With Christ in the School of Prayer

[Soldier4Christ]

   In the Apostle Paul we see very distinctly what a reality his faith in the
   power of united prayer was.  To the Romans he writes (xv. 30):  ‘I beseech
   you, brethren, by the love of the Spirit, that ye strive together with me in
   your prayer to God for me.’  He expects in answer to be delivered from his
   enemies, and to be prospered in his work.  To the Corinthians (2 Cor. i.
   11), ‘God will still deliver us, ye also helping together on our behalf by
   your supplications;’ their prayer is to have a real share in his
   deliverance.  To the Ephesians he writes:  ‘With all prayer and supplication
   praying at all seasons in the Spirit for all the saints and on my behalf,
   that utterance may be given unto me.’  His power and success in his ministry
   he makes to depend on their prayers.  With the Philippians (i. 19) he
   expects that his trials will turn to his salvation and the progress of the
   gospel ‘through your supplications and  the supply of the spirit of Jesus
   Christ.;  To the Colossians (iv. 3) he adds to the injunction to continue
   stedfast in prayer:  ‘Withal praying for us too, that God may open unto us a
   door for the word.’  And to the Thessalonians (2 Thess. iii. 1) he writes:
   ‘Finally, brethren, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may run and be
   glorified, and that we may be delivered from unreasonable men.’  It is
   everywhere evident that Paul felt himself the member of a body, on the
   sympathy and co-operation of which he was dependent, and that he counted on
   the prayers of these Churches to gain for him, what otherwise might not be
   given.  The prayers of the Church were to him as real a factor in the work
   of the kingdom, as the power of God.

   Who can say what power a Church could develop and exercise, if it gave
   itself to the work of prayer day and night for the coming of the kingdom,
   for God’s power on His servants and His word, for the glorifying of God in
   the salvation of souls?  Most Churches think their members are gathered into
   one simply to take care of and build up each other.  They know not that God
   rules the world by the prayers of His saints; that prayer is the power by
   which Satan is conquered; that by prayer the Church on earth has disposal of
   the powers of the heavenly world.  They do not remember that Jesus has, by
   His promise, consecrated every assembly in His Name to be a gate of heaven,
   where His Presence is to be felt, and His Power experienced in the Father
   fulfilling their desires.

   We cannot sufficiently thank God for the blessed week of united prayer, with
   which Christendom in our days opens every year.  As proof of our unity and
   our faith in the power of united prayer, as a training-school for the
   enlargement of our hearts to take in all the needs of the Church universal,
   as a help to united persevering prayer, it is of unspeakable value.  But
   very specially as a stimulus to continued union in prayer in the smaller
   circles, its blessing has been great.  And it will become even greater, as
   God’s people recognise what it is, all to meet as one in the Name of Jesus
   to have His presence in the midst of a body all united in the Holy Spirit,
   and boldly to claim the promise that it shall be done of the Father what
   they agree to ask.

   ‘LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY’


   Blessed Lord! who didst in Thy high-priestly prayer ask so earnestly for the
   unity of Thy people, teach us how Thou dost invite and urge us to this unity
   by Thy precious promise given to united prayer.  It is when we are one in
   love and desire that our faith has Thy presence and the Father’s answer.

   O Father! we pray for Thy people, and for every smaller circle of those who
   meet together, that they may be one.  Remove, we pray, all selfishness and
   self-interest, all narrowness of heart and estrangement, by which that unity
   is hindered.  Cast out the spirit of the world and the flesh, through which
   Thy promise loses all its power.  O let the though of Thy presence and the
   Father’s favour draw us all nearer to each other.

   Grant especially Blessed Lord, that Thy Church may believe that it is by the
   power of united prayer that she can bind and loose in heaven; that Satan can
   be cast out; that souls can be saved; that mountains can be removed; that
   the kingdom can be hastened.  And grant, good Lord! that in the circle with
   which I pray, the prayer of the Church may indeed be the power through which
   Thy Name and Word are glorified.  Amen.

[Soldier4Christ]

SIXTEENTH LESSON.

  ‘Speedily, though bearing long;’

  Or,    The Power of Persevering Prayer.

   ‘And He spake a parable unto them to the end that they ought always to pray,
   and not to faint. . . . And the Lord said, Hear what the unrighteous judge
   saith.  And shall not God avenge His own elect, which cry to Him day and
   night, and He is long-suffering over them?  I say unto you, that He will
   avenge them speedily.’—Luke xviii. 108.

   OF all the mysteries of the prayer world, the need of persevering prayer is
   one of the greatest.  That the Lord, who is so loving and longing to bless,
   should have to be supplicated time after time, sometimes year after year,
   before the answer comes, we cannot easily understand.  It is also one of the
   greatest practical difficulties in the exercise of believing prayer.  When,
   after persevering supplication, our prayer remains unanswered, it is often
   easiest for our slothful flesh, and it has all the appearance of pious
   submission, to think that we must now cease praying, because God may have
   His secret reason for withholding His answer to our request.

   It is by faith alone that the difficulty is overcome.  When once faith has
   taken its stand upon God’s word, and the Name of Jesus, and has yielded
   itself to the leading of the Spirit to seek God’s will and honour alone in
   its prayer, it need not be discouraged by delay.  It knows from Scripture
   that the power of believing prayer is simply irresistible; real faith can
   never be disappointed.  It knows how, just as water, to exercise the
   irresistible power it can have, must be gathered up and accumulated, until
   the stream can come down in full force, there must often be a heaping up of
   prayer, until God sees that the measure is full, and the answer comes.  It
   knows how, just as the ploughman has to take his ten thousand steps, and sow
   his ten thousand seeds, each one a part of the preparation for the final
   harvest, so there is a need-be for oft-repeated persevering prayer, all
   working out some desired blessing.  It knows for certain that not a single
   believing prayer can fail of its effect in heaven, but has its influence,
   and is treasured up to work out an answer in due time to him who persevereth
   to the end.  It knows that it has to do not with human thoughts or
   possibilities, but with the word of the living God.  And so even as Abraham
   through so many years ‘in hope believed against hope,’ and then ‘through
   faith and patience inherited the promise,’ it counts that the long-suffering
   of the Lord is salvation, waiting and hasting unto the coming of its Lord to
   fulfil His promise.

   To enable us, when the answer to our prayer does not come at once, to
   combine quiet patience and joyful confidence in our persevering prayer, we
   must specially try to understand the two words in which our Lord sets forth
   the character and conduct, not of the unjust judge, but of our God and
   Father towards those whom He allows to cry day and night to Him:  ‘He is
   long-suffering over them; He will avenge them speedily.’

   He will avenge them speedily, the Master says.  The blessing is all
   prepared; He is not only willing but most anxious to give them what they
   ask; everlasting love burns with the longing desire to reveal itself fully
   to its beloved, and to satisfy their needs.  God will not delay one moment
   longer than is absolutely necessary; He will do all in His power to hasten
   and speed the answer.

   But why, if this be true and His power be infinite, does it often last so
   long with the answer to prayer?  And why must God’s own elect so often, in
   the midst of suffering and conflict, cry day and night?  ‘He is
    long-suffering over them.’  ‘Behold! the husbandman waiteth for the
   precious fruit of the earth, being long-suffering over it, till it receive
   the early and the latter rain.’  The husbandman does indeed long for his
   harvest, but knows that it must have its full time of sunshine and rain, and
   has long patience.  A child so often wants to pick the half-ripe fruit; the
   husbandman knows to wait till the proper time.  Man, in his spiritual nature
   too, is under the law of gradual growth that reigns in all created life.  It
   is only in the path of development that he can reach his divine destiny.
   And it is the Father, in whose hands are the times and seasons, who alone
   knows the moment when the soul or the Church is ripened to that fulness of
   faith in which it can really take and keep the blessing.  As a father who
   longs to have his only child home from school, and yet waits patiently till
   the time of training is completed, so it is with God and His children:  He
   is the long-suffering One, and answers speedily.

