK xi. 24
|
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HAT a promise! so large, so Divine, that our little
hearts cannot take it in, and in every possible way seek to limit it to what we
think safe or probable; instead of allowing it, in its quickening power and
energy, just as He gave it, to enter in, and to enlarge our hearts to the
measure of what His love and power are really ready to do for us. Faith is very far from being a mere
conviction of the truth of God's word, or a conclusion drawn from certain
premises. It is the ear which has
heard God say what He will do, the eye which has seen Him doing it, and,
therefore, where there is true faith, it is impossible but the answer must
come. If we only see to it that we
do the one thing that He asks of us as we pray: BELIEVE that ye have received; He
will see to it that He does the thing He has promised: 'Ye shall have them.' The key-note of Solomon's prayer (2
Chron. vi. 4), 'Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, who hath with His hands
fulfilled that which He spake with His mouth to my father David,' is
the key-note of all true prayer:
the joyful adoration of a God whose hand always secures the
fulfilment of what His mouth hath spoken. Let us in this spirit listen to the
promise Jesus gives; each part of it has its Divine
message.
'All things whatsoever.' At this first word our human wisdom at
once begins to doubt and ask: This
surely cannot be literally true? But if it be not, why did the Master
speak it, using the very strongest expression He could find: 'All things whatsoever.' And it is not as if this were the only
time He spoke thus; is it not He who also said, 'If thou canst believe, ALL
THINGS are possible to him that believeth;' 'If ye have faith, NOTHING shall be
impossible to you.' Faith is so
wholly the work of God's Spirit through His word in the prepared heart of the
believing disciple, that it is impossible that the fulfilment should not come;
faith is the pledge and forerunner of the coming answer. Yes, 'ALL THINGS WHATSOEVER ye shall ask
in prayer believing, ye receive.'
The tendency of human reason is to interpose here, and with certain
qualifying clauses, 'if expedient,' 'if according to God's will,' to break the
force of a statement which appears dangerous. O let us beware of dealing thus with the
Master's words. His promise
is most literally true. He wants
His oft repeated 'ALL THINGS' to enter into our hearts, and reveal to us how
mighty the power of faith is, how truly the Head calls the members to share with
Him in His power, how wholly our Father places His power at the disposal of the
child that wholly trusts Him. In
this 'all things' faith is to have its food and strength: as we weaken it we weaken faith. The WHATSOEVER is unconditional: the only condition is what is implied in
the believing. Ere we can believe
we must find out and know what God's will is' believing is the exercise of a
soul surrendered and given up to the influence of the Word and the Spirit; but
when once we do believe nothing shall be impossible. God forbid that we should try and bring
down His ALL THINGS to the level of what we think possible. Let us now simply take Christ's
'WHATSOEVER' as the measure and the hope of our faith: it is a seed-word which, if taken just
as He gives it, and kept in the heart, will unfold itself and strike root, fill
our life with its fulness, and bring forth fruit
abundantly.
'All things whatsoever ye pray and ask
for.' It is in prayer that
these 'all things' are to be brought to God, to be asked and received of
Him. The faith that receives them
is the fruit of the prayer. In one
aspect there must be faith before there can be prayer; in another the faith is
the outcome and the growth of prayer.
It is in the personal presence of the Saviour, in intercourse with Him,
that faith rises to grasp what at first appeared too high. It is in prayer that we hold up our
desire to the light of God's Holy Will, that our motives are tested, and proof
given whether we ask indeed in the name of Jesus, and only for the glory of
God. It is in prayer that we wait
for the leading of the Spirit to show us whether we are asking the right thing
and in the right spirit. It is in
prayer that we become conscious of our want of faith, that we are led on to say
to the Father that we do believe, and that we prove the reality of our faith by
the confidence with which we persevere.
It is in prayer that Jesus teaches and inspires faith. He that waits to pray, or loses heart in
prayer, because he does not yet feel the faith needed to get the answer, will
never learn to believe. He who
begins to pray and ask will find the Spirit of faith is given nowhere so surely
as at the foot of the Throne.
'Believe that ye have received.' It is clear that what we are to believe
is, that we receive the very things we ask. The Saviour does not hint that because
the Father knows what is best He may give us something else. The very mountain faith bids depart is
cast into the sea. There is a
prayer in which, in everything, we make known our requests with prayer and
supplication, and the reward is the sweet peace of God keeping heart and
mind. This is the prayer of trust.
It has reference to things of which we cannot find out if God is going to give
them. As children we make known our
desires in the countless things of daily life, and leave it to the Father to
give or not as He thinks best. But
the prayer of faith of which Jesus speaks is something different, something
higher. When, whether in the
greater interests of the Master's work, or in the lesser concerns of our daily
life, the soul is led to see how there is nothing that so honours the Father as
the faith that is assured that He will do what He has said in giving us
whatsoever we ask for, and takes its stand on the promise as brought home by the
Spirit, it may know most certainly that it does receive exactly what it
asks. Just see how clearly the Lord
sets this before us in verse 23:
'Whosoever shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that what
he saith cometh to pass, he shall have it.' This is the blessing of the prayer of
faith of which Jesus speaks.
'Believe that ye have received.' This is the word of central importance,
of which the meaning is too often misunderstood. Believe that you have received! now,
while praying, the thing you ask for.
It may only be later that you shall have it in personal experience, that
you shall see what you believe; but now, without seeing, you are to believe that
it has been given you of the Father in heaven. The receiving or accepting of an answer
to prayer is just like the receiving or accepting of Jesus or of pardon, a
spiritual thing, an act of faith apart from all feeling. When I come as a supplicant for pardon,
I believe that Jesus in heaven is for me, and so I receive or take Him. When I come as a supplicant for any
special gift, which is according to God's word, I believe that what I ask is
given me: I believe that I have it,
I hold it in faith; I thank God that it is mine. 'If we know that He heareth us,
whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions which we have asked of
Him.'
'And ye shall have them.' That is, the gift which we first hold in
faith as bestowed upon us in heaven will also become ours in personal
experience. But will it be needful
to pray longer if once we know we have been heard and have received what we
asked? There are cases in which
such prayer will not be needful, in which the blessing is ready to break through
at once, if we but hold fast our confidence, and prove our faith by praising for
what we have received, in the face of our not yet having it in experience. There are other cases in which the faith
that has received needs to be still further tried and strengthened in
persevering prayer. God only knows
when everything in and around us is fully ripe for the manifestation of the
blessing that has been given to faith.
Elijah knew for certain that rain would come; God had promised it; and
yet he had to pray the seven times.
And that prayer was no show or play; an intense spiritual reality in the
heart of him who lay pleading there, and in the heaven above where it had its
effectual work to do. It is
'through faith and patience we inherit the promises.' Faith says most confidently, I have
received it. Patience perseveres in
prayer until the gift bestowed in heaven is seen on earth. 'Believe that ye have received,
and ye shall have.' Between
the have received in heaven, and the shall have of earth,
believe: believing praise
and prayer is the link.
And now, remember one thing
more: It is Jesus who said
this. As we see heaven thus opened
to us, and the Father on the Throne offering to give us whatsoever we ask in
faith, our hearts feel full of shame that we have so little availed ourselves of
our privilege, and full of fear lest our feeble faith still fail to grasp what
is so clearly placed within our reach.
There is one thing must make us strong and full of hope: it is Jesus who has brought us this
message from the Father. He
Himself, when He was on earth, lived the life of faith and prayer. It was when the disciples expressed
their surprise at what He had done to the fig-tree, that He told them that the
very same life He led could be theirs; that they could not only command the
fig-tree, but the very mountain, and it must obey. And He is our life: all He was on earth He is in us now; all
He teaches He really gives. He is
Himself the Author and the Perfecter of our faith: He gives the spirit of faith; let us not
be afraid that such faith is not meant for us. It is meant for every child of the
Father; it is within reach of each one who will but be childlike, yielding
himself to the Father's Will and Love, trusting the Father's Word and
Power. Dear fellow-Christian! let
the thought that this word comes through Jesus, the Son, our Brother, give us
courage, and let our answer be:
Yea, Blessed Lord, we do believe Thy Word, we do believe that we
receive.
'LORD, TEACH US TO
PRAY.'
-----0-----
Blessed Lord! Thou didst come from the Father to show
us all His love, and all the treasures of blessing that love is waiting to
bestow. Lord! Thou hast this day again flung the gates
so wide open, and given us such promises as to our liberty in prayer, that we
must blush that our poor hearts have so little taken it in. It has been too large for us to
believe.
Lord! we now look up to Thee to teach us to take
and keep and use this precious word of Thine: 'All things whatsoever ye ask, believe
that ye have received.' Blessed
Jesus! it is Thy self in whom our faith must be rooted if it is to grow
strong. Thy work has freed us
wholly from the power of sin, and opened the way to the Father; Thy Love is ever
longing to bring us into the full fellowship of Thy glory and power; Thy Spirit
is ever drawing us upward into a life of perfect faith and confidence; we are
assured that in Thy teaching we shall learn to pray the prayer of faith. Thou wilt train us to pray so that we
believe that we receive, to believe that we really have what we ask. Lord! teach me so to know and trust and
love Thee, so to live and abide in Thee, that all my prayers rise up and come
before God in Thee, and that my soul may have in Thee the assurance that I am
heard. Amen.
'Jesus, answering, said unto them, Have faith in
God. Verily I say unto you,
Whosoever shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that what He saith
cometh to pass; he shall have it.
Therefore I say unto you, All things whatsoever ye pray and ask for,
believe that ye have received them, and ye shall have them.'--MARK xi.
22-24.
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HE promise of answer to
prayer which formed our yesterday's lesson is one of the most wonderful in all
Scripture. In how many hearts it
has raised the question: How ever
can I attain the faith that knows that it receives all it
asks?
It is this question our Lord would answer
today. Ere He gave that wonderful
promise to His disciples, He spoke another word, in which He points out where
the faith in the answer to prayer takes its rise, and ever finds its
strength. HAVE FAITH IN GOD: this word precedes the other, Have faith
in the promise of an answer to prayer.
The power to believe a promise depends entirely, but only, on
faith in the promiser. Trust
in the person begets trust in his word.
It is only where we live and associate with God in personal, loving
intercourse, where GOD HIMSELF is all to us, where our whole being is
continually opened up and exposed to the mighty influences that are at work
where His Holy Presence is revealed, that the capacity will be developed for
believing that He gives whatsoever we ask.
This connection between faith in God and faith in
His promise will become clear to us if we think what faith really is. It is often compared to the hand or the
mouth, by which we take and appropriate what is offered to us. But it is of importance that we should
understand that faith is also the ear by which I hear what is promised, the eye
by which I see what is offered me.
On this the power to take depends.
I must hear the person who gives me the promise: the very tone of his voice gives me
courage to believe. I must see
him: in the light of his eye
and countenance all fear as to my right to take passes away. The value of the promise depends on the
promiser: it is on my knowledge of
what the promiser is that faith in the promise depends.
It is for this reason that Jesus, ere He gives
that wonderful prayer-promise, first says, 'HAVE FAITH IN GOD.' That is, let thine eye be open to the
Living God, and gaze on Him, seeing Him who is Invisible. It is through the eye that I yield
myself to the influence of what is before me; I just allow it to enter, to exert
its influence, to leave its impression upon my mind. So believing God is just looking to God
and what He is, allowing Him to reveal His presence, giving Him time and
yielding the whole being to take in the full impression of what He is as God,
the soul opened up to receive and rejoice in the overshadowing of His love. Yes, faith is the eye to which God shows
what He is and does: through faith
the light of His presence and the workings of His mighty power stream into the
soul. As that which I see lives in
me, so by faith God lives in me too.
And even so faith is also the ear through which
the voice of God is always heard and intercourse with Him kept up. It is through the Holy Spirit the Father
speaks to us; the Son is the Word, the substance of what God says; the Spirit is
the living voice. This the child of
God needs to lead and guide him; the secret voice from heaven must teach him, as
it taught Jesus, what to say and what to do. An ear opened towards God, that is, a
believing heart waiting on Him, to hear what He says, will hear Him speak. The words of God will not only be the
words of a Book, but, proceeding from the mouth of God, they will be spirit and
truth, life and power. They will
bring in deed and living experience what are otherwise only thoughts. Through this opened ear the soul tarries
under the influence of the life and power of God Himself. As the words I hear enter the mind and
dwell and work there, so through faith God enters the heart, and dwells and
works there.
