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.h1
The Reality of Prayer
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EDITED BY HOMER W. HODGE
The Spiritual Life Books
By EDWARD M. BOUNDS
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The Possibilities of Prayer.
Cloth $1.25
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A rich, exceptionally helpful addition to Doctor
Bounds’ books, which deal with the place and significance
prayer has in the life of the believer.
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Heaven: A Place—A City—A Home.
Cloth $1.25
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Possessed of a wonderfully full knowledge of
Holy Scripture, a man of unswerving faith and mystical
insight, Mr. Bounds writes with a certitude,
confidence and joyous anticipation of the eternal
felicity awaiting the faithful believer.
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Purpose in Prayer. Cloth $1.25
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“Mr. Bounds has the gift of insight, and with
this a faculty for selecting words to express precisely
that which responds to the heart-hunger of those
who are seeking spiritual enlightenment.”
—Sunday School Times.
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Satan: His Personality, His Power, His Overthrow.
Cloth $1.25
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With irrefutable logic backed by the testimony
of Holy Scripture, it shows the Arch Enemy of mankind
to be a Person—actual, literal, ever active for
the destruction of human souls. Indicates whereby
Christian believers can withstand his assaults and
how they may finally triumph.
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The Reality of Prayer
By
EDWARD M. BOUNDS, D.D.
Author of “Purpose in Prayer,” “The Possibilities
of Prayer,” “Heaven,” “Satan,” etc.
EDITED BY
HOMER W. HODGE
New York Chicago
Fleming H. Revell Company
London and Edinburgh
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Copyright, 1924, by
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave.
London: 21 Paternoster Square
Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street
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.h2
Foreword
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During the last twenty-five years of the
nineteenth century and a score of years of
the twentieth, there lived and died three
great men of God whom I knew—men whom God
has doubtless numbered among the foremost of His
heavenly host. The first was Edward McKendree
Bounds, author of this present volume and the
other “Spiritual Life” Books. The second was
Claud L. Chilton, minister for many years in the
Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and a musical
composer of religious music of considerable note.
The third, Clement C. Cary, preacher and editor,
lost his life in an automobile accident in 1922. The
fourth was Dr. B. F. Haynes, minister, editor and
author, who died in Nashville, in 1923.
What Dr. Thomas Goodwin, the Puritan, was to
Strong, Arrowsmith and Spurstow; what John
Wesley was to Whitefield, Fletcher and Clark,
Bounds was to Chilton, Cary and Haynes. What
David Brainerd’s Journal did for Cary, Martyn,
McCheyne, Bounds’ books can do for thousands of
God’s children. He was a man who lived ever on
prayer ground. He walked and talked with the
Lord. Prayer was the great weapon in his arsenal,
his pathway to the Throne of Grace. None who
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read what he has written can fail of realising that
Edward McKendree Bounds talked with God, as a
man talketh to his friend.
Homer W. Hodge.
Flushing, N. Y.
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Contents
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#I. Prayer—A Privilege, Princely, Sacred:chap01# . . . #9#
#II. Prayer—Fills Man’s Poverty with God’s Riches:chap02# . . . #18#
#III. Prayer—The All-Important Essence of Earthly Worship:chap03# . . . #28#
#IV. God Has Everything to Do with Prayer:chap04# . . . #34#
#V. Jesus Christ, the Divine Teacher of Prayer:chap05# . . . #46#
#VI. Jesus Christ, the Divine Teacher of Prayer (Continued):chap06# . . . #56#
#VII. Jesus Christ an Example of Prayer:chap07# . . . #69#
#VIII. Prayer Incidents in the Life of Our Lord:chap08# . . . #80#
#IX. Prayer Incidents in the Life of Our Lord (Continued):chap09# . . . #87#
#X. Our Lord’s Model Prayer:chap10# . . . #97#
#XI. Our Lord’s Sacerdotal Prayer:chap11# . . . #102#
#XII. The Gethsemane Prayer:chap12# . . . #112#
#XIII. The Holy Spirit and Prayer:chap13# . . . #122#
#XIV. The Holy Spirit Our Helper in Prayer:chap14# . . . #133#
#XV. The Two Comforters and Two Advocates:chap15# . . . #143#
#XVI. Prayer and the Holy Ghost Dispensation:chap16# . . . #148#
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.h2 id=chap01
I | PRAYER—A PRIVILEGE, PRINCELY, SACRED
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I am the creature of a day, passing through life as
an arrow through the air. I am a spirit come from
God and returning to God; just hovering over the
great gulf; till a few moments hence I am no more
seen; I drop into an unchangeable eternity! I want
to know one thing, the way to heaven; how to land
safe on that happy shore. God Himself has condescended
to teach the way; for this end He came from
heaven. He hath written it down in a book. O give
me that book! At any price give me the Book of
God! Lord, is it not Thy word—“If any man lack
wisdom, let him ask of God? Thou givest liberally,
and upbraidest not. Thou hast said, if any be willing
to do Thy will he shall know. I am willing to do;
let me know Thy will.”—John Wesley.
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The word “Prayer” expresses the largest
and most comprehensive approach unto
God. It gives prominence to the element
of devotion. It is communion and intercourse with
God. It is enjoyment of God. It is access to God.
“Supplication” is a more restricted and more intense
form of prayer, accompanied by a sense of
personal need, limited to the seeking in an urgent
manner of a supply for pressing need.
“Supplication” is the very soul of prayer in the
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way of pleading for some one thing, greatly needed,
and the need intensely felt.
“Intercession” is an enlargement in prayer, a
going out in broadness and fullness from self to
others. Primarily, it does not centre in praying for
others, but refers to the freeness, boldness and
childlike confidence of the praying. It is the fullness
of confiding influence in the soul’s approach to
God, unlimited and unhesitating in its access and
its demands. This influence and confident trust is
to be used for others.
Prayer always, and everywhere is an immediate
and confiding approach to, and a request of, God
the Father. In the prayer universal and perfect,
as the pattern of all praying, it is “Our Father,
Who art in Heaven.” At the grave of Lazarus,
Jesus lifted up His eyes and said, “Father.” In
His sacerdotal prayer, Jesus lifted up His eyes to
Heaven, and said, “Father.” Personal, familiar
and paternal was all His praying. Strong, too,
and touching and tearful, was His praying. Read
these words of Paul: “Who in the days of his
flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications,
with strong crying and tears, unto him
that was able to save him from death, and was
heard in that he feared” (Hebrews 5:7).
So elsewhere (James 1:5) we have “asking”
set forth as prayer: “If any of you lack wisdom,
let him ask of God, who giveth to all men liberally,
and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him.”
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“Asking of God” and “receiving” from the
Lord—direct application to God, immediate connection
with God—that is prayer.
In John 5:13 we have this statement about
prayer:
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“And this is the confidence that we have in him,
that if we ask anything according to his will, he heareth
us. And if we know that he heareth us, whatsoever
we ask, we know that we have the petitions that
we desired of him.”
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In Philippians 4:6 we have these words about
prayer:
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“Be careful for nothing, but in everything, by
prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your
requests be made known unto God.”
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What is God’s will about prayer? First of all,
it is God’s will that we pray. Jesus Christ “spake
a parable unto them to this end, that men ought
always to pray, and not to faint.”
Paul writes to young Timothy about the first
things which God’s people are to do, and first
among the first he puts prayer: “I exhort, therefore,
that first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions,
and giving of thanks, be made for all
men” (I Tim. 2:1).
In connection with these words Paul declares
that the will of God and the redemption and mediation
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of Jesus Christ for the salvation for all men
are all vitally concerned in this matter of prayer.
In this his apostolical authority and solicitude of
soul conspire with God’s will and Christ’s intercession
to will that “the men pray everywhere.”
Note how frequently prayer is brought forward
in the New Testament: “Continuing instant in
prayer”; “Pray without ceasing”; “Continue in
prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving”;
“Be ye sober and watch unto prayer”; Christ’s
clarion call was “watch and pray.” What are all
these and others, if it is not the will of God that
men should pray?
Prayer is complement, make efficient and cooperate
with God’s will, whose sovereign sway is to
run parallel in extent and power with the atonement
of Jesus Christ. He, through the Eternal Spirit,
by the grace of God, “tasted death for every man.”
We, through the Eternal Spirit, by the grace of
God, pray for every man.
But how do I know that I am praying by the
will of God? Every true attempt to pray is in
response to the will of God. Bungling it may be
and untutored by human teachers, but it is acceptable
to God, because it is in obedience to His will.
If I will give myself up to the inspiration of the
Spirit of God, who commands me to pray, the
details and the petitions of that praying will all
fall into harmony with the will of Him who wills
that I should pray.
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Prayer is no little thing, no selfish and small
matter. It does not concern the petty interests of
one person. The littlest prayer broadens out by the
will of God till it touches all words, conserves all
interests, and enhances man’s greatest wealth, and
God’s greatest good. God is so concerned that men
pray that He has promised to answer prayer. He
has not promised to do something general if we
pray, but He has promised to do the very thing for
which we pray.
Prayer, as taught by Jesus in its essential features,
enters into all the relations of life. It sanctifies
brotherliness. To the Jew, the altar was the
symbol and place of prayer. The Jew devoted the
altar to the worship of God. Jesus Christ takes
the altar of prayer and devotes it to the worship
of the brotherhood. How Christ purifies the altar
and enlarges it! How He takes it out of the sphere
of a mere performance, and makes its virtue to
consist, not in the mere act of praying, but in the
spirit which actuates us toward men. Our spirit
toward folks is of the life of prayer. We must be
at peace with men, and, if possible, have them at
peace with us, before we can be at peace with God.
Reconciliation with men is the forerunner of reconciliation
with God. Our spirit and words must
embrace men before they can embrace God. Unity
with the brotherhood goes before unity with God.
“Therefore, if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and
there rememberest that thy brother hath aught
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against thee; leave there thy gift before the altar,
and go thy way. First, be reconciled to thy brother,
and then come and offer thy gift” (Matt. 5:23).
Non-praying is lawlessness, discord, anarchy.
Prayer, in the moral government of God, is as
strong and far-reaching as the law of gravitation
in the material world, and it is as necessary as
gravitation to hold things in their proper sphere
and in life.
The space occupied by prayer in the Sermon on
the Mount bespeaks its estimate by Christ and the
importance it holds in His system. Many important
principles are discussed in a verse or two. The
Sermon consists of one hundred and eleven verses,
and eighteen are about prayer directly, and others
indirectly.
Prayer was one of the cardinal principles of piety
in every dispensation and to every child of God. It
did not pertain to the business of Christ to originate
duties, but to recover, to recast, to spiritualise, and
to re-enforce those duties which are cardinal and
original.
With Moses the great features of prayer are
prominent. He never beats the air nor fights a
sham battle. The most serious and strenuous
business of his serious and strenuous life was
prayer. He is much at it with the intensest earnestness
of his soul. Intimate as he was with God,
his intimacy did not abate the necessity of prayer.
This intimacy only brought clearer insight into the
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nature and necessity of prayer, and led him to see
the greater obligations to pray, and to discover the
larger results of praying. In reviewing one of the
crises through which Israel passed, when the very
existence of the nation was imperilled, he writes:
“I fell down before the Lord forty days and forty
nights.” Wonderful praying and wonderful results!
Moses knew how to do wonderful praying,
and God knew how to give wonderful results.
The whole force of Bible statement is to increase
our faith in the doctrine that prayer affects God,
secures favors from God, which can be secured in
no other way, and which will not be bestowed by
God if we do not pray. The whole canon of Bible
teaching is to illustrate the great truth that God
hears and answers prayer. One of the great purposes
of God in His book is to impress upon us
indelibly the great importance, the priceless value,
and the absolute necessity of asking God for the
things which we need for time and eternity. He
urges us by every consideration, and presses and
warns us by every interest. He points us to His
own Son, turned over to us for our good, as His
pledge that prayer will be answered, teaching us
that God is our Father, able to do all things for
us and to give all things to us, much more than
earthly parents are able or willing to do for their
children.
Let us thoroughly understand ourselves and understand,
also, this great business of prayer. Our
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one great business is prayer, and we will never do it
well without we fasten to it by all binding force.
We will never do it well without arranging the best
conditions of doing it well. Satan has suffered so
much by good praying that all his wily, shrewd
and ensnaring devices will be used to cripple its
performances.
We must, by all the fastenings we can find, cable
ourselves to prayer. To be loose in time and place
is to open the door to Satan. To be exact, prompt,
unswerving, and careful in even the little things, is
to buttress ourselves against the Evil One.
Prayer, by God’s very oath, is put in the very
stones of God’s foundations, as eternal as its companion,
“And men shall pray for him continually.”
This is the eternal condition which advances His
cause, and makes it powerfully aggressive. Men
are to always pray for it. Its strength, beauty and
aggression lie in their prayers. Its power lies
simply in its power to pray. No power is found
elsewhere but in its ability to pray. “For my
house shall be called the house of prayer for all
people.” It is based on prayer, and carried on by
the same means.
Prayer is a privilege, a sacred, princely privilege.
Prayer is a duty, an obligation most binding, and
most imperative, which should hold us to it. But
prayer is more than a privilege, more than a duty.
It is a means, an instrument, a condition. Not to
pray is to lose much more than to fail in the exercise
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and enjoyment of a high, or sweet privilege.
Not to pray is to fail along lines far more important
than even the violation of an obligation.
Prayer is the appointed condition of getting
God’s aid. This aid is as manifold and illimitable
as God’s ability, and as varied and exhaustless is
this aid as man’s need. Prayer is the avenue
through which God supplies man’s wants. Prayer
is the channel through which all good flows from
God to man, and all good from men to men. God
is the Christian’s father. Asking and giving are in
that relation.
Man is the one more immediately concerned in
this great work of praying. It ennobles man’s
reason to employ it in prayer. The office and work
of prayer is the divinest engagement of man’s
reason. Prayer makes man’s reason to shine. Intelligence
of the highest order approves prayer.
He is the wisest man who prays the most and the
best. Prayer is the school of wisdom as well as
of piety.
Prayer is not a picture to handle, to admire, to
look at. It is not beauty, coloring, shape, attitude,
imagination, or genius. These things do not pertain
to its character or conduct. It is not poetry
nor music. Its inspiration and melody come from
Heaven. Prayer belongs to the spirit, and at times
it possesses the spirit and stirs the spirit with high
and holy purposes and resolves.
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.h2 id=chap02
II | PRAYER—FILLS MAN’S POVERTY WITH GOD’S RICHES
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For two hours I struggled on, forsaken of God, and
met neither God nor man, all one chilly afternoon.
When at last, standing still and looking at Schiehallion
clothed in white from top to bottom, this of
David shot up into my heart: “Wash me, and I shall
be whiter than snow!” In a moment I was with
God, or rather God was with me. I walked home
with my heart in a flame of fire.
—Alexander Whyte, D.D.
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We have much fine writing and learned talk
about the subjective benefits of prayer;
how prayer secures its full measure of
results, not by affecting God, but by affecting us,
by becoming a training school for those who pray.
We are taught by such teachers that the province
of prayer is not to get, but to train. Prayer thus
becomes a mere performance, a drill-sergeant, a
school, in which patience, tranquility and dependence
are taught. In this school, denial of prayer is
the most valuable teacher. How well all this may
look, and how reasonable soever it may seem, there
is nothing of it in the Bible. The clear and oft-repeated
language of the Bible is that prayer is to
be answered by God; that God occupies the relation
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of a father to us, and that as Father He gives to us
when we ask the things for which we ask. The
best praying, therefore, is the praying that gets an
answer.
The possibilities and necessity of prayer are
graven in the eternal foundations of the Gospel.
The relation that is established between the Father
and the Son and the decreed covenant between the
two, has prayer as the base of its existence, and
the conditions of the advance and success of the
Gospel. Prayer is the condition by which all foes
are to be overcome and all the inheritance is to be
possessed.
These are axiomatic truths, though they may be
very homely ones. But these are the times when
Bible axioms need to be stressed, pressed, iterated
and reiterated. The very air is rife with influences,
practices and theories which sap foundations,
and the most veritable truths and the most
self-evident axioms go down by insidious and invisible
attacks.
More than this: the tendency of these times is to
an ostentatious parade of doing, which enfeebles
the life and dissipates the spirit of praying. There
may be kneeling, and there may be standing in
prayerful attitude. There may be much bowing of
the head, and yet there may be no serious, real
praying. Prayer is real work. Praying is vital
work. Prayer has in its keeping the very heart of
worship. There may be the exhibit, the circumstance,
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and the pomp of praying, and yet no real
praying. There may be much attitude, gesture,
and verbiage, but no praying.
Who can approach into God’s presence in
prayer? Who can come before the great God,
Maker of all worlds, the God and Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ, who holds in His hands all good,
and who is all powerful and able to do all things?
Man’s approach to this great God—what lowliness,
what truth, what cleanness of hands, and purity of
heart is needed and demanded!
Definition of prayer scarcely belongs to Bible
range at any point. Everywhere we are impressed
that it is more important and urgent that men pray,
than that they be skilled in the homiletic didactics
of prayer. That is a thing of the heart, not of the
schools. It is more of feeling than of words.
Praying is the best school in which to learn to pray,
prayer the best dictionary to define the art and
nature of praying.
We repeat and reiterate. Prayer is not a mere
habit, riveted by custom and memory, something
which must be gone through with, its value depending
upon the decency and perfection of the performance.
Prayer is not a duty which must be
performed, to ease obligation and to quiet conscience.
Prayer is not mere privilege, a sacred indulgence
to be taken advantage of, at leisure, at
pleasure, at will, and no serious loss attending its
omission.
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Prayer is a solemn service due to God, an adoration,
a worship, an approach to God for some request,
the presenting of some desire, the expression
of some need to Him, who supplies all need, and
who satisfies all desires; who, as a Father, finds His
greatest pleasure in relieving the wants and granting
the desires of His children. Prayer is the
child’s request, not to the winds nor to the world,
but to the Father. Prayer is the outstretched arms
of the child for the Father’s help. Prayer is the
child’s cry calling to the Father’s ear, the Father’s
heart, and to the Father’s ability, which the Father
is to hear, the Father is to feel, and which the
Father is to relieve. Prayer is the seeking of God’s
great and greatest good, which will not come if we
do not pray.
Prayer is an ardent and believing cry to God for
some specific thing. God’s rule is to answer by
giving the specific thing asked for. With it may
come much of other gifts and graces. Strength,
serenity, sweetness, and faith may come as the
bearers of the gifts. But even they come because
God hears and answers prayer.
We do but follow the plain letter and spirit of
the Bible when we affirm that God answers prayer,
and answers by giving us the very things we desire,
and that the withholding of that which we desire
and the giving of something else is not the rule, but
rare and exceptional. When His children cry for
bread He gives them bread.
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Revelation does not deal in philosophical subtleties,
nor verbal niceties and hair-splitting distinctions.
It unfolds relationships, declares principles,
and enforces duties. The heart must define, the
experience must realise. Paul came on the stage
too late to define prayer. That which had been so
well done by patriarchs and prophets needed no
return to dictionaries. Christ is Himself the illustration
and definition of prayer. He prayed as
man had never prayed. He put prayer on a higher
basis, with grander results and simpler being than
it had ever known. He taught Paul how to pray
by the revelation of Himself, which is the first call
to prayer, and the first lesson in praying. Prayer,
like love, is too ethereal and too heavenly to be held
in the gross arms of chilly definitions. It belongs
to Heaven, and to the heart, and not to words and
ideas only.
Prayer is no petty invention of man, a fancied
relief for fancied ills. Prayer is no dreary performance,
dead and death-dealing, but is God’s
enabling act for man, living and life-giving, joy
and joy-giving. Prayer is the contact of a living
soul with God. In prayer, God stoops to kiss man,
to bless man, and to aid man in everything that
God can devise or man can need. Prayer fills man’s
emptiness with God’s fullness. It fills man’s
poverty with God’s riches. It puts away man’s
weakness with God’s strength. It banishes
man’s littleness with God’s greatness. Prayer is
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God’s plan to supply man’s great and continuous
need with God’s great and continuous abundance.
What is this prayer to which men are called? It
is not a mere form, a child’s play. It is serious,
difficult work, the manliest, the mightiest work, the
divinest work which man can do. Prayer lifts men
out of the earthliness and links them with the heavenly.
Men are never nearer Heaven, nearer God,
never more God-like, never in deeper sympathy and
truer partnership with Jesus Christ, than when
praying. Love, philanthropy, holy affiances,—all
of them helpful and tender for men—are born and
perfected by prayer.
Prayer is not merely a question of duty, but of
salvation. Are men saved who are not men of
prayer? Is not the gift, the inclination, the habit
of prayer, one of the elements or characteristics of
salvation? Can it be possible to be in affinity with
Jesus Christ and not be prayerful? Is it possible
to have the Holy Spirit and not have the spirit of
prayer? Can one have the new birth and not be
born to prayer? Is not the life of the Spirit and
the life of prayer coördinate and consistent? Can
brotherly love be in the heart which is unschooled
in prayer?
We have two kinds of prayer named in the New
Testament—prayer and supplication. Prayer denotes
prayer in general. Supplication is a more
intense and more special form of prayer. These
two, supplication and prayer, ought to be combined.
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Then we would have devotion in its widest and
sweetest form, and supplication with its most earnest
and personal sense of need.
In Paul’s Prayer Directory, found in the sixth
chapter of Ephesians, we are taught to be always
in prayer, as we are always in the battle. The Holy
Spirit is to be sought by intense supplication, and
our supplications are to be charged by His vitalising,
illuminating and ennobling energy. Watchfulness
is to fit us for this intense praying and intense
fighting. Perseverance is an essential element in
successful praying, as in every other realm of conflict.
