With CHRIST In the School of Prayer: Thoughts on Our Training
for the Ministry of Intercession
BY REV. ANDREW MURRAY
Lord, teach us to pray.
Fleming H. Revell Company, Publishers of Evangelical Literature.
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PREFACE.
Of all the promises connected with the command, `ABIDE IN ME,' there
is none higher, and none that sooner brings the confession, `Not that
I have already attained, or am already made perfect,' than this: `If
ye abide in me, ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto
you.' Power with God is the highest attainment of the life of full
abiding.
And of all the traits of a life LIKE CHRIST there is none higher and
more glorious than conformity to Him in the work that now engages Him
without ceasing in the Father's presence--His all-prevailing
intercession. The more we abide in Him, and grow unto His likeness,
will His priestly life work in us mightily, and our life become what
His is, a life that ever pleads and prevails for men.
`Thou hast made us kings and priests unto God.' Both in the king and
the priest the chief thing is power, influence, blessing. In the king
it is the power coming downward; in the priest, the power rising
upward, prevailing with God. In our blessed Priest-King, Jesus
Christ, the kingly power is founded on the priestly `He is able to
save to the uttermost, because He ever liveth to make intercession.'
In us, His priests and kings, it is no otherwise: it is in
intercession that the Church is to find and wield its highest power,
that each member of the Church is to prove his descent from Israel,
who as a prince had power with God and with men, and prevailed.
It is under a deep impression that the place and power of prayer in
the Christian life is too little understood, that this book has been
written. I feel sure that as long as we look on prayer chiefly as the
means of maintaining our own Christian life, we shall not know fully
what it is meant to be. But when we learn to regard it as the highest
part of the work entrusted to us, the root and strength of all other
work, we shall see that there is nothing that we so need to study and
practise as the art of praying aright. If I have at all succeeded in
pointing out the progressive teaching of our Lord in regard to prayer,
and the distinct reference the wonderful promises of the last night
(John xiv. 16) have to the works we are to do in His Name, to the
greater works, and to the bearing much fruit, we shall all admit that
it is only when the Church gives herself up to this holy work of
intercession that we can expect the power of Christ to manifest itself
in her behalf. It is my prayer that God may use this little book to
make clearer to some of His children the wonderful place of power and
influence which He is waiting for them to occupy, and for which a
weary world is waiting too.
In connection with this there is another truth that has come to me
with wonderful clearness as I studied the teaching of Jesus on
prayer. It is this: that the Father waits to hear every prayer of
faith, to give us whatsoever we will, and whatsoever we ask in Jesus'
name. We have become so accustomed to limit the wonderful love and
the large promises of our God, that we cannot read the simplest and
clearest statements of our Lord without the qualifying clauses by
which we guard and expound them. If there is one thing I think the
Church needs to learn, it is that God means prayer to have an answer,
and that it hath not entered into the heart of man to conceive what
God will do for His child who gives himself to believe that his prayer
will be heard. God hears prayer; this is a truth universally
admitted, but of which very few understand the meaning, or experience
the power. If what I have written stir my reader to go to the
Master's words, and take His wondrous promises simply and literally as
they stand, my object has been attained.
And then just one thing more. Thousands have in these last years
found an unspeakable blessing in learning how completely Christ is our
life, and how He undertakes to be and to do all in us that we need. I
know not if we have yet learned to apply this truth to our
prayer-life. Many complain that they have not the power to pray in
faith, to pray the effectual prayer that availeth much. The message I
would fain bring them is that the blessed Jesus is waiting, is
longing, to teach them this. Christ is our life: in heaven He ever
liveth to pray; His life in us is an ever-praying life, if we will but
trust Him for it. Christ teaches us to pray not only by example, by
instruction, by command, by promises, but by showing us HIMSELF, the
ever-living Intercessor, as our Life. It is when we believe this, and
go and abide in Him for our prayer-life too, that our fears of not
being able to pray aright will vanish, and we shall joyfully and
triumphantly trust our Lord to teach us to pray, to be Himself the
life and the power of our prayer. May God open our eyes to see what
the holy ministry of intercession is to which, as His royal
priesthood, we have been set apart. May He give us a large and strong
heart to believe what mighty influence our prayers can exert. And may
all fear as to our being able to fulfil our vocation vanish as we see
Jesus, living ever to pray, living in us to pray, and standing surety
for our prayer-life.
ANDREW MURRAY
WELLINGTON, 28^th October 1895
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FIRST LESSON, Lord, teach us to pray; The Only Teacher .
`And it came to pass, as He was praying in a certain place, that when
He ceased, one of His disciples said to Him, Lord, teach us to
pray.'--Luke xi. 1.
THE disciples had been with Christ, and seen Him pray. They had
learnt to understand something of the connection between His wondrous
life in public, and His secret life of prayer. They had learnt to
believe in Him as a Master in the art of prayer--none could pray like
Him. And so they came to Him with the request, `Lord, teach us to
pray.' And in after years they would have told us that there were few
things more wonderful or blessed that He taught them than His lessons
on prayer.
And now still it comes to pass, as He is praying in a certain place,
that disciples who see Him thus engaged feel the need of repeating the
same request, `Lord, teach us to pray.' As we grow in the Christian
life, the thought and the faith of the Beloved Master in His
never-failing intercession becomes ever more precious, and the hope of
being Like Christ in His intercession gains an attractiveness before
unknown. And as we see Him pray, and remember that there is none who
can pray like Him, and none who can teach like Him, we feel the
petition of the disciples, `Lord, teach us to pray,' is just what we
need. And as we think how all He is and has, how He Himself is our
very own, how He is Himself our life, we feel assured that we have but
to ask, and He will be delighted to take us up into closer fellowship
with Himself, and teach us to pray even as He prays.
Come, my brothers! Shall we not go to the Blessed Master and ask Him
to enrol our names too anew in that school which He always keeps open
for those who long to continue their studies in the Divine art of
prayer and intercession? Yes, let us this very day say to the Master,
as they did of old, `Lord, teach us to pray.' As we meditate, we
shall find each word of the petition we bring to be full of meaning.
`Lord, teach us to pray.' Yes, to pray. This is what we need to be
taught. Though in its beginnings prayer is so simple that the
feeblest child can pray, yet it is at the same time the highest and
holiest work to which man can rise. It is fellowship with the Unseen
and Most Holy One. The powers of the eternal world have been placed
at its disposal. It is the very essence of true religion, the channel
of all blessings, the secret of power and life. Not only for
ourselves, but for others, for the Church, for the world, it is to
prayer that God has given the right to take hold of Him and His
strength. It is on prayer that the promises wait for their
fulfilment, the kingdom for its coming, the glory of God for its full
revelation. And for this blessed work, how slothful and unfit we
are. It is only the Spirit of God can enable us to do it aright. How
speedily we are deceived into a resting in the form, while the power
is wanting. Our early training, the teaching of the Church, the
influence of habit, the stirring of the emotions--how easily these
lead to prayer which has no spiritual power, and avails but little.
True prayer, that takes hold of God's strength, that availeth much, to
which the gates of heaven are really opened wide--who would not cry,
Oh for some one to teach me thus to pray?
Jesus has opened a school, in which He trains His redeemed ones, who
specially desire it, to have power in prayer. Shall we not enter it
with the petition, Lord! it is just this we need to be taught! O teach
us to pray.
`Lord, teach us to pray.' Yes, us, Lord. We have read in They Word
with what power Thy believing people of old used to pray, and what
mighty wonders were done in answer to their prayers. And if this took
place under the Old Covenant, in the time of preparation, how much
more wilt Thou not now, in these days of fulfilment, give Thy people
this sure sign of Thy presence in their midst. We have heard the
promises given to Thine apostles of the power of prayer in Thy name,
and have seen how gloriously they experienced their truth: we know
for certain, they can become true to us too. We hear continually even
in these days what glorious tokens of Thy power Thou dost still give
to those who trust Thee fully. Lord! these all are men of like
passions with ourselves; teach us to pray so too. The promises are
for us, the powers and gifts of the heavenly world are for us. O
teach us to pray so that we may receive abundantly. To us too Thou
hast entrusted Thy work, on our prayer too the coming of Thy kingdom
depends, in our prayer too Thou canst glorify Thy name; `Lord teach us
to pray.' Yes, us, Lord; we offer ourselves as learners; we would
indeed be taught of Thee. `Lord, teach us to pray.'
`Lord, teach us to pray.' Yes, we feel the need now of being taught
to pray. At first there is no work appears so simple; later on, none
that is more difficult; and the confession is forced from us: We know
not how to pray as we ought. It is true we have God's Word, with its
clear and sure promises; but sin has so darkened our mind, that we
know not always how to apply the word. In spiritual things we do not
always seek the most needful things, or fail in praying according to
the law of the sanctuary. In temporal things we are still less able
to avail ourselves of the wonderful liberty our Father has given us to
ask what we need. And even when we know what to ask, how much there
is still needed to make prayer acceptable. It must be to the glory of
God, in full surrender to His will, in full assurance of faith, in the
name of Jesus, and with a perseverance that, if need be, refuses to be
denied. All this must be learned. It can only be learned in the
school of much prayer, for practice makes perfect. Amid the painful
consciousness of ignorance and unworthiness, in the struggle between
believing and doubting, the heavenly art of effectual prayer is
learnt. Because, even when we do not remember it, there is One, the
Beginner and Finisher of faith and prayer, who watches over our
praying, and sees to it that in all who trust Him for it their
education in the school of prayer shall be carried on to perfection.
Let but the deep undertone of all our prayer be the teachableness that
comes from a sense of ignorance, and from faith in Him as a perfect
teacher, and we may be sure we shall be taught, we shall learn to pray
in power. Yes, we may depend upon it, He teaches to pray.
`Lord, teach us to pray.' None can teach like Jesus, none but Jesus;
therefore we call on Him, `LORD, teach us to pray.' A pupil needs a
teacher, who knows his work, who has the gift of teaching, who in
patience and love will descend to the pupil's needs. Blessed be God!
Jesus is all this and much more. He knows what prayer is. It is
Jesus, praying Himself, who teaches to pray. He knows what prayer
is. He learned it amid the trials and tears of His earthly life. In
heaven it is still His beloved work: His life there is prayer.
Nothing delights Him more than to find those whom He can take with Him
into the Father's presence, whom He can clothe with power to pray down
God's blessing on those around them, whom He can train to be His
fellow-workers in the intercession by which the kingdom is to be
revealed on earth. He knows how to teach. Now by the urgency of felt
need, then by the confidence with which joy inspires. Here by the
teaching of the Word, there by the testimony of another believer who
knows what it is to have prayer heard. By His Holy Spirit, He has
access to our heart, and teaches us to pray by showing us the sin that
hinders the prayer, or giving us the assurance that we please God. He
teaches, by giving not only thoughts of what to ask or how to ask, but
by breathing within us the very spirit of prayer, by living within us
as the Great Intercessor. We may indeed and most joyfully say, `Who
teacheth like Him?' Jesus never taught His disciples how to preach,
only how to pray. He did not speak much of what was needed to preach
well, but much of praying well. To know how to speak to God is more
than knowing how to speak to man. Not power with men, but power with
God is the first thing. Jesus loves to teach us how to pray.