When faith now is in full exercise as eye and
ear, as the faculty of the soul by which we see and hear God, then it will be
able to exercise its full power as hand and mouth, by which we appropriate God
and His blessing. The power of
reception will depend entirely on the power of spiritual perception. For this reason Jesus said, ere He gave
the promise that God would answer believing prayer: 'HAVE FAITH IN GOD.' Faith is simply surrender: I yield myself to the impression the
tidings I hear make on me. By faith
I yield myself to the living God.
His glory and love fill my heart, and have the mastery over my life. Faith is fellowship; I give myself up to
the influence of the friend who makes me a promise, and become linked to him by
it. And it is when we enter into
this living fellowship with God Himself, in a faith that always sees and
hears Him, that it becomes easy and natural to believe His promise as to
prayer. Faith in the promise is the
fruit of faith in the promiser: the
prayer of faith is rooted in the life of faith. And in this way the faith that prays
effectually is indeed a gift of God.
Not as something that He bestows or infuses at once, but in a far deeper
and truer sense, as the blessed disposition or habit of soul which is wrought
and grows up in us in a life of intercourse with Him. Surely for one who knows his Father
well, and lives in constant close intercourse with Him, it is a simple thing to
believe the promise that He will do the will of His child who lives in union
with Himself.
It is because very many of God's children do not
understand this connection between the life of faith and the prayer of faith
that their experience of the power of prayer is so limited. When they desire earnestly to obtain an
answer from God, they fix their whole heart upon the promise, and try their
utmost to grasp that promise in faith.
When they do not succeed, they are ready to give up hope; the promise is
true, but it is beyond their power to take hold of it in faith. Listen to the lesson Jesus teaches us
this day: HAVE FAITH IN GOD, the
Living God: let faith look to God
more than the thing promised: it is
His love, His power, His living presence will waken and work the faith. A physician would say to one asking for
some means to get more strength in his arms and hands to seize and hold, that
his whole constitution must be built up and strengthened. So the cure of a feeble faith is alone
to be found in the invigoration of our whole spiritual life by intercourse with
God. Learn to believe in God, to
take hold of God, to let God take possession of thy life, and it will be easy to
take hold of the promise. He that
knows and trusts God finds it easy to trust the promise
too.
Just note how distinctly this comes out in the
saints of old. Every special
exhibition of the power of faith was the fruit of a special revelation of
God. See it in Abraham: 'And the word of the Lord came
unto Abram, saying, Fear not, Abram; I am thy shield. And He brought him forth abroad,
and said . . . AND HE BELIEVED THE LORD.' And later again: 'The Lord appeared unto him, and
said unto him, I am God Almighty.
And Abram fell on his face, and God talked with him, saying, As
for me, behold my covenant is with thee.'
It was the revelation of God Himself that gave the promise its living
power to enter the heart and work the faith. Because they knew God, these men of
faith could not do anything but trust His promise. God's promise will be to us what God
Himself is. It is the man who walks
before the Lord, and falls upon his face to listen while the living God speaks
to him, who will really receive the promise. Though we have God's promises in the
Bible, with full liberty to take them, the spiritual power is wanting, except as
God Himself speaks them to us.
And He speaks to those who walk and live with Him. Therefore, HAVE FAITH IN GOD: let faith be all eye and ear, the
surrender to let God make His full impression, and reveal Himself fully in the
soul. Count it one of the chief
blessings of prayer to exercise faith in God, as the Living Mighty God who waits
to fulfil in us all the good pleasure of His will, and the work of faith with
power. See in Him the God of Love,
whose delight it is to bless and impart Himself. In such worship of faith in God the
power will speedily come to believe the promise too: 'ALL THINGS WHATSOEVER YE ASK, BELIEVE
THAT YE RECEIVE.' Yes, see that
thou dost in faith make God thine own; the promise will be thine
too.
Precious lessons that Jesus has to teach us this
day. We seek God's gifts: God wants to give us HIMSELF first. We think of prayer as the power to draw
down good gifts from heaven; Jesus as the means to draw ourselves up to
God. We want to stand at the door
and cry; Jesus would have us first enter in and realize that we are friends and
children. Let us accept the
teaching. Let every experience of
the littleness of our faith in prayer urge us first to have and exercise more
faith in the living God, and in such faith to yield ourselves to Him. A heart full of God has power for the
prayer of faith. Faith in God
begets faith in the promise, in the promise too of an answer to
prayer.
Therefore, child of God, take time, take time, to
bow before Him, to wait on Him to reveal Himself. Take time, and let thy soul in holy
awe and worship exercise and express its faith in the Infinite One, and as He
imparts Himself and takes possession of thee, the prayer of faith will crown thy
faith in God.
'LORD, TEACH US TO
PRAY.'
-----0-----
O my God! I do believe in Thee. I believe in Thee as the Father,
Infinite in Thy Love and Power. And
as the Son, my Redeemer and my Life.
And as the Holy Spirit, Comforter and Guide and Strength. Three-One God, I have faith in
Thee. I know and am sure that all
that Thou art Thou art to me, that all Thou hast promised Thou wilt
perform.
Lord Jesus! increase this faith. Teach me to take time, and wait and
worship in the Holy Presence until my faith takes in all there is in my God for
me. Let it see Him as the Fountain
of all Life, working with Almighty Strength to accomplish His will on the world
and in me. Let it see Him in His
love longing to meet and fulfil my desires. Let it so take possession of my heart
and life that through faith God alone may dwell there. Lord Jesus, help me! with my whole heart
would I believe in God. Let faith
in God each moment fill me.
O my Blessed Saviour! how can Thy Church glorify
Thee, how can it fulfil that work of intercession through which Thy kingdom must
come, unless our whole life be FAITH IN GOD. Blessed Lord! speak Thy Word, 'HAVE
FAITH IN GOD,' unto the depths of our souls.
'Then came the disciples to Jesus apart, and said, Why
could not we cast him out? And
Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have
faith as a grain of mustard seed, nothing shall be impossible to
you. Howbeit this kind goeth not
out but by prayer and fasting'--MATT. xvii. 19-21.
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HEN the disciples saw
Jesus cast the evil spirit out of the epileptic whom 'they could not cure,' they
asked the Master for the cause of their failure. He had given them 'power and authority
over all devils, and to cure all diseases.' They had often exercised that power, and
joyfully told how the devils were subject to them. And yet now, while He was on the Mount,
they had utterly failed. That there
had been nothing in the will of God or in the nature of the case to render
deliverance impossible, had been proved:
at Christ's bidding the evil spirit had gone out. From their expression, 'Why could we
not?' it is evident that they had wished and sought to do so; they had probably
used the Master's name, and called upon the evil spirit to go out. Their efforts had been vain, and in
presence of the multitude, they had been put to shame. 'Why could we
not?'
Christ's answer was direct and plain: 'Because of your unbelief.' The cause of His success and their
failure, was not owing to His having a special power to which they had no
access. No; the reason was not far
to seek. He had so often taught
them that there is one power, that of faith, to which, in the kingdom of
darkness, as in the kingdom of God, everything must bow; in the spiritual world
failure has but one cause, the want of faith. Faith is the one condition on which all
Divine power can enter into man and work through him. It is the susceptibility of the
unseen: man's will yielded up to,
and moulded by, the will of God.
The power they had received to cast out devils, they did not hold in
themselves as a permanent gift or possession; the power was in Christ, to be
received, and held, and used by faith alone, living faith in Himself. Had they been full of faith in
Him as Lord and Conqueror in the spirit-world, had they been full of faith
in Him as having given them authority to cast out in His name, this faith
would have given them the victory.
'Because of your unbelief' was, for all time, the Master's explanation
and reproof of impotence and failure in His Church.
But such want of faith must have a cause
too. Well might the disciples have
asked: 'And why could we not
believe? Our faith has cast out
devils before this: why have we now
failed in believing? 'The Master
proceeds to tell them ere they ask:
'This kind goeth not out but by fasting and prayer.' As faith is the simplest, so it is the
highest exercise of the spiritual life, where our spirit yields itself in
perfect receptivity to God's Spirit and so is strengthened to its highest
activity. This faith depends
entirely upon the state of the spiritual life; only when this is strong and in
full health, when the Spirit of God has full sway in our life, is there the
power of faith to do its mighty deeds.
And therefore Jesus adds:
'Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by fasting and prayer.' The faith that can overcome such
stubborn resistance as you have just seen in this evil spirit, Jesus tells them,
is not possible except to men living in very close fellowship with God, and in
very special separation from the world--in prayer and fasting. And so He teaches us two lessons in
regard to prayer of deep importance.
The one, that faith needs a life of prayer in which to grow and keep
strong. The other, that prayer
needs fasting for its full and perfect development.
Faith needs a life of prayer for its full
growth. In all the different parts
of the spiritual life, there is such close union, such unceasing action and
re-action, that each may be both cause and effect. Thus it is with faith. There can be no true prayer without
faith; some measure of faith must precede prayer. And yet prayer is also the way to more
faith; there can be no higher degrees of faith except through much prayer. This is the lesson Jesus teaches
here. There is nothing needs so
much to grow as our faith. 'Your
faith groweth exceedingly,' is said of one Church. When Jesus spoke the words, 'According
to your faith be it unto you,' He announced the law of the kingdom, which tells
us that all have not equal degrees of faith, that the same person has not always
the same degree, and that the measure of faith must always determine the measure
of power and of blessing. If we
want to know where and how our faith is to grow, the Master points us to the
throne of God. It is in prayer, in
the exercise of the faith I have, in fellowship with the living God, that faith
can increase. Faith can only live
by feeding on what is Divine, on God Himself.
It is in the adoring worship of God, the waiting
on Him and for Him, the deep silence of soul that yields itself for God to
reveal Himself, that the capacity for knowing and trusting God will be
developed. It is as we take His
word from the Blessed Book, and bring it to Himself, asking him to speak it to
us with His living loving voice, that the power will come fully to believe and
receive the word as God's own word to us.
It is in prayer, in living contact with God in living faith, that faith,
the power to trust God, and in that trust, to accept everything He says, to
accept every possibility He has offered to our faith will become strong in
us. Many Christians cannot
understand what is meant by the much prayer they sometimes hear spoken of: they can form no conception, nor do they
feel the need, of spending hours with God.
But what the Master says, the experience of His people has
confirmed: men of strong faith are
men of much prayer.
This just brings us back again to the lesson we
learned when Jesus, before telling us to believe that we receive what we ask,
first said, 'Have faith in God.' It
is God, the living God, into whom our faith must strike its roots deep and
broad; then it will be strong to remove mountains and cast out devils. 'If ye have faith, nothing shall be
impossible to you.' Oh! if we do
but give ourselves up to the work God has for us in the world, coming into
contact with the mountains and the devils there are to be cast away and cast
out, we should soon comprehend the need there is of much faith, and of much
prayer, as the soil in which alone faith can be cultivated. Christ Jesus is our life, the life of
our faith too. It is His life in us
that makes us strong, and makes us simple to believe. It is in the dying to self which much
prayer implies, in closer union to Jesus, that the spirit of faith will come in
power. Faith needs prayer
for its full growth.
And prayer needs fasting for its full
growth: this is the second
lesson. Prayer is the one hand with
which we grasp the invisible; fasting, the other, with which we let loose and
cast away the visible. In nothing
is man more closely connected with the world of sense than in his need of food,
and his enjoyment of it. It was the
fruit, good for food, with which man was tempted and fell in Paradise. It was with bread to be made of stones
that Jesus, when an hungered, was tempted in the wilderness, and in fasting that
He triumphed. The body has been
redeemed to be a temple of the Holy Spirit; it is in body as well as spirit, it
is very specially, Scripture says, in eating and drinking, we are to glorify
God. It is to be feared that there
are many Christians to whom this eating to the glory of God has not yet become a
spiritual reality. And the first
thought suggested by Jesus' words in regard to fasting and prayer, is, that it
is only in a life of moderation and temperance and self-denial that there will
be the heart or the strength to pray much.
But then there is also its more literal
meaning. Sorrow and anxiety cannot
eat: joy celebrates its feasts with
eating and drinking. There may come
times of intense desire, when it is strongly felt how the body, with its
appetites, lawful though they be, still hinder the spirit in its battle with the
powers of darkness, and the need is felt of keeping it under. We are creatures of the senses: our mind is helped by what comes to us
embodied in concrete form; fasting helps to express, to deepen, and to confirm
the resolution that we are ready to sacrifice anything, to sacrifice ourselves,
to attain what we seek for the kingdom of God. And He who accepted the fasting and
sacrifice of the Son, knows to value and accept and reward with spiritual power
the soul that is thus ready to give up all for Christ and His
kingdom.