   The insight into this truth leads the believer to cultivate the
   corresponding dispositions:  patience and faith, waiting and hasting, are
   the secret of his perseverance.  By faith in the promise of God, we know
   that we have the petitions we have asked of Him.  Faith takes and holds the
   answer in the promise, as an unseen spiritual possession, rejoices in it,
   and praises for it.  But there is a difference between the faith that thus
   holds the word and knows that it has the answer, and the clearer, fuller,
   riper faith that obtains the promise as a present experience.  It is in
   persevering, not unbelieving, but confident and praising prayer, that the
   soul grows up into that full union with its Lord in which it can enter upon
   the possession of the blessing in Him.  There may be in these around us,
   there may be in that great system of being of which we are part, there may
   be in God’s government, things that have to be put right through our prayer,
   ere the answer can fully come:  the faith that has, according to the
   command, believed that it has received, can allow God to take His time:  it
   knows it has prevailed and must prevail.  In quiet, persistent, and
   determined perseverance it continues in prayer and thanksgiving until the
   blessing come.  And so we see combined what at first sight appears so
   contradictory; the faith that rejoices in the answer of the unseen God as a
   present possession, with the patience that cries day and night until it be
   revealed.  The speedily of God’s long-suffering is met by the triumphant but
   patient faith of His waiting child.

[Soldier4Christ]

   Our great danger in this school of the answer delayed, is the temptation to
   think that, after all, it may not be God’s will to give us what we ask.  If
   our prayer be according to God’s word, and under the leading of the Spirit,
   let us not give way to these fears.  Let us learn to give God time.  God
   needs time with us.  If we only give Him time, that is, time in the daily
   fellowship with Himself, for Him to exercise the full influence of His
   presence on us, and time, day by day, in the course of our being kept
   waiting, for faith to prove its reality and to fill our whole being, He
   Himself will lead us from faith to vision; we shall see the glory of God.
   Let no delay shake our faith.  Of faith it holds good:  first the blade,
   then the ear, then the full corn in the ear.  Each believing prayer brings a
   step nearer the final victory.  Each believing prayer helps to ripen the
   fruit and bring us nearer to it; it fills up the measure of prayer and faith
   known to God alone; it conquers the hindrances in the unseen world; it
   hastens the end.  Child of God! give the Father time.  He is long-suffering
   over you.  He wants the blessing to be rich, and full, and sure; give Him
   time, while you cry day and night.  Only remember the word:  ‘I say unto
   you, He will avenge them speedily.’

   The blessing of such persevering prayer is unspeakable.  There is nothing so
   heart-searching as the prayer of faith.  It teaches you to discover and
   confess, and give up everything that hinders the coming of the blessing;
   everything there may be not in accordance with the Father’s will.  It leads
   to closer fellowship with Him who alone can teach to pray, to a more entire
   surrender to draw nigh under no covering but that of the blood, and the
   Spirit.  It calls to a closer and more simple abiding in Christ alone.
   Christian! give God time.  He will perfect that which concerneth you.
   ‘Long-suffering—speedily,’ this is God’s watchword as you enter the gates of
   prayer:  be it yours too.

   Let it be thus whether you pray for yourself, or for others.  All labour,
   bodily or mental, needs time and effort:  we must give up ourselves to it.
   Nature discovers her secrets and yields her treasures only to diligent and
   thoughtful labour.  However little we can understand it, in the spiritual
   husbandry it is the same:  the seed we sow in the soil of heaven, the
   efforts we put forth, and the influence we seek to exert in the world above,
   need our whole being:  we must give ourselves to prayer.  But let us hold
   fast the great confidence, that in due season we shall reap, if we faint
   not.

   And let us specially learn the lesson as we pray for the Church of Christ.
   She is indeed as the poor widow, in the absence of her Lord, apparently at
   the mercy of her adversary, helpless to obtain redress.  Let us, when we
   pray for His Church or any portion of it, under the power of the world,
   asking Him to visit her with the mighty workings of His Spirit and to
   prepare her for His coming, let us pray in the assured faith:  prayer does
   help, praying always and not fainting will bring the answer.  Only give God
   time.  And then keep crying day and night.  ‘Hear what the unrighteous judge
   saith.  And shall not God avenge His own elect, which cry to Him day and
   night, and He is long-suffering over them.  I say unto you, He will avenge
   them speedily.’

   ‘LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY.’


   O Lord my God!  teach me now to know Thy way, and in faith to apprehend what
   Thy Beloved Son has taught:  ‘He will avenge them speedily.’  Let Thy tender
   love, and the delight Thou hast in hearing and blessing Thy children, lead
   me implicitly to accept Thy promise, that we receive what we believe, that
   we have the petitions we ask, and that the answer will in due time be seen.
   Lord! we understand the seasons in nature, and know to wait with patience
   for the fruit we long for—O fill us with the assurance that not one moment
   longer than is needed wilt Thou delay, and that faith will hasten the
   answer.

   Blessed Master! Thou hast said that it is a sign of God’s elect that they
   cry day and night.  O teach us to understand this.  Thou knowest how
   speedily we grow faint and weary.  It is as if the Divine Majesty is so much
   beyond the need or the reach of continued supplication, that it does not
   become us to be too importunate.  O Lord! do teach me how real the labour of
   prayer is.  I know how here on earth, when I have failed in an undertaking,
   I can often succeed by renewed and more continuing effort, by giving more
   time and thought:  show me how, by giving myself more entirely to prayer, to
   live in prayer, I shall obtain what I ask.  And above all, O my blessed
   Teacher! Author and perfecter of faith, let by Thy grace my whole life be
   one of faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me—in whom
   my prayer gains acceptance, in whom I have the assurance of the answer, in
   whom the answer will be mine.  Lord Jesus! in this faith I will pray always
   and not faint.  Amen.

   NOTE

   The need of persevering importunate prayer appears to some to be at variance
   with the faith which knows that it has received what it asks (Mark xi. 24).
   One of the mysteries of the Divine life is the harmony between the gradual
   and the sudden, immediate full possession, and slow imperfect
   appropriation.  And so here persevering prayer appears to be the school in
   which the soul is strengthened for the boldness of faith.  And with the
   diversity of operations of the Spirit there may be some in whom faith takes
   more the form of persistent waiting; while to others, triumphant
   thanksgiving appears the only proper expressions of the assurance of having
   been heard.

   

[Soldier4Christ]

In a remarkable way the need of persevering prayer, and the gradual rising
   into greater ease in obtaining answer, is illustrated in the life of
   Blumhardt.  Complaints had been lodged against him of neglecting his work as
   a minister of the gospel, and devoting himself to the healing of the sick;
   and especially his unauthorized healing of the sick belonging to other
   congregations.  In his defense he writes:  ‘I simply ventured to do what
   becomes one who has the charge of souls, and to pray according to the
   command of the Lord in James i. 6, 7.  In no way did I trust to my own
   power, or imagine that I had any gift that others had not.  But this is
   true, I set myself to the work as a minister of the gospel, who has a right
   to pray.  But I speedily discovered that the gates of heaven were not fully
   opened to me.  Often I was inclined to retire in despair.  But the sight of
   the sick ones, who could find help nowhere, gave me no rest.  I thought of
   the word of the Lord:  “Ask, and it shall be given you” (Luke xi. 9, 10).
   And farther, I thought that if the Church and her ministers had, through
   unbelief, sloth, and disobedience lost what was needed for overcoming of the
   power of Satan, it was just for such times of leanness and famine that the
   Lord had spoken the parable of the friend at midnight and his three loaves.
   I felt that I was not worthy thus at midnight, in a time of great darkness,
   to appear before God as His friend and ask for a member of my congregation
   what he needed.  And yet, to leave him uncared for, I could not either.  And
   so I kept knocking, as the parable directs, or, as some have said, with
   great presumption and tempting God.  Be this as it may, I could not leave my
   guest unprovided.  At this time the parable of the widow became very
   precious to me.  I saw that the Church was the widow, and I was a minister
   of the Church.  I had the right to be her mouthpiece against the adversary;
   but for a long time the Lord would not.  I asked nothing more than the three
   loaves; what I needed for my guest.  At last the Lord listened to the
   importunate beggar, and helped me.  Was it wrong of me to pray thus?  The
   two parables must surely be applicable somewhere, and where was greater need
   to be conceived?

