 CHAPTER 19 OF WITH CHRIST IN THE SCHOOL OF PRAYER 19. I GO ON TO THE FATHER, ALL, POWER FOR PRAYING AND WORKING. Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, The works that I do shall he do also, And greater works than these shall he do, Because I go unto my father, And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, That will I do." John 14. 12. 13. As the Saviour opened his public ministry with his disciples by the Sermon on the Mount, so he closes it by the parting address preserved to us by John. In both he speaks more than once of prayer, but with a difference. In the Sermon on the Mount it is as to disciples who have only just entered his school, who scarcely know that God is their father, and whose prayer chiefly has reference to their personal needs. In his closing address he speaks to disciples whose training time is now come to an end, and who are ready as his messengers to take his place and his work. In the form of the chief lesson is, be childlike, pray believingly, and trust the father that he will give you all good gifts. Here he points to something higher. They are now his friends to whom he has made known all that he has heard of the father. His messengers, who have entered into his plans, and into whose hands the care of his work and kingdom on earth is to be entrusted. They are now to go out and do his works, and in the power of his approaching exultation, even greater works. Prayer is now to be the channel through which that power is to be received for their work. With Christ's ascension to the Father, a new epoch commences for their working and praying, both. See how clearly this connection comes out in our text. As his body here on earth, as those who are one with him in heaven, they are now to do greater works than he had done. Their success and their victories are to be greater than his. He mentions two reasons for this. The one because he was to go to the Father to receive all power. The other because they might now ask and expect all in his name. Because I go to the Father and notice this and, and whatsoever ye shall ask I will do. His going to the Father would thus bring the double blessing. They would ask and receive all in his name, and as a consequence would do the greater works. This first mention of prayer in our Saviour's parting words thus teaches us two most important lessons. He that would do the works of Jesus must pray in his name. He that would pray in his name must work in his name. He who would work must pray. It is in prayer that the power for work is obtained. He that in faith would do the works that Jesus did must pray in his name. As long as Jesus was here on earth he himself did the greatest works. Devils the disciples could not cast out fled at his word. When he went to the Father he was no longer here in the body to work directly. The disciples were now his body. All his work from the throne in heaven here on earth must and could be done through them. One might have thought that now he was leaving the scene himself and could only work through commissioners, the works might be fewer and weaker. He assures us of the contrary. Verily verily I sound to you. He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also, and he shall do greater works. His approaching death was to be such a real breaking down and making an end of the power of sin, with the resurrection the powers of the eternal life were so truly to take possession of the human body and to obtain supremacy over human life. With his ascension he was to receive the power to communicate the Holy Spirit so fully to his own. The union, the oneness between himself on the throne and them on earth was to be so intensely and divinely perfect that he meant it as the literal truth. Greater works than these shall he do because I go to the Father. And the issue proved how true it was. While Jesus, during three years of personal labour on earth, gathered little more than five hundred disciples, and the most of them so feeble that they were but little credit to his cause, it was given to men like Peter and Paul manifestly to do greater things than he had done. From the throne he could do through them what he himself and his humiliation could not yet do. But there was one condition. He that believeth on me, he shall do greater works because I go to the Father. And whatsoever ye ask in my name that will I do. His going to the Father would give him a new power to hear prayer. For the doing of the greater works two things were needed. His going to the Father to receive all power. Our prayer in his name to receive all power from him again. As he asks the Father, he receives and bestows on us the power of the new dispensation for the greater works. As we believe and ask in his name, the power comes and takes possession of us to do the greater works. Alas, how much working there is in the work of God, in which there is little or nothing to be seen of the power to do anything like Christ's works, not to speak of greater works. There can be but one reason. The believing on him. The believing prayer in his name. This is so much wanting. Know that every labourer and leader in church or school, in the work of home philanthropy or foreign missions, might learn the lesson. Prayer in the name of Jesus is the way to share in the mighty power which Jesus has received of the Father for his people. And it is in this power alone that he that believeth can do the greater works. To every complaint as to weakness or unfitness, as to difficulties or want of success, Jesus gives this one answer. He that believeth on me shall do greater works, because I go to the Father, and whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do. We must understand that the first and chief thing for everyone who would do the work of Jesus is to believe, and so to get linked to him, the Almighty One, and then to pray the prayer of faith in his name. Without this our work is but human and carnal. It may have some use in restraining sin or preparing the way for blessing, but the real power is wanting. Effectual working needs first effectual prayer. And now the second lesson. He who would pray must work. It is for power to work that prayer has such great promises. It is in working that the power for the effectual prayer of faith will be gained. In these parting words of our blessed Lord, we find that he know less than six times John 14, 13 and 14, 15, 7 and 16, 16, 23 and 24. Repeat those unlimited prayer promises which have so often awakened our anxious questionings as to their real meaning. Whatsoever, anything, what ye will, ask and ye shall receive. How many believer has read these over with joy and hope, and in deep earnestness of soul, has sought to bleed them for his own need? And he has come out disappointed. The simple reason was this. He had rent away the promise from its surrounding. The Lord gave the wonderful promise of the free use of his name with the Father in connection with the doing of his works. It is the disciple who gives himself wholly to live for Jesus' work and kingdom, for his will and honor, to whom the power will come to appropriate the promise. He that would feign grasp the promise when he wants something very special for himself will be disappointed, because he would make Jesus the servant of his own comfort. But to him who seeks to pray the effectual prayer of faith, because he needs it for the work of the Master, to him it will be given to learn it, because he had made himself the servant of his Lord's interests. Prayer not only teaches and strengthens to work, work teaches and strengthens to pray. This is in perfect harmony with what holds good both in the natural and the spiritual world. Who serve a half to him shall be given, or he that is faithful in a little is faithful also in much. Let us with the small measure of grace already received, give ourselves to the Master for his work. Work will be to us a real school of prayer. It was when Moses had to take full charge of a rebellious people that he felt the need, but also the courage, to speak boldly to God and to ask great things of him. Exodus 33.12.15.18. As you give yourself entirely to God for his work, you will feel that nothing less than these great promises are what you need, that nothing less is what you may most confidently expect. Believer in Jesus, you are called, you are appointed to do the works of Jesus, and even greater works, because he has gone to the Father to receive the power to do them in and through you. Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do. Give yourself and live to do the works of Christ, and you will learn to praise so as to obtain wonderful answers to prayer. Give yourself and live to pray and you will learn to do the works he did, and greater works. With disciples full of faith in himself and bold in prayer to ask great things, Christ can conquer the world. Lord, teach us to pray. Oh my Lord, I have this day again heard words from thee which pass my comprehension, and yet I cannot do ought but in simple childlike faith take and keep them as thy gift to me too. Thou hast said that in virtue of thy going to the Father, he that believeth on thee will do the works which thou hast done, and greater works. Lord, I worship thee as the glorified one, and look for the fulfilment of thy promise. May my whole life just be one of continued believing in thee. So purify and sanctify my heart, and make it so tenderly susceptible of thyself and thy love, that believing on thee may be the very life it breathes. And thou hast said that in virtue of thy going to the Father, whatsoever we ask thou wilt do. From thy throne of power, thou wilt make thy people share the power given thee, and work through them as the members of thy body, in response to their believing prayers in thy name. Power in prayer with thee, and power in work with men, is what thou hast promised thy people, and me too. Blessed Lord, forgive us all that we have so little believed thee and thy promise, and so little proved thy faithfulness in fulfilling it. Oh, forgive us that we have so little honoured thy all-prevailing name in heaven or upon earth. Lord, teach me to pray so that I may prove that thy name is indeed all-prevailing with God, and men, and devils. Yea, teach me so to work, and so to pray, that thou canst glorify thyself in me as the omnipotent one, and do thy great work through me too. Amen. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Joy Chan, with Christ in the School of Prayer by Andrew Murray. John 14.13 The glory of the Father must be the aim and end, the very soul and life of our prayer. It was so with Jesus when he was on earth. I seek not my own honour. I seek the honour of him that sent me. In such words we have the keynote of his life. In the first words of the High Priestly Prayer he gives utterance to it. Father, glorify thy Son, that thy Son may glorify thee. I have glorified thee on earth, glorify me with thyself. The ground on which he asks to be taken up into the glory he had with the Father is the twofold one. He has glorified him on earth. He will still glorify him in heaven. What he asks is only to enable him to glorify the Father more. It is as we enter into sympathy with Jesus on this point, and gratify him by making the Father's glory our chief object in prayer too. That our prayer cannot fail of an answer. There is nothing of which the beloved Son has said more distinctly that it will glorify the Father than this. His doing what we ask. He will not therefore let any opportunity slip of securing this object. Let us make his aim ours. Let the glory of the Father be the link between our asking and his doing. Such prayer must prevail. This word of Jesus comes indeed as a sharp two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, and quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart. Jesus in his prayers on earth, in his intercession in heaven, in his promise of an answer to our prayers from there, makes this his first object, the glory of his Father. Is it so with us too? Or not in large measure self-interest and self-will, the strongest motives urging us to pray? Or if we cannot see that this is the case, have we not to acknowledge that the distinct, conscious longing for the glory of the Father is not what animates our prayers? And yet it must be so. Not as if the believer does not at times desire it, but he has to mourn that he has so little attained, and he knows the reason of his failure too. It was because the separation between the Spirit of daily life and the Spirit of the hour of prayer was too wide. We begin to see that the desire for the glory of the Father is not something that we can awake and present to our Lord when we prepare ourselves to pray. No, it is only when the whole life in all its parts is given up to God's glory that we can really pray to his glory too. Do all to the glory of God, and ask all to the glory of God. These twin commands are inseparable. Obedience to the former is the secret of grace for the latter. A life to the glory of God is the condition of the prayers that Jesus can answer, that the Father may be glorified. This demand and connection with prevailing prayer, that it should be to the glory of God, is no more than right and natural. There is none glorious but the Lord, there is no glory but his, and what he layeth on his creatures. Creation exists to show forth his glory, or that it's not for his glory, is sin and darkness and death. It is only in the glorifying of God that the creatures can find glory. What the Son of Man did, to give himself wholly, his whole life to glorify the Father, is nothing but the simple duty of every redeemed one. And Christ's reward will be his too. Because he gave himself so entirely to the glory of the Father, the Father crowned him with glory and honor, giving the kingdom into his hands, with the power to ask what he will, and as intercessor, to answer our prayers. And just as we become one with Christ in this, and as our prayer is part of a life utterly surrendered to God's glory, will the Savior be able to glorify the Father to us by the fulfilment of the promise? Whatsoever ye shall ask, I will do it. To such a life with God's glory our only aim, we cannot attain by any effort of our own. It is only in the man Christ Jesus that such a life is to be seen. In him it is to be found for us. Yes, blessed be God, his life is our life. He gave himself for us. He himself is now our life. The discovery and the confession, and the denial of self as usurping the place of God, of self-seeking and self-trusting, is essential, and yet is what we cannot accomplish in our own strength. It is in the incoming and indwelling, the presence and the rule in the heart of our Lord Jesus who glorified the Father on earth, and is now glorified with him, that hence he might glorify him in us. It is Jesus himself coming in, who can cast out all self-glorifying, and give us instead his own God-glorifying life and spirit. It is Jesus who longs to glorify the Father in hearing our prayers, who will teach us to live and to pray to the glory of God. And what motive? What power is there that can urge our slothful hearts to yield themselves to our Lord to work this in us? Surely nothing more is needed than a sight of how glorious, how alone worthy of glory the Father is. Let our faith learn in adoring worship to bow before him, to ascribe to him alone the Kingdom and the power and the glory, to yield ourselves to dwell in his light as the ever-blessed, ever-loving one. Surely we shall be stirred to say, to him alone be glory. And we shall look to our Lord Jesus with new intensity of desire for a life that refuses to see or seek ought but the glory of God. When there is but little prayer that can be answered, the Father is not glorified. It is a duty for the glory of God to live and pray so that our prayer can be answered. For the sake of God's glory, let us learn to pray well. What a humbling thought that so often there is earnest prayer for a child or a friend, for a work or a circle, in which the thought of our joy or our pleasure was far stronger than any earnings for God's glory. No wonder that there are so many unanswered prayers. Here we have the secret. God would not be glorified when that glory was not our object. He that would pray the prayer of faith will have to give himself to live literally so that the Father in all things may be glorified in him. This must be his aim. Without this they cannot be the prayer of faith. How can you believe, said Jesus, which receive glory of one another and the glory that cometh from the only God you seek not? All seeking of our own glory with men makes faith impossible. It is the deep, intense, self-sacrifice that gives up its own glory and seeks the glory of God alone that wakens in the soul that spiritual susceptibility of the Divine which is faith. The surrender to God to seek his glory and the expectation that he will show his glory in hearing us are one at root. He that seeks God's glory will see it in the answer to his prayer and he alone. And how, we ask again, shall we attain to it? Let us begin with confession. How little has the glory of God been in all absorbing passion. How little our lives and our prayers have been full of it. How little have we lived in the likeness of the Son and in sympathy with him for God and his glory alone. Let us take time until the Holy Spirit discover it to us and we see how wanting we have been in this. True knowledge and confession of sin are the sure path to deliverance. And then let us look to Jesus. In him we can see by what death we can glorify God. In death he glorified him. Through death he was glorified with him. It is by dying, being dead to self and living to God that we can glorify him. And this, this death to self, this life to the glory of God is what Jesus gives and lives in each one who can trust him for it. Let nothing less than these, the desire, the decision to live only for the glory of the Father even as Christ did. The acceptance of him with his life and strength working it in us. The joyful assurance that we can live to the glory of God because Christ lives in us. Let this be the spirit of our daily life. Jesus stands surety for our living with us. The Holy Spirit is given and waiting to make it our experience. If we will only trust and let him. Oh, let us not hold back through unbelief but confidently take as our watchword or to the glory of God. The Father accepts the will. The sacrifice is well pleasing. The Holy Spirit will seal us within with the consciousness. We are living for God and his glory. And then what quiet peace and power there will be in our prayers as we know ourselves through his grace in perfect harmony with him who says to us when he promises to do what we ask that the Father may be glorified in the Son. With our whole being consciously yielded to the inspiration of the word and spirit our desires will be no longer ours but his. Their chief end the glory of God. With increasing liberty we shall be able in prayer to say Father thou knowest we ask it only for thy glory. And the condition of prayer answers instead of being as a mountain we cannot climb will only give us the greater confidence that we shall be heard because we have seen that prayer has no higher beauty or blessedness than this that it glorifies the Father. And the precious privilege of prayer will become doubly precious because it brings us into perfect unison with the beloved Son in the wonderful partnership he proposes. You ask and I do that the Father may be glorified in the Son. Lord teach us to pray. Blessed Lord Jesus I come again to thee. Every lesson thou give us to me convinces me more deeply how little I know to pray a right. But every lesson also inspires me with hope that thou art going to teach me. That thou art teaching me not only to know what prayer should be but actually to pray as I ought. O my Lord I look with courage to thee the great intercessor who didst pray and dost hear prayer only that the Father may be glorified. To teach me too to live and to pray to the glory of God. Saviour to this end I yield myself to thee again. I would be nothing. I have given self as already crucified with thee to the death. Through the spirit its workings are mortified and made dead. Thy life and thy love of the Father are taking possession of me. A new longing begins to fill my soul that every day, every hour, that in every prayer the glory of the Father may be everything to me. O my Lord I am in thy school to learn this. Teach thou it me. And do thou the God of glory, the Father of glory, my God and my Father, except the desire of a child who has seen that thy glory is indeed alone worth living for. O Lord show me thy glory. Let it overshadow me. Let it fill the temple of my heart. Let me dwell in it as revealed in Christ. And do thou thyself fulfil in me thine own good pleasure, that thy child should find his glory in seeking the glory of his Father. Amen. End of chapter 20 Chapter 21 of With Christ in the School of Prayer This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Joy Chan With Christ in the School of Prayer by Andrew Murray 21st Lesson If ye abide in me or the all-inclusive condition If ye abide in me and my words abide in you Ask whatsoever ye will and it shall be done unto you John 15.7 In all God's intercourse with us, the promise and its conditions are inseparable. If we fulfil the conditions, he fulfills the promise. What he is to be to us depends upon what we are willing to be to him. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. And so in prayer the unlimited promise, ask whatsoever ye will, has its one simple and natural condition. If ye abide in me. It is Christ whom the Father always hears. God is in Christ and can only be reached by being in him. To be in him is the way to have our prayer heard, fully and wholly abiding in him. We have the right to ask whatsoever we will, and the promise that it shall be done unto us. When we compare this promise with the experiences of most believers, we are startled by a terrible discrepancy. Who can number up the countless prayers that rise and bring no answer? The cause must be either that we do not fulfil the condition, or God does not fulfil the promise. Believers are not willing to admit either, and therefore have devised a way of escape from the dilemma. They put into the promise the qualifying clause our Saviour did not put there, if it be God's will, and so maintained both God's integrity and their own. O, if they did but accept it and hold it fast as it stands, trusting to Christ to vindicate his truth, how God's spirit would lead them to see the divine propriety of such a promise to those who really abide in Christ, in the sense in which he means it, and to confess that the failure in the fulfilling the condition is the one sufficient explanation of unanswered prayer, and how the Holy Spirit would then make our feebleness in prayer one of the mightiest motives to urge us on to discover the secret and obtain the blessing of full abiding in Christ. If ye abide in me As a Christian grows in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus, he is often surprised to find how the words of God grow too, in the new and deeper meaning with which they come to him. He can look back to the day when some word of God was opened up to him, and he rejoiced in the blessing he had found in it. After a time some deeper experience gave it a new meaning, and it was as if he had never seen what it contained. And yet once again as he advanced in the Christian life, the same words stood before him again as a great mystery, until anew the Holy Spirit led him still deeper into its divine fullness. One of these ever-growing, never-exhausted words, opening up to us step by step the fullness of the divine life, is the master's precious, abide in me. As the union of the branch with the vine is one of growth, never ceasing growth and increase. So our abiding in Christ is a life process in which the divine life takes ever fuller and more complete possession of us. The young and feeble believer may be really abiding in