And then follows a still
wider application. Prayer is the
reaching out after God and the unseen; fasting, the letting go of all that is of
the seen and temporal. While
ordinary Christians imagine that all that is not positively forbidden and sinful
is lawful to them, and seek to retain as much as possible of this world, with
its property, its literature, its enjoyments, the truly consecrated soul is as
the soldier who carries only what he needs for the warfare. Laying aside every weight, as well as
the easily besetting sin, afraid of entangling himself with the affairs of this
life, he seeks to lead a Nazarite life, as one specially set apart for the Lord
and His service. Without such
voluntary separation, even from what is lawful, no one will attain power in
prayer: this kind goeth not out but
by fasting and prayer.
Disciples of Jesus! who have
asked the Master to teach you to pray, come now and accept His lessons. He tells you that prayer is the path to
faith, strong faith, that can cast out devils. He tells you: 'If ye have faith, nothing shall be
impossible to you;' let this glorious promise encourage you to pray much. Is the prize not worth the price? Shall we not give up all to follow Jesus
in the path He opens to us here; shall we not, if need be, fast? Shall we not do anything that neither
the body nor the world around hinder us in our great life-work,--having
intercourse with our God in prayer, that we may become men of faith, whom He can
use in His work of saving the world.
'LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY.'
-----0-----
O Lord Jesus! how continually Thou hast to
reprove us for our unbelief! How
strange it must appear to Thee, this terrible incapacity of trusting our Father
and His promises. Lord! let Thy
reproof, with its searching, 'Because of your unbelief,' sink into the very
depths of our hearts, and reveal to us how much of the sin and suffering around
us is our blame. And then teach us,
Blessed Lord, that there is a place where faith can be learned and gained,--even
in the prayer and fasting that brings into living and abiding fellowship with
Thyself and the Father.
O Saviour! Thou Thyself art the Author and the
Perfecter of our faith; teach us what it is to let Thee live in us by Thy Holy
Spirit. Lord! our efforts and
prayers for grace to believe have been so unavailing. We know why it was: we sought for strength in ourselves to
be given from Thee. Holy Jesus! do
at length teach us the mystery of Thy life in us, and how Thou, by Thy Spirit,
dost undertake to live in us the life of faith, to see to it that our faith
shall not fail. O let us see that
our faith will just be a part of that wonderful prayer-life which Thou givest in
them who expect their training for the ministry of intercession, not in word and
thought only, but in the Holy Unction Thou givest, the inflowing of the Spirit
of Thine own life. And teach us
how, in fasting and prayer, we may grow up to the faith to which nothing shall
be impossible.
Amen.
NOTE
At the time when Blumhardt was
passing through his terrible conflict with the evil spirits in those who were
possessed, and seeking to cast them out by prayer, he often wondered what it was
that hindered the answer. One day a
friend, to whom he had spoken of his trouble, directed his attention to our
Lord's words about fasting.
Blumhardt resolved to give himself to fasting, sometimes for more than
thirty hours. From reflection and
experience he gained the conviction that it is of more importance than is
generally thought. He says,
'Inasmuch as the fasting is before God, a practical proof that the thing we ask
is to us a matter of true and pressing interest, and inasmuch as in a high
degree it strengthens the intensity and power of the prayer, and becomes the
unceasing practical expression of a prayer without words, I could believe that
it would not be without efficacy, especially as the Master's words had reference
to a case like the present. I tried
it, without telling any one, and in truth the later conflict was extraordinarily
lightened by it. I could speak with
much greater restfulness and decision.
I did not require to be so long present with the sick one; and I felt
that I could influence without being present.'
'And whensoever ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have aught against any one; that
your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.'--MARK xi.
25.
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HESE words follow
immediately on the great prayer-promise, 'All things whatsoever ye pray, believe
that ye have received them, and ye shall have them.' We have already seen how the words that
preceded that promise, 'Have faith in God,' taught us that in prayer all depends
upon our relation to God being clear; these words that follow on it remind us
that our relation with fellow-men must be clear too. Love to God and love to our neighbour
are inseparable: the prayer from a
heart, that is either not right with God on the one side, or with men on the
other, cannot prevail. Faith and
love are essential to each other.
We find that this is a thought to which our Lord
frequently gave expression. In the
Sermon on the Mount (Matt. v. 23, 24), when speaking of the sixth commandment,
He taught His disciples how impossible acceptable worship to the Father was if
everything were not right with the brother: 'If thou art offering thy gift at the
altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave
there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy
brother, and then come and offer thy gift.' And so later, when speaking of prayer to
God, after having taught us to pray, 'Forgive us our debts, as we also have
forgiven our debtors,' He added at the close of the prayer: 'If you forgive not men their
trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.' At the close of the parable of the
unmerciful servant He applies His teaching in the words: 'So shall also my Heavenly Father do
unto you, if ye forgive not every one his brother from your hearts.' And so here, beside the dried-up
fig-tree, where He speaks of the wonderful power of faith and the prayer of
faith, He all at once, apparently without connection, introduces the thought,
'Whensoever ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have aught against any one; that
your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.' It is as if the Lord had learned during
His life at Nazareth and afterwards that disobedience to the law of love to men
was the great sin even of praying people, and the great cause of the feebleness
of their prayer. And it is as if He
wanted to lead us into His own blessed experience that nothing gives such
liberty of access and such power in believing as the consciousness that we have
given ourselves in love and compassion, for those whom God
loves.
The first lesson taught here is that of a
forgiving disposition. We pray,
'Forgive, even as we have forgiven.' Scripture says, 'Forgive one another,
even as God also in Christ forgave you.'
God's full and free forgiveness is to be the rule of ours with men. Otherwise our reluctant, half-hearted
forgiveness, which is not forgiveness at all, will be God's rule with us. Every prayer rests upon our faith
in God's pardoning grace. If God
dealt with us after our sins, not one prayer could be heard. Pardon opens the door to all God's love
and blessing: because God has
pardoned all our sin, our prayer can prevail to obtain all we need. The deep sure ground of answer to prayer
is God's forgiving love. When it
has taken possession of the heart, we pray in faith. But also, when it has taken possession
of the heart, we live in love.
God's forgiving disposition, revealed in His love to us, becomes a
disposition in us; as the power of His forgiving love shed abroad and dwelling
within us, we forgive even as He forgives.
If there be great and grievous injury or injustice done us, we seek first
of all to possess a Godlike disposition; to be kept from a sense of wounded
honour, from a desire to maintain our rights, or from rewarding the offender as
he has deserved. In the little
annoyances of daily life, we are watchful not to excuse the hasty temper, the
sharp word, the quick judgment, with the thought that we mean no harm, that we
do not keep the anger long, or that it would be too much to expect from feeble
human nature, that we should really forgive the way God and Christ do. No, we take the command literally,
'Even as Christ forgave, so also do ye.' The blood that cleanses the conscience
from dead works, cleanses from selfishness too; the love it reveals is pardoning
love, that takes possession of us and flows through us to others. Our forgiving love to men is the
evidence of the reality of God's forgiving love in us, and so the condition of
the prayer of faith.
There is a second, more general lesson: our daily life in the world is made the
test of our intercourse with God in prayer. How often the Christian, when he comes
to pray, does his utmost to cultivate certain frames of mind which he thinks
will be pleasing. He does not
understand, or forgets, that life does not consist of so many loose pieces, of
which now the one, then the other, can be taken up. Life is a whole, and the pious frame of
the hour of prayer is judged of by God from the ordinary frame of the daily life
of which the hour of prayer is but a small part. Not the feeling I call up, but the tone
of my life during the day, is God's criterion of what I really am and
desire. My drawing nigh to God is
of one piece with my intercourse with men and earth: failure here will cause failure
there. And that not only when there
is the distinct consciousness of anything wrong between my neighbour and myself;
but the ordinary current of my thinking and judging, the unloving thoughts and
words I allow to pass unnoticed, can hinder my prayer. The effectual prayer of faith comes out
from a life given up to the will and the love of God. Not according to what I try to be when
praying, but what I am when not praying, is my prayer dealt with by
God.
We may gather these thoughts into a third
lesson: In our life with men the
one thing on which everything depends is love. The spirit of forgiveness is the spirit
of love. Because God is love, He
forgives: it is only when we are
dwelling in love that we can forgive as God forgives. In love to the brethren we have
the evidence of love to the Father, the ground of confidence before God, and the
assurance that our prayer will be heard, (1 John iv. 20, iii. 18-21, 23.). 'Let us love in deed and truth;
hereby shall we assure our heart before Him. If our heart condemn us not, we have
boldness toward God, and whatever we ask, we receive of Him.' Neither faith nor work will profit if we
have not love; it is love that unites with God, it is love that proves the
reality of faith. As essential as
in the word that precedes the great prayer-promise in Mark xi. 24, 'Have faith
in God,' is this one that follows it, 'Have love to men.' The right relations to the living God
above me, and the living men around me, are the conditions of effectual
prayer.
This love is of special consequence when we
labour for such and pray for them.
We sometimes give ourselves to work for Christ, from zeal for His cause,
as we call it, or for our own spiritual health, without giving ourselves in
personal self-sacrificing love for those whose souls we seek. No wonder that our faith is feeble and
does not conquer. To look on each
wretched one, however unloveable he be, in the light of the tender love of Jesus
the Shepherd seeking the lost; to see Jesus Christ in him, and to take him up,
for Jesus' sake, in a heart that really loves, --this, this is the secret of
believing prayer and successful effort.
Jesus, in speaking of forgiveness, speaks of love as its root. Just as in the Sermon on the Mount He
connected His teaching and promises about prayer with the call to be merciful,
as the Father in heaven is merciful (Matt. v. 7, 9, 22, 38-48), so we see it
here: a loving life is the
condition of believing prayer.
It has been said: There is nothing so heart-searching as
believing prayer, or even the honest effort to pray in faith. O let us not turn the edge of that
self-examination by the thought that God does not hear our prayer for reasons
known to Himself alone. By no
means. 'Ye ask and receive not,
because ye ask amiss.' Let that
word of God search us. Let us ask
whether our prayer be indeed the expression of a life wholly given over to the
will of God and the love of man.
Love is the only soil in which faith can strike its roots and
thrive. As it throws its arms up,
and opens its heart heavenward, the Father always looks to see if it has them
opened towards the evil and the unworthy too. In that love, not indeed the love of
perfect attainment, but the love of fixed purpose and sincere obedience, faith
can alone obtain the blessing. It
is he who gives himself to let the love of God dwell in him, and in the practice
of daily life to love as God loves, who will have the power to believe in the
Love that hears his every prayer.
It is the Lamb, who is in the midst of the throne: it is suffering and forbearing love that
prevails with God in prayer. The
merciful shall obtain mercy; the meek shall inherit the
earth.
'LORD, TEACH US TO
PRAY.'
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Blessed Father! Thou art Love, and only he that abideth
in love abideth in Thee and in fellowship with Thee. The Blessed Son hath this day again
taught me how deeply true this is of my fellowship with Thee in prayer. O my God! let Thy love, shed abroad in
my heart by the Holy Spirit, be in me a fountain of love to all around me, that
out of a life in love may spring the power of believing prayer. O my Father! grant by the Holy Spirit
that this may be my experience, that a life in love to all around me is the gate
to a life in the love of my God.
And give me especially to find in the joy with which I forgive day by day
whoever might offend me, the proof that Thy forgiveness to me is a power and a
life.
Lord Jesus! my Blessed
Teacher! teach Thou me to forgive and to love. Let the power of Thy blood make the
pardon of my sins such a reality, that forgiveness, as shown by Thee to me, and
by me to others, may be the very joy of heaven. Show me whatever in my intercourse with
fellowmen might hinder my fellowship with God, so that my daily life in my own
home and in society may be the school in which strength and confidence are
gathered for the prayer of faith.
Amen.
'Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall
agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done
for them of my Father which is in heaven.
For where two or three are gathered together in my Name, there am I in
the midst of them.--MATT. xviii. 19, 20.
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NE of the first lessons
of our Lord in His school of prayer was:
Not to be seen of men. Enter
thy inner chamber; be alone with the Father. When He has thus taught us that the
meaning of prayer is personal individual contact with God, He comes with a second lesson: You have need not only of secret
solitary, but also of public united prayer. And He gives us a very special promise
for the united prayer of two or three who agree in what they ask. As a tree has its root hidden in the
ground and its stem growing up into the sunlight, so prayer needs equally for
its full development the hidden secrecy in which the soul meets God alone, and
the public fellowship with those who find in the name of Jesus their common
meeting-place.