What think you, my beloved fellow-disciples! would it not be just what
we need, to ask the Master for a month to give us a course of special
lessons on the art of prayer? As we meditate on the words He spake on
earth, let us yield ourselves to His teaching in the fullest
confidence that, with such a teacher, we shall make progress. Let us
take time not only to meditate, but to pray, to tarry at the foot of
the throne, and be trained to the work of intercession. Let us do so
in the assurance that amidst our stammerings and fears He is carrying
on His work most beautifully. He will breathe His own life, which is
all prayer, into us. As He makes us partakers of His righteousness
and His life, He will of His intercession. too. As the members of His
body, as a holy priesthood, we shall take part in His priestly work of
pleading and prevailing with God for men. Yes, let us most joyfully
say, ignorant and feeble though we be, `Lord, teach us to pray.'
`LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY.'
Blessed Lord! who ever livest to pray, Thou canst teach me too to
pray, me too to live ever to pray. In this Thou lovest to make me
share Thy glory in heaven, that I should pray without ceasing, and
ever stand as a priest in the presence of my God.
Lord Jesus! I ask Thee this day to enrol my name among those who
confess that they know not how to pray as they ought, and specially
ask Thee for a course of teaching in prayer. Lord! teach me to tarry
with Thee in the school, and give Thee time to train me. May a deep
sense of my ignorance, of the wonderful privilege and power of prayer,
of the need of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of prayer, lead me to
cast away my thoughts of what I think I know, and make me kneel before
Thee in true teachableness and poverty of spirit.
And fill me, Lord, with the confidence that with such a teacher as
Thou art I shall learn to pray. In the assurance that I have as my
teacher, Jesus who is ever praying to the Father, and by His prayer
rules the destinies of His Church and the world, I will not be
afraid. As much as I need to know of the mysteries of the
prayer-world, Thou wilt unfold for me. And when I may not know, Thou
wilt teach me to be strong in faith, giving glory to God.
Blessed Lord! Thou wilt not put to shame Thy scholar who trusts Thee,
nor, by Thy grace, would he Thee either. Amen.
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SECOND LESSON. 'In spirit and truth.' or, The True Worshippers.
`The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship
the Father in spirit and truth: for such doth the Father seek to be
His worshippers. God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must
worship Him in spirit and truth.'--John iv. 23, 24.
THESE words of Jesus to the woman of Samaria are His first recorded
teaching on the subject of prayer. They give us some wonderful first
glimpses into the world of prayer. The Father seeks worshippers: our
worship satisfies His loving heart and is a joy to Him. He seeks true
worshippers, but finds many not such as He would have them. True
worship is that which is in spirit and truth. The Son has come to
open the way for this worship in spirit and in truth, and teach it
us. And so one of our first lessons in the school of prayer must be
to understand what it is to pray in spirit and in truth, and to know
how we can attain to it.
To the woman of Samaria our Lord spoke of a threefold worship. There
is first, the ignorant worship of the Samaritans: `Ye worship that
which ye know not.' The second, the intelligent worship of the Jew,
having the true knowledge of God: `We worship that which we know; for
salvation is of the Jews.' And then the new, the spiritual worship
which He Himself has come to introduce: `The hour is coming, and is
now, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and
truth.' From the connection it is evident that the words `in spirit
and truth' do not mean, as if often thought, earnestly, from the
heart, in sincerity. The Samaritans had the five books of Moses and
some knowledge of God; there was doubtless more than one among them
who honestly and earnestly sought God in prayer. The Jews had the
true full revelation of God in His word, as thus far given; there were
among them godly men, who called upon God with their whole heart. And
yet not `in spirit and truth,' in the full meaning of the words.
Jesus says, `The hour is coming, and now is;' it is only in and
through Him that the worship of God will be in spirit and truth.
Among Christians one still finds the three classes of worshippers.
Some who in their ignorance hardly know what they ask: they pray
earnestly, and yet receive but little. Others there are, who have
more correct knowledge, who try to pray with all their mind and heart,
and often pray most earnestly, and yet do not attain to the full
blessedness of worship in spirit and truth. It is into this third
class we must ask our Lord Jesus to take us; we must be taught of Him
how to worship in spirit and truth. This alone is spiritual worship;
this makes us worshippers such as the Father seeks. In prayer
everything will depend on our understanding well and practising the
worship in spirit and truth.
`God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him, must worship Him in
spirit and truth.' The first thought suggested here by the Master is
that there must be harmony between God and His worshippers; such as
God is, must His worship be. This is according to a principle which
prevails throughout the universe: we look for correspondence between
an object and the organ to which it reveals or yields itself. The eye
has an inner fitness for the light, the ear for sound. The man who
would truly worship God, would find and know and possess and enjoy
God, must be in harmony with Him, must have the capacity for receiving
Him. Because God is Spirit, we must worship in spirit. As God is, so
His worshipper.
And what does this mean? The woman had asked our Lord whether Samaria
or Jerusalem was the true place of worship. He answers that
henceforth worship is no longer to be limited to a certain place:
`Woman, believe Me, the hour cometh, when neither in this mountain,
nor in Jerusalem, shall ye worship the Father.' As God is Spirit, not
bound by space or time, but in His infinite perfection always and
everywhere the same, so His worship would henceforth no longer be
confined by place or form, but spiritual as God Himself is spiritual.
A lesson of deep importance. How much our Christianity suffers from
this, that it is confined to certain times and places. A man, who
seeks to pray earnestly in the church or in the closet, spends the
greater part of the week or the day in a spirit entirely at variance
with that in which he prayed. His worship was the work of a fixed
place or hour, not of his whole being. God is a Spirit: He is the
Everlasting and Unchangeable One; what He is, He is always and in
truth. Our worship must even so be in spirit and truth: His worship
must be the spirit of our life; our life must be worship in spirit as
God is Spirit.
`God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship Him in
spirit and truth.' The second thought that comes to us is that the
worship in the spirit must come from God Himself. God is Spirit: He
alone has Spirit to give. It was for this He sent His Son, to fit us
for such spiritual worship, by giving us the Holy Spirit. It is of
His own work that Jesus speaks when He says twice, `The hour cometh,'
and then adds, `and is now.' He came to baptize with the Holy Spirit;
the Spirit could not stream forth till He was glorified (John i. 33,
vii. 37, 38, xvi. 7). It was when He had made an end of sin, and
entering into the Holiest of all with His blood, had there on our
behalf received the Holy Spirit (Acts ii. 33), that He could send Him
down to us as the Spirit of the Father. It was when Christ had
redeemed us, and we in Him had received the position of children, that
the Father sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts to cry,
`Abba, Father.' The worship in spirit is the worship of the Father in
the Spirit of Christ , the Spirit of Sonship.
This is the reason why Jesus here uses the name of Father. We never
find one of the Old Testament saints personally appropriate the name
of child or call God his Father. The worship of the Father is only
possible to those to whom the Spirit of the Son has been given. The
worship in spirit is only possible to those to whom the Son has
revealed the Father, and who have received the spirit of Sonship. It
is only Christ who opens the way and teaches the worship in spirit.
And in truth. That does not only mean, in sincerity. Nor does it
only signify, in accordance with the truth of God's Word. The
expression is one of deep and Divine meaning. Jesus is `the
only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.' `The law was
given by Moses; grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.' Jesus says, `I
am the truth and the life.' In the Old Testament all was shadow and
promise; Jesus brought and gives the reality, the substance, of things
hoped for. In Him the blessings and powers of the eternal life are
our actual possession and experience. Jesus is full of grace and
truth; the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth; through Him the grace
that is in Jesus is ours in deed and truth, a positive communication
out of the Divine life. And so worship in spirit is worship in truth;
actual living fellowship with God, a real correspondence and harmony
between the Father, who is a Spirit, and the child praying in the
spirit.
What Jesus said to the woman of Samaria, she could not at once
understand. Pentecost was needed to reveal its full meaning. We are
hardly prepared at our first entrance into the school of prayer to
grasp such teaching. We shall understand it better later on. Let us
only begin and take the lesson as He gives it. We are carnal and
cannot bring God the worship He seeks. But Jesus came to give the
Spirit: He has given Him to us. Let the disposition in which we set
ourselves to pray be what Christ's words have taught us. Let there be
the deep confession of our inability to bring God the worship that is
pleasing to Him; the childlike teachableness that waits on Him to
instruct us; the simple faith that yields itself to the breathing of
the Spirit. Above all, let us hold fast the blessed truth--we shall
find that the Lord has more to say to us about it--that the knowledge
of the Fatherhood of God, the revelation of His infinite Fatherliness
in our hearts, the faith in the infinite love that gives us His Son
and His Spirit to make us children, is indeed the secret of prayer in
spirit and truth. This is the new and living way Christ opened up for
us. To have Christ the Son, and the Spirit of the Son, dwelling
within us, and revealing the Father, this makes us true, spiritual
worshippers.
`LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY.'
Blessed Lord! I adore the love with which Thou didst teach a woman,
who had refused Thee a cup of water, what the worship of God must be.
I rejoice in the assurance that Thou wilt no less now instruct Thy
disciple, who comes to Thee with a heart that longs to pray in spirit
and in truth. O my Holy Master! do teach me this blessed secret.
Teach me that the worship in spirit and truth is not of man, but only
comes from Thee; that it is not only a thing of times and seasons, but
the outflowing of a life in Thee. Teach me to draw near to God in
prayer under the deep impression of my ignorance and my having nothing
in myself to offer Him, and at the same time of the provision Thou, my
Saviour, makest for the Spirit's breathing in my childlike
stammerings. I do bless Thee that in Thee I am a child, and have a
child's liberty of access; that in Thee I have the spirit of Sonship
and of worship in truth. Teach me, above all, Blessed Son of the
Father, how it is the revelation of the Father that gives confidence
in prayer; and let the infinite Fatherliness of God's Heart be my joy
and strength for a life of prayer and of worship. Amen.
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THIRD LESSON. `Pray to thy Father, which is in secret;' Or, Alone with God
`But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thine inner chamber, and
having shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret, and thy
Father which seeth in secret shall recompense thee'--Matt. vi. 6.
AFTER Jesus had called His first disciples, He gave them their first
public teaching in the Sermon on the Mount. He there expounded to
them the kingdom of God, its laws and its life. In that kingdom God
is not only King, but Father, He not only gives all, but is Himself
all. In the knowledge and fellowship of Him alone is its
blessedness. Hence it came as a matter of course that the revelation
of prayer and the prayer-life was a part of His teaching concerning
the New Kingdom He came to set up. Moses gave neither command nor
regulation with regard to prayer: even the prophets say little
directly of the duty of prayer; it is Christ who teaches to pray.
And the first thing the Lord teaches His disciples is that they must
have a secret place for prayer; every one must have some solitary spot
where he can be alone with his God. Every teacher must have a
schoolroom. We have learnt to know and accept Jesus as our only
teacher in the school of prayer. He has already taught us at Samaria
that worship is no longer confined to times and places; that worship,
spiritual true worship, is a thing of the spirit and the life; the
whole man must in his whole life be worship in spirit and truth. And
yet He wants each one to choose for himself the fixed spot where He
can daily meet him. That inner chamber, that solitary place, is
Jesus' schoolroom. That spot may be anywhere; that spot may change
from day to day if we have to change our abode; but that secret place
there must be, with the quiet time in which the pupil places himself
in the Master's presence, to be by Him prepared to worship the
Father. There alone, but there most surely, Jesus comes to us to
teach us to pray.