   And what was the fruit of my prayer?  The friend who was at first unwilling,
   did not say, Go now; I will myself give to your friend what he needs; I do
   not require you; but gave it to me as His friend, to give to my guest.  And
   so I used the three loaves, and had to spare.  But the supply was small, and
   new guests came; because they saw I had a heart to help them, and that I
   would take the trouble even at midnight to go to my friend.  When I asked
   for them, too, I got the needful again, and there was again to spare.  How
   could I help that the needy continually came to my house?  Was I to harden
   myself, and say, What do you come to me?  there are large and better homes
   in the city, go there.  Their answer was, Dear sir, we cannot go there.  We
   have been there:  they were very sorry to send us away so hungry, but they
   could not undertake to go and ask a friend for what we wanted.  Do go, and
   get us bread for we suffer great pain.  What could I do?  They spoke the
   truth, and their suffering touched my heart.  However much labour it cost
   me, I went each time again, and got the three loaves.  Often I got what I
   asked much quicker than at first, and also much more abundantly.  But all
   did not care for this bread, so some left my home hungry.’^1

   In his first struggles with the evil spirits, it took him more than eighteen
   months of prayer and labour before the final victory was gained.  Afterwards
   he had such ease of access to the throne, and stood in such close
   communication with the unseen world, that often, with letters came asking
   prayer for sick people, he could, after just looking upward for a single
   moment, obtain the answer as to whether they would be healed.

   ^1From Johann Christophe Blumhardt, Ein Lebenabild von F. Etindel.

[Soldier4Christ]

SEVENTEENTH LESSON.

  ‘I know that Thou hearest me always;’

  Or          Prayer in harmony with the being of God.

   ‘Father, I thank Thee that Thou heardest me.  And I knew that Thou hearest
   me always.’—John xi. 41, 42.

   ‘Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten Thee.  Ask of me, and I shall
   give Thee.’—Ps. ii. 7, 8.

   IN the New Testament we find a distinction made between faith and
   knowledge.  ‘To one is given, through the Spirit, the word of  wisdom; to
   another the word of knowledge, according to the same Spirit; to another
   faith, in the same Spirit.’  In a child or a simple-minded Christian there
   may be much faith with little knowledge.  Childlike simplicity accepts the
   truth without difficulty, and often cares little to give itself or others
   any reason for its faith but this:  God has said.  But it is the will of God
   that we should love and serve Him, not only with all the heart but also with
   all the mind; that we should grow up into an insight into the Divine wisdom
   and beauty of all His ways and words and works.  It is only thus that the
   believer will be able fully to approach and rightly to adore the glory of
   God’s grace; and only thus that our heart can intelligently apprehend the
   treasures of wisdom and knowledge there are in redemption, and be prepared
   to enter fully into the highest note of the song that rises before the
   throne:  ‘O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of
   God!’

   In our prayer life this truth has its full application.  While prayer and
   faith are so simple that the new-born convert can pray with power, true
   Christian science finds in the doctrine of prayer some of its deepest
   problems.  In how far is the power of prayer a reality?  If so, how God can
   grant to prayer such mighty power?  How can the action of prayer be
   harmonized with the will and the decrees of God?  How can God’s sovereignty
   and our will, God’s liberty and ours, be reconciled?—these and other like
   questions are fit subjects for Christian meditation and inquiry.  The more
   earnestly and reverently we approach such mysteries, the more shall we in
   adoring wonder fall down to praise Him who hath in prayer given such power
   to man.

   One of the secret difficulties with regard to prayer,—one which, though not
   expressed, does often really hinder prayer,—is derived from the perfection
   of God, in His absolute independence of all that is outside of Himself.  Is
   He not the Infinite Being, who owes what He is to Himself alone, who
   determines Himself, and whose wise and holy will has determined all that is
   to be?  How can prayer influence Him, or He be moved by prayer to do what
   otherwise would not be done?  Is not the promise of an answer to prayer
   simply a condescension to our weakness?  Is what is said of the power—the
   much-availing power—of prayer anything more than an accommodation to our
   mode of thought, because the Deity never can be dependent on any action from
   without for its doings?  And is not the blessing of prayer simply the
   influence it exercises upon ourselves?

   In seeking an answer to such questions, we find the key in the very being of
   God, in the mystery of the Holy Trinity.  If God was only one Person, shut
   up within Himself, there could be no thought of nearness to Him or influence
   on Him.  But in God there are three Persons.  In God we have Father and Son,
   who have in the Holy Spirit their living bond of unity and fellowship.  When
   eternal Love begat the Son, and the Father gave the Son as the Second Person
   a place next Himself as His Equal and His Counsellor, there was a way opened
   for prayer and its influence in the very inmost life of Deity itself.  Just
   as on earth, so in heaven the whole relation between Father and Son is that
   of giving and taking.  And if that taking is to be as voluntary and
   self-determined as the giving, there must be on the part of the Son an
   asking and receiving.  In the holy fellowship of the Divine Persons, this
   asking of the Son was one of the great operations of the Thrice Blessed Life
   of God.  Hence we have it in Psalm ii.:  ‘This day I have begotten Thee:
   ask of me and I will give Thee.’  The Father gave the Son the place and the
   power to act upon Him.  The asking of the Son was no mere show or shadow,
   but one of those life-movements in which the love of the Father and the Son
   met and completed each other.  The Father had determined that He should not
   be alone in His counsels:  there was a Son on whose asking and accepting
   their fulfilment should depend.  And so there was in the very Being and Life
   of God an asking of which prayer on earth was to be the reflection and the
   outflow.  It was not without including this that Jesus said, “I knew that
   Thou always hearest me.’  Just as the Sonship of Jesus on earth may not be
   separated from His Sonship in heaven, even so with His prayer on earth, it
   is the continuation and the counterpart of His asking in heaven.  The prayer
   of the man Christ Jesus is the link between the eternal asking of the
   only-begotten Son in the bosom of the Father and the prayer of men upon
   earth.  Prayer has its rise and its deepest source in the very Being of
   God.  In the bosom of Deity nothing is ever done without prayer—the asking
   of the Son and the giving of the Father.^1

   This may help us somewhat to understand how the prayer of man, coming
   through the Son, can have effect upon God.  The decrees of God are not
   decisions made by Him without reference to the Son, or His petition, or the
   petition to be sent up through Him.  By no means.  The Lord Jesus is the
   first-begotten, the Head and Heir of all things:  all things were created
   through Him and unto Him, and all things consist in Him.  In the counsels of
   the Father, the Son, as Representative of all creation, had always a voice;
   in the decrees of the eternal purpose there was always room left for the
   liberty of the Son as Mediator and Intercessor, and so for the petitions of
   all who draw nigh to the Father in the Son.

   And if the thought come that this liberty and power of the Son to act upon
   the Father is at variance with the immutability of the Divine decrees, let
   us not forget that there is not with God as with man, a past by which He is
   irrevocably bound.  God does not live in time with its past and future; the
   distinctions of time have no reference to Him who inhabits Eternity.  And
   Eternity is an ever-present Now, in which the past is never past, and the
   future always present.  To meet our human weakness, Scripture must speak of
   past decrees, and a coming future.  In reality, the immutability of God’s
   counsel is ever still in perfect harmony with His liberty to do whatsoever
   He will.  Not so were the prayers of the Son and His people taken up into
   the eternal decrees that their effect should only be an apparent one; but
   so, that the Father-heart holds itself open and free to listen to every
   prayer that rises through the Son, and that God does indeed allow Himself to
   be decided by prayer to do what He otherwise would not have done.

[Soldier4Christ]

   This perfect harmony and union of Divine Sovereignty and human liberty is to
   us an unfathomable mystery, because God as THE ETERNAL ONE transcends all
   our thoughts.  But let it be our comfort and strength to be assured that in
   the eternal fellowship of the Father and the Son, the power of prayer has
   its origin and certainty, and that through our union with the Son, our
   prayer is taken up and can have its influence in the inner life of the
   Blessed Trinity.  God’s decrees are no iron framework against which man’s
   liberty would vainly seek to struggle.  No.  God Himself is the Living Love,
   who in His Son as man has entered into the tenderest relation with all that
   is human, who through the Holy Spirit takes up all that is human into the
   Divine life of love, and keeps Himself free to give every human prayer its
   place in His government of the world.

   It is in the daybreak light of such thoughts that the doctrine of the
   Blessed Trinity no longer is an abstract speculation, but the living
   manifestation of the way in which it were possible for man to be taken up
   into the fellowship of God, and his prayer to become a real factor in God’s
   rule of this earth.  And we can, as in the distance, catch glimpses of the
   light that from the eternal world shines out on words such as these:
   ‘THROUGH HIM we have access BY ONE SPIRIT unto THE FATHER.’

   ‘LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY.’

   ——0——

   Everlasting God!  the Three-One and Thrice Holy!  in deep reverence would I
   with veiled face worship before the holy mystery of Thy Divine Being.  And
   if it please Thee, O most glorious God, to unveil aught of that mystery, I
   would bow with fear and trembling, lest I sin against Thee, as I meditate on
   Thy glory.

