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With Christ in the School of Prayer

Murray, Andrew

Lord, teach us to pray.

PREFACE.

Of 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.

FIRST LESSON.

‘Lord, teach us to pray;’

Or, 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 xi.
1.

THE 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.’

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.

SECOND LESSON.

‘In spirit and truth.’

Or, The True Worshippers.

‘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.

THESE 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.’

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.

THIRD LESSON.

‘Pray to thy Father, which is in secret;’

Or, Alone with God.

‘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.

AFTER 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.’

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.

FOURTH LESSON

‘After this manner pray;’

Or, The Model Prayer.

‘After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in
heaven.’—Matt. vi. 9.

EVERY 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.’

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.

FIFTH LESSON.

‘Ask, and it shall be given you; ‘

Or, The Certainty of the Answer to Prayer.

‘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.

OUR 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.’

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.

SIXTH LESSON.

‘How much more?’

Or, 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?’—Matt. vii. 9-11

IN 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.’

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.

SEVENTH LESSON.

‘How much more the Holy Spirit;

Or, The All-Comprehensive Gift.

‘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.

IN 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.’

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.

EIGHTH LESSON.

‘Because of his importunity;’

Or, 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.
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.

THE 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.’

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.

NINTH LESSON.

‘Pray the Lord of the harvest;’

Or, Prayer provides Labourers.

‘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.

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 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.’

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.

TENTH LESSON.

‘What wilt thou?’

Or, Prayer must be Definite.

‘And Jesus answered him, and said, What wilt thou that I should do unto
thee?’—Mark x. 51; Luke xviii. 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 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.’

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.

ELEVENTH LESSON.

‘Believe that ye have received;’

Or, The Faith that Takes.

‘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

WHAT 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.’

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.

TWELFTH LESSON.

‘Have faith in God;’

Or, The Secret of believing Prayer.

‘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.

THE 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.’

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.

THIRTEENTH LESSON.

‘Prayer and fasting;’

Or, The Cure of Unbelief.

‘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.

WHEN 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.’

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.’

FOURTEENTH LESSON.

‘When ye stand praying, forgive;’

Or, Prayer and Love.

‘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.

THESE 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.’

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.

FIFTEENTH LESSON.

‘If two agree;’

Or, The Power of United Prayer

‘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.

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 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’

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.

SIXTEENTH LESSON.

‘Speedily, though bearing long;’

Or, The Power of Persevering Prayer.

‘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.

OF 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.’

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.

SEVENTEENTH LESSON.

‘I know that Thou hearest me always;’

Or Prayer in harmony with the being of God.

‘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.

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. 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.’

——0——

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?

EIGHTEENTH LESSON

‘Whose is this image?’

Or, Prayer in Harmony with the Destiny of Man.

‘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.

‘WHOSE 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.’

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.

NINTEENTH LESSON.

‘I go unto the Father!’

Or, Power for Praying and Working.

‘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.

AS 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.’

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.

TWENTIETH LESSON.

‘That the Father may be glorified;’

Or, The Chief End of Prayer.

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.

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.

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.’

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.

TWENTY-FIRST LESSON.

‘If ye abide in me;’

Or The All-Inclusive Condition.

‘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.

IN 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!’

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 Father, that alone
can satisfy me. It is Thy self, my Lord, no longer before me and above me,
but one with me, and abiding in me; it is this I need, it is this I seek.
It is this I trust Thee for.

Thou sayest: Ask whatsoever ye will! Lord! I know that the life of full,
deep abiding will so renew and sanctify and strengthen the will that I shall
have the light and the liberty to ask great things. Lord! let my will,
dead in Thy death, living in Thy life, be bold and large in its petitions.

Thou sayest: It shall be done. O Thou who art the Amen, the Faithful and
True Witness, give me in Thyself the joyous confidence that Thou wilt make
this word yet more wonderfully true to me than ever, because it hath not
entered into the heart of man to conceive what God hath prepared for them
that love Him. Amen.

NOTE

On a thoughtful comparison of what we mostly find in books or sermons on
prayer, and the teaching of the Master, we shall find one great difference:
the importance assigned to the answer to prayer is by no means the same. In
the former we find a great deal on the blessing of prayer as a spiritual
exercise even if there be no answer, and on the reasons why we should be
content without it. God’s fellowship ought to be more to us than the gift
we ask; God’s wisdom only knows what is best; God may bestow something
better than what He withholds. Though this teaching looks very high and
spiritual, it is remarkable that we find nothing of it with our Lord. 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. It is not that Christ would have us
count the gifts of higher value than the fellowship and favour of the
Father. By no means. But the Father means the answer to be the token of
His favour and of the reality of our fellowship with Him. ‘To-day thy
servant knoweth that I have found grace in thy sight, my lord, O king, in
that the king hath fulfilled the request of his servant.’

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. These are they in whom something of man’s
original dignity hath been restored, in whom, as they abide in Christ, His
power as the all-prevailing Intercessor can manifest itself, in whom the
glory of His Name is shown forth. Prayer is very blessed; the answer is
more blessed still, as the response from the Father that our prayer, our
faith, our will are indeed as He would wish them to be.

I make these remarks with the one desire of leading my readers themselves to
put together all that Christ has said on prayer, and to yield themselves to
the full impression of the truth that when prayer is what it should be, or
rather when we are what we should be, abiding in Christ, the answer must be
expected. It will bring us out from those refuges where we have comforted
ourselves with unanswered prayer. It will discover to us the place of power
to which Christ has appointed His Church, and which it so little occupies.
It will reveal the terrible feebleness of our spiritual life as the cause of
our not knowing to pray boldly in Christ’s Name. It will urge us mightily
to rise to a life in the full union with Christ, and in the fulness of the
Spirit, as the secret of effectual prayer. And it will so lead us on to
realize our destiny: ‘At that day: Verily, verily, I say unto you, If ye
shall ask anything of the Father, He will give it you in my Name: ask, and
ye shall receive, that your joy may be fulfilled.’ Prayer that is really,
spiritually, in union with Jesus, is always answered.

TWENTY-SECOND LESSON.

‘My words in you.’

Or, The Word and Prayer.

‘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.

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. In prayer, it is God’s word strengthens me by giving
my faith its warrant and its plea. And after prayer, it is God’s word that
brings me the answer when I have prayed, for in it the Spirit gives me to
hear the Father’s voice. Prayer is not monologue but dialogue; God’s voice
in response to mine in its most essential part. Listening to God’s voice is
the secret of the assurance that He will listen to mine. ‘Incline thine
ear, and hear;’ ‘Give ear to me;’ Hearken to my voice;’ are words which God
speaks to man as well as man to God. His hearkening will depend on ours;
the entrance His words find with me, will be the measure of the power of my
words with Him. What God’s words are to me, is the test of what He Himself
is to me, and so of the uprightness of my desire after Him in prayer.

It is this connection between His word and our prayer that Jesus points to
when He says, ‘If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatsoever
ye will, and it shall be done unto you.’ The deep importance of this truth
becomes clear if we notice the other expression of which this one has taken
the place. More than once Jesus had said, “Abide in me and I in you.’ His
abiding in us was the complement and the crown of our abiding in Him. But
here, instead of ‘Ye in me and I in you,’ He says, ‘Ye in me and my words in
you.’ His words abiding are the equivalent of Himself abiding.

What a view is here opened up to us of the place the words of God in Christ
are to have in our spiritual life, and especially in our prayer. In a
man’s words he reveals himself. In his promises he gives himself away, he
binds himself to the one who receives his promise. In his commands he sets
forth his will, seeks to make himself master of him whose obedience he
claims, to guide and use him as if he were part of himself. It is through
our words that spirit holds fellowship with spirit, that the spirit of one
man passes over and transfers itself into another. It is through the words
of a man, heard and accepted, and held fast and obeyed, that he can impart
himself to another. But all this in a very relative and limited sense.

But when God, the infinite Being, in whom everything is life and power,
spirit and truth, in the very deepest meaning of the words,—when God speaks
forth Himself in His words, He does indeed give HIMSELF, His Love and His
Life, His Will and His Power, to those who receive these words, in a reality
passing comprehension. In every promise He puts Himself in our power to lay
hold of and possess; in every command He puts Himself in our power for us to
share with Him His Will, His Holiness, His Perfection. In God’s Word God
gives us HIMSELF; His Word is nothing less than the Eternal Son, Christ
Jesus. And so all Christ’s words are God’s words, full of a Divine
quickening life and power. ‘The words that I speak unto you, they are
spirit and they are life.’

Those who have made the deaf and dumb their study, tell us how much the
power of speaking depends on that of hearing, and how the loss of hearing in
children is followed by that of speaking too. This is true in a wider
sense: as we hear, so we speak. This is true in the highest sense of our
intercourse with God. To offer a prayer—to give utterance to certain wishes
and to appeal to certain promises—is an easy thing, and can be learned of
man by human wisdom. But to pray in the Spirit, to speak words that reach
and touch God, that affect and influence the powers of the unseen
world,—such praying, such speaking, depends entirely upon our hearing God’s
voice. Just as far as we listen to the voice and language that God speaks,
and in the words of God receive His thoughts, His mind, His life, into our
heart, we shall learn to speak in the voice and the language that God
hears. It is the ear of the learner, wakened morning by morning, that
prepares for the tongue of the learned, to speak to God as well as men, as
should be (Isa. l. 4).

This hearing the voice of God is something more than the thoughtful study of
the Word. There may be a study and knowledge of the Word, in which there is
but little real fellowship with the living God. But there is also a reading
of the Word, in the very presence of the Father, and under the leading of
the Spirit, in which the Word comes to us in living power from God Himself;
it is to us the very voice of the Father, a real personal fellowship with
Himself. It is the living voice of God that enters the heart, that brings
blessing and strength, and awakens the response of a living faith that
reaches the heart of God again.

It is on this hearing the voice, that the power both to obey and believe
depends. The chief thing is, not to know what God has said we must do, but
that God Himself says it to us. It is not the law, and not the book, not
the knowledge of what is right, that works obedience, but the personal
influence of God and His living fellowship. And even so it is not the
knowledge of what God has promised, but the presence of God Himself as the
Promiser, that awakens faith and trust in prayer. It is only in the full
presence of God that disobedience and unbelief become impossible.

‘If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatsoever ye will, it
shall be done unto you.’ We see what this means. In the words the Saviour
gives Himself. We must have the words in us, taken up into our will and
life, reproduced in our disposition and conduct. We must have them abiding
in us: our whole life one continued exposition of the words that are
within, and filling us; the words revealing Christ within, and our life
revealing Him without. It is as the words of Christ enter our very heart,
become our life and influence it, that our words will enter His heart and
influence Him. My prayer will depend on my life; what God’s words are to me
and in me, my words will be to God and in God. If I do what God says, God
will do what I say.

How well the Old Testament saints understood this connection between God’s
words and ours, and how really prayer with them was the loving response to
what they had heard God speak! If the word were a promise, they counted on
God to do as He had spoken. ‘Do as Thou hast said;’ ‘For Thou, Lord, hast
spoken it;’ ‘According to Thy promise;’ ‘According to Thy word;’ in such
expressions they showed that what God spake in promise was the root and the
life of what they spake in prayer. If the word was a command, they simply
did as the Lord had spoken: ‘So Abram departed as the Lord had spoken.’
Their life was fellowship with God, the interchange of word and thought.
What God spoke they heard and did; what they spoke God heard and did. In
each word He speaks to us, the whole Christ gives Himself to fulfil it for
us. For each word He asks no less that we give the whole man to keep that
word, and to receive its fulfilment.

‘If my words abide in you;’ the condition is simple and clear. In His words
His will is revealed. As the words abide in me, His will rules me; my will
becomes the empty vessel which His will fills, the willing instrument which
His will wields; He fills my inner being. In the exercise of obedience and
faith my will becomes ever stronger, and is brought into deeper inner
harmony with Him. He can fully trust it to will nothing but what He wills;
He is not afraid to give the promise, ‘If my words abide in you, ask
whatsoever ye will, it shall be done unto you.’ To all who believe it, and
act upon it, He will make it literally true.

Disciples of Christ! is it not becoming more and more clear to us that
while we have been excusing our unanswered prayers, our impotence in prayer,
with a fancied submission to God’s wisdom and will, the real reason has been
that our own feeble life has been the cause of our feeble prayers. Nothing
can make strong men but the word coming to us from God’s mouth: by that we
must live. It is the word of Christ, loved, lived in, abiding in us,
becoming through obedience and action part of our being, that makes us one
with Christ, that fits us spiritually for touching, for taking hold of God.
All that is of the world passeth away; he that doeth the will of God abideth
for ever. O let us yield heart and life to the words of Christ, the words
in which He ever gives HIMSELF, the personal living Saviour, and His promise
will be our rich experience: ‘If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you,
ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto you.’

‘LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY!’

Blessed Lord! Thy lesson this day has again discovered to me my folly. I
see how it is that my prayer has not been more believing and prevailing. I
was more occupied with my speaking to Thee than Thy speaking to me. I did
not understand that the secret of faith is this: there can be only so much
faith as there is of the Living Word dwelling in the soul.

And Thy word had taught me so clearly: Let every man be swift to hear, slow
to speak; let not thine heart be hasty to utter anything before God. Lord,
teach me that it is only with Thy word taken up into my life that my words
can be taken into Thy heart; that Thy word, if it be a living power within
me, will be a living power with Thee; what Thy mouth hath spoken Thy hand
will perform.

Lord! deliver me from the uncircumcised ear. Give me the opened ear of
the learner, wakened morning by morning to hear the Father’s voice. Even as
Thou didst only speak what Thou didst hear, may my speaking be the echo of
Thy speaking to me. ‘When Moses went into the tabernacle to speak with Him,
he heard the voice of One speaking unto him from off the mercy-seat.’ Lord,
may it be so with me too. Let a life and character bearing the one mark,
that Thy words abide and are seen in it, be the preparation for the full
blessing: ‘Ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto you.’ Amen.

TWENTY-THIRD LESSON

‘Bear fruit, that the Father may give what ye ask;’

Or, Obedience the Path to Power in Prayer.

‘Ye did not choose me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that ye should go
and bear fruit, and that your fruit should abide: that whatsoever ye shall
ask the Father in my name, He may give it you.’—John xv. 16.

‘The fervent effectual prayer of a righteous man availeth much.’—James. v.
16.

THE promise of the Father’s giving whatsoever we ask is here once again
renewed, in such a connection as to show us to whom it is that such
wonderful influence in the council chamber of the Most High is to be
granted. ‘I chose you,’ the Master says, ‘and appointed you that ye should
go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should abide;’ and then He adds, to
the end ‘that whatsoever ye,’ the fruit-bearing ones, ‘shall ask of the
Father in my name, He may give it you.’ 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 fulfilment
of our calling is the condition of effectual prayer, is the key to the
unlimited blessings of Christ’s wonderful prayer-promises.

There are Christians who fear that such a statement is at variance with the
doctrine of free grace. But surely not of free grace rightly understood,
nor with so many express statements of God’s blessed word. Take the words
of St. John (1 John iii. 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;’ that is, of a man of whom,
according to the definition of the Holy Spirit, it can be said, ‘He that
doeth righteousness, is righteous even as He is righteous.’ Mark the spirit
of so many of the Psalms, with their confident appeal to the integrity and
righteousness of the supplicant. In Ps. xviii, 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.’ (Ps. xviii. 20-26. See also Ps. vii. 3-5, xv. 1, 2,
xviii. 3, 6, xxvi. 1-6, cxix. 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.’ The word is indeed meant literally: ‘I appointed
you that ye should go and bear fruit, that,’ then, ‘whatsoever ye shall ask
of the Father in my name, He may give it you.’