The reason why this must be so is plain. The bond that unites a man to his
fellow-men is no less real and close than that which unites him to God: he is one with them. Grace renews not alone our relation to
God but to man too. We not only
learn to say 'My Father,' but 'Our Father.' Nothing would be more unnatural than
that the children of a family should always meet their father separately, but
never in the united expression of their desires or their love. Believers are not only members of one
family, but even of one body. Just
as each member of the body depends on the other, and the full action of the
spirit dwelling in the body depends on the union and co-operation of all, so
Christians cannot reach the full blessing God is ready to bestow through His
Spirit, but as they seek and receive it in fellowship with each other. It is in the union and fellowship of
believers that the Spirit can manifest His full power. It was to the hundred and twenty
continuing in one place together, and praying with one accord, that the Spirit
came from the throne of the glorified Lord.
The marks of true united prayer are given us in
these words of our Lord. The first
is agreement as to the thing asked.
There must not only be generally the consent to agree with anything
another may ask: there must be some
special thing, matter of distinct united desire; the agreement must be, as all
prayer, in spirit and in truth. In
such agreement it will become very clear to us what exactly we are asking,
whether we may confidently ask according to God's will, and whether we are ready
to believe that we have received what we ask.
The second mark is the gathering in, or into, the
Name of Jesus. We shall afterwards
have much more to learn of the need and the power of the Name of Jesus in
prayer; here our Lord teaches us that the Name must be the centre of union to
which believers gather, the bond of union that makes them one, just as a home
contains and unites all who are in it.
'The Name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous runneth into it
and escape.' That Name is such a
reality to those who understand and believe it, that to meet within it is to
have Himself present. The love and
unity of His disciples have to Jesus infinite attraction: 'Where two or three are gathered in my
Name, there am I in the midst of them.' It is the living presence of Jesus, in
the fellowship of His loving praying disciples, that gives united prayer its
power.
The third mark is, the sure answer: 'It shall be done for them of my
Father.' A prayer-meeting for
maintaining religious fellowship, or seeking our own edification, may have its
use; this was not the Saviour's view in its appointment. He meant it as a means of securing
special answer to prayer. A
prayer meeting without recognised answer to prayer ought to be an anomaly. When any of us have distinct desires in
regard to which we feel too weak to exercise the needful faith, we ought to seek
strength in the help of other. In
the unity of faith and of love and of the Spirit, the power of the Name and the
Presence of Jesus acts more freely and the answer comes more surely. The mark that there has been true united
prayer is the fruit, the answer, the receiving of the thing we have asked: 'I say unto you, It shall be done
for them of my Father which is in heaven.'
What an unspeakable privilege this of united
prayer is, and what a power it might be.
If the believing husband and wife knew that they were joined together in
the Name of Jesus to experience His presence and power in united prayer (1
Peter); if friends believed what mighty help two or three praying in concert
could give each other; if in every prayer meeting the coming together in the
Name, the faith in the Presence, and the expectation of the answer, stood in the
foreground; if in every Church united effectual prayer were regarded as one of
the chief purposes for which they are banded together, the highest exercise of
their power as a Church; if in the Church universal the coming of the kingdom,
the coming of the King Himself, first in the mighty outpouring of His Holy
Spirit, then in His own glorious person, were really matter of unceasing united
crying to God;--O who can say what blessing might come to, and through, those
who thus agreed to prove God in the fulfilment of His
promise.
In the Apostle Paul we see very distinctly what a
reality his faith in the power of united prayer was. To the Romans he writes (xv. 30): 'I beseech you, brethren, by the love of
the Spirit, that ye strive together with me in your prayer to God for
me.' He expects in answer to be
delivered from his enemies, and to be prospered in his work. To the Corinthians (2 Cor. i. 11), 'God
will still deliver us, ye also helping together on our behalf by your
supplications;' their prayer is to have a real share in his deliverance. To the Ephesians he writes: 'With all prayer and supplication
praying at all seasons in the Spirit for all the saints and on my behalf, that
utterance may be given unto me.'
His power and success in his ministry he makes to depend on their
prayers. With the Philippians (i.
19) he expects that his trials will turn to his salvation and the progress of
the gospel 'through your supplications and the supply of the spirit of Jesus
Christ.; To the Colossians (iv. 3)
he adds to the injunction to continue stedfast in prayer: 'Withal praying for us too, that God may
open unto us a door for the word.'
And to the Thessalonians (2 Thess. iii. 1) he writes: 'Finally, brethren, pray for us, that
the word of the Lord may run and be glorified, and that we may be delivered from
unreasonable men.' It is everywhere
evident that Paul felt himself the member of a body, on the sympathy and
co-operation of which he was dependent, and that he counted on the prayers of
these Churches to gain for him, what otherwise might not be given. The prayers of the Church were to him as
real a factor in the work of the kingdom, as the power of
God.
Who can say what power a Church could develop and
exercise, if it gave itself to the work of prayer day and night for the coming
of the kingdom, for God's power on His servants and His word, for the glorifying
of God in the salvation of souls?
Most Churches think their members are gathered into one simply to take
care of and build up each other.
They know not that God rules the world by the prayers of His saints; that
prayer is the power by which Satan is conquered; that by prayer the Church on
earth has disposal of the powers of the heavenly world. They do not remember that Jesus has, by
His promise, consecrated every assembly in His Name to be a gate of heaven,
where His Presence is to be felt, and His Power experienced in the Father
fulfilling their desires.
We cannot sufficiently thank
God for the blessed week of united prayer, with which Christendom in our days
opens every year. As proof of our
unity and our faith in the power of united prayer, as a training-school for the
enlargement of our hearts to take in all the needs of the Church universal, as a
help to united persevering prayer, it is of unspeakable value. But very specially as a stimulus to
continued union in prayer in the smaller circles, its blessing has been
great. And it will become even
greater, as God's people recognise what it is, all to meet as one in the Name of
Jesus to have His presence in the midst of a body all united in the Holy Spirit,
and boldly to claim the promise that it shall be done of the Father what they
agree to ask.
'LORD, TEACH US TO
PRAY'
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Blessed Lord! who didst in Thy high-priestly
prayer ask so earnestly for the unity of Thy people, teach us how Thou dost
invite and urge us to this unity by Thy precious promise given to united
prayer. It is when we are one in
love and desire that our faith has Thy presence and the Father's
answer.
O Father! we pray for Thy people, and for every
smaller circle of those who meet together, that they may be one. Remove, we pray, all selfishness and
self-interest, all narrowness of heart and estrangement, by which that unity is
hindered. Cast out the spirit of
the world and the flesh, through which Thy promise loses all its power. O let the though of Thy presence and the
Father's favour draw us all nearer to each other.
Grant especially Blessed Lord, that Thy Church
may believe that it is by the power of united prayer that she can bind and loose
in heaven; that Satan can be cast out; that souls can be saved; that mountains
can be removed; that the kingdom can be hastened. And grant, good Lord! that in the circle
with which I pray, the prayer of the Church may indeed be the power through
which Thy Name and Word are glorified.
Amen.
'And He spake a parable unto them to the end that
they ought always to pray, and not to faint. . . . And the Lord said, Hear what
the unrighteous judge saith. And
shall not God avenge His own elect, which cry to Him day and night, and He is
long-suffering over them? I say
unto you, that He will avenge them speedily.'--LUKE xviii.
108.
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F all the mysteries of
the prayer world, the need of persevering prayer is one of the greatest. That the Lord, who is so loving and
longing to bless, should have to be supplicated time after time, sometimes year
after year, before the answer comes, we cannot easily understand. It is also one of the greatest practical
difficulties in the exercise of believing prayer. When, after persevering supplication,
our prayer remains unanswered, it is often easiest for our slothful flesh, and
it has all the appearance of pious submission, to think that we must now cease
praying, because God may have His secret reason for withholding His answer to
our request.
It is by faith alone that the difficulty is
overcome. When once faith has taken
its stand upon God's word, and the Name of Jesus, and has yielded itself to the
leading of the Spirit to seek God's will and honour alone in its prayer, it need
not be discouraged by delay. It
knows from Scripture that the power of believing prayer is simply irresistible;
real faith can never be disappointed.
It knows how, just as water, to exercise the irresistible power it can
have, must be gathered up and accumulated, until the stream can come down in
full force, there must often be a heaping up of prayer, until God sees that the
measure is full, and the answer comes.
It knows how, just as the ploughman has to take his ten thousand steps,
and sow his ten thousand seeds, each one a part of the preparation for the final
harvest, so there is a need-be for oft-repeated persevering prayer, all working
out some desired blessing. It knows
for certain that not a single believing prayer can fail of its effect in heaven,
but has its influence, and is treasured up to work out an answer in due time to
him who persevereth to the end. It
knows that it has to do not with human thoughts or possibilities, but with the
word of the living God. And so even
as Abraham through so many years 'in hope believed against hope,' and then
'through faith and patience inherited the promise,' it counts that the
long-suffering of the Lord is salvation, waiting and hasting unto
the coming of its Lord to fulfil His promise.
To enable us, when the answer to our prayer does
not come at once, to combine quiet patience and joyful confidence in our
persevering prayer, we must specially try to understand the two words in which
our Lord sets forth the character and conduct, not of the unjust judge, but of
our God and Father towards those whom He allows to cry day and night to
Him: 'He is long-suffering
over them; He will avenge them speedily.'
He will avenge them speedily, the Master
says. The blessing is all prepared;
He is not only willing but most anxious to give them what they ask; everlasting
love burns with the longing desire to reveal itself fully to its beloved, and to
satisfy their needs. God will not
delay one moment longer than is absolutely necessary; He will do all in His
power to hasten and speed the answer.
But why, if this be true and His power be
infinite, does it often last so long with the answer to prayer? And why must God's own elect so often,
in the midst of suffering and conflict, cry day and night? 'He is long-suffering over them.' 'Behold! the husbandman waiteth for the
precious fruit of the earth, being long-suffering over it, till it
receive the early and the latter rain.'
The husbandman does indeed long for his harvest, but knows that it must
have its full time of sunshine and rain, and has long patience. A child so often wants to pick the
half-ripe fruit; the husbandman knows to wait till the proper time. Man, in his spiritual nature too, is
under the law of gradual growth that reigns in all created life. It is only in the path of development
that he can reach his divine destiny.
And it is the Father, in whose hands are the times and seasons, who alone
knows the moment when the soul or the Church is ripened to that fulness of faith
in which it can really take and keep the blessing. As a father who longs to have his only
child home from school, and yet waits patiently till the time of training is
completed, so it is with God and His children: He is the long-suffering One, and
answers speedily.
The insight into this truth leads the believer to
cultivate the corresponding dispositions:
patience and faith, waiting and hasting, are the
secret of his perseverance. By
faith in the promise of God, we know that we have the petitions we have
asked of Him. Faith takes and holds
the answer in the promise, as an unseen spiritual possession, rejoices in it,
and praises for it. But there is a
difference between the faith that thus holds the word and knows that it has the
answer, and the clearer, fuller, riper faith that obtains the promise as a
present experience. It is in
persevering, not unbelieving, but confident and praising prayer, that the soul
grows up into that full union with its Lord in which it can enter upon the
possession of the blessing in Him.
There may be in these around us, there may be in that great system of
being of which we are part, there may be in God's government, things that have
to be put right through our prayer, ere the answer can fully come: the faith that has, according to the
command, believed that it has received, can allow God to take His time: it knows it has prevailed and must
prevail. In quiet, persistent, and
determined perseverance it continues in prayer and thanksgiving until the
blessing come. And so we see
combined what at first sight appears so contradictory; the faith that rejoices
in the answer of the unseen God as a present possession, with the patience that
cries day and night until it be revealed.
The speedily of God's long-suffering is met by the
triumphant but patient faith of His waiting child.
Our great danger in this school of the answer
delayed, is the temptation to think that, after all, it may not be God's will to
give us what we ask. If our prayer
be according to God's word, and under the leading of the Spirit, let us not give
way to these fears. Let us learn to
give God time. God needs time with
us. If we only give Him time, that
is, time in the daily fellowship with Himself, for Him to exercise the full
influence of His presence on us, and time, day by day, in the course of our
being kept waiting, for faith to prove its reality and to fill our whole being,
He Himself will lead us from faith to vision; we shall see the glory of
God. Let no delay shake our
faith. Of faith it holds good: first the blade, then the ear, then the
full corn in the ear. Each
believing prayer brings a step nearer the final victory. Each believing prayer helps to ripen the
fruit and bring us nearer to it; it fills up the measure of prayer and faith
known to God alone; it conquers the hindrances in the unseen world; it hastens
the end. Child of God! give the
Father time. He is long-suffering
over you. He wants the blessing to
be rich, and full, and sure; give Him time, while you cry day and night. Only remember the word: 'I say unto you, He will avenge them
speedily.'
