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June 18 - December 7, 2019
We may gather these thoughts into a third lesson: In our life with men, the one thing on which everything depends is love. The spirit of forgiveness is the spirit of love. Because God is love, He forgives.
After He has taught us that the meaning of prayer is personal contact with God, He came with a second lesson: You don’t only need secret, solitary prayer but also shared, united prayer. He gave us a special promise for the united prayer of two or three who agree in what they ask.
Believers are not only members of one family, but they are also even of one body. Just as each member of the body depends on the others, and the full action of the Spirit dwelling in the body depends on the union and cooperation of all, so Christians cannot reach the full blessing God is ready to bestow through His Spirit except when they seek and receive it in fellowship with each other.
The answer does not depend on human thoughts or possibilities but on the Word of the living God. Therefore, even as Abraham, who believed to wait against all hope (Romans 4:18), and by faith and patience inherit[ed] the promises (Hebrews 6:12), we see that the longsuffering of the Lord is salvation and hastening the coming of the Lord to fulfill His promise. When
The insight into this truth leads the believer to cultivate the corresponding dispositions: patience and faith, waiting and hastening – the secret of his perseverance. By faith in the promise of God, we know that we have the petitions we have asked of
Our great danger in this school of delayed answer is the temptation to think that it may not be God’s will to give us what we ask. If our prayer is according to God’s Word and under the leading of the Spirit, let’s not surrender to these fears.
Childlike simplicity accepts the truth without difficulty and often cares little to give any reason for its faith except this: God has said. But the will of God is that we should love and serve Him not only with all the heart but also with all the mind – that we should grow up with an insight into the divine wisdom and beauty of all His ways and words and works.
The living God, present and not merely eternal, the living, merciful, Holy One, God manifesting Himself to the soul, God saying, Seek my face (Hosea 5:15) – this is the magnet that draws us; this alone can open heart and lips.
Man’s destiny appears from God’s language at creation. It was to fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over . . . every beast that moves upon the earth (Genesis 1:28). All three expressions show us that man was meant to rule here on earth. As God’s agent, he was to subject himself to God and keep all else in subjection to Him.
And although sin has for a time frustrated God’s plans, prayer still remains what it would have been if man had never fallen – proof of man’s godlikeness, the vehicle of his communication with the infinite, unseen One, and the power to hold the hand that holds the destinies of the universe.
Because I go unto my Father. And whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, that will I do. His going to the Father would bring the double blessing: they could ask and receive everything in His name, and as a consequence, they would do the greater works. This first mention of prayer in our Savior’s parting words thus teaches us two important lessons. He that would do the works of Jesus must pray in His name. He that would pray in His name must work in His name.
From the throne, He could do through them what He in His humiliation could not do. But there was one condition: He that believes in me, . . . greater works than these shall he do because I go unto my Father. And whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, that will I do. Christ’s going to the Father would give Him a new power to hear prayer. For the doing of the greater works, two things were needed: His going to the Father to receive all power, and our prayer in His name to receive all power from Him again.
There can only be one reason for this: believing Him and believing prayer in His name are lacking. Every laborer and leader in church, school, home philanthropy, or foreign missions must learn this lesson: Prayer in the name of Jesus is the way to share in the mighty power that Jesus received from the Father for His people. In this power alone, he who believes can do the greater works.
latter. A life to the glory of God is the condition of the prayers that Jesus can answer, that the Father may be glorified. This demand in connection with prevailing prayer – that it should be to the
So, in prayer, the unlimited promise, ask what ye will, has its one simple and natural condition: If ye abide in me. The Father always hears Christ; God is in Christ and can only be reached by those in Him. To be in Him is the way to have our prayer heard; abiding in Him, we have the right to ask whatsoever we will with the promise that it will be done unto
In the growing life of abiding in Christ, the first stage is that of faith. As the believer sees that with his weakness, the command is really meant for him, his great aim is simply to believe that abiding in Christ is his immediate duty and a blessing within his reach.
