The Ministry of Intercession: A Plea for More Prayer
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Title: The Ministry of Intercession: A Plea for More Prayer
Author: Andrew Murray
Release date: July 2, 2009 [eBook #29296]
Most recently updated: January 5, 2021
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MINISTRY OF INTERCESSION: A PLEA FOR MORE PRAYER ***
Produced by Heiko Evermann, Nigel Blower and the Online
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file was produced from images generously made available
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THE
MINISTRY OF INTERCESSION
A PLEA FOR MORE PRAYER
BY THE
REV. ANDREW MURRAY
WELLINGTON, S. AFRICA
AUTHOR OF
"THE HOLIEST OF ALL" "ABIDE IN CHRIST"
"WAITING ON GOD" "THE LORD'S TABLE"
ETC. ETC.
"I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem,
which shall never hold their peace day nor night:
ye that are the Lord's remembrancers, keep not
silence, and give Him no rest, till He establish,
and till He make Jerusalem a praise in the earth."
ISA. lxii. 6, 7.
_THIRD EDITION_
London
JAMES NISBET & CO. LIMITED
21 BERNERS STREET, W.
1898
PRINTED BY
MORRISON AND GIBB LIMITED
EDINBURGH
TO
MY BRETHREN IN THE MINISTRY
AND
OTHER FELLOW-LABOURERS IN THE GOSPEL
WHOM IT WAS MY PRIVILEGE TO MEET
IN THE CONVENTIONS AT
LANGLAAGTE, JOHANNESBURG, AND HEILBRON
DURBAN AND PIETERMARITZBURG
KING WILLIAM'S TOWN, PORT ELIZABETH
AND STELLENBOSCH
THIS VOLUME
IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. THE LACK OF PRAYER 9
II. THE MINISTRATION OF THE SPIRIT AND PRAYER 20
III. A MODEL OF INTERCESSION 31
IV. BECAUSE OF HIS IMPORTUNITY 43
V. THE LIFE THAT CAN PRAY 55
VI. RESTRAINING PRAYER--IS IT SIN? 67
VII. WHO SHALL DELIVER? 78
VIII. WILT THOU BE MADE WHOLE? 91
IX. THE SECRET OF EFFECTUAL PRAYER 104
X. THE SPIRIT OF SUPPLICATION 116
XI. IN THE NAME OF CHRIST 129
XII. MY GOD WILL HEAR ME 143
XIII. PAUL A PATTERN OF PRAYER 155
XIV. GOD SEEKS INTERCESSORS 169
XV. THE COMING REVIVAL 180
NOTE A 193
NOTE B 194
NOTE C 195
NOTE D 196
NOTE E 198
NOTE F 199
PRAY WITHOUT CEASING: HELPS TO INTERCESSION 201
THE MINISTRY OF INTERCESSION
There is no holy service
But hath its secret bliss:
Yet, of all blessèd ministries,
Is one so dear as this?
The ministry that cannot be
A wondering seraph's dower,
Enduing mortal weakness
With more than angel-power;
The ministry of purest love
Uncrossed by any fear,
That bids us meet At the Master's feet
And keeps us very near.
God's ministers are many,
For this His gracious will,
Remembrancers that day and night
This holy office fill.
While some are hushed in slumber,
Some to fresh service wake,
And thus the saintly number
No change or chance can break.
And thus the sacred courses
Are evermore fulfilled,
The tide of grace By time or place
Is never stayed or stilled.
Oh, if our ears were opened
To hear as angels do
The Intercession-chorus
Arising full and true,
We should hear it soft up-welling
In morning's pearly light;
Through evening's shadows swelling
In grandly gathering might;
The sultry silence filling
Of noontide's thunderous glow,
And the solemn starlight thrilling
With ever-deepening flow.
We should hear it through the rushing
Of the city's restless roar,
And trace its gentle gushing
O'er ocean's crystal floor:
We should hear it far up-floating
Beneath the Orient moon,
And catch the golden noting
From the busy Western noon;
And pine-robed heights would echo
As the mystic chant up-floats,
And the sunny plain Resound again
With the myriad-mingling notes.
Who are the blessèd ministers
Of this world-gathering band?
All who have learnt one language,
Through each far-parted land;
All who have learnt the story
Of Jesu's love and grace,
And are longing for His glory
To shine in every face.
All who have known the Father
In Jesus Christ our Lord,
And know the might And love the light
Of the Spirit in the Word.
Yet there are some who see not
Their calling high and grand,
Who seldom pass the portals,
And never boldly stand
Before the golden altar
On the crimson-stainèd floor,
Who wait afar and falter,
And dare not hope for more.
Will ye not join the blessèd ranks
In their beautiful array?
Let intercession blend with thanks
As ye minister to-day!
There are little ones among them
Child-ministers of prayer,
White robes of intercession
Those tiny servants wear.
First for the near and dear ones
Is that fair ministry,
Then for the poor black children,
So far beyond the sea.
The busy hands are folded,
As the little heart uplifts
In simple love, To God above,
Its prayer for all good gifts.
There are hands too often weary
With the business of the day,
With God-entrusted duties,
Who are toiling while they pray.
They bear the golden vials,
And the golden harps of praise
Through all the daily trials,
Through all the dusty ways,
These hands, so tired, so faithful,
With odours sweet are filled,
And in the ministry of prayer
Are wonderfully skilled.
There are ministers unlettered,
Not of Earth's great and wise,
Yet mighty and unfettered
Their eagle-prayers arise.
Free of the heavenly storehouse!
For they hold the master-key
That opens all the fulness
Of God's great treasury.
They bring the needs of others,
And all things are their own,
For their one grand claim Is Jesu's name
Before their Father's throne.
There are noble Christian workers,
The men of faith and power,
The overcoming wrestlers
Of many a midnight hour;
Prevailing princes with their God,
Who will not be denied,
Who bring down showers of blessing
To swell the rising tide.
The Prince of Darkness quaileth
At their triumphant way,
Their fervent prayer availeth
To sap his subtle sway.
But in this temple service
Are sealed and set apart
Arch-priests of intercession,
Of undivided heart.
The fulness of anointing
On these is doubly shed,
The consecration of their God
Is on each low-bowed head.
They bear the golden vials
With white and trembling hand;
In quiet room Or wakeful gloom
These ministers must stand,--
To the Intercession-Priesthood
Mysteriously ordained,
When the strange dark gift of suffering
This added gift hath gained.
For the holy hands uplifted
In suffering's longest hour
Are truly Spirit-gifted
With intercession-power.
The Lord of Blessing fills them
With His uncounted gold,
An unseen store, Still more and more,
Those trembling hands shall hold.
Not always with rejoicing
This ministry is wrought,
For many a sigh is mingled
With the sweet odours brought.
Yet every tear bedewing
The faith-fed altar fire
May be its bright renewing
To purer flame, and higher.
But when the oil of gladness
God graciously outpours,
The heavenward blaze, With blended praise,
More mightily upsoars.
So the incense-cloud ascendeth
As through calm, crystal air,
A pillar reaching unto heaven
Of wreathèd faith and prayer.
For evermore the Angel
Of Intercession stands
In His Divine High Priesthood
With fragrance-fillèd hands,
To wave the golden censer
Before His Father's throne,
With Spirit-fire intenser,
And incense all His own.
And evermore the Father
Sends radiantly down
All-marvellous responses,
His ministers to crown;
The incense-cloud returning
As golden blessing-showers,
We in each drop discerning
Some feeble prayer of ours,
Transmuted into wealth unpriced,
By Him who giveth thus
The glory all to Jesus Christ,
The gladness all to us!
F. R. HAVERGAL.
_September_ 1877.
INTRODUCTION
I have been asked by a friend, who heard of this book being published,
what the difference would be between it and the previous one on the same
subject, WITH CHRIST IN THE SCHOOL OF PRAYER. An answer to that question
may be the best introduction I can give to the present volume.
Any acceptance the former work has had must be attributed, as far as the
contents go, to the prominence given to two great truths. The one was,
the certainty that prayer will be answered. There is with some an idea
that to ask and expect an answer is not the highest form of prayer.
Fellowship with God, apart from any request, is more than supplication.
About the petition there is something of selfishness and bargaining--to
worship is more than to beg. With others the thought that prayer is so
often unanswered is so prominent, that they think more of the spiritual
benefit derived from the exercise of prayer than the actual gifts to be
obtained by it. While admitting the measure of truth in these views,
when kept in their true place, THE SCHOOL OF PRAYER points out how our
Lord continually spoke of prayer as a means of obtaining what we desire,
and how He seeks in every possible way to waken in us the confident
expectation of an answer. I was led to show how prayer, in which a man
could enter into the mind of God, could assert the royal power of a
renewed will, and bring down to earth what without prayer would not have
been given, is the highest proof of his having been made in the likeness
of God's Son. He is found worthy of entering into fellowship with Him,
not only in adoration and worship, but in having his will actually taken
up into the rule of the world, and becoming the intelligent channel
through which God can fulfil his eternal purpose. The book sought to
reiterate and enforce the precious truths Christ preaches so
continually: the blessing of prayer is that you can ask and receive what
you will: the highest exercise and the glory of prayer is that
persevering importunity can prevail and obtain what God at first could
not and would not give.
With this truth there was a second one that came out very strongly as we
studied the Master's words. In answer to the question, But why, if the
answer to prayer is so positively promised, why are there such
numberless unanswered prayers? we found that Christ taught us that the
answer depended upon certain conditions. He spoke of faith, of
perseverance, of praying in His Name, of praying in the will of God. But
all these conditions were summed up in the one central one: "_If ye
abide in Me_, ask whatsoever ye will and it shall be done unto you." It
became clear that the power to pray the effectual prayer of faith
depended _upon the life_. It is only to a man given up to live as
entirely in Christ and for Christ as the branch in the vine and for the
vine, that these promises can come true. "_In that day_," Christ said,
the day of Pentecost, "ye shall ask in My Name." It is only in a life
full of the Holy Spirit that the true power to ask in Christ's Name can
be known. This led to the emphasising the truth that the ordinary
Christian life cannot appropriate these promises. It needs a spiritual
life, altogether sound and vigorous, to pray in power. The teaching
naturally led to press the need of a life of entire consecration. More
than one has told me how it was in the reading of the book that he first
saw what the better life was that could be lived, and must be lived, if
Christ's wonderful promises are to come true to us.
In regard to these two truths there is no change in the present volume.
One only wishes that one could put them with such clearness and force as
to help every beloved fellow-Christian to some right impression of the
reality and the glory of our privilege as God's children: "Ask
whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto you." The present volume
owes its existence to the desire to enforce two truths, of which
formerly I had no such impression as now.
The one is--that Christ actually meant prayer to be the great power by
which His Church should do its work, and that the neglect of prayer is
the great reason the Church has not greater power over the masses in
Christian and in heathen countries. In the first chapter I have stated
how my convictions in regard to this have been strengthened, and what
gave occasion to the writing of the book. It is meant to be, on behalf
of myself and my brethren in the ministry and all God's people, a
confession of shortcoming and of sin, and, at the same time, a call to
believe that things can be different, and that Christ waits to fit us by
His Spirit to pray as He would have us. This call, of course, brings me
back to what I spoke of in connection with the former volume: that there
is a life in the Spirit, a life of abiding in Christ, within our reach,
in which the power of prayer--both the power to pray and the power to
obtain the answer--can be realised in a measure which we could not have
thought possible before. Any failure in the prayer-life, any desire or
hope really to take the place Christ has prepared for us, brings us to
the very root of the doctrine of grace as manifested in the Christian
life. It is only by a full surrender to the life of abiding, by the
yielding to the fulness of the Spirit's leading and quickening, that the
prayer-life can be restored to a truly healthy state. I feel deeply how
little I have been able to put this in the volume as I could wish. I
have prayed and am trusting that God, who chooses the weak things, will
use it for His own glory.
The second truth which I have sought to enforce is that we have far too
little conception of the place that intercession, as distinguished from
prayer for ourselves, ought to have in the Church and the Christian
life. In intercession our King upon the throne finds His highest glory;
in it we shall find our highest glory too. Through it He continues His
saving work, and can do nothing without it; through it alone we can do
our work, and nothing avails without it. In it He ever receives from the
Father the Holy Spirit and all spiritual blessings to impart; in it we
too are called to receive in ourselves the fulness of God's Spirit, with
the power to impart spiritual blessing to others. The power of the
Church truly to bless rests on intercession--asking and receiving
heavenly gifts to carry to men. Because this is so, it is no wonder that
where, owing to lack of teaching or spiritual insight, we trust in
our own diligence and effort, to the influence of the world and the
flesh, and work more than we pray, the presence and power of God are not
seen in our work as we would wish.
Such thoughts have led me to wonder what could be done to rouse
believers to a sense of their high calling in this, and to help and
train them to take part in it. And so this book differs from the former
one in the attempt to open a practising school, and to invite all who
have never taken systematic part in the great work of intercession to
begin and give themselves to it. There are tens of thousands of workers
who have known and are proving wonderfully what prayer can do. But there
are tens of thousands who work with but little prayer, and as many more
who do not work because they do not know how or where, who might all be
won to swell the host of intercessors who are to bring down the
blessings of heaven to earth. For their sakes, and the sake of all who
feel the need of help, I have prepared helps and hints for a school of
intercession for a month (see the Appendix). I have asked those who
would join, to begin by giving at least ten minutes a day definitely to
this work. It is in doing that we learn to do; it is as we take hold and
begin that the help of God's Spirit will come. It is as we daily hear
God's call, and at once put it into practice, that the consciousness
will begin to live in us, I too am an intercessor; and that we shall
feel the need of living in Christ and being full of the Spirit if we are
to do this work aright. Nothing will so test and stimulate the Christian
life as the honest attempt to be an intercessor. It is difficult to
conceive how much we ourselves and the Church will be the gainers, if
with our whole heart we accept the post of honour God is offering us.
With regard to the school of intercession, I am confident that the
result of the first month's course will be to awake the feeling of how
little we know how to intercede. And a second and a third month may only
deepen the sense of ignorance and unfitness. This will be an unspeakable
blessing. The confession, "We know not how to pray as we ought," is the
introduction to the experience, "The Spirit maketh intercession for
us"--our sense of ignorance will lead us to depend upon the Spirit
praying in us, to feel the need of living in the Spirit.
We have heard a great deal of systematic Bible study, and we praise God
for thousands on thousands of Bible classes and Bible readings. Let all
the leaders of such classes see whether they could not open prayer
classes--helping their students to pray in secret, and training them to
be, above everything, men of prayer. Let ministers ask what they can do
in this. The faith in God's word can nowhere be so exercised and
perfected as in the intercession that asks and expects and looks out
for the answer. Throughout Scripture, in the life of every saint, of
God's own Son, throughout the history of God's Church, God is, first of
all, a prayer-hearing God. Let us try and help God's children to know
their God, and encourage all God's servants to labour with the
assurance: the chief and most blessed part of my work is to ask and
receive from my Father what I can bring to others.
It will now easily be understood how what this book contains will be
nothing but the confirmation and the call to put into practice the two
great lessons of the former one. "_Ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall
be done to you_"; "_Whatever ye ask, believe that ye have received_":
these great prayer-promises, as part of the Church's enduement of power
for her work, are to be taken as literally and actually true. "_If ye
abide in Me, and My words abide in you_"; "_In that day ye shall ask in
My Name_": these great prayer-conditions are universal and unchangeable.
A life abiding in Christ and filled with the Spirit, a life entirely
given up as a branch for the work of the vine, has the power to claim
these promises and to pray the effectual prayer that availeth much.
Lord, teach us to pray.
ANDREW MURRAY.
WELLINGTON, _1st September 1897_.
A PLEA FOR MORE PRAYER
CHAPTER I
The Lack of Prayer
"Ye have not, because ye ask not."--JAS. iv. 2.
"And He saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no
intercessor."--ISA. lix. 16.
"There is none that calleth upon Thy name, that stirreth up himself
to take hold of Thee."--ISA. lxiv. 7.
At our last Wellington Convention for the Deepening of the Spiritual
Life, in April, the forenoon meetings were devoted to prayer and
intercession. Great blessing was found, both in listening to what the
Word teaches of their need and power, and in joining in continued united
supplication. Many felt that we know too little of persevering
importunate prayer, and that it is indeed one of the greatest needs of
the Church.
During the past two months I have been attending a number of
Conventions. At the first, a Dutch Missionary Conference at Langlaagte,
Prayer had been chosen as the subject of the addresses. At the next, at
Johannesburg, a brother in business gave expression to his deep
conviction that the great want of the Church of our day was, more of the
spirit and practice of intercession. A week later we had a Dutch
Ministerial Conference in the Free State, where three days were spent,
after two days' services in the congregation on the work of the Holy
Spirit, in considering the relation of the Spirit to prayer. At the
ministerial meetings held at most of the succeeding conventions, we were
led to take up the subject, and everywhere there was the confession: We
pray too little! And with this there appeared to be a fear that, with
the pressure of duty and the force of habit, it was almost impossible to
hope for any great change.
I cannot say what a deep impression was made upon me by these
conversations. Most of all, by the thought that there should be anything
like hopelessness on the part of God's servants as to the prospect of an
entire change being effected, and real deliverance found from a failure
which cannot but hinder our own joy in God, and our power in His
service. And I prayed God to give me words that might not only help to
direct attention to the evil, but, specially, that might stir up faith,
and waken the assurance that God by His Spirit will enable us to pray as
we ought.
Let me begin, for the sake of those who have never had their attention
directed to the matter, by stating some of the facts that prove how
universal is the sense of shortcoming in this respect.
Last year there appeared a report of an address to ministers by Dr.
Whyte, of Free St. George's, Edinburgh. In that he said that, as a young
minister, he had thought that, of the time he had over from pastoral
visitation, he ought to spend as much as possible with his books in his
study. He wanted to feed his people with the very best he could prepare
for them. But he had now learned that prayer was of more importance than
study. He reminded his brethren of the election of deacons to take
charge of the collections, that the twelve might "give themselves to
prayer and the ministry of the word," and said that at times, when the
deacons brought him his salary, he had to ask himself whether he had
been as faithful in his engagement as the deacons had been to theirs.
He felt as if it were almost too late to regain what he had lost, and
urged his brethren to pray more. What a solemn confession and warning
from one of the high places: We pray too little!
During the Regent Square Convention two years ago the subject came up in
conversation with a well-known London minister. He urged that if so much
time must be given to prayer, it would involve the neglect of the
imperative calls of duty "There is the morning post, before breakfast,
with ten or twelve letters which _must_ be answered. Then there are
committee meetings waiting, with numberless other engagements, more than
enough to fill up the day. It is difficult to see how it can be done."
My answer was, in substance, that it was simply a question of whether
the call of God for our time and attention was of more importance than
that of man. If God was waiting to meet us, and to give us blessing and
power from heaven for His work, it was a short-sighted policy to put
other work in the place which God and waiting on Him should have.
At one of our ministerial meetings, the superintendent of a large
district put the case thus: "I rise in the morning and have half an
hour with God, in the Word and prayer, in my room before breakfast. I go
out, and am occupied all day with a multiplicity of engagements. I do
not think many minutes elapse without my breathing a prayer for guidance
or help. After my day's work, I return in my evening devotions and speak
to God of the day's work. But of the intense, definite, importunate
prayer of which Scripture speaks one knows little." What, he asked, must
I think of such a life?
We all know the difference between a man whose profits are just enough
to maintain his family and keep up his business, and another whose
income enables him to extend the business and to help others. There may
be an earnest Christian life in which there is prayer enough to keep us
from going back, and just maintain the position we have attained to,
without much of growth in spirituality or Christlikeness. The attitude
is more defensive, seeking to ward off temptation, than aggressive,
reaching out after higher attainment. If there is indeed to be a going
from strength to strength, with some large experience of God's power to
sanctify ourselves and to bring down real blessing on others, there must
be more definite and persevering prayer. The Scripture teaching about
crying day and night, continuing steadfastly in prayer, watching unto
prayer, being heard for his importunity, must in some degree become our
experience if we are really to be intercessors.
