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Lord! Teach Us To Pray
The Only Teacher
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 11:1
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.
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.
In Spirit And Truth
The True Worshipers
The 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.
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 practicing worship in spirit and truth.
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.
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. To have Christ the Son, and the Spirit of the Son, dwelling within us, and revealing the Father, this makes us true, spiritual worshippers.
Pray To Thy Father, Which Is In Secret
Alone With God
The first thing the Lord teaches His disciples is that they must have a secret place for prayer. Everyone must have some solitary spot where he can be alone with his God.
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 by Christ into the secret of God’s presence, the light of the Father’s love will rise upon him.
After This Manner Pray
The Model Prayer
“Our Father which art in heaven!”
To appreciate this word of adoration, we 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 center of the wonderful revelation the Son came to make of His Father as our Father too.
It is in the personal relation to the living God, and the personal conscious fellowship of love with Himself, that prayer begins.
“Hallowed be Thy name.”
In true worship, the Father must be first, must be all. The sooner we learn to forget ourselves in the desire that HE may be glorified, the richer will the blessing be that prayer will bring to ourselves. No one ever loses by what he or she sacrifices for the Father.
“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.
“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.
“Give us this day our 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?
“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 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.
Ask, And It Shall Be Given You
The Certainty Of The Answer To Prayer
Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss. – James 4:3
Here Jesus wants to teach us what in all Scripture is considered the chief thing in prayer: the assurance that prayer will be heard and answered.
In the three words the Lord uses, ask, seek, knock, a difference in meaning has been sought. If such was indeed His purpose, then:
- ASK refers to the gifts we pray for. But we may ask and receive the gift without the Giver.
- SEEK is the word Scripture uses of God Himself; Christ assures us that we can find Him. 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.
“Ask, and it shall be given you.”
Christ has no mightier stimulus to persevering prayer in His school than this.
Our Teacher waits to imprint this upon our minds: prayer and its answer, the child asking and the father giving, belong to each other.
How Much More?
The Infinite Fatherliness Of God
‘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!’ – Matthew 7:9-11
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.
We must learn to say well, “Abba, Father!” or “Our Father which art in heaven.” He that can say this, has the key to all prayer.
How Much More The Holy Spirit
The All-Comprehensive Gift
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.
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.
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.
Because Of His Importunity
The Boldness Of God’s Friends
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. 1 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 11.5-8
Jesus gave His first teaching to His disciples 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.
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 and pleasing to God.
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 especially 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.
The one thing by which man can honor 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 our friendship with the needy is so real, that we will take time and sacrifice our rest, will go even at midnight and not cease until we have obtained for them what we need. There it is seen whether my friendship with God is so clear, that we can depend on Him not to turn us away and therefore pray on until He gives.
Pray The Lord Of The Harvest
Prayer Provides Labourers
“Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is ‘plenteous, but the laborers are few. Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth laborers into his harvest” – Matthew 9:37-38
The 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 laborers.
Jesus would have his disciples 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 laborers for the work.
How little Christians really feel and mourn the need of laborers in the fields of the world so white to the harvest. And how little they believe that our labor-supply depends on prayer, that prayer will really provide “as many as he needeth.”
Why is it that we do not obey the injunction of the Master more heartily, and cry more earnestly for laborers? 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 neighbors 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 labor, 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 laborers.
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. The other blessing to be asked will not be less. Every believer is a laborer; 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.
What Wilt Thou?
Prayer Must Be Definite
“And Jesus answered and said unto him, What would thou that I should do unto thee?” – Mark 10:51 & Luke 18:41
The 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 to him. Before He does it, He asks him: “What wilt thou that I should do unto thee?”
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.
And yet how much of our prayer is vague and pointless.
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.
Believe That Ye Have Received
The Faith That Takes
“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 Savior 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.
Have Faith In God
The Secret Of Believing Prayer
Jesus, before 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.
Murray said, “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.”
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.
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.
Prayer And Fasting
The Cure Of Unbelief
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.
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 the 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.
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 a 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.
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 are, 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.
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.
When Ye Stand Praying, Forgive
Prayer And Love
Love to God and love to our neighbor 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.