Christ up to the measure of his light. It is he who reaches onward to the full abiding in the sense in which the master understood the words, who inherits all the promises connected with it. In the growing life of abiding in Christ, the first stage is that of faith. As the believer sees that, with all his feebleness, the command is really meant for him, his great aim is simply to believe that, as he knows he is in Christ, so now notwithstanding unfaithfulness and failure, abiding in Christ is his immediate duty and a blessing within his reach. He is specially occupied with the love and power and faithfulness of the Saviour. He feels his one need to be believing. It is not long before he sees something more as needed. Obedience and faith must go together. Not as if to the faith he has the obedience must be added, but faith must be made manifest in obedience. Faith is obedience at home and looking to the master. Obedience is faith going out to do his will. He sees how he has been more occupied with the privilege and the blessings of the surviving than with its duties and its fruit. There has been much of self and of self-will that has been unnoticed or tolerated. The peace which, as a young and feeble disciple, he could enjoy in believing goes from him. It is in practical obedience that the abiding must be maintained. If you keep my commands you shall abide in my love. As before his great aim was through the mind and the truth it took hold of to let the heart rest on Christ and his promises. So now in this stage his chief effort is to get his will united with the will of his Lord and the heart and the life brought entirely under his rule. And yet it is as if there is something wanting. The will and the heart are on Christ's side. He obeys and he loves his Lord. But still, why is it that the fleshly nature has yet so much power that the spontaneous motions and emotions of the inmost being are not what they should be? The will does not approve or allow, but he is a region beyond control of the will. And why also, even when there is not so much of positive commission to condemn? Why so much of omission? The deficiency of that beauty of holiness, that zeal of love, that conformity to Jesus and his death, in which the life of self is lost and which is surely implied in the abiding as the master meant it. There must surely be something in our abiding in Christ and Christ in us which he has not yet experienced. It is so. Faith and obedience are but the pathway of blessing. Before giving us the parable of the vine and the branches, Jesus had very distinctly told what the full blessing is to which faith and obedience are to lead. Three times over he had said, If you love me, keep my commandments. And spoken of the threefold blessing with which he would crown such obedient love. The Holy Spirit would come from the Father. The Son would manifest Himself. The Father and the Son would come and make there a bird. It is as our faith grows into obedience and in obedience and love, our whole being goes out and clings itself to Christ, that our inner life becomes opened up and the capacity is formed within of receiving the life, the spirit of the glorified Jesus, as a distinct and conscious union with Christ and with the Father. The word is fulfilled in us. In that day ye shall know that I am in my Father and ye in me, and I in you. We understand how just as Christ is in God and God in Christ, one together not only in will and in love, but in identity of nature and life, because they exist in each other, so we are in Christ and Christ in us, in union not only of will and love, but of life and nature too. It was after Jesus had spoken of our thus through the Holy Spirit, knowing that he is in the Father, and even so we in him and he in us that he said, Abide in me and I in you. Except, consent to receive that divine life of union with myself, in virtue of which, as you abide in me, I also abide in you, even as I abide in the Father, so that your life is mine and mine is yours. This is the true abiding, the occupying of the position in which Christ can come and abide, so abiding in him that the soul has come away from self to find that he has taken the place and become our life. It is the becoming as little children, who have no care, and find their happiness in trusting and obeying the love that has done all for them. To those who thus abide, the promise comes as their rightful heritage. Ask whatsoever ye will. It cannot be otherwise. Christ has got full possession of them. Christ dwells in their love, their will, their life. Not only has their will been given up, Christ has entered it, and dwells and breathes in it by his spirit. He whom the Father always hears, prays in them. They pray in him. What they ask shall be done unto them. Beloved fellow believer, let us confess that it is because we do not abide in Christ as he would have us, that the Church is so impotent in presence of the infidelity and worldliness and heathen them, in the midst of which the Lord is able to make her more than conqueror. Let us believe that he means what he promises, and accept the condemnation the confession implies. But let us not be discouraged. The abiding of the branch in the vine is a life of never-ceasing growth. The abiding as the master meant it is within our reach for he lives to give it us. Let us but be ready to count all things lost and to say, not as though I had already attained. I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which I also am apprehended of Christ Jesus. Let us not be so much occupied with the abiding as with him to whom the abiding links us, and his fullness. Let it be him, the whole Christ in his obedience and humiliation, in his exaltation and power, in whom our soul moves and acts. He himself will fulfil his promise in us. And then as we abide and grow ever more into the full abiding, let us exercise our right, the will to enter into all God's will, obeying what that will commands, let us claim what it promises, let us yield to the teaching of the Holy Spirit, to show each of us according to his growth and measure, what the will of God is in which we may claim in prayer, and let us rest content with nothing less than the personal experience of what Jesus gave when he said, If ye abide in me, ask whatsoever ye will, it shall be done unto you. Lord, teach us to pray. Beloved Lord, do teach me to take this promise anew in all its simplicity, and to be sure that the only measure of thy holy giving is our holy willing. Lord, let each word of this thy promise be anew made quick and powerful in my soul. Thou sayest, abide in me. O my master, my life, my all, I do abide in thee. Give thou me to grow up into all thy fullness. It is not the effort of faith seeking to cling to thee, nor even the rest of faith trusting thee to keep me. It is not the obedience of the will, nor the keeping the commandments, but it is thyself living in me and in the Father that alone can satisfy me. It is thyself, my Lord, no longer before me and above me, but one with me and abiding in me. It is this I need, it is this I seek, it is this I trust thee for. Thou sayest, ask whatsoever ye will. Lord, I know that the life of full, deep abiding will so renew and sanctify and strengthen the will that I shall have the light and the liberty to ask great things. Lord, let my will, dead in thy death, living in thy life, be bold and large in its petitions. Thou sayest, abide in me. O my master, my life, my all, I do abide in thee. Give thou me to grow up into all thy fullness. It is not the effort of faith seeking to cling to thee, nor even the rest of faith trusting thee to keep me. It is not the obedience of the will, nor the keeping the commandments, but it is thyself living in me and in the Father that alone can satisfy me. It is thyself, my Lord, no longer before me and above me, but one with me and abiding in me. It is this I need, it is this I seek, it is this I trust thee for. Thou sayest, ask whatsoever ye will. Lord, I know that the life of full, deep abiding will so renew and sanctify and strengthen the will that I shall have the light and the liberty to ask great things. Lord, let my will, dead in thy death, living in thy life, be bold and large in its petitions. Thou sayest, it shall be done. O thou who art the Amen, the faithful and true witness, give me in thyself the joyous confidence that thou wilt make this word yet more wonderfully true to me than ever, because it hath not entered into the heart of man to conceive what God hath prepared for them that love him. Amen. Note, on a thoughtful comparison of what we mostly find in books or sermons on prayer and the teaching of the Master, we shall find one great difference, the importance assigned to the answer to prayers by no means the same. In the former we find a great deal on the blessing of prayer, as a spiritual exercise, even if there be no answer, and on the reasons why we should be content without it. God's fellowship ought to be more to us than the gift we ask. God's wisdom only knows what is best. God may bestow something better than what he withholds. Though this teaching looks very high in spiritual, it is remarkable that we find nothing of it with our Lord. The more carefully we gather together all he spoke on prayer, the clearer it becomes that he wished us to think of prayer simply as the means to an end, and that the answer was to be the proof that we and our prayer are acceptable to the Father in heaven. It is not that Christ would have us count the gifts of higher value than the fellowship and favour of the Father, by no means. But the Father means the answer to be the token of his favour, and of the reality of our fellowship with him. Today thy servant knoweth that I have found grace in thy sight, my Lord, O King, in that the King hath fulfilled the request of his servant. A life marked by daily answer to prayers the proof of our spiritual maturity, that we have indeed attained to the true abiding in Christ, that our will is truly at one with God's will, that our faith has grown strong to see and take what God has prepared for us, that the name of Christ and his nature have taken full possession of us, and that we have been found fit to take a place among those whom God admits to his councils, and according to those whose prayer he rules the world. These are they in whom something of man's original dignity hath been restored, in whom as they abiding Christ, his power as the all-prevailing intercessor can manifest itself, in whom the glory of his name is shown forth. Prayer is very blessed. The answer is more blessed still, as the response from the Father that our prayer, our faith, our will, are indeed as he would wish them to be. I make these remarks with the one desire of leading my readers themselves to put together all that Christ has said on prayer, and to yield themselves to the full impression of the truth, that when prayer is what it should be, or rather when we are what we should be, abiding in Christ, the answer must be expected. It will bring us out from those refuges, where we have comforted ourselves with unanswered prayer. It will discover to us the place of power to which Christ has appointed his church, and which it so little occupies. It will reveal the terrible feebleness of our spiritual life, as the cause of our not knowing to pray boldly in Christ's name. It will urge us mightily to rise to a life in the full union with Christ, and in the fullness of the Spirit, as the secret of effectual prayer. And it will so lead us on to realize our destiny. At that day, verily verily I say unto you, if ye shall ask anything of the Father, he will give it you in my name. Ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be fulfilled." Prayer that is really, spiritually, in union with Jesus, is always answered. Chapter 22 of With Christ in the School of Prayer This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information on to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Joy Chan, With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray. 22nd Lesson My Words in You Or The Word and Prayer If ye abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto you. John 15.7 The vital connection between the Word and Prayer is one of the simplest and earliest lessons of the Christian life, as that newly converted heathen put it. I pray, I speak to my Father, I read, my Father speaks to me. Before prayer it is God's word that prepares me for it by revealing what the Father has bid me ask. In prayer it is God's word strengthens me by giving my faith its warrant and its plea. And after prayer it is God's word that brings me the answer when I have prayed, for in it the Spirit gives me to hear the Father's voice. Prayer is not monologue, but dialogue. God's voice in response to mine, in its most essential part. Listening to God's voice is the secret of the assurance that he will listen to mine. Incline thine ear and hear. Give ear to me, harken to my voice. A word which God speaks to man as well as man to God. His hearkening will depend on ours. The entrance his words find with me will be the measure of the power of my words with him. What God's words are to me is the test of what he himself is to me, and so of the uprightness of my desire after him in prayer. It is this connection between his word and our prayer that Jesus points to when he says, If ye abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto you. The deep importance of this truth becomes clear if we notice the other expression of which this one has taken the place. More than once Jesus had said, Abide in me and I in you. His abiding in us was the compliment and the crown of our abiding in him. But here instead of ye in me and I in you, he says ye in me and my words in you. His words abiding are the equivalent of himself abiding. What a view is here opened up to us of the place the words of God and Christ are to have in our spiritual life and especially in our prayer. In a man's words he reveals himself. In his promises he gives himself away. He binds himself to the one who receives his promise. In his commands he sets forth his will, seeks to make himself master of him whose obedience he claims, to guide and use him as if he were part of himself. It is through our words that spirit holds fellowship with spirit, that the spirit of one man passes over and transfers itself into another. It is through the words of a man, heard and accepted and held fast and obeyed, that he can impart himself to another. But all this in a very relative and limited sense. But when God, the infinite being in whom everything's life and power, spirit and truth, in the very deepest meaning of the words, when God speaks forth himself in his words, he does indeed give himself, his love and his life, his will and his power, to those who received these words, in a reality passing comprehension. In every promise he puts himself in our power to lay hold of and possess. In every command he puts himself in our power for us to share with him his will, his holiness, his perfection. In God's word God gives us himself. His word is nothing less than the eternal Son, Christ Jesus, and so all Christ's words are God's words, full of a divine quickening life and power. The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life. Those who have made the deaf and dumb their study, tell us how much the power of speaking depends on that of hearing, and how the loss of hearing in children is followed by that of speaking too. This is true in a wider sense, as we hear, so we speak. This is true in the highest sense of our intercourse with God. To offer a prayer, to give utterance to certain wishes, and to appeal to certain promises is an easy thing, and can be learned of man by human wisdom. But to pray in the spirit, to speak words that reach and touch God, that affect and influence the powers of the unseen world, such praying, such speaking, depends entirely upon our hearing God's voice. Just as far as we listen to the voice and language that God speaks, and in the words of God receive his thoughts, his mind, his life into our heart, we shall learn to speak in the voice and the language that God hears. It is the ear of the learner, wakened morning by morning, that prepares for the tongue of the learned, to speak to God as well as men, as should be. The hearing the voice of God is something more than the thoughtful study of the word. There may be a study and knowledge of the word, in which there is but little real fellowship with the living God. But there is also a reading of the word, in the very presence of the Father, and under the leading of the Spirit, in which the word comes to us in living power from God Himself. It is to us the very voice of the Father, a real personal fellowship with Himself. It is the living voice of God that enters the heart, that brings blessing and strength, and awakens the response of a living faith that reaches the heart of God again. It is on this hearing the voice, that the power both to obey and believe depends. The chief thing is not to know what God has said we must do, but that God Himself says it to us. It is not the law, not the book, not the knowledge of what is right, that works obedience, but the personal influence of God and His living fellowship. And even so it is not the knowledge of what God has promised, but the presence of God Himself as the promissor, that awakens faith and trust in prayer. It is only in the full presence of God that disobedience and unbelief become impossible. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatsoever ye will and it shall be done unto you. We see what this means in the words the Saviour gives Himself. We must have the words in us taken up into our will and life reproduced in our disposition and conduct. We must have them abiding in us, our whole life one continued exposition of the words that are within and filling us, the words revealing Christ within and our life revealing Him without. It is as the words of Christ enter our very heart, become our life and influence it, that our words will enter his heart and influence him. My prayer will depend on my life, what God's words are to me and in me, my words will be to God and in God. If I do what God says, God will do what I say. How well the Old Testament saints understood this connection between God's words and ours, and how really prayer with them was the loving response to what they had heard God speak. If the word were a promise, they counted on God to do as He had spoken. Do as Thou hast said, for Thou, Lord, has spoken it, according to Thy promise, according to Thy word. In such expressions they showed that what God spoke and promised was the root and the life of what they spoke in prayer. If the word was a command, they simply did as the Lord had spoken. So Abram departed as the Lord had spoken. Their life was fellowship with God, the interchange of word and thought, what God spoke they heard and did, what they spoke God heard and did. In each word he speaks to us, the whole Christ gives himself to fulfill it for us. For each word he asks no less that we give the whole man to keep that word and to receive its fulfillment. If my words abide in you, the condition is simple and clear. In his words his will is revealed. As the words abide in me, his will rules me. My will becomes the empty vessel which his will fills, the willing instrument which his will wields. He fills my inner being. In the exercise of obedience and faith my will becomes ever stronger and is brought into deeper inner harmony with him. He can fully trust it to will nothing but what he wills. He is not afraid to give the promise. If my words abide in you, ask whatsoever ye will, it shall be done unto you. To all who believe it and act upon it, he will make it literally true. Disciples of Christ, is it not becoming more and more clear to us that while we have been excusing our unanswered prayers, our impotence and prayer, with a fancied submission to God's wisdom and will, the real reason has been that our own feeble life has been the cause of our feeble prayers. Nothing can make strong men but the word coming to us from God's mouth. By that we must live. It is the word of Christ, loved, lived in, abiding in us, becoming through obedience and action part of our being that makes us one with Christ, that fits us spiritually for touching, for taking hold of God. All that is of the world passeth away. He that doeth the will of God abideth for ever. O let us yield heart and life to the words of Christ, the words in which he ever gives himself, the personal living saviour, and his promise will be our rich experience. If ye abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto you. Lord, teach us to pray. Blessed Lord, thy lesson this day has again discovered to me my folly. I see how it is that my prayer has not been more believing and prevailing. I was more occupied with my speaking to thee than thy speaking to me. I did not understand that the secret of faith is this. There can be only so much faith as there is of the living word dwelling in the soul, and thy word had taught me so clearly. Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, let not thine heart be hasty to utter anything before God. Lord, teach me that it is only with thy word taken up into my life, that my words can be taken into thy heart, that thy word, if it be a living power within me, will be a living power with thee. What thy mouth has spoken thy hand will perform. Lord, deliver me from the uncircumcised ear. Give me the opened ear of the learner, wakened morning by morning, to hear the Father's voice. Even as thou didst only speak what thou didst hear, may my speaking be the echo of thy speaking to me. When Moses went into the tabernacle to speak with him, he heard the voice of one speaking unto him from off the mercy seat. Lord, may it be so with me too, that a life and character bearing the one mark, that thy words abide and are seen in it, be the preparation for the full blessing. Ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto you. Twenty-third lesson Bear fruit that the Father may give what ye ask, or obedience the path to power in prayer. Ye did not choose me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that ye should go and bear fruit, that your fruit should abide, that whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he may give it you. John 15.16 The fervent effectual prayer of a righteous man availeth much. James 5.16 The promise of the Father's giving whatsoever, we ask, is here once again renewed, in such a connection as to show us to whom it is that such wonderful influence in the council chamber of the most high is to be granted. I chose you, the Master says, and appointed you, that ye should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should abide. And then he adds, to the end, that whatsoever ye, the fruit-bearing ones, shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you. This is nothing but the fuller expression of what he had spoken in the words, if ye abide in me. He had spoken of the object of this abiding, as the bearing fruit, more fruit, much fruit. And this was God to be glorified, and the mark of the discipleship seen. No wonder that he now adds, that where the reality of the abiding is seen in fruit abounding and abiding, this would be the qualification for prayer so as to obtain what we ask. Entire consecration to the fulfilment of our calling is the condition of effectual prayer, is the key to the unlimited blessings of Christ's wonderful prayer promises. There are Christians who fear that such a statement is at variance with the doctrine of free grace, but surely not of free grace rightly understood, nor with so many expressed statements of God's blessed word. Take the words of Saint John, 1 John 322. Let us love indeed and truth. Hereby shall we assure our heart before him. And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do the things that are pleasing in his sight. Or take the oft-quoted words of James, the fervent effectual prayer of a righteous man availeth much. That