At the very next Convention the same question was put in somewhat
different form. "I am at the head of a station, with a large outlying
district to care for. I see the importance of much prayer, and yet my
life hardly leaves room for it. Are we to submit? Or tell us how we can
attain to what we desire?" I admitted that the difficulty was universal.
I recalled the words of one of our most honoured South African
missionaries, now gone to his rest: he had the same complaint. "In the
morning at five the sick people are at the door waiting for medicine. At
six the printers come, and I have to set them to work and teach them. At
nine the school calls me, and till late at night I am kept busy with a
large correspondence." In my answer I quoted a Dutch proverb: 'What _is_
heaviest must _weigh_ heaviest,'--must have the first place. The law of
God is unchangeable: as on earth, so in our traffic with heaven, we only
get as we give. Unless we are willing to pay the price, and sacrifice
time and attention and what appear legitimate or necessary duties, for
the sake of the heavenly gifts, we need not look for a large experience
of the power of the heavenly world in our work. The whole company
present joined in the sad confession; it had been thought over, and
mourned over, times without number; and yet, somehow, there they were,
all these pressing claims, and all the ineffectual resolves to pray
more, barring the way. I need not now say to what further thoughts our
conversation led; the substance of them will be found in some of the
later chapters in this volume.
Let me call just one more witness. In the course of my journey I met
with one of the Cowley Fathers, who had just been holding Retreats for
clergy of the English Church. I was interested to hear from him the line
of teaching he follows. In the course of conversation he used the
expression--"the distraction of business," and it came out that he found
it one of the great difficulties he had to deal with in himself and
others. Of himself, he said that by the vows of his Order he was bound
to give himself specially to prayer. But he found it exceedingly
difficult. Every day he had to be at four different points of the town
he lived in; his predecessor had left him the charge of a number of
committees where he was expected to do all the work; it was as if
everything conspired to keep him from prayer.
All this testimony surely suffices to make clear that prayer has not the
place it ought to have in our ministerial and Christian life; that the
shortcoming is one of which all are willing to make confession; and that
the difficulties in the way of deliverance are such as to make a return
to a true and full prayer-life almost impossible. Blessed be God--"The
things that are impossible with men are possible with God"! "God is able
to make all grace abound toward you, that ye, always having all
sufficiency in all things, may abound to all good work." Do let us
believe that God's call to much prayer need not be a burden and cause of
continual self-condemnation. He means it to be a joy. He can make it an
inspiration, giving us strength for all our work, and bringing down His
power to work through us in our fellowmen. Let us not fear to admit to
the full the sin that shames us, and then to face it in the name of our
Mighty Redeemer. _The light that shows us our sin and condemns us for
it, will show us the way out of it, into the life of liberty that is
well-pleasing to God._ If we allow this one matter, unfaithfulness in
prayer, to convict us of the lack in our Christian life which lies at
the root of it, God will use the discovery to bring us not only the
power to pray that we long for, but the joy of a new and healthy life,
of which prayer is the spontaneous expression.
And what is now the way by which our sense of the lack of prayer can be
made the means of blessing, the entrance on a path in which the evil may
be conquered? How can our intercourse with the Father, in continual
prayer and intercession, become what it ought to be, if we and the world
around us are to be blessed? As it appears to me, we must begin by going
back to God's Word, to study what _the place is God means prayer to
have_ in the life of His child and His Church. A fresh sight of what
prayer is _according to the will of God_, of what our prayers can be,
_through the grace of God_, will free us from those feeble defective
views, in regard to the absolute necessity of continual prayer, which
lie at the root of our failure. As we get an insight into the
reasonableness and rightness of this divine appointment, and come under
the full conviction of how wonderfully it fits in with God's love and
our own happiness, we shall be freed from the false impression of its
being an arbitrary demand. We shall with our whole heart and soul
consent to it and rejoice in it, as the one only possible way for the
blessing of heaven to come to earth. All thought of task and burden, of
self-effort and strain, will pass away in the blessed faith that as
simple as breathing is in the healthy natural life, will praying be in
the Christian life that is led and filled by the Spirit of God.
As we occupy ourselves with and accept this teaching of God's Word on
prayer, we shall be led to see how our failure in the prayer-life was
owing to failure in the Spirit-life. Prayer is one of the most heavenly
and spiritual of the functions of the Spirit-life. How could we try or
expect to fulfil it so as to please God, except as our soul is in
perfect health, and our life truly possessed and moved by God's Spirit?
The insight into the place God means prayer to take, and which it only
can take, in a full Christian life, will show us that we have not been
living the true, the abundant life, and that any thought of praying more
and effectually will be vain, except as we are brought into a closer
relation to our Blessed Lord Jesus. Christ is our life, Christ liveth in
us, in such reality that His life of prayer on earth, and of
intercession in heaven, is breathed into us in just such measure as our
surrender and our faith allow and accept it. Jesus Christ is the Healer
of all diseases, the Conqueror of all enemies, the Deliverer from all
sin; if our failure teaches us to turn afresh to Him, and find in Him
the grace He gives to pray as we ought, this humiliation may become our
greatest blessing. Let us all unite in praying God that He would visit
our souls and fit us for that work of intercession, which is at this
moment the greatest need of the Church and the world. It is only by
intercession that that power can be brought down from Heaven which will
enable the Church to conquer the world. Let us stir up the slumbering
gift that is lying unused, and seek to gather and train and band
together as many as we can, to be God's remembrancers, and to give Him
no rest till He makes His Church a joy in the earth. Nothing but intense
believing prayer can meet the intense spirit of worldliness, of which
complaint is everywhere made.
A PLEA FOR MORE PRAYER
CHAPTER II
The Ministration of the Spirit and Prayer
"If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children;
how much more shall your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to
them that ask Him?"--LUKE xi. 13.
Christ had just said (v. 9), "Ask, and it shall be given": God's giving
is inseparably connected with our asking. He applies this especially to
the Holy Spirit. As surely as a father on earth gives bread to his
child, so God gives the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him. The whole
ministration of the Spirit is ruled by the one great law: God must give,
we must ask. When the Holy Spirit was poured out at Pentecost with a
flow that never ceases, it was in answer to prayer. The inflow into the
believer's heart, and His outflow in the rivers of living water, ever
still depend upon the law: "Ask, and it shall be given." In connection
with our confession of the lack of prayer, we have said that what we
need is some due apprehension of the place it occupies in God's plan of
redemption; we shall perhaps nowhere see this more clearly than in the
first half of the Acts of the Apostles. The story of the birth of the
Church in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and of the first freshness
of its heavenly life in the power of that Spirit, will teach us how
_prayer on earth_, whether as cause or effect, _is the true measure of
the presence of the Spirit of heaven_.
We begin with the well-known words (i. 13), "These all continued with
one accord in prayer and supplication." And then there follows: "And
when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord
in one place. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost. And the same
day there were added to them about three thousand souls." The great work
of redemption had been accomplished. The Holy Spirit had been promised
by Christ "not many days hence." He had sat down on His throne and
received the Spirit from the Father. But all this was not enough. One
thing more was needed: the ten days' united continued supplication of
the disciples. It was intense, continued prayer that prepared the
disciples' hearts, that opened the windows of heaven, that brought down
the promised gift. As little as the power of the Spirit could be given
without Christ sitting on the throne, _could it descend without the
disciples on the footstool of the throne_. For all the ages the law is
laid down here, at the birth of the Church, that whatever else may be
found on earth, the power of the Spirit must be prayed down from heaven.
The measure of believing, continued prayer will be the measure of the
Spirit's working in the Church. Direct, definite, determined prayer is
what we need.
See how this is confirmed in chapter iv. Peter and John had been brought
before the Council and threatened with punishment. When they returned to
their brethren, and reported what had been said to them, "all lifted up
their voice to God with one accord," and prayed for boldness to speak
the word. "And when they had prayed, the place was shaken, and they were
all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word of God with
boldness. And the multitude of them that believed were one heart and one
soul. And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection
of the Lord Jesus; and great grace was upon them all." It is as if the
story of Pentecost is repeated a second time over, with the prayer, the
shaking of the house, the filling with the Spirit, the speaking God's
word with boldness and power, the great grace upon all, the
manifestation of unity and love--to imprint it ineffaceably on the heart
of the Church: it is prayer that lies at the root of the spiritual life
and power of the Church. The measure of God's giving the Spirit is our
asking. He gives as a father to him who asks as a child.
Go on to the sixth chapter. There we find that, when murmurings arose as
to the neglect of the Grecian Jews in the distribution of alms, the
apostles proposed the appointment of deacons to serve the tables. "We,"
they said, "will give ourselves to prayer and the ministry of the word."
It is often said, and rightly said, that there is nothing in honest
business, when it is kept in its place as entirely subordinate to the
kingdom, which must ever be first, that need prevent fellowship with
God. Least of all ought a work like ministering to the poor hinder the
spiritual life. And yet the apostles felt it would hinder them in their
giving themselves to the ministry of prayer and the word. What does
this teach? That the maintenance of the spirit of prayer, such as is
consistent with the claims of much work, is not enough for those who are
the leaders of the Church. To keep up the communication with the King on
the throne and the heavenly world clear and fresh; to draw down the
power and blessing of that world, not only for the maintenance of our
own spiritual life, but for those around us; continually to receive
instruction and empowerment for the great work to be done--the apostles,
as the ministers of the word, felt the need of being free from other
duties, that they might give themselves to much prayer. James writes:
"Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit
the fatherless and widows in their affliction." If ever any work were a
sacred one, it was that of caring for these Grecian widows. And yet,
even such duties might interfere with the special calling to give
themselves to prayer and the ministry of the word. As on earth, so in
the kingdom of heaven, there is power in the division of labour; and
while some, like the deacons, had specially to care for serving the
tables and ministering the alms of the Church here on earth, others had
to be set free for that steadfast continuance in prayer which would
uninterruptedly secure the downflow of the powers of the heavenly world.
The minister of Christ is set apart to give himself as much to prayer as
to the ministry of the word. In faithful obedience to this law is the
secret of the Church's power and success. As before, so _after
Pentecost_, the apostles were men given up to prayer.
In chapter viii. we have the intimate connection between the Pentecostal
gift and prayer, from another point of view. At Samaria, Philip had
preached with great blessing, and many had believed. But the Holy Ghost
was, as yet, fallen on none of them. The apostles sent down Peter and
John to pray for them, that they might receive the Holy Ghost. The power
for such prayer was a higher gift than preaching--the work of the men
who had been in closest contact with the Lord in glory, the work that
was essential to the perfection of the life that preaching and baptism,
faith and conversion had only begun. Surely of all the gifts of the
early Church for which we should long there is none more needed than the
gift of prayer--prayer that brings down the Holy Ghost on believers.
This power is given to the men who say: "We will give ourselves to
prayer."
In the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, in the house of Cornelius at
Cæsarea, we have another testimony to the wondrous interdependence of
the action of prayer and the Spirit, and another proof of what will come
to a man who has given himself to prayer. Peter went up at midday to
pray on the housetop. And what happened? He saw heaven opened, and there
came the vision that revealed to him the cleansing of the Gentiles; with
that came the message of the three men from Cornelius, a man who "prayed
alway," and had heard from an angel, "Thy prayers are come up before
God"; and then the voice of the Spirit was heard saying, "Go with them."
It is Peter praying, to whom the will of God is revealed, to whom
guidance is given as to going to Cæsarea, and who is brought into
contact with a praying and prepared company of hearers. No wonder that
in answer to all this prayer a blessing comes beyond all expectation,
and the Holy Ghost is poured out upon the Gentiles. A much-praying
minister will receive an entrance into God's will he would otherwise
know nothing of; will be brought to praying people where he does not
expect them; will receive blessing above all he asks or thinks. The
teaching and the power of the Holy Ghost are alike unalterably linked to
prayer.
Our next reference will show us faith in the power that the Church's
prayer has with its glorified King, as it is found, not only in the
apostles, but in the Christian community. In chapter xii. we have the
story of Peter in prison on the eve of execution. The death of James had
aroused the Church to a sense of real danger, and the thought of losing
Peter too, wakened up all its energies. It betook itself to prayer.
"Prayer was made of the Church without ceasing to God for him." That
prayer availed much; Peter was delivered. When he came to the house of
Mary, he found "many gathered together praying." Stone walls and double
chains, soldiers and keepers, and the iron gate, all gave way before the
power from heaven that prayer brought down to his rescue. The whole
power of the Roman Empire, as represented by Herod, was impotent in
presence of the power the Church of the Holy Spirit wielded in prayer.
They stood in such close and living communication with their Lord in
heaven; they knew so well that the words, "all power is given unto Me,"
and "Lo I am with you alway," were absolutely true; they had such faith
in His promise to hear them whatever they asked--that they prayed in the
assurance that the powers of heaven could work on earth, and would work
at their request and on their behalf. The Pentecostal Church believed in
prayer, and practised it.
Just one more illustration of the place and the blessing of prayer among
men filled with the Holy Spirit. In chapter xiii. we have the names of
five men at Antioch who had given themselves specially to ministering to
the Lord with prayer and fasting. Their giving themselves to prayer was
not in vain: as they ministered to the Lord, the Holy Spirit met them,
and gave them new insight into God's plans. He called them to be
fellow-workers with Himself; there was a work to which He had called
Barnabas and Saul; their part and privilege would be to separate these
men with renewed fasting and prayer, and to let them go, "sent forth of
the Holy Ghost." God in heaven would not send forth His chosen servants
without the co-operation of His Church; men on earth were to have a real
partnership in the work of God. It was prayer that fitted and prepared
them for this; it was to praying men the Holy Ghost gave authority to
do His work and use His name. It was to prayer the Holy Ghost was given.
It is still prayer that is the only secret of true Church extension,
that is guided from heaven to find and send forth God-called and
God-empowered men. To prayer the Holy Spirit will show the men He has
selected; to prayer that sets them apart under His guidance He will give
the honour of knowing that they are men, "sent forth by the Holy Ghost."
It is prayer which is the link between the King on the throne and the
Church at His footstool--the human link that has its divine strength in
the power of the Holy Ghost, who comes in answer to it.
As one looks back upon these chapters in the history of the Pentecostal
Church, how clear the two great truths stand out: where there is much
prayer there will be much of the Spirit; where there is much of the
Spirit there will be ever-increasing prayer. So clear is the living
connection between the two, that when the Spirit is given in answer to
prayer it ever wakens more prayer to prepare for the fuller revelation
and communication of His Divine power and grace. If prayer was thus the
power by which the Primitive Church flourished and triumphed, is it not
the one need of the Church of our days? Let us learn what ought to be
counted axioms in our Church work:--
Heaven is still as full of stores of spiritual blessing as it was then.
God still delights to give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him. Our
life and work are still as dependent on the direct impartation of Divine
power as they were in Pentecostal times. Prayer is still the appointed
means for drawing down these heavenly blessings in power on ourselves
and those around us. God still seeks for men and women who will, with
all their other work of ministering, specially give themselves to
persevering prayer.
And we--you, my reader, and I--may have the privilege of offering
ourselves to God to labour in prayer, and bring down these blessings to
this earth. Shall we not beseech God to make all this truth so living in
us that we may not rest till it has mastered us, and our whole heart be
so filled with it, that the practice of intercession shall be counted by
us our highest privilege, and we find in it the sure and only measure
for blessing on ourselves, on the Church, and on the world?
A PLEA FOR MORE PRAYER
CHAPTER III
A Model of Intercession
"And he said unto them, Which of you shall have a friend, and shall
go unto him at midnight, and shall say unto him, Friend, lend me
three loaves; for a friend of mine is come unto me from a journey,
and I have nothing to set before him; and he from within shall
answer and say, Trouble me not: 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 arise and give him
as many as he needeth."--LUKE xi. 5-8.
"I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, which shall never
hold their peace day nor night: ye that are the Lord's
remembrancers, keep not silence, and give Him no rest."--ISA. lxii.
6, 7.
We have seen in our previous chapter what power prayer has. It is the
one power on earth that commands the power of heaven. The story of the
early days of the Church is God's great object-lesson, to teach His
Church what prayer can do, how it alone, but it most surely, can draw
down the treasures and powers of heaven into the life of earth.
Just remember the lessons we learnt of how prayer is at once
indispensable and irresistible. Did we not see how unknown and untold
power and blessing is stored up for us in heaven?--how that power will
make us a blessing to men, and fit us to do any work or face any danger?
how it is to be sought in prayer continually and persistently? how they
who have the heavenly power can pray it down upon others? how in all the
intercourse of ministers and people, in all the ministrations of
Christ's Church, it is the one secret of success? how it can defy all
the power of the world, and fit men to conquer that world for Christ? It
is the power of the heavenly life, the power of God's own Spirit, the
power of Omnipotence, that waits for prayer to bring it down.
In all this prayer there was little thought of personal need or
happiness. It was the desire to witness for Christ and bring Him and His
salvation to others, it was the thought of God's kingdom and glory, that
possessed these disciples. If we would be delivered from the sin of
restraining prayer, we must enlarge our hearts for the work of
intercession. The attempt to pray constantly for ourselves must be a
failure; it is in intercession for others that our faith and love and
perseverance will be aroused, and that power of the Spirit be found
which can fit us for saving men. We are asking how we may become more
faithful and successful in prayer; let us see how the Master teaches us,
in the parable of the Friend at Midnight, that intercession for the
needy calls forth the highest exercise of our power of believing and
prevailing prayer. Intercession is the most perfect form of prayer: it
is the prayer Christ ever liveth to pray on His throne. Let us learn
what the elements of true intercession are.
1. Notice _the urgent need_: here intercession has its origin. The
friend came at midnight--an untimely hour. He was hungry, and could not
buy bread. If we are to learn to pray aright we must open eye and heart
to the need around us.
We hear continually of the thousand millions of heathen and Mohammedans
living in midnight darkness, perishing for lack of the bread of life.
We hear of five hundred millions of nominal Christians, the great
majority of them almost as ignorant and indifferent as the heathen. We
see millions in the Christian Church, not ignorant or indifferent, and
yet knowing little of a walk in the light of God or in the power of a
life fed by bread from heaven. We have each of us our own
circles--congregations, schools, friends, missions--in which the great
complaint is that the light and life of God are too little known.
Surely, if we believe what we profess, that God alone is able to help,
that God certainly will help in answer to prayer,--all this need ought
to make intercessors of us, people who give their lives to prayer for
those around them.
Let us take time to consider and realise the need. Each Christless soul
going down into outer darkness, perishing of hunger, with bread enough
and to spare! Thirty millions a year dying without the knowledge of
Christ! Our own neighbours and friends, souls intrusted to us, dying
without hope! Christians around us living a sickly, feeble, fruitless
life! Surely there is need for prayer. Nothing, nothing but prayer to
God for help, will avail.
2. Note _the willing love_.--The friend took his weary, hungry friend
into his house, and into his heart too. He did not excuse himself by
saying he had no bread: he gave himself at midnight to seek it for him.
He sacrificed his night's rest, his comfort, to find the needed bread.
"Love seeketh not its own." It is the very nature of love to give up and
forget itself for the sake of others. It takes their needs and makes
them its own, it finds its real joy in living and dying for others as
Christ did.
It is the love of a mother to her prodigal son that makes her pray for
him. True love to souls will become in us the spirit of intercession. It
is possible to do a great deal of faithful, earnest work for our
fellowmen without true love to them. Just as a lawyer or a physician,
from a love of his profession and a high sense of faithfulness to duty,
may interest himself most thoroughly in clients or patients without any
special love to each, so servants of Christ may give themselves to their
work with devotion and even self-sacrificing enthusiasm without the
Christlike love to souls being strong. It is this lack of love that
causes so much shortcoming in prayer. It is as love of our profession
and work, delight in thoroughness and diligence, sink away in the tender
compassion of Christ, that love will compel us to prayer, because we
cannot rest in our work if souls are not saved. True love must pray.