A teacher is always anxious that his schoolroom should be bright and
attractive, filled with the light and air of heaven, a place where
pupils long to come, and love to stay. In His first words on prayer
in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus seeks to set the inner chamber
before us in its most attractive light. If we listen carefully, we
soon notice what the chief thing is He has to tell us of our tarrying
there. Three times He uses the name of Father: `Pray to thy
Father;' `Thy Father shall recompense thee;' `Your Father knoweth
what things ye have need of.' The first thing in closet-prayer is: I
must meet my Father. The light that shines in the closet must be:
the light of the Father's countenance. The fresh air from heaven with
which Jesus would have it filled, the atmosphere in which I am to
breathe and pray, is: God's Father-love, God's infinite
Fatherliness. Thus each thought or petition we breathe out will be
simple, hearty, childlike trust in the Father. This is how the Master
teaches us to pray: He brings us into the Father's living presence.
What we pray there must avail. Let us listen carefully to hear what
the Lord has to say to us.
First, `Pray to thy Father which is in secret.' God is a God who
hides Himself to the carnal eye. As long as in our worship of God we
are chiefly occupied with our own thoughts and exercises, we shall not
meet Him who is a Spirit, the unseen One. But to the man who
withdraws himself from all that is of the world and man, and prepares
to wait upon God alone, the Father will reveal Himself. As he
forsakes and gives up and shuts out the world, and the life of the
world, and surrenders himself to be led of Christ into the secret of
God's presence, the light of the Father's love will rise upon him.
The secrecy of the inner chamber and the closed door, the entire
separation from all around us, is an image of, and so a help to that
inner spiritual sanctuary, the secret of God's tabernacle, within the
veil, where our spirit truly comes into contact with the Invisible
One. And so we are taught, at the very outset of our search after the
secret of effectual prayer, to remember that it is in the inner
chamber, where we are alone with the Father, that we shall learn to
pray aright. The Father is in secret: in these words Jesus teaches
us where He is waiting us, where He is always to be found. Christians
often complain that private prayer is not what it should be. They
feel weak and sinful, the heart is cold and dark; it is as if they
have so little to pray, and in that little no faith or joy. They are
discouraged and kept from prayer by the thought that they cannot come
to the Father as they ought or as they wish. Child of God! listen to
your Teacher. He tells you that when you go to private prayer your
first thought must be: The Father is in secret, the Father waits me
there. Just because your heart is cold and prayerless, get you into
the presence of the loving Father. As a father pitieth his children,
so the Lord pitieth you. Do not be thinking of how little you have to
bring God, but of how much He wants to give you. Just place yourself
before, and look up into, His face; think of His love, His wonderful,
tender, pitying love. Just tell Him how sinful and cold and dark all
is: it is the Father's loving heart will give light and warmth to
yours. O do what Jesus says: Just shut the door, and pray to thy
Father which is in secret. Is it not wonderful? to be able to go
alone with God, the infinite God. And then to look up and say: My
Father!
`And thy Father, which seeth in secret, will recompense thee.' Here
Jesus assures us that secret prayer cannot be fruitless: its blessing
will show itself in our life. We have but in secret, alone with God,
to entrust our life before men to Him; He will reward us openly; He
will see to it that the answer to prayer be made manifest in His
blessing upon us. Our Lord would thus teach us that as infinite
Fatherliness and Faithfulness is that with which God meets us in
secret, so on our part there should be the childlike simplicity of
faith, the confidence that our prayer does bring down a blessing. `He
that cometh to God must believe that He is a rewarder of them that
seek Him.' Not on the strong or the fervent feeling with which I pray
does the blessing of the closet depend, but upon the love and the
power of the Father to whom I there entrust my needs. And therefore
the Master has but one desire: Remember your Father is, and sees and
hears in secret; go there and stay there, and go again from there in
the confidence: He will recompense. Trust Him for it; depend upon
Him: prayer to the Father cannot be vain; He will reward you openly.
Still further to confirm this faith in the Father-love of God, Christ
speaks a third word: `Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of
before ye ask Him.' At first sight it might appear as if this thought
made prayer less needful: God knows far better than we what we need.
But as we get a deeper insight into what prayer really is, this truth
will help much to strengthen our faith. It will teach us that we do
not need, as the heathen, with the multitude and urgency of our words,
to compel an unwilling God to listen to us. It will lead to a holy
thoughtfulness and silence in prayer as it suggests the question:
Does my Father really know that I need this? It will, when once we
have been led by the Spirit to the certainty that our request is
indeed something that, according to the Word, we do need for God's
glory, give us wonderful confidence to say, My Father knows I need it
and must have it. And if there be any delay in the answer, it will
teach us in quiet perseverance to hold on: FATHER! THOU KNOWEST I
need it. O the blessed liberty and simplicity of a child that Christ
our Teacher would fain cultivate in us, as we draw near to God: let
us look up to the Father until His Spirit works it in us. Let us
sometimes in our prayers, when we are in danger of being so occupied
with our fervent, urgent petitions, as to forget that the Father knows
and hears, let us hold still and just quietly say: My Father sees, my
Father hears, my Father knows; it will help our faith to take the
answer, and to say: We know that we have the petitions we have asked
of Him.
And now, all ye who have anew entered the school of Christ to be
taught to pray, take these lessons, practise them, and trust Him to
perfect you in them. Dwell much in the inner chamber, with the door
shut--shut in from men, shut up with God; it is there the Father waits
you, it is there Jesus will teach you to pray. To be alone in secret
with THE FATHER: this be your highest joy. To be assured that THE
FATHER will openly reward the secret prayer, so that it cannot remain
unblessed: this be your strength day by day. And to know that THE
FATHER knows that you need what you ask; this be your liberty to
bring every need, in the assurance that your God will supply it
according to His riches in Glory in Christ Jesus.
`LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY.'
Blessed Saviour! with my whole heart I do bless Thee for the
appointment of the inner chamber, as the school where Thou meetest
each of Thy pupils alone, and revealest to him the Father. O my
Lord! strengthen my faith so in the Father's tender love and
kindness, that as often as I feel sinful or troubled, the first
instinctive thought may be to go where I know the Father waits me, and
where prayer never can go unblessed. Let the thought that He knows my
need before I ask, bring me, in great restfulness of faith, to trust
that He will give what His child requires. O let the place of secret
prayer become to me the most beloved spot of earth.
And, Lord! hear me as I pray that Thou wouldest everywhere bless the
closets of Thy believing people. Let Thy wonderful revelation of a
Father's tenderness free all young Christians from every thought of
secret prayer as a duty or a burden, and lead them to regard it as the
highest privilege of their life, a joy and a blessing. Bring back all
who are discouraged, because they cannot find ought to bring Thee in
prayer. O give them to understand that they have only to come with
their emptiness to Him who has all to give, and delights to do it.
Not, what they have to bring the Father, but what the Father waits to
give them, be their one thought.
And bless especially the inner chamber of all Thy servants who are
working for Thee, as the place where God's truth and God's grace is
revealed to them, where they are daily anointed with fresh oil, where
their strength is renewed, and the blessings are received in faith,
with which they are to bless their fellow-men. Lord, draw us all in
the closet nearer to Thyself and the Father. Amen.
_________________________________________________________________
FOURTH LESSON `After this manner pray;' Or, The Model Prayer.
`After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in
heaven.'--Matt. vi. 9.
EVERY teacher knows the power of example. He not only tells the child
what to do and how to do it, but shows him how it really can be done.
In condescension to our weakness, our heavenly Teacher has given us
the very words we are to take with us as we draw near to our Father.
We have in them a form of prayer in which there breathe the freshness
and fulness of the Eternal Life. So simple that the child can lisp
it, so divinely rich that it comprehends all that God can give. A
form of prayer that becomes the model and inspiration for all other
prayer, and yet always draws us back to itself as the deepest
utterance of our souls before our God.
`Our Father which art in heaven!' To appreciate this word of
adoration aright, I must remember that none of the saints had in
Scripture ever ventured to address God as their Father. The
invocation places us at once in the centre of the wonderful revelation
the Son came to make of His Father as our Father too. It comprehends
the mystery of redemption--Christ delivering us from the curse that we
might become the children of God. The mystery of regeneration--the
Spirit in the new birth giving us the new life. And the mystery of
faith--ere yet the redemption is accomplished or understood, the word
is given on the lips of the disciples to prepare them for the blessed
experience still to come. The words are the key to the whole prayer,
to all prayer. It takes time, it takes life to study them; it will
take eternity to understand them fully. The knowledge of God's
Father-love is the first and simplest, but also the last and highest
lesson in the school of prayer. It is in the personal relation to the
living God, and the personal conscious fellowship of love with
Himself, that prayer begins. It is in the knowledge of God's
Fatherliness, revealed by the Holy Spirit, that the power of prayer
will be found to root and grow. In the infinite tenderness and pity
and patience of the infinite Father, in His loving readiness to hear
and to help, the life of prayer has its joy. O let us take time,
until the Spirit has made these words to us spirit and truth, filling
heart and life: `Our Father which art in heaven.' Then we are indeed
within the veil, in the secret place of power where prayer always
prevails.
`Hallowed be Thy name.' There is something here that strikes us at
once. While we ordinarily first bring our own needs to God in prayer,
and then think of what belongs to God and His interests, the Master
reverses the order. First, Thy name, Thy kingdom, Thy will; then,
give us, forgive us, lead us, deliver us. The lesson is of more
importance than we think. In true worship the Father must be first,
must be all. The sooner I learn to forget myself in the desire that
HE may be glorified, the richer will the blessing be that prayer will
bring to myself. No one ever loses by what he sacrifices for the
Father.
This must influence all our prayer. There are two sorts of prayer:
personal and intercessory. The latter ordinarily occupies the lesser
part of our time and energy. This may not be. Christ has opened the
school of prayer specially to train intercessors for the great work of
bringing down, by their faith and prayer, the blessings of His work
and love on the world around. There can be no deep growth in prayer
unless this be made our aim. The little child may ask of the father
only what it needs for itself; and yet it soon learns to say, Give
some for sister too. But the grown-up son, who only lives for the
father's interest and takes charge of the father's business, asks more
largely, and gets all that is asked. And Jesus would train us to the
blessed life of consecration and service, in which our interests are
all subordinate to the Name, and the Kingdom, and the Will of the
Father. O let us live for this, and let, on each act of adoration,
Our Father! there follow in the same breath Thy Name, Thy Kingdom, Thy
Will;--for this we look up and long.
`Hallowed be Thy name.' What name? This new name of Father. The
word Holy is the central word of the Old Testament; the name Father of
the New. In this name of Love all the holiness and glory of God are
now to be revealed. And how is the name to be hallowed? By God
Himself: `I will hallow My great name which ye have profaned.' Our
prayer must be that in ourselves, in all God's children, in presence
of the world, God Himself would reveal the holiness, the Divine power,
the hidden glory of the name of Father. The Spirit of the Father is
the Holy Spirit: it is only when we yield ourselves to be led of Him,
that the name will be hallowed in our prayers and our lives. Let us
learn the prayer: `Our Father, hallowed be Thy name.'
`Thy kingdom come.' The Father is a King and has a kingdom. The son
and heir of a king has no higher ambition than the glory of his
father's kingdom. In time of war or danger this becomes his passion;
he can think of nothing else. The children of the Father are here in
the enemy's territory, where the kingdom, which is in heaven, is not
yet fully manifested. What more natural than that, when they learn to
hallow the Father-name, they should long and cry with deep
enthusiasm: `Thy kingdom come.' The coming of the kingdom is the one
great event on which the revelation of the Father's glory, the
blessedness of His children, the salvation of the world depends. On
our prayers too the coming of the kingdom waits. Shall we not join in
the deep longing cry of the redeemed: `Thy kingdom come'? Let us
learn it in the school of Jesus.
`Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.' This petition is too
frequently applied alone to the suffering of the will of God. In
heaven God's will is done, and the Master teaches the child to ask
that the will may be done on earth just as in heaven: in the spirit
of adoring submission and ready obedience. Because the will of God is
the glory of heaven, the doing of it is the blessedness of heaven. As
the will is done, the kingdom of heaven comes into the heart. And
wherever faith has accepted the Father's love, obedience accepts the
Father's will. The surrender to, and the prayer for a life of
heaven-like obedience, is the spirit of childlike prayer.
`Give us this day our daily bread.' When first the child has yielded
himself to the Father in the care for His Name, His Kingdom, and His
Will, he has full liberty to ask for his daily bread. A master cares
for the food of his servant, a general of his soldiers, a father of
his child. And will not the Father in heaven care for the child who
has in prayer given himself up to His interests? We may indeed in
full confidence say: Father, I live for Thy honour and Thy work; I
know Thou carest for me. Consecration to God and His will gives
wonderful liberty in prayer for temporal things: the whole earthly
life is given to the Father's loving care.
`And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.' As
bread is the first need of the body, so forgiveness for the soul. And
the provision for the one is as sure as for the other. We are
children but sinners too; our right of access to the Father's presence
we owe to the precious blood and the forgiveness it has won for us.
Let us beware of the prayer for forgiveness becoming a formality:
only what is really confessed is really forgiven. Let us in faith
accept the forgiveness as promised: as a spiritual reality, an actual
transaction between God and us, it is the entrance into all the
Father's love and all the privileges of children. Such forgiveness,
as a living experience, is impossible without a forgiving spirit to
others: as forgiven expresses the heavenward, so forgiving the
earthward, relation of God's child. In each prayer to the Father I
must be able to say that I know of no one whom I do not heartily love.
`And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.'
Our daily bread, the pardon of our sins, and then our being kept from
all sin and the power of the evil one, in these three petitions all
our personal need is comprehended. The prayer for bread and pardon
must be accompanied by the surrender to live in all things in holy
obedience to the Father's will, and the believing prayer in everything
to be kept by the power of the indwelling Spirit from the power of the
evil one.
Children of God! it is thus Jesus would have us to pray to the Father
in heaven. O let His Name, and Kingdom, and Will, have the first
place in our love; His providing, and pardoning, and keeping love will
be our sure portion. So the prayer will lead us up to the true
child-life: the Father all to the child, the Father all for the
child. We shall understand how Father and child, the Thine and the
Our, are all one, and how the heart that begins its prayer with the
God-devoted THINK, will have the power in faith to speak out the OUR
too. Such prayer will, indeed, be the fellowship and interchange of
love, always bringing us back in trust and worship to Him who is not
only the Beginning but the End: `FOR THINE IS THE KINGDOM, AND THE
POWER, AND THE GLORY, FOR EVER, AMEN.' Son of the Father, teach us to
pray, `OUR FATHER.'
`LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY.'
O Thou who art the only-begotten Son, teach us, we beseech Thee, to
pray, `OUR FATHER.' We thank Thee, Lord, for these Living Blessed
Words which Thou has given us. We thank Thee for the millions who in
them have learnt to know and worship the Father, and for what they
have been to us. Lord! it is as if we needed days and weeks in Thy
school with each separate petition; so deep and full are they. But we
look to Thee to lead us deeper into their meaning: do it, we pray
Thee, for Thy Name's sake; Thy name is Son of the Father.
Lord! Thou didst once say: `No man knoweth the Father save the Son,
and he to whom the Son willeth to reveal Him.' And again: `I made
known unto them Thy name, and will make it known, that the love
wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them.' Lord Jesus! reveal to
us the Father. Let His name, His infinite Father-love, the love with
which He loved Thee, according to Thy prayer, BE IN US. Then shall we
say aright, `OUR FATHER!' Then shall we apprehend Thy teaching, and
the first spontaneous breathing of our heart will be: `Our Father,
Thy Name, Thy Kingdom, Thy Will.' And we shall bring our needs and
our sins and our temptations to Him in the confidence that the love of
such a Father care for all.
Blessed Lord! we are Thy scholars, we trust Thee; do teach us to pray,
`OUR FATHER.' Amen.
_________________________________________________________________
FIFTH LESSON.`Ask, and it shall be given you; `
Or, The Certainty of the Answer to Prayer.
`Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and
it shall be opened unto you: for every one that asketh receiveth, and
he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be
opened,'--Matt. vii. 7, 8.
`Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss.'--Jas. iv. 3.
OUR Lord returns here in the Sermon on the Mount a second time to
speak of prayer. The first time He had spoken of the Father who is to
be found in secret, and rewards openly, and had given us the pattern
prayer (Matt. vi. 5-15). Here He wants to teach us what in all
Scripture is considered the chief thing in prayer: the assurance that
prayer will be heard and answered. Observe how He uses words which
mean almost the same thing, and each time repeats the promise so
distinctly: `Ye shall receive, ye shall find, it shall be opened unto
you;' and then gives as ground for such assurance the law of the
kingdom: `He that asketh, receiveth; he that seeketh, findeth; to him
that knocketh, it shall be opened.' We cannot but feel how in this
sixfold repetition He wants to impress deep on our minds this one
truth, that we may and must most confidently expect an answer to our
prayer. Next to the revelation of the Father's love, there is, in the
whole course of the school of prayer, not a more important lesson than
this: Every one that asketh, receiveth.
In the three words the Lord uses, ask, seek, knock, a difference in
meaning has been sought. If such was indeed His purpose, then the
first, ASK, refers to the gifts we pray for. But I may ask and
receive the gift without the Giver. SEEK is the word Scripture uses
of God Himself; Christ assures me that I can find Himself. But it is
not enough to find God in time of need, without coming to abiding
fellowship: KNOCK speaks of admission to dwell with Him and in Him.
Asking and receiving the gift would thus lead to seeking and finding
the Giver, and this again to the knocking and opening of the door of
the Father's home and love. One thing is sure: the Lord does want us
to count most certainly on it that asking, seeking, knocking, cannot
be in vain: receiving an answer, finding God, the opened heart and
home of God, are the certain fruit of prayer.
That the Lord should have thought it needful in so many forms to
repeat the truth, is a lesson of deep import. It proves that He knows
our heart, how doubt and distrust toward God are natural to us, and
how easily we are inclined to rest in prayer as a religious work
without an answer. He knows too how, even when we believe that God is
the Hearer of prayer, believing prayer that lays hold of the promise,
is something spiritual, too high and difficult for the half-hearted
disciple. He therefore at the very outset of His instruction to those
who would learn to pray, seeks to lodge this truth deep into their
hearts: prayer does avail much; ask and ye shall receive; every one
that asketh, receiveth. This is the fixed eternal law of the
kingdom: if you ask and receive not, it must be because there is
something amiss or wanting in the prayer. Hold on; let the Word and
the Spirit teach you to pray aright, but do not let go the confidence
He seeks to waken: Every one that asketh, receiveth.
`Ask, and it shall be given you.' Christ has no mightier stimulus to
persevering prayer in His school than this. As a child has to prove a
sum to be correct, so the proof that we have prayed aright is, the
answer. If we ask and receive not, it is because we have not learned
to pray aright. Let every learner in the school of Christ therefore
take the Master's word in all simplicity: Every one that asketh,
receiveth. He had good reasons for speaking so unconditionally. Let
us beware of weakening the Word with our human wisdom. When He tells
us heavenly things, let us believe Him: His Word will explain itself
to him who believes it fully. If questions and difficulties arise,
let us not seek to have them settled before we accept the Word. No;
let us entrust them all to Him: it is His to solve them: our work is
first and fully to accept and hold fast His promise. Let in our inner
chamber, in the inner chamber of our heart too, the Word be inscribed
in letters of light: Every one that asketh, receiveth.
According to this teaching of the Master, prayer consists of two
parts, has two sides, a human and a Divine. The human is the asking,
the Divine is the giving. Or, to look at both from the human side,
there is the asking and the receiving--the two halves that make up a
whole. It is as if He would tell us that we are not to rest without
an answer, because it is the will of God, the rule in the Father's
family: every childlike believing petition is granted. If no answer
comes, we are not to sit down in the sloth that calls itself
resignation, and suppose that it is not God's will to give an answer.
No; there must be something in the prayer that is not as God would
have it, childlike and believing; we must seek for grace to pray so
that the answer may come. It is far easier to the flesh to submit
without the answer than to yield itself to be searched and purified by
the Spirit, until it has learnt to pray the prayer of faith.
It is one of the terrible marks of the diseased state of Christian
life in these days, that there are so many who rest content without
the distinct experience of answer to prayer. They pray daily, they
ask many things, and trust that some of them will be heard, but know
little of direct definite answer to prayer as the rule of daily life.
And it is this the Father wills: He seeks daily intercourse with His
children in listening to and granting their petitions. he wills that
I should come to Him day by day with distinct requests; He wills day
by day to do for me what I ask. It was in His answer to prayer that
the saints of old learned to know God as the Living One, and were
stirred to praise and love (Ps. xxxiv., lxvi. 19, cxvi. 1). Our
Teacher waits to imprint this upon our minds: prayer and its answer,
the child asking and the father giving, belong to each other.
There may be cases in which the answer is a refusal, because the
request is not according to God's Word, as when Moses asked to enter
Canaan. But still, there was an answer: God did not leave His
servant in uncertainty as to His will. The gods of the heathen are
dumb and cannot speak. Our Father lets His child know when He cannot
give him what he asks, and he withdraws his petition, even as the Son
did in Gethsemane. Both Moses the servant and Christ the Son knew
that what they asked was not according to what the Lord had spoken:
their prayer was the humble supplication whether it was not possible
for the decision to be changed. God will teach those who are
teachable and give Him time, by His Word and Spirit, whether their
request be according to His will or not. Let us withdraw the request,
if it be not according to God's mind, or persevere till the answer
come. Prayer is appointed to obtain the answer. It is in prayer and
its answer that the interchange of love between the Father and His
child takes place.
How deep the estrangement of our heart from God must be, that we find
it so difficult to grasp such promises. Even while we accept the
words and believe their truth, the faith of the heart, that fully has
them and rejoices in them, comes so slowly. It is because our
spiritual life is still so weak, and the capacity for taking God's
thoughts is so feeble. But let us look to Jesus to teach us as none
but He can teach. If we take His words in simplicity, and trust Him
by His Spirit to make them within us life and power, they will so
enter into our inner being, that the spiritual Divine reality of the
truth they contain will indeed take possession of us, and we shall not
rest content until every petition we offer is borne heavenward on
Jesus' own words: `Ask, and it shall be given you.'
Beloved fellow-disciples in the school of Jesus! let us set ourselves
to learn this lesson well. Let us take these words just as they were
spoken. Let us not suffer human reason to weaken their force. Let us
take them as Jesus gives them, and believe them. He will teach us in
due time how to understand them fully: let us begin by implicitly
believing them. Let us take time, as often as we pray, to listen to
His voice: Every one that asketh, receiveth. Let us not make the
feeble experiences of our unbelief the measure of what our faith may
expect. Let us seek, not only just in our seasons of prayer, but at
all times, to hold fast the joyful assurance: man's prayer on earth
and God's answer in heaven are meant for each other. Let us trust
Jesus to teach us so to pray that the answer can come. He will do it,
if we hold fast the word He gives today: `Ask, and ye shall receive.'
`LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY.'
O Lord Jesus! teach me to understand and believe what Thou hast now
promised me. It is not hid from Thee, O my Lord, with what reasonings
my heart seeks to satisfy itself, when no answer comes. There is the
thought that my prayer is not in harmony with the Father's secret
counsel; that there is perhaps something better Thou wouldest give me;
or that prayer as fellowship with God is blessing enough without an
answer. And yet, my blessed Lord, I find in Thy teaching on prayer
that Thou didst not speak of these things, but didst say so plainly,
that prayer may and must expect an answer. Thou dost assure us that
this is the fellowship of a child with the Father: the child asks and
the Father gives.
Blessed Lord! Thy words are faithful and true. It must be, because I
pray amiss, that my experience of answered prayer is not clearer. It
must be, because I live too little in the Spirit, that my prayer is
too little in the Spirit, and that the power for the prayer of faith
is wanting.
Lord! teach me to pray. Lord Jesus! I trust Thee for it; teach me
to pray in faith. Lord! teach me this lesson of today: Every one
that asketh receiveth. Amen.
_________________________________________________________________
SIXTH LESSON. How much more? Or, The Infinite Fatherliness of God.
`Or what man is there of you, who, if his son ask him for a loaf, will
give him a stone; or if he shall ask for a fish, will give him a
serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto
your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give
good things to them that ask Him?'--Matt. vii. 9-11
IN these words our Lord proceeds further to confirm what He had said
of the certainty of an answer to prayer. To remove all doubt, and
show us on what sure ground His promise rests, He appeals to what
every one has seen and experienced here on earth. We are all
children, and know what we expected of our fathers. We are fathers,
or continually see them; and everywhere we look upon it as the most
natural thing there can be, for a father to hear his child. And the
Lord asks us to look up from earthly parents, of whom the best are but
evil, and to calculate HOW MUCH MORE the heavenly Father will give
good gifts to them that ask Him. Jesus would lead us up to see, that
as much greater as God is than sinful man, so much greater our
assurance ought to be that He will more surely than any earthly father
grant our childlike petitions. As much greater as God is than man, so
much surer is it that prayer will be heard with the Father in heaven
than with a father on earth.
As simple and intelligible as this parable is, so deep and spiritual
is the teaching it contains. The Lord would remind us that the prayer
of a child owes its influence entirely to the relation in which he
stands to the parent. The prayer can exert that influence only when
the child is really living in that relationship, in the home, in the
love, in the service of the Father. The power of the promise, `Ask,
and it shall be given you,' lies in the loving relationship between us
as children and the Father in heaven; when we live and walk in that
relationship, the prayer of faith and its answer will be the natural
result. And so the lesson we have today in the school of prayer is
this: Live as a child of God, then you will be able to pray as a
child, and as a child you will most assuredly be heard.
And what is the true child-life? The answer can be found in any
home. The child that by preference forsakes the father's house, that
finds no pleasure in the presence and love and obedience of the
father, and still thinks to ask and obtain what he will, will surely
be disappointed. On the contrary, he to whom the intercourse and will
and honour and love of the father are the joy of his life, will find
that it is the father's joy to grant his requests. Scripture says,
`As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the children of
God:' the childlike privilege of asking all is inseparable from the
childlike life under the leading of the Spirit. He that gives himself
to be led by the Spirit in his life, will be led by Him in his prayers
too. And he will find that Fatherlike giving is the Divine response
to childlike living.
To see what this childlike living is, in which childlike asking and
believing have their ground, we have only to notice what our Lord
teaches in the Sermon on the Mount of the Father and His children. In
it the prayer-promises are imbedded in the life-precepts; the two are
inseparable. They form one whole; and He alone can count on the
fulfilment of the promise, who accepts too all that the Lord has
connected with it. It is as if in speaking the word, `Ask, and ye
shall receive,' He says: I give these promises to those whom in the
beatitudes I have pictured in their childlike poverty and purity, and
of whom I have said, `They shall be called the children of God' (Matt.
v. 3-9): to children, who `let your light shine before men, so that
they may glorify your Father in heaven:' to those who walk in love,
`that ye may be children of your Father which is in heaven,' and who
seek to be perfect `even as your Father in heaven is perfect' (v.
45): to those whose fasting and praying and almsgiving (vi. 1-18) is
not before men, but `before your Father which seeth in secret;' who
forgive `even as your Father forgiveth you' (vi. 15); who trust the
heavenly Father in all earthly need, seeking first the kingdom of God
and His righteousness (vi. 26-32); who not only say, Lord, Lord, but
do the will of my Father which is in heaven (vii. 21). Such are the
children of the Father, and such is the life in the Father's love and
service; in such a child-life answered prayers are certain and
abundant.
But will not such teaching discourage the feeble one? If we are first
to answer to this portrait of a child, must not many give up all hope
of answers to prayer? The difficulty is removed if we think again of
the blessed name of father and child. A child is weak; there is a
great difference among children in age and gift. The Lord does not
demand of us a perfect fulfilment of the law; no, but only the
childlike and whole-hearted surrender to live as a child with Him in
obedience and truth. Nothing more. But also, nothing less. The
Father must have the whole heart. When this is given, and He sees the
child with honest purpose and steady will seeking in everything to be
and live as a child, then our prayer will count with Him as the prayer
of a child. Let any one simply and honestly begin to study the Sermon
on the Mount and take it as his guide in life, and he will find,
notwithstanding weakness and failure, an ever-growing liberty to claim
the fulfilment of its promises in regard to prayer. In the names of
father and child he has the pledge that his petitions will be
granted.
This is the one chief thought on which Jesus dwells here, and which He
would have all His scholars take in. He would have us see that the
secret of effectual prayer is: to have the heart filled with the
Father-love of God. It is not enough for us to know that God is a
Father: He would have us take time to come under the full impression
of what that name implies. We must take the best earthly father we
know; we must think of the tenderness and love with which he regards
the request of his child, the love and joy with which he grants every
reasonable desire; we must then, as we think in adoring worship of the
infinite Love and Fatherliness of God, consider with how much more
tenderness and joy He sees us come to Him, and gives us what we ask
aright. And then, when we see how much this Divine arithmetic is
beyond our comprehension, and feel how impossible it is for us to
apprehend God's readiness to hear us, then He would have us come and
open our heart for the Holy Spirit to shed abroad God's Father-love
there. Let us do this not only when we want to pray, but let us yield
heart and life to dwell in that love. The child who only wants to
know the love of the father when he has something to ask, will be
disappointed. But he who lets God be Father always and in everything,
who would fain live his whole life in the Father's presence and love,
who allows God in all the greatness of His love to be a Father to him,
oh! he will experience most gloriously that a life in God's infinite
Fatherliness and continual answers to prayer are inseparable.
Beloved fellow-disciple! we begin to see what the reason is that we
know so little of daily answers to prayer, and what the chief lesson
is which the Lord has for us in His school. It is all in the name of
Father. We thought of new and deeper insight into some of the
mysteries of the prayer-world as what we should get in Christ's
school; He tells us the first is the highest lesson; we must learn to
say well, `Abba, Father!' `Our Father which art in heaven.' He that
can say this, has the key to all prayer. In all the compassion with
which a father listens to his weak or sickly child, in all the joy
with which he hears his stammering child, in all the gentle patience
with which he bears with a thoughtless child, we must, as in so many
mirrors, study the heart of our Father, until every prayer be borne
upward on the faith of this Divine word: `How much more shall your
heavenly Father give good gifts to them that ask Him.'
`LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY.'
Blessed Lord! Thou knowest that this, though it be one of the first
and simplest and most glorious lessons in Thy school, is to our hearts
one of the hardest to learn: we know so little of the love of the
Father. Lord! teach us so to live with the Father that His love may
be to us nearer, clearer, dearer, than the love of any earthly
father. And let the assurance of His hearing our prayer be as much
greater than the confidence in an earthly parent, as the heavens are
higher than earth, as God is infinitely greater than man. Lord! show
us that it is only our unchildlike distance from the Father that
hinders the answer to prayer, and lead us on to the true life of God's
children. Lord Jesus! it is fatherlike love that wakens childlike
trust. O reveal to us the Father, and His tender, pitying love, that
we may become childlike, and experience how in the child-life lies the
power of prayer.
Blessed Son of God! the Father loveth Thee and hath given Thee all
things. And Thou lovest the Father, and hast done all things He
commanded Thee, and therefore hast the power to ask all things.
Lord! give us Thine own Spirit, the Spirit of the Son. Make us
childlike, as Thou wert on earth. And let every prayer be breathed in
the faith that as the heaven is higher than the earth, so God's
Father-love, and His readiness to give us what we ask, surpasses all
we can think or conceive. Amen.
NOTE.1
`Your Father which is in heaven.' Alas! we speak of it only as the
utterance of a reverential homage. We think of it as a figure
borrowed from an earthly life, and only in some faint and shallow
meaning to be used of God. We are afraid to take God as our own
tender and pitiful father. He is a schoolmaster, or almost farther
off than that, and knowing less about us--an inspector, who knows
nothing of us except through our lessons. His eyes are not on the
scholar, but on the book, and all alike must come up to the standard.
Now open the ears of the heart, timid child of God; let it go sinking
right down into the inner most depths of the soul. Here is the
starting-point of holiness, in the love and patience and pity of our
heavenly Father. We have not to learn to be holy as a hard lesson at
school, that we may make God think well of us; we are to learn it at
home with the Father to help us. God loves you not because you are
clever not because you are good, but because He is your Father. The
Cross of Christ does not make God love us; it is the outcome and
measure of His love to us. He loves all His children, the clumsiest,
the dullest, the worst of His children. His love lies at the back of
everything, and we must get upon that as the solid foundation of our
religious life, not growing up into that, but growing up out if it.
We must begin there or our beginning will come to nothing. Do take
hold of this mightily. We must go out of ourselves for any hope, or
any strength, or any confidence. And what hope, what strength, what
confidence may be ours now that we begin here, your Father which is in
heaven!
We need to get in at the tenderness and helpfulness which lie in these
words, and to rest upon it--your Father. Speak them over to yourself
until something of the wonderful truth is felt by us. It means that I
am bound to God by the closest and tenderest relationship; that I
have a right to His love and His power and His blessing, such as
nothing else could give me. O the boldness with which we can draw
near! O the great things we have a right to ask for! Your Father.
It means that all His infinite love and patience and wisdom bend over
me to help me. In this relationship lies not only the possibility of
holiness; there is infinitely more than that.
Here we are to begin, in the patient love of our Father. Think how He
knows us apart and by ourselves, in all our peculiarities, and in all
our weaknesses and difficulties. The master judges by the result, but
our Father judges by the effort. Failure does not always mean fault.
He knows how much things cost, and weighs them where others only
measure. YOUR FATHER. Think how great store His love sets by the
poor beginnings of the little ones, clumsy and unmeaning as they may
be to others. All this lies in this blessed relationship and
infinitely more. Do not fear to take it all as your own.