The saints universal are to be helped on to
victory by the aid of our prayers. Apostolic courage,
ability and success are to be gained by the
prayers of the soldier saints everywhere.
It is only those of deep and true vision who can
administer prayer. These “Living Creatures,”
in Revelation 4:6, are described as “full of eyes
before and behind,” “full of eyes within.” Eyes
are for seeing. Clearness, intensity, and perfection
of sight are in it. Vigilance and profound insight
are in it, the faculty of knowing. It is by prayer
that the eyes of our hearts are opened. Clear, profound
knowledge of the mysteries of grace is secured
by prayer. These “Living Creatures” had
eyes “within and without.” They were “full of
eyes.” The highest form of life is intelligent.
Ignorance is degrading and low, in the spiritual
realm as it is in other realms. Prayer gives us
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eyes to see God. Prayer is seeing God. The
prayer life is knowledge without and within. All
vigilance without, all vigilance within. There can
be no intelligent prayer without knowledge within.
Our inner condition and our inner needs must be
felt and known.
It takes prayer to minister. It takes life, the
highest form of life, to minister. Prayer is the
highest intelligence, the profoundest wisdom, the
most vital, the most joyous, the most efficacious,
the most powerful of all vocations. It is life, radiant,
transporting, eternal life. Away with dry
forms, with dead, cold habits of prayer! Away
with sterile routine, with senseless performances
and petty playthings in prayer! Let us get at the
serious work, the chief business of men, that of
prayer. Let us work at it skillfully. Let us seek
to be adepts in this great work of praying. Let us
be master-workmen, in this high art of praying.
Let us be so in the habit of prayer, so devoted to
prayer, so filled with its rich spices, so ardent by its
holy flame, that all Heaven and earth will be perfumed
by its aroma, and nations yet in the womb
will be blest by our prayers. Heaven will be fuller
and brighter in glorious inhabitants, earth will be
better prepared for its bridal day, and hell robbed
of many of its victims, because we have lived
to pray.
There is not only a sad and ruinous neglect of
any attempt to pray, but there is an immense waste
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in the seeming praying which is done, as official
praying, state praying, mere habit praying. Men
cleave to the form and semblance of a thing after
the heart and reality have gone out of it. This
finds illustrations in many who seem to pray.
Formal praying has a strong hold and a strong
following.
Hannah’s statement to Eli and her defense
against his charge of hypocrisy was: “I have
poured out my soul before the Lord.” God’s
serious promise to the Jews was, “Then shall ye
call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me,
and I will hearken unto you. And ye shall seek me
and find me when ye shall search for me with all
your heart.”
Let all the present day praying be measured by
these standards, “Pouring out the soul before
God,” and “Seeking with all the heart,” and how
much of it will be found to be mere form, waste,
worthless. James says of Elijah that he “prayed
with prayer.”
In Paul’s directions to Timothy about prayer,
(I Tim. 1:8) we have a comprehensive verbal description
of prayer in its different departments, or
varied manifestations. They are all in the plural
form, supplications, prayers and intercessions.
They declare the many-sidedness, the endless diversity,
and the necessity of going beyond the
formal simplicity of a single prayer, and press and
add prayer upon prayer, supplication to supplication,
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intercession over and over again, until the
combined force of prayers in their most superlative
modes, unite their aggregation and pressure with
cumulative power to our praying. The unlimited
superlative and the unlimited plural are the only
measures of prayer. The one term of “prayer” is
the common and comprehensive one for the act, the
duty, the spirit, and the service we call prayer. It
is the condensed statement of worship. The heavenly
worship does not have the element of prayer
so conspicuous. Prayer is the conspicuous, all-important
essence and the all-colouring ingredient
of earthly worship, while praise is the pre-eminent,
comprehensive, all-colouring, all-inspiring element
of the heavenly worship.
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.sp 4
.h2 id=chap03
III | PRAYER—THE ALL-IMPORTANT ESSENCE OF EARTHLY WORSHIP
.pm letter-start
Where the spiritual consciousness is concerned—the
department which asks the question and demands
the evidence—no evidence is competent or relevant
except such as is spiritual. Only that which is above
matter and above logic can be heard, because the very
question at issue is the existence and personality of a
spiritual and supernatural God. Only the Spirit himself
beareth witness with our spirit. This must be
done in a spiritual or supernatural way, or it cannot
be done at all.—C. L. Chilton.
.pm letter-end
The Jewish law and the prophets know something
of God as a Father. Occasional and
imperfect, yet comforting glimpses they had
of the great truth of God’s Fatherhood, and of our
sonship. Christ lays the foundation of prayer deep
and strong with this basic principle. The law of
prayer, the right to pray, rests on sonship. “Our
Father” brings us into the closest relationship to
God. Prayer is the child’s approach, the child’s
plea, the child’s right. It is the law of prayer that
looks up, that lifts up the eye to “Our Father, Who
art in Heaven.” Our Father’s house is our home in
Heaven. Heavenly citizenship and heavenly homesickness
are in prayer. Prayer is an appeal from
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the lowness, from the emptiness, from the need of
earth, to the highness, the fullness and to the all-sufficiency
of Heaven. Prayer turns the eye and
the heart heavenward with a child’s longings, a
child’s trust and a child’s expectancy. To hallow
God’s Name, to speak it with bated breath, to hold
it sacredly, this also belongs to prayer.
In this connection it might be said that it is
requisite to dictate to children the necessity of
prayer in order to their salvation. But alas! Unhappily
it is thought sufficient to tell them there is
a Heaven and a hell; that they must avoid the latter
place and seek to reach the former. Yet they
are not taught the easiest way to arrive at salvation.
The only way to Heaven is by the route of prayer,
such prayer of the heart which every one is capable
of. It is prayer, not of reasonings which are the
fruits of study, or of the exercise of the imagination,
which fills the mind with wondering objects,
but which fails to settle salvation, but the simple,
confidential prayer of the child to his Father in
Heaven.
Poverty of spirit enters into true praying.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the
kingdom of Heaven.” “The poor” means paupers,
beggars, those who live on the bounties of
others, who live by begging. Christ’s people live
by asking. “Prayer is the Christian’s vital breath.”
It is his affluent inheritance, his daily annuity.
In His own example, Christ illustrates the nature
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and necessity of prayer. Everywhere He declares
that he who is on God’s mission in this world will
pray. He is an illustrious example of the principle
that the more devoted the man is to God, the more
prayerful will he be. The diviner the man, the
more of the Spirit of the Father and of the Son he
has, the more prayerful will he be. And, conversely,
it is true that the more prayerful he is, the
more of the Spirit of the Father and of the Son will
he receive.
The great events and crowning periods of the
life of Jesus we find Him in prayer—at the beginning
of His ministry, at the fords of the Jordan,
when the Holy Spirit descended upon Him; just
prior to the transfiguration, and in the garden of
Gethsemane. Well do the words of Peter come in
here: “Leaving us an example that ye should follow
His steps.”
There is an important principle of prayer found
in some of the miracles of Christ. It is the progressive
nature of the answer to prayer. Not at
once does God always give the full answer to
prayer, but rather progressively, step by step.
Mark (8:22) describes a case which illustrates this
important truth, too often overlooked:
.pm letter-start
“And he cometh to Bethsaida; and they bring a
blind man unto him, and besought him to touch him.
“And he took the blind man by the hand, and led
him out of the town; and when he had spit on his
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eyes, and put His hands upon him, he asked him if he
saw aught.
“And he looked up, and said, ‘I see men as trees,
walking.’
“After that he put his hands again upon his eyes,
and made him look up; and he was restored, and saw
every man clearly.”
.pm letter-end
Alone He has to take us at times, aside from the
world, where He can have us all to Himself, and
there speak to and deal with us.
We have three cures in blindness in the life of
our Lord, which illustrate the nature of God’s
working in answering prayer, and show the exhaustless
variety and the omnipotence of His
working.
In the first case Christ came incidentally on a
blind man at Jerusalem, made clay, softened it by
spittle, and smeared it on the eyes and then commanded
the man to go and wash in the pool of
Siloam. The gracious results lay at the end of his
action—washing. The failure to go and wash
would have been fatal to the cure. No one, not
even the blind man, in this instance, requested
the cure.
In the second case the parties who bring the
blind man, back their bringing with earnest prayer
for cure; they beseech Christ to simply touch him,
as though their faith would relieve the burden of a
heavy operation. But He took the man by the hand
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and led him out of the town and apart from the
people. Alone, and in secret, this work was to be
done. He spat on his eyes and put his hands on
them. The response was not complete, a dawning
of light, a partial recovery; the first gracious communication
but gave him a disordered vision, the
second stroke perfected the cure. The man’s submissive
faith in giving himself up to Christ to be
led away into privacy and alone, were prominent
features of the cure, as also the gradual reception
of sight, and the necessity of a second stroke to
finish the perfect work.
The third was the case of blind Bartimæus. It
was the urgency of faith declaring itself in clamourous
utterances, rebuked by those who were following
Christ, but intensified and emboldened by
opposition.
The first case comes on Christ unawares; the
second was brought with specific intent to Him;
the last goes after Christ with irresistible urgency,
met by the resistance of the multitude and the seeming
indifference of Christ. The cure, though, was
without the interposition of any agent, no taking by
the hand, no gentle or severe touch, no spittle, nor
clay, nor washing—a word only and his sight, full-orbed,
came instantly. Each one had experienced
the same divine power, the same blessed results, but
with marked diversity in the expression of their
faith and the mode of their cure. Suppose, at their
meeting, the first had set up the particulars and
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process of his cure, the spittle, the clay, the washing
in Siloam as the only Divine process, as the only
genuine credentials of a Divine work, how far from
the truth, how narrow and misleading such a standard
of decision! Not methods, but results, are the
tests of the Divine work.
Each one could say: “This one thing I know,
whereas I was blind I now see.” The results were
conscious results; that Christ did the work they
knew; faith was the instrument, but its exercise
different; the method of Christ’s working different;
the various steps that brought them to the gracious
end on their part and on His part at many points
strikingly dissimilar.
What are the limitations of prayer? How far
do its benefits and possibilities reach? What part
of God’s dealing with man, and with man’s world,
is unaffected by prayer? Do the possibilities of
prayer cover all temporal and spiritual good? The
answers to these questions are of transcendental
importance. The answer will gauge the effort and
results of our praying. The answer will greatly
enhance the value of prayer, or will greatly depress
prayer. The answer to these important questions
are fully covered by Paul’s words on prayer: “Be
careful for nothing, but in everything, by prayer
and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests
be made known unto God” (Phil. 4:6).
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.sp 4
.h2 id=chap04
IV | GOD HAS EVERYTHING TO DO WITH PRAYER
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
Christ is all. We are complete in Him. He is the
answer to every need, the perfect Savior. He needs
no decoration to heighten His beauty, no prop to
increase His stability, no girding to perfect His
strength. Who can gild refined gold, whiten the
snow, perfume the rose or heighten the colors of the
summer sunset? Who will prop the mountains or
help the great deep? It is not Christ and philosophy,
nor Christ and money, nor civilization, nor diplomacy,
nor science, nor organization. It is Christ alone. He
trod the winepress alone. His own arm brought salvation.
He is enough. He is the comfort, the
strength, the wisdom, the righteousness, the sanctification
of all men.—C. L. Chilton.
.pm letter-end
.sp 2
Prayer is God’s business to which men can
attend. Prayer is God’s necessary business,
which men only can do, and that men must
do. Men who belong to God are obliged to pray.
They are not obliged to grow rich, nor to make
money. They are not obliged to have large success
in business. These are incidental, occasional,
merely nominal, as far as integrity to Heaven and
loyalty to God are concerned. Material successes
are immaterial to God. Men are neither better nor
worse with those things or without them. They
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are not sources of reputation nor elements of character
in the heavenly estimates. But to pray, to
really pray, is the source of revenue, the basis of
reputation, and the element of character in the estimation
of God. Men are obliged to pray as they
are obliged to be religious. Prayer is loyalty to
God. Non-praying is to reject Christ and to
abandon Heaven. A life of prayer is the only life
which Heaven counts.
God is vitally concerned that men should pray.
Men are bettered by prayer, and the world is bettered
by praying. God does His best work for the
world through prayer. God’s greatest glory and
man’s highest good are secured by prayer. Prayer
forms the godliest men and makes the godliest
world.
God’s promises lie like giant corpses without life,
only for decay and dust unless men appropriate and
vivify these promises by earnest and prevailing
prayer.
Promise is like the unsown seed, the germ of life
in it, but the soil and culture of prayer are necessary
to germinate and culture the seed. Prayer is
God’s life-giving breath. God’s purposes move
along the pathway made by prayer to their glorious
designs. God’s purposes are always moving to
their high and benignant ends, but the movement is
along the way marked by unceasing prayer. The
breath of prayer in man is from God.
God has everything to do with prayer, as well as
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everything to do with the one who prays. To him
who prays, and as he prays, the hour is sacred because
it is God’s hour. The occasion is sacred
because it is the occasion of the soul’s approach to
God, and of dealing with God. No hour is more
hallowed because it is the occasion of the soul’s
mightiest approach to God, and of the fullest revelation
from God. Men are Godlike and men are
blessed, just as the hour of prayer has the most of
God in it. Prayer makes and measures the approach
of God. He knows not God who knows not
how to pray. He has never seen God whose eye
has not been couched for God in the closet. God’s
vision place is the closet. His dwelling place is in
secret. “He that dwelleth in the secret place of the
most High shall abide under the shadow of the
Almighty.”
He has never studied God who has not had his
intellect broadened, strengthened, clarified and uplifted
by prayer. Almighty God commands prayer,
God waits on prayer to order His ways, and God
delights in prayer. To God, prayer is what the incense
was to the Jewish Temple. It impregnates
everything, perfumes everything and sweetens
everything.
The possibilities of prayer cover the whole purposes
of God through Christ. God conditions all
gifts in all dispensations to His Son on prayer:
“Ask of me,” saith God the Father to the Son,
as that Son was moving earthward on the stupendous
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enterprise for a world’s salvation, “and I
will give thee the heathen for thy inheritance,
and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.”
Hinging on prayer were all the means
and results and successes of that wonderful and
Divine movement for man’s salvation. Broad
and profound, mysterious and wonderful was the
scheme.
The answer to prayer is assured not only by the
promises of God, but by God’s relation to us as a
Father.
“But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy
closet, and when thou has shut thy door, pray to
thy Father, which is in secret; and thy Father,
which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly.”
Again, we have these words: “If ye, being
evil, know how to give good gifts unto your
children, how much more shall your Father, which
is in heaven, give good things to them that ask
him?”
God encourages us to pray, not only by the certainty
of the answer, but by the munificence of
the promise, and the bounty of the Giver. How
princely the promise! “All things whatsoever.”
And when we superadd to that “whatsoever” the
promise which covers all things and everything,
without qualification, exception or limitation, “anything,”
this is to expand and make minute and specific
the promise. The challenge of God to us is
“Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show
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thee great and mighty things which thou knowest
not.” This includes, like the answer to Solomon’s
prayer, that which was specifically prayed for, but
embraces vastly more of great value and of great
necessity.
Almighty God seems to fear we will hesitate to
ask largely, apprehensive that we will strain His
ability. He declares that He is “able to do exceeding
abundantly above all that we can ask or think.”
He almost paralyses us by giving us a carte blanche,
“Ask of me things to come concerning my sons,
and concerning the work of my hands, command ye
me.” How He charges, commands and urges us to
pray! He goes beyond promise and says: “Behold
my Son! I have given Him to you.” “He that
spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for
us all, how shall he not with him freely give us all
things?”
God gave us all things in prayer by promise because
He had given us all things in His Son.
Amazing gift—His Son! Prayer is as illimitable
as His own Blessed Son. There is nothing on earth
nor in Heaven, for time or eternity, that God’s Son
did not secure for us. By prayer God gives us the
vast and matchless inheritance which is ours by
virtue of His Son. God charges us to “come
boldly to the throne of grace.” God is glorified and
Christ is honoured by large asking.
That which is true of the promises of God is
equally true of the purposes of God. We might say
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that God does nothing without prayer. His most
gracious purposes are conditioned on prayer. His
marvelous promises in the thirty-sixth chapter of
Ezekiel are subject to this qualification and condition:
“Thus saith the Lord God: I will yet for this
be inquired of by the house of Israel to do it for
them.”
In the second Psalm the purposes of God to His
enthroned Christ are decreed on prayer, as has been
previously quoted. That decree which promises to
Him the heathen for His inheritance relies on
prayer for its fulfillment: “Ask of me.” We see
how sadly the decree has failed in its operation, not
because of the weakness of God’s purpose, but by
the weakness of man’s praying. It takes God’s
mighty decree and man’s mighty praying to bring
to pass these glorious results.
In the seventy-second Psalm, we have an insight
into the mighty potencies of prayer as the force
which God moves on the conquest of Christ:
“Prayer shall be made for him continually.” In
this statement Christ’s movements are put into the
hands of prayer.
When Christ, with a sad and sympathising heart,
looked upon the ripened fields of humanity, and
saw the great need of labourers, His purposes were
for more labourers, and so He charged them,
“Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest that he
will send forth labourers into his harvest.”
In Ephesians, chapter three, Paul reminds those
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believers of the eternal purposes of God, and how
he was bowing his knees to God in order that that
eternal purpose might be accomplished, and also
that they “might be filled with all the fullness of
God.”
We see in Job how God conditioned His purposes
for Job’s three friends on Job’s praying, and
God’s purposes in regard to Job were brought about
by the same means.
In the first part of Revelation, (chapter eight)
the relation and necessity of saintly prayers to
God’s plans and operations in executing the salvation
of men is set forth in rich, expressive symbol,
wherein the angels have to do with the prayers of
the saints.
Prayer gives efficiency and utility to the promises.
The mighty ongoing of God’s purposes rests
on prayer. The representatives of the Church in
Heaven and of all creation before the throne of
God “have every one of them golden vials of
odours which are the prayers of the saints.”
We have said before, and repeat it, that prayer is
based not simply upon a promise, but on a relationship.
The returning penitent sinner prays on a
promise. The child of God prays on the relation of
a child. What the father has belongs to the child
for present and prospective uses. The child asks,
the father gives. The relationship is one of asking
and answering, of giving and receiving. The child
is dependent upon the father, must look to the
// File: 041.png
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father, must ask of the father, and must receive of
the father.
We know how with earthly parents asking and
giving belong to this relation, and how in the very
act of asking and giving, the relationship of parent
and child is cemented, sweetened and enriched.
The parent finds his wealth of pleasure and satisfaction
in giving to an obedient child, and the child
finds his wealth in the father’s loving and continuous
giving.
Prayer affects God more powerfully than His
own purposes. God’s will, words and purposes are
all subject to review when the mighty potencies of
prayer come in. How mighty prayer is with God
may be seen as he readily sets aside His own fixed
and declared purposes in answer to prayer. The
whole plan of salvation had been blocked had Jesus
Christ prayed for the twelve legions of angels to
carry dismay and ruin to His enemies.
The fasting and prayers of the Ninevites
changed God’s purposes to destroy that wicked
city, after Jonah had gone there and cried unto
the people, “Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be
destroyed.”
Almighty God is concerned in our praying. He
wills it, He commands it, He inspires it. Jesus
Christ in Heaven is ever praying. Prayer is His
law and His life. The Holy Spirit teaches us how
to pray. He prays for us “with groanings which
cannot be uttered.” All these show the deep concern
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of God in prayer. It discloses very clearly
how vital it is to His work in this world, and how
far-reaching are its possibilities. Prayer forms the
very center of the heart and will of God concerning
men. “Rejoice evermore, pray without ceasing,
and in everything give thanks. For this is the will
of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.” Prayer is
the pole star around which rejoicing and thanksgiving
revolve. Prayer is the heart sending its full and
happy pulsations up to God through the glad currents
of joy and thanksgiving.
By prayer God’s Name is hallowed. By prayer
God’s kingdom comes. By prayer is His kingdom
established in power and made to move with conquering
force swifter than the light. By prayer
God’s will is done till earth rivals Heaven in harmony
and beauty. By prayer daily toil is sanctified
and enriched, and pardon is secured, and Satan is
defeated. Prayer concerns God, and concerns man
in every way.
God has nothing too good to give in answer
to prayer. There is no vengeance pronounced by
God so dire which does not yield to prayer. There
is no justice so flaming that is not quenched by
prayer.
Take the record and attitude of Heaven against
Saul of Tarsus. That attitude is changed and that
record is erased when the astonishing condition is
announced, “Behold he prayeth.” The recreant
Jonah is alive, and on dry ground, with scarce the
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taste of the sea or the smell of its weeds about him,
as he prays. “Out of the belly of hell cried I, and
thou heardst my voice.”
“The waters compassed me about, even to the soul;
the depth closed me round about, the weeds were
wrapped about my head.
“I went down to the bottoms of the mountains;
the earth with her bars was about me for ever; yet
hast thou brought up my life from corruption, O
Lord my God.
“When my soul fainted within me I remembered
the Lord: and my prayer came in unto thee, into
thine holy temple.
“And the Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited
out Jonah upon the dry land.”
Prayer has all the force of God in it. Prayer can
get anything which God has. Thus prayer has all
of its plea and its claim in the name of Jesus Christ,
and there is nothing too good or great for God to
give that name.