   Father!  I thank Thee that Thou bearest this name not only as the Father of
   Thy children here on earth, but as having from eternity subsisted as the
   Father with Thine only-begotten Son.  I thank Thee that as Father Thou canst
   hear our prayer, because Thou hast from eternity given a place in Thy
   counsels to the asking of Thy Son.  I thank Thee that we have seen in Him on
   earth, what the blessed intercourse was He had with Thee in heaven; and how
   from eternity in all Thy counsels and decrees there had been room left for
   His prayer and their answers.  And I thank Thee above all that through His
   true human nature on Thy throne above, and through Thy Holy Spirit in our
   human nature here below, a way has been opened up by which every human cry
   of need can be taken up into and touch the Life and the Love of God, and
   receive in answer whatsoever it shall ask.

   Blessed Jesus!  in whom as the Son the path of prayer has been opened up,
   and who givest us assurance of the answer, we beseech Thee, teach Thy people
   to pray.  O let this each day be the sign of our sonship, that, like Thee,
   we know that the Father heareth us always.  Amen.

   NOTE.

   ‘”God hears prayer.”  This simplest view of prayer is taken throughout
   Scripture.  It dwells not on the reflex influence of prayer on our heart and
   life, although it abundantly shows the connection between prayer as an act,
   and prayer as a state.  It rather fixes with great definiteness the
   objective or real purposes of prayer, to obtain blessing, gifts,
   deliverances from God.  ‘Ask and it shall be given,” Jesus says.

   ‘However true and valuable the reflection may be, that God, foreseeing and
   foreordaining all things, has also foreseen and foreordained our prayers as
   links in the chain of events, of cause and effect, as a real power, yet we
   feel convinced that this is not the light in which the mind can find peace
   in this great subject, nor do we think that here is the attractive power to
   draw us in prayer.  We feel rather that such a reflection diverts the
   attention from the Object whence comes the impulse, life, and strength of
   prayer.  The living God, cotemporary and not merely eternal,^1 the living,
   merciful, holy One, God manifesting Himself to the soul, God saying, “Seek
   my face;” this is the magnet that draws us, this alone can open heart and
   lips. . .

   ‘In Jesus Christ the Son of God we have the full solution of the
   difficulty.  He prayed on earth, and that not merely as man, but as the Son
   of God incarnate.  His prayer on earth is only the manifestation of His
   prayer from all eternity, when in the Divine counsel He was set up as the
   Christ. . . . The Son was appointed to be heir of all things.  From all
   eternity the Son of God was the Way, the Mediator.  He was, to use our
   imperfect language, from eternity speaking unto the Father on behalf of the
   world.’—SAPHIR, The Hidden Life, chap. vi.  See also The Lord’s Prayer, p.
   12.

   ^1Should it not rather be cotemporary, because eternal, in the proper
   meaning of this latter word?

[Soldier4Christ]

EIGHTEENTH LESSON

  ‘Whose is this image?’

  Or,          Prayer in Harmony with the Destiny of Man.

   ‘He saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription?—Matt. xxi. 20.

   ‘And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.’—Gen. i.
   26.

   ‘WHOSE is this image?’  It was by this question that Jesus foiled His
   enemies, when they thought to take Him, and settled the matter of duty in
   regard to the tribute.  The question and the principle it involves are of
   universal application.  Nowhere more truly than in man himself.  The image
   he bears decides his destiny.  Bearing God’s image, he belongs to God:
   prayer to God is what he was created for.  Prayer is part of the wondrous
   likeness he bears to His Divine original; of the deep mystery of the
   fellowship of love in which the Three-One has His blessedness, prayer is the
   earthly image and likeness.

   The more we meditate on what prayer is, and the wonderful power with God
   which it has, the more we feel constrained to ask who and what man is, that
   such a place in God’s counsels should have been allotted to him.  Sin has so
   degraded him, that from what he is now we can form no conception of what he
   was meant to be.  We must turn back to God’s own record of man’s creation to
   discover there what God’s purpose was, and what the capacities with which
   man was endowed for the fulfilment of that purpose.

   Man’s destiny appears clearly from God’s language at creation.  It was to
   fill, to subdue, to have dominion over the earth and all in it.  All the
   three expressions show us that man was meant, as God’s representative, to
   hold rule here on earth.  As God’s viceroy he was to fill God’s place:
   himself subject to God, he was to keep all else in subjection to Him.  It
   was the will of God that all that was to be done on earth should be done
   through him:  the history of the earth was to be entirely in his hands.

   In accordance with such a destiny was the position he was to occupy, and the
   power at his disposal.  When an earthly sovereign sends a viceroy to a
   distant province, it is understood that he advises as to the policy to be
   adopted, and that that advice is acted on:  that he is at liberty to apply
   for troops and the other means needed for carrying out the policy or
   maintaining the dignity of the empire.  If his policy be not approved of, he
   is recalled to make way for some one who better understands his sovereign’s
   desires’ as long as he is trusted, his advice is carried out.  As God’s
   representative man was to have ruled; all was to have been done under his
   will and rule; on his advice and at his request heaven was to have bestowed
   its blessing on earth.  His prayer was to have been the wonderful, though
   simple and most natural channel, in which the intercourse between the King
   in heaven and His faithful servant man, as lord of this world, was to have
   been maintained.  The destinies of the world were given into the power of
   the wishes, the will, the prayer of man.

   With sin all this underwent a terrible change—man’s fall brought all
   creation under the curse.  With redemption the beginning was seen of a
   glorious restoration.  No sooner had God begun in Abraham to form for
   Himself a people from whom kings, yea the Great King, should come forth,
   than we see what power the prayer of God’s faithful servant has to decide
   the destinies of those who come into contact with him.  In Abraham we see
   how prayer is not only, or even chiefly, the means of obtaining blessing for
   ourselves, but is the exercise of his royal prerogative to influence the
   destinies of men, and the will of God which rules them.  We do not once find
   Abraham praying for himself.  His prayer for Sodom and Lot, for Abimelech,
   for Ishmael, prove what power a man, who is God’s friend, has to make the
   history of those around him.

   This had been man’s destiny from the first.  Scripture not only tells us
   this, but also teaches us how it was that God could entrust man with such a
   high calling.  It was because He had created him in His own image and
   likeness.  The external rule was not committed to him without the inner
   fitness:  the bearing God’s image in having dominion, in being lord of all,
   had its root in the inner likeness, in his nature.  There was an inner
   agreement and harmony between God and man, and incipient Godlikeness, which
   gave man a real fitness for being the mediator between God and His world,
   for he was to be prophet, priest, and king, to interpret God’s will, to
   represent nature’s needs, to receive and dispense God’s bounty.  It was in
   bearing God’s image that he could bear God’s rule; he was indeed so like
   God, so capable of entering into God’s purposes, and carrying out His plans,
   that God could trust him with the wonderful privilege of asking and
   obtaining what the world might need.  And although sin has for a time
   frustrated God’s plans, prayer still remains what it would have been if man
   had never fallen:  the proof of man’s Godlikeness, the vehicle of his
   intercourse with the Infinite Unseen One, the power that is allowed to hold
   the hand that holds the destinies of the universe.  Prayer is not merely the
   cry of the suppliant for mercy; it is the highest forth-putting of his will
   by man, knowing himself to be of Divine origin, created for and capable of
   being, in king-like liberty, the executor of the counsels of the Eternal.

   What sin destroyed, grace has restored.  What the first Adam lost, the
   second has won back.  In Christ man regains his original position, and the
   Church, abiding in Christ, inherits the promise:  ‘Ask what ye will, and it
   shall be done unto you.’  Such a promise does by no means, in the first
   place, refer to the grace or blessing we need for ourselves.  It has
   reference to our position as the fruit-bearing branches of the Heavenly
   Vine, who, like Him, only live for the work and glory of the Father.  It is
   for those who abide in Him, who have forsaken self to take up their abode in
   Him with His life of obedience and self-sacrifice, who have lost their life
   and found it in Him, who are now entirely given up to the interests of the
   Father and His kingdom.  These are they who understand how their new
   creation has brought them back to their original destiny, has restored
   God’s image and likeness, and with it the power to have dominion.  Such have
   indeed the power, each in their own circle, to obtain and dispense the
   powers of heaven here on earth.  With holy boldness they may make known what
   they will:  they live as priests in God’s presence; as kings the powers of
   the world to come begin to be at their disposal. [1]   They enter upon the
   fulfilment of the promise:  ‘Ask whatsoever ye will, it shall be done unto
   you.’