Let us seek to enter into the spirit of what the Saviour here teaches us.
There is a danger in our evangelical religion of looking too much at what it
offers from one side, as a certain experience to be obtained in prayer and
faith. 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. The
question is not, how we are to obtain and enjoy His favour, for in this the
main thing may still be self. But what this Being in the very nature of
things rightfully claims, and is infinitely and unspeakably worthy of, is
that His glory and pleasure should be my one object. Surrender to His
perfect and blessed will, a life of service and obedience, is the beauty and
the charm of heaven. Service and obedience, these were the thoughts that
were uppermost in the mind of the Son, when He dwelt upon earth. Service
and obedience, these must become with us the chief objects of desire and
aim, more so than rest or light, or joy or strength: in them we shall find
the path to all the higher blessedness that awaits us.

Just note what a prominent place the Master gives it, not only in the 15^th
chapter, in connection with the abiding, but in the 14^th, where 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;’ and he shall have the special love of my Father
resting on him and the special manifestation of myself. And then again,
verse 23, one of the highest of all the exceeding great and precious
promises: ‘If a man love me he will keep my words, and the Father and I
will come and take up our abode with him.’ Could words put it more clearly
that obedience is the way to the indwelling of the Spirit, to His revealing
the Son within us, and to His again preparing us to be the abode, the home
of the Father? 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. It is to be feared
that often our efforts to believe have been unavailing because we have not
taken up the only position in which a large faith is legitimate or
possible,—that of entire surrender to the honour and the will of God. It is
the man who is entirely consecrated to God and His will who will find the
power come to claim everything that His God has promised to be for him.

The application of this in the school of prayer is very simple, but very
solemn. ‘I chose you,’ the Master says, ‘and appointed you that ye should
go and bear fruit,’ much fruit (verses 5, 8), ‘and that your fruit should
abide,’ that your life might be one of abiding fruit and abiding
fruitfulness, ‘that’ thus, as fruitful branches abiding in me, ‘whatsoever
ye shall ask of the Father in my name, He may give it you.’ O how often we
have sought to be able to pray the effectual prayer for much grace to bear
fruit, and have wondered that the answer came not. It was because we were
reversing the Master’s order. We wanted to have the comfort and the joy and
the strength first, that we might do the work easily and without any feeling
of difficulty or self-sacrifice. And He wanted us in faith, without asking
whether we felt weak or strong, whether the work was hard or easy, in the
obedience of faith to do what He said: the path of fruit-bearing would have
led us to the place and the power of prevailing prayer. Obedience is the
only path that leads to the glory of God. Not obedience instead of faith,
nor obedience to supply the shortcomings of faith; no, but faith’s obedience
gives access to all the blessings our God has for us. The baptism of the
Spirit (xiv. 16), the manifestation of the Son (xiv. 21), the indwelling of
the Father (xiv. 23), the abiding in Christ’s love (xv. 10), the privilege
of His holy friendship (xv. 14), and the power of all-prevailing prayer (xv.
16),—all wait for the obedient.

Let us take home the lessons. Now we know the great reason why we have not
had power in faith to pray prevailingly. Our life was not as it should have
been: simple downright obedience, abiding fruitfulness, was not its chief
mark. And with our whole heart we approve of the Divine appointment: men
to whom God is to give such influence in the rule of the world, as at their
request to do what otherwise would not have taken place, men whose will is
to guide the path in which God’s will is to work, must be men who have
themselves learned obedience, whose loyalty and submission to authority must
be above all suspicion. Our whole soul approves the law: obedience and
fruit-bearing, the path to prevailing prayer. And with shame we
acknowledge how little our lives have yet borne this stamp.

Let us yield ourselves to take up the appointment the Saviour gives us. Let
us study His relation to us as Master. Let us seek no more with each new
day to think in the first place of comfort, or joy, or blessing. Let the
first thought be: I belong to the Master. Every moment and every movement
I must act as His property, as a part of Himself, as one who only seeks to
know and do His will. A servant, a slave of Jesus Christ,—let this be the
spirit that animates me. If He says, ‘No longer do I call you servants, but
I have called you friends,’ let us accept the place of friends: ‘Ye are my
friends if ye do the things which I command you.’

The one thing He commands us as His branches is to bear fruit. Let us live
to bless others, to testify of the life and the love there is in Jesus. Let
us in faith and obedience give our whole life to that which Jesus chose us
for and appointed us to—fruit-bearing. As we think of His electing us to
this, and take up our appointment as coming from Him who always gives all He
demands, we shall grow strong in the confidence that a life of
fruit-bearing, abounding and abiding, is within our reach. And we shall
understand why this fruit-bearing alone can be the path to the place of all
prevailing prayer. It is the man who, in obedience to the Christ of God, is
proving that he is doing what his Lord wills, for whom the Father will do
whatsoever he will: ‘Whatsoever we ask we receive, because we keep His
commandments, and do the things that are pleasing in His sight.’

‘LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY.’

——0——

Blessed Master! teach me to apprehend fully what I only partly realize,
that it is only through the will of God, accepted and acted out in obedience
to His commands, that we obtain the power to grasp His will in His promises
and fully to appropriate them in our prayers. And teach me that it is in
the path of fruit-bearing that the deeper growth of the branch into the Vine
can be perfected, and we attain to the perfect oneness with Thyself in which
we ask whatsoever we will.

O Lord! Reveal to us, we pray Thee, how with all the hosts of heaven, and
with Thyself the Son on earth, and with all the men of faith who have
glorified Thee on earth, obedience to God is our highest privilege, because
it gives access to oneness with Himself in that which is His highest
glory—His all perfect will. And reveal to us, we pray Thee, how in keeping
Thy commandments and bearing fruit according to Thy will, our spiritual
nature will grow up to the full stature of the perfect man, with power to
ask and to receive whatsoever we will.

O Lord Jesus! Reveal Thyself to us, and the reality of Thy purpose and Thy
power to make these Thy wonderful promises the daily experience of all who
utterly yield themselves to Thee and Thy words. Amen.

TWENTY-FOURTH LESSON.

‘In my Name;’

Or, The All-prevailing Plea.

‘Whatsoever ye shall ask in my Name, that will I do. If ye shall ask me
anything in my Name, that will I do. That whatsoever ye shall ask the
Father in my Name, He may give it you. Verily, verily, I say unto you, If
ye shall ask anything of the Father, He will give it you in my Name.
Hitherto ye have asked nothing in my Name: ask, and ye shall receive. In
that day ye shall ask in my Name.’—John xiv. 13, 14, xv. 16, xvi. 23, 24,
26.

HITHERTO the disciples had not asked in the Name of Christ, nor had He
Himself ever used the expression. The nearest approach is, ‘met together in
my Name.’ Here in His parting words, He repeats the word unceasingly in
connection with those promises of unlimited meaning, ‘Whatsoever,’
‘Anything,’ ‘What ye will,’ to teach them and us that His Name is our only,
but also our all-sufficient plea. The power of prayer and the answer depend
on the right use of the Name.

What is a person’s name? That word or expression in which the person is
called up or represented to us. When I mention or hear a name, it calls up
before me the whole man, what I know of him, and also the impression he has
made on me. The name of a king includes his honour, his power, his
kingdom. His name is the symbol of his power. And so each name of God
embodies and represents some part of the glory of the Unseen One. And the
Name of Christ is the expression of all He has done and all He is and lives
to do as our Mediator.

And what is it to do a thing in the name of another? It is to come with the
power and authority of that other, as his representative and substitute. We
know how such a use of another’s name always supposes a community of
interest. No one would give another the free use of his name without first
being assured that his honour and interest were as safe with that other as
with himself.

And 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? The
ordinary comparison of one person giving another, on some special occasion,
the liberty to ask something in his name, comes altogether short here,—Jesus
solemnly gives to all His disciples a general and unlimited power of the
free use of His Name at all times for all they desire. He could not do
this if He did not know that He could trust us with His interests, that His
honour would be safe in our hands. The free use of the name of another is
always the token of great confidence, of close union. He who gives his name
to another stands aside, to let that other act for him; he who takes the
name of another, gives up his own as of no value. When I go in the name of
another, I deny myself, I take not only his name, but himself and what he
is, instead of myself and what I am.

Such a use of the name of a person may be in virtue of a legal union. 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. He could
not do otherwise than also give them His Name to draw all the supplies they
needed for the due conduct of His business. And they have the spiritual
power to avail themselves of the Name of Jesus just to the extent to which
they yield themselves to live only for the interests and the work of the
Master. 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. And often the child of a good father has been
honoured or helped by others for the sake of the name he bore. But this
would not last long if it were found that it was only a name, and that the
father’s character was wanting. The name and the character or spirit must
be in harmony. When such is the case, the child will have a double claim on
the father’s friends: the character secures and increases the love and
esteem rendered first for the name’s sake. 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.
The use of the name rests on the unity of life; the Name and the Spirit of
Jesus are one. [2]

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. She purchases in his name, and that name is not
refused. And this is done because the bridegroom has chosen her for
himself, counting on her to care for his interests: they are now one. And
so the Heavenly Bridegroom could do nothing less; having loved us and made
us one with Himself, what could He do but give those who bear His Name the
right to present it before the Father, or to come with it to Himself for all
they need. And there is no one who gives himself really to live in the Name
of Jesus, who does not receive in ever-increasing measure the spiritual
capacity to ask and receive in that Name what he will. 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.

Such illustrations show us how defective the common view is of a messenger
sent to ask in the name of another, or a guilty one appealing to the name of
a surety. No Jesus Himself is with the Father; it is not an absent one in
whose name we come. Even when we pray to Jesus Himself, it must be in His
Name. The name represents the person; to ask in the Name is to ask in full
union of interest and life and love with Himself, as one who lives in and
for Him. Let the Name of Jesus only have undivided supremacy in my heart
and life, my faith will grow to the assurance that what I ask in that Name
cannot be refused. The name and the power of asking go together: when the
Name of Jesus has become the power that rules my life, its power in prayer
with God will be seen too.

We see thus that everything depends on our own relation to the Name: the
power it has on my life is the power it will have in my prayers. There is
more than one expression in Scripture which can make this clear to us. When
it says, ‘Do all in the Name of the Lord Jesus,’ we see how this is the
counterpart of the other, ‘Ask all.’ To do all and to ask all in His Name,
these go together. When we read, ‘We shall walk in the Name of our God,’ we
see how the power of the Name must rule in the whole life; only then will it
have power in prayer. It is not to the lips but to the life God looks to
see what the Name is to us. When Scripture speaks of ‘men who have given
their lives for the Name of the Lord Jesus,’ or of one ‘ready to die for the
Name of the Lord Jesus,’ we see what our relation to the Name must be: when
it is everything to me, it will obtain everything for me. If I let it have
all I have, it will let me have all it has.

‘WHATSOEVER ye shall ask in my Name, that will I do.’ Jesus means the
promise literally. Christians have sought to limit it: it looked too free;
it was hardly safe to trust man so unconditionally. We did not understand
that the word ‘in my Name’ is its own safeguard. It is a spiritual power
which no one can use further than he obtains the capacity for, by his living
and acting in that Name. As we bear that Name before men, we have power to
use it before God. O let us plead for God’s Holy Spirit to show us what the
Name means, and what the right use of it is. It is through the Spirit that
the Name, which is above every name in heaven, will take the place of
supremacy in our heart and life too.

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. Heaven is set open to you; the treasures and powers of the world of
spirit are placed at your disposal on behalf of men around you. O come, and
let us learn to pray in the Name of Jesus. As to the disciples, He says to
us, ‘Hitherto ye have not asked in my Name: ask, and ye shall receive.’
Let each disciple of Jesus seek to avail himself of the rights of his royal
priesthood, and use the power placed at his disposal for his circle and his
work. Let Christians awake and hear the message: your prayer can obtain
what otherwise will be withheld, can accomplish what otherwise remains
undone. O awake, and use the name of Jesus to open the treasures of heaven
for this perishing world. Learn as the servants of the King to use His
Name: ‘WHATSOEVER ye shall ask in my Name, THAT WILL I DO.’

‘LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY.’

Blessed Lord! It is as if each lesson Thou givest me has such fulness and
depths of meaning, that if I can only learn that one, I shall know how to
pray aright. This day I feel again as if I needed but one prayer every
day: Lord! Teach me what it is to pray in Thy Name. Teach me so to live
and act, to walk and speak, so to do all in the Name of Jesus, that my
prayer cannot be anything else but in that blessed Name too.

And teach me, Lord! to hold fast the precious promise that WHATSOEVER we
ask in Thy Name, Thou wilt do, the Father will give. Though I do not yet
fully understand, and still less have fully attained, the wondrous union
Thou meanest when Thou sayest, IN MY NAME, I would yet hold fast the promise
until it fills my heart with the undoubting assurance: Anything in the Name
of Jesus.

O my Lord! let Thy Holy Spirit teach me this. Thou didst say of Him, ‘The
Comforter, whom the Father shall send IN MY NAME.’ He knows what it is to
be sent from heaven in Thy Name, to reveal and to honour the power of that
Name in Thy servants, to use that Name alone, and so to glorify Thee. Lord
Jesus! let Thy Spirit dwell in me, and fill me. I would, I do yield my
whole being to His rule and leading. Thy Name and Thy Spirit are one;
through Him Thy Name will be the strength of my life and my prayer. Then I
shall be able for Thy Name’s sake to forsake all, in Thy Name to speak to
men and to God, and to prove that this is indeed the Name above every name.

Lord Jesus! O teach me by Thy Holy Spirit to pray in Thy Name. Amen.

NOTE.

‘What is meant by praying in Christ’s name? It cannot mean simply appearing
before God with faith in the mediation of the Saviour. When the disciples
asked Jesus to teach them to pray, He supplied them with petitions. And
afterwards Jesus said to them, “Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my
Name.” Until the Spirit came, the seven petitions of the Lord’s prayer lay
as it were dormant within them. When by the Holy Ghost Christ descended
into their hearts, they desired the very blessings which Christ as our High
Priest obtains for us by His prayer from the Father. And such petitions are
always answered. The Father is always willing to give what Christ asks.
The Spirit of Christ always teaches and influences us to offer the petitions
which Christ ratifies and presents to the Father. To pray in Christ’s name
is therefore to be identified with Christ as to our righteousness, and to be
identified with Christ in our desires by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost.
To pray in the Spirit, to pray according to the will of the Father, to pray
in Christ’s name, are identical expressions. The Father Himself loveth us,
and is willing to hear us: two intercessors, Christ the Advocate above, and
the Holy Ghost, the Advocate within, are the gifts of His love.

‘This view may appear at first less consoling than a more prevalent one,
which refers prayer in Christ’s name chiefly to our trust in Christ’s
merit. The defect of this opinion is, that it does not combine the
intercession of the Saviour with the will of the Father, and the indwelling
Spirit’s aid in prayer. Nor does it fully realize the mediation of Christ;
for the mediation consists not merely in that for Christ’s sake the Holy
Father is able to regard me and my prayer; but also, in that Christ Himself
presents my petitions as His petitions, desired by Him for me, even as all
blessings are purchased for me by His precious blood.