is, of a man of whom, according to the definition of the Holy Spirit, it can be said, he that doeth righteousness is righteous even as he is righteous. Mark the spirit of so many of the psalms with their confident appeal to the integrity and righteousness of the supplicant. In Psalm 28 David says, The Lord rewarded me according to my righteousness, according to the cleanliness of my hands hath he recompensed me. I was upright before him, and I kept myself from mine iniquity. Therefore hath the Lord recompensed me according to my righteousness. Psalm 28 20-26 See also Psalms 7 3-5 15-1-2 18-3-6 26-1-6 69-121-153 If we carefully consider such utterances in the light of the New Testament, we shall find them in perfect harmony with the explicit teaching of the Saviour's parting words. If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love. Ye are my friends if ye do what I command you. The word is indeed meant literally, I appointed you, that ye should go and bear fruit, that, then, whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you. Let us seek to enter into the spirit of what the Saviour here teaches us. There is a danger in our evangelical religion of looking too much at what it offers from one side as a certain experience to be obtained in prayer and faith. There is another side which God's word puts very strongly, that of obedience as the only path to blessing. What we need is to realise that in our relationship to the infinite being whom we call God, who has created and redeemed us, the first sentiment that ought to animate us is that of subjection. The surrender to his supremacy, his glory, his will, his pleasure ought to be the first and uppermost thought of our life. The question is not how we are to obtain and enjoy his favour, for in this the main thing may still be self. But what this being in the very nature of things rightfully claims, and is infinitely and unspeakably worthy of, is that his glory and pleasure should be my one object. Surrender to his perfect and blessed will, a life of service and obedience, is the beauty and the charm of heaven. Service and obedience, these were the thoughts that were uppermost in the mind of the sun when he dwelt upon earth. Service and obedience, these must become with us the chief objects of desire and aim, more so than rest or light or joy or strength. In them we shall find the path to all the higher blessedness that awaits us. Just note what a prominent place the master gives it, not only in the 15th chapter, in connection with the abiding, but in the 14th, where he speaks of the indwelling of the Three One God. In verse 15 we have it, If ye love me, keep my commandments, and the Spirit will be given you of the Father. Then verse 21, He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, He it is that loveth me, and he shall have the special love of my Father resting on him, and the special manifestation of myself. And then again, verse 23, one of the highest of all the exceeding great and precious promises. If a man love me, he will keep my words, and the Father and I will come and take up our abode with him. Could words put it more clearly that obedience is the way to the indwelling of the Spirit, to his revealing the sun within us, and to his again preparing us to be the abode, the home of the Father? The indwelling of the Three One God is the heritage of them that obey. Obedience and faith are but two aspects of one act, surrender to God and his will. As faith strengthens for obedience, it is in turn strengthened by it. Faith is made perfect by works. It is to be feared that often our efforts to believe have been unavailing, because we have not taken up the only position in which a large faith is legitimate or possible, that of entire surrender to the honor and the will of God. It is the man who is entirely consecrated to God and his will who will find the power come to claim everything that his God has promised to be for him. The application of this in the School of Prayer is very simple but very solemn. I chose you, the Master says, and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit, much fruit, verses five and eight, and that your fruit should abide, that your life might be one of abiding fruit and abiding fruitfulness, that, thus, as fruitful branches abiding in me, whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you. Oh, how often we have sought to be able to pray the effectual prayer for much grace to bear fruit, and have wondered that the answer came not. It was because we were reversing the Master's order. We wanted to have the comfort and the joy and the strength, first, that we might do the work easily and without any feeling of difficulty or self-sacrifice. And he wanted us in faith, without asking whether we felt weak or strong, whether the work was hard or easy, in the obedience of faith to do what he said. The path of fruit-bearing would have led us to the place and the power of prevailing prayer. Obedience is the only path that leads to the glory of God. Not obedience instead of faith, nor obedience to supply the shortcomings of faith. No, but faith's obedience gives access to all the blessings our God has for us. The baptism of the Spirit, 1416, the manifestation of the Son, 1421, the indwelling of the Father, 1423, the abiding in Christ's love, 1510, the privilege of his holy friendship, 1514, and the power of all prevailing prayer, 1516, all wait for the obedient. Let us take home the lessons. Now we know the great reason why we have not had power in faith to pray prevailingly. Our life was not as it should have been. Simple downright obedience, abiding fruitfulness, was not its chief mark. And with our whole heart we approve of the divine appointment, men to whom God is to give such influence in the rule of the world as at their request to do what otherwise would not have taken place. Men whose will is to guide the path in which God's will is to work, must be men who have themselves learned obedience, whose loyalty and submission to authority must be above all suspicion. Our whole soul approves the law, obedience and fruit bearing, the path to prevailing prayer. And with shame we acknowledge how little our lives have yet borne this stamp. Let us yield ourselves to take up the appointment the Saviour gives us. Let us study his relation to us as Master. Let us seek no more with each new day to think in the first place of comfort or joy or blessing. Let the first thought be, I belong to the Master. Every moment and every movement I must act as his property, as a part of himself, as one who only seeks to know and do his will. A servant, a slave of Jesus Christ, let this be the spirit that animates me. If he says, no longer do I call you servants but I have called you friends, let us accept the place of friends. Ye are my friends if you do the things which I command you. The one thing he commands us as his branches is to bear fruit. Let us live to bless others, to testify of the life and the love that is in Jesus. Let us in faith and obedience give our whole life to that which Jesus chose us for and appointed us to, fruit bearing. As we think of his electing us to this, and take up our appointment as coming from him who always gives all he demands, we shall grow strong in the confidence that a life of fruit bearing, abounding and abiding, is within our reach. And we shall understand why this fruit bearing alone can be the path to the place of all prevailing prayer. It is the man who, in obedience to the Christ of God, is proving that he is doing what his Lord wills, for whom the Father will do whatsoever he will. Whatsoever we ask we receive because we keep his commandments and do the things that are pleasing in his sight. Lord, teach us to pray. Blessed Master, teach me to apprehend fully what I only partly realize, that it is only through the will of God, accepted and acted out in obedience to his commands, that we obtain the power to grasp his will in his promises, and fully to appropriate them in our prayers. And teach me that it is in the path of fruit bearing that the deeper growth of the branch into the vine can be perfected, and we attain to the perfect oneness with thyself in which we ask whatsoever we will. O Lord, reveal to us we pray thee how with all the hosts of heaven, and with thyself the Son on earth, and with all the men of faith who have glorified thee on earth, obedience to God is our highest privilege, because it gives access to oneness with himself in that which is his highest glory, his all-perfect will. And reveal to us we pray thee how in keeping thy commandments and bearing fruit according to thy will, our spiritual nature will grow up to the full stature of the perfect man, with power to ask and to receive whatsoever we will. O Lord Jesus, reveal thyself to us and the reality of thy purpose and thy power to make these thy wonderful promises, the daily experience of all who utterly yield themselves to thee and thy words. Amen. Twenty-fourth lesson Hitherto the disciples had not asked in the name of Christ, nor had he himself ever used the expression. The nearest approaches met together in my name. Here in his parting words he repeats the words unceasingly in connection with those promises of unlimited meaning. Whatsoever, anything, what ye will. To teach them and us that his name is our only, but also our all-sufficient plea. The power of prayer and the answer depend on the right use of the name. What is a person's name? That word or expression in which the person is called up or represented to us. When I mention to hear a name it calls up before me the whole man, what I know of him, and also the impression he has made on me. The name of a king includes his honor, his power, his kingdom. His name is the symbol of his power. And so each name of God embodies and represents some part of the glory of the unseen one. And the name of Christ is the expression of all he has done and all he is and lives to do as our mediator. And what is it to do a thing in the name of another? It is to come with the power and authority of that other as his representative and substitute. We know how such a use of another's name always supposes a community of interest. No one would give another the free use of his name without first being assured that his honor and interest were as safe with that other as with himself. And what is it when Jesus gives us power over his name, the free use of it, with the assurance that whatever we ask in it will be given to us? The ordinary comparison of one person giving another, on some special occasion, the liberty to ask something in his name, comes altogether short here. Jesus solemnly gives to all his disciples a general and unlimited power of the free use of his name at all times for all they desire. He could not do this if he did not know that he could trust us with his interests, that his honor would be safe in our hands. The free use of the name of another is always the token of great confidence, of close union. He who gives his name to another stands aside to let that other act for him. He who takes the name of another gives up his own as of no value. When I go in the name of another, I deny myself. I take not only his name, but himself and what he is, instead of myself and what I am. Such a use of the name of a person may be in virtue of a legal union. A merchant leaving his home and business gives his chief clerk a general power by which he can draw thousands of pounds in the merchant's name. The clerk does this not for himself, but only in the interests of the business. It is because the merchant knows and trusts him as wholly devoted to his interests and business that he dares put his name and property at his command. When the Lord Jesus went to heaven, he left his work, the management of his kingdom on earth, in the hands of his servants. He could not do otherwise than also give them his name to draw all the supplies they needed for the due conduct of his business, and they have the spiritual power to avail themselves of the name of Jesus just to the extent to