[Soldier4Christ]

   Church of the living God!  thy calling is higher and holier than thou
   knowest.  Through thy members, as kings, and priests unto God, would God
   rule the world; their prayers bestow and withhold the blessing of heaven.
   In His elect who are not just content to be themselves saved, but yield
   themselves wholly, that through them, even as through the Son, the Father
   may fulfil all His glorious counsel, in these His elect, who cry day and
   night unto Him, God would prove how wonderful man’s original destiny was.
   As the image-bearer of God on earth, the earth was indeed given into his
   hand.  When he fell, all fell with him:  the whole creation groaneth and
   travaileth in pain together.  But now he is redeemed; the restoration of the
   original dignity has begun.  It is in very deed God’s purpose that the
   fulfilment of His eternal purpose, and the coming of His kingdom, should
   depend on those of His people who, abiding in Christ, are ready to take up
   their position in Him their Head, the great Priest-King, and in their
   prayers are bold enough to say what they will that their God should do.  As
   image-bearer and representative of God on earth, redeemed man has by his
   prayers to determine the history of this earth.  Man was created, and has
   now again been redeemed, to pray, and by his prayer to have dominion.

   ‘LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY.’



   Lord!  what is man, that Thou art mindful of him?  and the son of man, that
   Thou visitest him?  for Thou has made him a little lower than the angels,
   and hast crowned him with glory and honour.  Thou madest him to have
   dominion over the work of Thy hands:  Thou hast put all things under his
   feet.  O Lord our Lord, how excellent is Thy name in all the earth!

   Lord God!  how low has sin made man to sink.  And how terribly has it
   darkened his mind, that he does not even know his Divine destiny, to be Thy
   servant and representative.  Alas!  that even Thy people, when their eyes
   are opened, are so little ready to accept their calling and to seek to have
   power with God, that they may have power with men too to bless them.

   Lord Jesus!  it is in Thee the Father hath again crowned man with glory and
   honour, and opened the way for us to be what He would have us.  O Lord, have
   mercy on Thy people, and visit Thine heritage!  Work mightily in Thy Church,
   and teach Thy believing disciples to go forth in their royal priesthood, and
   in the power of prayer, to which Thou hast given such wonderful promises, to
   serve Thy kingdom, to have rule over the nations, and make the name of God
   glorious in the earth.  Amen.
     _________________________________________________________________

   [1] ‘God is seeking priests among the sons of men.  A human priesthood is
   one of the essential parts of His eternal plan.  To rule creation by man is
   His design; to carry on the worship of creation by man is no less part of
   His design. ‘Priesthood is the appointed link between heaven and earth, the
   channel of intercourse between the sinner and God.  Such a priesthood, in so
   far as expiation is concerned, is in the hands of the Son of God alone; in
   so far as it is to be the medium of communication between Creator and
   creature, is also in the hands of redeemed men—of the Church of God. ‘God is
   seeking kings.  Not out of the ranks of angels.  Fallen man must furnish Him
   with the rulers of His universe.  Human hands must wield the sceptre, human
   heads must wear the crown.—The Rent Veil, by Dr. H. Bonar.

[Soldier4Christ]

NINTEENTH LESSON.

  ‘I go unto the Father!’

  Or,          Power for Praying and Working.

   ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I
   do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go
   unto my Father.  And whatsoever ye shall ask in my Name, that will I
   do.’—John xiv. 12, 13.

   AS the Saviour opened His public ministry with His disciples by the Sermon
   on the Mount, so He closes it by the Parting Address preserved to us by
   John.  In both He speaks more than once of prayer.  But with a difference.
   In the Sermon on the Mount it is as to disciples who have only just entered
   His school, who scarcely know that God is their Father, and whose prayer
   chiefly has reference to their personal needs.  In His closing address He
   speaks to disciples whose training time is now come to an end, and who are
   ready as His messengers to take His place and His work.  In the former the
   chief lesson is:  Be childlike, pray believingly, and trust the Father that
   He will give you all good gifts.  Here He points to something higher:  They
   are now His friends to whom He has made known all that He has heard of the
   Father; His messengers, who have entered into His plans, and into whose
   hands the care of His work and kingdom on earth is to be entrusted.  They
   are now to go out and do His works, and in the power of His approaching
   exaltation, even greater works:  prayer is now to be the channel through
   which that power is to be received for their work.  With Christ’s ascension
   to the Father a new epoch commences for their working and praying both.

   See how clearly this connection comes out in our text.  As His body here on
   earth, as those who are one with Him in heaven, they are now to do greater
   works than He had done; their success and their victories are to be greater
   than His.  He mentions two reasons for this.  The one, because He was to go
   to the Father, to receive all power; the other, because they might now ask
   and expect all in His Name.  ‘Because I go to the Father, and—notice this
   and—and, whatsoever ye shall ask, I will do.’  His going to the Father would
   thus bring the double blessing:  they would ask and receive all in His Name,
   and as a consequence, would do the greater works.  This first mention of
   prayer in our Saviour’s parting words thus teaches us two most important
   lessons.  He that would do the works of Jesus must pray in His Name.  He
   that would pray in His Name must work in His Name.

   He who would work must pray:  it is in prayer that the power for work is
   obtained.  He that in faith would do the works that Jesus did, must pray in
   His Name.  As long as Jesus was here on earth, He Himself did the greatest
   works:  devils the disciples could not cast out, fled at His word.  When He
   went to the Father, He was no longer here in the body to work directly.  The
   disciples were now His body:  all His work from the throne in heaven here on
   earth must and could be done through them.  One might have thought that now
   He was leaving the scene Himself, and could only work through commissioners,
   the works might be fewer and weaker.  He assures us of the contrary:
   Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do
   shall he do also, and he shall do greater works.’  His approaching death was
   to be such a real breaking down and making an end of the power of sin; with
   the resurrection the powers of the Eternal Life were so truly to take
   possession of the human body and to obtain supremacy over human life; with
   His ascension He was to receive the power to communicate the Holy Spirit so
   fully to His own; the union, the oneness between Himself on the throne and
   them on earth, was to be so intensely and divinely perfect, that He meant it
   as the literal truth:  ‘Greater works than these shall he do, because I go
   to the Father.’  And the issue proved how true it was.  While Jesus, during
   three years of personal labour on earth, gathered little more than five
   hundred disciples, and the most of them so feeble that they were but little
   credit to His cause, it was given to men like Peter and Paul manifestly to
   do greater things than He had done.  From the throne He could do through
   them what He Himself in His humiliation could not yet do.

   But there is one condition:  ‘He that believeth on me, he shall do greater
   works, because I go to the Father; and whatsover ye shall ask in my Name,
   that will I do.’  His going to the Father would give Him a new power to hear
   prayer.  For the doing of the greater works, two things were needed:  His
   going to the Father to receive all power, our prayer in His Name to receive
   all power from Him again.  As He asks the Father, He receives and bestows on
   us the power of the new dispensation for the greater works; as we believe,
   and ask in His Name, the power comes and takes possession of us to do the
   greater works.

   Alas!  how much working there is in the work of God, in which there is
   little or nothing to be seen of the power to do anything like Christ’s
   works, not to speak of greater works.  There can be but one reason:  the
   believing on Him, the believing prayer in His Name, this is so much
   wanting.  O that every labourer and leader in church, or school, in the work
   of home philanthropy or foreign missions might learn the lesson:  Prayer in
   the Name of Jesus is the way to share in the mighty power which Jesus has
   received of the Father for His people, and it is in this power alone that he
   that believeth can do the greater works.  To every complaint as to weakness
   or unfitness, as to difficulties or want of success, Jesus gives this one
   answer:  ‘He that believeth on me shall do greater works, because I go to
   the Father, and whatsoever ye shall ask in my Name, that will I do.’  We
   must understand that the first and chief thing for everyone who would do the
   work of Jesus, is to believe, and so to get linked to Him, the Almighty One,
   and then to pray the prayer of faith in His Name.  Without this our work is
   but human and carnal; it may have some use in restraining sin, or preparing
   the way for blessing, but the real power is wanting.  Effectual working
   needs first effectual prayer.