It must be borne in mind that there is no test
surer than this thing of prayer of our being in the
family of God. God’s children pray. They repose
in Him for all things. They ask Him for all things—for
everything. The faith of the child in the
father is evinced by the child’s asking. It is the
answer to prayer which convinces men not only that
there is a God, but that He is a God who concerns
Himself about men, and about the affairs of this
world. Answered prayer brings God nigh, and
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assures men of His being. Answered prayer is the
credentials of our relation to and our representative
of Him. Men cannot represent God who do not get
answers to prayer from Him.
The possibilities of prayer are found in the
illimitable promise, the willingness and the power
of God to answer prayer, to answer all prayer, to
answer every prayer, and to supply fully the illimitable
need of man. None are so needy as man, none
are so able and anxious to supply every need and
any need as God.
Preaching should no more fully declare and fulfill
the will of God for the salvation of all men, than
should the prayers of God’s saints declare the same
great truth, as they wrestle in their closet for this
sublime end. God’s heart is set on the salvation of
all men. This concerns God. He has declared this
in the death of His Son by an unspeakable voice,
and every movement on earth for this end pleases
God. And so He declares that our prayers for the
salvation of all men are well pleasing in His sight.
The sublime and holy inspiration of pleasing God
should ever move us to prayer for all men. God
eyes the closet, and nothing we can do pleases Him
better than our large-hearted, ardent praying for all
men. It is the embodiment and test of our devotion
to God’s will and of our sympathetic loyalty to God.
In I Tim. 2:13 the apostle Paul does not descend
to a low plane, but presses the necessity of prayer
by the most forceful facts. Jesus Christ, a man,
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the God-man, the highest illustration of manhood,
is the Mediator between God and man. Jesus
Christ, this Divine man, died for all men. His life
is but an intercession for all men. His death is but
a prayer for all men. On earth, Jesus Christ knew
no higher law, no holier business, no diviner life,
than to plead for men. In Heaven He knows no
more royal estate, no higher theme, than to intercede
for men. On earth He lived and prayed and
died for men. His life, His death and His exaltation
in Heaven all plead for men.
Is there any work, higher work for the disciple to
do than His Lord did? Is there any loftier employment,
more honourable, more divine, than to pray
for men? To take their woes, their sins, and their
perils before God; to be one with Christ? To break
the thrall which binds them, the hell which holds
them and lift them to immortality and eternal life?
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.sp 4
.h2 id=chap05
V | JESUS CHRIST, THE DIVINE TEACHER OF PRAYER
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
A friend of mine in his journey is come to me, and
I have nothing to set before him! He knocks again.
“Friend! lend me three loaves.” He waits a while
and then knocks again. “Friend! I must have three
loaves!” “Trouble me not: the door is now shut; I
cannot rise and give thee!” He stands still. He
turns to go home. He comes back. He knocks again.
“Friend!” he cries. He puts his ear to the door.
There is a sound inside, and then the light of a candle
shines through the hole of the door. The bars of the
door are drawn back, and he gets not three loaves
only, but as many as he needs. “And I say unto you,
Ask and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall find;
knock and it shall be opened unto you.”
—Alexander Whyte, D.D.
.pm letter-end
.sp 2
Jesus Christ was the Divine Teacher of
prayer. Its power and nature had been illustrated
by many a saint and prophet in olden
times, but modern sainthood and modern teachers
of prayer had lost their inspiration and life. Religiously
dead, teachers and superficial ecclesiastics
had forgotten what it was to pray. They did much
of saying prayers, on state occasions, in public, with
much ostentation and parade, but pray they did not.
To them it was almost a lost practice. In the multiplicity
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.pn +1
of saying prayers they had lost the art of
praying.
The history of the disciples during the earthly
life of our Lord was not marked with much devotion.
They were much enamoured by their personal
association with Christ. They were charmed by
His words, excited by His miracles, and were entertained
and concerned by the hopes which a selfish
interest aroused in His person and mission. Taken
up with the superficial and worldly views of His
character, they neglected and overlooked the deeper
and weightier things which belonged to Him and
His mission. The neglect of the most obliging and
ordinary duties by them was a noticeable feature in
their conduct. So evident and singular was their
conduct in this regard, that it became a matter of
grave inquiry on one occasion and severe chiding
on another.
“And they said unto him, Why do the disciples
of John fast often, and make prayers, and likewise
the disciples of the Pharisees; but thine eat and
drink? And he said unto them, Can ye make the
children of the bridechamber fast, while the bridegroom
is with them? But the days will come, when
the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and
then shall they fast in those days.”
In the example and the teaching of Jesus Christ,
prayer assumes its normal relation to God’s person,
God’s movements and God’s Son. Jesus Christ
was essentially the teacher of prayer by precept and
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example. We have glimpses of His praying which,
like indices, tell how full of prayer the pages, chapters
and volumes of His life were. The epitome
which covers not one segment only, but the whole
circle of His life, and character, is pre-eminently
that of prayer! “In the days of his flesh,” the
Divine record reads, “when he had offered up
prayers and supplications, with strong crying and
tears.” The suppliant of all suppliants He was, the
intercessor of all intercessors. In lowliest form He
approached God, and with strongest pleas He
prayed and supplicated.
Jesus Christ teaches the importance of prayer by
His urgency to His disciples to pray. But He
shows us more than that. He shows how far
prayer enters into the purposes of God. We must
ever keep in mind that the relation of Jesus Christ
to God is the relation of asking and giving, the Son
ever asking, the Father ever giving. We must
never forget that God has put the conquering, inheriting
and expanding forces of Christ’s cause in
prayer. “Ask of me, and I will give thee the
heathen for thy inheritance, and the uttermost part
of the earth for thy possession.”
This was the clause embodying the royal proclamation
and the universal condition when the Son
was enthroned as the world’s Mediator, and when
He was sent on His mission of receiving grace
and power. We very naturally learn from this
how Jesus would stress praying as the one sole
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condition of His receiving His possession and
inheritance.
Necessarily in this study on prayer, lines of
thought will cross each other, and the same Scripture
passage or incident will be mentioned more
than once, simply because a passage may teach one
or more truths. This is the case when we speak of
the vast comprehensiveness of prayer. How all-inclusive
Jesus Christ makes prayer! It has no
limitations in extent or things! The promises to
prayer are Godlike in their magnificence, wideness
and universality. In their nature these promises
have to do with God—with Him in their inspiration,
creation and results. Who but God could say,
“All things whatsoever ye ask in prayer, believing,
ye shall receive?” Who can command and direct
“All things whatsoever” but God? Neither man
nor chance nor the law of results are so far lifted
above change, limitations or condition, nor have in
them mighty forces which can direct and result all
things, as to promise the bestowment and direction
of all things.
Whole sections, parables and incidents were used
by Christ to enforce the necessity and importance
of prayer. His miracles are but parables of prayer.
In nearly all of them prayer figures distinctly, and
some features of it are illustrated. The Syro-phœnician
woman is a pre-eminent illustration of
the ability and the success of importunity in prayer.
The case of blind Bartimæus has points of suggestion
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along the same line. Jairus and the Centurion
illustrate and impress phases of prayer. The
parable of the Pharisee and the publican enforce
humility in prayer, declare the wondrous results of
praying, and show the vanity and worthlessness of
wrong praying. The failure to enforce church
discipline and the readiness of violating the brotherhood,
are all used to make an exhibit of far-reaching
results of agreed praying, a record of
which we have in Matthew, chapter 18:19.
It is of prayer in concert that Christ is speaking.
Two agreed ones, two whose hearts have been
keyed into perfect symphony by the Holy Spirit.
Anything that they shall ask, it shall be done.
Christ had been speaking of discipline in the
Church, how things were to be kept in unity, and
how the fellowship of the brethren was to be maintained,
by the restoration of the offender or by his
exclusion. Members who had been true to the
brotherhood of Christ, and who were labouring to
preserve that brotherhood unbroken, would be the
agreed ones to make appeals to God in united
prayer.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ lays down
constitutional principles. Types and shadows are
retired, and the law of spiritual life is declared. In
this foundation law of the Christian system prayer
assumes a conspicuous, if not a paramount, position.
It is not only wide, all-commanding, and
comprehensive in its own sphere of action and
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relief, but it is ancillary to all duties. Even the one
demanding kindly and discriminating judgment
toward others, and also the royal injunction, the
Golden Rule of action, these owe their being to
prayer.
Christ puts prayer among the statutory promises.
He does not leave it to natural law. The law of
need, demand and supply, of helplessness, of natural
instincts, or the law of sweet, high, attractive
privilege—these howsoever strong as motives of
action, are not the basis of praying. Christ puts
it as spiritual law. Men must pray. Not to pray
is not simply a privation, an omission, but a positive
violation of law, of spiritual life, a crime, bringing
disorder and ruin. Prayer is law world-wide and
eternity-reaching.
In the Sermon on the Mount many important utterances
are dismissed with a line or a verse, while
the subject of prayer occupies a large space. To it
Christ returns again and again. He bases the possibilities
and necessities of prayer on the relation of
father and child, the child crying for bread, and the
father giving that for which the child asks. Prayer
and its answer are in the relation of a father to his
child. The teaching of Jesus Christ on the nature
and necessity of prayer as recorded in His life, is
remarkable. He sends men to their closets. Prayer
must be a holy exercise, untainted by vanity, or
pride. It must be in secret. The disciple must live
in secret. God lives there, is sought there and is
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found there. The command of Christ as to prayer
is that pride and publicity should be shunned.
Prayer is to be in private. “But thou when thou
prayest, enter into thy closet, and shut thy door,
and pray to thy Father in secret. And thy Father,
which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly.”
The Beatitudes are not only to enrich and adorn,
but they are the material out of which spiritual
character is built. The very first one of these fixes
prayer in the very foundation of spiritual character,
not simply to adorn, but to compose. “Blessed are
the poor in spirit.” The word “poor” means a
pauper, one who lives by begging. The real Christian
lives on the bounties of another, whose bounties
he gets by asking. Prayer then becomes the
basis of Christian character, the Christian’s business,
his life and his living. This is Christ’s law of
prayer, putting it into the very being of the Christian.
It is his first step, and his first breath, which
is to colour and to form all his after life. Blessed
are the poor ones, for they only can pray.
.pm verse-start
Prayer is the Christian’s vital breath,
The Christian’s native air;
His watchword at the gates of death;
He enters Heaven with prayer.
.pm verse-end
From praying Christ eliminates all self-sufficiency,
all pride, and all spiritual values. The
poor in spirit are the praying ones. Beggars are
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God’s princes. They are God’s heirs. Christ removes
the rubbish of Jewish traditions and glosses
from the regulations of the prayer altar.
.pm letter-start
“Ye have heard that it was said by them of old
time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill
shall be in danger of the judgment:
“But I say unto you, that whosoever is angry with
his brother shall be in danger of the judgment: and
whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in
danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, thou
fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.
“Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar and
there rememberest that thy brother has aught against
thee:
“Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy
way; first, be reconciled to thy brother, and then come
and offer thy gift.”
.pm letter-end
He who essays to pray to God with an angry
spirit, with loose and irreverent lips, with an irreconciled
heart, and with unsettled neighbourly
scores, spends his labour for that which is worse
than naught, violates the law of prayer, and adds
to his sin.
How rigidly exacting is Christ’s law of prayer!
It goes to the heart, and demands that love be enthroned
there, love to the brotherhood. The sacrifice
of prayer must be seasoned and perfumed with
love, by love in the inward parts. The law of
prayer, its creator and inspirer, is love.
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Praying must be done. God wants it done. He
commands it. Man needs it and man must do it.
Something must surely come of praying, for God
engages that something shall come out of it, if men
are in earnest and are persevering in prayer.
After Jesus teaches “Ask and it shall be given
you,” etc., He encourages real praying, and more
praying. He repeats and avers with redoubled
assurance, “For every one that asketh receiveth.”
No exception. “Every one.” “He that seeketh,
findeth.” Here it is again, sealed and stamped with
infinite veracity. Then closed and signed, as well
as sealed, with Divine attestation, “To him that
knocketh it shall be opened.” Note how we are
encouraged to pray by our relation to God!
.pm letter-start
“If ye then, being evil, know how to give good
gifts unto your children, how much more shall your
Father which is in Heaven give good things to them
that ask him?”
.pm letter-end
The relation of prayer to God’s work and God’s
rule in this world is most fully illustrated by Jesus
Christ in both His teaching and His practice. He
is first in every way and in everything. Among the
rulers of the Church He is primary in a pre-eminent
way. He has the throne. The golden
crown is His in eminent preciousness. The white
garments enrobe Him in pre-eminent whiteness and
beauty. In the ministry of prayer He is a Divine
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example as well as the Divine Teacher. His example
is affluent, and His prayer teaching abounds.
How imperative the teaching of our Lord when He
affirms that “men ought always to pray and not to
faint!” and then presents a striking parable of
an unjust judge and a poor widow to illustrate and
enforce His teaching. It is a necessity to pray. It
is exacting and binding for men always to be in
prayer. Courage, endurance and perseverance are
demanded that men may never faint in prayer.
“And shall not God avenge his own elect that cry
day and night unto him?”
This is His strong and indignant questioning and
affirmation. Men must pray according to Christ’s
teaching. They must not get tired nor grow weary
in praying. God’s character is the assured surety
that much will come of the persistent praying of
true men.
Doubtless the praying of our Lord had much to
do with the revelation made to Peter and the confession
he made to Christ, “Thou art the Christ,
the Son of the Living God.” Prayer mightily
affects and molds the circle of our associates.
Christ made disciples and kept them disciples by
praying. His twelve disciples were much impressed
by His praying. Never man prayed like this man.
How different His praying from the cold, proud,
self-righteous praying which they heard and saw on
the streets, in the synagogue, and in the Temple.
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.sp 4
.h2 id=chap06
VI | JESUS CHRIST, THE DIVINE TEACHER OF PRAYER (Continued)
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
Luke tells us that as Jesus was praying in a certain
place, when He ceased, one of His disciples said unto
Him, “Lord, teach us to pray.” This disciple had
heard Jesus preach, but did not feel like saying,
“Lord, teach us to preach.” He could learn to preach
by studying the methods of the Master. But there
was something about the praying of Jesus that made
the disciple feel that he did not know how to pray;
that he had never prayed, and that he could not learn
by listening even to the Master as He prayed. There
is a profound something about prayer which never
lies upon the surface. To learn it, one must go to the
depths of the soul, and climb to the heights of God.
—A. C. Dixon, D.D.
.pm letter-end
.sp 2
Let it not be forgotten that prayer was one
of the great truths which He came into the
world to teach and illustrate. It was worth
a trip from Heaven to earth to teach men this
great lesson of prayer. A great lesson it was,
a very difficult lesson for men to learn. Men
are naturally averse to learning this lesson of
prayer. The lesson is a very lowly one. None
but God can teach it. It is a despised beggary,
a sublime and heavenly vocation. The disciples
were very stupid scholars, but were quickened
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to prayer by hearing Him pray and talk about
prayer.
The dispensation of Christ’s personality, while it
was not and could not be the dispensation in its
fullest and highest sense of need and dependence,
yet Christ did try to impress on His disciples not
alone a deep necessity of the necessity of prayer in
general, but the importance of prayer to them in
their personal and spiritual needs. And there came
moments to them when they felt the need of a
deeper and more thorough schooling in prayer and
of their grave neglect in this regard. One of these
hours of deep conviction on their part and of eager
inquiry was when He was praying at a certain place
and time, and they saw Him, and they said to Him,
“Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his
disciples.”
As they listened to Him praying, they felt very
keenly their ignorance and deficiency in praying.
Who has not felt the same deficiency and ignorance?
Who has not longed for a teacher in the
Divine art of praying?
The conviction which these twelve men had of
their defect in prayer arose from hearing their
Lord and Master pray, but likewise from a sense
of serious defect even when compared with John
the Baptist’s training of his disciples in prayer. As
they listened to their Lord pray (for unquestionably
He must have been seen and heard by them as
He prayed, who prayed with marvelous simplicity,
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and power, so human and so Divine) such praying
had a stimulating charm for them. In the presence
and hearing of His praying, very keenly they felt
their ignorance and deficiency in prayer. Who has
not felt the same ignorance and deficiency?
We do not regret the schooling our Lord gave
these twelve men, for in schooling them He schools
us. The lesson is one already learned in the law of
Christ. But so dull were they, that many a patient
iteration and reiteration was required to instruct
them in this Divine art of prayer. And likewise so
dull are we and inapt that many a wearying patient
repetition must be given us before we will learn any
important lesson in the all-important school of
prayer.
This Divine Teacher of prayer lays Himself out
to make it clear and strong that God answers
prayer, assuredly, certainly, inevitably; that it is the
duty of the child to ask, and to press, and that the
Father is obliged to answer, and to give for the
asking. In Christ’s teaching, prayer is no sterile,
vain performance, not a mere rite, a form, but a
request for an answer, a plea to gain, the seeking
of a great good from God. It is a lesson of getting
that for which we ask, of finding that for which we
seek, and of entering the door at which we knock.
A notable occasion we have as Jesus comes down
from the Mount of Transfiguration. He finds His
disciples defeated, humiliated and confused in the
presence of their enemies. A father has brought
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his child possessed with a demon to have the
demon cast out. They essayed to do it but failed.
They had been commissioned by Jesus and sent to
do that very work, but had signally failed. “And
when he was come into the house, his disciples
asked him privately, saying, Why could not we cast
him out? And he said unto them, This kind can
come forth by nothing but by prayer and fasting.”
Their faith had not been cultured by prayer. They
failed in prayer before they failed in ability to do
their work. They failed in faith because they had
failed in prayer. That one thing which was necessary
to do God’s work was prayer. The work which
God sends us to do cannot be done without prayer.
In Christ’s teaching on prayer we have another
pertinent statement. It was in connection with the
cursing of the barren fig tree:
.pm letter-start
“Jesus answered and said unto them, Verily I say
unto you, if ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not
only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if
ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed and
be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done.
“And all things whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer,
believing, ye shall receive.”
.pm letter-end
In this passage we have faith and prayer, their
possibilities and powers conjoined. A fig tree had
been blasted to the roots by the word of the Lord
Jesus. The power and quickness of the result surprised
the disciples. Jesus says to them that it need
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.pn +1
be no surprise to them, or such a difficult work to be
done. “If ye have faith” its possibilities to affect
will not be confined to the little fig tree, but the
gigantic, rock-ribbed, rock-founded mountains can
be uprooted and moved into the sea. Prayer is
leverage of this great power of faith.
It is well to refer again to the occasion when the
heart of our Lord was so deeply moved with compassion
as he beheld the multitudes because they
fainted and were scattered as having no shepherd.
Then it was He urged upon His disciples the injunction,
“Pray ye the Lord of the harvest that he
would send forth labourers into his harvest,”
clearly teaching them that it belonged to God to call
into the ministry men whom He will, and that in
answer to prayer the Holy Spirit does this very
work.
Prayer is as necessary now as it was then to
secure the needed labourers to reap earthly harvests
for the heavenly garners. Has the Church of God
ever learned this lesson of so vital and exacting
import? God alone can choose the labourers and
thrust them out, and this choosing He does not
delegate to man, or church, convocation or synod,
association or conference. And God is moved to
this great work of calling men into the ministry by
prayer. Earthly fields are rotting. They are untilled
because prayer is silent. The labourers are
few. Fields are unworked because prayer has not
worked with God.
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.pn +1
We have the prayer promise and the prayer ability
put in a distinct form in the higher teachings of
prayer by our Lord: “If ye abide in me, and my
words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and
it shall be done unto you.”
Here we have a fixed attitude of life as the condition
of prayer. Not simply a fixed attitude of
life toward some great principles or purposes, but
the fixed attitude and unity of life with Jesus
Christ. To live in Him, to dwell there, to be one
with Him, to draw all life from Him, to let all life
from Him flow through us—this is the attitude of
prayer and the ability to pray. No abiding in Him
can be separated from His Word abiding in us.
It must live in us to give birth to and food for
prayer. The attitude of the Person of Christ is the
condition of prayer.
The Old Testament saints had been taught that
“God had magnified his word above all his name.”
New Testament saints must learn fully how to
exalt by perfect obedience that Word issuing from
the lips of Him who is the Word. Praying ones
under Christ must learn what praying ones under
Moses had already learned, that “man shall not live
by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth
out of the mouth of God.” The life of Christ flowing
through us and the words of Christ living in us,
these give potency to prayer. They breathe the
spirit of prayer, and make the body, blood and
bones of prayer. Then it is Christ praying in me
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.pn +1
and through me, and all things which “I will” are
the will of God. My will becomes the law and the
answer, for it is written “Ye shall ask what ye will,
and it shall be done unto you.”
Fruit bearing our Lord puts to the front in our
praying:
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“Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,
and ordained you, that ye shall go and bring forth
fruit and that your fruit shall remain, that whatsoever
ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may
give it you.”
.pm letter-end
Barrenness cannot pray. Fruit bearing capacity
and reality only can pray. It is not past fruitfulness,
but present: “That your fruit should remain.”
Fruit, the product of life, is the condition
of praying. A life vigourous enough to bear fruit,
much fruit, is the condition and the source of
prayer. “And in that day ye shall ask me nothing.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall
ask the Father in my name, he will give it you.
Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask
and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.”
“In that day ye shall ask me nothing.” It is not
solving riddles, not revealing mysteries, not curious
questionings. This is not our attitude, not our
business under the Dispensation of the Spirit, but
to pray, and to pray largely. Much true praying
increases man’s joy and God’s glory.