which they yield themselves to live only for the interests and the work of the master. The use of the name always supposes the surrender of our interests to him who we represent. Or such a use of the name may be in virtue of a life union. In the case of the merchant and his clerk the union is temporary, but we know how oneness of life on earth gives oneness of name. A child has the father's name because he has his life, and often the child of a good father has been honoured or helped by others for the sake of the name he bore. But this would not last long if it were found that it was only a name and that the father's character was wanting. The name and the character of spirit must be in harmony. When such is the case the child will have a double claim on the father's friends. The character secures and increases the love and esteem rendered first for the name's sake. So it is with Jesus and the believer. We are one. We have one life, one spirit with him. For this reason we may come in his name. Our power in using that name, whether with God or men, or devils, depends on the measure of our spiritual life union. The use of the name rests on the unity of life. The name and the spirit of Jesus are one. Note. Whatsoever you shall ask in my name, that is, in my nature, for things with God are called according to their nature. We ask in Christ's name, not when at the end of some request we say, this I ask in the name of Jesus Christ. But when we pray according to his nature, which is love, which seeketh not its own, but only the will of God and the good of all creatures, such asking is the cry of his own spirit in our hearts. Dukes the new man. End note. Or the union that empowers to the use of the name may be the union of love, when a bride whose life has been one of poverty becomes united to the bridegroom. She gives up her own name to be called by his, and has now the full right to use it. She purchases in his name, and that name is not refused. And this is done because the bridegroom has chosen her for himself, counting on her to care for his interests. They are now one, and so the heavenly bridegroom could do nothing less. Having loved us and made us one with himself, what could he do but give those who bear his name the right to represent it before the Father? Or to come with it to himself for all they need? And there is no one who gives himself really to live in the name of Jesus, who does not receive an ever-increasing measure, the spiritual capacity to ask and receive in that name what he will. The bearing of the name of another, supposes my having given up my own, and with it my own independent life. But then as surely, my possession of all there is in the name I have taken instead of my own. Such illustrations show us how defective the common view is of a messenger sent in to ask the name of another, or a guilty one appealing to the name of a surety. No, Jesus himself is with the Father. It is not an absent one in whose name we come. Even when we pray to Jesus himself it must be in his name. The name represents the person. To ask in the name is to ask in full union of interests and life and love with himself, as one who lives in and for him. Let the name of Jesus only have undivided supremacy in my heart and life. My faith will grow to the assurance that what I ask in that name cannot be refused. The name and the power of asking go together. When the name of Jesus has become the power that rules my life, its power in prayer with God will be seen too. We see thus that everything depends on our own relation to the name. The power it has on my life is the power it will have in my prayers. There is more than one expression in Scripture which can make this clear to us. When it says do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, we see how this is the counterpart of the other. Ask all. To do all and to ask all in his name, these go together. When we read, we shall walk in the name of our God. We see how the power of the name must rule in the whole life. Only then will it have power in prayer. It is not to the lips but to the life God looks to see what the name is to us. When Scripture speaks of men who have given their lives for the name of the Lord Jesus, or of one ready to die for the name of the Lord Jesus, we see what our relation to the name must be. When it is everything to me, it will obtain everything for me. If I let it have all I have, it will let me have all it has. Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do. Jesus means the promise literally. Christians have sought to limit it. It looked too free. It was hardly safe to trust man so unconditionally. We did not understand that the word in my name is its own safeguard. It is a spiritual power which no one can use further than he obtains the capacity for by his living and acting in that name. As we bear that name before men, we have power to use it before God. Oh, let us plead for God's Holy Spirit to show us what the name means and what the right use of it is. It is through the Spirit that the name, which is above every name in heaven, will take the place of supremacy in our heart and life too. Disciples of Jesus, let the lessons of this day enter deep into your hearts. The Master says, only pray in my name. Whatsoever ye ask will be given. Heaven is set open to you. The treasures and powers of the world of Spirit are placed at your disposal on behalf of men around you. Oh, come and let us learn to pray in the name of Jesus. As to the disciples, he says to us, hitherto ye have not asked in my name. Ask, and ye shall receive. Let each disciple of Jesus seek to avail himself of the rights of his royal priesthood and use the power placed at his disposal for his circle and his work. Let Christians awake and hear the message. Your prayer can obtain what otherwise will be withheld. Can accomplish what otherwise remains undone. Oh, awake and use the name of Jesus to open the treasures of heaven for this perishing world. Learn as the servants of the King to use his name. Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do. Lord, teach us to pray. Blessed Lord, it is as if each lesson thou givest me has such fullness and depths of meaning, that if I can only learn that one, I shall know how to pray a right. This day I feel again as if I needed but one prayer every day. Lord, teach me what it is to pray in thy name. Teach me so to live and act, to walk and speak, so to do all in the name of Jesus, that my prayer cannot be anything else but in that blessed name too. And teach me, Lord, to hold fast the precious promise that whatsoever we ask in thy name, thou wilt do, the Father will give. Though I do not yet fully understand and still less have fully attained, the wondrous union thou meanest when thou sayest, in my name, I would yet hold fast the promise until it fills my heart with the undoubting assurance, anything in the name of Jesus. Oh, my Lord, let thy Holy Spirit teach me this. Thou didst say of him the comforter whom the Father shall send in my name. He knows what it is to be sent from heaven in thy name, to reveal and to honor the power of that name in thy servants, to use that name alone and so to glorify thee. Lord Jesus, let thy spirit dwell in me and fill me. I would, I do yield my whole being to his rule and leading. Thy name and thy spirit are one. Through him thy name will be the strength of my life and my prayer. Then I shall be able for thy name's sake to forsake all, in thy name to speak to men and to God, and to prove that this is indeed the name above every name. Lord Jesus, oh, teach me by thy Holy Spirit to pray in thy name. Amen. Note, what is meant by praying in Christ's name? It cannot mean simply appearing before God with faith in the mediation of the Saviour. When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, he supplied them with petitions, and afterwards Jesus said to them, hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name. Until the Spirit came, the seven petitions of the Lord's Prayer lay as it were, dormant within them. When by the Holy Ghost Christ descended into their hearts, they desired the very blessings which Christ as our High Priest obtains for us by his prayer from the Father. And such petitions are always answered. The Father is always willing to give what Christ asks. The Spirit of Christ always teaches it influences us to offer the petitions which Christ ratifies and presents to the Father. To pray in Christ's name is therefore to be identified with Christ as to our righteousness, and to be identified with Christ in our desires by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. To pray in the Spirit, to pray according to the will of the Father, to pray in Christ's name are identical expressions. The Father himself loveth us, and is willing to hear us. Two intercessors, Christ the Advocate above, and the Holy Ghost the Advocate within, are the gifts of his love. This view may appear at first less consoling than a more prevalent one, which refers prayer in Christ's name chiefly to our trust in Christ's merit. The defect of this opinion is that it does not combine the intercession of the Savior with the will of the Father, and the indwelling Spirit's aid in prayer. Nor does it fully realize the mediation of Christ, for the mediation consists not merely in that for Christ's sake the Holy Father is able to regard me in my prayer, but also in that Christ himself presents my petitions as his petitions, desired by him for me, even as all blessings are purchased for me by his precious blood. In all prayer the one essential condition is that we are able to offer it in the name of Jesus as according to his desire for us, according to the Father's will, according to the Spirit's teaching, and thus praying in Christ's name is impossible without self-examination, without reflection, without self-denial, in short without the aid of the Spirit. Saphif, the Lord's Prayer, pages 411 and 142. With Christ in the School of Prayer by Andrew Murray. In that day you shall ask me nothing, verily verily I say unto you, whatsoever you shall ask at the Father in my name, he will give it you, hitherto have he 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, and I say not that I will pray the Father for you, for the Father himself loveth you. John 16, 23 to 26. Praying in the Holy Spirit keep yourselves in the love of God. Jude 20, 21. The words of John, 1 John 2, 12 to 14. To little children, to young men, and to fathers, suggest the thought that they're often on the Christian life three great stages of experience. The first, that of the newborn child, with the assurance and the joy of forgiveness. The second, the transition stage of struggle and growth in knowledge and strength. Young men growing strong. Gods were doing its work in them and giving them victory over the evil one. And then the final stage of maturity and ripeness. The fathers, who have entered deeply into the knowledge and fellowship of the eternal one. In Christ's teaching on prayer there appear to be three stages in the prayer life, somewhat analogous. In the Sermon on the Mount we have the initial stage. His teaching is all comprised in one word. Father. Pray to your Father. Your Father sees, hears, knows, and will reward. How much more than any earthly Father. Only be childlike and trustful. Then comes later on something like the transition stage of conflict and conquest, in words like these. This sort goeth not out but by fasting and prayer. Shall not God avenge his own elect who cried day and night unto him? And then we have, in the parting words, a higher stage. The children have become men. They are now the master's friends, from whom he has no secrets, to whom he says, all things that I heard from my Father I made known unto you, and to whom in the off repeated whatsoever ye will, he hands over the keys of the kingdom. Now the time has come for the power of prayer in his name to be proved. The contrast between this final stage and the previous preparatory ones I'll save your marks most distinctly in the words we