‘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.’—Saphiv, The
Lord’s Prayer, pp. 411, 142.
_________________________________________________________________

[2] ^‘Whatsoever ye shall ask in my Name,’ that is, in my nature; for things
with God are called according to their nature. We ask in Christ’s Name, not
when at the end of some request we say, ‘This I ask in the Name of Jesus
Christ,’ but when we pray according to His nature, which is love, which
seeketh not its own but only the will of God and the good of all
creatures. Such asking is the cry of His own Spirit in our
hearts.—Jukes. The New Man.

TWENTY-FIFTH LESSON.

‘At that day;’

Or, The Holy Spirit and Prayer.

‘In that day ye shall ask me nothing. Verily, verily, I say unto you,
Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my Name, He will give it you.
Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my Name: ask, and ye shall receive, that
your joy may be full. At that day ye shall ask in my Name: and I say not,
that I will pray the Father for you, for the Father Himself loveth
you.’—John xvi. 23-26.

‘Praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God.’—JUDE 20,
21.

THE words of John (I John ii. 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.

The contrast between this final stage and the previous preparatory ones our
Saviour marks most distinctly in the words we are to meditate on: ‘Hitherto
ye have asked nothing in my Name;’ ‘At that day ye shall ask in my Name. ‘
We know what ‘at that day’ means. It is the day of the outpouring of the
Holy Spirit. The great work Christ was to do on the cross, the mighty power
and the complete victory to be manifested in His resurrection and ascension,
were to issue in the coming down from heaven, as never before, of the glory
of God to dwell in men. The Spirit of the glorified Jesus was to come and
be the life of His disciples. And one of the marks of that wonderful
spirit-dispensation was to be a power in prayer hitherto unknown—prayer in
the Name of Jesus, asking and obtaining whatsoever they would, is to be the
manifestation of the reality of the Spirit’s indwelling.

To understand how the coming of the Holy Spirit was indeed to commence a new
epoch in the prayer-world, we must remember who He is, what His work, and
what the significance of His not being given until Jesus was glorified. It
is in the Spirit that God exists, for He is Spirit. It is in the Spirit
that the Son was begotten of the Father: it is in the fellowship of the
Spirit that the Father and the Son are one. The eternal never-ceasing
giving to the Son which is the Father’s prerogative and the eternal asking
and receiving which is the Son’s right and blessedness—it is through the
Spirit that this communion of life and love is maintained. It has been so
from all eternity. It is so specially now, when the Son as Mediator ever
liveth to pray. The great work which Jesus began on earth of reconciling in
His own body God and man, He carries on in heaven. To accomplish this He
took up into His own person the conflict between God’s righteousness and our
sin. On the cross He once for all ended the struggle in His own body. And
then He ascended to heaven, that thence He might in each member of His body
carry out the deliverance and manifest the victory He had obtained. It is
to do this that He ever liveth to pray; in His unceasing intercession He
places Himself in living fellowship with the unceasing prayer of His
redeemed ones. Or rather, it is His unceasing intercession which shows
itself in their prayers, and gives them a power they never had before.

And He does this through the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of
the glorified Jesus, was not (John vii. 39), could not be, until He had been
glorified. This gift of the Father was something distinctively new,
entirely different from what Old Testament saints had known. The work that
the blood effected in heaven when Christ entered within the veil, was
something so true and new, the redemption of our human nature into
fellowship with His resurrection-power and His exaltation-glory was so
intensely real, the taking up of our humanity in Christ into the life of the
Three-One God was an event of such inconceivable significance, that the Holy
Spirit, who had to come from Christ’s exalted humanity to testify in our
hearts of what Christ had accomplished, was indeed no longer only what He
had been in the Old Testament. It was literally true ‘the Holy Spirit was
not yet, for Christ was not yet glorified.’ He came now first as the Spirit
of the glorified Jesus. Even as the Son, who was from eternity God, had
entered upon a new existence as man, and returned to heaven with what He had
not before, so the Blessed Spirit, whom the Son, on His ascension, received
from the Father (Acts ii. 33) into His glorified humanity, came to us with a
new life, which He had not previously to communicate. Under the Old
Testament He was invoked as the Spirit of God: at Pentecost He descended as
the Spirit of the glorified Jesus, bringing down and communicating to us the
full fruit and power of the accomplished redemption.

It is in the intercession of Christ that the continued efficacy and
application of His redemption is maintained. And it is through the Holy
Spirit descending from Christ to us that we are drawn up into the great
stream of His ever-ascending prayers. The Spirit prays for us without
words: in the depths of a heart where even thoughts are at times formless,
the Spirit takes us up into the wonderful flow of the life of the Three-One
God. Through the Spirit, Christ’s prayers become ours, and ours are made
His: we ask what we will, and it is given to us. We then understand from
experience, ‘Hitherto ye have not asked in my Name. At that day ye shall
ask in my Name.’

Brother! what we need to pray in the Name of Christ, to ask that we may
receive that our joy may be full, is the baptism of this Holy Ghost. This
is more than the Spirit of God under the Old Testament. This is more than
the Spirit of conversion and regeneration the disciples had before
Pentecost. This is more than the Spirit with a measure of His influence
and working. This is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the glorified Jesus in
His exaltation-power, coming on us as the Spirit of the indwelling Jesus,
revealing the Son and the Father within. (John xiv. 16-23.) It is when
this Spirit is the Spirit not of our hours of prayer, but of our whole life
and walk, when this Spirit glorifies Jesus in us by revealing the
completeness of His work, and making us wholly one with Him and like Him,
that we can pray in His Name, because we are in very deed one with Him.
Then it is that we have that immediateness of access to the Father of which
Jesus says, ‘I say not that I will pray the Father for you.’ Oh! we need
to understand and believe that to be filled with this, the Spirit of the
glorified One, is the one need of God’s believing people. Then shall we
realize what it is, ‘with all prayer and supplication to be praying at all
seasons in the Spirit,’ and what it is, ‘praying in the Holy Ghost, to keep
ourselves in the love of God.’ ‘At that day ye shall ask in my Name.’

And so once again the lesson comes: What our prayer avails, depends upon
what we are and what our life is. It is living in the Name of Christ that
is the secret of praying in the Name of Christ; living in the Spirit that
fits for praying in the Spirit. It is abiding in Christ that gives the
right and power to ask what we will: the extent of the abiding is the exact
measure of the power in prayer. It is the Spirit dwelling within us that
prays, not in words and thoughts always, but in a breathing and a being
deeper than utterance. Just so much as there is of Christ’s Spirit in us,
is there real prayer. Our lives, our lives, O let our lives be full of
Christ, and full of His Spirit, and the wonderfully unlimited promises to
our prayer will no longer appear strange. ‘Hitherto ye have asked nothing
in my Name. Ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full. At that
day ye shall ask in my Name. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye
shall ask the father in my Name, He will give it you.’

‘LORD , TEACH US TO PRAY.’

O my God! in holy awe I bow before Thee, the Three in One. Again I have
seen how the mystery of prayer is the mystery of the Holy Trinity. I adore
the Father who ever hears, and the Son who ever lives to pray, and the Holy
Spirit, proceeding from the Father and the Son, to lift us up into the
fellowship of that ever-blessed, never-ceasing asking and receiving. I bow,
my God, in adoring worship, before the infinite condescension that thus,
through the Holy Spirit, takes us and our prayers into the Divine Life, and
its fellowship of love.

O my Blessed Lord Jesus! Teach me to understand Thy lesson, that it is the
indwelling Spirit, streaming from Thee, uniting to Thee, who is the Spirit
of prayer. Teach me what it is as an empty, wholly consecrated vessel, to
yield myself to His being my life. Teach me to honour and trust Him, as a
living Person, to lead my life and my prayer. Teach me specially in prayer
to wait in holy silence, and give Him place to breathe within me His
unutterable intercession. And teach me that through Him it is possible to
pray without ceasing, and to pray without failing, because He makes me
partaker of the never-ceasing and never-failing intercession in which Thou,
the Son, dost appear before the Father. Yea, Lord, fulfil in me Thy
promise, At that day ye shall ask in my Name. Verily, verily, I say unto
you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my Name, that will He give.’
Amen.

NOTE.

Prayer has often been compared to breathing: we have only to carry out the
comparison fully to see how wonderful the place is which the Holy Spirit
occupies. With every breath we expel the impure air which would soon cause
our death, and inhale again the fresh air to which we owe our life. So we
give out from us, in confession the sins, in prayer the needs and the
desires of our heart. And in drawing in our breath again, we inhale the
fresh air of the promises, and the love, and the life of God in Christ. We
do this through the Holy Spirit, who is the breath of our life.

And this He is because He is the breath of God. The Father breathes Him
into us, to unite Himself with our life. And then just as on every
expiration there follows again the inhaling or drawing in of the breath, so
God draws in again His breath, and the Spirit returns to Him laden with the
desires and needs of our hearts. And thus the Holy Spirit is the breath of
the life of God, and the breath of the new life in us. As God breathes Him
out, we receive Him in answer to prayer; as we breathe Him back again, He
rises to God laden with our supplications. As the Spirit of God, in whom
the Father and the Son are one, and the intercession of the Son reaches the
Father, He is to us the Spirit of prayer. True prayer is the living
experience of the truth of the Holy Trinity. The Spirit’s breathing, the
Son’s intercession, the Father’s will, these three become one in us.

TWENTY-SIXTH LESSON.

‘I have prayed for thee;’

Or, Christ the Intercessor.

‘But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not.’—Luke xxii. 32.

‘I say not unto you, that I will pray the Father for you.’—John xvi. 26.

‘He ever liveth to make intercession.’—Heb. vii. 25.

ALL growth in the spiritual life is connected with the clearer insight into
what Jesus is to us. The more I realize that Christ must be all to me and
in me, that all in Christ is indeed for me, the more I learn to live the
real life of faith, which, dying to self, lives wholly in Christ. The
Christian life is no longer the vain struggle to live right, but the resting
in Christ and finding strength in Him as our life, to fight the fight and
gain the victory of faith. This is specially true of the life of prayer.
As it too comes under the law of faith alone, and is seen in the light of
the fulness and completeness there is in Jesus, the believer understands
that it need no longer be a matter of strain or anxious care, but an
experience of what Christ will do for him and in him—a participation in that
life of Christ which, as on earth, so in heaven, ever ascends to the Father
as prayer. And he begins to pray, not only trusting in the merits of Jesus,
or in the intercession by which our unworthy prayers are made acceptable,
but in that near and close union in virtue of which He prays in us and we in
Him. [3] ^ The whole of salvation is Christ Himself: He has given HIMSELF
to us; He Himself lives in us. Because He prays, we pray too. As the
disciples, when they saw Jesus pray, asked Him to make them partakers of
what He knew of prayer, so we, now we see Him as intercessor on the throne,
know that He makes us participate with Himself in the life of prayer.

How clearly this comes out in the last night of His life. In His
high-priestly prayer (John xvii.), He 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 power to pray in His Name: all
right and power of prayer is Christ’s; He makes us share in His
intercession.

To understand this, think first of His intercession: He ever liveth to make
intercession. The work of Christ on earth as Priest was but a beginning.
It was as Aaron He shed His blood; it is as Melchizedek that He now lives
within the veil to continue His work, after the power of the eternal life.
As Melchizedek is more glorious than Aaron, so it is in the work of
intercession that the atonement has its true power and glory. ‘It is Christ
that died: yea more, who is even at the right hand of God, who maketh
intercession for us.’ That intercession is an intense reality, a work that
is absolutely necessary, and without which the continued application of
redemption cannot take place. In the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus
the wondrous reconciliation took place, by which man became partaker of the
Divine life and blessedness. But the real personal appropriation of this
reconciliation in each of His members here below cannot take place without
the unceasing exercise of His Divine power by the head in heaven. In all
conversion and sanctification, in every victory over sin and the world,
there is a real forth-putting of the power of Him who is mighty to save.
And this exercise of His power only takes place through His prayer: He asks
of the Father, and receives from the Father. ‘He is able to save to the
uttermost, because He ever liveth to make intercession.’ There is not a
need of His people but He receives in intercession what the Godhead has to
give: His mediation on the throne is as real and indispensable as on the
cross. Nothing takes place without His intercession: it engages all His
time and powers, is His unceasing occupation at the right hand of the
Father.

And we participate not only in the benefits of this His work, but in the
work itself. This because we are His body. Body and members are one: ‘The
head cannot say to the feet, I have no need of thee.’ We share with Jesus
in all He is and has: ‘The glory which Thou gavest me, I have given
them.’ We are partakers of His life, His righteousness, His work: we share
with Him in His intercession too; it is not a work He does without us.

We do this because we are partakers of His life: ‘Christ is our life;’ ‘No
longer I, but Christ liveth in me.’ The life in Him and in us is identical,
one and the same. His life in us is an ever-praying life. When it descends
and takes possession of us, it does not lose its character; in us too it is
the every-praying life—a life that without ceasing asks and receives from
God. And this not as if there were two separate currents of prayer rising
upwards, one from Him, and one from His people. No, but the substantial
life-union is also prayer-union: what He prays passes through us, what we
pray passes through Him. He is the angel with the golden censer: ‘UNTO HIM
there was given much incense,’ the secret of acceptable prayer, ‘that He
should add it unto the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar.’ We
live, we abide in Him, the Interceding One.

The Only-begotten is the only one who has the right to pray: to Him alone
it was said, ‘Ask, and it shall be given Thee.’ As in all other things the
fulness dwells in Him, so the true prayer-fulness too; He alone has the
power of prayer. And just as the growth of the spiritual life consists in
the clearer insight that all the treasures are in Him, and that we too are
in Him, to receive each moment what we possess in Him, grace for grace, so
with the prayer-life too. 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.

To many a believer it was a new epoch in his spiritual life when it was
revealed to him how truly and entirely Christ was his life, standing good as
surety for his remaining faithful and obedient. It was then first that he
really began to life a faith-life. No less blessed will be the discovery
that Christ is surety for our prayer-life too, the centre and embodiment of
all prayer, to be communicated by Him through the Holy Spirit to His
people. ‘He ever liveth to make intercession’ as the Head of the body, as
the Leader in that new and living way which He hath opened up, as the Author
and the Perfecter of our faith. He provides in everything for the life of
His redeemed ones by giving His own life in them: He cares for their life
of prayer, by taking them up into His heavenly prayer-life, by giving and
maintaining His prayer-life within them. ‘I have prayed for thee,’ not to
render thy faith needless, but ‘that thy faith fail not:’ our faith and
prayer of faith is rooted in His. It is, ‘if ye abide in me,’ the
ever-living Intercessor, and pray with me and in me: ‘ask whatsoever ye
will, and it shall be done unto you.’