In the Sermon on the Mount, when speaking of the sixth commandment, Jesus 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.”
“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.
If Two Agree
The Power Of United Prayer
One 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 a need, not only of secret solitary but also of public united prayer.
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.
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.
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 thought of Thy presence and the Father’s favor draw us all nearer to each other.
Speedily, Though Bearing Long
The Power Of Persevering Prayer
“And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint; saying there was in a city a judge, which feared not God neither regarded man: And there was a widow in that city; and she came unto him, saying, Avenge me of mine adversary. And he would not for a while but afterward he said within himself, Though I fear not God, nor regard man; Yet because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me. And the Lord said, Hear what the unjust judge saith. And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them? I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of may cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” – Luke 18:1-8
Of all the mysteries of the prayer world, the need of persevering prayer is one of the greatest.
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.”
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.
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.
I Know That Thou Hearest Me Always
Prayer In Harmony With The Being Of God
“Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. And I knew that thou hearest me always” – John 11:41-42
“Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I shall give thee” – Psalm 2:7-8
In 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.
“God hears prayer.” This simplest view of prayer is taken throughout Scripture.
“Ask and it shall be given,” Jesus says.
Whose Is This Image?
Prayer In Harmony With The Destiny Of Man
“And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription?” – Matthew 22:20
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.
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.
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 God-likeness, 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.”
In The Rent Veil, Dr. H. Bonar wrote, “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 scepter, human heads must wear the crown.”
I Go Unto The Father
Power For Praying And Working
As the Savior 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.
Going to the Father would bring the double blessing: they would ask and receive all in His Name, and as a consequence, would do the greater works.
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.
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 14:13,14; 15:7; 16:23,24) 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.”
Prayer not only teaches and strengthens to work: work teaches and strengthens to pray.
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.
That The Father May Be Glorified
The Chief End Of Prayer
That 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.
The separation between the spirit of daily life and the spirit of the hour of prayer was too wide.
“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.
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.
Blessed Lord Jesus! I come again to Thee. Every lesson Thou givest me convinces me more deeply how little I know to pray right. 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.
If Ye Abide In Me
The All-inclusive Condition
In all God’s intercourse with us, the promise and its conditions are inseparable. If we fulfill the conditions, He fulfills 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 one simple and natural condition, if ye abide in me.
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 to us.
As we abide, and grow ever more into the full abiding, let us exercise our right, the will to enter into all God’s will. Obeying what that will command, 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.”
The more carefully we gather together all He spoke on prayer, the clearer it becomes that He wished us to think of prayer simply as the means to an end and that the answer was to be the proof that we and our prayer are acceptable to the Father in heaven.
A life marked by daily answer to prayer is the proof of our spiritual maturity; that we have indeed attained to the true abiding in Christ; that our will is truly at one with God’s will; that our faith has grown strong to see and take what God has prepared for us; that the Name of Christ and His nature have taken full possession of us; and that we have been found fit to take a place among those whom God admits to His counsels, and according to whose prayer He rules the world.
My Words In You
The Word And Prayer
The vital connection between the word and prayer is one of the simplest and earliest lessons of the Christian life. As that newly-converted heathen put it: I pray—I speak to my father; I read—my Father speaks to me. Before prayer, it is God’s word that prepares me for it by revealing what the Father has bid me ask.
“If my words abide in you;” the condition is simple and clear. In His words, His will is revealed.
Bear Fruit, That The Father May Give What Ye Ask
Obedience: The Path To Power In Prayer
“The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much” – James 5:16
This is nothing but the fuller expression of what He had spoken in the words, “If ye abide in me.” He had spoken of the object of this abiding as the bearing “fruit,” “more fruit,” “much fruit;” in this was God to be glorified, and the mark of discipleship seen. No wonder that He now adds, that where the reality of the abiding is seen in fruit abounding and abiding, this would be the qualification for praying so as to obtain what we ask. Entire consecration to the fulfillment of our calling is the condition of effectual prayer, is the key to the unlimited blessings of Christ’s wonderful prayer-promises.