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.pn +1
“Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, I will
give,” says Christ, and the Father will give. Both
Father and Son are pledged to give the very things
for which we ask. But the condition is “in His
name.” This does not mean that His name is talismanic,
to give value by magic. It does not mean
that His name in beautiful settings of pearl will
give value to prayer. It is not that His name perfumed
with sentiment and larded in and closing up
our prayers and doings will do the deed. How
fearful the statement: “Many will say unto me in
that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy
name? and in thy name cast out devils? and in
thy name done many wonderful works? And then
will I profess unto them, I never knew you. Depart
from me, ye that work iniquity.” How blasting
the doom of these great workers and doers who
claim to work in His name!
It means far more than sentiment, verbiage, and
nomenclature. It means to stand in His stead, to
bear His nature, to stand for all for which He
stood, for righteousness, truth, holiness and zeal. It
means to be one with God as He was, one in spirit,
in will and in purpose. It means that our praying
is singly and solely for God’s glory through His
Son. It means that we abide in Him, that Christ
prays through us, lives in us and shines out of us;
that we pray by the Holy Spirit according to the
will of God.
Even amid the darkness of Gethsemane, with the
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.pn +1
stupor which had settled upon the disciples, we have
the sharp warning from Christ to His sluggish disciples,
“Watch and pray lest ye enter into temptation.
The spirit truly is willing, but the flesh is
weak.” How needful to hear such a warning, to
awaken all our powers, not simply for the great
crises of our lives, but as the inseparable and constant
attendants of a career marked with perils and
dangers on every hand.
As Christ nears the close of His earthly mission,
nearer to the greater and more powerful dispensation
of the Spirit, His teaching about prayer takes
on a more absorbing and higher form. It has now
become a graduating school. His connection with
prayer becomes more intimate and more absolute.
He becomes in prayer what He is in all else pertaining
to our salvation, the beginning and the end,
the first and the last. His name becomes all potent.
Mighty works are to be done by the faith which
can pray in His name. Like His nature, His name
covers all needs, embraces all worlds, and gets
all good.
.pm letter-start
“Believest thou not that I am in the Father and
the Father in me? The words that I speak unto you
I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in
me, he doeth the works.
“Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father
in me: or else believe me for the very works’ sake.
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth
// File: 065.png
.pn +1
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, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
“If ye shall ask anything in my name I will do it.”
.pm letter-end
The Father, the Son and the praying one are all
bound up together. All things are in Christ, and
all things are in prayer in His name. “If ye shall
ask anything in my name.” The key which unlocks
the vast storehouse of God is prayer. The
power to do greater works than Christ did lies in
the faith which can grasp His name truly and in
true praying.
In the last of His life, note how He urges prayer
as a preventive of the many evils to which they
were exposed. In view of the temporal and fearful
terrors of the destruction of Jerusalem, He charges
them to this effect: “Pray ye that your flight be
not in winter.”
How many evils in this life which can be escaped
by prayer! How many fearful temporal calamities
can be mitigated, if not wholly relieved, by prayer!
Notice how, amid the excesses and stupefying influences
to which we are exposed in this world,
Christ charges us to pray:
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“And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your
hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness,
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.pn +1
and cares of this life, and so that day come upon
you unawares.
“For as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell
on the face of the whole earth.
“Watch ye therefore and pray always, that ye may
be accounted worthy to escape all these things that
shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son
of man.”
.pm letter-end
In view of the uncertainty of Christ’s coming to
judgment, and the uncertainty of our going out of
this world, He says: “But of that day and that
hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are
in Heaven, neither the Son, but the Father. Take
ye heed, watch and pray, for ye know not when
the time is.”
We have the words of Jesus as given in His last
interview with His twelve disciples, found in the
Gospel of John, chapters fourteen to seventeen, inclusive.
These are true, solemn parting words.
The disciples were to move out into the regions of
toil, and peril, bereft of the personal presence of
their Lord and Master. They were to be impressed
that prayer would serve them in everything, and its
use, and unlimited possibilities would in some measure
supply their loss, and by it they would be able
to command all the possibilities of Jesus Christ and
God the Father.
It was the occasion of momentous interest to
Jesus Christ. His work was to receive its climax
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.pn +1
and crown in His death and His resurrection. His
glory and the success of His work and of its execution,
under the mastery and direction of the Holy
Spirit, was to be committed to His apostles. To
them it was an hour of strange wonderment and
of peculiar, mysterious sorrow, only too well assured
of the fact that Jesus was to leave them. All
else was dark and impalpable.
He was to give them His parting words and pray
His parting prayer. Solemn, vital truths were to
be the weight and counsel of that hour. He speaks
to them of Heaven. Young men, strong though
they were, yet they could not meet the duties of
their preaching life and their apostolic life, without
the fact, the thought, the hope and the relish of
Heaven. These things were to be present constantly
in all sweetness, in all their vigour, in all
freshness, in all brightness. He spoke to them
about their spiritual and conscious connection with
Himself, an abiding indwelling, so close and continuous
that His own life would flow into them, as
the life of the vine flows into the branches. Their
lives and their fruitfulness were dependent upon
this. Then praying was urged upon them as one
of the vital, essential forces. This was the one
thing upon which all the Divine force depended,
and this was the avenue and agency through which
the Divine life and power were to be secured and
continued in their ministry.
He spake to them about prayer. He had taught
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them many lessons upon this all-important subject
as they had been together. This solemn hour he
seizes to perfect his teaching. They must be made
to realize that they have an illimitable and exhaustless
storehouse of good in God and that they can
draw on Him at all times and for all things without
stint, as Paul said in after years to the Philippians,
“My God shall supply all your need according to
His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.”
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.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2 id=chap07
VII | JESUS CHRIST AN EXAMPLE OF PRAYER
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
Christ, when He saw that He must die, and that
now His time was come, He wore His body out: He
cared not, as it were, what became of Him: He wholly
spent Himself in preaching all day, and in praying all
night, preaching in the temple those terrible parables
and praying in the garden such prayers, as the seventeenth
of John, and “Thy will be done!” even to a
bloody sweat.—Thomas Goodwin.
.pm letter-end
.sp 2
The Bible record of the life of Jesus Christ
gives but a glance of His busy doing, a
small selection of His many words, and only
a brief record of His great works. But even in
this record we see Him as being much in prayer.
Even though busy and exhausted by the severe
strain and toils of His life, “in the morning a
great while before day, he rose up and went out
and departed into a desert place, and there prayed.”
Alone in the desert and in the darkness with God!
Prayer filled the life of our Lord while on earth.
His life was a constant stream of incense sweet and
perfumed by prayer. When we see how the life
of Jesus was but one of prayer, then we must conclude
that to be like Jesus is to pray like Jesus and
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is to live like Jesus. A serious life it is to pray as
Jesus prayed.
We cannot follow any chronological order in the
praying of Jesus Christ. What were His steps of
advance and skill in the Divine art of praying we
know not. He is in the act of prayer when we find
Him at the fords of the Jordan, when the waters of
baptism, at the hands of John the Baptist, are upon
Him. So passing over the three years of His ministry,
when closing the drama of His life in that
terrible baptism of fear, pain, suffering, and shame,
we find Him in the spirit, and also in the very act
of praying. The baptism of the Cross, as well as
the baptism of the Jordan, are sanctified by prayer.
With the breath of prayer in His last sigh, He
commits His spirit to God. In His first recorded
utterances, as well as His first acts, we find Him
teaching His disciples how to pray as His first
lesson, and as their first duty. Under the shadow
of the Cross, in the urgency and importance of His
last interview with His chosen disciples, He is at
the same all-important business, teaching the
world’s teachers how to pray, trying to make prayerful
those lips and hearts out of which were to
flow the Divine deposits of truth.
The great eras of His life were created and
crowned with prayer. What were His habits of
prayer during His stay at home and His toil as a
carpenter in Nazareth, we have no means of knowing.
God has veiled it, and guess and speculation
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are not only vain and misleading, but proud and
prurient. It would be presumptuous searching into
that which God has hidden, which would make us
seek to be wise above that which was written, trying
to lift up the veil with which God has covered
His own revelation.
We find Christ in the presence of the famed, the
prophet and the preacher. He has left His Nazareth
home and His carpenter shop by God’s call.
He is now at a transitional point. He has moved
out to His great work. John’s baptism and the
baptism of the Holy Ghost are prefatory and are
to qualify Him for that work. This epochal and
transitional period is marked by prayer.
.pm letter-start
“Now when all the people were baptized, it came
to pass that Jesus, being also baptized, and praying,
the heaven was opened.
“And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape
like a dove upon him, and a voice came from heaven,
which said, Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am
well pleased.”
.pm letter-end
It is a supreme hour in His history, different and
in striking contrast with, but not in opposition to,
the past. The descent and abiding of the Holy
Spirit in all His fullness, the opening heavens, and
the attesting voice which involved God’s recognition
of His only Son—all these are the result, if not
the direct creation and response to His praying on
that occasion.
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“As He was praying,” so we are to be praying.
If we would pray as Christ prayed, we must be as
Christ was, and must live as Christ lived. The
Christ character, the Christ life, and the Christ
spirit, must be ours if we would do the Christ praying,
and would have our prayers answered as He
had His prayers answered. The business of Christ
even now in Heaven at His Father’s right hand is
to pray. Certainly if we are His, if we love Him,
if we live for Him, and if we live close to Him, we
will catch the contagion of His praying life, both
on earth and in Heaven. We will learn His trade
and carry on His business on earth.
Jesus Christ loved all men, He tasted death for
all men, He intercedes for all men. Let us ask
then, are we the imitators, the representatives, and
the executors of Jesus Christ? Then must we in
our prayers run parallel with His atonement in its
extent. The atoning blood of Jesus Christ gives
sanctity and efficiency to our prayers. As world-wide,
as broad, and as human as the man Christ
Jesus was, so must be our prayers. The intercessions
of Christ’s people must give currency and expedition
to the work of Christ, carry the atoning
blood to its benignant ends, and help to strike off
the chains of sin from every ransomed soul. We
must be as praying, as tearful, and as compassionate
as was Christ.
Prayer affects all things. God blesses the person
who prays. He who prays goes out on a long voyage
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.pn +1
for God and is enriched himself while enriching
others, and is blessed himself while the world is
blessed by his praying. To “live a quiet and peaceable
life in all godliness and honesty” is the
wealthiest wealth.
The praying of Christ was real. No man prayed
as He prayed. Prayer pressed upon Him as a
solemn, all-imperative, all-commanding duty, as
well as a royal privilege in which all sweetness was
condensed, alluring and absorbing. Prayer was the
secret of His power, the law of His life, the inspiration
of His toil and the source of His wealth,
His joy, His communion and His strength.
To Christ Jesus prayer occupied no secondary
place, but was exacting and paramount, a necessity,
a life, the satisfying of a restless yearning and a
preparation for heavy responsibilities.
Closeting with His Father in counsel and fellowship,
with vigour and in deep joy, all this was His
praying. Present trials, future glory, the history
of His Church, and the struggles and perils of His
disciples in all times and to the very end of time—all
these things were born and shaped by His
praying.
Nothing is more conspicuous in the life of our
Lord than prayer. His campaigns were arranged
and His victories were gained in the struggles and
communion of His all night praying. By prayer
He rent the heavens. Moses and Elijah and the
transfiguration glory wait on His praying. His
// File: 074.png
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miracles and teaching had their power from the
same source. Gethsemane’s praying crimsoned
Calvary with serenity and glory. His sacerdotal
prayer makes the history and hastens the triumph
of His Church on earth. What an inspiration and
command to pray is the prayer life of Jesus Christ
while in this world! What a comment it is on the
value, the nature and the necessity of prayer!
The dispensation of the Person of Jesus Christ
was a dispensation of prayer. A synopsis of His
teaching and practice of prayer was that “Men
ought always to pray and not to faint.”
As the Jews prayed in the name of their patriarchs
and invoked the privileges granted to them
by covenant with God; as we have a new Name and
a new covenant, more privileged and more powerful
and more all-comprehensive, more authoritative
and more Divine; and as far as the Son of God is
lifted above the patriarchs in divinity, glory and
power, by so much should our praying exceed
theirs in range of largeness, glory and power of
results.
Jesus Christ prayed to God as Father. Simply
and directly did He approach God in the charmed
and revered circle of the Father. The awful, repelling
fear was entirely absent, lost in the supreme
confidence of a child.
Jesus Christ crowns His life, His works and His
teaching with prayer. How His Father attests His
relationship and puts on Him the glory of answered
// File: 075.png
.pn +1
prayer at His Baptism and Transfiguration when
all other glories are growing dim in the night which
settles on Him! What almighty potencies are in
prayer when we are charged and surcharged with
but one inspiration and aim! “Father, glorify thy
name.” This sweetens all, brightens all, conquers
all and gets all. “Father, glorify thy name.”
That guiding star will illumine the darkest night
and calm the wildest storm and will make us brave
and true. An imperial principle it is. It will make
an imperial Christian.
The range and potencies of prayer, so clearly
shown by Jesus in life and teaching, but reveal the
great purposes of God. They not only reveal the
Son in the reality and fullness of His humanity,
but also reveal the Father.
Christ prayed as a child. The spirit of a child
was found in Him. At the grave of Lazarus
“Jesus lifted up His eyes and said, Father.”
Again we hear Him begin His prayer after this
fashion: “In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and
said, I thank thee, O Father.” So also on other
occasions we find Him in praying addressing God
as His Father, assuming the attitude of the child
asking something of the Father. What confidence,
simplicity and artlessness! What readiness, freeness
and fullness of approach are all involved in
the spirit of a child! What confiding trust, what
assurance, what tender interest! What profound
solicitudes, and tender sympathy on the Father’s
// File: 076.png
.pn +1
part! What respect deepening into reverence!
What loving obedience and grateful emotions glow
in the child’s heart! What Divine fellowship and
royal intimacy! What sacred and sweet emotions!
All these meet in the hour of prayer when the child
of God meets His Father in Heaven, and when the
Father meets His child! We must live as children
if we would ask as children. We must act as children
if we would pray as children. The spirit of
prayer is born of the child spirit.
The profound reverence in this relation of paternity
must forever exclude all lightness, frivolity
and pertness, as well as all undue familiarity. Solemnity
and gravity become the hour of prayer. It
has been well said: “The worshipper who invokes
God under the name of Father and realises the
gracious and beneficent love of God, must at the
same time remember and recognise God’s glorious
majesty, which is neither annulled nor impaired,
but rather supremely intensified through His fatherly
love. An appeal to God as Father, if not
associated with reverence and homage before the
Divine Majesty, would betray a want of understanding
of the character of God.” And, we might
add, would show a lack of the attributes of a child.
Patriarchs and prophets knew something of the
doctrine of the Fatherhood of God to God’s family.
They “saw it afar off, were persuaded of it, and
embraced it,” but understood it not, in all its fullness,
“God having provided some better thing for
// File: 077.png
.pn +1
us, that they without us should not be made
perfect.”
“Behold he prayeth!” was God’s statement of
wonderment and surprise to the timid Ananias in
regard to Saul of Tarsus. “Behold he prayeth!”
applied to Christ has in it far more of wonderment
and mystery and surprise. He, the Maker of all
worlds, the Lord of angels and of men, co-equal
and co-eternal with the Everlasting God; the
“brightness of the Father’s glory and the express
image of his person”; “fresh from his Father’s
glory and from his Father’s throne.”—“Behold he
prayeth!” To find Him in lowly, dependent attitude
of prayer, the suppliant of all suppliants, His
richest legacy and His royal privilege to pray—this
is the mystery of all mysteries, the wonder of all
wonders.
Paul gives in brief and comprehensive statement
the habit of our Lord in prayer in Hebrews 5:7—“Who,
in the days of his flesh, when he had offered
up prayers and supplications, with strong crying
and tears, unto him that was able to save him from
death, and was heard in that he feared.” We have
in this description of our Lord’s praying the outgoing
of great spiritual forces. He prayed with
“prayers and supplications.” It was no formal,
tentative effort. He was intense, personal and real.
He was a pleader for God’s good. He was in great
need and He must cry with “strong cryings,” made
stronger still by His tears. In an agony the Son of
// File: 078.png
.pn +1
God wrestled. His praying was no playing a mere
part. His soul was engaged, and all His powers
were taxed to a strain. Let us pause and look at
Him and learn how to pray in earnest. Let us
learn how to win in an agony of prayer that which
seems to be withholden from us. A beautiful word
is that, “feared,” which occurs only twice in the
New Testament, the fear of God.
Jesus Christ was always a busy man with His
work, but never too busy to pray. “The divinest
of business filled His heart and filled His hands,
consumed His time, exhausted His nerves. But
with Him even God’s work must not crowd out
God’s praying. Saving people from sin or suffering
must not, even with Christ, be substituted
for praying, nor abate in the least the time or the
intensity of these holiest of seasons. He filled the
day with working for God; He employed the night
with praying to God. The day-working made the
night-praying a necessity. The night-praying
sanctified and made successful the day-working.
Too busy to pray gives religion Christian burial, it
is true, but kills it nevertheless.”
In many cases only the bare fact, yet important
and suggestive fact, is stated that He prayed. In
other cases the very words which came out of His
heart and fell from His lips are recorded. The man
of prayer by pre-eminence was Jesus Christ. The
epochs of His life were created by prayer, and all
the minor details outlines and inlines of His life
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.pn +1
were inspired, coloured and impregnated by prayer.
The prayer words of Jesus were sacred words.
By them God speaks to God, and by them God is
revealed and prayer is illustrated and enforced.
Here is prayer in its purest form and in its mightiest
potencies. It would seem that earth and heaven
would uncover head and open ears most wide to
catch the words of His praying who was truest
God and truest man, and divinest of suppliants,
who prayed as never man prayed. His prayers are
our inspiration and pattern to pray.
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.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2 id=chap08
VIII | PRAYER INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF OUR LORD
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
There was a great cape at the south of Africa and
so many storms and so much loss of life until it was
called the Cape of Death. One day in 1789 a bold
navigator shoved the prow of his vessel into the
storms that thundered around it and found a calm
sea. He then named it the Cape of Good Hope. So
there is a cape that jutted out from earth into the
sea of eternity called death. All were afraid of it.
All navigators, sooner or later, must contend with
these murky waters. But once upon a time, nearly
two thousand years ago, a brave navigator from
heaven came and drove the prow of His frail humanity
bark down into the gloomy waters of this cape and
lay under its awful power for three days. Emerging
therefrom, He found it to be the door to endless calm
and joy, and now we call it Good Hope.
—John W. Baker.
.pm letter-end
.sp 2
One of Christ’s most impassioned and sublime
pæans of prayer and praise is found
recorded by both Matthew and Luke, with
small verbal contrasts and with some diversity of
detail and environments. He is reviewing the poor
results of His ministry and remarking upon the
feeble responses of man to God’s vast outlay of
love and mercy. He is arraigning the ingratitude
of men to God, and is showing the fearfully
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destructive results of their indifference
with their increased opportunities, favours and
responsibilities.
In the midst of these arraignments, denunciations
and woes, the seventy disciples return to
report the results of their mission. They were full
of exhilaration at their success, and evinced it with
no little self-gratulation. The spirit of Jesus was
diverted, relieved and refreshed by their animation,
catching somewhat the contagion of their joy, and
sharing in their triumph. He rejoiced, gave
thanks, and prayed a prayer wonderful for its
brevity, its inspiration and its revelation:
.pm letter-start
“In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said, I
thank thee, O Father, Lord of Heaven and earth,
that thou hast hid these things from the wise and
prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes: even so,
Father; for so it seemed good in thy sight.
“All things are delivered to me of my Father; and
no man knoweth who the Son is, but the Father; and
who the Father is, but the Son, and he to whom the
Son will reveal him.”
.pm letter-end
The Christ life was in the image of His Father.
He was the “express image of His person.” And
so the spirit of prayer with Christ was to do God’s
will. His constant asseveration was that He
“came to do His Father’s will,” and not His own
will. When the fearful crisis came in His life in
Gethsemane, and all its darkness, direness and
// File: 082.png
.pn +1
dread, with the crushing weight of man’s sins and
sorrows which were pressing down upon Him, His
spirit and frame crushed, and almost expiring, then
He cried out for relief, yet it was not His will
which was to be followed. It was only an appeal
out of weakness and death for God’s relief in God’s
way. God’s will was to be the law and the rule of
His relief, if relief came.
So he who follows Christ in prayer must have
God’s will as his law, his rule and his inspiration.
In all praying, it is the man who prays. The life
and the character flow into the closet. There is a
mutual action and reaction. The closet has much
to do with making the character, while the character
has much to do with making the closet. It is
“the effectual fervent prayer of the righteous man
which availeth much.” It is with them who “call
upon the Lord out of a pure heart” we are to consort.
Christ was the greatest of pray-ers because
He was the holiest of men. His character is the
praying character. His spirit is the life and power
of prayer. He is not the best pray-er who has the
greatest fluency, the most brilliant imagination, the
richest gifts, and the most fiery ardour, but he who
has imbibed most of the spirit of Christ.
It is he whose character is the nearest to a facsimile
of Christ. His prayer referred to just
named, in the form of thanksgiving, sets forth the
characters upon whom God’s power is bestowed
and to whom God’s person and will are revealed.
// File: 083.png
.pn +1
“Hid these things from the wise and prudent,”
those, for instance, who are wise in their own eyes,
skilled in letters, cultured, learned, philosophers,
scribes, doctors, rabbis—“prudent”—one who can
put things together, having insight, comprehension,
expression. God’s revelation of Himself and His
will cannot be sought out and understood by
reason, intelligence nor great learning. Great men
and great minds are neither the channels nor depositories
of God’s revelation by virtue of their
culture, braininess nor wisdom. God’s system in
redemption and providence is not to be thought
out, open only to the learned and wise. The
learned and the wise, following their learning and
their wisdom, have always sadly and darkly missed
God’s thoughts and God’s ways.