1From Thoughts on Holiness, by Mark Guy Pearse. What is so
beautifully said of the knowledge of God's Fatherliness as the
starting-point of holiness is no less true of prayer.
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SEVENTH LESSON. `How much more the Holy Spirit;
Or All-Comprehensive Gift.
`If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your
children, how much more shall the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit
to them that ask Him?'--Luke xi. 13.
IN the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord had already given utterance to
His wonderful HOW MUCH MORE? Here in Luke, where He repeats the
question, there is a difference. Instead of speaking, as then of
giving good gifts, He says, `How much more shall the heavenly Father
give THE HOLY SPIRIT?' He thus teaches us that the chief and the best
of these gifts is the Holy Spirit, or rather, that in this gift all
others are comprised The Holy Spirit is the first of the Father's
gifts, and the one He delights most to bestow. The Holy Spirit is
therefore the gift we ought first and chiefly to seek.
The unspeakable worth of this gift we can easily understand. Jesus
spoke of the Spirit as `the promise of the Father;' the one promise in
which God's Fatherhood revealed itself. The best gift a good and wise
father can bestow on a child on earth is his own spirit. This is the
great object of a father in education--to reproduce in his child his
own disposition and character. If the child is to know and understand
his father; if, as he grows up, he is to enter into all his will and
plans; if he is to have his highest joy in the father, and the father
in him,--he must be of one mind and spirit with him. And so it is
impossible to conceive of God bestowing any higher gift on His child
than this, His own Spirit. God is what He is through His Spirit; the
Spirit is the very life of God. Just think what it means--God giving
His own Spirit to His child on earth.
Or was not this the glory of Jesus as a Son upon earth, that the
Spirit of the Father was in Him? At His baptism in Jordan the two
things were united,--the voice, proclaiming Him the Beloved Son, and
the Spirit, descending upon Him. And so the apostle says of us,
`Because ye are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your
hearts, crying, Abba, Father.' A king seeks in the whole education of
his son to call forth in him a kingly spirit. Our Father in heaven
desires to educate us as His children for the holy, heavenly life in
which He dwells, and for this gives us, from the depths of His heart,
His own Spirit. It was this which was the whole aim of Jesus when,
after having made atonement with His own blood, He entered for us into
God's presence, that He might obtain for us, and send down to dwell in
us, the Holy Spirit. As the Spirit of the Father, and of the Son, the
whole life and love of the Father and the Son are in Him; and, coming
down into us, He lifts us up into their fellowship. As Spirit of the
Father, He sheds abroad the Father's love, with which He loved the
Son, in our hearts, and teaches us to live in it. As Spirit of the
Son, He breathes in us the childlike liberty, and devotion, and
obedience in which the Son lived upon earth. The Father can bestow no
higher or more wonderful gift than this: His own Holy Spirit, the
Spirit of sonship.
This truth naturally suggests the thought that this first and chief
gift of God must be the first and chief object of all prayer. For
every need of the spiritual life this is the one thing needful, the
Holy Spirit. All the fulness is in Jesus; the fulness of grace and
truth, out of which we receive grace for grace. The Holy Spirit is
the appointed conveyancer, whose special work it is to make Jesus and
all there is in Him for us ours in personal appropriation, in blessed
experience. He is the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus; as wonderful as
the life is, so wonderful is the provision by which such an agent is
provided to communicate it to us. If we but yield ourselves entirely
to the disposal of the Spirit, and let Him have His way with us, He
will manifest the life of Christ within us. He will do this with a
Divine power, maintaining the life of Christ in us in uninterrupted
continuity. Surely, if there is one prayer that should draw us to the
Father's throne and keep us there, it is this: for the Holy Spirit,
whom we as children have received, to stream into us and out from us
in greater fulness.
In the variety of the gifts which the Spirit has to dispense, He meets
the believer's every need. Just think of the names He bears. The
Spirit of grace, to reveal and impart all of grace there is in Jesus.
The Spirit of faith, teaching us to begin and go on and increase in
ever believing. The Spirit of adoption and assurance, who witnesses
that we are God's children, and inspires the confiding and confident
Abba, Father! The Spirit of truth, to lead into all truth, to make
each word of God ours in deed and in truth. The Spirit of prayer,
through whom we speak with the Father; prayer that must be heard. The
Spirit of judgment and burning, to search the heart, and convince of
sin. The Spirit of holiness, manifesting and communicating the
Father's holy presence within us. The Spirit of power, through whom
we are strong to testify boldly and work effectually in the Father's
service. The Spirit of glory, the pledge of our inheritance, the
preparation and the foretaste of the glory to come. Surely the child
of God needs but one thing to be able really to live as a child: it
is, to be filled with this Spirit.
And now, the lesson Jesus teaches us today in His school is this:
That the Father is just longing to give Him to us if we will but ask
in the childlike dependence on what He says: `If ye know to give good
gifts unto your children, HOW MUCH MORE shall your heavenly Father
give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him.' In the words of God's
promise, `I will pour out my Spirit abundantly;' and of His command,
`Be ye filled with the Spirit' we have the measure of what God is
ready to give, and what we may obtain. As God's children, we have
already received the Spirit. But we still need to ask and pray for
His special gifts and operations as we require them. And not only
this, but for Himself to take complete and entire possession; for His
unceasing momentary guidance. Just as the branch, already filled with
the sap of the vine, is ever crying for the continued and increasing
flow of that sap, that it may bring its fruit to perfection, so the
believer, rejoicing in the possession of the Spirit, ever thirsts and
cries for more. And what the great Teacher would have us learn is,
that nothing less than God's promise and God's command may be the
measure of our expectation and our prayer; we must be filled
abundantly. He would have us ask this in the assurance that the
wonderful HOW MUCH MORE of God's Father-love is the pledge that, when
we ask, we do most certainly receive.
Let us now believe this. As we pray to be filled with the Spirit, let
us not seek for the answer in our feelings. All spiritual blessings
must be received, that is, accepted or taken in faith.1 Let me
believe, the Father gives the Holy Spirit to His praying child. Even
now, while I pray, I must say in faith: I have what I ask, the
fulness of the Spirit is mine. Let us continue stedfast in this
faith. On the strength of God's Word we know that we have what we
ask. Let us, with thanksgiving that we have been heard, with
thanksgiving for what we have received and taken and now hold as ours,
continue stedfast in believing prayer that the blessing, which has
already been given us, and which we hold in faith, may break through
and fill our whole being. It is in such believing thanksgiving and
prayer, that our soul opens up for the Spirit to take entire and
undisturbed possession. It is such prayer that not only asks and
hopes, but takes and holds, that inherits the full blessing. In all
our prayer let us remember the lesson the Saviour would teach us this
day, that, if there is one thing on earth we can be sure of, it is
this, that the Father desires to have us filled with His Spirit, that
He delights to give us His Spirit.
And when once we have learned thus to believe for ourselves, and each
day to take out of the treasure we hold in heaven, what liberty and
power to pray for the outpouring of the Spirit on the Church of God,
on all flesh, on individuals, or on special efforts! He that has once
learned to know the Father in prayer for himself, learns to pray most
confidently for others too. The Father gives the Holy Spirit to them
that ask Him, not least, but most, when they ask for others.
`LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY.'
Father in heaven! Thou didst send Thy Son to reveal Thyself to us,
Thy Father-love, and all that that love has for us. And He has taught
us, that the gift above all gifts which Thou wouldst bestow in answer
to prayer is, the Holy Spirit.
O my Father! I come to Thee with this prayer; there is nothing I
would--may I not say, I do--desire so much as to be filled with the
Spirit, the Holy Spirit. The blessings He brings are so unspeakable,
and just what I need. He sheds abroad Thy love in the heart, and
fills it with Thy self. I long for this. He breathes the mind and
life of Christ in me, so that I live as He did, in and for the
Father's love. I long for this. He endues with power from on high
for all my walk and work. I long for this. O Father! I beseech
Thee, give me this day the fulness of Thy Spirit.
Father! I ask this, resting on the words of my Lord: `HOW MUCH MORE
THE HOLY SPIRIT.' I do believe that Thou hearest my prayer; I
receive now what I ask; Father! I claim and I take it: the fulness
of Thy Spirit is mine. I receive the gift this day again as a faith
gift; in faith I reckon my Father works through the Spirit all He has
promised. The Father delights to breathe His Spirit into His waiting
child as He tarries in fellowship with Himself. Amen.
1The Greek word for receiving and taking is the same. When Jesus
said, `Everyone that asketh receiveth,' He used the same verb as at
the Supper, `Take, eat,' or on the resurrection morning, `Receive,'
accept, take, `the Holy Spirit.' Receiving not only implies God's
bestowment, but our acceptance.
_________________________________________________________________
EIGHTH LESSON. `Because of his importunity;'
The Boldness of God's Friends.
`And He said unto them, Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go
to him at midnight, and say to him, Friend, lend me three loaves; for
a friend of mine is come to me from a journey, and I have nothing to
set before him' and he from within shall answer and say, Trouble me
not: the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I
cannot rise and give thee. I say unto you, though he will not rise
and give him because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity
he will rise and give him as many as he needeth.'--Luke xi. 5-8.
THE first teaching to His disciples was given by our Lord in the
Sermon on the Mount. It was near a year later that the disciples
asked Jesus to teach them to pray. In answer He gave them a second
time the Lord's Prayer, so teaching them what to pray. He then
speaks of how they ought to pray, and repeats what he formerly said
of God's Fatherliness and the certainty of an answer. But in between
He adds the beautiful parable of the friend at midnight, to teach them
the two fold lesson, that God does not only want us to pray for
ourselves, but for the perishing around us, and that in such
intercession great boldness of entreaty is often needful, and always
lawful, yea, pleasing to God.
The parable is a perfect storehouse of instruction in regard to true
intercession. There is, first, the love which seeks to help the needy
around us: `my friend is come to me.' Then the need which urges to
the cry `I have nothing to set before him.' Then follows the
confidence that help is to be had: `which of you shall have a friend,
and say, Friend, lend me three loaves.' Then comes the unexpected
refusal: `I cannot rise and give thee.' Then again the perseverance
that takes no refusal: `because of his importunity.' And lastly, the
reward of such prayer: `he will give him as many as he needeth.' A
wonderful setting forth of the way of prayer and faith in which the
blessing of God has so often been sought and found.
Let us confine ourselves to the chief thought: prayer as an appeal to
the friendship of God; and we shall find that two lessons are
specially suggested. The one, that if we are God's friends, and come
as such to Him, we must prove ourselves the friends of the needy;
God's friendship to us and ours to others go hand in hand. The other,
that when we come thus we may use the utmost liberty in claiming an
answer.
There is a twofold use of prayer: the one, to obtain strength and
blessing for our own life; the other, the higher, the true glory of
prayer, for which Christ has taken us into His fellowship and
teaching, is intercession, where prayer is the royal power a child of
God exercises in heaven on behalf of others and even of the kingdom.
We see it in Scripture, how it was in intercession for others that
Abraham and Moses, Samuel and Elijah, with all the holy men of old,
proved that they had power with God and prevailed. It is when we give
ourselves to be a blessing that we can specially count on the blessing
of God. It is when we draw near to God as the friend of the poor and
the perishing that we may count on His friendliness; the righteous man
who is the friend of the poor is very specially the friend of God.