3. Note _the sense of impotence_.--We often speak of the power of love.
In one sense this is true; and yet the truth has its limitations, which
must not be forgotten. The strongest love may be utterly impotent. A
mother might be willing to give her life for her dying child, and yet
not be able to save it. The friend at midnight was most willing to give
his friend bread, but he had none. It was this sense of impotence, of
his inability to help, that sent him a-begging: "My friend is come to
me, and _I have nothing_ to set before him." It is this sense of
impotence with God's servants that is the very strength of the life of
intercession.
"I have nothing to set before them": as this consciousness takes
possession of the minister or missionary, the teacher or worker,
intercession will become their only hope and refuge. I may have
knowledge and truth, a loving heart, and the readiness to give myself
for those under my charge; but the bread of heaven I cannot give them.
With all my love and zeal, "I have nothing to set before them." Blessed
the man who has made that "I have nothing," the motto of his ministry.
As he thinks of the judgment day and the danger of souls, as he sees
what a supernatural power and life is needed to save men from sin, as he
feels how utterly insufficient all he can ever do is to give them life,
that "_I have nothing_" urges him to pray. Intercession appears to him,
as he thinks of the midnight darkness and the hungry souls, as his only
hope, the one thing in which his love can take refuge.
Let us take the lesson to heart, for a warning to all who are strong and
wise to work, for the encouragement of all who are feeble. The sense of
our impotence is the soul of intercession. The simplest, feeblest
Christian can pray down blessing from an Almighty God.
4. Note _the faith in prayer_.--What he has not himself, another can
supply. He has a rich friend near, who will be both able and willing to
give the bread. He is sure that if he only asks, he will receive. This
faith makes him leave his home at midnight: if he has not the bread
himself to give, he can ask another.
It is this simple, confident faith that God will give, that we need:
where it really exists, there will surely be no mistake about our not
praying. And in God's word we have everything that can stir and
strengthen such faith in us. Just as the heaven our natural eye can see
is one great ocean of sunshine, with its light and heat, giving beauty
and fruitfulness to earth, Scripture shows us God's true heaven, filled
with all spiritual blessings,--divine light and love and life, heavenly
joy and peace and power, all shining down upon us. It reveals to us God
waiting, delighting to bestow these blessings _in answer to prayer_. By
a thousand promises and testimonies it calls and urges us to believe
that prayer will be heard, that what we cannot possibly do ourselves for
those whom we want to help, _can be got by prayer_. Surely there can be
no question as to our believing that prayer will be heard, that through
prayer the poorest and feeblest can dispense blessings to the needy, and
each of us, though poor, may yet be making many rich.
5. Note _the importunity that prevails_.--The faith of the friend met a
sudden and unexpected check: the rich friend refuses to hear--"I cannot
rise and give thee." How little the loving heart had counted on this
disappointment; it cannot consent to accept it. The supplicant presses
his threefold plea: here is my needy friend, you have abundance, I am
your friend; and refuses to accept a denial. The love that opened his
house at midnight, and then left it to seek help, must win.
This is the central lesson of the parable. In our intercession we may
find that there is difficulty and delay with the answer. It may be as if
God says, "I cannot give thee." It is not easy, against all appearances,
to hold fast our confidence that He will hear, and to persevere in full
assurance that we shall have what we ask. And yet this is what God looks
for from us. He so highly prizes our confidence in Him, it is so
essentially the highest honour the creature can render the Creator, that
He will do anything to train us in the exercise of this trust in Him.
Blessed the man who is not staggered by God's delay, or silence, or
apparent refusal, but is strong in faith, giving glory to God. Such
faith perseveres, importunately, if need be, and cannot fail to inherit
the blessing.
6. Note, last, _the certainty of a rich reward_.--"I say unto you,
because of his importunity, he will give him as many as he needeth." Oh
that we might learn to believe in the certainty of an abundant answer. A
prophet said of old: "Let not your hands be weak; _your work shall be
rewarded_." Would that all who feel it difficult to pray much, would fix
their eye on the recompense of the reward, and in faith learn to count
upon the Divine assurance that their prayer cannot be vain. If we will
but believe in God and His faithfulness, intercession will become to us
the very first thing we take refuge in when we seek blessing for others,
and the very last thing for which we cannot find time. And it will
become a thing of joy and hope, because, all the time we pray, we know
that we are sowing seed that will bring forth fruit an hundredfold.
Disappointment is impossible: "I say unto you, He will rise and give him
as many as he needeth."
Let all lovers of souls, and all workers in the service of the gospel,
take courage. Time spent in prayer will yield more than that given to
work. Prayer alone gives work its worth and its success. Prayer opens
the way for God Himself to do His work in us and through us. Let our
chief work, as God's messengers, be intercession: in it we secure the
presence and power of God to go with us.
"Which of you shall have a friend at midnight, and shall say to him,
Friend, lend me three loaves?" This friend is none other but our God. Do
let us learn that in the darkness of midnight, at the most unlikely
time, and in the greatest need, when we have to say of those we love and
care for, "I have nothing to set before them," we have a rich Friend in
heaven, the Everlasting God and Father, who only waits to be asked
aright. Let us confess before Him our lack of prayer. Let us admit that
the lack of faith, of which it is the proof, is the symptom of a life
that is not spiritual, that is yet all too much under the power of self
and the flesh and the world. Let us in the faith of the Lord Jesus, who
spake this parable, and Himself waits to make every trait of it true in
us, give ourselves to be intercessors. Let every sight of souls needing
help, let every stirring of the spirit of compassion, let every sense of
our own impotence to bless, let every difficulty in the way of our
getting an answer, just combine to urge us to do this one thing: with
importunity to cry to the God who alone can help, who, in answer to our
prayer, will help. And let us, if we indeed feel that we have failed, do
our utmost to train a young generation of Christians, who profit by our
mistake and avoid it. Moses could not enter the land of Canaan, but
there was one thing he could do: he could at God's bidding "charge
Joshua, and encourage him, and strengthen him" (Deut. iii. 28). If it is
too late for us to make good our failure, let us at least encourage
those who come after us to enter into the good land, the blessed life of
unceasing prayer.
The Model Intercessor is the Model Christian Worker. First to get from
God, and then to give to men what we ourselves secure from day to day,
is the secret of successful work. Between our Impotence and God's
Omnipotence intercession is the blessed link.
A PLEA FOR MORE PRAYER
CHAPTER IV
Because of His Importunity
"I say unto you, Though he will not rise and give him, because he is
his friend, yet _because of his importunity_ he will arise and give
him as many as he needeth."--LUKE xi. 8.
"And He spake a parable unto them, to the end, they ought always to
pray and not to faint.... Hear what the unrighteous judge saith. And
shall not God avenge His own elect, which _cry to Him day and
night_, and _He is long-suffering with them_? I tell you that He
will avenge them speedily."--LUKE xviii. 1-8.
Our Lord Jesus thought it of such importance that we should know the
need of perseverance and importunity in prayer, that He spake two
parables to teach us this. This is proof sufficient that in this aspect
of prayer we have at once its greatest difficulty and its highest power.
He would have us know that in prayer all will not be easy and smooth; we
must expect difficulties, which can only be conquered by persistent,
determined perseverance.
In the parables our Lord represents the difficulty as existing on the
side of the persons to whom the petition was addressed, and the
importunity as needed to overcome their reluctance to hear. In our
intercourse with God the difficulty is not on His side, but on ours. In
connection with the first parable He tells us that our Father is more
willing to give good things to those who ask Him than any earthly father
to give his child bread. In the second, He assures us that God longs to
avenge His elect speedily. The need of urgent prayer cannot be because
God must be made willing or disposed to bless: the need lies altogether
in ourselves. But because it was not possible to find any earthly
illustration of a loving father or a willing friend from whom the needed
lesson of importunity could be taught, He takes the unwilling friend and
the unjust judge to encourage in us the faith, that perseverance can
overcome every obstacle.
The difficulty is not in God's love or power, but in ourselves and our
own incapacity to receive the blessing. And yet, because there is this
difficulty with us, this lack of spiritual preparedness, there is a
difficulty with God too. His wisdom, His righteousness, yea His love,
dare not give us what would do us harm, if we received it too soon or
too easily. The sin, or the consequence of sin, that makes it impossible
for God to give at once, is a barrier on God's side as well as ours; to
break through this power of sin in ourselves, or those for whom we pray,
is what makes the striving and the conflict of prayer such a reality.
And so in all ages men have prayed, and that rightly too, under a sense
that there were difficulties in the heavenly world to overcome. As they
pleaded with God for the removal of the unknown obstacles, and in that
persevering supplication were brought into a state of utter brokenness
and helplessness, of entire resignation to Him, of union with His will,
and of faith that could take hold of Him, the hindrances in themselves
and in heaven were together overcome. As God conquered them, they
conquered God. As God prevails over us, we prevail with God.
God has so constituted us that the clearer our insight is into the
reasonableness of a demand, the more hearty will be our surrender to it.
One great cause of our remissness in prayer is that there appears to be
something arbitrary, or at least something incomprehensible, in the call
to such continued prayer. If we could be brought to see that this
apparent difficulty is a Divine necessity, and in the very nature of
things the source of unspeakable blessing, we should be more ready with
gladness of heart to give ourselves to continue in prayer. Let us see if
we cannot understand how the difficulty that the call to importunity
throws in our way is one of our greatest privileges.
I do not know whether you have ever noticed what a part difficulties
play in our natural life. They call out man's powers as nothing else
can. They strengthen and ennoble character. We are told that one reason
of the superiority of the Northern nations, like Holland and Scotland,
in strength of will and purpose, over those of the sunny South, as Italy
and Spain, is that the climate of the latter has been too beautiful, and
the life it encourages too easy and relaxing--the difficulties the
former had to contend with have been their greatest boon; how all nature
has been so arranged by God that in sowing and reaping, as in seeking
coal or gold, nothing is found without labour and effort. What is
education but a daily developing and disciplining of the mind by new
difficulties presented to the pupil to overcome? The moment a lesson has
become easy, the pupil is moved on to one that is higher and more
difficult. With the race and the individual, it is in the meeting and
the mastering of difficulties that our highest attainments are found.
It is even so in our intercourse with God. Just imagine what the result
would be if the child of God had only to kneel down and ask, and get,
and go away. What unspeakable loss to the spiritual life would ensue. It
is in the difficulty and delay that calls for persevering prayer, that
the true blessing and blessedness of the heavenly life will be found. We
there learn how little we delight in fellowship with God, and how little
we have of living faith in Him. We discover how earthly and unspiritual
our heart still is, how little we have of God's Holy Spirit. We there
are brought to know our own weakness and unworthiness, and to yield to
God's Spirit to pray in us, to take our place in Christ Jesus, and abide
in Him as our only plea with the Father. There our own will and strength
and goodness are crucified. There we rise in Christ to newness of life,
with our whole will dependent on God and set upon His glory. Do let us
begin to praise God for the need and the difficulty of importunate
prayer, as one of His choicest means of grace.
Just think what our Lord Jesus owed to the difficulties in His path. In
Gethsemane it was as if the Father would not hear: He prayed yet more
earnestly, until "He was heard." In the way He opened up for us, He
learned obedience by the things He suffered, and so was made perfect;
His will was given up to God; His faith in God was proved and
strengthened; the prince of this world, with all his temptation, was
overcome. This is the new and living way He consecrated for us; it is in
persevering prayer we walk with and are made partakers of His very
Spirit. Prayer is one form of crucifixion, of our fellowship with
Christ's Cross, of our giving up our flesh to the death. O Christians!
shall we not be ashamed of our reluctance to sacrifice the flesh and our
own will and the world, as it is seen in our reluctance to pray much?
Shall we not learn the lesson which nature and Christ alike teach? The
difficulty of importunate prayer is our highest privilege; the
difficulties to be overcome in it bring us our richest blessings.
In importunity there are various elements. Of these the chief are
perseverance, determination, intensity. It begins with the refusal to at
once accept a denial. It grows to the determination to persevere, to
spare no time or trouble, till an answer comes. It rises to the
intensity in which the whole being is given to God in supplication, and
the boldness comes to lay hold of God's strength. At one time it is
quiet and restful; at another passionate and bold. Now it takes time and
is patient; then again it claims at once what it desires. In whatever
different shape, it always means and knows--God hears prayer: I must be
heard.
Remember the wonderful instances we have of it in the Old Testament
saints. Think of Abraham, as he pleads for Sodom. Time after time he
renews his prayer until the sixth time he has to say, "Let not my Lord
be angry." He does not cease until he has learnt to know God's
condescension in each time consenting to his petition, until he has
learnt how far he can go, has entered into God's mind, and now rests in
God's will. And for his sake Lot was saved. "God remembered Abraham,
and delivered Lot out of the midst of the overthrow." And shall not we,
who have a redemption and promises for the heathen which Abraham never
knew, begin to plead more with God on their behalf.
Think of Jacob, when he feared to meet Esau. The angel of the Lord met
him in the dark, and wrestled with him. And when the angel saw that he
prevailed not, he said, "Let me go." And Jacob said, "I will not let
thee go." And he blessed him there. And that boldness that said, "I will
not," and forced from the reluctant angel the blessing, was so pleasing
in God's sight, that a new name was there given to him: "Israel, he who
striveth with God, for thou hast striven with God and with men, and hast
prevailed." And through all the ages God's children have understood,
what Christ's two parables teach, that God holds Himself back, and seeks
to get away from us, until what is of flesh and self and sloth in us is
overcome, and we so prevail with Him that He can and must bless us. Oh!
why is it that so many of God's children have no desire for this
honour--being princes of God, strivers with God, and prevailing? What
our Lord taught us, "What things soever ye desire, _believe that ye
have received_," is nothing but His putting of Jacob's words, "I will
not let Thee go except thou bless me." This is the importunity He
teaches, and we must learn: to claim and take the blessing.
Think of Moses when Israel had made the golden calf. Moses returned to
the Lord and said, "Oh, this people have sinned a great sin. Yet now, if
Thou wilt forgive their sin--; and if not, blot me, I pray Thee, out of
Thy book which Thou hast written." That was importunity, that would
rather die than not have his people given him. Then, when God had heard
him, and said He would send His angel with the people, Moses came again,
and would not be content until, in answer to his prayer that God Himself
should go with them (xxxiii. 12, 17, 18), He had said, "I will do this
thing also that thou hast spoken." After that, when in answer to his
prayer, "Show me Thy glory," God made His goodness pass before him, he
at once again began pleading, "Let my Lord, I pray Thee, go among us."
And he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights (Ex. xxxiv.
28). Of these days he says, "I fell down before the Lord, as at the
first, forty days and forty nights, I did neither eat bread, nor drink
water, because of all your sin which ye sinned." As an intercessor Moses
used importunity with God, and prevailed. He proves that the man who
truly lives near to God, and with whom God speaks face to face, becomes
partaker of that same power of intercession which there is in Him who is
at God's right hand and ever lives to pray.
Think of Elijah in his prayer, first for fire, and then for rain. In the
former you have the importunity that claims and receives an immediate
answer. In the latter, bowing himself down to the earth, his face
between his knees, his answer to the servant who had gone to look toward
the sea, and come with the message, "There is nothing," was "Go again
seven times." Here was the importunity of perseverance. He had told Ahab
there would be rain; he knew it was coming; and yet he prayed till the
seven times were fulfilled. And it is of this Elijah and this prayer we
are taught, "Pray for one another. Elijah was a man of like passions
with ourselves. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth
much." Will there not be some who feel constrained to cry out, "Where is
the Lord God of Elijah?"--this God who draws forth such effectual
prayer, and hears it so wonderfully. His name be praised: He is still
the same. Let His people but believe that He still waits to be inquired
of! Faith in a prayer-hearing God will make a prayer-loving Christian.
We remember the marks of the true intercessor as the parable taught us
them. A sense of the need of souls; a Christlike love in the heart; a
consciousness of personal impotence; faith in the power of prayer;
courage to persevere in spite of refusal; and the assurance of an
abundant reward;--these are the dispositions that constitute a Christian
an intercessor, and call forth the power of prevailing prayer. These are
the dispositions that constitute the beauty and the health of the
Christian life, that fit a man for being a blessing in the world, that
make him a true Christian worker, who does indeed get from God the bread
of heaven to dispense to the hungry. These are the dispositions that
call forth the highest, the heroic virtues of the life of faith. There
is nothing to which the nobility of natural character owes so much as
the spirit of enterprise and daring which in travel or war, in politics
or science, battles with difficulties and conquers. No labour or expense
is grudged for the sake of victory. And shall we who are Christians not
be able to face the difficulties that we meet in prayer? It is as we
"labour" and "strive" in prayer that the renewed will asserts its royal
right to claim in the name of Christ what it will, and wields its
God-given power to influence the destinies of men. Shall men of the
world sacrifice ease and pleasure in their pursuits, and shall we be
such cowards and sluggards as not to fight our way through to the place
where we can find liberty for the captive and salvation for the
perishing? Let each servant of Christ learn to know his calling. His
King ever lives to pray. The Spirit of the King ever lives in us to
pray. It is from heaven the blessings, which the world needs, must be
called down in persevering, importunate, believing prayer. It is from
heaven, in answer to prayer, the Holy Spirit will take complete
possession of us to do His work through us. Let us acknowledge how vain
our much work has been owing to our little prayer. Let us change our
method, and let henceforth more prayer, much prayer, unceasing prayer,
be the proof that we look for all to God, and that we believe that He
heareth us.
A PLEA FOR MORE PRAYER
CHAPTER V
The Life that can Pray
"_If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you_, ask whatsoever ye
will, and it shall be done unto you."--JOHN xv. 7.
"The supplication of _a righteous man_ availeth much in its
working."--JAMES v. 16.
"Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, we have boldness toward God;
and whatsoever we ask, we receive of Him, _because_ we keep His
commandments, and do the things that are pleasing in His sight."--1
JOHN iii. 21, 22.
Here on earth the influence of one who asks a favour for others depends
entirely on his character, and the relationship he bears to him with
whom he is interceding. It is what he is that gives weight to what he
asks. It is no otherwise with God. Our power in prayer depends upon our
life. Where our life is right we shall know how to pray so as to please
God, and prayer will secure the answer. The texts quoted above all point
in this direction. "_If ye abide in Me_," our Lord says, ye shall ask,
and it shall be done unto you. It is the prayer of _a righteous man_,
according to James, that availeth much. We receive whatsoever we ask,
John says, _because_ we obey and please God. All lack of power to pray
aright and perseveringly, all lack of power in prayer with God, points
to some lack in the Christian life. It is as we learn to live the life
that pleases God, that God will give what we ask. Let us learn from our
Lord Jesus, in the parable of the vine, what the healthy, vigorous life
is that may ask and receive what it will. Hear His voice, "If ye abide
in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it
shall be done unto you." And again at the close of the parable: "Ye did
not choose Me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that you should go
and bear fruit, and that your fruit should abide: that _whatsoever ye
shall ask_ the Father in My name, _He may give it you_."
And what is now, according to the parable, the life that one must lead
to bear fruit, and then ask and receive what we will? What is it we are
to be or do, that will enable us to pray as we should, and to receive
what we ask? The answer is in one word: it is the branch-life that gives
power for prayer. We are branches of Christ, the Living Vine. We must
simply live like branches, and abide in Christ, then we shall ask what
we will, and it shall be done unto us.
We all know what a branch is, and what its essential characteristic. It
is simply a growth of the vine, produced by it and appointed to bear
fruit. It has only one reason of existence; it is there at the bidding
of the vine, that through it the vine may bear and ripen its precious
fruit. Just as the vine only and solely and wholly lives to produce the
sap that makes the grape, so the branch has no other aim and object but
this alone, to receive that sap and bear the grape. Its only work is to
serve the vine, that through it the vine may do its work.