The blessing of such persevering prayer is
unspeakable. There is nothing so
heart-searching as the prayer of faith.
It teaches you to discover and confess, and give up everything that
hinders the coming of the blessing; everything there may be not in accordance
with the Father's will. It leads to
closer fellowship with Him who alone can teach to pray, to a more entire
surrender to draw nigh under no covering but that of the blood, and the
Spirit. It calls to a closer and
more simple abiding in Christ alone.
Christian! give God time. He
will perfect that which concerneth you.
'Long-suffering--speedily,' this is God's watchword as you enter the
gates of prayer: be it yours
too.
Let it be thus whether you pray for yourself, or
for others. All labour, bodily or
mental, needs time and effort: we
must give up ourselves to it.
Nature discovers her secrets and yields her treasures only to diligent
and thoughtful labour. However
little we can understand it, in the spiritual husbandry it is the same: the seed we sow in the soil of heaven,
the efforts we put forth, and the influence we seek to exert in the world above,
need our whole being: we must
give ourselves to prayer.
But let us hold fast the great confidence, that in due season we shall
reap, if we faint not.
And let us specially learn the lesson as we pray
for the Church of Christ. She is
indeed as the poor widow, in the absence of her Lord, apparently at the mercy of
her adversary, helpless to obtain redress.
Let us, when we pray for His Church or any portion of it, under the power
of the world, asking Him to visit her with the mighty workings of His Spirit and
to prepare her for His coming, let us pray in the assured faith: prayer does help, praying always and not
fainting will bring the answer.
Only give God time. And then
keep crying day and night. 'Hear
what the unrighteous judge saith.
And shall not God avenge His own elect, which cry to Him day and night,
and He is long-suffering over them.
I say unto you, He will avenge them
speedily.'
'LORD, TEACH US TO
PRAY.'
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O Lord my God! teach me now to know Thy way, and in
faith to apprehend what Thy Beloved Son has taught: 'He will avenge them speedily.' Let Thy tender love, and the delight
Thou hast in hearing and blessing Thy children, lead me implicitly to accept Thy
promise, that we receive what we believe, that we have the petitions we ask, and
that the answer will in due time be seen.
Lord! we understand the seasons in nature, and know to wait with patience
for the fruit we long for--O fill us with the assurance that not one moment
longer than is needed wilt Thou delay, and that faith will hasten the
answer.
Blessed Master! Thou hast said that it is a sign
of God's elect that they cry day and night. O teach us to understand this. Thou knowest how speedily we grow faint
and weary. It is as if the Divine
Majesty is so much beyond the need or the reach of continued supplication, that
it does not become us to be too importunate. O Lord! do teach me how real the labour
of prayer is. I know how here on
earth, when I have failed in an undertaking, I can often succeed by renewed and
more continuing effort, by giving more time and thought: show me how, by giving myself more
entirely to prayer, to live in prayer, I shall obtain what I ask. And above all, O my blessed Teacher!
Author and perfecter of faith, let by Thy grace my whole life be one of faith in
the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me--in whom my prayer gains
acceptance, in whom I have the assurance of the answer, in whom the answer will
be mine. Lord Jesus! in this faith
I will pray always and not faint.
Amen.
NOTE
The need of persevering
importunate prayer appears to some to be at variance with the faith which knows
that it has received what it asks (Mark xi. 24). One of the mysteries of the Divine life
is the harmony between the gradual and the sudden, immediate full possession,
and slow imperfect appropriation.
And so here persevering prayer appears to be the school in which the soul
is strengthened for the boldness of faith.
And with the diversity of operations of the Spirit there may be some in
whom faith takes more the form of persistent waiting; while to others,
triumphant thanksgiving appears the only proper expressions of the assurance of
having been heard.
In a remarkable way the need of
persevering prayer, and the gradual rising into greater ease in obtaining
answer, is illustrated in the life of Blumhardt. Complaints had been lodged against him
of neglecting his work as a minister of the gospel, and devoting himself to the
healing of the sick; and especially his unauthorized healing of the sick
belonging to other congregations.
In his defense he writes: 'I
simply ventured to do what becomes one who has the charge of souls, and to pray
according to the command of the Lord in James i. 6, 7. In no way did I trust to my own power,
or imagine that I had any gift that others had not. But this is true, I set myself to the
work as a minister of the gospel, who has a right to pray. But I speedily discovered that the gates
of heaven were not fully opened to me.
Often I was inclined to retire in despair. But the sight of the sick ones, who
could find help nowhere, gave me no rest.
I thought of the word of the Lord:
"Ask, and it shall be given you" (Luke xi. 9, 10). And farther, I thought that if the
Church and her ministers had, through unbelief, sloth, and disobedience lost
what was needed for overcoming of the power of Satan, it was just for such times
of leanness and famine that the Lord had spoken the parable of the friend at
midnight and his three loaves. I
felt that I was not worthy thus at midnight, in a time of great darkness, to
appear before God as His friend and ask for a member of my congregation what he
needed. And yet, to leave him
uncared for, I could not either.
And so I kept knocking, as the parable directs, or, as some have said,
with great presumption and tempting God.
Be this as it may, I could not leave my guest unprovided. At this time the parable of the widow
became very precious to me. I saw
that the Church was the widow, and I was a minister of the Church. I had the right to be her mouthpiece
against the adversary; but for a long time the Lord would not. I asked nothing more than the three
loaves; what I needed for my guest.
At last the Lord listened to the importunate beggar, and helped me. Was it wrong of me to pray thus? The two parables must surely be
applicable somewhere, and where was greater need to be
conceived?
And what was the fruit of my
prayer? The friend who was at first
unwilling, did not say, Go now; I will myself give to your friend what he needs;
I do not require you; but gave it to me as His friend, to give to my guest. And so I used the three loaves, and had
to spare. But the supply was small,
and new guests came; because they saw I had a heart to help them, and that I
would take the trouble even at midnight to go to my friend. When I asked for them, too, I got the
needful again, and there was again to spare. How could I help that the needy
continually came to my house? Was I
to harden myself, and say, What do you come to me? there are large and better homes in the
city, go there. Their answer was,
Dear sir, we cannot go there. We
have been there: they were very
sorry to send us away so hungry, but they could not undertake to go and ask a
friend for what we wanted. Do go,
and get us bread for we suffer great pain.
What could I do? They spoke
the truth, and their suffering touched my heart. However much labour it cost me, I went
each time again, and got the three loaves.
Often I got what I asked much quicker than at first, and also much more
abundantly. But all did not care
for this bread, so some left my home hungry.'1
In his first struggles with the
evil spirits, it took him more than eighteen months of prayer and labour before
the final victory was gained.
Afterwards he had such ease of access to the throne, and stood in such
close communication with the unseen world, that often, with letters came asking
prayer for sick people, he could, after just looking upward for a single moment,
obtain the answer as to whether they would be healed.
1From
Johann Christophe Blumhardt, Ein Lebenabild von F. Etindel.
‘Father, I thank Thee that Thou heardest me. And I knew that Thou hearest me
always.’--JOHN xi. 41, 42.
‘Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten
Thee. Ask of me, and I shall give
Thee.’--PS. ii. 7, 8.
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N the New Testament we
find a distinction made between faith and knowledge. ‘To one is given, through the Spirit,
the word of wisdom; to
another the word of knowledge, according to the same Spirit; to another
faith, in the same Spirit.’
In a child or a simple-minded Christian there may be much faith with
little knowledge. Childlike
simplicity accepts the truth without difficulty, and often cares little to give
itself or others any reason for its faith but this: God has said. But it is the will of God that we should
love and serve Him, not only with all the heart but also with all the mind; that
we should grow up into an insight into the Divine wisdom and beauty of all His
ways and words and works. It is
only thus that the believer will be able fully to approach and rightly to adore
the glory of God’s grace; and only thus that our heart can intelligently
apprehend the treasures of wisdom and knowledge there are in redemption, and be
prepared to enter fully into the highest note of the song that rises before the
throne: ‘O the depth of the riches
both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!’
In our prayer life this truth
has its full application. While
prayer and faith are so simple that the new-born convert can pray with power,
true Christian science finds in the doctrine of prayer some of its deepest
problems. In how far is the power
of prayer a reality? If so, how God
can grant to prayer such mighty power?
How can the action of prayer be harmonized with the will and the decrees
of God? How can God’s sovereignty
and our will, God’s liberty and ours, be reconciled?--these and other like
questions are fit subjects for Christian meditation and inquiry. The more earnestly and reverently we
approach such mysteries, the more shall we in adoring wonder fall down to praise
Him who hath in prayer given such power to man.
One of the secret difficulties with regard to
prayer,--one which, though not expressed, does often really hinder prayer,--is
derived from the perfection of God, in His absolute independence of all that is
outside of Himself. Is He not the
Infinite Being, who owes what He is to Himself alone, who determines Himself,
and whose wise and holy will has determined all that is to be? How can prayer influence Him, or He be
moved by prayer to do what otherwise would not be done? Is not the promise of an answer to
prayer simply a condescension to our weakness? Is what is said of the power--the
much-availing power--of prayer anything more than an accommodation to our mode
of thought, because the Deity never can be dependent on any action from without
for its doings? And is not the
blessing of prayer simply the influence it exercises upon
ourselves?
In seeking an answer to such questions, we find
the key in the very being of God, in the mystery of the Holy Trinity. If God was only one Person, shut up
within Himself, there could be no thought of nearness to Him or influence on
Him. But in God there are three
Persons. In God we have Father and
Son, who have in the Holy Spirit their living bond of unity and fellowship. When eternal Love begat the Son, and the
Father gave the Son as the Second Person a place next Himself as His Equal and
His Counsellor, there was a way opened for prayer and its influence in the very
inmost life of Deity itself. Just
as on earth, so in heaven the whole relation between Father and Son is that of
giving and taking. And if that
taking is to be as voluntary and self-determined as the giving, there must be on
the part of the Son an asking and receiving. In the holy fellowship of the Divine
Persons, this asking of the Son was one of the great operations of the Thrice
Blessed Life of God. Hence we have
it in Psalm ii.: ‘This day I have
begotten Thee: ask of me and I will
give Thee.’ The Father gave the Son
the place and the power to act upon Him.
The asking of the Son was no mere show or shadow, but one of those
life-movements in which the love of the Father and the Son met and completed
each other. The Father had
determined that He should not be alone in His counsels: there was a Son on whose asking and
accepting their fulfilment should depend.
And so there was in the very Being and Life of God an asking of which
prayer on earth was to be the reflection and the outflow. It was not without including this that
Jesus said, “I knew that Thou always hearest me.’ Just as the Sonship of Jesus on earth
may not be separated from His Sonship in heaven, even so with His prayer on
earth, it is the continuation and the counterpart of His asking in heaven. The prayer of the man Christ Jesus is
the link between the eternal asking of the only-begotten Son in the bosom of the
Father and the prayer of men upon earth.
Prayer has its rise and its deepest source in the very Being of God. In the bosom of Deity nothing is ever
done without prayer--the asking of the Son and the giving of the
Father.1
This may help us somewhat to understand how the
prayer of man, coming through the Son, can have effect upon God. The decrees of God are not decisions
made by Him without reference to the Son, or His petition, or the petition to be
sent up through Him. By no
means. The Lord Jesus is the
first-begotten, the Head and Heir of all things: all things were created through
Him and unto Him, and all things consist in Him. In the counsels of the Father, the Son,
as Representative of all creation, had always a voice; in the decrees of the
eternal purpose there was always room left for the liberty of the Son as
Mediator and Intercessor, and so for the petitions of all who draw nigh to the
Father in the Son.
And if the thought come that this liberty and
power of the Son to act upon the Father is at variance with the immutability of
the Divine decrees, let us not forget that there is not with God as with man, a
past by which He is irrevocably bound.
God does not live in time with its past and future; the distinctions of
time have no reference to Him who inhabits Eternity. And Eternity is an ever-present Now, in
which the past is never past, and the future always present. To meet our human weakness, Scripture
must speak of past decrees, and a coming future. In reality, the immutability of God’s
counsel is ever still in perfect harmony with His liberty to do whatsoever He
will. Not so were the prayers of
the Son and His people taken up into the eternal decrees that their effect
should only be an apparent one; but so, that the Father-heart holds itself open
and free to listen to every prayer that rises through the Son, and that God does
indeed allow Himself to be decided by prayer to do what He otherwise would not
have done.