The thought of our fellowship in the intercession of Jesus reminds us of
what He has taught us more than once before, how all these wonderful
prayer-promises have as their aim and their justification, the glory of God
in the manifestation of His kingdom and the salvation of sinners. As long
as we only or chiefly pray for ourselves, the promises of the last night
must remain a sealed book to us. It is to the fruit-bearing branches of the
Vine; it is to disciples sent into the world as the Father sent Him, to live
for perishing men; it is to His faithful servants and intimate friends who
take up the work He leaves behind, who have like their Lord become as the
seed-corn, losing its life to multiply it manifold;—it is to such that the
promises are given. Let us each find out what the work is, and who the
souls are entrusted to our special prayers; let us make our intercession for
them our life of fellowship with God, and we shall not only find the
promises of power in prayer made true to us, but we shall then first begin
to realize how our abiding in Christ and His abiding in us makes us share in
His own joy of blessing and saving men.

O most wonderful intercession of our Blessed Lord Jesus, to which we not
only owe everything, but in which we are taken up as active partners and
fellow-workers! Now we understand what it is to pray in the Name of Jesus,
and why it has such power. In His Name, in His Spirit, in Himself, in
perfect union with Him. O wondrous, ever active, and most efficacious
intercession of the man Christ Jesus! When shall we be wholly taken up into
it and always pray in it?

‘LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY.’

Blessed Lord! In lowly adoration I would again bow before Thee. Thy whole
redemption work has now passed into prayer; all that now occupies Thee in
maintaining and dispensing what Thou didst purchase with Thy blood is only
prayer. Thou ever livest to pray. And because we are and abide in Thee,
the direct access to the Father is always open, our life can be one of
unceasing prayer, and the answer to our prayer is sure.

Blessed Lord! Thou hast invited Thy people to be Thy fellow-workers in a
life of prayer. Thou hast united Thyself with Thy people and makest them as
Thy body share with Thee in that ministry of intercession through which
alone the world can be filled with the fruit of Thy redemption and the glory
of the Father. With more liberty than ever I come to Thee, my Lord, and
beseech Thee: Teach me to pray. Thy life is prayer, Thy life is mine.
Lord! teach me to pray, in Thee, like Thee.

And, O my Lord! Give me specially to know, as Thou didst promise Thy
disciples, that Thou art in the Father, and I in Thee, and Thou in me. Let
the uniting power of the Holy Spirit make my whole life an abiding in Thee
and Thy intercession, so that my prayer may be its echo, and the Father hear
me in Thee and Thee in me. Lord Jesus! let Thy mind in everything be in
me, and my life in everything by in Thee. So shall I be prepared to be the
channel through which Thy intercession pours its blessing on the world.
Amen.

NOTE.

‘The new epoch of prayer in the Name of Jesus is pointed out by Christ as
the time of the outpouring of the Spirit, in which the disciples enter upon
a more enlightened apprehension of the economy of redemption, and become as
clearly conscious of their oneness with Jesus as of His oneness with the
Father. Their prayer in the Name of Jesus is now directly to the Father
Himself. “I say not that I will pray for you, for the Father Himself
loveth you,” Jesus says; while He had previously spoken of the time before
the Spirit’s coming: “I will pray the Father, and He will give you the
Comforter.” This prayer thus has as its central thought the insight into
our being united to God in Christ as on both sides the living bond of union
between God and us (John xvii. 23: “I in them and Thou in me”), so that in
Jesus we behold the Father as united to us, and ourselves as united to the
Father. Jesus Christ must have been revealed to us, not only through the
truth in the mind, but in our inmost personal consciousness as the living
personal reconciliation, as He in whom God’s Fatherhood and Father-love have
been perfectly united with human nature and it with God. Not that with the
immediate prayer to the Father, the mediatorship of Christ is set aside; but
it is no longer looked at as something external, existing outside of us, but
as a real living spiritual existence within us, so that the Christ for us,
the Mediator, has really become Christ in us.

‘When the consciousness of this oneness between God in Christ and us in
Christ still is wanting, or has been darkened by the sense of guilt, then
the prayer of faith looks to our Lord as the Advocate, who pays the Father
for us. (Compare John xvi. 26 with John xiv. 16, 17; ix. 20; Luke xxi. 32;
I John ii. 1.) To take Christ thus in prayer as Advocate, is according to
John xvi. 26 not perfectly the same as the prayer in His Name. Christ’s
advocacy is meant to lead us on to that inner self-standing life-union with
Him, and with the Father in Him, in virtue of which Christ is He in whom God
enters into immediate relation and unites Himself with us, and in whom we in
all circumstances enter into immediate relation with God. Even so the
prayer in the Name of Jesus does not consist in our prayer at His command:
the disciples had prayed thus ever since the Lord had given them His “Our
Father,” and yet He says, “Hitherto ye have not prayed in my Name.” Only
when the mediation of Christ has become, through the indwelling of the Holy
Spirit, life and power within us, and so His mind, as it found expression in
His word and work, has taken possession of and filled our personal
consciousness and will, so that in faith and love we have Jesus in us as the
Reconciler who has actually made us one with God: only then His Name, which
included His nature and His work, is become truth and power in us (not only
for us), and we have in the Name of Jesus the free, direct access to the
Father which is sure of being heard. Prayer in the Name of Jesus is the
liberty of a son with the Father, just as Jesus had this as the
First-begotten. We pray in the place of Jesus, not as if we could put
ourselves in His place, but in as far as we are in Him and He in us. We go
direct to the Father, but only as the Father is in Christ, not as if He were
separate from Christ. Wherever thus the inner man does not live in Christ
and has Him not present as the Living One, where His word is not ruling in
the heart in its Spirit-power, where His truth and life have not become the
life of our soul, it is vain to think that a formula like “for the sake of
Thy dear Son” will avail.’—Christliche Ethik, von Dr. I. T. Beck, Tubingen,
iii. 39.
_________________________________________________________________

[3] See on the difference between having Christ as an Advocate or
Intercessor who stands outside of us, and the having Him within us, we
abiding in Him and He in us through the Holy Spirit perfecting our union
with Him, so that we ourselves can come directly to the Father in His
Name,—the note above from Beck of Tubingen.

TWENTY-SEVENTH LESSON.

‘Father, I will;’

Or, Christ the High Priest

‘Father, I will that they also whom Thou hast given me may be with me where
I am.’—John xvii. 24.

IN His parting address, Jesus gives His disciples the full revelation of
what the New Life was to be, when once the kingdom of God had come in
power. 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. To let His disciples have the joy of knowing what
His intercession for them in heaven as their High Priest will be, He gives
this precious legacy of His prayer to the Father. He does this at the same
time because they as priests are to share in His work of intercession, that
they and we might know how to perform this holy work. In the teaching of
our Lord on this last night, we have learned to understand that these
astonishing prayer-promises have not been given in our own behalf, but in
the interest of the Lord and His kingdom: it is from the Lord Himself alone
that we can learn what the prayer in His Name is to be and to obtain. We
have understood that to pray in His Name is to pray in perfect unity with
Himself: the high-priestly prayer will teach all that the prayer in the
Name of Jesus may ask and expect.

This prayer is ordinarily divided into three parts. Our Lord first prays
for Himself (v. 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 of the Spirit to study this wonderful prayer as one of
the most important lessons of the school of prayer.

First of all, Jesus prays for Himself, for His being glorified, that so He
may glorify the Father. ‘Father! Glorify Thy Son. And now, Father, glorify
me.’ And He brings forward the grounds on which He thus prays. A holy
covenant had been concluded between the Father and the Son in heaven. The
Father had promised Him power over all flesh as the reward of His work: He
had done the work, He had glorified the Father, and His one purpose is now
still further to glorify Him. With the utmost boldness He asks that the
Father may glorify Him, that He may now be and do for His people all He has
undertaken.

Disciple of Jesus! here you have the first lesson in your work of priestly
intercession, to be learned from the example of your great High Priest. To
pray in the Name of Jesus is to pray in unity, in sympathy with Him. As the
Son began His prayer by making clear His relation to the Father, pleading
His work and obedience and His desire to see the Father glorified, do so
too. Draw near and appear before the Father in Christ. Plead His finished
work. Say that you are one with it, that you trust on it, live in it. 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 then confidently that the
Son may be glorified in you. This is praying in the Name, in the very
words, in the Spirit of Jesus, in union with Jesus Himself. Such prayer has
power. If with Jesus you glorify the Father, the Father will glorify Jesus
by doing what you ask in His Name. It is only when your own personal
relation on this point, like Christ’s, is clear with God, when you are
glorifying Him, and seeking all for His glory, that like Christ, you will
have power to intercede for those around 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. It is of great
consequence that intercession should be personal, pointed, and definite.
And then our first prayer must always be that they may receive the word.
But this prayer will not avail unless with our Lord we say, ‘I have given
them Thy word:’ it is this gives us liberty and power in intercession for
souls. Not only pray for them, but speak to them. And when they have
received the word, let us pray much for their being kept from the evil one,
for their being sanctified through that word. Instead of being hopeless or
judging or giving up those who fall, let us pray for our circle, ‘Father!
Keep them in Thy Name;’ ‘Sanctify them through Thy truth.’ Prayer in the
Name of Jesus availeth much: ‘What ye will shall be done unto you.’

And then follows our Lord’s prayer for a still wider circle. ‘I pray not
only for these, but for them who through their word shall believe.’ His
priestly heart enlarges itself to embrace all places and all time, and He
prays that all who belong to Him may everywhere be one, as God’s proof to
the world of the divinity of His mission, and then that they may ever be
with Him in His glory. Until then ‘that the love wherewith Thou hast loved
me may be in them, and I in them.’

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 specially for the unity of
the Spirit and of love. He prays for its being one in Christ, as a witness
to the world that Christ, who hath wrought such a wonder as to make love
triumph over selfishness and separation, is indeed the Son of God sent from
heaven. Every believer ought to pray much that the unity of the Church, not
in external organizations, but in spirit and in truth, may be made manifest.

So much for the matter of the prayer. Now for its mode. Jesus says,
‘FATHER! I WILL.’ On the ground of His right as Son, and the Father’s
promise to Him, and His finished work, He might do so. The Father had said
to Him, ‘Ask of me, and I will give Thee.’ He simply availed Himself of the
Father’s promise. Jesus has given us a like promise: ‘Whatsoever ye will
shall be done unto you.’ He asks me in His Name to say what I will.
Abiding in Him, in a living union with Him in which man is nothing and
Christ all, the believer has the liberty to take up that word of His High
Priest and, in answer to the question ‘What wilt thou?’ to say, ‘FATHER! I
WILLall that Thou hast promised.’ This is nothing but true faith; this is
honouring God: to be assured that such confidence in saying what I will is
indeed acceptable to Him. At first sight, our heart shrinks from the
expression; we feel neither the liberty nor the power to speak thus. It is
a word for which alone in the most entire abnegation of our will grace will
be given, but for which grace will most assuredly be given to each one who
loses his will in his Lord’s. He that loseth his will shall find it; he
that gives up his will entirely shall find it again renewed and strengthened
with a Divine Strength. ‘FATHER! I WILL:’ this is the keynote of the
everlasting, ever-active, all-prevailing intercession of our Lord in
heaven. It is only in union with Him that our prayer avails; in union with
Him it avails much. If we but abide in Him, living, and walking, and doing
all things in His Name; if we but come and bring each separate petition,
tested and touched by His Word and Spirit, and cast it into the mighty
stream of intercession that goes up from Him, to be borne upward and
presented before the Father;—we shall have the full confidence that we
receive the petitions we ask: the ‘Father! I will’ will be breathed into
us by the Spirit Himself. We shall lose ourselves in Him, and become
nothing, to find that in our impotence we have power and prevail.

Disciples of Jesus! Called to be like your Lord in His priestly
intercession, when, O when! Shall we awaken to the glory, passing all
conception, of this our destiny to plead and prevail with God for perishing
men? O when shall we shake off the sloth that clothes itself with the
pretence of humility, and yield ourselves wholly to God’s Spirit, that He
may fill our wills with light and with power, to know, and to take, and to
possess all that our God is waiting to give to a will that lays hold on Him.

‘LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY.’

——0——

O my Blessed High Priest! who am I that Thou shouldest thus invite me to
share with Thee in Thy power of prevailing intercession! And why, O my
Lord! am I so slow of heart to understand and believe and exercise this
wonderful privilege to which Thou hast redeemed Thy people. O Lord! give
Thy grace that this may increasingly be my unceasing life-work—in praying
without ceasing to draw down the blessing of heaven on all my surroundings
on earth.

Blessed Lord! I come now to accept this my calling. For this I would
forsake all and follow Thee. Into Thy hands I would believingly yield my
whole being: form, train, inspire me to be one of Thy prayer-legion,
wrestlers who watch and strive in prayer, Israels, God’s princes, who have
power and prevail. Take possession of my heart, and fill it with the one
desire for the glory of God in the ingathering, and sanctification, and
union of those whom the Father hath given Thee. Take my mind and let this
be my study and my wisdom, to know when prayer can bring a blessing. Take
me wholly and fit me as a priest ever to stand before God and to bless in
His Name.

Blessed Lord! Be it here, as through all the spiritual life: Thou all, I
nothing. And be it here my experience too that he that has and seeks
nothing for himself, receives all, even to the wonderful grace of sharing
with Thee in Thine everlasting ministry of intercession. Amen.

TWENTY-EIGHTH LESSON.

‘Father! Not what I will;’

Or, Christ the Sacrifice.

‘And He said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto Thee; remove this
cup from me: howbeit not what I will, but what Thou wilt.’—Mark xiv. 36.

WHAT a contrast within the space of a few hours! What a transition from the
quiet elevation of that, He lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said, FATHER I
WILL,’ to that falling on the ground and crying in agony. ‘My Father! Not
what I will.’ In the one we see the High Priest within the veil in His
all-prevailing intercession; in the other, the sacrifice on the altar
opening the way through the rent veil. The high-priestly ‘Father! I
will,’ in order of time precedes the sacrificial ‘Father! Not what I
will;’ but this was only by anticipation, to show what the intercession
would be when once the sacrifice was brought. In reality it was that prayer
at the altar, ‘Father! Not what I will,’ in which the prayer before the
throne, ‘Father! I will,’ had its origin and its power. It is from the
entire surrender of His will in Gethsemane that the High Priest on the
throne has the power to ask what He will, has the right to make His people
share in that power too, and ask what they will.

For all who would learn to pray in the school of Jesus, this Gethsemane
lesson is one of the most sacred and precious. To a superficial scholar it
may appear to take away the courage to pray in faith. If even the earnest
supplication of the Son was not heard, if even the Beloved had to say, ‘NOT
WHAT I WILL!’ how much more do we need to speak so. And thus it appears
impossible that the promises which the Lord had given only a few hours
previously, ‘WHATSOEVER YE SHALL ASK,’ ‘WHATSOEVER YE WILL,’ could have been
meant literally. A deeper insight into the meaning of Gethsemane would
teach us that we have just here the sure ground and the open way to the
assurance of an answer to our prayer. Let us draw nigh in reverent and
adoring wonder, to gaze on this great sight—God’s Son thus offering up
prayer and supplications with strong crying and tears, and not obtaining
what He asks. He Himself is our Teacher, and will open up to us the mystery
of His holy sacrifice, as revealed in this wondrous prayer.