This gives wonderful liberty in prayer. Lord! I have a needy friend
whom I must help. As a friend I have undertaken to help him. In Thee
I have a Friend, whose kindness and riches I know to be infinite: I
am sure Thou wilt give me what I ask. If I, being evil, am ready to
do for my friend what I can, how much more wilt Thou, O my heavenly
Friend, now do for Thy friend what he asks?
The question might suggest itself, whether the Fatherhood of God does
not give such confidence in prayer, that the thought of His Friendship
can hardly teach us anything more: a father is more than a friend.
And yet, if we consider it, this pleading the friendship of God opens
new wonders to us. That a child obtains what he asks of his father
looks so perfectly natural, we almost count it the father's duty to
give. But with a friend it is as if the kindness is more free,
dependent, not on nature, but on sympathy and character. And then the
relation of a child is more that of perfect dependence; two friends
are more nearly on a level. And so our Lord, in seeking to unfold to
us the spiritual mystery of prayer, would fain have us approach God in
this relation too, as those whom He has acknowledged as His friends,
whose mind and life are in sympathy with His.
But then we must be living as His friends. I am still a child even
when a wanderer; but friendship depends upon the conduct. `Ye are my
friends if ye do whatsoever I command you.' `Thou seest that faith
wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect; and the
scripture was fulfilled which saith, And Abraham believed God, and he
was called the friend of God.' It is the Spirit, `the same Spirit,'
that leads us that also bears witness to our acceptance with God;
`likewise, also,' the same Spirit helpeth us in prayer. It is a life
as the friend of God that gives the wonderful liberty to say: I have
a friend to whom I can go even at midnight. And how much more when I
go in the very spirit of that friendliness, manifesting myself the
very kindness I look for in God, seeking to help my friend as I want
God to help me. When I come to God in prayer, He always looks to what
the aim is of my petition. If it be merely for my own comfort or joy
I seek His grace, I do not receive. But if I can say that it is that
He may be glorified in my dispensing His blessings to others, I shall
not ask in vain. Or if I ask for others, but want to wait until God
has made me so rich, that it is no sacrifice or act of faith to aid
them, I shall not obtain. But if I can say that I have already
undertaken for my needy friend, that in my poverty I have already
begun the work of love, because I know I had a friend Who would help
me, my prayer will be heard. Oh, we know not how much the plea
avails: the friendship of earth looking in its need to the friendship
of heaven: `He will give him as much as he needeth.'
But not always at once. The one thing by which man can honour and
enjoy his God is faith. Intercession is part of faith's
training-school. There our friendship with men and with God is
tested. There it is seen whether my friendship with the needy is so
real, that I will take time and sacrifice my rest, will go even at
midnight and not cease until I have obtained for them what I need.
There it is seen whether my friendship with God is so clear, that I
can depend on Him not to turn me away and therefore pray on until He
gives.
O what a deep heavenly mystery this is of persevering prayer. The God
who has promised, who longs, whose fixed purpose it is to give the
blessing, holds it back. It is to Him a matter of such deep
importance that His friends on earth should know and fully trust their
rich Friend in heaven, that He trains them, in the school of answer
delayed, to find out how their perseverance really does prevail, and
what the mighty power is they can wield in heaven, if they do but set
themselves to it. There is a faith that sees the promise, and
embraces it, and yet does not receive it (Heb. xi. 13, 39). It is
when the answer to prayer does not come, and the promise we are most
firmly trusting appears to be of none effect, that the trial of faith,
more precious than of gold, takes place. It is in this trial that the
faith that has embraced the promise is purified and strengthened and
prepared in personal, holy fellowship with the living God, to see the
glory of God. It takes and holds the promise until it has received
the fulfilment of what it had claimed in a living truth in the unseen
but living God.
Let each child of God who is seeking to work the work of love in his
Father's service take courage. The parent with his child, the teacher
with his class, the visitor with his district, the Bible reader with
his circle, the preacher with his hearers, each one who, in his little
circle, has accepted and is bearing the burden of hungry, perishing
souls,--let them all take courage. Nothing is at first so strange to
us as that God should really require persevering prayer, that there
should be a real spiritual needs-be for importunity. To teach it us,
the Master uses this almost strange parable. If the unfriendliness of
a selfish earthly friend can be conquered by importunity, how much
more will it avail with the heavenly Friend, who does so love to give,
but is held back by our spiritual unfitness, our incapacity to possess
what He has to give. O let us thank Him that in delaying His answer
He is educating us up to our true position and the exercise of all our
power with Him, training us to live with Him in the fellowship of
undoubting faith and trust, to be indeed the friends of God. And let
us hold fast the threefold cord that cannot be broken: the hungry
friend needing the help, and the praying friend seeking the help, and
the Mighty Friend, loving to give as much as he needeth.
`LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY.'
O my Blessed Lord and Teacher! I must come to Thee in prayer. Thy
teaching is so glorious, and yet too high for me to grasp. I must
confess that my heart is too little to take in these thoughts of the
wonderful boldness I may use with Thy Father as my Friend. Lord
Jesus! I trust Thee to give me Thy Spirit with Thy Word, and to make
the Word quick and powerful in my heart. I desire to keep Thy Word of
this day: `Because of his importunity he will give him as many as he
needeth.'
Lord! teach me more to know the power of persevering prayer. I know
that in it the Father suits Himself to our need of time for the inner
life to attain its growth and ripeness, so that His grace may indeed
be assimilated and made our very own. I know that He would fain thus
train us to the exercise of that strong faith that does not let Him go
even in the face of seeming disappointment. I know He wants to lift
us to that wonderful liberty, in which we understand how really He has
made the dispensing of His gift dependent on our prayer. Lord! I
know this: O teach me to see it in spirit and truth.
And may it now be the joy of my life to become the almoner of my Rich
Friend in heaven, to care for all the hungry and perishing, even at
midnight, because I know MY FRIEND, who always gives to him who
perseveres, because of his importunity, as many as he needeth. Amen.
_________________________________________________________________
NINTH LESSON. `Pray the Lord of the harvest;'
Or, Prayer provides Labourers.
`Then saith He unto His disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but
the labourers are few. Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest,
that He will send forth labourers into His harvest.'--Matt. ix. 37-38.
THE Lord frequently taught His disciples that they must pray, and how;
but seldom what to pray. This he left to their sense of need, and the
leading of the Spirit. But here we have one thing He expressly
enjoins them to remember: in view of the plenteous harvest, and the
need of reapers, they must cry to the Lord of the harvest to send
forth labourers. Just as in the parable of the friend at midnight, He
would have them understand that prayer is not to be selfish; so here
it is the power through which blessing can come to others. The Father
is Lord of the harvest; when we pray for the Holy Spirit, we must pray
for Him to prepare and send forth labourers for the work.
Strange, is it not, that He should ask His disciples to pray for
this? And could He not pray Himself? And would not one prayer of His
avail more than a thousand of theirs? And God, the Lord of the
harvest, did He not see the need? And would not He, in His own good
time, send forth labourers without their prayer? Such questions lead
us up to the deepest mysteries of prayer, and its power in the Kingdom
of God. The answer to such questions will convince us that prayer is
indeed a power, on which the ingathering of the harvest and the coming
of the Kingdom do in very truth depend.
Prayer is no form or show. The Lord Jesus was Himself the truth;
everything He spake was the deepest truth. It was when (see ver. 36)
`He saw the multitude, and was moved with compassion on them, because
they were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd,' that He
called on the disciples to pray for labourers to be sent among them.
He did so because He really believed that their prayer was needed, and
would help. The veil which so hides the invisible world from us was
wonderfully transparent to the holy human soul of Jesus. He had
looked long and deep and far into the hidden connection of cause and
effect in the spirit world. He had marked in God's Word how, when God
called men like Abraham and Moses, Joshua and Samuel and Daniel, and
given them authority over men in His name, He had at the same time
given them authority and right to call in the powers of heaven to
their aid as they needed them. He knew that as to these men of old,
and to Himself for a time, here upon earth, the work of God had been
entrusted, so it was now about to pass over into the hands of His
disciples. He knew that when this work should be given in charge to
them, it would not be a mere matter of form or show, but that on them,
and their being faithful or unfaithful, the success of the work would
actually depend. As a single individual, within the limitations of a
human body and a human life, Jesus feels how little a short visit can
accomplish among these wandering sheep He sees around Him, and He
longs for help to have them properly cared for. And so He tells His
disciples now to begin and pray, and, when they have taken over the
work from Him on earth, to make this one of the chief petitions in
their prayer: That the Lord of the harvest Himself would send forth
labourers into His harvest. The God who entrusted them with the work,
and made it to so large extent dependent on them, gives them authority
to apply to Him for labourers to help, and makes the supply dependent
on their prayer.
How little Christians really feel and mourn the need of labourers in
the fields of the world so white to the harvest. And how little they
believe that our labour-supply depends on prayer, that prayer will
really provide `as many as he needeth.' Not that the dearth of labour
is not known or discussed. Not that efforts are not sometimes put
forth to supply the want. But how little the burden of the sheep
wandering without a Shepherd is really borne in the faith that the
Lord of the harvest will, in answer to prayer, send forth the
labourers, and in the solemn conviction that without this prayer
fields ready for reaping will be left to perish. And yet it is so.
So wonderful is the surrender of His work into the hands of His
Church, so dependent has the Lord made Himself on them as His body,
through whom alone His work can be done, so real is the power which
the Lord gives His people to exercise in heaven and earth, that the
number of the labourers and the measure of the harvest does actually
depend upon their prayer.
Solemn thought! O why is it that we do not obey the injunction of the
Master more heartily, and cry more earnestly for labourers? There are
two reasons for this. The one is: We miss the compassion of Jesus,
which gave rise to this request for prayer. When believers learn that
to love their neighbours as themselves, that to live entirely for
God's glory in their fellow-men, is the Father's first commandment to
His redeemed ones, they will accept of the perishing ones as the
charge entrusted to them by their Lord. And, accepting them not only
as a field of labour, but as the objects of loving care and interest,
it will not be long before compassion towards the hopelessly perishing
will touch their heart, and the cry ascend with an earnestness till
then unknown: Lord! send labourers. The other reason for the
neglect of the command, the want of faith, will then make itself felt,
but will be overcome as our pity pleads for help. We believe too
little in the power of prayer to bring about definite results. We do
not live close enough to God, and are not enough entirely given up to
His service and Kingdom, to be capable of the confidence that He will
give it in answer to our prayer. O let us pray for a life so one with
Christ, that His compassion may stream into us, and His Spirit be able
to assure us that our prayer avails.
Such prayer will ask and obtain a twofold blessing. There will first
be the desire for the increase of men entirely given up to the service
of God. It is a terrible blot upon the Church of Christ that there
are times when actually men cannot be found for the service of the
Master as ministers, missionaries, or teachers of God's Word. As
God's children make this a matter of supplication for their own circle
or Church, it will be given. The Lord Jesus is now Lord of the
harvest. He has been exalted to bestow gifts--the gifts of the
Spirit. His chief gifts are men filled with the Spirit. But the
supply and distribution of the gifts depend on the co-operation of
Head and members. It is just prayer will lead to such co-operation;
the believing suppliants will be stirred to find the men and the means
for the work.
The other blessing to be asked will not be less. Every believer is a
labourer; not one of God's children who has not been redeemed for
service, and has not his work waiting. It must be our prayer that the
Lord would so fill all His people with the spirit of devotion, that
not one may be found standing idle in the vineyard. Wherever there is
a complaint of the want of helpers, or of fit helpers in God's work,
prayer has the promise of a supply. There is no Sunday school or
district visiting, no Bible reading or rescue work, where God is not
ready and able to provide. It may take time and importunity, but the
command of Christ to ask the Lord of the harvest is the pledge that
the prayer will be heard: `I say unto you, he will arise and give him
as many as he needeth.'