This perfect harmony and union of Divine
Sovereignty and human liberty is to us an unfathomable mystery, because God as
THE ETERNAL ONE transcends all our thoughts. But let it be our comfort and strength
to be assured that in the eternal fellowship of the Father and the Son, the
power of prayer has its origin and certainty, and that through our union with
the Son, our prayer is taken up and can have its influence in the inner life of
the Blessed Trinity. God’s decrees
are no iron framework against which man’s liberty would vainly seek to
struggle. No. God Himself is the Living Love, who in
His Son as man has entered into the tenderest relation with all that is human,
who through the Holy Spirit takes up all that is human into the Divine life of
love, and keeps Himself free to give every human prayer its place in His
government of the world.
It is in the daybreak light
of such thoughts that the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity no longer is an
abstract speculation, but the living manifestation of the way in which it were
possible for man to be taken up into the fellowship of God, and his prayer to
become a real factor in God’s rule of this earth. And we can, as in the distance, catch
glimpses of the light that from the eternal world shines out on words such as
these: ‘THROUGH HIM we have access
BY ONE SPIRIT unto THE FATHER.’
‘LORD, TEACH US TO
PRAY.’
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Everlasting God! the Three-One and Thrice Holy! in deep reverence would I with veiled
face worship before the holy mystery of Thy Divine Being. And if it please Thee, O most glorious
God, to unveil aught of that mystery, I would bow with fear and trembling, lest
I sin against Thee, as I meditate on Thy glory.
Father!
I thank Thee that Thou bearest this name not only as the Father of Thy
children here on earth, but as having from eternity subsisted as the Father with
Thine only-begotten Son. I thank
Thee that as Father Thou canst hear our prayer, because Thou hast from eternity
given a place in Thy counsels to the asking of Thy Son. I thank Thee that we have seen in Him on
earth, what the blessed intercourse was He had with Thee in heaven; and how from
eternity in all Thy counsels and decrees there had been room left for His prayer
and their answers. And I thank Thee
above all that through His true human nature on Thy throne above, and through
Thy Holy Spirit in our human nature here below, a way has been opened up by
which every human cry of need can be taken up into and touch the Life and the
Love of God, and receive in answer whatsoever it shall
ask.
Blessed Jesus! in whom as the Son the path of prayer
has been opened up, and who givest us assurance of the answer, we beseech Thee,
teach Thy people to pray. O let
this each day be the sign of our sonship, that, like Thee, we know that the
Father heareth us always.
Amen.
NOTE.
‘”God hears prayer.” This simplest view of prayer is taken
throughout Scripture. It dwells not
on the reflex influence of prayer on our heart and life, although it abundantly
shows the connection between prayer as an act, and prayer as a state. It rather fixes with great definiteness
the objective or real purposes of prayer, to obtain blessing, gifts,
deliverances from God. ‘Ask and it
shall be given,” Jesus says.
‘However true and valuable the
reflection may be, that God, foreseeing and foreordaining all things, has also
foreseen and foreordained our prayers as links in the chain of events, of cause
and effect, as a real power, yet we feel convinced that this is not the light in
which the mind can find peace in this great subject, nor do we think that here
is the attractive power to draw us in prayer. We feel rather that such a reflection
diverts the attention from the Object whence comes the impulse, life, and
strength of prayer. The living God,
cotemporary and not merely eternal,1 the living, merciful, holy One, God
manifesting Himself to the soul, God saying, “Seek my face;” this is the magnet
that draws us, this alone can open heart and lips. . .
‘In Jesus Christ the Son of God
we have the full solution of the difficulty. He prayed on earth, and that not merely
as man, but as the Son of God incarnate.
His prayer on earth is only the manifestation of His prayer from all
eternity, when in the Divine counsel He was set up as the Christ. . . . The Son
was appointed to be heir of all things.
From all eternity the Son of God was the Way, the Mediator. He was, to use our imperfect language,
from eternity speaking unto the Father on behalf of the world.’--SAPHIR, The
Hidden Life, chap. vi. See also
The Lord’s Prayer, p. 12.
1Should it not rather be cotemporary, because
eternal, in the proper meaning of this latter word?
‘He saith unto them, Whose is this image and
superscription?--MATT. xxi. 20.
‘And God said, Let us make man in our image,
after our likeness.’--GEN. i. 26.
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HOSE is this
image?’ It was by this question
that Jesus foiled His enemies, when they thought to take Him, and settled the
matter of duty in regard to the tribute.
The question and the principle it involves are of universal
application. Nowhere more truly
than in man himself. The image he
bears decides his destiny. Bearing
God’s image, he belongs to God:
prayer to God is what he was created for. Prayer is part of the wondrous likeness
he bears to His Divine original; of the deep mystery of the fellowship of love
in which the Three-One has His blessedness, prayer is the earthly image and
likeness.
The more we meditate on what prayer is, and the
wonderful power with God which it has, the more we feel constrained to ask who
and what man is, that such a place in God’s counsels should have been allotted
to him. Sin has so degraded him,
that from what he is now we can form no conception of what he was meant to
be. We must turn back to God’s own
record of man’s creation to discover there what God’s purpose was, and what the
capacities with which man was endowed for the fulfilment of that
purpose.
Man’s destiny appears clearly from God’s language
at creation. It was to fill,
to subdue, to have dominion over the earth and all in it. All the three expressions show us that
man was meant, as God’s representative, to hold rule here on earth. As God’s viceroy he was to fill God’s
place: himself subject to God, he
was to keep all else in subjection to Him.
It was the will of God that all that was to be done on earth should be
done through him: the history of
the earth was to be entirely in his hands.
In accordance with such a destiny was the
position he was to occupy, and the power at his disposal. When an earthly sovereign sends a
viceroy to a distant province, it is understood that he advises as to the policy
to be adopted, and that that advice is acted on: that he is at liberty to apply for
troops and the other means needed for carrying out the policy or maintaining the
dignity of the empire. If his
policy be not approved of, he is recalled to make way for some one who better
understands his sovereign’s desires’ as long as he is trusted, his advice is
carried out. As God’s
representative man was to have ruled; all was to have been done under his will
and rule; on his advice and at his request heaven was to have bestowed its
blessing on earth. His prayer was
to have been the wonderful, though simple and most natural channel, in which the
intercourse between the King in heaven and His faithful servant man, as lord of
this world, was to have been maintained.
The destinies of the world were given into the power of the wishes, the
will, the prayer of man.
With sin all this underwent a terrible
change--man’s fall brought all creation under the curse. With redemption the beginning was seen
of a glorious restoration. No
sooner had God begun in Abraham to form for Himself a people from whom kings,
yea the Great King, should come forth, than we see what power the prayer of
God’s faithful servant has to decide the destinies of those who come into
contact with him. In Abraham we see
how prayer is not only, or even chiefly, the means of obtaining blessing for
ourselves, but is the exercise of his royal prerogative to influence the
destinies of men, and the will of God which rules them. We do not once find Abraham praying for
himself. His prayer for Sodom and
Lot, for Abimelech, for Ishmael, prove what power a man, who is God’s friend,
has to make the history of those around him.
This had been man’s destiny from the first. Scripture not only tells us this, but
also teaches us how it was that God could entrust man with such a high
calling. It was because He had
created him in His own image and likeness. The external rule was not committed to
him without the inner fitness: the
bearing God’s image in having dominion, in being lord of all, had its root in
the inner likeness, in his nature.
There was an inner agreement and harmony between God and man, and
incipient Godlikeness, which gave man a real fitness for being the mediator
between God and His world, for he was to be prophet, priest, and king, to
interpret God’s will, to represent nature’s needs, to receive and dispense God’s
bounty. It was in bearing God’s
image that he could bear God’s rule; he was indeed so like God, so capable of
entering into God’s purposes, and carrying out His plans, that God could trust
him with the wonderful privilege of asking and obtaining what the world might
need. And although sin has for a
time frustrated God’s plans, prayer still remains what it would have been if man
had never fallen: the proof of
man’s Godlikeness, the vehicle of his intercourse with the Infinite Unseen One,
the power that is allowed to hold the hand that holds the destinies of the
universe. Prayer is not merely the
cry of the suppliant for mercy; it is the highest forth-putting of his will by
man, knowing himself to be of Divine origin, created for and capable of being,
in king-like liberty, the executor of the counsels of the Eternal.
What sin destroyed, grace has restored. What the first Adam lost, the second has
won back. In Christ man regains his
original position, and the Church, abiding in Christ, inherits the promise: ‘Ask what ye will, and it shall be done
unto you.’ Such a promise does by
no means, in the first place, refer to the grace or blessing we need for
ourselves. It has reference to our
position as the fruit-bearing branches of the Heavenly Vine, who, like Him, only
live for the work and glory of the Father.
It is for those who abide in Him, who have forsaken self to take up their
abode in Him with His life of obedience and self-sacrifice, who have lost their
life and found it in Him, who are now entirely given up to the interests of the
Father and His kingdom. These are
they who understand how their new creation has brought them back to their
original destiny, has restored God’s image and likeness, and with it the power
to have dominion. Such have indeed
the power, each in their own circle, to obtain and dispense the powers of heaven
here on earth. With holy boldness
they may make known what they will:
they live as priests in God’s presence; as kings the powers of the world
to come begin to be at their disposal.1 They enter upon the fulfilment of the
promise: ‘Ask whatsoever ye will,
it shall be done unto you.’
Church of the living God! thy calling is higher and holier than
thou knowest. Through thy members,
as kings, and priests unto God, would God rule the world; their prayers bestow
and withhold the blessing of heaven.
In His elect who are not just content to be themselves saved, but yield
themselves wholly, that through them, even as through the Son, the Father may
fulfil all His glorious counsel, in these His elect, who cry day and night unto
Him, God would prove how wonderful man’s original destiny was. As the image-bearer of God on earth, the
earth was indeed given into his hand.
When he fell, all fell with him:
the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together. But now he is redeemed; the restoration
of the original dignity has begun.
It is in very deed God’s purpose that the fulfilment of His eternal
purpose, and the coming of His kingdom, should depend on those of His people
who, abiding in Christ, are ready to take up their position in Him their Head,
the great Priest-King, and in their prayers are bold enough to say what they
will that their God should do. As
image-bearer and representative of God on earth, redeemed man has by his prayers
to determine the history of this earth.
Man was created, and has now again been redeemed, to pray, and by his
prayer to have dominion.
‘LORD, TEACH US TO
PRAY.’
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Lord!
what is man, that Thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that Thou visitest
him? for Thou has made him a little
lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion over
the work of Thy hands: Thou hast
put all things under his feet. O
Lord our Lord, how excellent is Thy name in all the earth!
Lord God!
how low has sin made man to sink.
And how terribly has it darkened his mind, that he does not even know his
Divine destiny, to be Thy servant and representative. Alas! that even Thy people, when their eyes
are opened, are so little ready to accept their calling and to seek to have
power with God, that they may have power with men too to bless
them.
Lord Jesus!
it is in Thee the Father hath again crowned man with glory and honour,
and opened the way for us to be what He would have us. O Lord, have mercy on Thy people, and
visit Thine heritage! Work mightily
in Thy Church, and teach Thy believing disciples to go forth in their royal
priesthood, and in the power of prayer, to which Thou hast given such wonderful
promises, to serve Thy kingdom, to have rule over the nations, and make the name
of God glorious in the earth.
Amen.
1’God is seeking priests among the sons of
men. A human priesthood is one of
the essential parts of His eternal plan.
To rule creation by man is His design; to carry on the worship of
creation by man is no less part of His design.
‘Priesthood is the appointed link between heaven
and earth, the channel of intercourse between the sinner and God. Such a priesthood, in so far as
expiation is concerned, is in the hands of the Son of God alone; in so far as it
is to be the medium of communication between Creator and creature, is also in
the hands of redeemed men--of the Church of God.
‘God is seeking kings. Not out of the ranks of angels. Fallen man must furnish Him with the
rulers of His universe. Human hands
must wield the sceptre, human heads must wear the crown.--The Rent Veil,
by Dr. H. Bonar.
‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father. And whatsoever ye shall ask in my Name, that will I do.’--JOHN xiv. 12, 13.
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S the Saviour opened
His public ministry with His disciples by the Sermon on the Mount, so He closes
it by the Parting Address preserved to us by John. In both He speaks more than once of
prayer. But with a difference. In the Sermon on the Mount it is as to
disciples who have only just entered His school, who scarcely know that God is
their Father, and whose prayer chiefly has reference to their personal
needs. In His closing address He
speaks to disciples whose training time is now come to an end, and who are ready
as His messengers to take His place and His work. In the former the chief lesson is: Be childlike, pray believingly, and
trust the Father that He will give you all good gifts. Here He points to something higher: They are now His friends to whom He has
made known all that He has heard of the Father; His messengers, who have entered
into His plans, and into whose hands the care of His work and kingdom on earth
is to be entrusted. They are now to
go out and do His works, and in the power of His approaching exaltation, even
greater works: prayer is now to be
the channel through which that power is to be received for their work. With Christ’s ascension to the Father a
new epoch commences for their working and praying both.