To understand the prayer, let us note the infinite difference between what
our Lord prayed a little ago as a Royal High Priest, and what He here
supplicates in His weakness. There it was for the glorifying of the Father
He prayed, and the glorifying of Himself and His people as the fulfilment of
distinct promises that had been given Him. He asked what He knew to be
according to the word and the will of the Father; He might boldly say,
‘FATHER! I WILL.’ Here He prays for something in regard to which the
Father’s will is not yet clear to Him. As far as He knows, it is the
Father’s will that He should drink the cup. He had told His disciples of
the cup He must drink: a little later He would again say, ‘The cup which my
Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?’ It was for this He had come to
this earth. But when, in the unutterable agony of soul that burst upon him
as the power of darkness came upon Him, and He began to taste the first
drops of death as the wrath of God against sin, His human nature, as it
shuddered in presence of the awful reality of being made a curse, gave
utterance in this cry of anguish, to its desire that, if God’s purpose could
be accomplished without it, He might be spared the awful cup: ‘Let this cup
pass from me.’ That desire was the evidence of the intense reality of His
humanity. The ‘Not as I will’ kept that desire from being sinful: as He
pleadingly cries, ‘All things are possible with Thee,’ and returns again to
still more earnest prayer that the cup may be removed, it is His
thrice-repeated ‘NOT WHAT I WILL’ that constitutes the very essence and
worth of His sacrifice. He had asked for something of which He could not
say: I know it is Thy will. He had pleaded God’s power and love, and had
then withdrawn it in His final, ‘THY WILL BE DONE.’ The prayer that the cup
should pass away could not be answered; the prayer of submission that God’s
will be done was heard, and gloriously answered in His victory first over
the fear, and then over the power of death.

It is in this denial of His will, this complete surrender of His will to the
will of the Father, that Christ’s obedience reached its highest perfection.
It is from the sacrifice of the will in Gethsemane that the sacrifice of the
life on Calvary derives its value. It is here, as Scripture saith, that He
learned obedience, and became the author of everlasting salvation to all
that obey Him. It was because He there, in that prayer, became obedient
unto death, even the death of the cross, that God hath highly exalted Him,
and given Him the power to ask what He will. It was in that ‘Father! Not
what I will,’ that He obtained the power for that other ‘FATHER! I will.’
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 me look at them again, the deep mysteries that Gethsemane offers to my
view. There is the first: the Father offers His Well-beloved the cup, the
cup of wrath. The second: the Son, always so obedient, shrinks back, and
implores that He may not have to drink it. The third: the Father does not
grant the Son His request, but still gives the cup. And then the last: 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.

This is in harmony with the whole scheme of redemption. Our Lord always
wins for us the opposite of what He suffered. He was bound that we might go
free. He was made sin that we might become the righteousness of God. He
died that we might live. He bore God’s curse that God’s blessing might be
ours. He endured the not answering of His prayer, that our prayers might
find an answer. Yea, He spake, ‘Not as I will,’ that He might say to us,
‘If ye abide in me, ask what ye will; it shall be done unto you.’

Yes, ‘If ye abide in me;’ here in Gethsemane the word acquires new force and
depth. Christ is our Head, who as surety stands in our place, and bears
what we must for ever have borne. We had deserved that God should turn a
deaf ear to us, and never listen to our cry. Christ comes, and suffers this
too for us: He suffers what we had merited; for our sins He suffers beneath
the burden of that unanswered prayer. But now His suffering this avails for
me: what He has borne is taken away for me; His merit has won for me the
answer to every prayer, if I abide in Him.

Yes, in Him, as He bows there in Gethsemane, I must abide. As my Head, He
not only once suffered for me, but ever lives in me, breathing and working
His own disposition in me too. The Eternal Spirit, through which He offered
Himself unto God, is the Spirit that dwells in me too, and makes me partaker
of the very same obedience, and the sacrifice of the will unto God. That
Spirit teaches me to yield my will entirely to the will of the Father, to
give it up even unto the death, in Christ to be dead to it. Whatever is my
own mind and thought and will, even though it be not directly sinful, He
teaches me to fear and flee. He opens my ear to wait in great gentleness
and teachableness of soul for what the Father has day by day to speak and to
teach. He discovers to me how union with God’s will in the love of it is
union with God Himself; how entire surrender to God’s will is the Father’s
claim, the Son’s example, and the true blessedness of the soul. He leads my
will into the fellowship of Christ’s death and resurrection, my will dies in
Him, in Him to be made alive again. He breathes into it, as a renewed and
quickened will, a holy insight into God’s perfect will, a holy joy in
yielding itself to be an instrument of that will, a holy liberty and power
to lay hold of God’s will to answer prayer. With my whole will I learn to
live for the interests of God and His kingdom, to exercise the power of that
will—crucified but risen again—in nature and in prayer, on earth and in
heaven, with men and with God. The more deeply I enter into the ‘FATHER!
NOT WHAT I WILL’ of Gethsemane, and into Him who spake it, to abide in Him,
the fuller is my spiritual access into the power of His ‘FATHER! I WILL.
And the soul experiences that it is the will, which has become nothing that
God’s will may be all, which now becomes inspired with a Divine strength to
really will what God wills, and to claim what has been promised it in the
name of Christ.

O let us listen to Christ in Gethsemane, as He calls, ‘If ye abide in me,
ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto you.’ Being of one mind
and spirit with Him in His giving up everything to God’s will, living like
Him in obedience and surrender to the Father; this is abiding in Him; this
is the secret of power in prayer.

‘LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY.’

——0——

Blessed Lord Jesus! Gethsemane was Thy school, where Thou didst learn to
pray and to obey. It is still Thy school, where Thou leadest all Thy
disciples who would fain learn to obey and to pray even as Thou. Lord!
teach me there to pray, in the faith that Thou has atoned for and conquered
our self-will, and canst indeed give us grace to pray like Thee.

O Lamb of God! I would follow Thee to Gethsemane, there to become one with
Thee, and to abide in Thee as Thou dost unto the very death yield Thy will
unto the Father. With Thee, through Thee, in Thee, I do yield my will in
absolute and entire surrender to the will of the Father. Conscious of my
own weakness, and the secret power with which self-will would assert itself
and again take its place on the throne, I claim in faith the power of Thy
victory. Thou didst triumph over it and deliver me from it. In Thy death I
would daily live; in Thy life I would daily die. Abiding in Thee, let my
will, through the power of Thine eternal Spirit, only be the tuned
instrument which yields to every touch of the will of my God. With my whole
soul do I say with Thee and in Thee, ‘Father! Not as I will, but as Thou
wilt.’

And then, Blessed Lord! Open my heart and that of all Thy people, to take
in fully the glory of the truth, that a will given up to God is a will
accepted of God to be used in his service, to desire, and purpose, and
determine, and will what is according to God’s will. A will which, in the
power of the Holy Spirit the indwelling God, is to exercise its royal
prerogative in prayer, to loose and to bind in heaven and upon earth, to ask
whatsoever it will, and to say it shall be done.

O Lord Jesus! teach me to pray. Amen.

TWENTY-NINTH LESSON.

‘If we ask according to His will;

Or, Our Boldness in Prayer.

‘And this is the boldness which we have toward Him, that, if we ask anything
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 which we have asked of
Him.’—I John v. 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. And they soon begin
to think that, if once they have made known their requests, and receive no
answer, it is best to leave it to God to do according to His good pleasure.
The words of John, ‘If we ask anything according to His will, He heareth
us,’ as they understand them, make certainty as to answer to prayer
impossible, because they cannot be sure of what really may be the will of
God. They think of God’s will as His hidden counsel—how should man be able
to fathom what really may be the purpose of the all-wise God.

This is the very opposite of what John aimed at in writing thus. 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.’ On this account He adds at
once: ‘If we know that He heareth us whatsoever we ask, we know,’ through
this faith, that we have,’ that we now while we pray receive ‘the
petition,’ the special things, ‘we have asked of Him.’ John supposes that
when we pray, we first find out if our prayers are according to the will of
God. They may be according to God’s will, and yet not come at once, or
without the persevering prayer of faith. It is to give us courage thus to
persevere and to be strong in faith, that He tells us: This gives us
boldness or confidence in prayer, if we ask anything according to His will,
He heareth us. It is evident that if it be a matter of uncertainty to us
whether our petitions be according to His will, we cannot have the comfort
of what he says, ‘We know that we have the petitions which we have asked of
Him.’

But just this is the difficulty. More than one believer says: ‘I do not
know if what I desire be according to the will of God. God’s will is the
purpose of His infinite wisdom: it is impossible for me to know whether He
may not count something else better for me than what I desire, or may not
have some reasons for withholding what I ask.’ Every one feels how with
such thoughts the prayer of faith, of which Jesus said, ‘Whosoever shall
believe that these things which he saith shall come to pass, he shall have
whatsoever he saith,’ becomes an impossibility. There may be the prayer of
submission, and of trust in God’s wisdom; there cannot be the prayer of
faith. The great mistake here is that God’s children do not really believe
that it is possible to know God’s will. Or if they believe this, they do
not take the time and trouble to find it out. What we need is to see
clearly in what way it is that the Father leads His waiting, teachable child
to know that his petition is according to His will.^1 It is through God’s
holy word, taken up and kept in the heart, the life, the will; and through
God’s Holy Spirit, accepted in His indwelling and leading, that we shall
learn to know that our petitions are according to His will.

Through the word. There is a secret will of God, with which we often fear
that our prayers may be at variance. It is not with this will of God, but
His will as revealed in His word, that we have to do in prayer. Our notions
of what the secret will may have decreed, and of how it might render the
answers to our prayers impossible, are mostly very erroneous. Childlike
faith as to what He is willing to do for His children, simply keeps to the
Father’s assurance, that it is His will to hear prayer and to do what faith
in His word desires and accepts. In the word the Father has revealed in
general promises the great principles of His will with His people. The
child has to take the promise and apply it to the special circumstances in
His life to which it has reference. Whatever he asks within the limits of
that revealed will, he can know to be according to the will of God, and he
may confidently expect. In His word, God has given us the revelation of His
will and plans with us, with His people, and with the world, with the most
precious promises of the grace and power with which through His people He
will carry out His plans and do His work. As faith becomes strong and bold
enough to claim the fulfilment of the general promise in the special case,
we may have the assurance that our prayers are heard: they are according to
God’s will. Take the words of John in the verse following our text as an
illustration: ‘If any man see his brother sinning a sin not unto death, he
shall ask and God will give him life.’ Such is the general promise; and the
believer who pleads on the ground of this promise, prays according to the
will of God, and John would give him boldness to know that he has the
petition which he asks.

But this apprehension of God’s will is something spiritual, and must be
spiritually discerned. It is not as a matter of logic that we can argue it
out: God has said it; I must have it. Nor has every Christian the same
gift or calling. While the general will revealed in the promise is the same
for all, there is for each one a special different will according to God’s
purpose. And herein is the wisdom of the saints, to know this special will
of God for each of us, according to the measure of grace given us, and so to
ask in prayer just what God has prepared and made possible for each. It is
to communicate this wisdom that the Holy Ghost dwells in us. The personal
application of the general promises of the word to our special personal
needs—it is for this that the leading of the Holy Spirit is given us.

It is this union of the teaching of the word and Spirit that many do not
understand, and so there is a twofold difficulty in knowing what God’s will
may be. Some seek the will of God in an inner feeling or conviction, and
would have the Spirit lead them without the word. Others seek it in the
word, without the living leading of the Holy Spirit. The two must be
united: only in the word, only in the Spirit, but in these most surely, can
we know the will of God, and learn to pray according to it. In the heart
the word and the Spirit must meet: it is only by indwelling that we can
experience their teaching. The word must dwell, must abide in us: heart
and life must day by day be under its influence. Not from without, but from
within, comes the quickening of the word by the Spirit. It is only he who
yields himself entirely in his whole life to the supremacy of the word and
the will of God, who can expect in special cases to discern what that word
and will permit him boldly to ask. And even as with the word, just so with
the Spirit: if I would have the leading of the Spirit in prayer to assure
me what God’s will is, my whole life must be yielded to that leading; so
only can mind and heart become spiritual and capable of knowing God’s holy
will. It is he who, through word and Spirit, lives in the will of God by
doing it, who will know to pray according to that will in the confidence
that He hears us.

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.’ In not granting an answer, the
Father tells us that there is something wrong in our praying. He wants to
teach us to find it out and confess it, and so to educate us to true
believing and prevailing prayer. He can only attain His object when He
brings us to see that we are to blame for the withholding of the answer; our
aim, or our faith, or our life is not what it should be. But this purpose
of God is frustrated as long as we are content to say: It is perhaps
because my prayer is not according to His will that He does not hear me. O
let us no longer throw the blame of our unanswered prayers on the secret
will of God, but on our praying amiss. Let that word, ‘Ye receive not
because ye ask amiss,’ be as the lantern of the Lord, searching heart and
life to prove that we are indeed such as those to whom Christ gave His
promises of certain answers. Let us believe that we can know if our prayer
be according to God’s will. Let us yield our heart to have the word of the
Father dwell richly there, to have Christ’s word abiding in us. Let us live
day by day with the anointing which teacheth us all things. Let us yield
ourselves unreservedly to the Holy Spirit as He teaches us to abide in
Christ, to dwell in the Father’s presence, and we shall soon understand how
the Father’s love longs that the child should know His will, and should, in
the confidence that that will includes all that His power and love have
promised to do, know too that He hears the petitions which we ask of Him.
‘This is the boldness which we have, that if we ask anything according to
His will, He heareth us.’

‘LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY.’

——0——

Blessed Master! With my whole heart I thank Thee for this blessed lesson,
that the path to a life full of answers to prayer is through the will of
God. Lord! Teach me to know this blessed will by living it, loving it, and
always doing it. So shall I learn to offer prayers according to that will,
and to find in their harmony with God’s blessed will, my boldness in prayer
and my confidence in accepting the answer.

Father! it is Thy will that Thy child should enjoy Thy presence and
blessing. It is Thy will that everything in the life of Thy child should be
in accordance with Thy will, and that the Holy Spirit should work this in
Him. It is Thy will that Thy child should live in the daily experience of
distinct answers to prayer, so as to enjoy living and direct fellowship with
Thyself. It is Thy will that Thy Name should be glorified in and through
Thy children, and that it will be in those who trust Thee. O my Father!
let this Thy will be my confidence in all I ask.

Blessed Saviour! Teach me to believe in the glory of this will. That will
is the eternal love, which with Divine power works out its purpose in each
human will that yields itself to it. Lord! Teach me this. Thou canst make
me see how every promise and every command of the word is indeed the will of
God, and that its fulfilment is secured to me by God Himself. Let thus the
will of God become to me the sure rock on which my prayer and my assurance
of an answer ever rest. Amen.

NOTE.

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. Of
God’s will revealed in His promises, so much will be fulfilled as our faith
accepts. 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. When once God reveals to a soul what He
is willing to do for it, the responsibility for the execution of that will
rests with 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. The key of all
prayer and all power is His, and when we learn to understand that He is just
as much with us as with the Father, and that we are also just as much one
with Him as He with the Father, we shall see how natural and right and safe
it is that to those who abide in Him as He in the Father, such power should
be given. It is Christ the Son who has the right to ask what He will: it
is through the abiding in Him and His abiding in us (in a Divine reality of
which we have too little apprehension) that His Spirit breathes in us what
He wants to ask and obtain through us. We pray in His Name: the prayers
are really ours and as really His.