And the believer, the branch of Christ the Heavenly Vine, is it to be
understood that he is as literally, as exclusively, to live only that
Christ may bear fruit through him? Is it meant that a true Christian as
a branch is to be just as absorbed in and devoted to the work of bearing
fruit to the glory of God as Christ the Vine was on earth, and is now in
heaven? This, and nothing less, is indeed what is meant. It is to such
that the unlimited prayer promises of the parable are given. It is the
branch-life, existing solely for the Vine, that will have the power to
pray aright. With our life abiding in Him, and His words abiding, kept
and obeyed, in our heart and life, transmuted into our very being, there
will be the grace to pray aright, and the faith to receive the
whatsoever we will.
Do let us connect the two things, and take them both in their simple,
literal truth, and their infinite, divine grandeur. The promises of our
Lord's farewell discourse, with their wonderful six-fold repetition of
the unlimited, _anything, whatsoever_ (John xiv. 13, 14; xv. 7, 16; xvi.
23, 24), appear to us altogether too large to be taken literally, and
they are qualified down to meet our human ideas of what appears seemly.
It is because we separate them from that life of absolute and unlimited
devotion to Christ's service to which they were given. God's covenant
is ever: Give all and take all. He that is willing to be wholly branch,
and nothing but branch, who is ready to place himself absolutely at the
disposal of Jesus the Vine of God, to bear His fruit through him, and to
live every moment only for Him, will receive a Divine liberty to claim
Christ's _whatsoever_ in all its fulness, and a Divine wisdom and
humility to use it aright. He will live and pray, and claim the Father's
promises, even as Christ did, only for God's glory in the salvation of
men. He will use his boldness in prayer only with a view to power in
intercession, and getting men blessed. The unlimited devotion of the
branch-life to fruitbearing, and the unlimited access to the treasures
of the Vine life, are inseparable. It is the life abiding wholly in
Christ that can pray the effectual prayer in the name of Christ.
Just think for a moment of the men of prayer in Scripture, and see in
them what the life was that could pray in such power. We spoke of
Abraham as intercessor. What gave Him such boldness? He knew that God
had chosen and called him away from his home and people to walk before
Him, that all nations might be blessed in him. He knew that he had
obeyed, and forsaken all for God. Implicit obedience, to the very
sacrifice of his son, was the law of his life. He did what God asked: he
dared trust God to do what he asked. We spoke of Moses as intercessor.
He too had forsaken all for God, "counting the reproach of Christ
greater riches than all the treasures of Egypt." He lived at God's
disposal: "as a servant he was faithful in all His house." How often it
is written of him, "According to all that the Lord commanded Moses, so
did he." No wonder that he was very bold: his heart was right with God:
he knew God would hear him. No less true is this of Elijah, the man who
stood up to plead for the Lord God of Israel. The man who is ready to
risk all for God can count upon God to do all for him.
It is as men live that they pray. It is the life that prays. It is the
life that, with whole-hearted devotion, gives up all for God and to God,
that can claim all from God. Our God longs exceedingly to prove Himself
the Faithful God and Mighty Helper of His people. He only waits for
hearts wholly turned from the world to Himself, and open to receive His
gifts. The man who loses all will find all; he dare ask and take it.
The branch that only and truly lives abiding in Christ, the Heavenly
Vine, entirely given up, like Christ, to bear fruit in the salvation of
men, and has His words taken up into and abiding in its life, may and
dare ask what it will--it shall be done. And where we have not yet
attained to that full devotion to which our Lord had trained His
disciples, and cannot equal them in their power of prayer, we may,
nevertheless, take courage in remembering that, even in the lower stages
of the Christian life, every new onward step in the striving after the
perfect branch-life, and every surrender to live for others in
intercession, will be met from above by a corresponding liberty to draw
nigh with greater boldness, and expect larger answers. The more we pray,
and the more conscious we become of our unfitness to pray in power, the
more we shall be urged and helped to press on towards the secret of
power in prayer--a life abiding in Christ entirely at His disposal.
And if any are asking, with somewhat of a despair of attainment, what
the reason may be of the failure in this blessed branch-life, so simple
and yet so mighty, and how they can come to it, let me point them to
one of the most precious lessons of the parable of the Vine. It is one
that is all too little noticed. Jesus spake, "I am the true Vine, _and
my Father is the Husbandman_." We have not only Himself, the glorified
Son of God, in His divine fulness, out of whose fulness of life and
grace we can draw,--this is very wonderful,--but there is something more
blessed still. We have the Father, as the Husbandman, watching over our
abiding in the Vine, over our growth and fruitbearing. It is not left to
our faith or our faithfulness to maintain our union with Christ: the
God, who is the Father of Christ, and who united us with Him,--God
Himself will see to it that the branch is what it should be, will enable
us to bring forth just the fruit we were appointed to bear. Hear what
Christ said of this, "Every branch that beareth fruit, He cleanseth it,
that it may bear more fruit." More fruit is what the Father seeks; more
fruit is what the Father will Himself provide. It is for this that He,
as the Vinedresser, cleanses the branches.
Just think a moment what this means. It is said that of all fruitbearing
plants on earth there is none that produces fruit so full of spirit,
from which spirit can be so abundantly distilled, as the vine. And of
all fruitbearing plants there is none that is so ready to run into wild
wood, and for which pruning and cleansing are so indispensable. The one
great work that a vinedresser has to do for the branch every year is to
prune it. Other plants can for a time dispense with it, and yet bear
fruit: the vine _must_ have it. And so the one thing the branch that
desires to abide in Christ and bring forth much fruit, and to be able to
ask whatsoever it will, must do, is to trust in and yield itself to this
Divine cleansing. What is it that the vinedresser cuts away with his
pruning-knife? Nothing but the wood that the branch has produced--true,
honest wood, with the true vine nature in it. This must be cut away. And
why? Because it draws away the strength and life of the vine, and
hinders the flow of the juice to the grape. The more it is cut down, the
less wood there is in the branch, the more all the sap can go to the
grape. The wood of the branch must decrease, that the fruit for the vine
may increase; in obedience to the law of all nature, that death is the
way to life, that gain comes through sacrifice, the rich and luxuriant
growth of wood must be cut off and cast away, that the life more
abundant may be seen in the cluster.
Even so, child of God, branch of the Heavenly Vine, there is in thee
that which appears perfectly innocent and legitimate, and which yet so
draws out thy interest and thy strength, that it must be pruned and
cleansed away. We saw what power in prayer men like Abraham and Moses
and Elijah had, and we know what fruit they bore. But we also know what
it cost them; how God had to separate them from their surroundings, and
ever again to draw them from any trust in themselves, to seek their life
in Him alone. It is only as our own will, and strength and effort and
pleasure, even where these appear perfectly natural and sinless, are cut
down, so that the whole energies of our being are free and open to
receive the sap of the Heavenly Vine, the Holy Spirit, that we shall
bear much fruit. It is in the surrender of what nature holds fast, it is
in the full and willing submission to God's holy pruning-knife, that we
shall come to what Christ chose and appointed us for--to bear fruit,
that whatsoever we ask the Father in Christ's name, He may give to us.
What the pruning-knife is, Christ tells us in the next verse. "Ye are
_clean through the word_ which I have spoken to you." As He says later,
"Sanctify them through Thy truth; Thy word is truth." "The word of God
is sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing of
soul and spirit." What heart-searching words Christ had spoken to His
disciples on love and humility, on being the least, and, like Himself,
the servant of all, on denying self, and taking the cross, and losing
the life. Through His word the Father had cleansed them, cut away all
confidence in themselves or the world, and prepared them for the
inflowing and filling of the Spirit of the Heavenly Vine. It is not we
who can cleanse ourselves: God is the Vinedresser: we may confidently
intrust ourselves to His care.
Beloved brethren,--ministers, missionaries, teachers, workers, believers
old and young,--are you mourning your lack of prayer, and, as a
consequence, your lack of power in prayer? Oh! come and listen to your
beloved Lord as He tells you, "only be a branch, united to, identified
with, the Heavenly Vine, and your prayers will be effectual and much
availing." Are you mourning that just this is your trouble--you do not,
cannot, live this branch-life, abiding in Him? Oh! come and listen
again. "_More fruit_" is not only your desire, but the Father's too. He
is the Husbandman who cleanseth the fruitful branch, that it may bear
more fruit. Cast yourself upon God, to do in you what is impossible to
man. Count upon a Divine cleansing, to cut down and take away all that
self-confidence and self-effort, that has been the cause of your
failure. The God who gave you His beloved Son to be your Vine, who made
you His branch, will He not do His work of cleansing to make you
fruitful in every good work, in the work of prayer and intercession too?
Here is the life that can pray. A branch entirely given up to the Vine
and its aims, with all responsibility for its cleansing cast on the
Vinedresser; a branch abiding in Christ, trusting and yielding to God
for His cleansing, can bear much fruit. In the power of such a life we
shall love prayer, we shall know how to pray, we shall pray, and receive
whatsoever we ask.
A PLEA FOR MORE PRAYER
CHAPTER VI
Restraining Prayer: is it Sin?
"Thou restrainest prayer before God."--JOB xv. 4.
"What profit should we have, if we pray unto Him?"--JOB xxi. 15.
"God forbid that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray
for you."--1 SAM. xii. 23.
"Neither will I be with you any more, except ye destroy the accursed
from among you."--JOSH. vii. 12.
Any deep quickening of the spiritual life of the Church will always be
accompanied by a deeper sense of sin. This will not begin with theology;
that can only give expression to what God works in the life of His
people. Nor does it mean that that deeper sense of sin will only be seen
in stronger expressions of self-reproach or penitence: that is sometimes
found to consist with a harbouring of sin, and unbelief as to
deliverance. But the true sense of the hatefulness of sin, the hatred
of it, will be proved by the intensity of desire for deliverance, and
the struggle to know to the very utmost what God can do in saving from
it--a holy jealousy, in nothing to sin against God.
If we are to deal effectually with the lack of prayer we must look at it
from this point of view and ask, Restraining prayer, is it sin? And if
it be, how is it to be dealt with, to be discovered, and confessed, and
cast out by man, and cleansed away by God? Jesus is a Saviour from sin.
It is only as we know sin truly that we can truly know the power that
saves from sin. The life that can pray effectually is the life of the
cleansed branch--the life that knows deliverance from the power of self.
To see that our prayer-sins are indeed sins, is the first step to a true
and Divine deliverance from them.
In the story of Achan we have one of the strongest proofs in Scripture
that it is sin that robs God's people of His blessing, and that God will
not tolerate it; and at the same time the clearest indication of the
principles under which God deals with it, and removes it. Let us see in
the light of the story if we can learn how to look at the sin of
prayerlessness, and at the sinfulness that lies at the root of it. The
words I have quoted above, "Neither will I be with you any more, except
ye put away the accursed thing from among you," take us into the very
heart of the story, and suggest a series of the most precious lessons
around the truth they express, that the presence of sin makes the
presence of God impossible.
1. _The presence of God is the great privilege of God's people, and
their only power against the enemy._--God had promised to Moses, _I will
bring you in_ unto the land. Moses proved that he understood this when
God, after the sin of the golden calf, spoke of withdrawing His presence
and sending an angel. He refused to accept anything less than God's
presence. "For whereby shall it be known that I and Thy people have
found grace in Thy sight? Is it not that _Thou goest with us_?" It was
this gave Caleb and Joshua their confidence: The Lord is with us. It was
this gave Israel their victory over Jericho: the presence of God. This
is throughout Scripture the great central promise: I am with thee. This
marks off the whole-hearted believer from the worldling and worldly
Christians around him: he lives consciously hidden in the secret of
God's presence.
2. _Defeat and failure are always owing to the loss of God's
presence._--It was thus at Ai. God had brought His people into Canaan
with the promise to give them the land. When the defeat at Ai took place
Joshua felt at once that the cause must be in the withdrawal of God's
power. He had not fought for them. His presence had been withheld.
In the Christian life and the work of the Church, defeat is ever a sign
of the loss of God's presence. If we apply this to our failure in the
prayer-life, and as a result of that to our failure in work for God, we
are led to see that all is simply owing to our not standing in clear and
full fellowship with God. His nearness, His immediate presence, has not
been the chief thing sought after and trusted in. He could not work in
us as He would. Loss of blessing and power is ever caused by the loss of
God's presence.
3. _The loss of God's presence is always owing to some hidden
sin._--Just as pain is ordered in nature to warn of some hidden evil in
the system, defeat is God's voice telling us there is something wrong.
He has given Himself so wholly to His people, He delights so in being
with them, and would so fain reveal in them His love and power, that He
never withdraws Himself unless they compel Him by sin.
Throughout the Church there is a complaint of defeat. The Church has so
little power over the masses, or the educated classes. Powerful
conversions are comparatively rare. The fewness of holy, consecrated,
spiritual Christians, devoted to the service of God and their fellowmen,
is felt everywhere. The power of the Church for the preaching of the
gospel to the heathen is paralysed by the scarcity of money and men; and
all owing to the lack of the effectual prayer which brings the Holy
Spirit in power, first on ministers and believers, then on missionaries
and the heathen. Can we deny it that the lack of prayer is the sin on
account of which God's presence and power are not more manifestly seen
among us?
4. _God Himself will discover the hidden sin._--We may think we know
what the sin is: it is only God who can discover its real deep meaning.
When He spoke to Joshua, before naming the sin of Achan, God first said,
"They have transgressed My covenant which I commanded them." God had
commanded (vi. 19) that all the booty of Jericho, gold and silver and
all that was in it, was to be a devoted thing, consecrated unto the
Lord, and to come into His treasury. And Israel had broken this
consecration vow: it had not given God His due; it had robbed God.
It is this we need: God must discover to us how the lack of prayer is
the indication of unfaithfulness to our consecration vow, that God
should have all our heart and life. We must see that this restraining
prayer, with the excuses we make for it, is greater sin than we have
thought; for what does it mean? That we have little taste or relish for
fellowship with God; that our faith rests more on our own work and
efforts than on the power of God; that we have little sense of the
heavenly blessing God waits to shower down; that we are not ready to
sacrifice the ease and confidence of the flesh for persevering waiting
on God; that the spirituality of our life, and our abiding in Christ, is
altogether too feeble to make us prevail in prayer. When the pressure of
work for Christ is allowed to be the excuse for our not finding time to
seek and secure His own presence and power in it, as our chief need, it
surely proves that there is no right sense of our absolute dependence
upon God; no deep apprehension of the Divine and supernatural work of
God in which we are only His instruments, no true entrance into the
heavenly, altogether other-worldly, character of our mission and aims,
no full surrender to and delight in Christ Jesus Himself.
If we were to yield to God's Spirit to show us that all this is in very
deed the meaning of remissness in prayer, and of our allowing other
things to crowd it out, all our excuses would fall away, and we should
fall down and cry, "We have sinned! we have sinned!" Samuel once said,
"As for me, God forbid that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to
pray for you." Ceasing from prayer is sin against God. May God discover
this to us. (Note A.)
5. _When God discovers sin, it must be confessed and cast out._--When
the defeat at Ai came, Joshua and Israel were ignorant of the cause. God
dealt with Israel as a nation, as one body, and the sin of one member
was visited on all. Israel as a whole was ignorant of the sin, and yet
suffered for it. The Church may be ignorant of the greatness of this sin
of restraining prayer, individual ministers or believers may never have
looked upon it as actual transgression, none the less does it bring its
punishment. But when the sin is no more hidden, when the Holy Spirit
begins to convince of it, then comes the time of heart-searching. In our
story the combination of individual and united responsibility is very
solemn. The individual: as we find it in the expression, "man for man";
each man felt himself under the eye of God, to be dealt with. And when
Achan had been taken, he had to make confession. The united: as we see
it in all Israel first suffering and dealt with by God, then taking
Achan, and his family, and the accursed thing, and destroying them out
of their midst.
If we have reason to think this is the sin that is in the camp, let us
begin with personal and united confession. And then let us come before
God to put away and destroy the sin. Here stands at the very threshold
of Israel's history in Canaan the heap of stones in the valley of Achor,
to tell us that God cannot bear sin, that God will not dwell with sin,
and that if _we really want God's presence in power, sin must be put
away_. Let us look the solemn fact in the face. There may be other sins,
but here is certainly one that causes the loss of God's presence--we do
not pray as Christ and Scripture teach us. Let us bring it out before
God, and give up this sin to the death. Let us yield ourselves to God
to obey His voice. Let no fear of past failure, let no threatening array
of temptations, or duties, or excuses, keep us back. It is a simple
question of obedience. Are we going to give up ourselves to God and His
Spirit to live a life in prayer, well-pleasing to Him? Surely, if it is
God who has been withholding His presence, who has been discovering the
sin, who is calling for its destruction, and a return to obedience,
surely we can count upon His grace to accept and strengthen for the life
He asks of us. It is not a question of what you can do; it is the
question of whether you now, with your whole heart, turn to give God His
due, and give yourself to let His will and grace have their way with
you.
6. _With sin cast out God's presence is restored._--From this day
onwards there is not a word in Joshua of defeat in battle. The story
shows them going on from victory to victory. God's presence secured
gives power to overcome every enemy.
This truth is so simple that the very ease with which we acquiesce in it
robs it of its power. Let us pause and think what it implies. God's
presence restored means victory secured. Then, we are responsible for
defeat. Then, there must be sin somewhere causing it. Then, we ought at
once to find out and put away the sin. We may confidently expect God's
presence the moment the sin is put away. Surely each one is under the
solemn obligation to search his life and see what part he may have in
this evil.
God never speaks to His people of sin except with a view to saving them
from it. _The same light that shows the sin will show the way out of
it._ The same power that breaks down and condemns will, if humbly
yielded to and waited on in confession and faith, give the power to rise
up and conquer. It is GOD who is speaking to His Church and to us about
this sin: "HE WONDERED that there was no intercessor." "I WONDERED that
there was none to uphold." "I SOUGHT for a man that should stand in the
gap before Me, and found none." The God who speaks thus is He who will
work the change for His children who seek His face. He will make the
valley of Achor, of trouble and shame, of sin confessed and cast out, a
door of hope. Let us not fear, let us not cling to the excuses and
explanations which circumstances suggest, but simply confess, "We have
sinned; we are sinning; we dare not sin longer." In this matter of
prayer we are sure God does not demand of us impossibilities. He does
not weary us with an impracticable ideal. He asks us to pray no more
than He gives grace to enable us to. He will give the grace to do what
He asks, and so to pray that our intercessions shall, day by day, be a
pleasure to Him and to us, a source of strength to our conscience and
our work, and a channel of blessing to those for whom we labour.
God dealt personally with Joshua, with Israel, with Achan. Let each of
us allow Him to deal personally with us concerning this sin, of
restraining prayer, and its consequences in our life and work;
concerning the deliverance from sin, its certainty and blessedness. Just
bow in stillness and wait before God, until, as God, He overshadow you
with His presence, lead you out of that region of argument as to human
possibilities, where conviction of sin can never be deep, and full
deliverance can never come. Take quiet time, and be still before God,
that He may take this matter in hand. "Sit still, for He will not be in
rest until He have finished this thing this day." Leave yourself in
God's hands.
A PLEA FOR MORE PRAYER
CHAPTER VII
Who shall Deliver?
"Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? why then
is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?"--JER.
viii. 22.
"Return, ye backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings.
Behold, we come unto Thee; for Thou art the Lord our God."-JER. iii.
22.
"Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed."-JER. xii. 14.
"O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of
this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. The law of
the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin
and death."-ROM. vii. 24, viii. 2.
During one of our conventions a gentleman called upon me to ask advice
and help. He was evidently an earnest and well-instructed Christian man.
He had for some years been in most difficult surroundings, trying to
witness for Christ. The result was a sense of failure and unhappiness.
His complaint was that he had no relish for the Word, and that though he
prayed, it was as if his heart was not in it. If he spoke to others, or
gave a tract, it was under a sense of duty: the love and the joy were
not present. He longed to be filled with God's Spirit, but the more he
sought it, the farther off it appeared to be. What was he to think of
his state, and was there any way out of it?