are to meditate on. Hear the two, ye have asked nothing in my name. At that day ye shall ask in my name. We know what at that day means. It is the day of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The great work Christ was to do on the cross, the mighty power and the complete victory to be manifested in his resurrection and ascension, were to issue in the coming down from heaven, as never before, of the glory of God to dwell in men. The spirit of the glorified Jesus was to come and be the life of his disciples, and one of the marks of that wonderful spirit dispensation was to be a power in prayer hitherto unknown. Prayer in the name of Jesus, asking and obtaining whatsoever they would, is to be the manifestation of the reality of the spirits in dwelling. To understand how the coming of the Holy Spirit was indeed to commence a new epoch in the prayer world, we must remember who he is, what his work and what the significance of his not being given until Jesus was glorified. It is in the spirit that God exists for he is spirit. It is in the spirit that the Son was begotten of the Father. It is in the fellowship of the Spirit that the Father and the Son are one. The eternal never ceasing giving to the Son which is the Father's prerogative, and the eternal asking and receiving which is the Son's right and blessedness. It is through this spirit that this communion of life and love is maintained. It has been so from all eternity. It is so especially now when the Son as mediator ever liveth to pray. The great work which Jesus began on earth of reconciling in his own body, God and man, he carries on in heaven. To accomplish this he took up into his own person the conflict between God's righteousness and our sin. On the cross he once for all ended the struggle in his own body, and then he ascended to heaven, that thence he might in each member of his body carry out the deliverance and manifest the victory he had obtained. It is to do this that he ever liveth to pray. In his unceasing intercession he places himself in living fellowship with the unceasing prayer of his redeemed ones, or rather it is his unceasing intercession which shows itself in their prayers and gives them a power they never had before. He does this through the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the glorified Jesus, was not John 739, could not be until he had been glorified. This gift of the Father was something distinctively new, entirely different from what Old Testament saints had known. The work that the blood affected in heaven when Christ entered within the veil was something so true and new. The redemption of our human nature into fellowship with his resurrection power and his exaltation glory was so intensely real, that taking up of our humanity in Christ into the life of the Three One God was an event of such inconceivable significance, that the Holy Spirit who had to come from Christ's exalted humanity to testify in our hearts of what Christ had accomplished was indeed no longer only what he had been in the Old Testament. It was literally true the Holy Spirit was not yet, for Christ was not yet glorified. He came now first as the Spirit of the glorified Jesus, even as the Son, who was from eternity God, had entered upon a new existence as man, and returned to heaven with what he had not before. So the blessed Spirit, whom the Son on his ascension received from the Father, Acts 233, into his glorified humanity, came to us with the new life which he had not previously to communicate. Under the Old Testament he was invoked as the Spirit of God. At Pentecost he descended as the Spirit of the glorified Jesus, bringing down and communicating to us the full fruit and power of the accomplished redemption. It is in the intercession of Christ that the continued efficacy and application of his redemption is maintained, and it is through the Holy Spirit descending from Christ to us that we are drawn up into the great stream of his ever ascending prayers. The Spirit prays for us without words. In the depths of our heart where even thoughts are at times formless, the Spirit takes us up into the wonderful flow of the life of the three one God. Through the Spirit Christ's prayers become ours and ours are made his. We ask what we will, and it is given to us. We then understand from experience, hitherto you have not asked in my name. At that day you shall ask in my name. Brother, what we need to pray in the name of Christ, to ask that we may receive that our joy may be full, is the baptism of this Holy Ghost. This is more than the Spirit of God under the Old Testament. This is more than the Spirit of conversion and regeneration the disciples had before Pentecost. This is more than the Spirit with a measure of his influence and working. This is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the glorified Jesus in his exaltation power, coming on us as the Spirit of the indwelling Jesus, revealing the Son and the Father within. John 14, 16 to 23. It is when this Spirit is the Spirit not of our hours of prayer, but of our whole life and walk, when this Spirit glorifies Jesus in us by revealing the completeness of his work and making us Holy One with him and like him, that we can pray in his name because we are in very deed one with him. Then it is that we have that immediateness of access to the Father of which Jesus says, I say not that I will pray the Father for you. Oh, we need to understand and believe that to be filled with this, the Spirit of the glorified One, is the one need of God's believing people. Then shall we realise what it is with all prayer and supplication to be praying at all seasons in the Spirit, and what it is praying in the Holy Ghost to keep ourselves in the love of God. At that day, ye shall ask in my name. And so once again the lesson comes, what our prayer avails depends upon what we are and what our life is. It is living in the name of Christ that is the secret of praying in the name of Christ, living in the Spirit that fits for praying in the Spirit. It is abiding in Christ that gives the right and power to ask what we will. The extent of the abiding is the exact measure of the power in prayer. It is the Spirit dwelling within us that prays not in words and thoughts always, but in a breathing and a being deeper than utterance. Just so much as there is of Christ's Spirit in us is their real prayer. Our lives, our lives, oh, let our lives be full of Christ and full of His Spirit, and the wonderfully unlimited promises to our prayer will no longer appear strange. Hitherto ye have 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. Verily, verily I say unto you, whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you. Lord, teach us to pray. Oh, my God, in holy awe I bow before thee, the three in one. Again I have seen how the mystery of prayer is the mystery of the Holy Trinity. I adore the Father who ever hears and the Son who ever lives to pray, and the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son, to lift us up into the fellowship of that ever-blessed, never-ceasing, asking and receiving. I bow, my God, in adoring worship, before the infinite condescension that, thus, through the Holy Spirit, takes us and our prayers into the divine life and its fellowship of love. Oh, my blessed Lord Jesus, teach me to understand thy lesson, that it is the indwelling Spirit streaming from thee, uniting to thee who is the Spirit of prayer. Teach me what it is, as an empty, holy consecrated vessel, to yield myself to his being my life. Teach me to honor and trust him as a living person, to lead my life and my prayer. Teach me especially in prayer to wait in holy silence, and give him place to breathe within me his unutterable intercession. And teach me that through him it is possible to pray without ceasing, and to pray without failing, because he makes me partaker of the never-ceasing and never-failing intercession, in which thou, the Son, dost appear before the Father. Yea, Lord, fulfil in me thy promise, at that day ye shall ask in my name. Verily, verily, I say unto you, whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, that will I give. Amen. Note. Prayer has often been compared to breathing. We have only to carry out the comparison fully to see how wonderful the place is which the Holy Spirit occupies. With every breath we expel the impure air which would soon cause our death, and inhale again the fresh air to which we owe our life. So we give out from us, in confession the sins, in prayer the needs and the desires of our hearts. And in drawing in our breath again we inhale the fresh air of the promises and the love and the life of God in Christ. We do this through the Holy Spirit who is the breath of our life. And this he is because he is the breath of God. The Father breathes him into us to unite himself with our life, and then just as on every exploration there follows again the inhaling or drawing in of the breath, so God draws in again his breath, and the Spirit returns to him laden with the desires and needs of our heart. And thus the Holy Spirit is the breath of the life of God, and the breath of the new life in us. As God breathes him out, we receive him in answer to prayer. As we breathe him back again, he rises to God laden with our supplications. As the Spirit of God in whom the Father and the Son are one, and the intercession of the Son reaches the Father, he is to us the Spirit of prayer. True prayer is the living experience of the truth of the Holy Trinity. The Spirit's breathing, the Son's intercession, the Father's will, these three become one in us. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Joy Chan, with Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray. 26. The Lesson I have prayed for thee, or Christ the Intercessor. But I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not. Luke 22.32 I say not unto you that I will pray the Father for you. John 16.26 He ever liveth to make intercession. Hebrews 7.25 All growth in the spiritual life is connected with the clear insight into what Jesus is to us. The more I realize that Christ must be all to me and in me, that all in Christ is indeed for me, the more I learn to live the real life of faith, which, dying to self, lives wholly in Christ. The Christian life is no longer the vain struggle to live right, but the resting in Christ and finding strength in him as our life, to fight the fight and gain the victory of faith. This is especially true of the life of prayer. As it too comes under the law of faith alone, and is seen in the light of the fullness and completeness there is in Jesus, the believer understands that it need no longer be a matter of strain or anxious care, but an experience of what Christ will do for him and in him. A participation in that life of Christ which, as on earth, so in heaven, ever ascends to the Father as prayer. And he begins to pray not only trusting in the merits of Jesus or in the intercession by which our unworthy prayers are made acceptable, but in that near and close union in virtue of which he prays in us and we in him. Note, see on the difference between having Christ as an advocate or intercessor who stands outside of us, and the having him within us, we abiding in him and he in us through the Holy Spirit perfecting our union with him, so that we ourselves can come directly to the Father in his name. The note above from Beck of Tuwingon. End note. The whole of salvation is Christ himself. He has given himself to us. He himself lives in us. Because he prays, we pray too. As the disciples, when they saw Jesus pray, asked him to make them partakers of what he knew of prayer. So we, now we see him as intercessor on the throne, know that he makes us participate with himself in the life of prayer. How clearly this comes out in the last night of his life. In his high priestly prayer, John 17, he shows us how and what he has to pray to the Father, and will pray when once ascended to heaven. And yet he had in his parting address, so repeatedly also connected his going to the Father