See how clearly this connection comes out in our
text. As His body here on earth, as
those who are one with Him in heaven, they are now to do greater works than He
had done; their success and their victories are to be greater than His. He mentions two reasons for this. The one, because He was to go to the
Father, to receive all power; the other, because they might now ask and expect
all in His Name. ‘Because I go to
the Father, and--notice this and--and, whatsoever ye shall ask, I
will do.’ His going to the Father
would thus bring the double blessing:
they would ask and receive all in His Name, and as a consequence, would
do the greater works. This first
mention of prayer in our Saviour’s parting words thus teaches us two most
important lessons. He that would do
the works of Jesus must pray in His Name. He that would pray in His Name must
work in His Name.
He who would work must
pray: it is in prayer that the
power for work is obtained. He that
in faith would do the works that Jesus did, must pray in His Name. As long as Jesus was here on earth, He
Himself did the greatest works:
devils the disciples could not cast out, fled at His word. When He went to the Father, He was no
longer here in the body to work directly.
The disciples were now His body:
all His work from the throne in heaven here on earth must and could be
done through them. One might have
thought that now He was leaving the scene Himself, and could only work through
commissioners, the works might be fewer and weaker. He assures us of the contrary: Verily, verily, I say unto you,
He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also, and he shall do
greater works.’ His approaching
death was to be such a real breaking down and making an end of the power of sin;
with the resurrection the powers of the Eternal Life were so truly to take
possession of the human body and to obtain supremacy over human life; with His
ascension He was to receive the power to communicate the Holy Spirit so fully to
His own; the union, the oneness between Himself on the throne and them on earth,
was to be so intensely and divinely perfect, that He meant it as the literal
truth: ‘Greater works than these
shall he do, because I go to the Father.’
And the issue proved how true it was. While Jesus, during three years of
personal labour on earth, gathered little more than five hundred disciples, and
the most of them so feeble that they were but little credit to His cause, it was
given to men like Peter and Paul manifestly to do greater things than He had
done. From the throne He could do
through them what He Himself in His humiliation could not yet
do.
But there is one condition: ‘He that believeth on me, he shall do
greater works, because I go to the Father; and whatsover ye shall ask in my
Name, that will I do.’ His
going to the Father would give Him a new power to hear prayer. For the doing of the greater works, two
things were needed: His going to
the Father to receive all power, our prayer in His Name to receive all power
from Him again. As He asks the
Father, He receives and bestows on us the power of the new dispensation for the
greater works; as we believe, and ask in His Name, the power comes and takes
possession of us to do the greater works.
Alas! how much working there is in the work of
God, in which there is little or nothing to be seen of the power to do anything
like Christ’s works, not to speak of greater works. There can be but one reason: the believing on Him, the believing
prayer in His Name, this is so much wanting. O that every labourer and leader in
church, or school, in the work of home philanthropy or foreign missions might
learn the lesson: Prayer in the
Name of Jesus is the way to share in the mighty power which Jesus has received
of the Father for His people, and it is in this power alone that he that
believeth can do the greater works.
To every complaint as to weakness or unfitness, as to difficulties or
want of success, Jesus gives this one answer: ‘He that believeth on me shall do
greater works, because I go to the Father, and whatsoever ye shall ask in
my Name, that will I do.’ We
must understand that the first and chief thing for everyone who would do the
work of Jesus, is to believe, and so to get linked to Him, the Almighty One, and
then to pray the prayer of faith in His Name. Without this our work is but human and
carnal; it may have some use in restraining sin, or preparing the way for
blessing, but the real power is wanting.
Effectual working needs first effectual prayer.
And now the second
lesson: He who would pray must
work. It is for power to work
that prayer has such great promises:
it is in working that the power for the effectual prayer of faith will be
gained. In these parting words of
our blessed Lord we find that He no less than six times (John xiv. 13, 14, xv.
7, 16, xvi. 23, 24) repeats those unlimited prayer-promises which have so often
awakened our anxious questionings as to their real meaning: ‘whatsoever,’ ‘anything,’ ‘what ye
will,’ ‘ask and ye shall receive.’
How many a believer has read these over with joy and hope, and in deep
earnestness of soul has sought to plead them for his own need. And he has come out disappointed. The simple reason was this: he had rent away the promise from its
surrounding. The Lord gave the
wonderful promise of the free use of His Name with the Father in connection with
the doing of His works. It
is the disciple who gives himself wholly to live for Jesus’ work and kingdom,
for His will and honour, to whom the power will come to appropriate the
promise. He that would fain grasp
the promise when he wants something very special for himself, will be
disappointed, because he would make Jesus the servant of his own comfort. But to him who seeks to pray the
effectual prayer of faith, because he needs it for the work of the Master, to
him it will be given to learn it; because he has made himself the servant of his
Lord’s interests. Prayer not only
teaches and strengthens to work:
work teaches and strengthens to pray.
This is in perfect harmony
with what holds good both in the natural and the spiritual world. Whosoever hath, to him shall be given;
or, He that is faithful in a little, is faithful also in much. Let us with the small measure of grace
already received, give ourselves to the Master for His work: work will be to us a real school of
prayer. It was when Moses had to
take full charge of a rebellious people that he felt the need, but also the
courage, to speak boldly to God and to ask great things of Him (Ex. xxxiii. 12,
15, 18). As you give yourself
entirely to God for His work, you will feel that nothing less than these great
promises are what you need, that nothing less is what you may most confidently
expect.
Believer in Jesus! You are called, you are appointed, to do
the works of Jesus, and even greater works, because He has gone to the Father to
receive the power to do them in and through you.
Whatsoever ye shall ask in my Name, that will I
do. Give yourself, and live, to
do the works of Christ and you will learn to pray so as to obtain wonderful
answers to prayer. Give yourself,
and live, to pray and you will learn to do the works He did, and greater
works. With disciples full of faith
in Himself, and bold in prayer to ask great things, Christ can conquer the
world.
‘LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY.’
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O my Lord! I have this day again heard words from
Thee which pass my comprehension.
And yet I cannot do aught but in simple childlike faith take and keep
them as Thy gift to me too. Thou
hast said that in virtue of Thy going to the Father, he that believeth on Thee
will do the works which Thou hast done, and greater works. Lord! I worship Thee as the Glorified One, and
look for the fulfilment of Thy promise.
May my whole life just be one of continued believing in Thee. So purify and sanctify my heart, make it
so tenderly susceptible of Thyself and Thy love, that believing on Thee may be
the very life it breathes.
And Thou hast said that in
virtue of Thy going to the Father, whatsoever we ask, Thou wilt do. From Thy throne of power Thou wouldest
make Thy people share the power given Thee, and work through them as the members
of Thy body, in response to their believing prayers in Thy Name. Power in prayer with Thee, and power in
work with men, is what Thou has promised Thy people and me
too.
Blessed Lord! Forgive us all that we have so little
believed Thee and Thy promise, and so little proved Thy faithfulness in
fulfilling it. O forgive us that we
have so little honoured Thy all-prevailing Name in heaven or upon earth.
Lord! Teach me to pray so that I may prove
that Thy Name is indeed all-prevailing with God and men and devils. Yea, teach me so to work and so to pray
that Thou canst glorify Thyself in me as the Omnipotent One, and do Thy great
work through me too.
Amen.
I go unto the Father. And whatsoever ye shall ask in my Name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.’—JOHN xiv. 13.
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HAT the Father may
be glorified in the Son: it is
to this end that Jesus on His throne in glory will do all we ask in His
Name. Every answer to prayer He
gives will have this as its object:
when there is no prospect of this object being obtained, He will not
answer. It follows as a
matter of course that this must be with us, as with Jesus, the essential element
in our petitions: the glory of the
Father must be the aim and end, the very soul and life of our
prayer.
It was so with Jesus when He
was on earth. ‘I seek not mine own
honour: I seek the honour of Him
that sent me;’ in such words we have the keynote of His life. In the first words of the high-priestly
prayer He gives utterance to it:
Father! Glorify Thy son, that Thy Son may glorify Thee. ‘I have glorified Thee on earth;
glorify me with Thyself.’ The
ground on which He asks to be taken up into the glory He had with the Father, is
the twofold one: He has glorified
Him on earth; He will still glorify Him in heaven. What He asks is only to enable Him
to glorify the Father more. It is
as we enter into sympathy with Jesus on this point, and gratify Him by making
the Father’s glory our chief object in prayer too, that our prayer cannot fail
of an answer. There is nothing of
which the Beloved Son has said more distinctly that it will glorify the Father
than this, His doing what we ask; He will not, therefore, let any opportunity
slip of securing this object. Let
us make His aim ours: let the glory
of the Father be the link between our asking and His doing: such prayer must
prevail.1
This word of Jesus comes
indeed as a sharp two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing of soul and
spirit, and quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart. Jesus in His prayers on earth, in His
intercession in heaven, in His promise of an answer to our prayers from there,
makes this His first object—the glory of His Father. Is it so with us too? Or are not, in large measure,
self-interest and self-will the strongest motives urging us to pray? Or, if we cannot see that this is the
case, have we not to acknowledge that the distinct, conscious longing for the
glory of the Father is not what animates our prayers? And yet it must be
so.
Not as if the believer does
not at times desire it. But
he has to mourn that he has so little attained. And he knows the reason of his failure
too. It was, because the separation
between the spirit of daily life and the spirit of the hour of prayer was too
wide. We begin to see that the
desire for the glory of the Father is not something that we can awake and
present to our Lord when we prepare ourselves to pray. No! it is only when the whole life, in
all its parts, is given up to God’s glory, that we can really pray to His glory
too. ‘Do all to the glory of
God,’ and, ‘Ask all to the glory of God,’—these twin commands are
inseparable: obedience to the
former is the secret of grace for the latter. A life to the glory of God is the
condition of the prayers that Jesus can answer, ‘that the Father may be
glorified.’
This demand in connection
with prevailing prayer—that it should be to the glory of God—is no more than
right and natural. There is none
glorious but the Lord: there is no
glory but His, and what He layeth on His creatures. Creation exists to show forth His glory;
all that is not for His glory is sin, and darkness, and death: it is only in the glorifying of God that
the creatures can find glory. What
the Son of Man did, to give Himself wholly, His whole life, to glorify the
Father, is nothing but the simple duty of every redeemed one. And Christ’s reward will be his
too. Because He gave Himself so
entirely to the glory of the Father, the Father crowned Him with glory and
honour, giving the kingdom into His hands, with the power to ask what He will,
and, as Intercessor, to answer our prayers. And just as we become one with Christ in
this, and as our prayer is part of a life utterly surrendered to God’s glory,
will the Saviour be able to glorify the Father to us by the fulfilment of the
promise: ‘Whatsoever ye shall ask,
I will do it.’
To such a life, with God’s
glory our only aim, we cannot attain by any effort of our own. It is only in the man Christ Jesus that
such a life is to be seen: in Him
it is to be found for us. Yes
blessed be God! His life is our
life; He gave Himself for us; He Himself is now our life. The discovery, and the confession, and
the denial, of self, as usurping the place of God, of self-seeking and
self-trusting, is essential, and yet is what we cannot accomplish in our own
strength. It is the incoming and
indwelling, the Presence and the Rule in the heart, of our Lord Jesus who
glorified the Father on earth, and is now glorified with Him, that thence He
might glorify Him in us;--it is Jesus Himself coming in, who can cast out all
self-glorifying, and give us instead His own God-glorifying life and
Spirit. It is Jesus, who longs to
glorify the Father in hearing our prayers, who will teach us to live and to pray
to the glory of God.
And what motive, what power
is there that can urge our slothful hearts to yield themselves to our Lord to
work this in us? Surely nothing
more is needed than a sight of how glorious, how alone worthy of glory the
Father is. Let our faith learn in
adoring worship to bow before Him, to ascribe to Him alone the kingdom, and the
power, and the glory, to yield ourselves to dwell in His light as the
ever-blessed, ever-loving One.
Surely we shall be stirred to say, ‘To Him alone be glory.’ And we shall look to our Lord Jesus with
new intensity of desire for a life that refuses to see or seek ought but the
glory of God. When there is but
little prayer that can be answered, the Father is not glorified. It is a duty, for the glory of God, to
live and pray so that our prayer can be answered. For the sake of God’s glory, let us
learn to pray well.