My answer was, that the whole matter appeared to me very simple; he was
living under the law and not under grace. As long as he did so, there
could be no change. He listened attentively, but could not exactly see
what I meant.
I reminded him of the difference, the utter contrariety, between law and
grace. Law demands; grace bestows. Law commands, but gives no strength
to obey; grace promises, and performs, does all we need to do. Law
burdens, and casts down and condemns; grace comforts, and makes strong
and glad. Law appeals to self, to do its utmost; grace points to Christ
to do all. Law calls to effort and strain, and urges us towards a goal
we never can reach; grace works in us all God's blessed will. I pointed
out to him how his first step should be, instead of striving against
all this failure, fully to accept of it, and the lesson of his own
impotence, as God had been seeking to teach it him, and, with this
confession, to sink down before God in utter helplessness. There would
be the place where he would learn that, unless grace gave him
deliverance and strength, he never could do better than he had done, and
that grace would indeed work all for him. He must come out from under
law and self and effort, and take his place under grace, allowing God to
do all.
In later conversations he told me the diagnosis of the disease had been
correct. He admitted grace must do all. And yet, so deep was the thought
that we must do something, that we must at least bring our faithfulness
to secure the work of grace, he feared that his life would not be very
different; he would not be equal to the strain of new difficulties into
which he was now going. There was, amid all the intense earnestness, an
undertone of despair; he could not live as he knew he ought to. I have
already said, in the opening chapter, that in some of our meetings I had
noticed this tone of hopelessness. And no minister who has come into
close contact with souls seeking to live wholly for God, to "walk
worthy of the Lord unto all well pleasing," but knows that this renders
true progress impossible. To speak specially of the lack of prayer, and
the desire of living a fuller prayer-life, how many are the difficulties
to be met! We have so often resolved to pray more and better, and have
failed. We have not the strength of will some have, with one resolve to
turn round and change our habits. The press of duty is as great as ever
it was; it is so difficult to find time for more prayer; real enjoyment
in prayer, which would enable us to persevere, is what we do not feel;
we do not possess the power to supplicate and to plead, as we should;
our prayers, instead of being a joy and a strength, are a source of
continual self-condemnation and doubt. We have at times mourned and
confessed and resolved; but, to tell the honest truth, we do not expect,
for we do not see the way to, any great change.
It is evident that as long as this spirit prevails, there can be very
little prospect of improvement. Discouragement must bring defeat. One of
the first objects of a physician is ever to waken hope; without this he
knows his medicines will often profit little. No teaching from God's
Word as to the duty, the urgent need, the blessed privilege of more
prayer, of effectual prayer, will avail, while the secret whisper is
heard: There is no hope. Our first care must be to find out the hidden
cause of the failure and despair, and then to show how divinely sure
deliverance is. We must, unless we are to rest content with our state,
listen to and join in the question, "Is there no balm in Gilead; is
there no physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter of
my people restored?" We must listen, and receive into our heart, the
Divine promise with the response it met with: "Return, ye backsliding
children, and I will heal your backslidings. Behold, we come unto Thee,
for Thou art the Lord our God." We must come with the personal prayer,
and the faith that there will be a personal answer. Shall we not even
now begin to claim it in regard to the lack of prayer, and believe that
God will help us: "Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed."
It is always of consequence to distinguish between the symptoms of a
disease and the disease itself. Feebleness and failure in prayer is a
sign of feebleness in the spiritual life. If a patient were to ask a
physician to give him something to stimulate his feeble pulse, he would
be told that this would do him little good. The pulse is the index of
the state of the heart and the whole system: the physician strives to
have health restored. What everyone who would fain pray more faithfully
and effectually must learn is this, that his whole spiritual life is in
a sickly state, and needs restoration. It is as he comes to look, not
only at his shortcomings in prayer, but at the lack in the life of
faith, of which this is the symptom, that he will become fully alive to
the serious nature of the disease. He will then see the need of a
radical change in his whole life and walk, if his prayer-life, which is
simply the pulse of the spiritual system, is to indicate health and
vigour. God has so created us that the exercise of every healthy
function causes joy. Prayer is meant to be as simple and natural as
breathing or working to a healthy man. The reluctance we feel, and the
failure we confess, are God's own voice calling us to acknowledge our
disease, and to come to Him for the healing He has promised.
And what is now the disease of which the lack of prayer is the symptom?
We cannot find a better answer than is pointed out in the words, "Ye
are not under the law, but under grace."
Here we have suggested the possibility of two types of Christian life.
There may be a life partly under the law and partly under grace; or, a
life entirely under grace, in the full liberty from self-effort, and the
full experience of the Divine strength which it can give. A true
believer may still be living partly under the law, in the power of
self-effort, striving to do what he cannot accomplish. The continued
failure in his Christian life to which he confesses is owing to this one
thing: he trusts in himself, and tries to do his best. He does, indeed,
pray and look to God for help, but still it is he in his strength,
helped by God, who is to do the work. In the Epistles to the Romans, and
Corinthians, and Galatians, we know how Paul tells them that they have
not received the spirit of bondage again, that they are free from the
law, that they are no more servants but sons; that they must beware of
nothing so much as to be entangled again with the yoke of bondage.
Everywhere it is the contrast between the law and grace, between the
flesh, which is under the law, and the Spirit, who is the gift of grace,
and through whom grace does all its work. In our days, just as in those
first ages, the great danger is living under the law, and serving God in
the strength of the flesh. With the great majority of Christians it
appears to be the state in which they remain all their lives. Hence the
lack to such a large extent of true holy living and power in prayer.
They do not know that all failure can have but one cause: _Men seek to
do themselves what grace alone can do in them_, what grace most
certainly will do.
Many will not be prepared to admit that this is their disease, that they
are not living "under grace." Impossible, they say. "From the depth of
my heart," a Christian cries, "I believe and know that there is no good
in me, and that I owe everything to grace alone." "I have spent my
life," a minister says, "and found my glory in preaching and exalting
the doctrines of free grace." "And I," a missionary answers, "how could
I ever have thought of seeing the heathen saved, if my only confidence
had not been in the message I brought, and the power I trusted, of God's
abounding grace." Surely you cannot say that our failures in prayer, and
we sadly confess to them, are owing to our not living "under grace"?
This cannot be our disease.
We know how often a man may be suffering from a disease without knowing
it. What he counts a slight ailment turns out to be a dangerous
complaint. Do not let us be too sure that we are not, to a large extent,
still living "under the law," while considering ourselves to be living
wholly "under grace." Very frequently the reason of this mistake is the
limited meaning attached to the word "grace." Just as we limit God
Himself, by our little or unbelieving thoughts of Him, so we limit His
grace at the very moment that we are delighting in terms like the
"riches of grace," "grace exceeding abundant." Has not the very term,
"grace abounding," from Bunyan's book downward, been confined to the one
great blessed truth of free justification with ever renewed pardon and
eternal glory for the vilest of sinners, while the other equally blessed
truth of "grace abounding" in sanctification is not fully known. Paul
writes: "Much more shall they which receive the abundance of grace reign
in life through Jesus Christ." That reigning in life, as conqueror over
sin, is even here on earth. "Where sin abounded" in the heart and life,
"grace did abound more exceedingly, that grace might reign through
righteousness" in the whole life and being of the believer. It is of
this reign of grace in the soul that Paul asks, "Shall we sin because we
are under grace?" and answers, "God forbid." Grace is not only pardon
of, but power over, sin; grace takes the place sin had in the life, and
undertakes, as sin had reigned within in the power of death, to reign in
the power of Christ's life. It is of this grace that Christ spoke, "My
grace is sufficient for thee," and Paul answered, "I will glory in my
weakness; for, when I am weak, then am I strong." It is of this grace,
which, when we are willing to confess ourselves utterly impotent and
helpless, comes in to work all in us, that Paul elsewhere teaches, "God
is able to make _all grace_ abound unto you, that ye, _always_ having
_all sufficiency_ in _all things_, may abound unto _all good works_."
It has often happened that a seeker after God and salvation has read his
Bible long, and yet never seen the truth of a free and full and
immediate justification by faith. When once his eyes were opened, and he
accepted it, he was amazed to find it everywhere. Even so many
believers, who hold the doctrines of free grace as applied to pardon,
have never seen its wondrous meaning as it undertakes to work our whole
life in us, and _actually give us strength every moment_ for whatever
the Father would have us be and do. When God's light shines into our
heart with this blessed truth, we know what Paul means, "Not I, but the
grace of God." There again you have the twofold Christian life. The one,
in which that "Not I"--I am nothing, I can do nothing--has not yet
become a reality. The other, when the wondrous exchange has been made,
and grace has taken the place of our effort, and we say and know, "I
live, yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in me." It may then become a
lifelong experience: "The grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant, with
faith and love which is in Christ Jesus."
Beloved child of God! what think you, is it not possible that this has
been the want in your life, the cause of your failure in prayer? You
knew not how grace would enable you to pray, if once the whole life were
under its power. You sought by earnest effort to conquer your reluctance
or deadness in prayer, but failed. You strove by every motive of shame
or love you could think of to stir yourself to it, but it would not
help. Is it not worth while asking the Lord whether the message I bring
you as His servant may not be more true for you than you think? Your
lack of prayer is owing to a diseased state of life, and the disease is
nothing but this--you have not accepted, for daily life and every duty,
the full salvation which the word brings: "Ye are not under the law, but
under grace." As universal and deep-reaching as the demand of the law
and the reign of sin, yea, more exceeding abundant, is the provision of
grace and the power by which it makes us reign in life. (Note B.)
In the chapter that follows that in which Paul wrote, "Ye are not under
the law, but under grace," he gives us a picture of a believer's life
under law, with the bitter experience in which it ends: "O wretched man
that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" His answer
to the question, "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord," shows that
there is deliverance from a life held captive under evil habits that
have been struggled against in vain. That deliverance is by the Holy
Spirit giving the full experience of what the life of Christ can work in
us: "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free
from the law of sin and death." The law of God could only deliver us
into the power of the law of sin and death. The grace of God can bring
us into, and keep us in, the liberty of the Spirit. We can be made free
from the sad life under the power that led us captive, so that we did
not what we would. The Spirit of life in Christ can free us from our
continual failure in prayer, and enable us in this, too, to walk worthy
of the Lord unto all well-pleasing.
Oh! be not hopeless, be not despondent; there is a balm in Gilead; there
is a Physician there; there is healing for our sickness. What is
impossible with man is possible with God. What you see no possibility of
doing, grace will do. Confess the disease; trust the Physician; claim
the healing; pray the prayer of faith, "Heal me, and I shall be healed."
You too can become a man of prayer, and pray the effectual prayer that
availeth much.[1]
[1] I ought to say, for the encouragement of all, that the gentleman of
whom I spoke, at a Convention a fortnight later, saw and claimed the
rest of faith in trusting God for all, and a letter from England tells
that he has found that His grace is sufficient.
A PLEA FOR MORE PRAYER
CHAPTER VIII
Wilt Thou be made Whole?
"Jesus saith unto him, Wilt thou be made whole? The impotent man
answered him, Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool. Jesus
saith unto him, Rise and walk. Immediately the man was made whole,
and walked."--JOHN v. 6-9.
"Peter said, In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and
walk.... The faith which is by Him hath given this man this perfect
soundness in the presence of you all."--ACTS iii. 6, 16.
"Peter said, Æneas, Jesus Christ maketh thee whole: arise. And he
arose immediately."--ACTS ix. 34.
Feebleness in prayer is the mark of disease. Impotence to walk is, in
the Christian, as in the natural life, a terrible proof of some evil in
the system that needs a physician. The lack of power to walk joyfully in
the new and living way that leads to the Father and the throne of grace
is specially grievous. Christ is the great Physician, who comes to
every Bethesda where impotent folk are gathered, and speaks out his
loving, searching question, Wilt thou be made whole? For all who are
still clinging to their hope in the pool, or are looking for some man to
put them in, who are hoping, in course of time, somehow to be helped by
just continuing in the use of the ordinary means of grace, His question
points to a better way. He offers them healing in a way of power they
have never understood. And to all who are willing to confess, not only
their own impotence, but their failure to find any man to help them, His
question brings the sure and certain hope of a near deliverance. We have
seen that our weakness in prayer is part of a life smitten with
spiritual impotence. Let us listen to our Lord as He offers to restore
our spiritual strength, to fit us for walking like healthy, strong men
in all the ways of the Lord, and so be fit rightly to fill our place in
the great work of intercession. As we see what the wholeness is He
offers, how He gives it, and what He asks of us, we shall be prepared
for giving a willing answer to His question.
WHAT THE HEALTH THAT JESUS OFFERS.
I might mention many marks of spiritual health. Our text leads us to
take one,--walking. Jesus said to the sick man, Rise and walk, and with
that restored him to his place among men in full health and vigour, able
to take his part in all the work of life. It is a wonderfully suggestive
picture of the restoration of spiritual health. To the healthy, walking
is a pleasure; to the sick, a burden, if not an impossibility. How many
Christians there are to whom, like the maimed and the halt and the lame
and the impotent, movement and progress in God's way is indeed an effort
and a weariness. Christ comes to say, and with the word He gives the
power, Rise and walk.
Just think of this walk to which He restores and empowers us. It is a
life like that of Enoch and Noah, who "walked with God." A life like
that of Abraham, to whom God said, "Walk before Me," and who himself
spake, "The Lord before whom I walk." A life of which David sings, "They
shall walk in the light of Thy countenance," and Isaiah prophesies,
"They that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall run
and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint." Even as God the
Creator fainteth not nor is weary, shall they who walk with Him, waiting
on Him, never be exhausted or feeble. It is a life concerning which it
could be said of the last of the Old Testament saints, Zacharias and
Elisabeth, "They were both righteous before God, walking in all the
commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless." This is the walk
Jesus came to make possible and true to His people in greater power than
ever before.
Hear what the New Testament speaks of it: "That like as Christ was
raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also should walk
in newness of life." It is the Risen One who says to us, Rise and walk:
He gives the power of the resurrection life. It is a walk in Christ. "As
ye have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye also in Him." It is a
walk like Christ. "He that saith he abideth in Him ought so to walk even
as He walked." It is a walk by the Spirit and after the Spirit. "Walk by
the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh." "Who walk
not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." It is a walk worthy of God
and well pleasing to Him. "That ye would walk worthy of the Lord, unto
all well pleasing, being fruitful in every good work." "I beseech you,
that as ye received of us, how ye should walk and please God, _even as
ye do walk_, that ye would abound more and more." It is a walk in
heavenly love. "Walk in love, even as Christ loved you." It is a "walk
in the light, as He is in the light." It is a walk of faith, all its
power coming simply from God and Christ and the Holy Spirit, to the soul
turned away from the world. "We walk by faith, and not by sight."
How many believers there are who regard such a walk as an impossible
thing--so impossible that they do not feel it a sin that they "walk
otherwise"; and so they do not long for this walk in newness of life.
They have become so accustomed to the life of impotence, that the life
and walk in God's strength has little attraction. But some there are
with whom it is not thus. They do wonder if these words really mean what
they say, and if the wonderful life each one of them speaks of is simply
an unattainable ideal, or meant to be realised in flesh and blood. The
more they study them, the more they feel that they are spoken as for
daily life. And yet they appear too high. Oh that they would believe
that God sent his Almighty Son, and His Holy Spirit, indeed to bring us
and fit us for a life and walk from heaven beyond all that man could
dare to think or hope for.
HOW JESUS MAKES US WHOLE.
When a physician heals a patient, he acts on him from without, and does
something which is, if possible, ever after to render him independent of
his aid. He restores him to perfect health, and leaves him. With the
work of our Lord Jesus it is in both respects the very opposite. Jesus
works not from without, but from within, by entering Himself in the
power of His Spirit into our very life. And instead of, as in the bodily
healing, being rendered, if possible, independent of a physician for the
future, Christ's one purpose in healing is, as we said, the exact
opposite. His one condition of success, is to bring us into _such
dependence upon Himself as that we shall not be able one single moment
to do without Him_. Christ Jesus Himself is our life, in a sense that
many Christians have no conception of. The prevailing feeble and sickly
life is entirely owing to the lack of the apprehension of the Divine
truth, that as long as we expect Christ continually to do something for
us from heaven, in single acts of grace from time to time, and each time
trust Him to give us what will last a little while, we cannot be
restored to perfect health. But when once we see how there is to be
nothing of our own for a single moment, and it is to be all Christ
moment by moment, and learn to accept it from Him and trust Him for it,
the life of Christ becomes the health of our soul. Health is nothing but
life in its normal, undisturbed action. Christ gives us health by giving
us Himself as our life; so He becomes our strength for our walk.
Isaiah's words find their New Testament fulfilment: They that wait on
the Lord shall walk and not faint, because Christ is now the strength of
their life.
It is strange how believers sometimes think this life of dependence too
great a strain, and a loss of our personal liberty. They admit a need of
dependence, of much dependence, but with room left for our own will and
energy. They do not see that even a partial dependence makes us debtors,
and leaves us nothing to boast of. They forget that our relationship to
God, and co-operation with Him, is not that He does the larger part and
we the lesser, but that God does all and we do all--God all in us, we
all through God. This dependence upon God secures our true independence;
when our will seeks nothing but the Divine will, we reach a Divine
nobility, the true independence of all that is created. He that has not
seen this must remain a sickly Christian, letting self do part and
Christ part. He that accepts the life of unceasing dependence on Christ,
as life and health and strength, is made whole. As God, Christ can enter
and become the life of His creature. As the Glorified One who received
the Holy Spirit from the Father to bestow, He can renew the heart of the
sinful creature and make it His home, and by His presence maintain it in
full health and strength.
O ye all who would fain walk and please God, and in your prayer-life not
have your heart condemn you, listen to Christ's words: "Wilt thou be
made whole?" He can give soul-health. He can give a life that can pray,
and know that it is well-pleasing to the Father. If you would have this,
come and hear how you can receive it.
WHAT CHRIST ASKS OF US.
The story invites us to notice three things very specially. Christ's
question first appeals to the will, and asks for the expression of its
consent. He then listens to man's confession of his utter helplessness.
Then comes the ready obedience to Christ's command, that rises up and
walks.
1. Wilt thou be made whole? About the answer of the impotent man there
could be no doubt. Who would not be willing to have his sickness
removed? But, alas, in the spiritual life what need to press the
question. Some will not admit that they are so sick. And some will not
believe that Christ can make a man whole. And some will believe it for
others, but they are sure it is not for them. At the root of all lies
the fear of the self-denial and the sacrifice which will be needed. They
are not willing to forsake entirely the walk after the course of this
world, to give up all self-will, and self-confidence, and self-pleasing.
The walk in Christ and like Christ is too straight and hard: they do not
will it, they do not will to be made whole. My brother, if thou art
willing, speak it out: "Lord! at any price, I will!" From Christ's side
the act is one of the will: "I will, be thou clean." From your side
equally: "Be it unto thee as thou wilt." If you would be delivered from
your impotence--oh, fear not to say, "I will, I will!"
Then comes the second step. Christ wants us to look up to him as our
only Helper. "I have no man to put me in," must be our cry. Here on
earth there is no help for me. Weakness may grow into strength in the
ordinary use of means, if all the organs and functions are in a sound
state. Sickness needs special measures. Your soul is sick; your
impotence to walk joyfully the Christian walk in God's way is a sign of
disease; fear not to confess it, and to admit that there is no hope for
restoration unless by an act of Christ's mercy healing you. Give up the
idea of growing out of your sickly into a healthy state, of growing out
from under the law into a life under grace. A few days ago I heard a
student plead the cause of the Volunteer Pledge. "The pledge calls you,"
he said, "to a decision. Do not think of growing into a missionary:
unless God forbids you, take the step; the decision will bring joy and
strength, will set you free to grow up in all needed for a missionary,
and will be a help to others." It is even so in the Christian life.