[Soldier4Christ]

   And now the second lesson:  He who would pray must work.  It is for power to
   work that prayer has such great promises:  it is in working that the power
   for the effectual prayer of faith will be gained.  In these parting words of
   our blessed Lord we find that He no less than six times (John xiv. 13, 14,
   xv. 7, 16, xvi. 23, 24) repeats those unlimited prayer-promises which have
   so often awakened our anxious questionings as to their real meaning:
   ‘whatsoever,’ ‘anything,’ ‘what ye will,’ ‘ask and ye shall receive.’  How
   many a believer has read these over with joy and hope, and in deep
   earnestness of soul has sought to plead them for his own need.  And he has
   come out disappointed.  The simple reason was this:  he had rent away the
   promise from its surrounding.  The Lord gave the wonderful promise of the
   free use of His Name with the Father in connection with the doing of His
   works.  It is the disciple who gives himself wholly to live for Jesus’ work
   and kingdom, for His will and honour, to whom the power will come to
   appropriate the promise.  He that would fain grasp the promise when he wants
   something very special for himself, will be disappointed, because he would
   make Jesus the servant of his own comfort.  But to him who seeks to pray the
   effectual prayer of faith, because he needs it for the work of the Master,
   to him it will be given to learn it; because he has made himself the servant
   of his Lord’s interests.  Prayer not only teaches and strengthens to work:
   work teaches and strengthens to pray.

   This is in perfect harmony with what holds good both in the natural and the
   spiritual world.  Whosoever hath, to him shall be given; or, He that is
   faithful in a little, is faithful also in much.  Let us with the small
   measure of grace already received, give ourselves to the Master for His
   work:  work will be to us a real school of prayer.  It was when Moses had to
   take full charge of a rebellious people that he felt the need, but also the
   courage, to speak boldly to God and to ask great things of Him (Ex. xxxiii.
   12, 15, 18).  As you give yourself entirely to God for His work, you will
   feel that nothing less than these great promises are what you need, that
   nothing less is what you may most confidently expect.

   Believer in Jesus!  You are called, you are appointed, to do the works of
   Jesus, and even greater works, because He has gone to the Father to receive
   the power to do them in and through you.

   Whatsoever ye shall ask in my Name, that will I do.  Give yourself, and
   live, to do the works of Christ and you will learn to pray so as to obtain
   wonderful answers to prayer.  Give yourself, and live, to pray and you will
   learn to do the works He did, and greater works.  With disciples full of
   faith in Himself, and bold in prayer to ask great things, Christ can conquer
   the world.

   ‘LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY.’


   O my Lord!  I have this day again heard words from Thee which pass my
   comprehension.  And yet I cannot do aught but in simple childlike faith take
   and keep them as Thy gift to me too.  Thou hast said that in virtue of Thy
   going to the Father, he that believeth on Thee will do the works which Thou
   hast done, and greater works.  Lord!  I worship Thee as the Glorified One,
   and look for the fulfilment of Thy promise.  May my whole life just be one
   of continued believing in Thee.  So purify and sanctify my heart, make it so
   tenderly susceptible of Thyself and Thy love, that believing on Thee may be
   the very life it breathes.

   And Thou hast said that in virtue of Thy going to the Father, whatsoever we
   ask, Thou wilt do.  From Thy throne of power Thou wouldest make Thy people
   share the power given Thee, and work through them as the members of Thy
   body, in response to their believing prayers in Thy Name.  Power in prayer
   with Thee, and power in work with men, is what Thou has promised Thy people
   and me too.

   Blessed Lord!  Forgive us all that we have so little believed Thee and Thy
   promise, and so little proved Thy faithfulness in fulfilling it.  O forgive
   us that we have so little honoured Thy all-prevailing Name in heaven or upon
   earth.

   Lord!  Teach me to pray so that I may prove that Thy Name is indeed
   all-prevailing with God and men and devils.  Yea, teach me so to work and so
   to pray that Thou canst glorify Thyself in me as the Omnipotent One, and do
   Thy great work through me too.  Amen.

[Soldier4Christ]

TWENTIETH LESSON.

  ‘That the Father may be glorified;’

  Or,    The Chief End of Prayer.

   I go unto the Father.  And whatsoever ye shall ask in my Name, that will I
   do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.’—John xiv. 13.

   THAT the Father may be glorified in the Son: it is to this end that Jesus on
   His throne in glory will do all we ask in His Name.  Every answer to prayer
   He gives will have this as its object:  when there is no prospect of this
   object being obtained, He will not answer.   It follows as a matter of
   course that this must be with us, as with Jesus, the essential element in
   our petitions:  the glory of the Father must be the aim and end, the very
   soul and life of our prayer.

   It was so with Jesus when He was on earth.  ‘I seek not mine own honour:  I
   seek the honour of Him that sent me;’ in such words we have the keynote of
   His life.  In the first words of the high-priestly prayer He gives utterance
   to it:  Father! Glorify Thy son, that Thy Son may glorify Thee.  ‘I have
   glorified Thee on earth; glorify me with Thyself.’  The ground on which He
   asks to be taken up into the glory He had with the Father, is the twofold
   one:  He has glorified Him on earth; He will still glorify Him in heaven.
   What He asks is only to enable Him to glorify the Father more.  It is as we
   enter into sympathy with Jesus on this point, and gratify Him by making the
   Father’s glory our chief object in prayer too, that our prayer cannot fail
   of an answer.  There is nothing of which the Beloved Son has said more
   distinctly that it will glorify the Father than this, His doing what we ask;
   He will not, therefore, let any opportunity slip of securing this object.
   Let us make His aim ours:  let the glory of the Father be the link between
   our asking and His doing:  such prayer must prevail.^1

   This word of Jesus comes indeed as a sharp two-edged sword, piercing even to
   the dividing of soul and spirit, and quick to discern the thoughts and
   intents of the heart.  Jesus in His prayers on earth, in His intercession in
   heaven, in His promise of an answer to our prayers from there, makes this
   His first object—the glory of His Father.  Is it so with us too?  Or are
   not, in large measure, self-interest and self-will the strongest motives
   urging us to pray?  Or, if we cannot see that this is the case, have we not
   to acknowledge that the distinct, conscious longing for the glory of the
   Father is not what animates our prayers?  And yet it must be so.

   Not as if the believer does not at times desire it.   But he has to mourn
   that he has so little attained.  And he knows the reason of his failure
   too.  It was, because the separation between the spirit of daily life and
   the spirit of the hour of prayer was too wide.  We begin to see that the
   desire for the glory of the Father is not something that we can awake and
   present to our Lord when we prepare ourselves to pray.  No! it is only when
   the whole life, in all its parts, is given up to God’s glory, that we can
   really pray to His glory too.  ‘Do all to the glory of God,’ and, ‘Ask all
   to the glory of God,’—these twin commands are inseparable:  obedience to the
   former is the secret of grace for the latter.   A life to the glory of God
   is the condition of the prayers that Jesus can answer, ‘that the Father may
   be glorified.’

   This demand in connection with prevailing prayer—that it should be to the
   glory of God—is no more than right and natural.  There is none glorious but
   the Lord:  there is no glory but His, and what He layeth on His creatures.
   Creation exists to show forth His glory; all that is not for His glory is
   sin, and darkness, and death:  it is only in the glorifying of God that the
   creatures can find glory.  What the Son of Man did, to give Himself wholly,
   His whole life, to glorify the Father, is nothing but the simple duty of
   every redeemed one.  And Christ’s reward will be his too.  Because He gave
   Himself so entirely to the glory of the Father, the Father crowned Him with
   glory and honour, giving the kingdom into His hands, with the power to ask
   what He will, and, as Intercessor, to answer our prayers.  And just as we
   become one with Christ in this, and as our prayer is part of a life utterly
   surrendered to God’s glory, will the Saviour be able to glorify the Father
   to us by the fulfilment of the promise:  ‘Whatsoever ye shall ask, I will do
   it.’

   To such a life, with God’s glory our only aim, we cannot attain by any
   effort of our own.  It is only in the man Christ Jesus that such a life is
   to be seen:  in Him it is to be found for us.  Yes blessed be God!  His life
   is our life; He gave Himself for us; He Himself is now our life.  The
   discovery, and the confession, and the denial, of self, as usurping the
   place of God, of self-seeking and self-trusting, is essential, and yet is
   what we cannot accomplish in our own strength.  It is the incoming and
   indwelling, the Presence and the Rule in the heart, of our Lord Jesus who
   glorified the Father on earth, and is now glorified with Him, that thence He
   might glorify Him in us;—it is Jesus Himself  coming in, who can cast out
   all self-glorifying, and give us instead His own God-glorifying life and
   Spirit.  It is Jesus, who longs to glorify the Father in hearing our
   prayers, who will teach us to live and to pray to the glory of God.