Others again fear that to believe that prayer has such power is limiting the
liberty and the love of God. O if we only knew how we are limiting His
liberty and His love by not allowing Him to act in the only way in which He
chooses to act, now that He has taken us up into fellowship with
himself—through our prayers and our faith. A brother in the ministry once
asked, as we were speaking on this subject, whether there was not a danger
of our thinking that our love to souls and our willingness to see them
blessed were to move God’s love and God’s willingness to bless them. We
were just passing some large water-pipes, by which water was being carried
over hill and dale from a large mountain stream to a town at some distance.
Just look at these pipes, was the answer; they did not make the water
willing to flow downwards from the hills, nor did they give it its power of
blessing and refreshment: this is its very nature. All that they could do
is to decide its direction: by it the inhabitants of the town said they
want the blessing there. And just so, it is the very nature of God to love
and to bless. Downward and ever downward His love longs to come with its
quickening and refreshing streams. But He has left it to prayer to say
where the blessing is to come. He has committed it to His believing people
to bring the living water to the desert places: the will of God to bless is
dependent upon the will of man to say where the blessing must descend.
‘Such honour have His saints.’ ‘And this is the boldness which we have
toward him, that if we ask anything 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 which we have asked of Him.’

1See this illustrated in the extracts from George Muller at the end of this
volume.

THIRTIETH LESSON.

‘An holy priesthood;’

Or, The Ministry of Intercession.

‘An holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by
Jesus Christ.’—I Peter ii. 5.

‘Ye shall be named the Priests of the Lord.’—Isaiah lxi. 6.

THE Spirit of the Lord God is upon me: because the Lord hath anointed
me.’ These are the words of Jesus in Isaiah. As the fruit of His work all
redeemed ones are priests, fellow-partakers with Him of His anointing with
the Spirit as High Priest. ‘Like the precious ointment upon the beard of
Aaron, that went down to the skirts of his garments.’ As every son of
Aaron, so every member of Jesus’ body has a right to the priesthood. But
not every one exercises it: many are still entirely ignorant of it. And
yet it is the highest privilege of a child of God, the mark of greatest
nearness and likeness to Him, ‘who ever liveth to pray.’ Do you doubt if
this really be so? 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’
(Heb. v. 1); or, as it is said by Moses (Deut. x. 8, see also xxi. 5,
xxxiii. 10; Mal. ii. 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 favour 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. His work is as God’s servant to care for His house, His
honour, and His worship, to make known to men His love and His will. He
lives with men and for men (Heb. v. 2). His work is to find out their sin
and need, and to bring it before God, to offer sacrifice and incense in
their name, to obtain forgiveness and blessing for them, and then to come
out and bless them in His Name. This is the high calling of every
believer. ‘Such honour have all His saints.’ They have been redeemed with
the one purpose to be in the midst of the perishing millions around them,
God’s priests, who in conformity to Jesus, the Great High Priest, are to be
the ministers and stewards of the grace of God to all around them.

And then there is the walk of the priesthood, in harmony with its work. As
God is holy, so the priest was to be especially holy. This means not only
separated from everything unclean, but holy unto God, being set apart and
given up to God for His disposal. The separation from the world and setting
apart unto God was indicated in many ways.

It was seen in the clothing: the holy garments, made after God’s own order,
marked them as His (Ex. xxviii.). It was seen in the command as to their
special purity and freedom from all contact from death and defilement (Lev.
xi. 22). Much that was allowed to an ordinary Israelite was forbidden to
them. It was seen in the injunction that the priest must have no bodily
defect or blemish; bodily perfection was to be the type of wholeness and
holiness in God’s service. And it was seen in the arrangement by which the
priestly tribes were to have no inheritance with the other tribes; God was
to be their inheritance. Their life was to be one of faith: set apart unto
God, they were to live on Him as well as for Him.

All this is the emblem of what the character of the New Testament priest is
to be. 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.’

In the surrender of what may appear lawful to others in our separation from
the world, we must prove that our consecration to be holy to the Lord is
whole-hearted and entire. The bodily perfection of the priest must have its
counterpart in our too being ‘without spot or blemish;’ ‘the man of God
perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works,’ ‘perfect and entire,
wanting nothing’ (Lev. xxi. 17-21; Eph. v. 27; 2 Tim. ii. 7; Jas. i. 4).
And above all, we consent to give up all inheritance on earth; to forsake
all, and like Christ to have only God as our portion: to possess as not
possessing, and hold all for God alone: it is this marks the true priest,
the man who only lives for God and his fellow-men.

And now the way to the priesthood. In Aaron God had chosen all his sons to
be priests: each of them was a priest by birth. And yet he could not enter
upon his work without a special act of ordinance—his consecration. Every
child of God is priest in light of his birth, his blood relationship to the
Great High Priest; but this is not enough: he will exercise his power only
as he accepts and realizes his consecration.

With Aaron and his sons it took place thus (Ex. xxix.): After being washed
and clothed, they were anointed with the holy oil. Sacrifices were then
offered, and with the blood the right ear, the right hand, and the right
foot were touched. And then they and their garments were once again
sprinkled with the blood and the oil together. And so it is as the child of
God enters more fully into what THE BLOOD and THE SPIRIT of which he already
is partaker, are to him, that the power of the Holy Priesthood will work in
him. The blood will take away all sense of unworthiness; the Spirit, all
sense of unfitness.

Let us notice what there was new in the application of the blood to the
priest. If ever he had as a penitent brought a sacrifice for his sin,
seeking forgiveness, the blood was sprinkled on the altar, but not on his
person. But now, for priestly consecration, there was to be closer contact
with the blood; ear and hand and foot were by a special act brought under
its power, and the whole being taken possession of and sanctified for God.
And so, when the believer, who had been content to think chiefly of the
blood sprinkled on the mercy-seat as what he needs for pardon, is led to
seek full priestly access to God, he feels the need of a fuller and more
abiding experience of the power of the blood, as really sprinkling and
cleansing the heart from an evil conscience, so that he has ‘no more
conscience of sin’ (Heb. x. 2) as cleansing from all sin. And it is as he
gets to enjoy this, that the consciousness is awakened of his wonderful
right of most intimate access to God, and of the full assurance that his
intercessions are acceptable.

And as the blood gives the right, the Spirit gives the power, and fits for
believing intercession. He breathes into us the priestly spirit—burning
love for God’s honour and the saving of souls. He makes us so one with
Jesus that prayer in His Name is a reality. He strengthens us to believing,
importunate prayer. The more the Christian is truly filled with the Spirit
of Christ, the more spontaneous will be his giving himself up to the life of
priestly intercession. Beloved fellow-Christians! God needs, greatly
needs, priests who can draw near to Him, who live in His presence, and by
their intercession draw down the blessings of His grace on others. And the
world needs, greatly needs, priests who will bear the burden of the
perishing ones, and intercede on their behalf.

Are you willing to offer yourself for this holy work? You know the
surrender it demands—nothing less than the Christ-like giving up of all,
that the saving purposes of God’s love may be accomplished among men. Oh,
be no longer of those who are content if they have salvation, and just do
work enough to keep themselves warm and lively. O let nothing keep you back
from giving yourselves to be wholly and only priests—nothing else, nothing
less than the priests of the Most High God. The thought of unworthiness, of
unfitness, need not keep you back. In the Blood, the objective power of the
perfect redemption works in you: in the Spirit its full subjective
personal experience as a divine life is secured. The Blood provides an
infinite worthiness to make your prayers most acceptable: The Spirit
provides a Divine fitness, teaching you to pray just according to the will
of God. Every priest knew that when he presented a sacrifice according to
the law of the sanctuary, it was accepted: under the covering of the Blood
and Spirit you have the assurance that all the wonderful promises to prayer
in the Name of Jesus will be fulfilled in you. Abiding in union with the
Great High Priest, ‘you shall ask what you will, and it shall be done unto
you.’ You will have power to pray the effectual prayer of the righteous man
that availeth much. You will not only join in the general prayer of the
Church for the world, but be able in your own sphere to take up your special
work in prayer—as priests, to transact it with God, to receive and know the
answer, and so to bless in His Name. Come, brother, come, and be a priest,
only priest, all priest. Seek now to walk before the Lord in the full
consciousness that you have been set apart for the holy Ministry of
Intercession. This is the true blessedness of conformity to the image of
God’s Son.

‘LORD TEACH US TO PRAY.’

——0——

O Thou my blessed High Priest, accept the consecration in which my soul now
would respond to Thy message.

I believe in the HOLY PRIESTHOOD OF THY SAINTS, and that I too am a priest,
with power to appear before the Father, and in the prayer that avails much
bring down blessing on the perishing around me.

I believe in the POWER OF THY PRECIOUS BLOOD to cleanse from all sin, to
give me perfect confidence toward God, and bring me near in the full
assurance of faith that my intercession will be heard.

I believe in the ANOINTING OF THE SPIRIT, coming down daily from Thee, my
Great High Priest, to sanctify me, to fill me with the consciousness of my
priestly calling, and with love to souls, to teach me what is according to
God’s will, and how to pray the prayer of faith.

I believe that, as Thou my Lord Jesus art Thyself in all things my life, so
Thou, too, art THE SURETY FOR MY PRAYER-LIFE, and wilt Thyself draw me up
into the fellowship of Thy wondrous work of intercession.

In this faith I yield myself this day to my God, as one of His anointed
priests, to stand before His face to intercede in behalf of sinners, and to
come out and bless in His Name.

Holy Lord Jesus! accept and seal my consecration. Yea, Lord, do Thou lay
Thy hands on me, and Thyself consecrate me to this Thy holy work. And let
me walk among men with the consciousness and the character of a priest of
the Most High God.

Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins IN HIS OWN BLOOD, AND
HATH MADE US kings and priests unto God and His Father; TO HIM be glory and
dominion forever and ever. Amen

THIRTY-FIRST LESSON.

‘Pray without ceasing;’

Or, A Life of Prayer.

‘Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks.—I
Thess. v. 16, 17, 18.

OUR Lord spake the parable of the widow and the unjust judge to teach us
that men ought to pray always and not faint. As the widow persevered in
seeking one definite thing, the parable appears to have reference to
persevering prayer for some one blessing, when God delays or appears to
refuse. 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. As
the soul is filling with the longing for the manifestation of God’s glory to
us and in us, through us and around us, and with the confidence that He
hears the prayers of His children; the inmost life of the soul is
continually rising upward in dependence and faith, in longing desire and
trustful expectation.

At the close of our meditations it will not be difficult to say what is
needed to live such a life of prayer. The first thing is undoubtedly the
entire sacrifice of the life to God’s kingdom and glory. 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 honour that enlarges the heart, that teaches us to regard
everything in the light of God and His will, and that instinctively
recognises in everything around us the need of God’s help and blessing, an
opportunity for His being glorified. Because everything is weighed and
tested by the one thing that fills the heart—the glory of God, and because
the soul has learnt that only what is of God can really be to Him and His
glory, the whole life becomes a looking up, a crying from the inmost heart,
for God to prove His power and love and so show forth His glory. The
believer awakes to the consciousness that he is one of the watchmen on
Zion’s walls, one of the Lord’s remembrancers, whose call does really touch
and move the King in heaven to do what would otherwise not be done. 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. We have seen how our Blessed Lord insisted upon
nothing so much in His prayer-lessons as faith in the Father as a God who
most certainly does what we ask. ‘Ask and ye shall receive;’ count
confidently on an answer, is with Him the beginning and the end of His
teaching (compare Matt. vii. 8 and John xvi. 24). In proportion as this
assurance masters us, and it becomes a settled thing that our prayers do
tell and that God does what we ask, we dare not neglect the use of this
wonderful power: the soul turns wholly to God, and our life becomes
prayer. We see that the Lord needs and takes time, because we and all
around us are the creatures of time, under the law of growth; but knowing
that not one single prayer of faith can possibly be lost that there is
sometimes a needs-be for the storing up and accumulating of prayer, that
persevering pray is irresistible, prayer becomes the quiet, persistent
living of our life of desire and faith in the presence of our God. O do not
let us any longer by our reasonings limit and enfeeble such free and sure
promises of the living God, robbing them of their power, and ourselves of
the wonderful confidence they are meant to inspire. Not in God, not in His
secret will, not in the limitations of His promises, but in us, in ourselves
is the hindrance; we are not what we should be to obtain the promise. Let
us open our whole heart to God’s words of promise in all their simplicity
and truth: they will search us and humble us; they will lift us up and make
us glad and strong. And to the faith that knows it gets what it asks,
prayer is not a work or a burden, but a joy and a triumph; it becomes a
necessity and a second nature.

This union of strong desire and firm confidence again is nothing but the
life of the Holy Spirit within us. The Holy Spirit dwells in us, hides
Himself in the depths of our being, and stirs the desire after the Unseen
and the Divine, after God Himself. Now in groanings that cannot be uttered,
then in clear and conscious assurance; now in special distinct petitions for
the deeper revelation of Christ to ourselves, then in pleadings for a soul,
a work, the Church or the world, it is always and alone the Holy Spirit who
draws out the heart to thirst for God, to long for His being made known and
glorified. Where the child of God really lives and walks in the Spirit,
where he is not content to remain carnal, but seeks to be spiritual, in
everything a fit organ for the Divine Spirit to reveal the life of Christ
and Christ Himself, there the never-ceasing intercession-life of the Blessed
Son cannot but reveal and repeat itself in our experience. Because it is
the Spirit of Christ who prays in us, our prayer must be heard; because it
is we who pray in the Spirit, there is need of time, and patience, and
continual renewing of the prayer, until every obstacle be conquered, and the
harmony between God’s Spirit and ours is perfect.

But the chief thing we need for such a life of unceasing prayer is, to know
that Jesus teaches us to pray. We have begun to understand a little what
His teaching is. Not the communication of new thoughts or views, not the
discovery of failure or error, not the stirring up of desire and faith, of
however much importance all this be, but the taking us up into the
fellowship of His own prayer-life before the Father—this it is by which
Jesus really teaches. It was the sight of the praying Jesus that made the
disciples long and ask to be taught to pray. It is the faith of the
ever-praying Jesus, whose alone is the power to pray, that teaches us truly
to pray. We know why: He who prays is our Head and our Life. All He has
is ours and is given to us when we give ourselves all to Him. By His blood
He leads us into the immediate presence of God. The inner sanctuary is our
home, we dwell there. And He that lives so near God, and knows that He has
been brought near to bless those who are far, cannot but pray. Christ makes
us partakers with Himself of His prayer-power and prayer-life. We
understand then that our true aim must not be to work much and have prayer
enough to keep the work right, but to pray much and then to work enough for
the power and blessing obtained in prayer to find its way through us to
men. It is Christ who ever lives to pray, who saves and reigns. He
communicates His prayer-life to us: He maintains it in us if we trust Him.
He is surety for our praying without ceasing. Yes, Christ teaches to pray
by showing how He does it, by doing it in us, by leading us to do it in Him
and like Him. Christ is all, the life and the strength too for a
never-ceasing prayer-life.