Delay and struggle will equally hinder you; do confess that you cannot
bring yourself to pray as you would, because you cannot give yourself
the healthy, heavenly life that loves to pray, and that knows to count
upon God's Spirit to pray in us. Come to Christ to heal you. He can in
one moment make you whole. Not in the sense of working a sudden change
in your feelings, or in what you are in yourself, but in the heavenly
reality of coming in, in response to your surrender and faith, and
taking charge of your inner life, and filling it with Himself and
Spirit.
The third thing Christ asks is this, the surrender of faith. When He
spoke to the impotent man His word of command had to be obeyed. The man
believed that there was truth and power in Christ's word; in that faith
he rose and walked. By faith he obeyed. And what Christ said to others
was for him too--"Go thy way; thy faith hath made thee whole." Of us,
too, Christ asks this faith, that His word changes our impotence into
strength, and fits us for that walk in newness of life for which we have
been quickened in Him. If we do not believe this, if we will not take
courage and say, with Paul, "I can do all things in Christ, which
strengtheneth me," we cannot obey. But if we will listen to the word
that tells us of the walk that is not only possible, but has been proved
and seen in God's saints from of old, if we will fix our eye on the
mighty, living, loving Christ, who speaks in power, "Rise and walk," we
shall take courage and obey. We shall rise and begin to walk in Him and
His strength. In faith, apart from and above all feeling, we shall
accept and trust an unseen Christ as our strength, and go on in the
strength of the Lord God. We shall know Christ as the strength of our
life. We shall know, and tell, and prove that Jesus Christ hath made us
whole.
Can it indeed be? Yes, it can. He has done it for many: He will do it
for you. Beware of forming wrong conceptions of what must take place.
When the impotent man was made whole he had still all to learn as to the
use of his new-found strength. If he wanted to dig, or build, or learn a
trade, he had to begin at the beginning. Do not expect at once to be a
proficient in prayer or any part of the Christian life. No; but expect
and be confident of this one thing, that, as you have trusted yourself
to Christ to be your health and strength, He will lead and teach you.
Begin to pray in a quiet sense of your ignorance and weakness, but in a
joyful assurance that He will work in you what you need. Rise and walk
each day in a holy confidence that He is with you and in you. Just
accept Jesus Christ the Living One, and trust Him to do His work.
Will you do it? Have you done it? Even now Jesus speaks, "Rise and
walk." "Amen, Lord! at Thy word I come. I rise to walk with Thee, and in
Thee, and like Thee."
A PLEA FOR MORE PRAYER
CHAPTER IX
The Secret of Effectual Prayer
"What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye have
received them, and ye shall have them."--MARK xi. 24.
Here we have a summary of the teaching of our Lord Jesus on prayer.
Nothing will so much help to convince us of the sin of our remissness in
prayer, to discover its causes, and to give us courage to expect entire
deliverance, as the careful study and then the believing acceptance of
that teaching. The more heartily we enter into the mind of our blessed
Lord, and set ourselves simply just to think about prayer as He thought,
the more surely will His words be as living seeds. They will grow and
produce in us their fruit,--a life and practice exactly corresponding to
the Divine truth they contain. Do let us believe this: Christ, the
living Word of God, gives in His words a Divine quickening power which
brings what they say, which works in us what He asks, which actually
fits and enables for all He demands. Learn to look upon His teaching on
prayer as a definite promise of what He, by His Holy Spirit dwelling in
you, is going to work into your very being and character.
Our Lord gives us the five marks, or essential elements, of true prayer.
There must be, first, the heart's _desire_; then the expression of that
desire in _prayer_; with that, the _faith_ that carries the prayer to
God; in that faith, the _acceptance of God's answer_; then comes _the
experience_ of the desired blessing. It may help to give definiteness to
our thought, if we each take a definite request in regard to which we
would fain learn to pray believingly. Or, perhaps better still, we might
all unite and take the one thing that has been occupying our attention.
We have been speaking of failure in prayer; why should we not take as
the object of desire and supplication the "grace of supplication," and
say, I want to ask and receive in faith the power to pray just as, and
as much as, my God expects of me? Let us meditate on our Lord's words,
in the confidence that He will teach us how to pray for this blessing.
1. "What things soever _ye desire_."--Desire is the secret power that
moves the whole world of living men, and directs the course of each. And
so desire is the soul of prayer, and the cause of insufficient or
unsuccessful prayer is very much to be found in the lack or feebleness
of desire. Some may doubt this: they are sure that they have very
earnestly desired what they ask. But if they consider whether their
desire has indeed been as whole-hearted as God would have it, as the
heavenly worth of these blessings demands, they may come to see that it
was indeed the lack of desire that was the cause of failure. What is
true of God is true of each of his blessings, and is the more true the
more spiritual the blessing: "Ye shall seek Me, and shall find, when ye
shall search for Me with all your heart" (Jer. xxix. 13). Of Judah in
the days of Asa it is written, "They sought Him with _their whole
desire_" (2 Chron. xv. 15). A Christian may often have very earnest
desires for spiritual blessings. But alongside of these there are other
desires in his daily life occupying a large place in his interests and
affections. The spiritual desires are not all-absorbing. He wonders
that his prayer is not heard. It is simply that God wants the whole
heart. "The Lord thy God is _one Lord_, therefore thou shalt love the
Lord thy God with _all thy heart_." The law is unchangeable: God offers
Himself, gives Himself away, to the whole-hearted who give themselves
wholly away to Him. He always gives us according to our heart's desire.
But not as we think it, but as He sees it. If there be other desires
which are more at home with us, which have our heart more than Himself
and His presence, He allows these to be fulfilled, and the desires that
engage us at the hour of prayer cannot be granted.
We desire the gift of intercession, grace and power to pray aright. Our
hearts must be drawn away from other desires: we must give ourselves
wholly to this one. We must be willing to live wholly in intercession
for the kingdom. By fixing our eye on the blessedness and the need of
this grace, by thinking of the certainty that God will give it us, by
giving ourselves up to it, for the sake of the perishing world, desire
may be strengthened, and the first step taken towards the possession of
the coveted blessing. Let us seek the grace of prayer, as we seek the
God with whom it will link us, "with our whole desire"; we may depend
upon the promise, "He will fulfil the desire of them that fear Him." Let
us not fear to say to Him, "I desire it with my whole heart."
2. "What things soever ye desire when _ye pray_."--The desire of the
heart must become the expression of the lips. Our Lord Jesus more than
once asked those who cried to Him for mercy, "What wilt thou?" He wanted
them to say what they would. To speak it out roused their whole being
into action, brought them into contact with Him, and wakened their
expectation. To pray is to enter into God's presence, to claim and
secure His attention, to have distinct dealing with Him in regard to
some request, to commit our need to His faithfulness and to leave it
there: it is in so doing that we become fully conscious of what we are
seeking.
There are some who often carry strong desires in their heart, without
bringing them to God in the clear expression of definite and repeated
prayer. There are others who go to the Word and its promises to
strengthen their faith, but do not give sufficient place to that pointed
asking of God which helps the soul to the assurance that the matter has
been put into God's hands. Still others come in prayer with so many
requests and desires, that it is difficult for themselves to say what
they really expect God to do. If you would obtain from God this great
gift of faithfulness in prayer and power to pray aright, begin by
exercising yourself in prayer in regard to it. Say of it to yourself and
to God: "Here is something I have asked, and am continuing to ask till I
receive. As plain and pointed as words can make it, I am saying, 'My
Father! I do desire, I do ask of Thee, and expect of Thee, the grace of
prayer and intercession.'"
3. "What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, _believe_."--As it is
only by faith that we can know God, or receive Jesus Christ, or live the
Christian life, so faith is the life and power of prayer. If we are to
enter upon a life of intercession, in which there is to be joy and power
and blessing, if we are to have our prayer for the grace of prayer
answered, we must learn anew what faith is, and begin to live and pray
in faith as never before.
Faith is the opposite of sight, and the two are contrary the one to the
other. "We walk by faith, and not by sight." If the unseen is to get
full possession of us, and heart and life and prayer are to be full of
faith, there must be a withdrawal from, a denial of, the visible. The
spirit that seeks to enjoy as much as possible of what is innocent or
legitimate, that gives the first place to the calls and duties of daily
life, is inconsistent with a strong faith and close intercourse with the
spiritual world. "We _look not_ at the things that are seen"--the
negative side needs to be emphasised if the positive, "but at the things
which are not seen," is to become natural to us. In praying, faith
depends upon our living in the invisible world.
This faith has specially to do with God. The great reason of our lack of
faith is our lack of knowledge of God and intercourse with Him. "Have
faith in God," Jesus said when He spoke of removing mountains. It is as
a soul knows God, is occupied with His power, love, and faithfulness,
comes away out of self and the world, and allows the light of God to
shine on it, that unbelief will become impossible. All the mysteries and
difficulties connected with answers to prayer will, however little we
may be able to solve them intellectually, be swallowed up in the adoring
assurance: "This God is our God. He will bless us. He does indeed
answer prayer. And the grace to pray I am asking for He will delight to
give." (Note C.)
4. "What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that _ye have
received_," now as you pray.--_Faith has to accept the answer, as given
by God in heaven, before it is found or felt upon earth._ This point
causes difficulty, and yet it is of the very essence of believing
prayer, its real secret. Try and take it in. Spiritual things can only
be spiritually apprehended or appropriated. The spiritual heavenly
blessing of God's answer to your prayer must be spiritually recognised
and accepted before you feel anything of it. It is faith does this. A
soul that not only seeks an answer, but seeks first the God who gives
the answer, receives the power to know that it has what it has asked of
Him. If it knows that it has asked according to His will and promises,
and that it has come to and found Himself to give it, it does believe
that it has received. "We know that He heareth us."
There is nothing so heart-searching as this faith, "_Believe that ye
have received._" As we strive to believe, and find we cannot, it leads
us to discover what there is that hinders. Blessed is the man who holds
nothing back, and lets nothing hold him back, but, with his eye and
heart on God alone, refuses to rest till he has believed what our Lord
bids him, "that he has received." Here is the place where Jacob becomes
Israel, and the power of prevailing prayer is born out of human weakness
and despair. Here comes in the real need for persevering and
ever-importunate prayer, that will not rest, or go away, or give up,
till it knows it is heard, and believes that it has received.
You pray for "the Spirit of grace and supplication"? As you ask for it
in strong desire, and believe in God who hears prayer, do not be afraid
to press on and believe that your life can indeed be changed, that the
world with its press of duties, whether religious or not, hindering
prayer, can be overcome, and that God gives you your heart's desire,
grace to pray both in measure and in spirit, just as the Father would
have His child do. "Believe that you have received."
5. "What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye have
received, and _ye shall have them_."--The receiving from God in faith,
the believing acceptance of the answer with the perfect, praising
assurance that it has been given, is not necessarily the experience or
subjective possession of the gift we have asked for. At times there may
be a considerable, or even a long, interval. In other cases the
believing supplicant may at once enter upon the actual enjoyment of what
he has received. It is specially in the former case that we have need of
faith and patience: faith to rejoice in the assurance of the answer
bestowed and received, and to begin and act upon that answer though
nothing be felt; patience to wait if there be for the present no
sensible proof of its presence. We can count upon it: _Ye shall have_,
in actual enjoyment.
If we apply this to the prayer for the power of faithful intercession,
the grace to pray earnestly and perseveringly for souls around us, let
us learn to hold fast the Divine assurance that, as surely as we believe
we receive, and that faith therefore, apart from all failing, may
rejoice in the certainty of an answered prayer. The more we praise God
for it, the sooner will the experience come. We may begin at once to
pray for others, in the confidence that grace will be given us to pray
more perseveringly and more believingly than we have done before. If we
do not find any special enlargement or power in prayer, this must not
hinder or discourage us. We have accepted, apart from feeling, a
spiritual Divine gift by faith; in that faith we are to pray, nothing
doubting. The Holy Spirit may for a little time be hiding Himself within
us; we may count upon Him, even though it be with groanings which cannot
find expression, to pray in us; in due time we shall become conscious of
His presence and power. As sure as there is desire and prayer and faith,
and faith's acceptance of the gift, there will be, too, the
manifestation and experience of the blessing we sought.
Beloved brother! do you truly desire that God should enable you so to
pray that your life may be free from continual self-condemnation, and
that the power of His Spirit may come down in answer to your petition?
Come and _ask it of God_. Kneel down and pray for it in a single
definite sentence. When you have done so, kneel still in faith,
believing in God who answers. Believe that you do now receive what you
have prayed: believe that you have received. If you find it difficult to
do this, kneel still, and say that you do it on the strength of His own
word. If it cost time, and struggle, and doubt--fear not; at His feet,
looking up into His face, faith will come. "Believe that you have
received": at His bidding you dare claim the answer. Begin in that
faith, even though it be feeble, a new prayer-life, with this one
thought as its strength: "You have asked and received grace in Christ to
prepare you, step by step, to be faithful in prayer and intercession.
The more simply you hold to this, and expect the Holy Spirit to work it
in you, the more surely and fully will the word be made true to you: Ye
shall have it. God Himself who gave the answer will work it in you."
A PLEA FOR MORE PRAYER
CHAPTER X
The Spirit of Supplication
"I will pour upon the house of David the Spirit of grace and of
supplication."--ZECH. xii. 10.
"The Spirit also helpeth our infirmity; for we know not how to pray
as we ought: but the Spirit Himself maketh intercession for us with
groanings which cannot be uttered. And He that searcheth the hearts
knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because He maketh
intercession for the saints according to God."--ROM. viii. 26, 27.
"With all prayer and supplication praying at all seasons in the
Spirit, and watching thereunto in all perseverance and supplication
for all the saints."--EPH. vi. 18.
"Praying in the Holy Spirit."--JUDE 20.
The Holy Spirit has been given to every child of God to be his life. He
dwells in him, not as a separate Being in one part of his nature, but as
his very life. He is the Divine power or energy by which his life is
maintained and strengthened. All that a believer is called to be or to
do, the Holy Spirit can and will work in him. If he does not know or
yield to the Holy Guest, the Blessed Spirit cannot work, and his life is
a sickly one, full of failure and of sin. As he yields, and waits, and
obeys the leading of the Spirit, God works in him all that is pleasing
in His sight.
This Holy Spirit is, in the first place, a Spirit of prayer. He was
promised as a "Spirit of grace and supplication," the grace for
supplication. He was sent forth into our hearts as "the Spirit of
adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father." He enables us to say, in true
faith and growing apprehension of its meaning, Our Father which art in
heaven. "He maketh intercession for the saints according to God." And as
we pray in the Spirit, our worship is as God seeks it to be, "in spirit
and in truth." Prayer is just the breathing of the Spirit in us; power
in prayer comes from the power of the Spirit in us, waited on and
trusted in. Failure in prayer comes from feebleness of the Spirit's work
in us. Our prayer is the index of the measure of the Spirit's work in
us. To pray aright, the life of the Spirit must be right in us. For
praying the effectual, much-availing prayer of the righteous man
everything depends on being full of the Spirit.
There are three very simple lessons that the believer, who would enjoy
the blessing of being taught to pray by the Spirit of prayer, must know.
The first is: _Believe that the Spirit dwells in you_ (Eph. i. 13). Deep
in the inmost recesses of his being, hidden and unfelt, every child of
God has the Holy, Mighty Spirit of God dwelling in him. He knows it by
faith, the faith that, accepting God's word, realises that of which he
sees as yet no sign. "We receive the promise of the Spirit by faith." As
long as we measure our power, for praying aright and perseveringly, by
what we feel, or think we can accomplish, we shall be discouraged when
we hear of how much we ought to pray. But when we quietly believe that,
in the midst of all our conscious weakness, the Holy Spirit as a Spirit
of supplication is dwelling within us, _for the very purpose of enabling
us to pray in such manner and measure as God would have us_, our hearts
will be filled with hope. We shall be strengthened in the assurance
which lies at the very root of a happy and fruitful Christian life, that
_God has made an abundant provision for our being what He wants us to
be_. We shall begin to lose our sense of burden and fear and
discouragement about our ever praying sufficiently, because we see that
the Holy Spirit Himself will pray, is praying, in us.
The second lesson is: _Beware above everything of grieving the Holy
Spirit_ (Eph. iv. 30). If you do, how can He work in you the quiet,
trustful, and blessed sense of that union with Christ which makes your
prayers well pleasing to the Father? Beware of grieving Him by sin, by
unbelief, by selfishness, by unfaithfulness to His voice in conscience.
Do not think grieving Him a necessity: that cuts away the very sinews of
your strength. Do not consider it impossible to obey the command,
"Grieve not the Holy Spirit." He Himself is the very power of God to
make you obedient. The sin that comes up in you against your will, the
tendency to sloth, or pride, or self-will, or passion that rises in the
flesh, your will can, in the power of the Spirit, at once reject, and
cast upon Christ and His blood, and your communion with God is
immediately restored. Accept each day the Holy Spirit as your Leader and
Life and Strength; you can count upon Him to do in your heart all that
ought to be done there. He, the Unseen and Unfelt One, but known by
faith, gives there, unseen and unfelt, the love and the faith and the
power of obedience you need, because He reveals Christ unseen within
you, as actually your Life and Strength. Grieve not the Holy Spirit by
distrusting Him, because you do not feel His presence in you.
Especially in the matter of prayer grieve Him not. Do not expect, when
you trust Christ to bring you into a new, healthy prayer-life, that you
will be able all at once to pray as easily and powerfully and joyfully
as you fain would. No; it may not come at once. But just bow quietly
before God in your ignorance and weakness. That is the best and truest
prayer, to put yourself before God just as you are, and to count on the
hidden Spirit praying in you. "We know not what to pray as we ought";
ignorance, difficulty, struggle, marks our prayer all along. But, "the
Spirit helpeth our infirmities." How? "The Spirit Himself," deeper down
than our thoughts or feelings, "maketh intercession for us with
groanings which cannot be uttered." When you cannot find words, when
your words appear cold and feeble, just believe: The Holy Spirit is
praying in me. Be quiet before God, and give Him time and opportunity;
in due season you will learn to pray. Beware of grieving the Spirit of
prayer, by not honouring Him in patient, trustful surrender to His
intercession in you.
The third lesson: "_Be filled with the Spirit_" (Eph. v. 18). I think
that we have seen the meaning of the great truth: It is only the healthy
spiritual life that can pray aright. The command comes to each of us:
"Be filled with the Spirit." That implies that while some rest content
with the beginning, with a small measure of the Spirit's working, it is
God's will that we should be filled with the Spirit. That means, from
our side, that our whole being ought to be entirely yielded up to the
Holy Spirit, to be possessed and controlled by Him alone. And, from
God's side, that we may count upon and expect the Holy Spirit to take
possession and fill us. Has not our failure in prayer evidently been
owing to our not having accepted the Spirit of prayer to be our life; to
our not having yielded wholly to Him, whom the Father gave as the Spirit
of His Son, to work the life of the Son in us? Let us, to say the very
least, be willing to receive Him, to yield ourselves to God and trust
Him for it. Let us not again wilfully grieve the Holy Spirit by
declining, by neglecting, by hesitating to seek to have Him as fully as
He is willing to give Himself to us. If we have at all seen that prayer
is the great need of our work and of the Church, if we have at all
desired or resolved to pray more, let us turn to the very source of all
power and blessing--let us believe that the Spirit of prayer, even in
His fulness, is for us.
We all admit the place the Father and the Son have in our prayer. It is
to the Father we pray, and from whom we expect the answer. It is in the
merit, and name, and life of the Son, abiding in Him and He in us, that
we trust to be heard. But have we understood that in the Holy Trinity
all the Three Persons have an equal place in prayer, and that the faith
in the Holy Spirit of intercession as praying in us is as indispensable
as the faith in the Father and the Son? How clearly we have this in the
words, "Through Christ we have access by one Spirit to the Father." As
much as prayer must be _to_ the Father, and _through_ the Son, it must
be _by_ the Spirit. And the Spirit can pray in no other way in us, than
as He lives in us. It is only as we give ourselves to the Spirit living
and praying in us, that the glory of the prayer-hearing God, and the
ever-blessed and most effectual mediation of the Son, can be known by us
in their power. (Note D.)