with their new life of prayer. The two would be ultimately connected. His entrance on the work of his eternal intercession would be the commencement and the power of their new prayer life in his name. It is the sight of Jesus in his intercession that gives us power to pray in his name. All right and power of prayer is Christ's. He makes us share in his intercession. To understand this, think first of his intercession. He ever lived to make intercession. The work of Christ on earth as priest was but a beginning. It was as Aaron he shed his blood. It is as Melchizedek that he now lives within the veil to continue his work after the power of the eternal life. As Melchizedek is more glorious than Aaron, so it is in the work of intercession that the atonement has its true power and glory. It is Christ that died, yea more, who is even at the right hand of God, who maketh intercession for us. That intercession is an intense reality, a work that is absolutely necessary, and without which the continued application of redemption cannot take place. In the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus the wondrous reconciliation took place, by which man became partaker of the divine life and blessedness. But the real personal appropriation of this reconciliation in each of his members here below cannot take place without the unceasing exercise of his divine power by the head in heaven. In all conversion and sanctification, in every victory over sin and the world, there is a real forth-putting of the power of him who is mighty to save. And this exercise of his power only takes place through his prayer. He asks of the Father and receives from the Father. He is able to save to the uttermost, because he ever liveth to make intercession. There is not a need of his people that he receives in intercession what the Godhead has to give. His mediation on the throne is as real and indispensable as on the cross. Nothing takes place without his intercession. It engages all his time and powers, is his unceasing occupation at the right hand of the Father. And we participate not only in the benefits of this his work, but in the work itself. This because we are his body. Body and members are one. The head cannot say to the feet, I have no need of thee. We share with Jesus in all he is and has. The glory which thou gave us to me I have given them. We are partakers of his life, his righteousness, his work. We share with him in his intercession too. It is not a work he does without us. We do this because we are partakers of his life. Christ is our life. No longer I, but Christ liveth in me. The life in him and in us is identical, one and the same. His life in us is an ever-praying life. When it descends and takes possession of us it does not lose its character. In us too it is the ever-praying life, a life that without ceasing asks and receives from God. And this not as if there were two separate currents of prayer rising upwards, one from him and one from his people. No, but the substantial life union is also prayer union. What he prays passes through us and what we pray passes through him. He is the Angel with the Golden Sensor. Under him there was given much incense. The secret of acceptable prayer, that he should add it unto the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar. We live, we abide in him, the interceding one. The only begotten is the only one who has the right to pray. To him alone it was said, ask and it shall be given thee. As in all other things the fullness dwells in him. So the true prayerfulness too. He alone has the power of prayer. And just as the growth of the spiritual life consists in the clearer insight that all the treasures are in him, and that we too are in him, to receive each moment what we possess in him, grace for grace. So with the prayer life too. Our faith into intercession of Jesus must not only be that he prays in our stead when we do not or cannot pray, but that as the author of our life and our faith, he draws us on to pray in unison with himself. Our prayer must be a work of faith in this sense too, that as we know that Jesus communicates his whole life in us, he also out of that prayer fullness which is his alone, breathes into us our praying. To many a believer it was a new epoch in his spiritual life, when it was revealed to him how truly and entirely Christ was his life, standing good as surety for his remaining faithful and obedient. It was then first that he really began to live a faith life. No less blessed will be the discovery that Christ is surety for our prayer life too, the center and embodiment of all prayer to be communicated by him through the Holy Spirit to his people. He even liveth to make intercession as the head of the body, as the leader in that new and living way which he had opened up, as the author and the perfector of our faith. He provides in everything for the life of his redeemed ones by giving his own life in them. He cares for their life of prayer by taking them up into his heavenly prayer life, by giving and maintaining his prayer life within them. I have prayed for thee not to render thy faith needless, but that thy faith fail not. Our faith and prayer of faith is rooted in his. It is, if ye abide in me, the ever living intercessor, and pray with me and in me, ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto you. The thought of our fellowship in the intercession of Jesus reminds us of what he has taught us more than once before, how all these wonderful prayer promises have as their aim and their justification, the glory of God in the manifestation of his kingdom and the salvation of sinners. As long as we only or chiefly pray for ourselves, the promises of the last night must remain a sealed book to us. It is to the fruit-bearing branches of the vine. It is to disciples sent into the world as the Father sent him, to live for perishing men. It is to his faithful servants and intimate friends who take up the work he leaves behind, who have like their Lord become as the seed-corn, losing its life to multiply its manifold. It is to search that the promises are given, that us each find out what the work is, and who the souls are entrusted to our special prayers. Let us make our intercession for them our life of fellowship with God, and we shall not only find the promises of power and prayer made true to us, but we shall then first begin to realise how our abiding in Christ, and his abiding in us, makes us share in his own joy of blessing and saving man. O most wonderful intercession of our blessed Lord Jesus, to which we not only owe everything, but in which we are taken up as active partners and fellow workers. Now we understand what it is to pray in the name of Jesus, and why it has such power. In his name, in his spirit, in himself, in perfect union with him. O wondrous ever-active and most efficacious intercession of the man Christ Jesus, when shall we be wholly taken up into it and always pray in it? Lord, teach us to pray. Blessed Lord, in lowly adoration I would again bow before Thee. Thy whole redemption work has now passed into prayer. All that now occupies Thee in maintaining and dispensing what Thou didst purchase with Thy blood is only prayer. Thou ever livest to pray, and because we are and abide in Thee, the direct access to the Father is always open. Our life can be one of unceasing prayer. And the answer to our prayer is sure. Blessed Lord, Thou hast invited Thy people to be Thy fellow workers in a life of prayer. Thou hast united Thyself with Thy people and makest them as Thy bodies share with Thee in that ministry of intercession, through which alone the world can be filled with the fruit of Thy redemption and the glory of the Father. With more liberty than ever, I come to Thee, my Lord, and beseech Thee. Teach me to pray. Thy life is prayer. Thy life is mine. Lord, teach me to pray in Thee, like Thee. And, oh my Lord, give me specially to know, as Thou didst promise Thy disciples, that Thou art in the Father, and I in Thee, and Thou in Me. Let the uniting power of the Holy Spirit make my whole life and abiding in Thee in Thy intercession, so that my prayer may be its echo, and the Father hear me in Thee, and Thee in Me. Lord Jesus, let Thy mind in everything be in Me, and my life in everything be in Thee. So shall I be prepared to be the channel through which Thy intercession pours its blessing on the world. Amen. Note. The new epoch of prayer in the name of Jesus is pointed out by Christ as the time of the outpouring of the Spirit, in which the disciples enter upon a more enlightened apprehension of the economy of redemption, and become as clearly conscious of their oneness with Jesus as of His oneness with the Father. Their prayer in the name of Jesus is now directly to the Father Himself. I say not that I will pray for You, for the Father Himself loveth You. Jesus says, while He had previously spoken of the time before the Spirit's coming, I will pray the Father, and He will give you the Comforter. This prayer thus has its central thought, the insight into our being united to God in Christ, as on both sides the living bond of union between God and us. John 17 23, I in them and Thou in me. So that in Jesus we behold the Fathers united to us, and ourselves as united to the Father. Jesus Christ must have been revealed to us not only through the truth in the mind, but in our inmost personal consciousness as the living personal reconciliation, as He in whom God's Fatherhood and Father Love have been perfectly united with human nature and it with God. Not that with the immediate prayer to the Father, the mediatorship of Christ is set aside, but it is no longer looked at as something external existing outside of us, but as a real living spiritual existence within us, so that the Christ for us, the mediator, has really become Christ in us. When the consciousness of this oneness between God in Christ and us in Christ still is wanting, or has been darkened by the sense of guilt, then the prayer of faith looks to our Lord as the advocate who pays the Father for us. Compare John 16 26 with John 14 16 17, 9 20, Luke 21 32, 1 John 2 1 To take Christ thus in prayer's advocate is according to John 16 26, not perfectly the same as the prayer in His name. Christ's advocacy is meant to lead us on to that inner self-standing life union with Him and with the Father in Him, in virtue of which Christ is He in whom God enters into immediate relation and unites Himself with us, and in whom we in all circumstances enter into immediate relation with God. Even so the prayer in the name of Jesus does not consist in our prayer at His command. The disciples have prayed thus ever since the Lord had given them His our Father, and yet He says, hitherto ye have not prayed in my name. Only when the mediation of Christ has become through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, life and power within us, and so His mind, as it found expression in His word and work, has taken possession of and filled our personal consciousness and will, so that in faith and love we have Jesus in us as the reconciler who has actually made us one with God. Only then His name, which included His nature and His work, has become truth and power in us, not only for us, and we have in the name of Jesus the free, direct access to the Father, which is sure of being heard. Prayer in the name of Jesus is the liberty of a son with the Father, just as Jesus had this as the first begotten. We pray in the place of Jesus not as if we could put ourselves in His place, but in as far as we are in Him and He in us. We go direct to the Father, but only as the Father is in Christ, not as if He was separate from Christ. Whoever thus the inner man does not live in Christ and has Him not present as the living one, where His word is not ruling in the heart and its spirit power, where His truth and life have not become the life of our soul, it is vain to think that a formula like, for the sake of the idea son, will avail Christlich Ethik von Dr. I.T. Beck-Tübingen, 339 End of Chapter 26