It is the sight of this, the sight of the ever-praying Christ as our life,
that enables us to pray without ceasing. Because His priesthood is the
power of an endless life, that resurrection-life that never fades and never
fails, and because His life is our life, praying without ceasing can become
to us nothing less than the life-joy of heaven. So the Apostle says:
‘Rejoice evermore; pray without ceasing; in everything give thanks.’ Borne
up between the never-ceasing joy and the never-ceasing praise, never-ceasing
prayer is the manifestation of the power of the eternal life, where Jesus
always prays. The union between the Vine and the branch is in very deed a
prayer-union. The highest conformity to Christ, the most blessed
participation in the glory of His heavenly life, is that we take part in His
work of intercession: He and we live ever to pray. In the experience of
our union with Him, praying without ceasing becomes a possibility, a
reality, the holiest and most blessed part of our holy and blessed
fellowship with God. We have our abode within the veil, in the presence of
the Father. What the Father says, we do; what the Son says, the Father
does. 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.

‘LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY.’

——0——

O my Father, with my whole heart do I praise Thee for this wondrous life of
never-ceasing prayer, never-ceasing fellowship, never-ceasing answers, and
never-ceasing experience of my oneness with Him who ever lives to pray. O
my God! keep me ever so dwelling and walking in the presence of Thy glory,
that prayer may be the spontaneous expression of my life with Thee.

Blessed Saviour! with my whole heart I praise Thee that Thou didst come
from heaven to share with me in my needs and cries, that I might share with
Thee in Thy all-prevailing intercession. And I thank Thee that Thou hast
taken me into the school of prayer, to teach the blessedness and the power
of a life that is all prayer. And most of all, that Thou hast taken me up
into the fellowship of Thy life of intercession, that through me too Thy
blessings may be dispensed to those around me.

Holy Spirit! with deep reverence I thank Thee for Thy work in me. It is
through Thee I am lifted up into a share in the intercourse between the Son
and the Father, and enter so into the fellowship of the life and love of the
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
unceasingly to the glory of the Father and to the blessing of those around
me. Amen.

GEORGE MULLER, AND THE SECRET OF HIS

POWER IN PRAYER

WHEN God wishes anew to teach His Church a truth that is not being
understood or practised, He mostly does so by raising some man to be in word
and deed a living witness to its blessedness. And so God has raised up in
this nineteenth century, among others, George Muller to be His witness that
He is indeed the Hearer of prayer. I know of no way in which the principal
truths of God’s word in regard to prayer can be more effectually illustrated
and established than a short review of his life and of what he tells of his
prayer-experiences.

He was born in Prussia on 25^th September 1805, and is thus now eighty years
of age. His early life, even after having entered the University of Halle
as a theological student, was wicked in the extreme. Led by a friend one
evening, when just twenty years of age, to a prayer meeting, he was deeply
impressed, and soon after brought to know the Saviour. Not long after he
began reading missionary papers, and in course of time offered himself to
the London Society for promoting Christianity to the Jews. He was accepted
as a student, but soon found that he could not in all things submit to the
rules of the Society, as leaving too little liberty for the leading of the
Holy Spirit. The connection was dissolved in 1830 by mutual consent, and he
became the pastor of a small congregation at Teignmouth. In 1832 he was led
to Bristol, and it was as pastor of Bethesda Chapel that he was led to the
Orphan Home and other work, in connection with which God has so remarkably
led him to trust His word and to experience how God fulfils that word.

A few extracts in regard to his spiritual life will prepare the way for what
we specially wish to quote of his experiences in reference to prayer.

‘In connection with this I would mention, that the Lord very graciously gave
me, from the very commencement of my divine life, a measure of simplicity
and of childlike disposition in spiritual things, so that whilst I was
exceedingly ignorant of the Scriptures, and was still from time to time
overcome even by outward sins, yet I was enabled to carry most minute
matters to the Lord in prayer. And I have found “godliness profitable unto
all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to
come.” Though very weak and ignorant, yet I had now, by the grace of God,
some desire to benefit others, and he who so faithfully had once served
Satan, sought now to win souls for Christ.’

It was at Teignmouth that he was led to know how to use God’s word , and to
trust the Holy Spirit as the Teacher given by God to make that word clear.
He writes:—

‘God then began to show me that the word of God alone is our standard of
judgment in spiritual things; that it can be explained only by the Holy
Spirit; and that in our day, as well as in former times. He is the Teacher
of His people. The office of the Holy Spirit I had not experimentally
understood before that time.

‘It was my beginning to understand this latter point in particular, which
had a great effect on me; for the Lord enabled me to put it to the test of
experience, by laying aside commentaries, and almost every other book and
simply reading the word of God and studying it.

‘The result of this was, that the first evening that I shut myself into my
room, to give myself to prayer and meditation over the Scriptures, I learned
more in a few hours than I had done during a period of several months
previously.

‘But the particular difference was that I received real strength for my soul
in so doing. I now began to try by the test of the Scriptures the things
which I had learned and seen, and found that only those principles which
stood the test were of real value.’

Of obedience to the word of God, he writes as follows, in connection with
his being baptized:—

‘It had pleased God, in His abundant mercy, to bring my mind into such a
state, that I was willing to carry out into my life whatever I should find
in the Scriptures. I could say, “I will do His will,” and it was on that
account, I believe, that I saw which “doctrine is of God.”—And I would
observe here, by the way, that the passage to which I have just alluded
(John vii. 17) has been a most remarkable comment to me on many doctrines
and precepts of our most holy faith. For instance: “Resist not evil; but
whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him
have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with
him twain. Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of
thee, turn not thou away. Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do
good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you,
and persecute you” (Matt. v. 39-44). “Sell that ye have, and give
alms”(Luke xii. 33). “Owe no man any thing, but to love one another”(Rom.
xii. 8). It may be said, “Surely these passages cannot be taken literally,
for how then would the people of God be able to pass through the world?”
The state of mind enjoined in John vii. 17 will cause such objections to
vanish. WHOSOEVER IS WILLING TO ACT OUT these commandments of the Lord
LITERALLY, will, I believe, be led with me to see that to take them
LITERALLY is the will of God.—Those who do so take them will doubtless often
be brought into difficulties, hard to the flesh to bear, but these will have
a tendency to make them constantly feel that they are strangers and pilgrims
here, that this world is not their home, and thus to throw them more upon
God, who will assuredly help us through any difficulty into which we may be
brought by seeking to act in obedience to His word.’

This implicit surrender to God’s word led him to certain views and conduct
in regard to money, which mightily influenced his future life. They had
their root in the conviction that money was a Divine stewardship, and that
all money had therefore to be received and dispensed in direct fellowship
with God Himself. This led him to the adoption of the following four great
rules: 1. Not to receive any fixed salary, both because in the collecting
of it there was often much that was at variance with the freewill offering
with which God’s service is to be maintained, and in the receiving of it a
danger of placing more dependence on human sources of income than in the
living God Himself. 2. Never to ask any human being for help, however
great the need might be, but to make his wants known to the God who has
promised to care for His servants and to hear their prayer. 3. To take
this command (Luke xii. 33) literally, ‘Sell that thou hast and give
alms,’ and never to save up money, but to spend all God entrusted to him on
God’s poor, on the work of His kingdom. 4. Also to take Rom. xiii. 8, ‘Owe
no man anything,’ literally, and never to buy on credit, or be in debt for
anything, but to trust God to provide.

This mode of living was not easy at first. But Muller testifies it was most
blessed in bringing the soul to rest in God, and drawing it into closer
union with Himself when inclined to backslide. ‘For it will not do, it is
not possible, to live in sin, and at the same time, by communion with God,
to draw down from heaven everything one needs for the life that now is.’

Not long after his settlement at Bristol, ‘THE SCRIPTURAL KNOWLEDGE
INSTITUTION FOR HOME AND ABROAD’ was established for aiding in Day, Sunday
School, Mission and Bible work. Of this Institution the Orphan Home work,
by which Mr. Muller is best known, became a branch. It was in 1834 that his
heart was touched by the case of an orphan brought to Christ in one of the
schools, but who had to go to a poorhouse where its spiritual wants would
not be cared for. Meeting shortly after with a life of Franke, he writes
(Nov, 20, 1835): ‘Today I have had it very much laid on my heart no longer
merely to think about the establishment of an Orphan Home, but actually to
set about it, and I have been very much in prayer respecting it, in order to
ascertain the Lord’s mind. May God make it plain.’ And again, Nov. 25:
‘I have been again much in prayer yesterday and today about the Orphan Home,
and am more and more convinced that it is of God. May He in mercy guide
me. The three chief reasons are—1. That God may be glorified, should He be
pleased to furnish me with the means, in its being seen that it is not a
vain thing to trust Him; and that thus the faith of His children may be
strengthened. 2. The spiritual welfare of fatherless and motherless
children. 3. Their temporal welfare.’

After some months of prayer and waiting on God, a house was rented, with
room for thirty children , and in course of time three more, containing in
all 120 children. The work was carried on it this way for ten years, the
supplies for the needs of the orphans being asked and received of God
alone. It was often a time of sore need and much prayer, but a trial of
faith more precious than of gold was found unto praise and honour and glory
of God. The Lord was preparing His servant for greater things. By His
providence and His Holy Spirit, Mr. Muller was led to desire, and to wait
upon God till he received from Him, the sure promise of £15,000 for a Home
to contain 300 children. This first Home was opened in 1849. In 1858, a
second and third Home, for 950 more orphans, was opened, costing £35,000.
And in 1869 and 1870, a fourth and a fifth Home, for 850 more, at an expense
of £50,000, making the total number of the orphans 2100.

In addition to this work, God has given him almost as much as for the
building of the Orphan Homes, and the maintenance of the orphans, for other
work, the support of schools and missions, Bible and tract circulation. In
all he has received from God, to be spent in His work, during these fifty
years, more than one million pounds sterling. How little he knew, let us
carefully notice, that when he gave up his little salary of £35 a year in
obedience to the leading of God’s word and the Holy Spirit, what God was
preparing to give him as the reward of obedience and faith; and how
wonderfully the word was to be fulfilled to him: ‘Thou hast been faithful
over few things; I will set thee over many things.’

And these things have happened for an ensample to us. God calls us to be
followers of George Muller, even as he is of Christ. His God is our God;
the same promises are for us; the same service of love and faith in which he
laboured is calling for us on every side. Let us in connection with our
lessons in the school of prayer study the way in which God gave George
Muller such power as a man of prayer: we shall find in it the most
remarkable illustration of some of the lessons which we have been studying
with the blessed Master in the word. We shall specially have impressed upon
us His first great lesson, that if we will come to Him in the way He has
pointed out, with definite petitions, made known to us by the Spirit through
the word as being according to the will of God, we may most confidently
believe that whatsoever we ask it shall be done.

PRAYER AND THE WORD OF GOD.

We have more than once seen that God’s listening to our voice depends upon
our listening to His voice. (See Lessons 22 and 23.) We must not only have
a special promise to plead, when we make a special request, but our whole
life must be under the supremacy of the word: the word must be dwelling in
us. The testimony of George Muller on this point is most instructive. He
tells us how the discovery of the true place of the word of God, and the
teaching of the Spirit with it, was the commencement of a new era in his
spiritual life. Of it he writes:—

‘Now the scriptural way of reasoning would have been: God Himself has
condescended to become an author, and I am ignorant about that precious book
which His Holy Spirit has caused to be written through the instrumentality
of His servants, and it contains that which I ought to know, and the
knowledge of which will lead me to true happiness; therefore I ought to read
again and again this most precious book, this book of books, most earnestly,
most prayerfully, and with much meditation; and in this practice I ought to
continue all the days of my life. For I was aware, though I read it but
little, that I knew scarcely anything of it. But instead of acting thus and
being led by my ignorance of the word of God to study it more, my difficulty
in understanding it, and the little enjoyment I had in it, made me careless
of reading it (for much prayerful reading of the word gives not merely more
knowledge, but increases the delight we have in reading it); and thus, like
many believers, I practically preferred, for the first four years of my
divine life, the works of uninspired men to the oracles of the living God.
The consequence was that I remained a babe, both in knowledge and grace. In
knowledge, I say; for all true knowledge must be derived, by the Spirit,
from the word. And as I neglected the word, I was for nearly four years so
ignorant, that I did not clearly know even the fundamental points of our
holy faith. And this lack of knowledge most sadly kept me back from walking
steadily in the ways of God. For when it pleased the Lord in August 1829 to
bring me really to the Scriptures, my life and walk became very different.
And though ever since that I have very much fallen short of what I might and
ought to be, yet by the grace of God I have been enabled to live much nearer
to Him than before. If any believers read this who practically prefer other
books to the Holy Scriptures, and who enjoy the writings of men much more
than the word of God, may they be warned by my loss. I shall consider this
book to have been the means of doing much good, should it please the Lord,
through its instrumentality, to lead some of His people no longer to neglect
the Holy Scriptures, but to give them that preference which they have
hitherto bestowed on the writings of men.

‘Before I leave this subject, I would only add: If the reader understands
very little of the word of God, he ought to read it very much; for the
Spirit explains the word by the word. And if he enjoys the reading of the
word little, that is just the reason why he should read it much; for the
frequent reading of the Scriptures creates a delight in them, so that the
more we read them, the more we desire to do so.

‘Above all, he should seek to have it settled in his own mind that God alone
by His Spirit can teach him, and that therefore, as God will be inquired of
for blessings, it becomes him to seek God’s blessing previous to reading,
and also whilst reading.

‘He should have it, moreover, settled in his mind that although the Holy
Spirit is the best and sufficient Teacher, yet that this Teacher does not
always teach immediately when we desire it, and that therefore we may have
to entreat Him again and again for the explanation of certain passages; but
that He will surely teach us at last, if indeed we are seeking for light
prayerfully, patiently, and with a view to the glory of God.’ [4]

We find in his journal frequent mention made of his spending two and three
hours in prayer over the word for the feeding of his spiritual life. As the
fruit of this, when he had need of strength and encouragement in prayer, the
individual promises were not to him so many arguments from a book to be used
with God, but living words which he had heard the Father’s living voice
speak to him, and which he could now bring to the Father in living faith

PRAYER AND THE WILL OF GOD.

One of the greatest difficulties with young believers is to know how they
can find out whether what they desire is according to God’s will. I count
it one of the most precious lessons God wants to teach through the
experience of George Muller, that He is willing to make know, of things of
which His word says nothing directly, that they are His will for us, and
that we may ask them. The teaching of the Spirit, not without or against
the word, but as something above and beyond it, in addition to it, without
which we cannot see God’s will, is the heritage of every believer. It is
through THE WORD, AND THE WORD ALONE, that the Spirit teaches, applying the
general principles or promises to our special need. And it is THE SPIRIT,
AND THE SPIRIT ALONE, who can really make the word a light on our path,
whether the path of duty in our daily walk, or the path of faith in our
approach to God. Let us try and notice in what childlike simplicity and
teachableness it was that the discovery of God’s will was so surely and so
clearly made known to His servant.

With regard to the building of the first Home and the assurance he had of
its being God’s will, he writes in May 1850, just after it had been opened,
speaking of the great difficulties there were, and how little likely it
appeared to nature that they would be removed: ‘But while the prospect
before me would have been overwhelming had I looked at it naturally, I was
never even for once permitted to question how it would end. For as from the
beginning I was sure it was the will of God that I should go to the work of
building for Him this large Orphan Home, so also from the beginning I was as
certain that the whole would be finished as if the Home had been already
filled.’