Our last lesson: _Pray in the Spirit for all saints_ (Eph. vi. 18). The
Spirit, who is called "the Spirit of supplication," is also and very
specially the Spirit of intercession. It is said of Him, "the Spirit
Himself maketh intercession for us with groanings that cannot be
uttered." "He maketh intercession for the saints." It is the same word
as is used of Christ, "who also maketh intercession for us." The thought
is essentially that of mediation--one pleading for another. When the
Spirit of intercession takes full possession of us, all selfishness, as
if we wanted Him separate from His intercession for others, and have Him
for ourselves alone, is banished, and we begin to avail ourselves of our
wonderful privilege to plead for men. We long to live the Christ-life of
self-consuming sacrifice for others, as our heart unceasingly yields
itself to God to obtain His blessing for those around us. Intercession
then becomes, not an incident or an occasional part of our prayers, but
their one great object. Prayer for ourselves then takes its true place,
simply as a means for fitting us better for exercising our ministry of
intercession more effectually.
May I be allowed to speak a very personal word to each of my readers? I
have humbly besought God to give me what I may give them--Divine light
and help truly to forsake the life of failure in prayer, and to enter,
even now, and at once, upon the life of intercession which the Holy
Spirit can enable them to lead. It can be done by a simple act of faith,
claiming the fulness of the Spirit, that is, the full measure of the
Spirit which you are capable in God's sight of receiving, and He is
therefore willing to bestow. Will you not, even now, accept of this by
faith?
Let me remind you of what takes place at conversion. Most of us, you
probably too, for a time sought peace in efforts and struggles to give
up sin and please God. But you did not find it thus. The peace of God's
pardon came by faith, trusting God's word concerning Christ and His
salvation. You had heard of Christ as the gift of His love, you knew
that He was for you too, you had felt the movings and drawings of His
grace; but never till in faith in God's word you accepted Him as God's
gift to you, did you know the peace and joy that He can give. Believing
in Him and His saving love made all the difference, and changed your
relation from one who had ever grieved Him, to one who loved and served
Him. And yet, after a time, you have a thousand times wondered you love
and serve Him so ill.
At the time of your conversion you knew little about the Holy Spirit.
Later on you heard of His dwelling in you, and His being the power of
God in you for all the Father intends you to be, and yet His indwelling
and inworking have been something vague and indefinite, and hardly a
source of joy or strength. At conversion you did not yet know your need
of Him, and still less what you might expect of Him. But your failures
have taught it you. And now you begin to see how you have been grieving
Him, by not trusting and not following Him, by not allowing Him to work
in you all God's pleasure.
All this can be changed. Just as you, after seeking Christ, and praying
to Him, and trying without success to serve Him, found rest in accepting
Him by faith, just so you may even now yield yourself to the full
guidance of the Holy Spirit, and claim and accept Him to work in you
what God would have. Will you not do it? Just accept Him in faith as
Christ's gift, to be the Spirit of your whole life, of your prayer-life
too, and you can count upon Him to take charge. You can then begin,
however feeble you feel, and unable to pray aright, to bow before God in
silence, with the assurance that He will teach you to pray.
My dear brother, as you consciously by faith accepted Christ, to pardon,
you can consciously now in the like faith accept of Christ who gives the
Holy Spirit to do His work in you. "Christ redeemed us that we might
receive the promise of the Spirit by faith." Kneel down, and simply
believe that the Lord Christ, who baptizeth with the Holy Spirit, does
now, in response to your faith, begin in you the blessed life of a full
experience of the power of the indwelling Spirit. Depend most
confidently upon Him, apart from all feeling or experience, as the
Spirit of supplication and intercession to do His work. Renew that act
of faith each morning, each time you pray; trust Him, against all
appearances, to work in you,--be sure He is working,--and He will give
you to know what the joy of the Holy Spirit is as the power of your
life.
"I will pour out the Spirit of supplication." Do you not begin to see
that the mystery of prayer is the mystery of the Divine indwelling. God
in heaven gives His Spirit in our hearts to be there the Divine power
praying in us, and drawing us upward to our God. God is a Spirit, and
nothing but a like life and Spirit within us can hold communion with
Him. It was for this man was created, that God might dwell and work in
Him, and be the life of his life. It was this Divine indwelling that sin
lost. It was this that Christ came to exhibit in His life, to win back
for us in His death, and then to impart to us by coming again from
heaven in the Spirit to live in His disciples. It is this, the
indwelling of God through the Spirit, that alone can explain and enable
us to appropriate the wonderful promises given to prayer. God gives the
Spirit as a Spirit of Supplication, too, to maintain His Divine life
within us as a life out of which prayer ever rises upward.
Without the Holy Spirit no man can call Jesus Lord, or cry, Abba,
Father; no man can worship in spirit and truth, or pray without ceasing.
The Holy Spirit is given the believer to be and do in him all that God
wants him to be or do. He is given him especially as the Spirit of
prayer and supplication. Is it not clear that everything in prayer
depends upon our trusting the Holy Spirit to do His work in us; yielding
ourselves to His leading, depending only and wholly on Him?
We read, "Stephen was a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit." The two
ever go together, in exact proportion to each other. As our faith sees
and trusts the Spirit in us to pray, and waits on Him, He will do His
work; and it is the longing desire, and the earnest supplication, and
the definite faith the Father seeks. Do let us know Him, and in the
faith of Christ who unceasingly gives Him, cultivate the assured
confidence, we can learn to pray as the Father would have us.
A PLEA FOR MORE PRAYER
CHAPTER XI
In the Name of Christ
"Whatsoever ye shall ask _in My Name_, that will I do. If ye shall
ask anything _in My Name_, I will do it. I have appointed you, that
whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father _in My Name_, He may give it
you. Verily, verily I say unto you, whatsoever ye shall ask the
Father _in My Name_, He will give it you. Hitherto have ye asked
nothing _in My Name_; ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may
be full. At that day ye shall ask _in My Name_."--JOHN xiv. 13, 14,
xv. 16, xvi. 23, 24, 26.
In my name--repeated six times over. Our Lord knew how slow our hearts
would be to take it in, and He so longed that we should really believe
that His Name is the power in which every knee should bow, and in which
every prayer could be heard, that He did not weary of saying it over and
over: _In My Name!_ Between the wonderful _whatsoever ye shall ask_, and
the Divine _I will do it, the Father will give it_, this one word is
the simple link: _In My Name._ Our asking and the Father's giving are to
be equally in the Name of Christ. Everything in prayer depends upon our
apprehending this--_In My Name._
We know what a name is: a word by which we call up to our mind the whole
being and nature of an object. When I speak of a lamb or a lion, the
name at once suggests the different nature peculiar to each. The Name of
God is meant to express His whole Divine nature and glory. And so the
Name of Christ means His whole nature, His person and work, His
disposition and Spirit. To ask in the Name of Christ is to pray in union
with Him. When first a sinner believes in Christ, he only knows and
thinks of His merit and intercession. And to the very end that is the
one foundation of our confidence. And yet, as the believer grows in
grace and enters more deeply and truly into union with Christ--that is,
as he abides in Him--he learns that to pray in the Name of Christ also
means in His Spirit, and in the possession of His nature, as the Holy
Spirit imparts it to us. As we grasp the meaning of the words, "_At that
day_ ye shall ask in My Name"--the day when in the Holy Spirit Christ
came to live in His disciples--we shall no longer be staggered at the
greatness of the promise: "_Whatsoever_ ye shall ask in My Name, I will
do it." We shall get some insight into the unchangeable necessity and
certainty of the law: what is asked in the Name of Christ, in union with
Him, out of His nature and Spirit, must be given. As Christ's
prayer-nature lives in us, His prayer-power becomes ours too. Not that
the measure of our attainment or experience is the ground of our
confidence, but the honesty and whole-heartedness of our surrender to
all that we see that Christ seeks to be in us, will be the measure of
our spiritual fitness and power to pray in His Name. "If ye abide in
Me," He says, "ye shall ask what ye will." As we live in Him, we get the
spiritual power to avail ourselves of His Name. As the branch wholly
given up to the life and service of the Vine can count upon all its sap
and strength for its fruit, so the believer, who in faith has accepted
the fulness of the Spirit to possess his whole life, can indeed avail
himself of all the power of Christ's Name.
Here on earth Christ as man came to reveal what prayer is. To pray in
the Name of Christ we must pray as He prayed on earth; as He taught us
to pray; in union with Him, as He now prays in heaven. We must in love
study, and in faith accept, Him as our Example, our Teacher, our
Intercessor.
CHRIST OUR EXAMPLE.
Prayer in Christ on earth and in us cannot be two different things. Just
as there is but one God, who is a Spirit, who hears prayer, there is but
one spirit of acceptable prayer. When we realise what time Christ spent
in prayer, and how the great events of His life were all connected with
special prayer, we learn the necessity of absolute dependence on and
unceasing direct communication with the heavenly world, if we are to
live a heavenly life, or to exercise heavenly power around us. We see
how foolish and fruitless the attempt must be to do work for God and
heaven, without in the first place in prayer getting the life and the
power of heaven to possess us. Unless this truth lives in us, we cannot
avail ourselves aright of the mighty power of the Name of Christ. His
example must teach us the meaning of His Name.
Of His baptism we read, "Jesus having been baptized, _and praying_, the
heaven was opened." It was in prayer heaven was opened to Him, that
heaven came down to Him with the Spirit and the voice of the Father. In
the power of these He was led into the wilderness, in fasting and prayer
to have them tested and fully appropriated. Early in His ministry Mark
records (i. 35), "And in the morning, a great while before day, He rose
and departed into a desert place, _and there prayed_." And somewhat
later Luke tells (v. 16), "Multitudes came together to hear and to be
healed. _But He withdrew Himself into the desert, and prayed._" He knew
how the holiest service, preaching and healing, can exhaust the spirit;
how too much intercourse with men could cloud the fellowship with God;
how time, time, full time, is needed if the spirit is to rest and root
in Him; how no pressure of duty among men can free from the absolute
need of much prayer. If anyone could have been satisfied with always
living and working in the spirit of prayer, it would have been our
Master. But He could not; He needed to have His supplies replenished by
continual and long-continued seasons of prayer. To use Christ's Name in
prayer surely includes this, to follow His example and to pray as He
did.
Of the night before choosing His apostles we read (Luke vi. 12), "He
went out into the mountain _to pray, and continued all night in prayer
to God_." The first step towards the constitution of the Church, and the
separation of men to be His witnesses and successors, called Him to
special long-continued prayer. All had to be done according to the
pattern on the mount. "The Son can do nothing of Himself: the Father
showeth Him all things that Himself doeth." It was in the night of
prayer it was shown Him.
In the night between the feeding of the five thousand, when Jesus knew
that they wanted to take Him by force and make Him King, and the walking
on the sea, "He withdrew again into the mountain, Himself alone, _to
pray_" (Matt. xiv. 23; Mark vi. 46; John vi. 15). It was God's will He
was come to do, and God's power He was to show forth. He had it not as a
possession of His own; it had to be prayed for and received from above.
The first announcement of His approaching death, after He had elicited
from Peter the confession that He was the Christ, is introduced by the
words (Luke ix. 15), "And it came to pass that _He was praying alone_."
The introduction to the story of the Transfiguration is (Luke ix. 28),
"He went up into the mountain _to pray_." The request of the disciples,
"Lord, teach us to pray" (Luke xi. 1), follows on, "It came to pass _as
He was praying_ in a certain place." In His own personal life, in His
intercourse with the Father, in all He is and does for men, the Christ
whose name we are to use is a Man of prayer. It is prayer gives Him His
power of blessing, and transfigures His very body with the glory of
heaven. It is His own prayer-life makes Him the teacher of others how to
pray. How much more must it be prayer, prayer alone, much prayer, that
can fit us to share His glory of a transfigured life, or make us the
channel of heavenly blessing and teaching to others. To pray in the Name
of Christ is to pray as He prays.
As the end approaches, it is still more prayer. When the Greeks asked to
see Him, and He spoke of His approaching death, He prayed. At Lazarus'
grave He prayed. In the last night He prayed His prayer as our
High-Priest, that we might know what His sacrifice would win, and what
His everlasting intercession on the throne would be. In Gethsemane He
prayed His prayer as Victim, the Lamb giving itself to the slaughter. On
the Cross it is still all prayer--the prayer of compassion for His
murderers; the prayer of atoning suffering in the thick darkness; the
prayer in death of confiding resignation of His spirit to the Father.
(Note E.)
Christ's life and work, His suffering and death--it was all prayer, all
dependence on God, trust in God, receiving from God, surrender to God.
Thy redemption, O believer, is a redemption wrought out by prayer and
intercession: thy Christ is a praying Christ: the life He lived for
thee, the life He lives in thee, is a praying life, that delights to
wait on God and receive all from Him. To pray in His Name is to pray as
He prayed. Christ is only our example because He is our Head, our
Saviour, and our Life. In virtue of His Deity and of His Spirit He can
live in us: we can pray in His Name, because we abide in Him and He in
us.
CHRIST OUR TEACHER.
Christ was what He taught. All His teaching was just the revelation of
how He lived, and--praise God--of the life He was to live in us. His
teaching of the disciples was first to awaken desire, and so prepare
them for what He would by the Holy Spirit be and work in them. Let us
believe very confidently: all He was in prayer, and all He taught, He
Himself will give. He came to fulfil the law; much more will He fulfil
the gospel in all He taught us, as to what to pray, and how.
_What to pray._--It has sometimes been said that direct petitions, as
compared with the exercise of fellowship with God, are but a subordinate
part of prayer, and that "in the prayer of those who pray best and most,
they occupy but an inconsiderable place." If we carefully study all that
our Lord spoke of prayer, we shall see that this is not His teaching. In
the Lord's Prayer, in the parables on prayer, in the illustration of a
child asking bread, of our seeking and knocking, in the central thought
of the prayer of faith, "Whatsoever ye pray, believe that ye have
received," in the oft-repeated "_whatsoever_" of the last
evening--everywhere our Lord urges and encourages us to offer definite
petitions, and to expect definite answers. It is only because we have
too much confined prayer to our own needs, that it has been thought
needful to free it from the appearance of selfishness, by giving the
petitions a subordinate place. If once believers were to awake to the
glory of the work of intercession, and to see that in it, and the
definite pleading for definite gifts on definite spheres and persons,
lie our highest fellowship with our glorified Lord, and our only real
power to bless men, it would be seen that there can be no truer
fellowship with God than these definite petitions and their answers, by
which we become the channel of His grace and life to men. Then our
fellowship with the Father is even such as the Son has in His
intercession.
_How to pray._--Our Lord taught us to pray in secret, in simplicity,
with the eye on God alone, in humility, in the spirit of forgiving love.
But the chief truth He reiterated was ever this: to pray in faith. And
He defined that faith, not only as a trust in God's goodness or power,
but as the definite assurance that we have received the very thing we
ask. And then, in view of the delay in the answer, He insisted on
perseverance and urgency. We must be followers of those "who through
faith and patience inherit the promises"--the faith that accepts the
promise, and knows it has what it has asked--the patience that obtains
the promise and inherits the blessing. We shall then learn to understand
why God, who promises to avenge His elect speedily, bears with them in
seeming delay. It is that their faith may be purified from all that is
of the flesh, and tested and strengthened to become that spiritual power
that can do all things--can even cast mountains into the heart of the
sea.
CHRIST AS OUR INTERCESSOR.
We have gazed on Christ in His prayers; we have listened to His teaching
as to how we must pray; to know fully what it is to pray in His Name, we
must know Him too in His heavenly intercession.
Just think what it means: that all His saving work wrought from heaven
is still carried on, just as on earth, in unceasing communication with,
and direct intercession to the Father, who worketh all in all, who is
All in All. Every act of grace in Christ has been preceded by, and owes
its power to, intercession. God has been honoured and acknowledged as
its Author. On the throne of God, Christ's highest fellowship with the
Father, and His partnership in His rule of the world, is in
intercession. Every blessing that comes down to us from above bears upon
it the stamp from God: through Christ's intercession. His intercession
is nothing but the fruit and the glory of His atonement. When He gave
Himself a sacrifice to God for men, He proved that His whole heart had
the one object: the glory of God, in the salvation of men. In His
intercession this great purpose is realised: He glorifies the Father by
asking and receiving all of Him; He saves men by bestowing what He has
obtained from the Father. Christ's intercession is the Father's glory,
His own glory, our glory.
And now, this Christ, the Intercessor, is our life; He is our Head, and
we are His body; His Spirit and life breathe in us. As in heaven so on
earth, intercession is God's chosen, God's only channel of blessing. Let
us learn from Christ what glory there is in it; what the way to exercise
this wondrous power; what the part it is to take in work for God.
_The glory of it._--By it, beyond anything, we glorify God. By it we
glorify Christ. By it we bring blessing to the Church and the world. By
it we obtain our highest nobility--the Godlike power of saving men.
_The way to it._--Paul writes, "Walk in love, even as Christ loved us,
and gave Himself a sacrifice to God for us." If we live as Christ
lived, we will, as He did, give ourselves, for our whole life, to God,
to be used by Him for men. When once we have done this, given ourselves,
no more to seek anything for ourselves, but for men, and that to God,
for Him to use us, and to impart to us what we can bestow on others,
intercession will become to us, as it is in Christ in heaven, the great
work of our life. And if ever the thought comes that the call is too
high, or the work too great, the faith in Christ, the Interceding
Christ, who lives in us, will give us the victory. We will listen to Him
who said, "The works that I do, shall ye do; and greater works shall ye
do." We shall remember that we are not under the law, with its
impotence, but under grace with its omnipotence, working all in us. We
shall believe again in Him who said to us, Rise and walk, and gave
us--and we received it--His life as our strength. We shall claim afresh
the fulness of God's Spirit as His sufficient provision for our need,
and count Him to be in us the Spirit of Intercession, who makes us one
with Christ in His. Oh! let us only keep our place--giving up ourselves,
like Him, in Him, to God for men.
Then we shall understand the part intercession is to take in God's work
through us. We shall no longer try to work for God, and ask Him to
follow it with His blessing. We shall do what the friend at midnight
did, what Christ did on earth, and ever does in heaven--we shall first
get from God, and then turn to men to give what He gave us. As with
Christ, we shall make our chief work, we shall count no time or trouble
too great, to receive from the Father; giving to men will then be in
power.
Servants of Christ! children of God! be of good courage. Let no fear of
feebleness or poverty make you afraid--ask in the Name of Christ. His
Name is Himself, in all His perfection and power. He is the living
Christ, and will Himself make His Name a power in you. Fear not to plead
the Name; His promise is a threefold cord that cannot be broken:
_Whatsoever ye ask--in My Name_--IT SHALL BE DONE UNTO YOU.
A PLEA FOR MORE PRAYER
CHAPTER XII
My God will hear Me
"Therefore will the Lord wait, that He may be gracious unto you.
Blessed are all they that wait for Him. He will be very gracious
unto thee at the voice of thy cry; when He shall hear it, He will
answer thee."--ISA. xxx. 18, 19.
"The Lord will hear when _I call_ upon Him."--PS. iv. 3.
"I have called upon Thee, for Thou _wilt hear me_, O God!"--PS.
xvii. 6.
"I will look unto the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation:
my God _will hear me_."--MIC. vii. 7.
The power of prayer rests in the faith that God hears it. In more than
one sense this is true. It is this faith that gives a man courage to
pray. It is this faith that gives him power to prevail with God. The
moment I am assured that God hears _me_ too, I feel drawn to pray and to
persevere in prayer. I feel strong to claim and to take in faith the
answer God gives. One great reason of lack of prayer is the want of the
living, joyous assurance: "My God will hear me." If once God's servants
got a vision of the living God waiting to grant their request, and to
bestow all the heavenly gifts of the Spirit they are in need of, for
themselves or those they are serving, how everything would be set aside
to make time and room for this one only power that can ensure heavenly
blessing--the prayer of faith!