Take the words of St. John (1 John 3:22): “Let us love in deed and truth; hereby shall we assure our heart before Him. And whatsoever we ask, we receive of Him, because we keep His commandments, and do the things that are pleasing in His sight.’’ Or take the oft-quoted words of James: “The fervent effectual prayer of a righteous man availeth much.”
In Psalm 18, David says: “The Lord rewarded me according to my righteousness; according to the cleanness of my hands hath He recompensed me… I was upright before Him, and I kept myself from mine iniquity: therefore hath the Lord recompensed me according to my righteousness.” (Psalm 18:20-26; 7:3-5; 15:1-2; 18:3,6; 26:1-6; 99:121,153) If we carefully consider such utterances in the light of the New Testament, we shall find them in perfect harmony with the explicit teaching of the Saviour’s parting words: “If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love;” “Ye are my friends if ye do what I command you.”
There is another side which God’s word puts very strongly, that of obedience as the only path to blessing. What we need is to realize that in our relationship to the Infinite Being whom we call God who has created and redeemed us, the first sentiment that ought to animate us is that of subjection: the surrender to His supremacy, His glory, His will, His pleasure, ought to be the first and uppermost thought of our life.
He speaks of the indwelling of the Three-One God. In verse 15 we have it: “If ye love me, keep my commandments, and the Spirit will be given you of the Father.” Then verse 21: “He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me.”
The indwelling of the Three-One God is the heritage of them that obey. Obedience and faith are but two aspects of one act—surrender to God and His will. As faith strengthens for obedience, it is in turn strengthened by it: faith is made perfect by works.
In My Name
The All-prevailing Plea
Hitherto the disciples had not asked in the Name of Christ, nor had He Himself ever used the expression.
What is it when Jesus gives us power over His Name, the free use of it, with the assurance that whatever we ask in it will be given to us?
A merchant leaving his home and business gives his chief clerk a general power, by which he can draw thousands of pounds in the merchant’s name. The clerk does this, not for himself, but only in the interests of the business. It is because the merchant knows and trusts him as wholly devoted to his interests and business, that he dares put his name and property at his command. When the Lord Jesus went to heaven, He left His work, the management of His kingdom on earth, in the hands of His servants.
The use of the Name always supposes the surrender of our interests to Him whom we represent. Or such a use of the name may be in virtue of a life union. In the case of the merchant and his clerk, the union is temporary. But we know how oneness of life on earth gives oneness of name: a child has the father’s name because he has his life.
So it is with Jesus and the believer: we are one, we have one life, one Spirit with Him; for this reason, we may come in His Name. Our power in using that Name, whether with God, or men, or devils depends on the measure of our spiritual life-union.
Or the union that empowers to the use of the Name may be the union of love. When a bride whose life has been one of poverty, becomes united to the bridegroom, she gives up her own name, to be called by his, and has now the full right to use it.
The bearing of the name of another supposes my having given up my own, and with it my own independent life; but then, as surely, my possession of all there is in the name I have taken instead of my own.
Disciples of Jesus! Let the lessons of this day enter deep into your hearts. The Master says: Only pray in my Name; whatsoever ye ask will be given.
In The Lord’s Prayer, Saphiv wrote, “In all prayer, the one essential condition is that we are able to offer it in the name of Jesus, as according to His desire for us, according to the Father’s will, according to the Spirit’s teaching. And thus praying in Christ’s name is impossible without self-examination, without reflection, without self-denial; in short, without the aid of the Spirit.”
At That Day
The Holy Spirit And Prayer
“At that day ye shall ask in my name: and I say not unto you, that I will pray the Father for you: For the Father himself loveth you” – John 16:26-27
“Praying in the Holy Ghost, keep yourselves in the love of God” – Jude 20-21
The words of John (1 John 2:12-14) to little children, to young men, and to fathers suggest the thought that there often are in the Christian life three great stages of experience. The first, that of the new-born child, with the assurance and the joy of forgiveness. The second, the transition stage of struggle and growth in knowledge and strength: young men growing strong, God’s word doing its work in them and giving them victory over the Evil One. And then the final stage of maturity and ripeness: the Fathers, who have entered deeply into the knowledge and fellowship of the Eternal One.