The way in which he found out what was God’s will, comes out with special
clearness in his account of the building of the second Home; and I ask the
reader to study with care the lesson the narrative conveys:—

‘Dec. 5, 1850.—Under these circumstances I can only pray that the Lord in
His tender mercy would not allow Satan to gain an advantage over me. By the
grace of God my heart says: Lord, if I could be sure that it is Thy will
that I should go forward in this matter, I would do so cheerfully; and, on
the other hand, if I could be sure that these are vain, foolish, proud
thoughts, that they are not from Thee, I would, by Thy grace, hate them, and
entirely put them aside.

‘My hope is in God: He will help and teach me. Judging, however, from His
former dealings with me, it would not be a strange thing to me, nor
surprising, if He called me to labour yet still more largely in this way.

‘The thoughts about enlarging the Orphan work have not yet arisen on account
of an abundance of money having lately come in; for I have had of late to
wait for about seven weeks upon God, whilst little, very little
comparatively, came in, i.e. about four times as much was going out as came
in; and, had not the Lord previously sent me large sums, we should have been
distressed indeed.

‘Lord! how can Thy servant know Thy will in this matter? Wilt Thou be
pleased to teach him!

December 11.—During the last six days, since writing the above, I have been,
day after day, waiting upon God concerning this matter. It has generally
been more or less all the day on my heart. When I have been awake at night,
it has not been far from my thoughts. Yet all this without the least
excitement. I am perfectly calm and quiet respecting it. My soul would be
rejoiced to go forward in this service, could I be sure that the Lord would
have me to do so; for then, notwithstanding the numberless difficulties, all
would be well; and His Name would be magnified.

‘On the other hand, were I assured that the Lord would have me to be
satisfied with my present sphere of service, and that I should not pray
about enlarging the work, by His grace I could, without an effort,
cheerfully yield to it; for He has brought me into such a state of heart,
that I only desire to please Him in this matter. Moreover, hitherto I have
not spoken about this thing even to my beloved wife, the sharer of my joys,
sorrows, and labours for more than twenty years; nor is it likely that I
shall do so for some time to come: for I prefer quietly to wait on the
Lord, without conversing on this subject, in order that thus I may be kept
the more easily, by His blessing, from being influenced by things from
without. The burden of my prayer concerning this matter is, that the Lord
would not allow me to make a mistake, and that He would teach me to do His
will.

‘December 26.—Fifteen days have elapsed since I wrote the preceding
paragraph. Every day since then I have continued to pray about this matter,
and that with a goodly measure of earnestness, by the help of God. There
has passed scarcely an hour during these days, in which, whilst awake, this
matter has not been more or less before me. But all without even a shadow
of excitement. I converse with no one about it. Hitherto have I not even
done so with my dear wife. For this I refrain still, and deal with God
alone about the matter, in order that no outward influence and no outward
excitement may keep me from attaining unto a clear discovery of His will. I
have the fullest and most peaceful assurance that He will clearly show me
His will. This evening I have had again an especial solemn season for
prayer, to seek to know the will of God. But whilst I continue to entreat
and beseech the Lord, that He would not allow me to be deluded in this
business, I may say I have scarcely any doubt remaining on my mind as to
what will be the issue, even that I should go forward in this matter. As
this, however, is one of the most momentous steps that I have ever taken, I
judge that I cannot go about this matter with too much caution,
prayerfulness, and deliberation. I am in no hurry about it. I could wait
for years, by God’s grace, were this His will, before even taking one single
step toward this thing, or even speaking to anyone about it; and, on the
other hand, I would set to work tomorrow, were the Lord to bid me do so.
This calmness of mind, this having no will of my own in the matter, this
only wishing to please my Heavenly Father in it, this only seeking His and
not my honour in it; this state of heart, I say, is the fullest assurance to
me that my heart is not under a fleshly excitement, and that, if I am helped
thus to go on, I shall know the will of God to the full. But, while I write
this, I cannot but add at the same time, that I do crave the honour and the
glorious privilege to be more and more used by the Lord.

‘I desire to be allowed to provide scriptural instruction for a thousand
orphans, instead of doing so for 300. I desire to expound the Holy
Scriptures regularly to a thousand orphans, instead of doing so to 300. I
desire that it may be yet more abundantly manifest that God is still the
Hearer and Answerer of prayer, and that He is the living God now as He ever
was and ever will be, when He shall simply, in answer to prayer, have
condescended to provide me with a house for 700 orphans and with means to
support them. This last consideration is the most important point in my
mind. The Lord’s honour is the principal point with me in this whole
matter; and just because this is the case, if He would be more glorified by
not going forward in this business, I should by His grace be perfectly
content to give up all thoughts about another Orphan House. Surely in such
a state of mind, obtained by the Holy Spirit, Thou, O my Heavenly Father,
wilt not suffer Thy child to be mistaken, much less deluded. By the help of
God I shall continue further day by day to wait upon Him in prayer,
concerning this thing, till He shall bid me act.

‘Jan. 2, 1851.—A week ago I wrote the preceding paragraph. During this week
I have still been helped day by day, and more than once every day, to seek
the guidance of the Lord about another Orphan House. The burden of my
prayer has still been, that He in His great mercy would keep me from making
a mistake. During the last week the book of Proverbs has come in the course
of my Scripture reading, and my heart has been refreshed in reference to
this subject by the following passages: “Trust in the Lord with all thine
heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways
acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths” (Prov. iii. 5, 6). By the
grace of God I do acknowledge the Lord in all my ways, and in this thing in
particular; I have therefore the comfortable assurance that He will direct
my paths concerning this part of my service, as to whether I shall be
occupied in it our not. Further: “The integrity of the upright shall
preserve them” (Prov. xi. 3). By the grace of God I am upright in this
business. My honest purpose is to get glory to God. Therefore I expect to
be guided aright. Further: “Commit thy works unto the Lord, and thy
thoughts shall be established” (Prov. xvi. 3). I do commit my works unto
the Lord, and therefore expect that my thoughts will be established. My
heart is more and more coming to a calm, quiet, and settled assurance, that
the Lord will condescend to use me still further in the orphan work. Here
Lord is Thy servant.’

When later he decided to build two additional houses, Nos. 4 and 5, he
writes thus again:—

‘Twelve days have passed away since I wrote the last paragraph. I have
still day by day been enabled to wait upon the Lord with reference to
enlarging the Orphan work, and have been during the whole of this period
also in perfect peace, which is the result of seeking in this thing only the
Lord’s honour and the temporal and spiritual benefit of my fellow-men.
Without an effort could I by His grace put aside all thoughts about this
whole affair, if only assured that it is the will of God that I should do
so; and, on the other hand, would at once go forward, if He would have it be
so. I have still kept this matter entirely to myself. Though it be now
about seven weeks, since day by day, more or less, my mind has been
exercised about it, and since I have been daily praying about it, yet not
one human being knows of it. As yet I have not even mentioned it to my dear
wife in order that thus, by quietly waiting upon God, I might not be
influenced by what might be said to me on the subject. This evening has
been particularly set apart for prayer, beseeching the Lord once more not to
allow me to be mistaken in this thing, and much less to be deluded by the
devil. I have also sought to let all the reasons against building another
Orphan House, and all the reasons for doing so pass before my mind: and now
for the clearness and definiteness, write them down. . . .

‘Much, however, as the nine previous reasons weigh with me, yet they would
not decide me were there not one more. It is this. After having for months
pondered the matter, and having looked at it in all its bearings and with
all its difficulties, and then having been finally led, after much prayer,
to decide on this enlargement, my mind is at peace. The child who has again
and again besought His Heavenly Father not to allow him to be deluded, nor
even to make a mistake, is at peace, perfectly at peace concerning this
decision; and has thus the assurance that the decision come to, after much
prayer during weeks and months, is the leading of the Holy Spirit; and
therefore purposes to go forward, assuredly believing that he will not be
confounded, for he trusts in God. Many and great may be his difficulties;
thousands and ten thousands of prayers may have ascended to God, before the
full answer may be obtained; much exercise of faith and patience may be
required; but in the end it will again be seen, that His servant, who trusts
in Him, has not been confounded.’

PRAYER AND THE GLORY OF GOD.

We have sought more than once to enforce the truth, that while we ordinarily
seek the reasons of our prayers not being heard in the thing we ask not
being according to the will of God, Scripture warns us to find the cause in
ourselves, in our not being in the right state or not asking in the right
spirit. The thing may be in full accordance with His will, but the asking,
the spirit of the supplicant, not; then we are not heard. As the great root
of all sin is self and self-seeking, so there is nothing that even in our
more spiritual desires so effectually hinders God in answering as this: we
pray for our own pleasure or glory. Prayer to have power and prevail must
ask for the glory of God; and he can only do this as he is living for God’s
glory.

In George Muller we have one of the most remarkable instances on record of
God’s Holy Spirit leading a man deliberately and systematically, at the
outset of a course of prayer, to make the glorifying of God his first and
only object. Let us ponder well what he says, and learn the lesson God
would teach us through him:—

‘I had constantly cases brought before me, which proved that one of the
especial things which the children of God needed in our day, was to have
their faith strengthened.

‘I longed, therefore, to have something to point my brethren to, as a
visible proof that our God and Father is the same faithful God as ever He
was; as willing as ever to PROVE Himself to be the LIVING GOD in our day as
formerly, to all who put their trust in Him.

‘My spirit longed to be instrumental in strengthening their faith, by giving
them not only instances from the word of God, of His willingness and ability
to help all who rely upon Him, but to show them by proofs that He is the
same in our day. I knew that the word of God ought to be enough, and it was
by grace enough for me; but still I considered I ought to lend a helping
hand to my brethren.

‘I therefore judged myself bound to be the servant of the Church of Christ,
in the particular point in which I had obtained mercy; namely, in being able
to take God at His word and rely upon it. The first object of the work was,
and is still: that God might be magnified by the fact that the orphans
under my care are provided with all they need, only by prayer and faith,
without any one being asked; thereby it may be seen that God is FAITHFUL
STILL, AND HEARS PRAYER STILL.

‘I have again these last days prayed much about the Orphan House, and have
frequently examined my heart; that if it were at all my desire to establish
it for the sake of gratifying myself, I might find it out. For as I desire
only the Lord’s glory, I shall be glad to be instructed by the
instrumentality of my brother, if the matter be not of Him.

‘When I began the Orphan work in 1835, my chief object was the glory of God,
by giving a practical demonstration as to what could be accomplished simply
through the instrumentality of prayer and faith, in order thus to benefit
the Church at large, and to lead a careless world to see the reality of the
things of God, by showing them in this work, that the living God is still,
as 4000 years ago, the living God. This my aim has been abundantly
honoured. Multitudes of sinners have been thus converted, multitudes of the
children of God in all parts of the world have been benefited by this work,
even as I had anticipated. But the larger the work as grown, the greater
has been the blessing, bestowed in the very way in which I looked for
blessing: for the attention of hundreds of thousands has been drawn to the
work; and many tens of thousands have come to see it. All this leads me to
desire further and further to labour on in this way, in order to bring yet
greater glory to the Name of the Lord. That He may be looked at, magnified,
admired, trusted in, relied on at all times, is my aim in this service; and
so particularly in this intended enlargement. That it may be seen how much
one poor man, simply by trusting in God, can bring about by prayer; and that
thus other children of God may be led to carry on the work of God in
dependence upon Him; and that children of God may be led increasingly to
trust in Him in their individual positions and circumstances, therefore I am
led to this further enlargement.’

PRAYER AND TRUST IN GOD.

There are other points on which I would be glad to point out what is to be
found in Mr. Muller’s narrative, but one more must suffice. It is the
lesson of firm and unwavering trust in God’s promise as the secret of
persevering prayer. If once we have, in submission to the teaching of the
Spirit in the word, taken hold of God’s promise, and believed that the
Father has heard us, we must not allow ourselves by any delay or
unfavourable appearances be shaken in our faith.

‘The full answer to my daily prayers was far from being realized; yet there
was abundant encouragement granted by the Lord, to continue in prayer. But
suppose, even, that far less had come in than was received, still, after
having come to the conclusion, upon scriptural grounds, after much prayer
and self-examination, I ought to have gone on without wavering, in the
exercise of faith and patience concerning this object; and thus all the
children of God, when once satisfied that anything which they bring before
God in prayer, is according to His will, ought to continue in believing,
expecting, persevering prayer until the blessing is granted. Thus am I
myself now waiting upon God for certain blessings, for which I have daily
besought Him for ten years and six months without one day’s intermission.
Still the full answer is not yet given concerning the conversion of certain
individuals, though in the meantime I have received many thousands of
answers to prayer. I have also prayed daily without intermission for the
conversion of other individuals about ten years, for others six or seven
years, for others from three or two years; and still the answer is not yet
granted concerning those persons, while in the meantime many thousands of my
prayers have been answered, and also souls converted, for whom I had been
praying. I lay particular stress on this for the benefit of those who may
suppose that I need only to ask of God, and receive at once; or that I might
pray concerning anything, and the answer would surely come. One can only
expect to obtain answers to prayers which are according to the mind of God;
and even then, patience and faith may be exercised for many years, even as
mine are exercised, in the matter to which I have referred; and yet am I
daily continuing in prayer, and expecting the answer, and so surely
expecting the answer, that I have often thanked God that He will surely give
it, though now for nineteen years faith and patience have thus been
exercised. Be encouraged, dear Christians, with fresh earnestness to give
yourselves to prayer, if you can only be sure that you ask things which are
for the glory of God.

‘But the most remarkable point is this, that £6, 6s. 6d. from Scotland
supplied me, as far as can be known now, with all the means necessary for
fitting up and promoting the New Orphan Houses. Six years and eight months
I have been day by day, and generally several times daily, asking the Lord
to give me the needed means for this enlargement of the Orphan work, which,
according to calculations made in the spring of 1861, appeared to be about
fifty thousand pounds: the total of this amount I had now received. I
praise and magnify the Lord for putting this enlargement of the work into my
heart, and for giving me courage and faith for it; and above all, for
sustaining my faith day by day without wavering. When the last portion of
the money was received, I was no more assured concerning the whole, that I
was at the time I had not received one single donation towards this large
sum. I was at the beginning, after once having ascertained His mind,
through most patient and heart-searching waiting upon God, as fully assured
that He would bring it about, as if the two houses, with their hundreds of
orphans occupying them, had been already before me. I make a few remarks
here for the sake of young believers in connection with this subject: 1.
Be slow to take new steps in the Lord’s service, or in your business, or in
your families: weigh everything well; weigh all in the light of the Holy
Scriptures and in the fear of God. 2. Seek to have no will of your own, in
order to ascertain the mind of God, regarding any steps you propose taking,
so that you can honestly say you are willing to do the will of God, if He
will only please to instruct you. 3. But when you have found out what the
will of God is, seek for His help, and seek it earnestly, perseveringly,
patiently, believingly, expectantly; and you will surely in His own time and
way obtain it.

‘To suppose that we have difficulty about money only would be a mistake:
there occur hundreds of other wants and of other difficulties. It is a rare
thing that a day occurs without some difficulty or some want; but often
there are many difficulties and many wants to be met and overcome the same
day. All these are met by prayer and faith, our universal remedy; and we
have never been confounded. Patient, persevering, believing prayer, offered
up to God, in the Name of the Lord Jesus, has always, sooner or later,
brought the blessing. I do not despair, by God’s grace, of obtaining any
blessing, provided I can be sure it would be for any real good, and for the
glory of God.

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