The condition of receiving God’s revelation and
of holding God’s truth is one of the heart, not one
of the head. The ability to receive and search out
is like that of the child, the babe, the synonym of
docility, innocence and simplicity. These are the
conditions on which God reveals Himself to men.
The world by wisdom cannot know God. The
world by wisdom can never receive nor understand
God, because God reveals Himself to men’s hearts,
not to their heads. Only hearts can ever know
God, can feel God, can see God, and can read God
in His Book of Books. God is not grasped by
thought but by feeling. The world gets God by
revelation, not by philosophy. It is not apprehension,
// File: 084.png
.pn +1
the mental ability to grasp God, but plasticity,
ability to be impressed, that men need. It is not by
hard, strong, stern, great reasoning that the world
gets God or gets hold of God, but by big, soft, pure
hearts. Not so much do men need light to see God
as they need hearts to feel God.
Human wisdom, great natural talents, and the
culture of the schools, howsoever good they may
be, can neither be the repositories nor conservors
of God’s revealed truth. The tree of knowledge
has been the bane of faith, ever essaying to reduce
revelation to a philosophy and to measure God by
man. In its pride, it puts God out and puts man
into God’s truth. To become babes again, on our
mother’s bosom, quieted, weaned, without clamour
or protest, is the only position in which to know
God. A calmness on the surface, and in the depths
of the soul, in which God can mirror His will, His
Word and Himself—this is the attitude toward
Him through which He can reveal Himself, and
this attitude is the right attitude of prayer.
Our Lord taught us the lesson of prayer by putting
into practice in His life what He taught by
His lips. Here is a simple but important statement,
full of meaning: “And when he had sent the
multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart
to pray: and when the evening was come He was
there alone.”
The multitudes had been fed and were dismissed
by our Lord.
// File: 085.png
.pn +1
The Divine work of healing and teaching must
be stayed awhile in order that time, place and opportunity
for prayer might be secured,—Prayer,
the divinest of all labour, the most important of all
ministries. Away from the eager, anxious, seeking
multitudes, He has gone while the day is yet bright,
to be alone with God. The multitudes tax and exhaust
Him. The disciples are tossed on the sea,
but calmness reigns on the mountain top where our
Lord is kneeling in secret prayer—where prayer
rules. “When Jesus therefore perceived that they
would come and take him by force, to make him
a king, he departed again into a mountain alone.”
He must be alone in that moment with God.
Temptation was in that hour. The multitude had
feasted on the five loaves and the two fishes. Filled
with food and excited beyond measure, they would
fain make Him king. He flees from the temptation
to secret prayer, for here is the source of His
strength to resist evil. What a refuge was secret
prayer even to Him! What a refuge to us from
the world’s dazzling and delusive crowns! What
safety there is to be alone with God when the world
tempts us, allures us, attracts us!
The prayers of our Lord were prophetic and
illustrative of the great truth that the greatest
measure of the Holy Spirit, the attesting voice and
opening Heavens are only secured by prayer. This
is suggested by His baptism by John the Baptist,
when He prayed as He was baptised, and immediately
// File: 086.png
.pn +1
the Holy Spirit descended upon Him like a
dove. More than prophetic and illustrative is this
hour to Him. This critical hour is real and personal,
consecrating and qualifying Him for God’s
highest purposes. Prayer to Him, just as it is to
us, was a necessity, an absolute, invariable condition
of securing God’s fullest, consecrating and
qualifying power. The Holy Spirit came upon
Him in fullness of measure and power in the very
act of prayer.
And so the Holy Spirit comes upon us in fullness
of measure and power only in answer to ardent and
intense praying. The heavens were opened to
Christ, and access and communion established and
enlarged by prayer. Freedom and fullness of
access and closeness of communion are secured to
us as the heritage of prayer. The voice attesting
His Sonship came to Christ in prayer. The witness
of our sonship, clear and indubitable, is
secured only by praying. The constant witness of
our sonship can only be retained by those who pray
without ceasing. When the stream of prayer is
shallow and arrested, the evidence of our sonship
becomes faint and inaudible.
// File: 087.png
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2 id=chap09
IX | PRAYER INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF OUR LORD (Continued)
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
Sin is so unspeakably awful in its evil that it struck
down, as to death and hell, the very Son of God Himself.
He had been amazed enough at sin before. He
had seen sin making angels of heaven into devils of
hell. Death and all its terrors did not much move or
disconcert our Lord. No. It was not death: It was
sin. It was hell-fire in His soul. It was the coals,
and the oil, and the rosin, and the juniper, and the
turpentine of the fire that is not quenched.
—Alexander Whyte, D.D.
.pm letter-end
.sp 2
We note that from the revelation and inspiration
of a transporting prayer-hour
of Christ, as its natural sequence, there
sounds out that gracious encouraging proclamation
for heavy-hearted, restless, weary souls of
earth, which has so impressed, arrested and drawn
humanity as it has fallen on the ears of heavy-laden
souls, which has so sweetened and relieved
men of their toils and burdens:
.pm letter-start
“Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy
laden, and I will give you rest.
“Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I
am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest
unto your souls.
“For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
.pm letter-end
// File: 088.png
.pn +1
At the grave of Lazarus and as preparatory to
and as a condition of calling him back to life, we
have our Lord calling upon His Father in Heaven.
“Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me, and
I know that thou hearest me always.” The lifting
to Heaven of Christ’s eyes—how much was there
in it! How much of confidence and plea was in
that look to Heaven! His very look, the lifting
up of His eyes, carried His whole being Heaven-ward,
and caused a pause in that world, and drew
attention and help. All Heaven was engaged,
pledged and moved when the Son of God looked
up at this grave. O for a people with the Christly
eye, Heaven lifted and Heaven arresting! As it
was with Christ, so ought we to be so perfected
in faith, so skilled in praying, that we could lift
our eyes to Heaven and say with Him, with
deepest humility, and with commanding confidence,
“Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me.”
Once more we have a very touching and beautiful
and instructive incident in Christ’s praying,
this time having to do with infants in their
mothers’ arms, parabolic as well as historical:
.pm letter-start
“Then were there brought unto him little children,
that he should put his hands on them, and pray: and
the disciples rebuked them.
“But when Jesus saw it he was much displeased,
and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come
unto me, and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom
of God.
// File: 089.png
.pn +1
“Verily I say unto you, whosoever shall not receive
the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter
therein.
“And he took them up in his arms, put his hands
upon them and blessed them.”
.pm letter-end
This was one of the few times when stupid
ignorance and unspiritual views aroused His indignation
and displeasure. Vital principles were involved.
The foundations were being destroyed,
and worldly views actuated the disciples. Their
temper and their words in rebuking those who
brought their infants to Christ were exceedingly
wrong. The very principles which He came to
illustrate and propagate were being violated.
Christ received the little ones. The big ones must
become little ones. The old ones must become
young ones ere Christ will receive them. Prayer
helps the little ones. The cradle must be invested
with prayer. We are to pray for our little ones.
The children are now to be brought to Jesus Christ
by prayer, as He is in Heaven and not on earth.
They are to be brought to Him early for His blessing,
even when they are infants. His blessing
descends upon these little ones in answer to the
prayers of those who bring them. With untiring
importunity are they to be brought to Christ in
earnest, persevering prayer by their fathers and
mothers. Before they know, themselves, anything
about coming of their own accord, parents are to
present them to God in prayer, seeking His blessing
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upon their offspring and at the same time asking
for wisdom, for grace and Divine help to rear them
that they may come to Christ when they arrive at
the years of accountability of their own accord.
Holy hands and holy praying have much to do
with guarding and training young lives and to
form young characters for righteousness and
Heaven. What benignity, simplicity, kindness,
unworldliness and condescension and meekness,
linked with prayerfulness, are in this act of this
Divine Teacher!
It was as Jesus was praying that Peter made
that wonderful confession of his faith that Jesus
was the Son of God:
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“And it came to pass, as he was alone praying, his
disciples were with him; and he asked them, saying,
Whom say the people that I am?
“And they said, Some say that thou art John the
Baptist; some, Elias; and others, Jeremias or one of
the prophets.
“He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?
“And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art
the Christ, the Son of the living God.
“And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed
art thou, Simon Bar-jona; for flesh and blood hath
not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in
heaven.
“And I say also unto thee, that thou art Peter, and
upon this rock I will build my church: and the gates
of hell shall not prevail against it.
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“And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom
of Heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth
shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt
loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
.pm letter-end
It was after our Lord had made large promises
to His disciples that He had appointed unto each
of them a kingdom, and that they should sit at His
table in His kingdom and sit on thrones judging
the twelve tribes of Israel, that He gave those
words of warning to Simon Peter, telling him that
He had prayed for Peter. “And the Lord said,
Simon, Simon, behold Satan hath desired to have
you, so that he may sift you as wheat. But I
have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not. And
when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.”
Happy Peter, to have such an one as the Son of
God to pray for him! Unhappy Peter, to be so in
the toils of Satan as to demand so much of Christ’s
solicitude! How intense are the demands upon our
prayers for some specific cases! Prayer must be
personal in order to be to the fullest extent beneficial.
Peter drew on Christ’s praying more than
any other disciple because of his exposure to
greater perils. Pray for the most impulsive, the
most imperilled ones by name. Our love and their
danger give frequency, inspiration, intensity and
personality to praying.
We have seen how Christ had to flee from the
multitude after the magnificent miracle of feeding
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the five thousand as they sought to make Him
king. Then prayer was His escape and His
refuge from this strong worldly temptation. He
returns from that night of prayer with strength
and calmness, and with a power to perform that
other remarkable miracle of great wonder of walking
on the sea.
Even the loaves and fishes were sanctified by
prayer before He served them to the multitude.
“He looked up to Heaven and gave thanks.”
Prayer should sanctify our daily bread and multiply
our seed sown.
He looked up to heaven and heaved a sigh when
He touched the tongue of the deaf man who had
an impediment in his speech. Much akin was this
sigh to that groaning in spirit which He evinced
at the grave of Lazarus. “Jesus therefore again
groaning in himself, cometh to the grave.” Here
was the sigh and groan of the Son of God over a
human wreck, groaning that sin and hell had such
a mastery over man; troubled that such a desolation
and ruin were man’s sad inheritance. This is
a lesson to be ever learned by us. Here is a fact
ever to be kept in mind and heart and which must
ever, in some measure, weigh upon the inner spirits
of God’s children. We who have received the first
fruit of the Spirit groan within ourselves at sin’s
waste, and death, and are filled with longings for
the coming of a better day.
Present in all great praying, making and marking
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it, is the man. It is impossible to separate the
praying from the man. The constituent elements
of the man are the constituents of his praying.
The man flows through his praying. Only the fiery
Elijah could do Elijah’s fiery praying. We can get
holy praying only from a holy man. Holy being
can never exist without holy doing. Being is first,
doing comes afterward. What we are gives being,
force and inspiration to what we do. Character,
that which is graven deep, ineradicably, imperishably
within us, colours all we do.
The praying of Christ, then, is not to be separated
from the character of Christ. If He prayed
more unweariedly, more self-denyingly, more
holily, more simply and directly than other men,
it was because these elements entered more largely
into His character than into that of others.
The transfiguration marks another epoch in His
life, and that was pre-eminently a prayer epoch.
Luke gives an account with the animus and aim of
the event:
.pm letter-start
“And it came to pass about an eight days after
these sayings, he took Peter and John and James, and
went up into a mountain to pray.
“And as he prayed, the fashion of his countenance
was altered, and his raiment was white and glistering.
“And, behold, there talked with him two men,
which were Moses and Elias:
“Who appeared in glory, and spake of his decease
which he should accomplish at Jerusalem.”
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The selection was made of three of His disciples
for an inner circle of associates, in prayer. Few
there be who have the spiritual tastes or aptitude
for this inner circle. Even these three favoured
ones could scarcely stand the strain of that long
night of praying. We know that He went up on
that mountain to pray, not to be transfigured. But
it was as He prayed, the fashion of His countenance
was altered and His raiment became white
and glistering. There is nothing like prayer to
change character and whiten conduct. There is
nothing like prayer to bring heavenly visitants and
to gild with heavenly glory earth’s mountain to us,
dull and drear. Peter calls it the holy mount, made
so by prayer.
Three times did the voice of God bear witness
to the presence and person of His Son, Jesus Christ—at
His baptism by John the Baptist, and then at
His transfiguration the approving, consoling and
witnessing voice of His Father was heard. He
was found in prayer both of these times. The third
time the attesting voice came, it was not on the
heights of His transfigured glory, nor was it as He
was girding Himself to begin His conflict and to
enter upon His ministry, but it was when He was
hastening to the awful end. He was entering the
dark mystery of His last agony, and looking forward
to it. The shadows were deepening, a dire
calamity was approaching and an unknown and
untried dread was before Him. Ruminating on
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His approaching death, prophesying about it, and
forecasting the glory which would follow, in the
midst of His high and mysterious discourse, the
shadows come like a dread eclipse and He bursts
out in an agony of prayer:
.pm letter-start
“Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say?
Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause
came I unto this hour.
“Father, glorify thy name. Then came there a
voice from heaven, saying, I have both glorified it and
will glorify it again.
“The people therefore that stood by, and heard it,
said that it thundered: others said, An angel spake
to him.
“Jesus answered and said, This voice came not
because of me, but for your sakes.”
.pm letter-end
But let it be noted that Christ is meeting and
illuminating this fateful and distressing hour with
prayer. How even thus early the flesh reluctantly
shrank from the contemplated end!
How fully does His prayer on the cross for His
enemies synchronise with all He taught about love
to our enemies, and with mercy and forgiveness to
those who have trespassed against us! “Then said
Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not
what they do.” Apologising for His murderers
and praying for them, while they were jeering and
mocking Him at His death pains and their hands
were reeking with His blood! What amazing
generosity, pity and love!
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Again, take another one of the prayers on the
cross. How touching the prayer and how bitter
the cup! How dark and desolate the hour as He
exclaims, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me?” This is the last stroke that rends in
twain His heart, more exquisite in its bitterness
and its anguish and more heart-piercing than the
kiss of Judas. All else was looked for, all else was
put in His book of sorrows. But to have His
Father’s face withdrawn, God-forsaken, the hour
when these distressing words escaped the lips of
the dying Son of God! And yet how truthful He
is! How childlike we find Him! And so when
the end really comes, we hear Him again speaking
to His Father: “Father, into thy hands I commit
my spirit. And having said this, he gave up the
ghost.”
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.sp 4
.h2 id=chap10
X | OUR LORD’S MODEL PRAYER
.sp 2
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What satisfaction must it be to learn from God
Himself with what words and in what manner, He
would have us pray to Him so as not to pray in vain!
We do not sufficiently consider the value of this
prayer; the respect and attention which it requires;
the preference to be given to it; its fulness and perfection;
the frequent use we should make of it; and
the spirit which we should bring with it. “Lord,
teach us how to pray.”—Adam Clark.
.pm letter-end
.sp 2
Jesus gives us the pattern prayer in what is
commonly known as “The Lord’s Prayer.”
In this model, perfect prayer He gives us a
law form to be followed, and yet one to be filled
in and enlarged as we may decide when we pray.
The outlines and form are complete, yet it is but an
outline, with many a blank, which our needs and
convictions are to fill in.
Christ puts words on our lips, words which are
to be uttered by holy lives. Words belong to the
life of prayer. Wordless prayers are like human
spirits; pure and high they may be, but too ethereal
and impalpable for earthly conflicts and earthly
needs and uses. We must have spirits clothed in
flesh and blood, and our prayers must be likewise
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clothed in words to give them point and power, a
local habitation, and a name.
This lesson of “The Lord’s Prayer,” drawn
forth by the request of the disciples, “Lord, teach
us to pray,” has something in form and verbiage
like the prayer sections of the Sermon on the
Mount. It is the same great lesson of praying to
“Our Father which art in Heaven,” and is one
of insistent importunity. No prayer lesson would
be complete without it. It belongs to the first and
last lessons in prayer. God’s Fatherhood gives
shape, value and confidence to all our praying.
He teaches us that to hallow God’s name is the
first and the greatest of prayers. A desire for the
glorious coming and the glorious establishment of
God’s glorious kingdom follows in value and in
sequence the hallowing of God’s name. He who
really hallows God’s name will hail the coming of
the Kingdom of God, and will labour and pray to
bring that kingdom to pass and to establish it.
Christ’s pupils in the school of prayer are to be
taught diligently to hallow God’s name, to work
for God’s kingdom, and to do God’s will perfectly,
completely and gladly, as it is done in Heaven.
Prayer engages the highest interest and secures
the highest glory of God. God’s name, God’s
kingdom and God’s will are all in it. Without
prayer His name is profaned, His kingdom fails,
and His will is decried and opposed. God’s will
can be done on earth as it is done in Heaven. God’s
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will done on earth makes earth like Heaven. Importunate
praying is the mighty energy which
establishes God’s will on earth as it is established
in Heaven.
He is still teaching us that prayer sanctifies and
makes hopeful and sweet our daily toil for daily
bread. Forgiveness of sins is to be sought by
prayer, and the great prayer plea we are to make
for forgiveness is that we have forgiven all those
who have sinned against us. It involves love for
our enemies so far as to pray for them, to bless
them and not curse them, and to pardon their
offences against us whatever those offences may be.
We are to pray, “Lead us not into temptation,”
that is, that while we thus pray, the tempter and
the temptation are to be watched against, resisted
and prayed against.
All these things He had laid down in this law of
prayer, but many a simple lesson of comment, expansion,
and expression He adds to His statute law.
In this prayer He teaches His disciples, so
familiar to thousands in this day who learned it
at their mother’s knees in childhood, the words
are so childlike that children find their instruction,
edification and comfort in them as they kneel and
pray. The most glowing mystic and the most
careful thinker finds each his own language in
these simple words of prayer. Beautiful and
revered as these words are, they are our words
for solace, help and learning.
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He led the way in prayer that we might follow
His footsteps. Matchless leader in matchless
praying! Lord, teach us to pray as Thou didst
Thyself pray!
How marked the contrast between the Sacerdotal
Prayer and this “Lord’s Prayer,” this copy
for praying He gave to His disciples as the first
elements of prayer. How simple and childlike!
No one has ever approached in composition a
prayer so simple in its petitions and yet so comprehensive
in all of its requests.
How these simple elements of prayer as given
by our Lord commend themselves to us! This
prayer is for us as well as for those to whom it
was first given. It is for the child in the A B C
of prayer, and it is for the graduate of the highest
institutions of learning. It is a personal prayer,
reaching to all our needs and covering all our sins.
It is the highest form of prayer for others. As
the scholar can never in all his after studies or
learning dispense with his A B C, and as the alphabet
gives form, colour and expression to all after
learning, impregnating all and grounding all, so
the learner in Christ can never dispense with the
Lord’s Prayer. But he may make it form the
basis of his higher praying, this intercession for
others in the Sacerdotal Prayer.
The Lord’s Prayer is ours by our mother’s
knee and fits us in all the stages of a joyous
Christian life. The Sacerdotal Prayer is ours
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also in the stages and office of our royal priesthood
as intercessors before God. Here we have
oneness with God, deep spiritual unity, and unswerving
loyalty to God, living and praying to
glorify God.
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.sp 4
.h2 id=chap11
XI | OUR LORD’S SACERDOTAL PRAYER
.sp 2
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Jesus closes His life with inimitable calmness, confidence
and sublimity. “I have glorified Thee; I have
finished the work which Thou gavest me to do.” The
annals of earth have nothing comparable to it in real
serenity and sublimity. May we come to our end
thus, in supreme loyalty to Christ.
—Edward Bounds.
.pm letter-end
.sp 2
We come now to consider our Lord’s Sacerdotal
Prayer, as found recorded in the
seventeenth chapter of John’s Gospel.
Obedience to the Father and abiding in the
Father, these belong to the Son, and these belong
to us, as partners with Christ in His Divine work
of intercession. How tenderly and with what
pathos and how absorbingly He prays for His
disciples! “I pray for them; I pray not for the
world.” What a pattern of prayerfulness for
God’s people! For God’s people are God’s cause,
God’s Church and God’s Kingdom. Pray for
God’s people, for their unity, their sanctification,
and their glorification. How the subject of their
unity pressed upon Him! These walls of separation,
these alienations, these riven circles of God’s
family, and these warring tribes of ecclesiastics—how
He is torn and bleeds and suffers afresh at the
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sight of these divisions! Unity—that is the great
burden of that remarkable Sacerdotal Prayer.
“That they may be one, even as we are one.” The
spiritual oneness of God’s people—that is the
heritage of God’s glory to them, transmitted by
Christ to His Church.
First of all, in this prayer, Jesus prays for Himself,
not now the suppliant as in Gethsemane, not
weakness, but strength now. There is not now
the pressure of darkness and of hell, but passing
for the time over the fearful interim, He asks that
He may be glorified, and that His exalted glory
may secure glory to His Father. His sublime
loyalty and fidelity to God are declared, that
fidelity to God which is of the very essence of interceding
prayer. Our devoted lives pray. Our
unswerving loyalty to God are eloquent pleas to
Him, and give access and confidence in our advocacy.
This prayer is gemmed, but its walls are
adamant. What profound and granite truths!
What fathomless mysteries! What deep and rich
experiences do such statements as these involve:
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“And this is life eternal, that they might know
thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou
hast sent.