In Christ’s teaching on prayer there appear to be three stages in the prayer-life, somewhat analogous. In the Sermon on the Mount, we have the initial stage: His teaching is all comprised in one word, Father. Pray to your Father, your Father sees, hears, knows, and will reward: how much more than any earthly father! Only be childlike and trustful. Then comes later on something like the transition stage of conflict and conquest, in words like these: “This sort goeth not out but by fasting and prayer;” “Shall not God avenge His own elect who cry day and night unto Him?” And then we have in the parting words, a higher stage. The children have become men: they are now the Master’s friends, from whom He has no secrets, to whom He says, “All things that I heard from my Father I made known unto you;” and to whom, in the oft-repeated “whatsoever ye will,” He hands over the keys of the kingdom. Now the time has come for the power of prayer in His Name to be proved.
I Have Prayed For Thee
Christ The Intercessor
“But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not” – Luke 22:32
“I say not unto you, that I will pray the Father for you” – John 16:26
“He ever liveth to make intercession for them” – Hebrews 7:25
How clearly this comes out in the last night of His life. In His high-priestly prayer (John 17), Jesus shows us how and what He has to pray to the Father, and will pray when once ascended to heaven. And yet He had in His parting address so repeatedly also connected His going to the Father with their new life of prayer. The two would be ultimately connected: His entrance on the work of His eternal intercession would be the commencement and the power of their new prayer-life in His Name. It is the sight of Jesus in His intercession that gives us the power to pray in His Name: all right and power of prayer is Christ’s; He makes us share in His intercession.
Our faith in the intercession of Jesus must not only be that He prays in our stead when we do not or cannot pray but that, as the Author of our life and our faith, He draws us on to pray in unison with Himself. Our prayer must be a work of faith in this sense too, that as we know that Jesus communicates His whole life in us, He also out of that prayerfulness which is His alone breathes into us our praying.
Father, I Will
Christ The High Priest
“Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am” – John 17:24
In the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, in union with Him the heavenly Vine, in their going forth to witness and to suffer for Him, they were to find their calling and their blessedness. In between His setting forth of their future new life, the Lord had repeatedly given the most unlimited promises as to the power their prayers might have. And now in closing, He Himself proceeds to pray.
This prayer is ordinarily divided into three parts. Our Lord first prays for Himself (John 17:1-5), then for His disciples (6-19), and last for all the believing people through all ages (20-26). The follower of Jesus, who gives himself to the work of intercession, and would fain try how much of blessing he can pray down upon his circle in the Name of Jesus, will in all humility let himself be led by the Spirit to study this wonderful prayer as one of the most important lessons of the school of prayer.
To pray in the Name of Jesus is to pray in unity, in sympathy with Him.
Say that you too have given yourself to finish the work the Father has given you to do and to live alone for His glory. And ask confidently that the Son may be glorified in you.
Our Lord next prays for the circle of His disciples. He speaks of them as those whom the Father has given Him. Their chief mark is that they have received Christ’s word. He says of them that He now sends them into the world in His place, just as the Father had sent Himself. And He asks two things for them: that the Father keep them from the evil one, and sanctify them through His Word because He sanctifies Himself for them.
Just like the Lord, each believing intercessor has his own immediate circle for whom he first prays. Parents have their children, teachers their pupils, pastors their flocks, all workers their special charge, all believers those whose care lies upon their hearts.
The disciple of Jesus, who has first in his own circle proved the power of prayer, cannot confine himself within its limits: he prays for the Church universal and its different branches. He prays especially for the unity of the Spirit and of love.
Father! Not What I Will
Christ The Sacrifice
“And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless, not what I will, but what thou wilt” – Mark 14:36
It was by Christ’s submittal in Gethsemane to have not His will done, that He secured for His people the right to say to them, “Ask whatsoever ye will.”
Let’s look at them again, the deep mysteries that Gethsemane offers:
- The Father offers His Well-beloved the cup, the cup of wrath.
- The Son, always so obedient, shrinks back, and implores that He may not have to drink it.
- The Father does not grant the Son His request, but still gives the cup.
- The Son yields His will, is content that His will be not done and goes out to Calvary to drink the cup.