Solemn, blessed thought! this power has been given us in prayer to
provide in the need of the world, to secure the servants for God's
work. The Lord of the harvest will hear. Christ, who called us so
specially to pray thus, will support our prayers offered in His name
and interest. Let us set apart time and give ourselves to this part
of our intercessory work. It will lead us into the fellowship of that
compassionate heart of His that led Him to call for our prayers. It
will elevate us to the insight of our regal position, as those whose
will counts for something with the great God in the advancement of His
Kingdom. It will make us feel how really we are God's fellow-workers
on earth, to whom a share in His work has in downright earnest been
entrusted. It will make us partakers in the soul travail, but also in
the soul satisfaction of Jesus, as we know how, in answer to our
prayer, blessing has been given that otherwise would not have come.
`LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY.'
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Blessed Lord! Thou hast this day again given us another of Thy
wondrous lessons to learn. We humbly ask Thee, O give us to see
aright the spiritual realities of which Thou hast been speaking.
There is the harvest which is so large, and perishing, as it waits for
sleepy disciples to give the signal for labourers to come. Lord,
teach us to look out upon it with a heart moved with compassion and
pity. There are the labourers, so few. Lord, show us how terrible
the sin of the want of prayer and faith, of which this is the token.
And there is the Lord of the harvest, so able and ready to send them
forth. Lord, show us how He does indeed wait for the prayer to which
He has bound His answer. And there are the disciples, to whom the
commission to pray has been given: Lord, show us how Thou canst pour
down Thy Spirit and breathe upon them, so that Thy compassion and the
faith in Thy promise shall rouse them to unceasing, prevailing prayer.
O our Lord! we cannot understand how Thou canst entrust such work and
give such power to men so slothful and unfaithful. We thank Thee for
all whom Thou art teaching to cry day and night for labourers to be
sent forth. Lord, breathe Thine own Spirit on all Thy children, that
they may learn to live for this one thing alone--the Kingdom and glory
of their Lord--and become fully awake to the faith of what their
prayer can accomplish. And let all our hearts in this, as in every
petition, be filled with the assurance that prayer, offered in loving
faith in the living God, will bring certain and abundant answer.
Amen.
_________________________________________________________________
TENTH LESSON.`What wilt thou?' Or, Prayer must be Definite.
`And Jesus answered him, and said, What wilt thou that I should do
unto thee?'--Mark x. 51; Luke xviii. 41.
THE blind man had been crying out aloud, and that a great deal, `Thou
Son of David, have mercy on me.' The cry had reached the ear of the
Lord; He knew what he wanted, and was ready to grant it him. But ere
He does it, He asks him: `What wilt thou that I should do unto
thee?' He wants to hear from his own lips, not only the general
petition for mercy, but the distinct expression of what his desire
was. Until he speaks it out, he is not healed.
There is now still many a suppliant to whom the Lord puts the same
question, and who cannot, until it has been answered, get the aid he
ask. Our prayers must not be a vague appeal to His mercy, an
indefinite cry for blessing, but the distinct expression of definite
need. Not that His loving heart does not understand our cry, or is
not ready to hear. But He desires it for our own sakes. Such
definite prayer teaches us to know our own needs better. It demands
time, and thought, and self-scrutiny to find out what really is our
greatest need. It searches us and puts us to the test as to whether
our desires are honest and real, such as we are ready to persevere
in. It leads us to judge whether our desires are according to God's
Word, and whether we really believe that we shall receive the things
we ask. It helps us to wait for the special answer, and to mark it
when it comes.
And yet how much of our prayer is vague and pointless. Some cry for
mercy, but take not the trouble to know what mercy must do for them.
Others ask, perhaps, to be delivered from sin, but do not begin by
bringing any sin by name from which the deliverance may be claimed.
Still others pray for God's blessing on those around them, for the
outpouring of God's Spirit on their land or the world, and yet have no
special field where they wait and expect to see the answer. To all
the Lord says: And what is it now you really want and expect Me to
do? Every Christian has but limited powers, and as he must have his
own special field of labour in which he works, so with his prayers
too. Each believer has his own circle, his family, his friends, his
neighbours. If he were to take one or more of these by name, he would
find that this really brings him into the training-school of faith,
and leads to personal and pointed dealing with his God. It is when in
such distinct matters we have in faith claimed and received answers,
that our more general prayers will be believing and effectual.
We all know with what surprise the whole civilised world heard of the
way in which trained troops were repulsed by the Transvaal Boers at
Majuba. And to what did they owe their success? In the armies of
Europe the soldier fires upon the enemy standing in large masses, and
never thinks of seeking an aim for every bullet. In hunting game the
Boer had learnt a different lesson: his practised eye knew to send
every bullet on its special message, to seek and find its man. Such
aiming must gain the day in the spiritual world too. As long as in
prayer we just pour out our hearts in a multitude of petitions,
without taking time to see whether every petition is sent with the
purpose and expectation of getting an answer, not many will reach the
mark. But if, as in silence of soul we bow before the Lord, we were
to ask such questions as these: What is now really my desire? do I
desire it in faith, expecting to receive? am I now ready to place and
leave it in the Father's bosom? is it a settled thing between God and
me that I am to have the answer? we should learn so to pray that God
would see and we would know what we really expect.
It is for this, among other reasons, that the Lord warns us against
the vain repetitions of the Gentiles, who think to be heard for their
much praying. We often hear prayers of great earnestness and fervour,
in which a multitude of petitions are poured forth, but to which the
Saviour would undoubtedly answer `What wilt thou that I should do unto
thee?' If I am in a strange land, in the interests of the business
which my father owns, I would certainly write two different sorts of
letters. There will be family letters giving expression to all the
intercourse to which affection prompts; and there will be business
letters, containing orders for what I need. And there may be letters
in which both are found. The answers will correspond to the letters.
To each sentence of the letters containing the family news I do not
expect a special answer. But for each order I send I am confident of
an answer whether the desired article has been forwarded. In our
dealings with God the business element must not be wanting. With our
expression of need and sin, of love and faith and consecration, there
must be the pointed statement of what we ask and expect to receive; it
is in the answer that the Father loves to give us the token of His
approval and acceptance.
But the word of the Master teaches us more. He does not say, What
dost thou wish? but, What does thou will? One often wishes for a
thing without willing it. I wish to have a certain article, but I
find the price too high; I resolve not to take it; I wish, but do not
will to have it. The sluggard wishes to be rich, but does not will
it. Many a one wishes to be saved, but perishes because he does not
will it. The will rules the whole heart and life; if I really will to
have anything that is within my reach, I do not rest till I have it.
And so, when Jesus says to us, `What wilt thou?' He asks whether it is
indeed our purpose to have what we ask at any price, however great the
sacrifice. Dost thou indeed so will to have it that, though He delay
it long, thou dost not hold thy peace till He hear thee? Alas! how
many prayers are wishes, sent up for a short time and then forgotten,
or sent up year after year as matter of duty, while we rest content
with the prayer without the answer.
But, it may be asked, is it not best to make our wishes known to God,
and then to leave it to Him to decide what is best, without seeking to
assert our will? By no means. This is the very essence of the prayer
of faith, to which Jesus sought to train His disciples, that it does
not only make known its desire and then leave the decision to God.
That would be the prayer of submission, for cases in which we cannot
know God's will. But the prayer of faith, finding God's will in some
promise of the Word, pleads for that till it come. In Matthew (ix.
28) we read Jesus said to the blind man: `Believe ye that I can do
this?' Here, in Mark, He says: `What wilt thou that I should do?'
In both cases He said that faith had saved them. And so He said to
the Syrophenician woman, too: `Great is thy faith: be it unto thee
even as thou wilt.' Faith is nothing but the purpose of the will
resting on God's word, and saying: I must have it. To believe truly
is to will firmly.
But is not such a will at variance with our dependence on God and our
submission to Him? By no means; it is much rather the true submission
that honours God. It is only when the child has yielded his own will
in entire surrender to the Father, that he receives from the Father
liberty and power to will what he would have. But, when once the
believer has accepted the will of God, as revealed through the Word
and Spirit, as his will, too, then it is the will of God that His
child should use this renewed will in His service. The will is the
highest power in the soul; grace wants above everything to sanctify
and restore this will, one of the chief traits of God's image, to full
and free exercise. As a son, who only lives for his father's
interests, who seeks not his own but his father's will is trusted by
the father with his business, so God speaks to His child in all truth,
`What wilt thou?' It is often spiritual sloth that, under the
appearance of humility, professes to have no will, because it fears
the trouble of searching out the will of God, or, when found, the
struggle of claiming it in faith. True humility is ever in company
with strong faith, which only seeks to know what is according to the
will of God, and then boldly claims the fulfilment of the promise:
`Ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.'
`LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY.'
-----0-----
Lord Jesus! teach me to pray with all my heart and strength, that
there may be no doubt with Thee or with me as to what I have asked.
May I so know what I desire that, even as my petitions are recorded in
heaven, I can record them on earth too, and note each answer as it
comes. And may my faith in what Thy Word has promised be so clear
that the Spirit may indeed work in me the liberty to will that it
shall come. Lord! renew, strengthen, sanctify wholly my will for the
work of effectual prayer.
Blessed Saviour! I do beseech Thee to reveal to me the wonderful
condescension Thou showest us, thus asking us to say what we will that
Thou shouldest do, and promising to do whatever we will. Son of God!
I cannot understand it; I can only believe that Thou hast indeed
redeemed us wholly for Thyself, and dost seek to make the will, as our
noblest part, Thy most efficient servant. Lord! I do most
unreservedly yield my will to Thee, as the power through which Thy
Spirit is to rule my whole being. Let Him take possession of it, lead
it into the truth of Thy promises, and make it so strong in prayer
that I may ever hear Thy voice saying: `Great is thy faith: be it
unto thee even as thou wilt.' Amen.
_________________________________________________________________
ELEVENTH LESSON.
`Believe that ye have received;'
Or, The Faith that Takes.
`Therefore I say unto you, All things whatsoever ye pray and ask for,
believe that ye have received them, and ye shall have them.'--Mark xi.
24
WHAT a promise! so large, so Divine, that our little hearts cannot
take it in, and in every possible way seek to limit it to what we
think safe or probable; instead of allowing it, in its quickening
power and energy, just as He gave it, to enter in, and to enlarge our
hearts to the measure of what His love and power are really ready to
do for us. Faith is very far from being a mere conviction of the
truth of God's word, or a conclusion drawn from certain premises. It
is the ear which has heard God say what He will do, the eye which has
seen Him doing it, and, therefore, where there is true faith, it is
impossible but the answer must come. If we only see to it that we do
the one thing that He asks of us as we pray: BELIEVE that ye have
received; He will see to it that He does the thing He has promised:
`Ye shall have them.' The key-note of Solomon's prayer (2 Chron. vi.
4), `Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, who hath with His hands
fulfilled that which He spake with His mouth to my father David,' is
the key-note of all true prayer: the joyful adoration of a God whose
hand always secures the fulfilment of what His mouth hath spoken. Let
us in this spirit listen to the promise Jesus gives; each part of it
has its Divi 
Divine Healing