“And all mine are thine, and thine are mine, and
I am glorified in them.
“And I have declared unto them thy name, and
will declare it, that the love wherewith thou hast loved
me may be in them, and I in them.
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“And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine
own self with the glory which I had with thee before
the world was.”
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Let us stop and ask, have we eternal life? Do
we know God experimentally, consciously, and do
we know Him really and personally? Do we know
Jesus Christ as a person, and as a personal Saviour?
Do we know Him by a heart acquaintance,
and know Him well? This, this only, is eternal
life. And is Jesus glorified in us? Let us continue
this personal inquiry. Do our lives prove
His divinity? And does Jesus shine brighter
because of us? Are we opaque or transparent
bodies, and do we darken or reflect His pure light?
Once more let us ask: Do we seek God’s glory?
Do we seek glory where Christ sought it?
“Glorify thou me with thy own self.” Do we
esteem the presence and the possession of God our
most excellent glory and our supreme good?
How closely does He bind Himself and His
Father to His people! His heart centers upon
them in this high hour of holy communion with
His Father.
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“I have manifested thy name unto the men which
thou gavest me out of the world; thine they were, and
thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word.
“Now they have known that all things whatsoever
thou hast given me are of thee.
“For I have given unto them the words which thou
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gavest me; and they have received them, and have
known surely that I came out from thee, and they
have believed that thou didst send me.
“I pray for them; I pray not for the world; but
for them which thou hast given me; for they are
thine.
“And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I
am glorified in them.”
.pm letter-end
He prays also for keeping for these disciples.
Not only were they to be chosen, elected and
possessed, but were to be kept by the Father’s
watchful eyes and by the Father’s omnipotent
hand. “And now I am no more in the world, but
these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy
Father, keep through thine own name those whom
thou hast given me, that they may be one, as
we are.”
He prays that they might be kept by the Holy
Father, in all holiness by the power of His Name.
He asks that His people may be kept from sin,
from all sin, from sin in the concrete and sin in
the abstract, from sin in all its shapes of evil, from
all sin in this world. He prays that they might not
only be fit and ready for Heaven, but ready and fit
for earth, for its sweetest privileges, its sternest
duties, its deepest sorrows, and its richest joys;
ready for all of its trials, consolations and
triumphs. “I pray not that thou shouldest take
them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep
them from the evil.”
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He prays that they may be kept from the world’s
greatest evil, which is sin. He desires that they
may be kept from the guilt, the power, the pollution
and the punishment of sin. The Revised
Version makes it read, “That thou shouldst keep
them from the evil one.” Kept from the devil, so
that he might not touch them, nor find them, nor
have a place in them; that they might be all owned,
possessed, filled and guarded by God. “Kept by
the power of God through faith unto salvation.”
He places us in the arms of His Father, on the
bosom of His Father, and in the heart of His
Father. He calls God into service, puts Him to
the front, and places us under His Father’s closer
keeping, under His Father’s shadow, and under
the covert of His Father’s wing. The Father’s
rod and staff are for our security, for our comfort,
for our refuge, for our strength and guidance.
These disciples were not to be taken out of the
world, but kept from its evil, its monster evil,
which is itself. “This present evil world.” How
the world seduces, dazzles, and deludes the children
of men! His disciples are chosen out of the
world, out of the world’s bustle and earthliness,
out of its all-devouring greed of gain, out of its
money-desire, money-love, and money-toil. Earth
draws and holds as if it was made out of gold and
not out of dirt; as though it was covered with
diamonds and not with graves.
“They are not of the world, even as I am not
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of the world.” Not only from sin and Satan
were they to be kept, but also from the soil, stain
and the taint of worldliness, as Christ was free
from it. Their relation to Christ was not only to
free them from the world’s defiling taint, its unhallowed
love, and its criminal friendships, but
the world’s hatred would inevitably follow their
Christ-likeness. No result so necessarily and universally
follows its cause as this. “The world
hath hated them because they are not of the world,
even as I am not of the world.”
How solemn and almost awful the repetition of
the declaration, “They are not of the world, even
as I am not of the world.” How pronounced,
radical and eternal was our Lord Christ’s divorce
from the world! How pronounced, radical and
eternal is that of our Lord’s true followers from
the world! The world hates the disciple as it
hated his Lord, and will crucify the disciple just
as it crucified his Lord. How pertinent the question,
have we the Christ unworldliness? Does the
world hate us as it hated our Lord? Are His
words fulfilled in us?
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“If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me
before it hated you.
“If ye were of the world, the world would love his
own; but because ye are not of the world, but I have
chosen you out of the world, therefore the world
hateth you.”
.pm letter-end
He puts Himself before us clear cut as the full
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portraiture of an unworldly Christian. Here is
our changeless pattern. “They are not of the
world even as I am not of the world.” We must
be cut after this pattern.
The subject of their unity pressed upon Him.
Note how He called His Father’s attention to it,
and see how He pleaded for this unity of His followers:
“And now I am no more in the world, but
these are in the world and I come to thee. Holy
Father, keep through thine own name those whom
thou hast given me, that they may be one, as
we are.”
Again He returns to it as He sees the great
crowds flocking to His standard as the ages
pass on:
.pm letter-start
“That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in
me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us;
that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.
“And the glory which thou gavest me I have given
them; that they may be one, even as we are one.
“I in them and thou in me that they may be made
perfect in one; and that the world may know that
thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast
loved me.”
.pm letter-end
Notice how intently His heart was set on this
unity. What shameful history, and what bloody
annals has this lack of unity written for God’s
Church! These walls of separations, these alienations,
these riven circles of God’s family, these
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warring tribes of men, and these internecine fratricidal
wars! He looks ahead and sees how Christ is
torn, how He bleeds and suffers afresh in all these
sad things of the future. The unity of God’s
people was to be the heritage of God’s glory promised
to them. Division and strife are the devil’s
bequest to the Church, a heritage of failure, weakness,
shame and woe.
The oneness of God’s people was to be the one
credential to the world of the divinity of Christ’s
mission on earth. Let us ask in all candor, are
we praying for this unity as Christ prayed for it?
Are we seeking the peace, the welfare, the glory,
the might and the divinity of God’s cause as it is
found in the unity of God’s people?
Going back again, note, please, how He puts
Himself as the exponent and the pattern of this
unworldliness which He prays may possess His
disciples. He sends them into the world just
as His Father sent Him into the world. He expects
them to be and do, just as He was and as
He did for His Father. He sought the sanctification
of His disciples that they might be wholly
devoted to God and purified from all sin. He
desired in them a holy life and a holy work for
God. He devoted Himself to death in order that
they might be devoted in life to God. For a true
sanctification He prayed, a real, whole, and thorough
sanctification, embracing soul, body and
mind, for time and eternity. With Him the word
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itself had much to do with their true sanctification.
“Sanctify them through thy truth; thy word is
truth. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that
they also might be sanctified by the truth.”
Entire devotedness was to be the type of their
sanctification. His prayer for their sanctification
marks the pathway to full sanctification. Prayer
is that pathway. All the ascending steps to that
lofty position of entire sanctification are steps of
prayer, increasing prayerfulness in spirit and increasing
prayerfulness in fact. “Pray without
ceasing” is the imperative prelude to “the very
God of peace sanctify you wholly.” And prayer
is but the continued interlude and doxology of this
rich grace in the heart: “I pray God your whole
spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless
unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful
is he that calleth you, who also will do it.”
We can only meet our full responsibilities and
fulfill our high mission when we go forth sanctified
as Christ our Lord was sanctified. He sends us
into the world just as His Father sent Him into
the world. He expects us to be as He was, to do
as He did, and to glorify the Father just as He
glorified the Father.
What longings He had to have us with Him in
Heaven: “Father, I will that they also whom thou
hast given me, be with me where I am; that they
may behold my glory, which thou hast given me.”
What response do our truant hearts make to this
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earnest, loving, Christly longing? Are we as eager
for Heaven as He is to have us there? How
calm, how majestic and how authoritative is His
“I will”!
He closes His life with inimitable calmness,
confidence and sublimity. “I have glorified thee
on the earth; I have finished the work which thou
gavest me to do.”
The annals of earth have nothing comparable to
it in real serenity and sublimity. May we come to
our end thus in supreme loyalty to Christ.
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.sp 4
.h2 id=chap12
XII | THE GETHSEMANE PRAYER
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.pm letter-start
The cup! the cup! the cup! Our Lord did not use
many words: but He used His few words again and
again, till this cup! and Thy will!—Thy will be done,
and this cup—was all His prayer. “The cup! The
cup! The cup!” cried Christ: first on His feet: and
then on His knees: and then on His face.... “Lord,
teach us to pray!”—Alexander Whyte, D.D.
.pm letter-end
.sp 2
We come to Gethsemane. What a contrast!
The sacerdotal prayer had been one of intense
feelings of universal grasp, and of
world-wide and illimitable sympathy and solicitude
for His church. Perfect calmness and perfect
poise reigned. Majestic He was and simple and
free from passion or disquiet. The Royal Intercessor
and Advocate for others, His petitions are
like princely edicts, judicial and authoritative.
How changed now! In Gethsemane He seems to
have entered another region, and becomes another
man. His sacerdotal prayer, so exquisite in its
tranquil flow, so unruffled in its strong, deep current,
is like the sun, moving in meridian, unsullied
glory, brightening, vitalising, ennobling and blessing
everything. The Gethsemane prayer is that
same sun declining in the west, plunged into an
ocean of storm and cloud, storm-covered, storm-eclipsed
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with gloom, darkness and terror on every
side.
The prayer in Gethsemane is exceptional in
every way. The super-incumbent load of the
world’s sin is upon Him. The lowest point of His
depression has been reached. The bitterest cup of
all, His bitter cup, is being pressed to His lips.
The weakness of all His weaknesses, the sorrow of
all His sorrows, the agony of all His agonies are
now upon Him. The flesh is giving out with its
fainting and trembling pulsations, like the trickling
of His heart’s blood. His enemies have thus far
triumphed. Hell is in a jubilee and bad men are
joining in the hellish carnival.
Gethsemane was Satan’s hour, Satan’s power,
and Satan’s darkness. It was the hour of massing
all of Satan’s forces for a final, last conflict. Jesus
had said, “The prince of this world cometh and
findeth nothing in me.” The conflict for earth’s
mastery is before Him. The spirit led and drove
Him into the stern conflict and severe temptation
of the wilderness. But His Comforter, His Leader
and His inspiration through His matchless history,
seems to have left Him now. “He began to be sorrowful
and very heavy,” and we hear Him under
this great pressure exclaiming, “My soul is exceeding
sorrowful, even unto death.” The depression,
conflict and agony had gone to the very core
of His spirit, and had sunk Him to the very verge
of death. “Sore amazed” He was.
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Surprise and awe depress His soul. “Very
heavy” was the hour of hell’s midnight which fell
upon His spirit. Very heavy was this hour when
all the sins of all the world, of every man, of all
men, fell upon His immaculate soul, with all their
stain and all their guilt.
He cannot abide the presence of His chosen
friends. They cannot enter into the depths and
demands of this fearful hour. His trusted and set
watchers were asleep. His Father’s face is hid.
His Father’s approving voice is silent. The Holy
Spirit, who had been with Him in all the trying
hours of His life, seems to have withdrawn from
the scene. Alone He must drink the cup, alone He
must tread the winepress of God’s fierce wrath and
of Satan’s power and darkness, and of man’s
envy, cruelty and vindictiveness. The scene is well
described by Luke:
.pm letter-start
“And he came out and went, as he was wont, to
the Mount of Olives: and his disciples also followed
him.
“And when he was at the place, he said unto them,
Pray that ye enter not into temptation.
“And he was withdrawn from them about a stone’s
cast, and kneeled down and prayed.
“Saying, Father, if thou be willing remove this
cup from me; nevertheless, not my will, but thine,
be done.
“And there appeared an angel unto him from
heaven, strengthening him.
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“And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly;
and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood
falling down to the ground.
“And when he rose up from prayer, and was come
to his disciples, he found them sleeping for sorrow.
“And said unto them, Why sleep ye? Rise and
pray, lest ye enter into temptation.”
.pm letter-end
The prayer agony of Gethsemane crowns Calvary
with glory and while the prayers offered by
Christ on the cross are the union of weakness and
strength, of deepest agony and desolation, accompanied
with sweetest calm, divinest submission and
implicit confidence.
Nowhere in prophet or priest, king or ruler, of
synagogue or church, does the ministry of prayer
assume such marvels of variety, power and fragrance
as in the life of Jesus Christ. It is the
aroma of God’s sweetest spices, aflame with God’s
glory, and consumed by God’s will.
We find in this Gethsemane prayer that which
we find nowhere else in the praying of Christ. “O,
my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from
me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt.”
This is different from the whole tenor and trend of
His praying and doing. How different from His
sacerdotal prayer! “Father, I will,” is the law and
life of that prayer. In His last directions for
prayer, He makes our will the measure and condition
of prayer. “If ye abide in me, and my
words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will,
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and it shall be done unto you.” He said to the
Syro-phœnician woman, “Great is thy faith! Be
it unto thee as thou wilt.”
But in Gethsemane His praying was against the
declared will of God. The pressure was so heavy
upon Him, the cup was so bitter, the burden was
so strange and intolerable, that the flesh cried out
for relief. Prostrate, sinking, sorrowful unto
death. He sought to be relieved from that which
seemed too heavy to bear. He prayed, however,
not in revolt against God’s will, but in submission
to that will, and yet to change God’s plan and to
alter God’s purposes. He prayed. Pressed by the
weakness of the flesh, and by the powers of hell in
all their dire, hellish malignity and might, Jesus
was on this one only occasion constrained to pray
against the will of God. He did it, though, with
great wariness and pious caution. He did it with
declared and inviolable submission to God’s will.
But this was exceptional.
Simple submission to God’s will is not the highest
attitude of the soul to God. Submission may
be seeming, induced by conditions, nothing but an
enforced surrender, not cheerful but grudging, only
a temporary expedient, a fitful resolve. When the
occasion or calamity which called it forth is removed,
the will returns to its old ways and to its
old self.
Jesus Christ prayed always with this one exception
in conformity with the will of God. He was
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one with God’s plan, and one with God’s will. To
pray in conformity with God’s will was the life and
law of Christ. The same was law of His praying.
Conformity, to live one with God, is a far higher
and diviner life than to live simply in submission
to God. To pray in conformity—together with
God—is a far higher and diviner way to pray than
mere submission. At its best state, submission is
non-rebellion, an acquiescence, which is good, but
not the highest. The most powerful form of praying
is positive, aggressive, mightily outgoing and
creative. It molds things, changes things and
brings things to pass.
Conformity means to “stand perfect and complete
in all the will of God.” It means to delight to
do God’s will, to run with eagerness and ardour to
carry out His plans. Conformity to God’s will
involves submission, patient, loving, sweet submission.
But submission in itself falls short of and
does not include conformity. We may be submissive
but not conformed. We may accept results
against which we have warred, and even be resigned
to them.
Conformity means to be one with God, both in
result and in processes. Submission may be one
with God in the end. Conformity is one with God
in the beginning, and the end. Jesus had conformity,
absolute and perfect, to God’s will, and by that
He prayed. This was the single point where there
was a drawing back from God’s processes, extorted
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by insupportable pain, fear and weariness. His
submission was abject, loyal and confiding, as His
conformity had been constant and perfect. Conformity
is the only true submission, the most loyal,
the sweetest and the fullest.
Gethsemane has its lessons of humble supplications
as Jesus knelt alone in the garden. Of
burdened prostration, as He fell on His face, of
intense agony, of distressing dread, of hesitancy
and shrinking back, of crying out for relief—yet
amid it all of cordial submission to God, accompanied
with a singleness of purpose for His glory.
Satan will have for each of us his hour and
power of darkness and for each of us the bitter
cup and the fearful spirit of gloom.
We can pray against God’s will, as Moses did,
to enter the Promised Land; as Paul did about
the thorn in the flesh; as David did for his doomed
child; as Hezekiah did to live. We must pray
against God’s will three times when the stroke is
the heaviest, the sorrow is the keenest, and the grief
is the deepest. We may lie prostrate all night, as
David did, through the hours of darkness. We
may pray for hours, as Jesus did, and in the darkness
of many nights, not measuring the hours by
the clock, nor the nights by the calendar. It must
all be, however, the prayer of submission.
When sorrow and the night and desolation of
Gethsemane fall in heaviest gloom on us, we ought
to submit patiently and tearfully, if need be, but
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sweetly and resignedly, without tremour, or doubt,
to the cup pressed by a Father’s hand to our lips.
“Not my will, but thine, be done,” our broken
hearts shall say. In God’s own way, mysterious
to us, that cup has in its bitterest dregs, as it had
for the Son of God, the gem and gold of perfection.
We are to be put into the crucible to be
refined. Christ was made perfect in Gethsemane,
not by the prayer, but by the suffering. “For it
became him to make the captain of their salvation
perfect through suffering.” The cup could not
pass because the suffering must go on and yield its
fruit of perfection. Through many an hour of
darkness and of hell’s power, through many a sore
conflict with the prince of this world, by drinking
many a bitter cup, we are to be made perfect. To
cry out against the terrific and searching flame of
the crucible of a Father’s painful processes is
natural and is no sin, if there be perfect acquiescence
in the answer to our prayer, perfect submission
to God’s will, and perfect devotion to
His glory.
If our hearts are true to God, we may plead with
Him about His way, and seek relief from His painful
processes. But the fierce fire of the crucible
and the agonising victim with His agonising and
submissive prayer, is not the normal and highest
form of majestic and all-commanding prayer. We
can cry out in the crucible, and can cry out against
the flame which purifies and perfects us. God
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allows this, hears this, and answers this, not by
taking us out of the crucible, nor by mitigating the
fierceness of the flame, but by sending more than
an angel to strengthen us. And yet crying out
thus, with full submission, does not answer the
real high, world-wide, royal and eternity-reaching
behests of prayer.
The prayer of submission must not be so used as
to vitiate or substitute the higher and mightier
prayer of faith. Nor must it be so stressed as to
break down importunate and prevailing prayer,
which would be to disarm prayer of its efficiency
and discrown its glorious results and would be to
encourage listless, sentimental and feeble praying.
We are ever ready to excuse our lack of earnest
and toilsome praying, by a fancied and delusive
view of submission. We often end praying just
where we ought to begin. We quit praying when
God waits and is waiting for us to really pray.
We are deterred by obstacles from praying, or we
succumb to difficulties, and call it submission to
God’s will. A world of beggarly faith, of spiritual
laziness, and of half-heartedness in prayer,
are covered under the high and pious name of
submission. To have no plan but to seek God’s
plan and carry it out, is of the essence and inspiration
of Christly praying. This is far more
than putting in a clause of submission. Jesus did
this once in seeking to change the purpose of God,
but all His other praying was the output of being
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perfectly at one with the plans and purposes of
God. It is after this order we pray when we abide
in Him and when His word abides in us. Then
we ask what we will and it is done. It is then
our prayers fashion and create things. Our wills
then become God’s will and His will becomes ours.
The two become one, and there is not a note of
discord.
“And this is the confidence that we have in him,
that, if we ask anything according to his will, he
heareth us.” And if we know that He hear us,
whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the
petitions that we desired of Him. And then it
proves true: “And whatsoever we ask, we receive
of him, because we keep his commandments, and
do those things that are pleasing in his sight.”
What restraint, forbearance, self-denial, and
loyalty to duty to God, and what deference to the
Old Testament Scriptures are in that statement of
our Lord: “Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray
to my Father, and he shall presently give me more
than twelve legions of angels? But how then shall
the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?”
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.sp 4
.h2 id=chap13
XIII | THE HOLY SPIRIT AND PRAYER
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.pm letter-start
During the great Welsh Revival a minister was
said to be very successful in winning souls by one
sermon that he preached—hundreds were converted.
Far away in a valley news reached a brother minister
of the marvelous success of this sermon. He desired
to find out the secret of the man’s great success.—He
walked the long way, and came to the minister’s poor
cottage, and the first thing he said was: “Brother,
where did you get that sermon?” He was taken into
a poorly furnished room and pointed to a spot where
the carpet was worn threadbare, near a window that
looked out upon the everlasting hills and solemn
mountains and said, “Brother, there is where I got
that sermon. My heart was heavy for men. One
night I knelt there—and cried for power as I never
preached before. The hours passed until midnight
struck, and the stars looked down on a sleeping
world, but the answer came not. I prayed on until I
saw a faint streak of grey shoot up, then it was silver—silver
became purple and gold. Then the sermon
came and the power came and men fell under the
influence of the Holy Spirit.”—G. H. Morgan.
.pm letter-end
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The Gospel without the Holy Spirit would
be vain and nugatory. The gift of the
Holy Spirit was vital to the work of Jesus
Christ in the atonement. As Jesus did not begin
His work on earth till He was anointed by the
Holy Spirit, so the same Holy Spirit is necessary
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to carry forward and make effective the atoning
work of the Son of God. As His anointing by the
Holy Ghost at His baptism was an era in His life,
so also is the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost
a great era in the work of redemption in
making effective the work of Christ’s Church.
The Holy Spirit is not only the bright lamp of
the Christian Dispensation, its Teacher and Guide,
but is the Divine Helper.
He is the enabling agent in God’s new dispensation
of doing. As the pilot takes his stand at
the wheel to guide the vessel, so the Holy Ghost
takes up His abode in the heart to guide and empower
all its efforts. The Holy Ghost executes
the whole gospel through the man by His presence
and control of the spirit of the man.