O Gethsemane! in thee I see how my Lord could give me such unlimited assurance of an answer to my prayers. As my surety, He won it for me, by His consent to have His petition unanswered.
If We Ask According To His Will
Our Boldness In Prayer
“And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: And if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him” – 1 John 5:14-15
One of the greatest hindrances to believing prayer is with many undoubtedly this: they know not if what they ask is according to the will of God. As long as they are in doubt on this point, they cannot have the boldness to ask, in the assurance that they certainly shall receive.
This is the very opposite of what John aimed at in writing. He wished to rouse us to boldness, to confidence, to full assurance of faith in prayer. He says, “This is the boldness which we have toward Him,” that we can say: Father! Thou knowest and I know that I ask according to Thy will: I know Thou hearest me. “This is the boldness, that if we ask anything according to His will, He heareth us.”
John supposes that when we pray, we first find out if our prayers are according to the will of God.
Would that Christians might see what incalculable harm they do themselves by the thought that because possibly their prayer is not according to God’s will, they must be content without an answer. God’s word tells us that the great reason of unanswered prayer is that we do not pray aright: “Ye ask and receive not because ye ask amiss.”
There is often great confusion as to the will of God. People think that what God wills must inevitably take place. This is by no means the case. God wills a great deal of blessing to His people, which never comes to them. He wills it most earnestly, but they do not will it, and it cannot come to them. This is the great mystery of man’s creation with a free will, and also of the renewal of his will in redemption, that God has made the execution of His will, in many things, dependent on the will of man.
Prayer is the power by which that comes to pass which otherwise would not take place. And faith, the power by which it is decided how much of God’s will shall be done in us.
Some are afraid that this is putting too much power into the hands of man. But all power is put into the hands of man in Christ Jesus.
A Holy Priesthood
The Ministry Of Intercession
“A holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ” – 1 Peter 2:5
“Ye shall be named the Priests of the Lord.” – Isaiah 61:6
As every son of Aaron, so every member of Jesus’ body has a right to the priesthood.
Think of what constitutes priesthood. There is, first, the work of the priesthood. This has two sides, one Godward, the other manward. “Every priest is ordained for men in things pertaining to God”; or, as it is said by Moses (Deuteronomy 10:8; 21:5; 33:10; Malachi 2:6): “The Lord separated the tribe of Levi, to stand before the Lord to minister unto Him, and to bless His Name.” On the one hand, the priest had the power to draw nigh to God, to dwell with Him in His house, and to present before Him the blood of the sacrifice or the burning incense. This work he did not do, however, on his own behalf, but for the sake of the people whose representative he was. This is the other side of his work. He received from the people their sacrifices, presented them before God, and then came out to bless in His Name, to give the assurance of His favor and to teach them His law. A priest is thus a man who does not at all live for himself. He lives with God and for God.
Our priestly power with God depends on our personal life and walk. We must be of them of whose walk on earth Jesus says, “They have not defiled their garments.”
Pray Without Ceasing
A Life Of Prayer
The words in the Epistles, which speak of continuing instant in prayer, continuing in prayer and watching in the same, of praying always in the Spirit, appear more to refer to the whole life being one of prayer.
He who seeks to pray without ceasing because he wants to be very pious and good, will never attain to it. It is the forgetting of self and yielding ourselves to live for God and His honor that enlarges the heart, that teaches us to regard everything in the light of God and His will, and that instinctively recognizes in everything around us the need of God’s help and blessing, an opportunity for His being glorified.
He understands how real Paul’s exhortation was, “praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit for all the saints and for me,” and “continue in prayer, withal praying also for us.” To forget oneself, to live for God and His kingdom among men is the way to learn to pray without ceasing. This life devoted to God must be accompanied by the deep confidence that our prayer is effectual.
Praying without ceasing is the earthly manifestation of heaven come down to us, the foretaste of the life where they rest not day or night in the song of worship and adoration.
Holy Trinity Spirit of God! Perfect Thy work in me; bring me into perfect union with Christ my Intercessor. Let Thine unceasing indwelling make my life one of unceasing intercession. And let so my life become one that is unceasing to the glory of the Father and to the blessing of those around me. Amen.