What a humbling thought that
so often there is earnest prayer for a child or a friend, for a work or a
circle, in which the thought of our joy or our pleasure was far stronger than
any yearnings for God’s glory. No
wonder that there are so many unanswered prayers: here we have the secret. God would not be glorified when that
glory was not our object. He that
would pray the prayer of faith, will have to give himself to live literally so
that the Father in all things may be glorified in him. This must be his aim: without this there cannot be the prayer
of faith. ‘How can ye believe,’
said Jesus, ‘which receive glory of one another, and the glory that cometh from
the only God ye seek not?’ All
seeking of our own glory with men makes faith impossible: it is the deep, intense self-sacrifice
that gives up its own glory, and seeks the glory of God alone, that wakens in
the soul that spiritual susceptibility of the Divine, which is faith. The surrender to God to seek His glory,
and the expectation that He will show His glory in hearing us, are one at
root: He that seeks God’s
glory will see it in the answer to his prayer, and he
alone.
And how, we ask again, shall
we attain to it? Let us begin with
confession. How little has the
glory of God been an all-absorbing passion; how little our lives and our prayers
have been full of it. How little
have we lived in the likeness of the Son, and in sympathy with Him—for God and
His glory alone. Let us take time,
until the Holy Spirit discover it to us, and we see how wanting we have been in
this. True knowledge and confession
of sin are the sure path to deliverance.
And then let us look to
Jesus. In Him we can see by what
death we can glorify God. In death
He glorified Him; through death He was glorified with Him. It is by dying, being dead to self and
living to God, that we can glorify Him.
And this—this death to self, this life to the glory of God—is what Jesus
gives and lives in each one who can trust Him for it. Let nothing less than these—the desire,
the decision to live only for the glory of the Father, even as Christ did; the
acceptance of Him with His life and strength working it in us; the joyful
assurance that we can live to the glory of God, because Christ lives in us;--let
this be the spirit of our daily life. Jesus stands surety for our living
thus; the Holy Spirit is given, and waiting to make it our experience, if we
will only trust and let Him; O let us not hold back through unbelief, but
confidently take as our watchword—All to the glory of God! The Father accepts the will, the
sacrifice is well-pleasing; the Holy Spirit will seal us within with the
consciousness, we are living for God and His glory.
And then what quiet peace and
power there will be in our prayers, as we know ourselves through His grace, in
perfect harmony with Him who says to us, when He promises to do what we
ask: ‘That the Father may be
glorified in the Son.’ With our
whole being consciously yielded to the inspiration of the Word and Spirit, our
desires will be no longer ours but His; their chief end the glory of God. With increasing liberty we shall be able
in prayer to say: Father! Thou knowest, we ask it only for Thy
glory. And the condition of
prayer-answers, instead of being as a mountain we cannot climb, will only give
us the greater confidence that we shall be heard, because we have seen that
prayer has no higher beauty or blessedness than this, that it glorifies the
Father. And the precious privilege
of prayer will become doubly precious because it brings us into perfect unison
with the Beloved Son in the wonderful partnership He proposes: ‘You ask, and I do, that
the Father may be glorified in the Son.’
‘LORD, TEACH US TO
PRAY.’
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Blessed Lord Jesus! I come again to Thee. Every lesson Thou givest me convinces me
more deeply how little I know to pray aright. But every lesson also inspires me with
hope that Thou art going to teach me, that Thou art teaching me not only to know
what prayer should be, but actually to pray as I ought. O my Lord! I look with courage to Thee, the Great
Intercessor, who didst pray and dost hear prayer, only that the Father may be
glorified, to teach me too to live and to pray to the glory of
God.
Saviour! To this end I yield myself to Thee
again. I would be nothing. I have given self, as already crucified
with Thee, to the death. Through
the Spirit its workings are mortified and made dead; Thy life and Thy love of
the Father are taking possession of me.
A new longing begins to fill my soul, that every day, every hour, that in
every prayer the glory of the Father may be everything to me. O my Lord! I am in Thy school to learn this: teach Thou it me.
And do Thou, the God of
glory, the Father of glory, my God and my Father, accept the desire of a child
who has seen that Thy glory is indeed alone worth living for. O Lord! Show me Thy glory. Let it overshadow me. Let it fill the temple of my heart. Let me dwell in it as revealed in
Christ. And do Thou Thyself fulfil
in me Thine own good pleasure, that Thy child should find his glory in seeking
the glory of his Father.
Amen.
1See in the note on George Muller, at the close of this
volume, how he was led to make God’s glory his first object.
‘If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you,
ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto you.’—JOHN xv.
7.
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N all God’s intercourse
with us, the promise and its conditions are inseparable. If we fulfil the conditions, He fulfils
the promise. What He is to be to us
depends upon what we are willing to be to Him. ‘Draw near to God, and He will draw near
to you.’ And so in prayer the
unlimited promise, Ask whatsoever ye will, has its one simple and natural
condition, if ye abide in me.
It is Christ whom the Father always hears; God is in Christ, and
can only be reached by being in Him; to be IN HIM is the way to have our prayer
heard; fully and wholly ABIDING IN HIM, we have the right to ask whatsoever we
will, and the promise that it shall be done unto us.
When we compare this promise
with the experiences of most believers, we are startled by a terrible
discrepancy. Who can number up the
countless prayers that rise and bring no answer? The cause must be either that we do not
fulfil the condition, or God does not fulfil the promise. Believers are not willing to admit
either, and therefore have devised a way of escape from the dilemma. They put into the promise the qualifying
clause our Saviour did not put there—if it be God’s will; and so maintain both
God’s integrity and their own. O if
they did but accept it and hold it fast as it stands, trusting to Christ to
vindicate His truth, how God’s Spirit would lead them to see the Divine
propriety of such a promise to those who really abide in Christ in the sense in
which He means it, and to confess that the failure in the fulfilling the
condition is the one sufficient explanation of unanswered prayer. And how the Holy Spirit would then make
our feebleness in prayer one of the mightiest motives to urge us on to discover
the secret, and obtain the blessing, of full abiding in
Christ.
‘If ye abide in me.’ As a Christian grows in grace and in
the knowledge of the Lord Jesus, he is often surprised to find how the words of
God grow too, in the new and deeper meaning with which they come to him. He can look back to the day when some
word of God was opened up to him and he rejoiced in the blessing he had found in
it. After a time some deeper
experience gave it a new meaning, and it was as if he never had seen what it
contained. And yet once again, as
he advanced in the Christian life, the same word stood before him again as a
great mystery, until anew the Holy Spirit led him still deeper into its Divine
fulness. One of these ever-growing,
never-exhausted words, opening up to us step by step the fulness of the Divine
life, is the Master’s precious ‘Abide in me.’ As the union of the branch with the vine
is one of growth, never-ceasing growth and increase, so our abiding in Christ is
a life process in which the Divine life takes ever fuller and more complete
possession of us. The young and
feeble believer may be really abiding in Christ up to the measure of his light;
it is he who reaches onward to the full abiding in the sense in which the Master
understood the words, who inherits all the promises connected with
it.
In the growing life of
abiding in Christ, the first stage is that of faith. As the believer sees that, with all his
feebleness, the command is really meant for him, his great aim is simply to
believe that, as he knows he is in Christ, so now, notwithstanding
unfaithfulness and failure, abiding in Christ is his immediate duty, and a
blessing within his reach. He is
specially occupied with the love, and power, and faithfulness of the
Saviour: he feels his one need to
be believing.
It is not long before he sees
something more is needed. Obedience
and faith must go together. Not as
if to the faith he has the obedience must be added, but faith must be made
manifest in obedience. Faith is
obedience at home and looking to the Master: obedience is faith going out to do His
will. He sees how he has been more
occupied with the privilege and the blessings of this abiding than with its
duties and its fruit. There has
been much of self and of self-will that has been unnoticed or tolerated: the peace which, as a young and feeble
disciple, he could enjoy in believing goes from him; it is in practical
obedience that the abiding must be maintained: ‘If ye keep my commands, ye shall abide
in my love.’ As before his great
aim was through the mind, and the truth it took hold of, to let the heart
rest on Christ and His promises; so now, in this stage, he chief effort is to
get his will united with the will of his Lord, and the heart and the life
brought entirely under His rule.
And yet it is as if there is
something wanting. The will and the
heart are on Christ’s side; he obeys and he loves his Lord. But still, why is it that the fleshly
nature has yet so much power, that the spontaneous motions and emotions of the
inmost being are not what they should be?
The will does not approve or allow, but here is a region beyond control
of the will. And why also, even
when there is not so much of positive commission to condemn, why so much of
omission, the deficiency of that beauty of holiness, that zeal of love, that
conformity to Jesus and His death, in which the life of self is lost, and which
is surely implied in the abiding, as the Master meant it? There must surely be something in our
abiding in Christ and Christ in us, which he has not yet
experienced.
It is so. Faith and obedience are but the pathway
of blessing. Before giving us the
parable of the vine and the branches, Jesus had very distinctly told what the
full blessing is to which faith and obedience are to lead. Three times over He had said, ‘If ye
love me, keep my commandments,’ and spoken of the threefold blessing with which
He would crown such obedient love.
The Holy Spirit would come from the Father; the Son would manifest
Himself; the Father and the Son would come and make their abode. It is as our faith grows into obedience,
and in obedience and love our whole being goes out and clings itself to Christ,
that our inner life becomes opened up, and the capacity is formed within of
receiving the life, the spirit, of the glorified Jesus, as a distinct and
conscious union with Christ and with the Father. The word is fulfilled in us: ‘In that day ye shall know that I am in
my Father and ye in me, and I in you.’
We understand how, just as Christ is in God, and God in Christ, one
together not only in will and in love, but in identity of nature and life,
because they exist in each other, so we are in Christ and Christ in us, in union
not only of will and love, but of life and nature too.
It was after Jesus had spoken
of our thus through the Holy Spirit knowing that He is in the Father, and even
so we in Him and He in us, that He said, ‘Abide in me, and I in you. Accept, consent to receive that Divine
life of union with myself, in virtue of which, as you abide in me, I also abide
in you, even as I abide in the Father.
So that your life is mine and mine is yours.’ This is the true abiding, the occupying
of the position in which Christ can come and abide; so abiding in Him that the
soul has come away from self to find that He has taken the place and become our
life. It is the becoming as little
children who have no care, and find their happiness in trusting and obeying the
love that has done all for them.
To those who thus abide, the
promise comes as their rightful heritage:
Ask whatsoever ye will. It
cannot be otherwise. Christ has got
full possession of Them. Christ
dwells in their love, their will, their life. Not only has their will been given up;
Christ has entered it, and dwells and breathes in it by His Spirit. He whom the Father always hears, prays
in them; they pray in Him: what
they ask shall be done unto them.
Beloved fellow-believer! let us confess that it is because we do
not abide in Christ as He would have us, that the Church is so impotent in
presence of the infidelity and worldliness and heathendom, in the midst of which
the Lord is able to make her more than conqueror. Let us believe that He means what He
promises, and accept the condemnation the confession
implies.
But let us not be
discouraged. The abiding of the
branch in the Vine is a life of never-ceasing growth. The abiding, as the Master meant it, is
within our reach, for He lives to give it us. Let us but be ready to count all things
loss, and to say, ‘Not as though I had already attained; I follow after, if that
I may apprehend that for which I also am apprehended of Christ Jesus.’ Let us not be so much occupied with the
abiding, as with Him to whom the abiding links us, and His fulness. Let it be Him, the whole Christ,
in His obedience and humiliation, in His exaltation and power, in whom our soul
moves and acts; He Himself will fulfil His promise in us.
And then as we abide, and
grow evermore into the full abiding, let us exercise our right, the will to
enter into all God’s will. Obeying
what that will commands, let us claim what it promises. Let us yield to the teaching of the Holy
Spirit, to show each of us, according to his growth and measure, what the will
of God is which we may claim in prayer.
And let us rest content with nothing less than the personal experience of
what Jesus gave when He said, ‘If ye abide in me, ask whatsoever ye will, it
shall be done unto you.’
‘LORD, TEACH US TO
PRAY!’
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Beloved Lord! do teach me to take this promise anew in
all its simplicity, and to be sure that the only measure of Thy holy giving is
our holy willing. Lord! Let each word of this Thy promise be
anew made quick and powerful in my soul.
Thou sayest: Abide in me! O my Master, my Life, my All, I do abide in Thee. Give Thou me to grow up into all Thy fulness. It is not the effort of faith, seeking to cling to Thee, nor even the rest of faith, trusting Thee to keep me; it is not the obedience of the will, nor the keeping the commandments; but it is Thyself living in me and in the