In the execution of the atoning work of Jesus
Christ, in its general and more comprehensive
operation, or in its minute and personal application,
the Holy Spirit is the one efficient Agent, absolute
and indispensable.
The gospel cannot be executed but by the Holy
Ghost. He only has the regal authority to do this
royal work. Intellect cannot execute it, neither
can learning, nor eloquence, nor truth, not even the
revealed truth can execute the gospel. The marvelous
facts of Christ’s life told by hearts unanointed
by the Holy Spirit will be dry and sterile, or “like
a story told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing.” Not even the precious blood
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can execute the gospel. Not any, nor all of these,
though spoken with angelic wisdom, angelic eloquence,
can execute the gospel with saving power.
Only tongues set on fire by the Holy Spirit can
witness the saving power of Christ with power to
save others.
No one dared move from Jerusalem to proclaim
or utter the message along its streets to the dying
multitudes till the Holy Spirit came in baptismal
power. John could not utter a word, though he
had pillowed his head on Christ’s bosom and caught
the pulsations of Christ’s heart, and though his
brain was full of the wondrous facts of that life
and of the wondrous words which fell from His
lips. John must wait till a fuller and richer endowment
than all of these came on him. Mary could
not live over that Christ-life in the home of John,
though she had nurtured the Christ and stored
heart and mind full of holy and motherly memories,
till she was empowered by the Holy Spirit.
The coming of the Holy Spirit is dependent upon
prayer, for prayer only can compass with its authority
and demands, the realm where this Person of
the Godhead has His abode. Even Christ was
subject to this law of prayer. With Him, it is, it
ever has been, and ever will be, “Ask, and it shall
be given you; seek and ye shall find; knock, and it
shall be opened unto you.” To His disconsolate
disciples, He said, “I will pray the Father, and He
will give you another Comforter.” This law of
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prayer for the Holy Spirit presses on the Master
and on the disciples as well. Of so many of God’s
children it may truly be said, “Ye have Him not
because ye ask not.” And of many others it might
be said, “Ye have Him in faint measure because
ye pray for Him in faint measure.”
The Holy Spirit is the spirit of all grace and of
each grace as well. Purity, power, holiness, faith,
love, joy and all grace are brought into being and
perfected by Him. Would we grow in grace in
particular? Would we be perfect in all graces?
We must seek the Holy Spirit by prayer.
We urge the seeking of the Holy Spirit. We
need Him, and we need to stir ourselves up to seek
Him. The measure we receive of Him will be
gauged by the fervour of faith and prayer with
which we seek Him. Our ability to work for God,
and to pray to God, and live for God, and affect
others for God, will be dependent on the measure
of the Holy Spirit received by us, dwelling in us,
and working through us.
Christ lays down the clear and explicit law of
prayer in this regard for all of God’s children. The
world needs the Holy Spirit to convict it of sin and
of righteousness and judgment to come and to
make it feel its guiltiness in God’s sight. And this
spirit of conviction on sinners comes in answer to
the prayers of God’s people. God’s children need
Him more and more, need His life, His more
abundant life, His super-abundant life. But that
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life begins and ever increases as the child of God
prays for the Holy Spirit. “If ye, then, being
evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children,
how much more shall your Heavenly Father
give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?” This
is the law, a condition brightened by a promise and
sweetened by a relationship.
The gift of the Holy Spirit is one of the benefits
flowing to us from the glorious presence of Christ
at the right hand of God, and this gift of the Holy
Spirit, together with all the other gifts of the enthroned
Christ, are secured to us by prayer as the
condition. The Bible by express statement, as well
as by its general principles and clear and constant
intimations, teaches us that the gift of the Holy
Spirit is connected with and conditioned in prayer.
That the Holy Spirit is in the world as God is in
the world, is true. That the Holy Spirit is in the
world as Christ is in the world is also true. And
it is also true that there is nothing predicated of
Him being in us and in the world that is not predicated
of God and Christ being in us, and in the
world. The Holy Spirit was in the world in measure
before Pentecost, and in the measure of His
operation then He was prayed for and sought for,
and the principles are unchanged. The truth is,
if we cannot pray for the Holy Spirit we cannot
pray for any good thing from God, for He is the
sum of all good to us. The truth is we seek after
the Holy Spirit just as we seek after God, just as
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we seek after Christ, with strong cryings and tears,
and we are to seek always for more and more of
His gifts, and power, and grace. The truth is,
that the presence and power of the Holy Spirit at
any given meeting is conditioned on praying faith.
Christ lays down the doctrine that the reception
of the Holy Spirit is conditioned on prayer, and He
Himself illustrated this universal law, for when
the Holy Spirit came upon Him at His baptism,
He was praying. The Apostolic Church in action
illustrates the same great truth.
A few days after Pentecost the disciples were in
an agony of prayer, “and when they had prayed,
the place was shaken where they were assembled
together; and they were all filled with the Holy
Spirit.” This incident destroys every theory which
denies prayer as the condition of the coming and
re-coming of the Holy Spirit after Pentecost, and
confirms the view that Pentecost as the result of a
long struggle of prayer is illustrative and confirmatory
that God’s great and most precious gifts
and conditioned on asking, seeking, knocking,
prayer, ardent, importunate prayer.
The same truth comes to the front very prominently
in Philip’s revival at Samaria. Though
filled with joy by believing in Christ, and though
received into the Church by water baptism, they
did not receive the Holy Spirit till Peter and John
went down there and prayed with and for them.
Paul’s praying was God’s proof to Ananias that
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Paul was in a state which conditioned him to
receive the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is not only our Teacher, our
Inspirer and our Revealer, in prayer, but the power
of our praying in measure and force is measured
by the Spirit’s power working in us, as the will
and work of God, according to God’s good pleasure.
In the third chapter of Ephesians, after the
marvelous prayer of Paul for the Church, he
seemed to be apprehensive that they would think
he had gone beyond the ability of God in his large
asking. And so he closes his appeal for them
with the words, that God was able to do exceeding
abundantly above all that we ask or think. The
power of God to do for us was measured by the
power of God in us. “According to,” says the
Apostle, that is, after the measure of, “the power
that worketh in us.” The projecting power of
praying outwardly was the projecting power of
God in us. The feeble operation of God in us
brings feeble praying. The mightiest operation of
God in us brings the mightiest praying. The secret
of prayerlessness is the absence of the work of the
Holy Spirit in us. The secret of feeble praying
everywhere is the lack of God’s Spirit in His
mightiness.
The ability of God to answer and work through
our prayers is measured by the Divine energy that
God has been enabled to put in us by the Holy
Spirit. The projecting power of praying is the
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measure of the Holy Spirit in us. So the statement
of James in the fifth chapter of his Epistle
is to this effect:
“The fervent effectual prayer of a righteous
man availeth much.” The prayer inwrought in
the heart by the almighty energy of the Holy
Spirit works mightily in its results just as Elijah’s
prayer did.
Would we pray efficiently and mightily? Then
the Holy Spirit must work in us efficiently and
mightily. Paul makes the principle of universal
application. “Whereunto I also labour, striving
according to his working, which worketh in me
mightily.” All labour for Christ which does not
spring from the Holy Spirit working in us, is
nugatory and vain. Our prayers and activities are
so feeble and resultless, because He has not worked
in us and cannot work in us His glorious work.
Would you pray with mighty results? Seek the
mighty workings of the Holy Spirit in your own
spirit.
Here we have the initial lesson in prayer for
the Holy Spirit which was to enlarge to its full
fruitage in Pentecost. It is to be noted that in
John 14:16, where Jesus engages to pray the
Father to send another Comforter, who would
dwell with His disciples and be in them, that this
is not a prayer that the Holy Spirit might do His
work in making us children of God by regeneration,
but it was for that fuller grace and power
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and Person of the Holy Spirit which we can claim
by virtue of our relation as children of God. His
work in us to make us the children of God and
His Person abiding with us and in us, as children
of God, are entirely different stages of the same
Spirit in His relation to us. In this latter work,
His gifts and works are greater, and His presence,
even Himself, is greater than His works or gifts.
His work in us prepares us for Himself. His gifts
are the dispensations of His presence. He puts
and makes us members of the body of Christ by
His work. He keeps us in that body by His Presence
and Person. He enables us to discharge the
functions as members of that body by His gifts.
The whole lesson culminates in asking for the
Holy Spirit as the great objective point of all
praying. In the direction in the Sermon on the
Mount, we have the very plain and definite promise,
“If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts
unto your children, how much more shall your
Father in Heaven give good things to them that
ask him?” In Luke we have “good things” substituted
by “the Holy Spirit.” All good is comprehended
in the Holy Spirit and He is the sum
and climax of all good things.
How complex, confusing and involved is many
a human direction about obtaining the gift of the
Holy Spirit as the abiding Comforter, our Sanctifier
and the one who empowers us! How simple
and direct is our Lord’s direction—Ask! This is
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plain and direct. Ask with urgency, ask without
fainting. Ask, seek, knock, till He comes. Your
Heavenly Father will surely send Him if you ask
for Him. Wait in the Lord for the Holy Spirit.
It is the child waiting, asking, urging and praying
perseveringly for the Father’s greatest gift and
for the child’s greatest need, the Holy Spirit.
How are we to obtain the Holy Spirit so freely
promised to those who seek Him believingly?
Wait, press, and persevere with all the calmness
and with all the ardour of a faith which knows no
fear, which allows no doubt, a faith which staggers
not at the promise through unbelief, a faith which
in its darkest and most depressed hours against
hope believes in hope, which is brightened by hope
and strengthened by hope, and which is saved
by hope.
Wait and pray—here is the key which unlocks
every castle of despair, and which opens every
treasure-store of God. It is the simplicity of the
child’s asking of the Father, who gives with a
largeness, liberality, and cheerfulness, infinitely
above everything ever known to earthly parents.
Ask for the Holy Spirit—seek for the Holy Spirit—knock
for the Holy Spirit. He is the Father’s
greatest gift for the child’s greatest need.
In these three words, “ask,” “seek” and
“knock,” given us by Christ, we have the repetition
of the advancing steps of insistency and
effort. He is laying Himself out in command and
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promise in the strongest way, showing us that if
we will lay ourselves out in prayer and will persevere,
rising to higher and stronger attitudes and
sinking to deeper depths of intensity and effort,
that the answer must inevitably come. So that it
is true the stars would fail to shine before the asking,
the seeking and the knocking would fail to
obtain what is needed and desired.
There is no elect company here, only the election
of undismayed, importunate, never-fainting effort
in prayer: “For to him that knocketh, it shall be
opened.” Nothing can be stronger than this declaration
assuring us of the answer unless it be the
promise upon which it is based, “And I say unto
you, ask and it shall be given you.”
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.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2 id=chap14
XIV | THE HOLY SPIRIT OUR HELPER IN PRAYER
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
We must pray in the Spirit, in the Holy Ghost, if
we would pray at all. Lay this, I beseech you, to
heart. Do not address yourselves to prayer as to a
work to be accomplished in your own natural strength.
It is a work of God, of God the Holy Ghost, a work
of His in you and by you, and in which you must be
fellow-workers with Him—but His work notwithstanding.—Archbishop
Trench.
.pm letter-end
.sp 2
One of the revelations of the New Testament
concerning the Holy Spirit is that
He is our helper in prayer. So we have
in the following incident in our Lord’s life the
close connection between the Holy Spirit’s work
and prayer:
.pm letter-start
“At that time Jesus rejoiced in spirit and said, I
thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that
thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent,
and hast revealed them unto babes; even so, Father,
for it seemed good in thy sight.”—Luke 10:21.
.pm letter-end
Here we have revelations of what God is to us.
Only the child’s heart can know the Father, and
only the child’s heart can reveal the Father. It is
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by prayer only that all things are delivered to us
by the Father through the Son. It is only by
prayer that all things are revealed to us by the
Father and by the Son. It is only in prayer that
the Father gives Himself to us, which is much
more every way than all other things whatsoever.
The Revised Version reads: “At that same hour
Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit.” This sets forth
that great truth not generally known, or if known,
ignored, that Jesus Christ was generally led by the
Holy Spirit, and that His joy and His praying, as
well as His working, and His life, were under the
inspiration, law and guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Turn to and read this passage:
.pm letter-start
Romans 8:26—“Likewise the spirit also helpeth
our infirmities; for we know not what we should pray
for as we ought.”
.pm letter-end
This text is most pregnant and vital, and needs
to be quoted. Patience, hope and waiting help us
in prayer. But the greatest and the divinest of
all helpers is the Holy Spirit. He takes hold of
things for us. We are dark and confused, ignorant
and weak in many things, in fact in everything
pertaining to the Heavenly life, especially in the
simple service of prayer. There is an “ought”
on us, an obligation, a necessity to pray, a spiritual
necessity upon us of the most absolute and imperative
kind. But we do not feel the obligation and
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have no ability to meet it. The Holy Spirit helps
us in our weaknesses, gives wisdom to our ignorance,
turns ignorance into wisdom, and changes
our weakness into strength. The Spirit Himself
does this. He helps and takes hold with us as we
tug and toil. He adds His wisdom to our ignorance,
gives His strength to our weakness. He
pleads for us and in us. He quickens, illumines and
inspires our prayers. He indites and elevates the
matter of our prayers, and inspires the words and
feelings of our prayers. He works mightily in us
so that we can pray mightily. He enables us to
pray always and ever according to the will of God.
In I John 5:14 we have these words:
.pm letter-start
“And this is the confidence that we have in him,
that, if we ask anything according to his will, he
heareth us:
“And if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we
ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired
of him.”
.pm letter-end
That which gives us boldness and so much
freedom and fullness of approach toward God, the
fact and basis of that boldness and liberty of approach,
is that we are asking “according to the
will of God.” This does not mean submission, but
conformity. “According to” means after the
standard, conformity, agreement. We have boldness
and all freedom of access to God because we
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are praying in conformity to His will. God
records His general will in His Word, but He has
this special work in praying for us to do. His
“things are prepared for us,” as the prophet says,
who “wait upon him.” How can we know the will
of God in our praying? What are the things which
God designs specially for us to do and pray? The
Holy Spirit reveals them to us perpetually.
“The Spirit itself maketh intercession for us
with groanings which cannot be uttered.
“And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth
what is the mind of the spirit because he maketh
intercession for the saints according to the will of
God.” Combine this text with those words of
Paul in First Corinthians, second chapter, eighth
verse and what follows:
.pm letter-start
“But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear
heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the
things which God hath prepared for them that love
him.
“But God hath revealed them unto us by his spirit;
for the spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things
of God.
“For what man knoweth the things of a man, save
the spirit of man which is in him? Even so the things
of God knoweth no man, but the spirit of God.
“Now we have received, not the spirit of the
world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might
know the things that are freely given to us of God.
“Which things also we speak, not in the words
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which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy
Ghost teacheth, comparing spiritual things with
spiritual.
“But the natural man receiveth not the things of
the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him;
neither can he know them, because they are spiritually
discerned.
“But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he
himself is judged of no man.
“For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that
he may instruct him? But we have the mind of
Christ.”
.pm letter-end
“Revealed to us by the Spirit.” Note those
words. God searches the heart where the Spirit
dwells and knows the mind of the Spirit. The
Spirit who dwells in our hearts searches the deep
purposes and the will of God to us, and reveals
those purposes and that will of God, “that we
might know the things which are freely given to
us of God.” Our spirits are so fully indwelt by
the Spirit of God, so responsive and obedient to
His illumination and to His will, that we ask with
holy boldness and freedom the things which the
Spirit of God has shown us as the will of God,
and faith is assured. Then “we know that we
have the petitions that we have asked.”
The natural man prays, but prays according to
his own will, fancy and desire. If he has ardent
desires and groanings, they are the fire and agony
of nature simply, and not that of the Spirit. What
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a world of natural praying there is, which is selfish,
self-centered, self-inspired! The Spirit, when He
prays through us, or helps us to meet the mighty
“oughtness” of right praying, trims our praying
down to the will of God, and then we give heart
and expression to His unutterable groanings. Then
we have the mind of Christ, and pray as He would
pray. His thoughts, purposes and desires are our
desires, purposes and thoughts.
This is not a new and different Bible from that
which we already have, but it is the Bible we
have, applied personally by the Spirit of God. It
is not new texts, but rather the Spirit’s embellishing
of certain texts for us at the time.
It is the unfolding of the word by the Spirit’s
light, guidance, teaching, enabling us to perform
the great office of intercessors on earth, in harmony
with the great intercessions of Jesus Christ
at the Father’s right hand in Heaven.
We have in the Holy Spirit an illustration and
an enabler of what this intercession is and ought
to be. We are charged to supplicate in the Spirit
and to pray in the Holy Spirit. We are reminded
that the Holy Spirit “helpeth our infirmities,” and
that while intercession is an art of so Divine and
so high a nature that though we know not what to
pray for as we ought, yet the Spirit teaches us this
Heavenly science, by making intercession in us
“with groanings which cannot be uttered.” How
burdened these intercessions of the Holy Spirit!
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How profoundly He feels the world’s sin, the
world’s woe, and the world’s loss, and how deeply
He sympathises with the dire conditions, are seen
in His groanings which are too deep for utterance
and too sacred to be voiced by Him. He inspires
us to this most Divine work of intercession, and
His strength enables us to sigh unto God for the
oppressed, the burdened and the distressed creation.
The Holy Spirit helps us in many ways.
How intense will be the intercessions of the
saints who supplicate in the spirit! How vain
and delusive and how utterly fruitless and inefficient
are prayers without the Spirit! Official
prayers they may be, fitted for state occasions,
beautiful and courtly, but worth less than nothing
as God values prayer.
It is our unfainting praying which will help the
Holy Spirit to His mightiest work in us, and at
the same time He helps us to these strenuous and
exalted efforts in prayer.
We can and do pray by many inspirations and
in many ways which are not of God. Many
prayers are stereotyped in manner and in matter,
in part, if not as a whole. Many prayers are
hearty and vehement, but it is natural heartiness
and a fleshly vehemence. Much praying is done
by dint of habit and through form. Habit is a
second nature and holds to the good, when so
directed, as well as to the bad. The habit of praying
is a good habit, and should be early and
// File: 140.png
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strongly formed; but to pray by habit merely is
to destroy the life of prayer and allow it to degenerate
into a hollow and sham-producing form.
Habit may form the bank for the river of prayer,
but there must be a strong, deep, pure current,
crystal and life-giving, flowing between these two
banks. Hannah multiplied her praying, “but she
poured out her soul before the Lord.” We cannot
make our prayer habits too marked and controlling
if the life-waters be full and overflow
the banks.
Our divine example in praying is the Son of
God. Our Divine Helper in praying is the Holy
Spirit. He quickens us to pray and helps us in
praying. Acceptable prayer must be begun and
carried on by His presence and inspiration. We
are enjoined in the Holy Scriptures to “pray in
the Holy Ghost.” We are charged to “pray
always with all prayer and supplication in the
Spirit.” We are reminded for our encouragement,
that “Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities;
for we know not what we should pray for as
we ought; but the Spirit itself maketh intercession
for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.”
“And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what
is the mind of the Spirit, because He maketh intercession
for the saints according to the will of
God.”
So ignorant are we in this matter of prayer; so
impotent are all other teachers to impart its lessons
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to our understanding and heart, that the Holy
Spirit comes as the infallible and all-wise teacher
to instruct us in this divine art. “To pray with
all your heart and all your strength, with the reason
and the will, this is the greatest achievement of
the Christian warfare on earth.” This is what
we are taught to do and enabled to do by the Holy
Spirit. If no man can say that Jesus is the Christ
but by the Spirit’s help; for the much greater
reason can no man pray save by the aid of God’s
Spirit. Our mother’s lips, now sealed by death,
taught us many sweet lessons of prayer; prayers
which have bound and held our hearts like golden
threads; but these prayers, flowing through the
natural channel of a mother’s love, can not serve
the purposes of our manhood’s warring, stormy
life. These maternal lessons are but the A B C
of praying. For the higher and graduating lessons
in prayer we must have the Holy Spirit. He
only can unfold to us the mysteries of the prayer-life,
its duty and its service.
To pray by the Holy Spirit we must have Him
always. He does not, like earthly teachers, teach
us the lesson and then withdraw. He stays to
help us practise the lesson He has taught. We
pray, not by the precepts and lessons He has taught,
but we pray by Him. He is both teacher and lesson.
We can only know the lesson because He is
ever with us to inspire, to illumine, to explain, to
help us to do. We pray not by the truth the Holy
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Spirit reveals to us, but we pray by the actual presence
of the Holy Spirit. He puts the desire in our
hearts; kindles that desire by His own flame. We
simply give lip and voice and heart to His unutterable
groanings. Our prayers are taken up by Him
and energised and sanctified by His intercession.
He prays for us, through us and in us. We pray
by Him, through Him and in Him. He puts the
prayer in us and we give it utterance and heart.
We always pray according to the will of God
when the Holy Spirit helps our praying. He prays
through us only “according to the will of God.”
If our prayers are not according to the will of
God they die in the presence of the Holy Spirit.
He gives such prayers no countenance, no help.
Discountenanced and unhelped by Him, prayers,
not according to God’s will, soon die out of every
heart where the Holy Spirit dwells.
We must, as Jude says, “Pray in the Holy
Ghost.” As Paul says, “with all prayer and supplication
in the Spirit.” Never forgetting that
“the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities; for we
know not what we should pray for as we ought:
but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us
with groanings which cannot be uttered.” Above
all, over all, and through all our praying there
must be the Name of Christ, which includes the
power of His blood, the energy of His intercession,
the fullness of the enthroned Christ. “Whatsoever
ye ask in my name that will I do.”
