With Christ in the School of Prayer

[Soldier4Christ]

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.

[Soldier4Christ]

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.

[Soldier4Christ]

‘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.

[Soldier4Christ]

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.

[Soldier4Christ]

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.

[Soldier4Christ]

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.

[Soldier4Christ]

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.

[Soldier4Christ]

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.

[Soldier4Christ]

‘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.

[Soldier4Christ]

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.’

[Soldier4Christ]

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.

[Soldier4Christ]

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.

[Soldier4Christ]

   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.

[Soldier4Christ]

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.

[Soldier4Christ]

   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.