When a man can, and does say, in living faith, "My God will hear me!"
surely nothing can keep him from prayer. He knows that what he cannot do
or get done on earth, can and will be done for him from heaven. Let each
one of us bow in stillness before God, and wait on Him to reveal Himself
as the prayer-hearing God. In His presence the wondrous thoughts
gathering round the central truth will unfold themselves to us.
1. "_My God will hear me._"--_What a blessed certainty!_--We have God's
word for it in numberless promises. We have thousands of witnesses to
the fact that they have found it true. We have had experience of it in
our lives. We have had the Son of God come from heaven with the message
that if we ask, the Father will give. We have had Himself praying on
earth, and being heard. And we have Him in heaven now, sitting at the
right hand of God and making intercession for us. God hears prayer--God
delights to hear prayer. He has allowed His people a thousand times over
to be tried, that they might be compelled to cry to Him, and learn to
know Him as the Hearer of Prayer.
Let us confess with shame how little we have believed this wondrous
truth, in the sense of receiving it into our heart, and allowing it to
possess and control our whole being. That we accept a truth is not
enough; the living God, of whom the truth speaks, must in its light so
be revealed, that our whole life is spent in His presence, with the
consciousness as clear as in a little child towards its earthly
parent--I know for certain my father hears me.
Beloved child of God! you know by experience how little an intellectual
apprehension of truth has profited you. Beseech God to reveal Himself to
you. If you want to live a different prayer-life, bow each time ere you
pray in silence to worship this God; to wait till there rests on you
some right sense of His nearness and readiness to answer. So will you
begin to pray with the words, "My God will hear me!"
2. "_My God will hear me._" _What a wondrous grace!_--Think of God in
His infinite majesty, His altogether incomprehensible glory, His
unapproachable holiness, sitting on a throne of grace, waiting to be
gracious, inviting, encouraging you to pray with His promise: "Call upon
Me, and I will answer thee." Think of yourself, in your nothingness and
helplessness as a creature; in your wretchedness and transgressions as a
sinner; in your feebleness and unworthiness as a saint; and praise the
glory of that grace which allows you to say boldly of your prayer for
yourself and others, "My God will hear me." Think of how you are not
left to yourself, and what you can accomplish, in this wonderful
intercourse with God. God has united you with Christ; in Him and His
Name you have your confidence; on the throne He prays with you and for
you; on the footstool of the throne you pray with Him and in Him. His
worth, and the Father's delight in hearing Him, are the measure of your
confidence, your assurance of being heard. There is more. Think of the
Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God's own Son, sent into your heart to cry,
Abba, Father, and to be _in you_ a Spirit of Supplication, when you know
not what to pray as you ought. Think, in all your insignificance and
unworthiness, of your being as acceptable as Christ Himself. Think in
all your ignorance and feebleness, of the Spirit making intercession
according to God within you, and cry out, "What wondrous grace! Through
Christ I have access to the Father, by the Spirit. I can, I do believe
it: 'My God will hear me.'"
3. "_My God will hear me._"--_What a deep mystery!_--There are
difficulties that cannot but at times arise and perplex even the honest
heart. There is the question as to God's sovereign, all-wise,
all-disposing will. How can our wishes, often so foolish, and our will,
often so selfish, overrule or change that perfect will? Were it not
better to leave all to His disposal, who knows what is best, and loves
to give us the very best? Or how can our prayer change what He has
ordained before? Then there is the question as to the need of
persevering prayer, and long waiting for the answer. If God be Infinite
Love, and delighting more to give than we to receive, where the need for
the pleading and wrestling, the urgency, and the long delay of which
Scripture and experience speak? Arising out of this there is still
another question--that of the multitude of apparently vain and
unanswered prayers. How many have pleaded for loved ones, and they die
unsaved. How many cry for years for spiritual blessing, and no answer
comes. To think of all this tries our faith, and makes us hesitate as we
say, "My God will hear me."
Beloved! prayer, in its power with God, and His faithfulness to His
promise to hear it, is a deep spiritual mystery. To the questions put
above answers can be given that remove some of the difficulty. But,
after all, the first and the last that must be said is this: As little
as we can comprehend God can we comprehend this, one of the most blessed
of His attributes, that He hears prayer. It is a spiritual
mystery--nothing less than the mystery of the Holy Trinity. God hears
because we pray in His Son, because the Holy Spirit prays in us. If we
have believed and claimed the life of Christ as our health, and the
fulness of the Spirit as our strength, let us not hesitate to believe in
the power of our prayer too. The Holy Spirit can enable us to believe
and rejoice in it, even where every question is not yet answered. He
will do this, as we lay our questionings in God's bosom, trust His
faithfulness, and give ourselves humbly to obey His command to pray
without ceasing. Every art unfolds its secrets and its beauty only to
the man who practises it. To the humble soul who prays in the obedience
of faith, who practises prayer and intercession diligently, because God
asks it, the secret of the Lord will be revealed, and the thought of the
deep mystery of prayer, instead of being a weary problem, will be a
source of rejoicing, adoration, and faith, in which the unceasing
refrain is ever heard: "_My God will hear me!_"
4. "_My God will hear me._" _What a solemn responsibility!_--How often
we complain of darkness, of feebleness, of failure, as if there was no
help for it. And God has promised in answer to our prayer to supply our
every need, and give us His light and strength and peace. Would that we
realised the responsibility of having such a God, and such promises,
with the sin and shame of not availing ourselves of them to the utmost.
How confident we should feel that the grace, which we have accepted and
trusted to enable us to pray as we should, will be given.
There is more. This access to a prayer-hearing God is specially meant to
make us intercessors for our fellowmen. Even as Christ obtained His
right of prevailing intercession by His giving Himself a sacrifice to
God for men, and through it receives the blessings He dispenses, so, if
we have truly with Christ given ourselves to God for men, we share His
right of intercession, and are able to obtain the powers of the heavenly
world for them too. The power of life and death is in our hands (1 John
v. 16). In answer to prayer the Spirit can be poured out, souls can be
converted, believers can be established. In prayer the kingdom of
darkness can be conquered, souls brought out of prison into the liberty
of Christ, and the glory of God be revealed. Through prayer, the sword
of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, can be wielded in power, and,
in public preaching as in private speaking, the most rebellious made to
bow at Jesus' feet.
What a responsibility on the Church to give herself to the work of
intercession! What a responsibility on every minister, missionary,
worker, set apart for the saving of souls, to yield himself wholly to
act out and prove his faith: "My God will hear me!" And what a call on
every believer, instead of burying and losing this talent, to seek to
the very utmost to use it in prayer and supplication for all saints and
for all men. My God will hear me: The deeper our entrance into the truth
of this wondrous power God hath given to men, the more whole-hearted
will be our surrender to the work of intercession.
5. "_My God will hear me._" _What a blessed prospect!_--I see it--all
the failures of my past life have been owing to the lack of this faith.
My failure, especially in the work of intercession, has had its deepest
root in this--I did not live in the full faith of the blessed assurance,
"_My God will hear me!_" Praise God! I begin to see it--I believe it.
All can be different. Or, rather, I see Him, I believe Him. "_My God
will hear me!_" Yes, me, even me! Commonplace and insignificant though I
be, filling but a very little place, so that I will scarce be missed
when I go--even I have access to this Infinite God, with the confidence
that He heareth me. One with Christ, led by the Holy Spirit, I dare to
say: "I will pray for others, for I am sure my God will listen to me:
'_My God will hear me._'" What a blessed prospect before me--every
earthly and spiritual anxiety exchanged for the peace of God, who cares
for all and hears prayer. What a blessed prospect in my work--to know
that even when the answer is long delayed, and there is a call for much
patient, persevering prayer, the truth remains infallibly sure--"_My God
will hear me!_"
And what a blessed prospect for Christ's Church if we could but all give
prayer its place, give faith in God its place, or, rather, _give the
prayer-hearing God His place_! Is not this the one great thing, those,
who in some little measure begin to see the urgent need of prayer, ought
in the first place to pray for. When God, at the first, time after time,
poured forth the Spirit on His praying people, He laid down the law for
all time: as much of prayer, so much of the Spirit. Let each one who can
say, "_My God will hear me_," join in the fervent supplication, that
throughout the Church that truth may be restored to its true place, and
the blessed prospect will be realised: a praying Church endued with the
power of the Holy Ghost.
6. "_My God will hear me._" _What a need of Divine teaching!_--We need
this, both to enable us to hold this word in living faith, and to make
full use of it in intercession. It has been said, and it cannot be said
too often or too earnestly, that the one thing needful for the Church of
our day is, the power of the Holy Spirit. It is just because this is
so, from the Divine side, that we may also say as truly that, from the
human side, the one thing needful is, more prayer, more believing,
persevering prayer. In speaking of lack of the Spirit's power, and the
condition for receiving it, someone used the expression--the block is
not on the perpendicular, but on the horizontal line. It is to be feared
that it is on both. There is much to be confessed and taken away in us
if the Spirit is to work freely. But it is specially on the
perpendicular line that the block is--the upward look, and the deep
dependence, and the strong crying to God, and the effectual prayer of
faith that avails--all this is sadly lacking. And just this is the one
thing needful.
Shall we not all set ourselves to learn the lesson which will make
prevailing prayer possible--the lesson of a faith that always sings,
"_My God will hear me_"? Simple and elementary as it is, it needs
practice and patience, it needs time and heavenly teaching, to learn it
aright. Under the impression of a bright thought, or a blessed
experience, it may look as if we knew the lesson perfectly. But ever
again the need will recur of making this our first prayer--that God who
hears prayer would teach us to believe it, and so to pray aright. If we
desire it we can count upon Him He who delights in hearing prayer and
answering it, He who gave His Son that He might ever pray for us and
with us, and His Holy Spirit to pray in us, we can be sure there is not
a prayer that He will hear more certainly than this: that He so reveal
Himself as the prayer-hearing God, that our whole being may respond,
"_My God will hear me._"
A PLEA FOR MORE PRAYER
CHAPTER XIII
Paul a Pattern of Prayer
"Go and inquire for one called Saul of Tarsus: for, _behold, he
prayeth_."--ACTS ix. 11.
"For this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ
might show forth all long-suffering, for a pattern to them which
should hereafter believe on Him to life everlasting."--1 TIM. i. 16.
God took His own Son, and made Him our Example and our Pattern. It
sometimes is as if the power of Christ's example is lost in the thought
that He, in whom is no sin, is not man as we are. Our Lord took Paul, a
man of like passions with ourselves, and made him a pattern of what he
could do for one who was the chief of sinners. And Paul, the man who,
more than any other, has set his mark on the Church, has ever been
appealed to as a pattern man. In his mastery of Divine truth, and his
teaching of it; in his devotion to his Lord, and his self-consuming zeal
in His service; in his deep experience of the power of the indwelling
Christ and the fellowship of his cross; in the sincerity of his
humility, and the simplicity and boldness of his faith; in his
missionary enthusiasm and endurance--in all this, and so much more, "the
grace of our Lord Jesus was exceeding abundant in him." Christ gave him,
and the Church has accepted him, as a pattern of what Christ would have,
of what Christ would work. Seven times Paul speaks of believers
following him: (1 Cor. iv. 16), "Wherefore I beseech you, be ye
followers of me"; (xi. 1), "Be ye followers of me, even as I am of
Christ"; Phil, iii. 17, iv. 9; 1 Thess. i. 6; 2 Thess. iii. 7-9.
If Paul, as a pattern of prayer, is not as much studied or appealed to
as he is in other respects, it is not because he is not in this too as
remarkable a proof of what grace can do, or because we do not, in this
respect, as much stand in need of the help of his example. A study of
Paul as a pattern of prayer will bring a rich reward of instruction and
encouragement. The words our Lord used of him at his conversion, "Behold
he prayeth," may be taken as the keynote of his life. The heavenly
vision which brought him to his knees ever after ruled his life. Christ
at the right hand of God, in whom we are blessed with all spiritual
blessings, was everything to him; to pray and expect the heavenly power
in his work and on his work, from heaven direct by prayer, was the
simple outcome of his faith in the Glorified One. In this, too, Christ
meant him to be a pattern, that we might learn that, just in the measure
in which the heavenliness of Christ and His gifts, the unworldliness of
the powers that work for salvation, are known and believed, will prayer
become the spontaneous rising of the heart to the only source of its
life. Let us see what we know of Paul.
PAUL'S HABITS OF PRAYER.
These are revealed almost unconsciously. He writes (Rom. i. 9), "God is
my witness, that without ceasing I make mention of you _always in my
prayers_. For I long to see you, that I may impart unto you some
spiritual gift, to the end ye may be established." Rom. x. 1, ix. 2, 3:
"My _heart's desire and prayer to God_ for Israel is, that they may be
saved"; "I have great heaviness and _continual sorrow of heart_; for I
could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren." 1
Cor. i. 4: "I thank my God _always_ on your behalf, for the grace of God
which is given you by Jesus Christ." 2 Cor. vi. 4, 6: "Approving
ourselves as the ministers of Christ, _in watchings_, _in fastings_."
Gal. iv. 19: "My little children, of whom _I travail in birth again_
till Christ be formed in you." Eph. i. 16: "_I cease not_ to give thanks
for you, making mention of you _in my prayers_." Eph. iii. 14: "_I bow
my knees_ to the Father, that He would grant you to be strengthened with
might by His Spirit in the inner man." Phil. i. 3, 4, 8, 9: "I thank my
God _upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine_
making request for you all with joy. For God is my record, how greatly I
long after you all in the bowels of Jesus Christ. And this _I
pray_"--Col. i. 3, 9: "We give thanks to God, _praying always for you_.
For this cause also, since the day we heard it, we _do not cease to pray
for you_, and to desire"--Col. ii. 1: "I would that ye knew what _great
conflict_ I have for you, and for as many as have not seen my face in
the flesh." 1 Thess. i. 2: "We give thanks to God _always_ for you all,
making mention of you _in our prayers_." iii. 9: "We joy for your sakes
before God; _night and day praying exceedingly_ that we might perfect
that which is lacking in your faith." 2 Thess. i. 3: "We are bound to
thank God _always_ for you. Wherefore also _we always pray_ for you." 2
Tim. i. 3: "I thank God, that _without ceasing_ I have remembrance of
thee night and day." Philem. 4: "I thank my God, making mention of thee
_always in my prayers_."
These passages taken together give us the picture of a man whose words,
"Pray without ceasing," were simply the expression of his daily life. He
had such a sense of the insufficiency of simple conversion; of the need
of the grace and the power of heaven being brought down for the young
converts in prayer; of the need of much and unceasing prayer, day and
night, to bring it down; of the certainty that prayer would bring it
down--that his life was continual and most definite prayer. He had such
a sense that everything must come from above, and such a faith that it
would come in answer to prayer, that prayer was neither a duty nor a
burden, but the natural turning of the heart to the only place whence it
could possibly obtain what it sought for others.
THE CONTENTS OF PAUL'S PRAYERS.
It is of as much importance to know _what_ Paul prayed, as how
frequently and earnestly he did so. Intercession is a spiritual work.
Our confidence in it will depend much on our knowing that we ask
according to the will of God. The more distinctly we ask heavenly
things, which we feel at once God alone can bestow, which we are sure He
will bestow, the more direct and urgent will our appeal be to God alone.
The more impossible the things are that we seek, the more we will turn
from all human work to prayer and to God alone.
In the Epistles, in addition to expressions in which he speaks of his
praying, we have a number of distinct prayers in which Paul gives
utterance to his heart's desire for those to whom he writes. In these we
see that his first desire was always that they might be "established" in
the Christian life. Much as he praised God when he heard of conversion,
he knew how feeble the young converts were, and how for their
establishing nothing would avail without the grace of the Spirit prayed
down. If we notice some of the principal of these prayers we shall see
what he asked and obtained.
Take the two prayers in Ephesians--the one for light, the other for
strength. In the former (i. 15), he prays for the Spirit of wisdom to
enlighten them to know what their calling was, what their inheritance,
what the mighty power of God working in them. Spiritual enlightenment
and knowledge was their great need, to be obtained for them by prayer.
In the latter (iii. 15) he asks that the power they had been led to see
in Christ might work in them, and they be strengthened with Divine
might, so as to have the indwelling Christ, and the love that passeth
knowledge, and the fulness of God actually come on them. These were
things that could only come direct from heaven; these were things he
asked and expected. If we want to learn Paul's art of intercession, we
must ask nothing less for believers in our days.
Look at the prayer in Philippians (i. 9-11). There, too, it is first for
spiritual knowledge; then comes a blameless life, and then a fruitful
life to the glory of God. So also in the beautiful prayer in Colossians
(i. 9-11). First, spiritual knowledge and understanding of God's will,
then the strengthening with all might to all patience and joy.
Or take the two prayers in 1 Thessalonians (iii. 12, 13, and v. 23). The
one: "God so increase your love to one another, that He may stablish
your _hearts unblameable in holiness_." The other: "God _sanctify you
wholly_, and preserve you blameless." The very words are so high that we
hardly understand, still less believe, still less experience what they
mean. Paul so lived in the heavenly world, he was so at home in the
holiness and omnipotence of God and His love, that such prayers were the
natural expression of what he knew God could and would do. "God stablish
your hearts unblameable in holiness," "God sanctify you wholly"--the man
who believes in these things and desires them, will pray for them for
others. The prayers are all a proof that he seeks for them the very life
of heaven upon earth. No wonder that he is not tempted to trust in any
human means, but looks for it from heaven alone. Again, I say, the more
we take Paul's prayers as our pattern, and make his desires our own for
believers for whom we pray, the more will prayer to the God of heaven
become as our daily breath.
PAUL'S REQUESTS FOR PRAYER.
These are no less instructive than his own prayers for the saints. They
prove that he does not count prayer any special prerogative of an
apostle; he calls the humblest and simplest believer to claim his right.
They prove that he does not think that only the new converts or feeble
Christians need prayer; he himself is, as a member of the body,
dependent upon his brethren and their prayers. After he had preached the
gospel for twenty years, he still asks for prayer that he may speak as
he ought to speak. Not once for all, not for a time, but day by day, and
that without ceasing, must grace be sought and brought down from heaven
for his work. United, continued waiting on God is to Paul the only hope
of the Church. With the Holy Spirit a heavenly life, the life of the
Lord in heaven, entered the world; nothing but unbroken communication
with heaven can keep it up.
Listen how he asks for prayer, and with what earnestness--Rom. xv. 30:
"_I beseech you_, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake, and for
the love of the Spirit, that ye _strive together with me in your
prayers_ to God for me; that I may be delivered from them which do not
believe in Judæa; and may come unto you with joy by the will of God."
How remarkably both prayers were answered: Rom. xv. 5, 6, 13. The
remarkable fact that the Roman world-power, which in Pilate with Christ,
in Herod with Peter, at Philippi, had proved its antagonism to God's
kingdom, all at once becomes Paul's protector, and secures him a safe
convoy to Rome, can only be accounted for by these prayers.
2 Cor. i. 10, 11: "In whom we trust that He will yet deliver us, _ye
also helping together by prayer_ for us." Eph. vi. 18, 19: "Praying
always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, for all saints;
_and for me_ that I may open my mouth boldly, that therein I may speak
boldly as I ought to speak." Phil. i. 19: "I know that this (trouble)
shall turn to my salvation, _through your prayer_, and the supply of the
Spirit of Jesus Christ." Col. iv. 2, 3, 4: "Continue in prayer; withal
also _praying for us_, that God would open unto us a door of utterance,
to speak the mystery of Christ: that I may make it manifest as I ought
to speak." 1 Thess. v. 25: "Brethren, pray for us." Philem. 22: "I
trust that through your prayers I shall be given to you."
We saw how Christ prayed, and taught His disciples to pray. We see how
Paul prayed, and taught the churches to pray. As the Master, so the
servant calls us to believe and to prove that prayer is the power alike
of the ministry and the Church
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