Before giving us the parable of the vine and the branches, Jesus had distinctly told us what the full blessing is. Three times over He had said, If ye love me, keep my commandments, and spoke of the threefold blessing with which He would crown such obedient love: The Holy Spirit would come from the Father; the Son would manifest Himself; the Father and the Son would come and make their abode.
Prayer is not monologue but dialogue; God’s voice in response to mine is its most essential part. Listening to God’s voice is the secret of the assurance that He will listen to mine. Bow down thine ear and hear (Proverbs 22:17) and Give ear to my words, . . . Hearken unto the voice of my cry (Psalm 5:1-2) are words which God speaks to man as well as man to God.
But when God, the infinite Being – in whom everything is life, power, spirit, and truth in the deepest meaning of the words – reveals Himself in His words, He does indeed give Himself, His love, His life, His will, and His power to those who receive these words and comprehend them.
Then He promised, He who loves me will keep my words, and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him and dwell with him (John 14:23). Could any words put it more clearly that obedience is the way to the indwelling of the Spirit, to His revealing the Son within us, and to His preparing us to be the home of the Father? The indwelling of the Trinity is the heritage of those who obey. Obedience and faith are only two aspects of one act – surrender to God and His will.
No, faith’s obedience gives access to all the blessings our God has for us. In the Gospel of John, we see the abiding of the Spirit (14:16), the manifestation of the Son (14:21), the love of the Father (14:23), the abiding in Christ’s love (15:10), the privilege of His holy friendship (15:14), and the power of all-prevailing prayer (15:16) – all wait for the obedient.
It is the same with Jesus and the believer: we are one; we have one life – one Spirit with Him. For this reason, we may come in His name. Our power in using that name, whether with God, men, or devils, depends on the measure of our spiritual life-union.
My faith will grow to the assurance that what I ask in that name cannot be refused. The name and the power of asking go together: when the name of Jesus has become the power that rules my life, its power in prayer with God will be seen too.
When this Spirit is the Spirit not of our hours of prayer but of our whole life and walk, when this Spirit glorifies Jesus in us by revealing the completeness of His work and making us wholly one with Him and like Him, we can pray in His name, because we are indeed one with Him.
Once again the lesson comes: What our prayer accomplishes depends upon what we are and what our life is. Living in the name of Christ is the secret of praying in the name of Christ; living in the Spirit fits us for praying in the Spirit.
dying to self to live in Christ. The Christian life is no longer the vain struggle to live right, but it is the resting in Christ and finding strength in Him as our life to fight the fight and gain the victory of faith.
In His high-priestly prayer (John 17), He shows us how and what He prays to the Father and will pray when He ascends to heaven. In His parting address, He repeatedly connected His going to the Father with the disciples’ new life of prayer. The two would be ultimately connected: His entrance into the work of His eternal intercession would be the commencement and the power of their new prayer – life in His name.
This prayer is ordinarily divided into three parts. Our Lord first prays for Himself (John 17:1-5), then for His disciples (17:6-19), and lastly for all the believing people through all ages (17:20-26). The follower of Jesus who gives himself to the work of intercession and gladly prays blessing down upon his circle of friends in the name of Jesus will in all humility let himself be led by the Spirit to study this wonderful prayer as one of the most important lessons in the school of prayer.
Instead of giving up on those who fall, let us pray for our circle, Father, . . . keep them in thy name and Sanctify them in thy truth (John 17:11, 17). Prayer in the name of Jesus avails much: Ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you (John 15:7).
In reality, it was that prayer at the altar, Father, not what I will, in which the prayer before the throne, Father, I will, had its origin and its power. It is from the entire surrender of His will in Gethsemane that the High Priest on the throne has the power to ask what He will and the right to allow His people to share in that power and ask what they will. For all who learn to pray in the school of Jesus, this Gethsemane lesson is one of the most sacred and precious.
It was in that Father, not what I will that He obtained the power for that Father, I will. It was by Christ’s submission in Gethsemane to not have His will done that He secured for His people the right to say to them, Whatsoever ye shall ask.
