With Christ in the School of Prayer

[Soldier4Christ]

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.

[Soldier4Christ]

   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.

[Soldier4Christ]

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.’

[Soldier4Christ]

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.

[Soldier4Christ]

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.

[Soldier4Christ]

   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.

[Soldier4Christ]

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.’

[Soldier4Christ]

   ‘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.

[Soldier4Christ]

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.

[Soldier4Christ]

   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.

[Soldier4Christ]

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.

[Soldier4Christ]

   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.’

[Soldier4Christ]

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.

[Soldier4Christ]

   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.

[Soldier4Christ]

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.