   And what motive, what power is there that can urge our slothful hearts to
   yield themselves to our Lord to work this in us?  Surely nothing more is
   needed than a sight of how glorious, how alone worthy of glory the Father
   is.  Let our faith learn in adoring worship to bow before Him, to ascribe to
   Him alone the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, to yield ourselves to
   dwell in His light as the ever-blessed, ever-loving One.  Surely we shall be
   stirred to say, ‘To Him alone be glory.’  And we shall look to our Lord
   Jesus with new intensity of desire for a life that refuses to see or seek
   ought but the glory of God.  When there is but little prayer that can be
   answered, the Father is not glorified.  It is a duty, for the glory of God,
   to live and pray so that our prayer can be answered.  For the sake of God’s
   glory, let us learn to pray well.

   What a humbling thought that so often there is earnest prayer for a child or
   a friend, for a work or a circle, in which the thought of our joy or our
   pleasure was far stronger than any yearnings for God’s glory.  No wonder
   that there are so many unanswered prayers:  here we have the secret.  God
   would not be glorified when that glory was not our object.  He that would
   pray the prayer of faith, will have to give himself to live literally so
   that the Father in all things may be glorified in him.  This must be his
   aim:  without this there cannot be the prayer of faith.  ‘How can ye
   believe,’ said Jesus, ‘which receive glory of one another, and the glory
   that cometh from the only God ye seek not?’  All seeking of our own glory
   with men makes faith impossible:  it is the deep, intense self-sacrifice
   that gives up its own glory, and seeks the glory of God alone, that wakens
   in the soul that spiritual susceptibility of the Divine, which is faith.
   The surrender to God to seek His glory, and the expectation that He will
   show His glory in hearing us, are one at root:   He that seeks God’s glory
   will see it in the answer to his prayer, and he alone.

[Soldier4Christ]

  And how, we ask again, shall we attain to it?  Let us begin with
   confession.  How little has the glory of God been an all-absorbing passion;
   how little our lives and our prayers have been full of it.  How little have
   we lived in the likeness of the Son, and in sympathy with Him—for God and
   His glory alone.  Let us take time, until the Holy Spirit discover it to us,
   and we see how wanting we have been in this.  True knowledge and confession
   of sin are the sure path to deliverance.

   And then let us look to Jesus.  In Him we can see by what death we can
   glorify God.  In death He glorified Him; through death He was glorified with
   Him.  It is by dying, being dead to self and living to God, that we can
   glorify Him.  And this—this death to self, this life to the glory of God—is
   what Jesus gives and lives in each one who can trust Him for it.  Let
   nothing less than these—the desire, the decision to live only for the glory
   of the Father, even as Christ did; the acceptance of Him with His life and
   strength working it in us; the joyful assurance that we can live to the
   glory of God, because Christ lives in us;—let this be the spirit of our
   daily life.   Jesus stands surety for our living thus; the Holy Spirit is
   given, and waiting to make it our experience, if we will only trust and let
   Him; O let us not hold back through unbelief, but confidently take as our
   watchword—All to the glory of God!  The Father accepts the will, the
   sacrifice is well-pleasing; the Holy Spirit will seal us within with the
   consciousness, we are living for God and His glory.

   And then what quiet peace and power there will be in our prayers, as we know
   ourselves through His grace, in perfect harmony with Him who says to us,
   when He promises to do what we ask:  ‘That the Father may be glorified in
   the Son.’  With our whole being consciously yielded to the inspiration of
   the Word and Spirit, our desires will be no longer ours but His; their chief
   end the glory of God.  With increasing liberty we shall be able in prayer to
   say:  Father!  Thou knowest, we ask it only for Thy glory.  And the
   condition of prayer-answers, instead of being as a mountain we cannot climb,
   will only give us the greater confidence that we shall be heard, because we
   have seen that prayer has no higher beauty or blessedness than this, that it
   glorifies the Father.  And the precious privilege of prayer will become
   doubly precious because it brings us into perfect unison with the Beloved
   Son in the wonderful partnership He proposes:  ‘You ask, and I do, that the
   Father may be glorified in the Son.’

   ‘LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY.’


   Blessed Lord Jesus!  I come again to Thee.  Every lesson Thou givest me
   convinces me more deeply how little I know to pray aright.  But every lesson
   also inspires me with hope that Thou art going to teach me, that Thou art
   teaching me not only to know what prayer should be, but actually to pray as
   I ought.  O my Lord!  I look with courage to Thee, the Great Intercessor,
   who didst pray and dost hear prayer, only that the Father may be glorified,
   to teach me too to live and to pray to the glory of God.

   Saviour!  To this end I yield myself to Thee again.  I would be nothing.  I
   have given self, as already crucified with Thee, to the death.  Through the
   Spirit its workings are mortified and made dead; Thy life and Thy love of
   the Father are taking possession of me.  A new longing begins to fill my
   soul, that every day, every hour, that in every prayer the glory of the
   Father may be everything to me.  O my Lord!  I am in Thy school to learn
   this:  teach Thou it me.

   And do Thou, the God of glory, the Father of glory, my God and my Father,
   accept the desire of a child who has seen that Thy glory is indeed alone
   worth living for.   O Lord!  Show me Thy glory.  Let it overshadow me.  Let
   it fill the temple of my heart.  Let me dwell in it as revealed in Christ.
   And do Thou Thyself fulfil in me Thine own good pleasure, that Thy child
   should find his glory in seeking the glory of his Father.  Amen.

   ^1See in the note on George Muller, at the close of this volume, how he was
   led to make God’s glory his first object.

[Soldier4Christ]

TWENTY-FIRST LESSON.

  ‘If ye abide in me;’

  Or     The All-Inclusive Condition.

   ‘If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatsoever ye will, and
   it shall be done unto you.’—John xv. 7.

   IN all God’s intercourse with us, the promise and its conditions are
   inseparable.  If we fulfil the conditions, He fulfils the promise.  What He
   is to be to us depends upon what we are willing to be to Him.  ‘Draw near to
   God, and He will draw near to you.’  And so in prayer the unlimited promise,
   Ask whatsoever ye will, has its one simple and natural condition, if ye
   abide in me.  It is Christ whom the Father always hears; God is in Christ,
   and can only be reached by being in Him; to be IN HIM is the way to have our
   prayer heard; fully and wholly ABIDING IN HIM, we have the right to ask
   whatsoever we will, and the promise that it shall be done unto us.

   When we compare this promise with the experiences of most believers, we are
   startled by a terrible discrepancy.  Who can number up the countless prayers
   that rise and bring no answer?  The cause must be either that we do not
   fulfil the condition, or God does not fulfil the promise.  Believers are not
   willing to admit either, and therefore have devised a way of escape from the
   dilemma.  They put into the promise the qualifying clause our Saviour did
   not put there—if it be God’s will; and so maintain both God’s integrity and
   their own.  O if they did but accept it and hold it fast as it stands,
   trusting to Christ to vindicate His truth, how God’s Spirit would lead them
   to see the Divine propriety of such a promise to those who really abide in
   Christ in the sense in which He means it, and to confess that the failure in
   the fulfilling the condition is the one sufficient explanation of unanswered
   prayer.  And how the Holy Spirit would then make our feebleness in prayer
   one of the mightiest motives to urge us on to discover the secret, and
   obtain the blessing, of full abiding in Christ.

   ‘If ye abide in me.’  As a Christian grows in grace and in the knowledge of
   the Lord Jesus, he is often surprised to find how the words of God grow too,
   in the new and deeper meaning with which they come to him.  He can look back
   to the day when some word of God was opened up to him and he rejoiced in the
   blessing he had found in it.  After a time some deeper experience gave it a
   new meaning, and it was as if he never had seen what it contained.  And yet
   once again, as he advanced in the Christian life, the same word stood before
   him again as a great mystery, until anew the Holy Spirit led him still
   deeper into its Divine fulness.  One of these ever-growing, never-exhausted
   words, opening up to us step by step the fulness of the Divine life, is the
   Master’s precious ‘Abide in me.’  As the union of the branch with the vine
   is one of growth, never-ceasing growth and increase, so our abiding in
   Christ is a life process in which the Divine life takes ever fuller and more
   complete possession of us.  The young and feeble believer may be really
   abiding in Christ up to the measure of his light; it is he who reaches
   onward to the full abiding in the sense in which the Master understood the
   words, who inherits all the promises connected with it.