The great mistake here is that God’s children do not really believe that it is possible to know God’s will. Or if they believe this, they do not take the time and trouble to discover it. What we need is to see clearly how the Father leads His waiting, teachable child to know that his petition is according to His will.
The two must be united – the Word and the Spirit – because only in these can we know for sure the will of God and learn to pray according to it. In the heart, the Word and the Spirit must meet; it is only by such indwelling that we can experience their teaching.
And yet it is the highest privilege of a child of God, the mark of greatest nearness and likeness to Him, as he ever lives to make intercession (Hebrews 7:25). Do you doubt that this is so? Think of what constitutes Christ’s role as our High Priest. First, there is the work of the Old Testament priesthood. This has two sides: one is Godward, the other manward.
The separation from the world and the setting apart unto God was indicated in many ways. This separation was seen in the clothing: the holy garments, made after God’s own order, marked them as His (Exodus 28). We see this separation in the command about their special purity and freedom from all contact with death and defilement (Leviticus 21:11). Much that was allowed for an ordinary Israelite was forbidden for the priests. It was seen in the injunction that the priest must have no bodily defect or blemish; bodily perfection was to be the type of wholeness and holiness in God’s service
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The message is clear that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works (2 Timothy 3:17) and perfect and entire, not lacking in anything (James 1:4). And above all, we consent to give up all inheritance on earth and to forsake all, and like Christ, to have only God as our portion – to possess as not possessing and hold all for God alone. For if we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord; whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s (Romans 14:8). These were marks of the true priest in the Old Testament, but they also describe the man who
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It is the forgetting of self and yielding ourselves to live for God and His honor that enlarges the heart, that teaches us to regard everything in the light of God and His will, and that instinctively recognizes that the need for God’s help and blessing in everything around us is an opportunity for His being glorified. Everything is weighed and tested by the one thing that fills the heart – the glory of God – and the soul has learned that only what is of God can really be to Him and His glory.
We know why: He who prays is our Head and our Life. All He has is ours and is given to us when we give ourselves all to Him. By His blood, He leads us into the immediate presence of God. The inner sanctuary is our home where we dwell. And He that lives near God and knows that He has been brought near to bless those who are far away cannot but pray.
It may be said, “Surely these passages cannot be taken literally, for how then would the people of God be able to survive in the world?” The state of mind of John 7:17 will cause such objections to vanish: If anyone desires to do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it is of God or whether I speak of myself. I believe that whoever is willing to act out these commandments of the Lord literally, will be led with me to see that taking them literally is the will of God.
They had their root in the conviction that money was a divine stewardship, and that all money had to be received and dispensed in direct fellowship with God Himself. This led him to adopting the following four great rules: (1) not to receive any fixed salary, both because in the collecting of it there was often much that was at variance with the freewill offering with which God’s service is to be maintained, and in the receiving of it there was a danger of placing more dependence on human sources of income than on the living God Himself; (2) never to ask any human being for help, however great
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And if he enjoys the reading of the Word little, that is the reason he should read it much, for the frequent reading of the Scriptures creates a delight in them. The more we read them, the more we desire to do so. Above all, he should seek to have it settled in his own mind that God alone by His Spirit can teach him, and therefore, as he asks God for blessings, it serves him to seek God’s blessing prior to reading and while reading.
The teaching of the Spirit – not without or against the Word but as something above and beyond it and in addition to it, without which we cannot see God’s will – is the heritage of every believer. It is through the Word and the Word alone that the Spirit teaches, applying the general principles or promises to our special need.
I make a few remarks here for the sake of young believers in connection with this subject: (1) Be slow to take new steps in the Lord’s service, in your business, or in your families; weigh everything well; weigh all in the light of the Holy Scriptures and in the fear of God. (2) Seek to have no will of your own in order to determine the mind of God regarding any steps you propose taking, so you can honestly say you are willing to do the will of God if He will instruct you. (3) But when you have found out what the will of God is, seek His help, and seek it earnestly, perseveringly, patiently,
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Patient, persevering, believing prayer that is offered up to God in the name of the Lord Jesus has always brought the blessing sooner or later.