   In the growing life of abiding in Christ, the first stage is that of faith.
   As the believer sees that, with all his feebleness, the command is really
   meant for him, his great aim is simply to believe that, as he knows he is in
   Christ, so now, notwithstanding unfaithfulness and failure, abiding in
   Christ is his immediate duty, and a blessing within his reach.  He is
   specially occupied with the love, and power, and faithfulness of the
   Saviour:  he feels his one need to be believing.

   It is not long before he sees something more is needed.  Obedience and faith
   must go together.  Not as if to the faith he has the obedience must be
   added, but faith must be made manifest in obedience.  Faith is obedience at
   home and looking to the Master:  obedience is faith going out to do His
   will.  He sees how he has been more occupied with the privilege and the
   blessings of this abiding than with its duties and its fruit.  There has
   been much of self and of self-will that has been unnoticed or tolerated:
   the peace which, as a young and feeble disciple, he could enjoy in believing
   goes from him; it is in practical obedience that the abiding must be
   maintained:  ‘If ye keep my commands, ye shall abide in my love.’  As before
   his great aim was through the mind, and the truth it took hold of, to let
   the heart rest on Christ and His promises; so now, in this stage, he chief
   effort is to get his will united with the will of his Lord, and the heart
   and the life brought entirely under His rule.

   And yet it is as if there is something wanting.  The will and the heart are
   on Christ’s side; he obeys and he loves his Lord.  But still, why is it that
   the fleshly nature has yet so much power, that the spontaneous motions and
   emotions of the inmost being are not what they should be?  The will does not
   approve or allow, but here is a region beyond control of the will.  And why
   also, even when there is not so much of positive commission to condemn, why
   so much of omission, the deficiency of that beauty of holiness, that zeal of
   love, that conformity to Jesus and His death, in which the life of self is
   lost, and which is surely implied in the abiding, as the Master meant it?
   There must surely be something in our abiding in Christ and Christ in us,
   which he has not yet experienced.

   It is so.  Faith and obedience are but the pathway of blessing.  Before
   giving us the parable of the vine and the branches, Jesus had very
   distinctly told what the full blessing is to which faith and obedience are
   to lead.  Three times over He had said, ‘If ye love me, keep my
   commandments,’ and spoken of the threefold blessing with which He would
   crown such obedient love.  The Holy Spirit would come from the Father; the
   Son would manifest Himself; the Father and the Son would come and make their
   abode.  It is as our faith grows into obedience, and in obedience and love
   our whole being goes out and clings itself to Christ, that our inner life
   becomes opened up, and the capacity is formed within of receiving the life,
   the spirit, of the glorified Jesus, as a distinct and conscious union with
   Christ and with the Father.  The word is fulfilled in us:  ‘In that day ye
   shall know that I am in my Father and ye in me, and I in you.’  We
   understand how, just as Christ is in God, and God in Christ, one together
   not only in will and in love, but in identity of nature and life, because
   they exist in each other, so we are in Christ and Christ in us, in union not
   only of will and love, but of life and nature too.

[Soldier4Christ]

  It was after Jesus had spoken of our thus through the Holy Spirit knowing
   that He is in the Father, and even so we in Him and He in us, that He said,
   ‘Abide in me, and I in you.  Accept, consent to receive that Divine life of
   union with myself, in virtue of which, as you abide in me, I also abide in
   you, even as I abide in the Father.  So that your life is mine and mine is
   yours.’  This is the true abiding, the occupying of the position in which
   Christ can come and abide; so abiding in Him that the soul has come away
   from self to find that He has taken the place and become our life.  It is
   the becoming as little children who have no care, and find their happiness
   in trusting and obeying the love that has done all for them.

   To those who thus abide, the promise comes as their rightful heritage:  Ask
   whatsoever ye will.  It cannot be otherwise.  Christ has got full possession
   of Them.  Christ dwells in their love, their will, their life.  Not only has
   their will been given up; Christ has entered it, and dwells and breathes in
   it by His Spirit.  He whom the Father always hears, prays in them; they pray
   in Him:  what they ask shall be done unto them.

   Beloved fellow-believer!  let us confess that it is because we do not abide
   in Christ as He would have us, that the Church is so impotent in presence of
   the infidelity and worldliness and heathendom, in the midst of which the
   Lord is able to make her more than conqueror.  Let us believe that He means
   what He promises, and accept the condemnation the confession implies.

   But let us not be discouraged.  The abiding of the branch in the Vine is a
   life of never-ceasing growth.  The abiding, as the Master meant it, is
   within our reach, for He lives to give it us.  Let us but be ready to count
   all things loss, and to say, ‘Not as though I had already attained; I follow
   after, if that I may apprehend that for which I also am apprehended of
   Christ Jesus.’  Let us not be so much occupied with the abiding, as with Him
   to whom the abiding links us, and His fulness.  Let it be Him, the whole
   Christ, in His obedience and humiliation, in His exaltation and power, in
   whom our soul moves and acts; He Himself will fulfil His promise in us.

   And then as we abide, and grow evermore into the full abiding, let us
   exercise our right, the will to enter into all God’s will.  Obeying what
   that will commands, let us claim what it promises.  Let us yield to the
   teaching of the Holy Spirit, to show each of us, according to his growth and
   measure, what the will of God is which we may claim in prayer.  And let us
   rest content with nothing less than the personal experience of what Jesus
   gave when He said, ‘If ye abide in me, ask whatsoever ye will, it shall be
   done unto you.’

   ‘LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY!’


   Beloved Lord!  do teach me to take this promise anew in all its simplicity,
   and to be sure that the only measure of Thy holy giving is our holy
   willing.  Lord!  Let each word of this Thy promise be anew made quick and
   powerful in my soul.

   Thou sayest:  Abide in me!  O my Master, my Life, my All, I do abide in
   Thee.  Give Thou me to grow up into all Thy fulness.  It is not the effort
   of faith, seeking to cling to Thee, nor even the rest of faith, trusting
   Thee to keep me; it is not the obedience of the will, nor the keeping the
   commandments; but it is Thyself living in me and in the Father, that alone
   can satisfy me.  It is Thy self, my Lord, no longer before me and above me,
   but one with me, and abiding in me; it is this I need, it is this I seek.
   It is this I trust Thee for.

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

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

   NOTE

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

   A life marked by daily answer to prayer is the proof of our spiritual
   maturity; that we have indeed attained to the true abiding in Christ; that
   our will is truly at one with God’s will; that our faith has grown strong to
   see and take what God has prepared for us; that the Name of Christ and His
   nature have taken full possession of us; and that we have been found fit to
   take a place among those whom God admits to His counsels, and according to
   whose prayer He rules the world.  These are they in whom something of man’s
   original dignity hath been restored, in whom, as they abide in Christ, His
   power as the all-prevailing Intercessor can manifest itself, in whom the
   glory of His Name is shown forth.   Prayer is very blessed; the answer is
   more blessed still, as the response from the Father that our prayer, our
   faith, our will are indeed as He would wish them to be.

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

[Soldier4Christ]

TWENTY-SECOND LESSON.

  ‘My words in you.’

  Or,    The Word and Prayer.

   ‘If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatsoever ye will, and
   it shall be done unto you.’—John xv. 7.

   THE vital connection between the word and prayer is one of the simplest and
   earliest lessons of the Christian life.  As that newly-converted heathen put
   it:  I pray—I speak to my father; I read—my Father speaks to me.  Before
   prayer, it is God’s word that prepares me for it by revealing what the
   Father has bid me ask.  In prayer, it is God’s word strengthens me by giving
   my faith its warrant and its plea.  And after prayer, it is God’s word that
   brings me the answer when I have prayed, for in it the Spirit gives me to
   hear the Father’s voice.  Prayer is not monologue but dialogue; God’s voice
   in response to mine in its most essential part.  Listening to God’s voice is
   the secret of the assurance that He will listen to mine.  ‘Incline thine
   ear, and hear;’ ‘Give ear to me;’ Hearken to my voice;’ are words which God
   speaks to man as well as man to God.  His hearkening will depend on ours;
   the entrance His words find with me, will be the measure of the power of my
   words with Him.   What God’s words are to me, is the test of what He Himself
   is to me, and so of the uprightness of my desire after Him in prayer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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