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.sp 4
.h2 id=chap15
XV | THE TWO COMFORTERS AND TWO ADVOCATES
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
If we were asked whose Comforter the Holy Spirit
was, the answer would be—Ours. The answer is not
so ready when we are asked whose Advocate He is.
The Spirit is Christ’s Advocate, not ours. It is
Christ’s place He takes, Christ’s cause He pleads,
Christ’s name He vindicates, Christ’s Kingdom He
administers.—Samuel Chadwick.
.pm letter-end
.sp 2
The fact that man has two Divine Comforters,
Advocates, Helpers, is declarative of
the affluence of God’s provisions in the
gospel, and also declarative of the settled purpose
of God to execute His work of salvation with
efficacy and final success. Many-sided are the infirmities
and needs of man in his pilgrimage and
warfare for Heaven. These two Christs can meet
with manifold wisdom.
The affluence of God’s provision of two Intercessors
in executing the plan of salvation finds its
counterpart in the prayer promise in its unlimited
nature, comprehending all things, great and small.
“All things whatsoever ye ask in prayer, believing,
ye shall receive.” All things we have in
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Christ, all things we have in the Holy Spirit, and
all things we have in prayer.
How much is ours in God’s plan and purposes
we have in these two Christs, the one ascended to
Heaven and enthroned, there to intercede for our
benefit, the other Christ, His Representative, and
better Substitute, on earth, to work in us and make
intercessions for us!
The first Christ was a person. The other Christ,
a person, but not clothed in physical form nor subject
to human limitations as the first Christ necessarily
was. Transient and local was the first
Christ. The other Christ not limited to locality,
not transient, but abiding; not dealing with the
sensible, the material, the fleshly, but entering personally
into the mysterious and imperial domain
of the spirit, to emancipate and transform into
more than Eden beauty that waste and dark realm.
The first Christ left His novitiates that they might
enter into higher regions of spiritual knowledge.
The man Christ withdrew that the Spirit Christ
might train and school into the deeper mysteries
of God; that all the historical and physical might
be transmuted into the pure gold of the spiritual.
The first Christ brought to us a picture of what we
must be. The other Christ mirrored this perfect
and fadeless image on our hearts. The first Christ,
like David, gathered and furnished the material for
the temple. The other Christ out of this material
forms God’s glorious temple.
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The possibilities of prayer, then, are the possibilities
of these two Divine Intercessors. Where
are the limitations to results when the Holy Spirit
intercedes for us with groanings which cannot be
uttered, when He so helps us that our prayers run
parallel to the will of God, and we pray for the
very things and in the very manner in which we
ought to pray, schooled in and pressed to these
prayers by the urgency of the Holy Spirit! How
measureless are the possibilities of prayer when
we are filled with all the fullness of God; when
we stand “perfect and complete in all the will of
God”?
If the intercession of Moses so wondrously preserved
the being and safety of Israel throughout
its marvelous history and destiny, what may we
not secure through our Intercessor, who is so much
greater than Moses? All that God has lies open to
Christ through prayer. All that Christ has lies
open to us through prayer.
If we have the two Christs covering the whole
realm of goodness, power, purity and glory, in
Heaven and on earth—if we have the better Christ
with us here in this world—why is it that we sigh
to know the Christ after the flesh as the disciples
knew Him? Why is it that the mighty work of
these two Almighty Intercessors finds us so barren
of Heavenly fruit, so feeble in all Christly principles,
so low in the Christly life, and so marred in
the Christly image? Is it not because our prayers
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for the Holy Spirit have been so faint and few?
The Heavenly Christ can only come to us in full
beauty and power when we have received the fullness
of the present earthly Christ, even the Holy
Spirit.
Living always the life of prayer, breathing
always the spirit of prayer, being always in the
fact of prayer, praying always in the Holy Spirit,
the Heavenly Christ would become ours by a
clearer vision, a deeper love, and a more intimate
fellowship than He was to His disciples in the
days of His flesh.
We would not disguise nor abate the fact that
there is a loss to us by our absent Christ as we will
see and know Him in Heaven. But in our earthly
work to be done by us, and above all to be done in
us, we will know Christ and the Father better, and
can better utilise them by the ministry of the Holy
Spirit than would have been possible under the
personal, human presence of the Son. So to the
loving and obedient ones who are filled with the
Spirit, both the Father and the Son “Will come
unto us and make their abode with us.” In the
day of the fullness of the indwelling Spirit, “Ye
shall know that I am in my Father and ye in me
and I in you.” Amazing oneness and harmony,
wrought by the almighty power of the other
Christ!
There is not a note in the archangel’s song to
which the Holy Spirit does not attune man into
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sympathy, not a pulsation in the heart of God to
which the Holy Spirit-filled heart does not respond
with loud amens and joyful hallelujahs. Even
more than this, by the other Christ, the Holy Ghost,
“we know the love of Christ which passeth
knowledge.” More than this, by the Holy Spirit
we are “filled with all the fullness of God.” More
than this, God is able to do exceeding abundantly
above all that we ask or think according to the
power of the Holy Spirit which worketh in us.
The presence and power of the other Christ
would more than compensate the disciples for the
loss of the first Christ. His going away had filled
their hearts with a strange sorrow. A loneliness
and desolation like an orphan’s woe had swept over
their hearts and stunned and bewildered them; but
He comforted them by telling them that the Holy
Ghost would be like the pains of a travailing
mother, all forgotten in the untold joy that a
man-child was born into the world.
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.sp 4
.h2 id=chap16
XVI | PRAYER AND THE HOLY GHOST DISPENSATION
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
How God needs, how the world needs, how the
Church needs the flow of the mighty river, more
blessed than the Nile, deeper, broader and more overflowing
than the Amazon’s mighty current! and yet
what mere rills we are! We need, the age needs, the
Church needs, memorials of God’s mighty power,
which will silence the enemy and the avenger, dumbfound
God’s foes, strengthen weak saints, and fill
strong ones with triumphant raptures.
—Edward Bounds.
.pm letter-end
.sp 2
The dispensation of the Holy Ghost was
ushered in by prayer. Read these words
from Acts 1:13—“And when they were
come in, they went up into an upper room where
abode both Peter and James and John and Andrew,
Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew,
James, the son of Alpheus, and Simon Zelotes, and
Judas, the brother of James. These all continued
with one accord in prayer and supplication, with
the women, and Mary, the mother of Jesus, and
with his brethren.”
This was the attitude which the disciples assumed
after Jesus had ascended to Heaven. That meeting
for prayer ushered in the dispensation of the
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Holy Spirit, to which prophets had looked forward
with entranced vision. And to prayer in a
marked way has this dispensation, which holds
in its keeping the fortune of the Gospel, been
committed.
Apostolic men knew well the worth of prayer
and were jealous of the most sacred offices which
infringed on their time and strength and hindered
them from “giving themselves continually to
prayer and to the ministry of the Word.” They
put prayer first. The Word depends on prayer
that it “may have free course and be glorified.”
Praying apostles make preaching apostles. Prayer
gives edge, entrance and weight to the Word.
Sermons conceived by prayer and saturated with
prayer are weighty sermons. Sermons may be
ponderous with thought, sparkle with the gems of
genius and of taste, pleasing and popular, but without
they have their birth and life in prayer, for
God’s uses, they are trifles, dull and dead.
The Lord of the harvest sends out labourers,
full in number and perfect in kind, in answer to
prayer. It needs no prophetic ken to declare that
if the Church had used prayer force to its utmost
the light of the gospel would have long since
girdled the world.
God’s Gospel has always waited more on prayer
than on anything else for its successes. A praying
Church is strong though poor in all besides.
A prayerless Church is weak though rich in all
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besides. Praying hearts only will build God’s
Kingdom. Praying hands only will put the crown
on the Saviour’s head.
The Holy Spirit is the Divinely appointed Substitute
for and representative of the personal and
humanised Christ. How much is He to us! And
how we are to be filled by Him, live in Him, walk
in Him, and be led by Him! How we are to conserve
and kindle to a brighter and more consuming
glow the holy flame! How careful should we be
never to quench that pure flame! How watchful,
tender, loving ought we to be so as not to grieve
His sensitive, loving nature! How attentive, meek
and obedient, never to resist His Divine impulses,
always to hear His voice, and always to do His
Divine will. How can all this be done without
much and continuous prayer?
The importunate widow had a great case to win
against helpless, hopeless despair, but she did it by
importunate prayer. We have this great treasure
to preserve and enhance, but we have a Divine
Person to entertain and help. We can only be
enabled to meet our duties by exceeding much
prayer.
Prayer is the only element in which the Holy
Spirit can live and work. Prayer is the golden
chain which happily enslaves Him to His happy
work in us.
Everything depends upon our having this Second
Christ, and retaining Him in the fullness of
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His power. With the disciples, Pentecost was
made by prayer. With them, Pentecost was continued
by giving themselves to continued prayer.
Persistent and unwearied prayer is the price we
will have to pay for our Pentecost, by instant and
continued prayer. Abiding in the fact and in the
spirit of prayer is the only surety of our abiding
in Pentecostal power and purity.
Not only should the many-sided operation of
the Holy Spirit in us and for us, teach us the
necessity of prayer for Him, but His condition
with our praying assumes another attitude, the
attitude of mutual dependence, that of action and
reaction. The more we pray the more He helps
us to pray, and the larger the measure of Himself
He gives to us. We are not only to pray and
press and wait for His coming to us, but after we
have received Him in His fullness, we are to pray
for a fuller and still larger bestowment of Himself
to us. We are to pray for the largest and
ever-increasing and constant fullness of capacity.
“That ye might be strengthened with might by
His Spirit in the inner man,” as Paul prayed for
the Spirit-baptised Ephesian Church. It will be
remembered that He also prayed that “Christ
might dwell in your hearts by faith,” rooted and
grounded in love, measuring up to the breadth,
length, depth and height of the most perfect sainthood,
and up to the immeasurable love of Christ,
being “filled with all the fullness of God.”
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In that wonderful prayer for those Christians,
Paul laid himself out to pray to God, and by
prayer he sought to fathom the fathomless depths
and to measure the illimitable purposes and benefits
of God’s plan of salvation for immortal souls
by the presence and work of the Holy Spirit.
Only importunate and invincible prayer can bring
the Holy Spirit to us, and secure for us these
ineffably gracious results. “Epaphras always
labouring fervently in prayers, that ye may stand
perfect and complete in all the will of God.”
The Word of God provides for a mighty, consciously
realised religion in His saints, into whose
happy, shining spirits God has been brought as a
Dweller, and whose Heaven-toned lives have been
attuned to melody by God’s own hand.
Then will it prove true: “He that believeth on
me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living
water.” Here is a promise concerning the indwelling
and outflowing of the Holy Spirit in us,
life-giving, fructifying, irresistible, a ceaseless outflow
of the river of God in us.
How God needs, how the world needs, how the
Church needs the flow of this mighty river, more
blessed than the Nile, deeper, broader, more overflowing
than the Amazon’s broad and mighty current!
And yet what mere rills we are and have!
O that the Church, by the infilling and outflowing
of the Holy Spirit, might be able to raise up
everywhere memorials of the Holy Spirit’s power,
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which might fix the eye as well as engage the
heart! We need, the age needs, the Church needs,
memorials of God’s mighty power, which will
silence the enemy and the avenger, dumbfound
God’s foes, strengthen weak saints, and fill strong
ones with triumphant raptures.
A glance at some more of the Divine promises
concerning this vital question would show us how
they need to be projected into the experimental
and the actual. “If any man will do his will, he
shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God
or whether I speak of myself.” How we do need
a conscious religion, personal and vital, unspeakable
in its joy, and full of glory! The need is for
a conscious religion, made so by the Spirit bearing
witness that we are the children of God. A
religion of “I know” is the only powerful, vital
and aggressive religion. “One thing I know,
whereas I once was blind, but now I see.” We
need men and women in these loose days who can
verify the above mentioned promise of Christ in
their inner consciousness. And yet how many
untold thousands of people in all of our churches,
who have only a dim, impalpable, hope so, maybe
so, I trust so, kind of religion, all dubious, intangible
and unstable.
There is certainly a great need in these days in
the modern Church, first, for Christians to see and
seek and obtain the high privilege in the Gospel
of a Heaven-born, clear cut, and happy religious
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.pn +1
experience, born of the presence of the Holy Spirit,
giving an undoubted assurance of sins forgiven,
and of adoption into the family of God.
And secondly, there is a need, subsequent to
this conscious realization of Divine favour in the
forgiveness of sins, and added to it, of the reception
of the Holy Spirit in His fullness, purifying
their hearts by faith, perfecting them in love, overcoming
the world, and bestowing a Divine, inward
power over all sin, both inward and outward, and
giving boldness to bear witness and qualifying for
real religious service in the Church and in the
world.
There is a fearfully prevailing agnosticism
along here in the Church just at this time. We
greatly fear that a vast majority of our Church
members are now in this school of spiritual agnosticism,
and really deem it to be a virtue to be
there. God’s word gives no encouragement whatever
to a shadowy religion and a vague religious
experience. It calls us definitely into the realm
of knowledge. It crowns religion with the crown
of “I know.” It passes us from the darkness of
sin, doubt and inward misgiving into the marvelous
light, where we see clearly and know fully our
personal relations to God.
.pm verse-start
“The things unknown to feeble sense,
Unseen by reason’s glimmering ray,
With strong, commanding confidence,
Their heavenly origin display.”
.pm verse-end
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.pn +1
Two things may be said just here in concluding
this part of our study upon this subject: First,
this sort of Bible religion, hereinbefore described,
comes directly through the office of the Holy Spirit
dealing personally with each soul; and secondly,
the Holy Spirit in all of His offices pertaining to
spiritual life and religious experience is secured
by earnest, definite, prevailing prayer.
Printed in the United States of America
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EVANGELISTIC WORK
.sp 2
NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS, D.D.
The Great Refusal
.pm verse-start
And Other Evangelistic Sermons. . . . $1.50.
.pm verse-end
Dr. Hillis never addresses himself to any kind of subject
he does not adorn. Literature, art, world-affairs,
are, for him, all congenial fields. He is equally at home
in them all. And here in treating of great Gospel themes
he gives us of his best, bringing to their presentation his
splendid gifts and ripened powers.
.sp 2
R. A. TORREY, D.D.
How to Be Saved
.pm verse-start
Evangelistic Sermons. . . . $1.50.
.pm verse-end
A striking new volume of Evangelistic addresses, by
the famous preacher and Bible teacher, which are marked
by all his old-time vigor and certitude. He is the proclaimer
of a straight Gospel, about which no note of
doubt or preadventure finds a place.
.sp 2
EDWARD M. BOUNDS
The Possibilities of Prayer
.pm verse-start
The Bounds “Spiritual Life Books” Edited by Homer W. Hodge. . . . $1.25.
.pm verse-end
A rich, exceptionally helpful addition to Dr. Bounds’
books.
“Many will find their understanding clarified and their
faith in the possibilities of prayer strengthened by a
careful reading of this book.”—Watchman-Examiner.
.sp 2
SADHU SUNDAR SINGH
.pm verse-start
Translated by Rev. and Mrs. Arthur Parker.
.pm verse-end
At the Master’s Feet
.pm verse-start
Boards. . . . 75c.
.pm verse-end
Simple but impressive chapters on God’s Presence, Sin,
Prayer, Service, The Cross, Heaven and Hell by a
man who has proved himself to be a faithful Christian
evangelist. They take the form of a colloquy between the
Master and the Disciple, expressed in parabolic form and
Oriental imagery.
.sp 2
GEORGE WHITEFIELD RIDOUT
.pm verse-start
Asbury College, Wilmore, Ky.
.pm verse-end
Amazing Grace
.pm verse-start
Messages on the Grace of God. . . . $1.25.
.pm verse-end
A book of stirring Gospel addresses by a man of large
experience in the evangelistic field. They are clear,
ringing messages, simply phrased, yet forming the vehicle
for the conveyance of a Gospel of “amazing grace.”
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PROPHECY, ETC.
.sp 2
J.J. ROSS, D.D.
Pearls from Patmos
Introduction by Rev. W. H. Griffith-Thomas.
.pm verse-start
Cloth. . . . $1.50.
.pm verse-end
A Spiritual and Devotional Study of the Early Chapters
of the Book of Revelation.
Dr. Ross deals with the great Apocalypse under what
he describes as the “Presentist” method—that is, he furnishes
an interpretation of its symbolism which applies
neither to the far future nor the historic past, but to the
days through which we are now passing.
.sp 2
RICHARD W. LEWIS, D.D.
.pm verse-start
Associate Editor
“Pentecostal Herald.”
.pm verse-end
A New Vision of Another Heaven
.pm verse-start
$1.25.
.pm verse-end
Recorded in the form of a vision, Dr. Lewis sets forth
his conception of the great things “which shall shortly
come to pass.” The entire work is based on Scriptural
warrants, and is never allowed to assume a fantastic or an
unsupportable character.
.sp 2
SAMUEL HENRY KELLOGG, D.D., LL.D.
.pm verse-start
Sometime Professor of Systematic Theology in
Western Theology Seminary, and for Seventeen
Years a Missionary in India.
.pm verse-end
Are Premillennialists Right?
.pm verse-start
$1.00.
.pm verse-end
With Biographical Memoir of the Author by J. J.
Lucas, D.D., Allahabad, India, and a Foreword by Henry
S. Nesbitt, D.D., New Concord, Ohio. A new edition of
a book first published nearly a generation ago.
.sp 2
WILLIAM EVANS, Ph.D., D.D.
The Coming King
.pm verse-start
The World’s Next Great Crisis. . . . $1.50.
.pm verse-end
Dr. Evans examines the testimony of the Scriptures,
of the Apostolic Fathers, and reviews the order of events.
“There is scarcely a subject demanding more strength
to-day than the Second Coming of Christ. Those who
wish light in the matter will find help in this carefully
prepared book.”—Herald and Presbyter.
.sp 2
FRANCIS ASAWIGHT, D.D
.pm verse-start
Pastor, Center Street Baptist Church,
Jamaica Plains, Mass.
.pm verse-end
The Kingdom of God
.pm verse-start
Or, The Reign of Heaven Among Men. . . . $1.50.
.pm verse-end
Mr. Wight brings all Biblical teaching of both the Old
and the New Testament into complete harmony, enabling,
an earnest, truth-seeking student to understand the purpose
and nature of the Coming Kingdom.
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QUESTIONS OF THE HOUR
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
NEVILLE S. TALBOT, D.D. Bishop of Pretoria.
.pm verse-end
The Returning Tide of Faith
.pm verse-start
$1.50.
.pm verse-end
The Congregationalist says: “A Modernist in temper
and method, Bishop Talbot’s very literal belief in the
Incarnation, the Resurrection and the Virgin Birth give
added interest to the breath and intensity of his spiritual
interpretation of these matters.”
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
NOLAN RICE BEST Editor of “The Continent.”
.pm verse-end
Inspiration
.pm verse-start
A Study of Divine Influence and Authority in
the Holy Scriptures. . . . $1.25.
.pm verse-end
Mr. Best’s new book “takes sides” with neither conservatives
nor liberals. “One of the sanest and best
balanced discussions of the subject of inspiration of
the Bible, for the average church member to read,
which we have yet seen.”—Herald of Gospel Liberty.
.sp 2
FREDERIC C. SPURR
.pm verse-start
President of National Council of Evangelical
Churches Great Britain.
.pm verse-end
Jesus Christ and the Modern Challenge
.pm verse-start
Can We Still Believe in His Divinity. . . . $1.50.
.pm verse-end
Mr. Spurr accepts the gage of battle which modern unbelief
has thrown down, and with great skill of fence,
defends the priceless possession of the Christian believer.
The defense of the faith is presented, and made
to stand out irrefutably, as being impervious to the
assaults of present-day unbelief or hostility.
.sp 2
JOHN J. LAWRENCE, D.D.
.pm verse-start
Pastor, First Presbyterian Church, Binghamton, N. Y.
.pm verse-end
The Christian Credentials
.pm verse-start
An Appeal of Faith to Doubt. Introduction by
S. Parkes Cadman, D.D. . . . $1.50.
.pm verse-end
Commencing with a review of the present theological
situation, Dr. Lawrence depicts the character of the Divine
Founder of Christianity, discusses the divine element
in Christian origins, marshals the arguments of personal
experiences, adduces the witness of history, and concludes
with a survey of the religious trend and tendency of the
age.
.sp 2
RT. REV. JAMES E. FREEMAN, D.D.
.pm verse-start
Bishop of Washington.
.pm verse-end
.pm verse-start
Everyday Religion . . . $1.50.
.pm verse-end
“Here are gathered together about ninety short sermons,
part of a harvest of a generous and constant
sowing from the hand and heart and brain of the Bishop
of Washington, related to the more practical phases of
religion.”—Christian Advocate.
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SERMONS AND ADDRESSES
.sp 2
HOBERT D. McKEEHAN, S.T.M. (Editor)
.pm verse-start
Pastor, St. Paul’s Reformed Church, Dallastown, Pa.
.pm verse-end
.pm verse-start
Great Modern Sermons . . . $1.50.
.pm verse-end
Sermons by Canon E. W. Barnes, M.A., (Westminster);
David J. Burrell, D.D.; S. Parkes Cadman,
D.D.; Harry Emerson Fosdick, D.D.; George A. Gordon,
D.D.; Newell Dwight Hillis, D.D.; John A.
Hutton, D.D.; (Glasgow); W. R. Inge, D.D. (Dean
of St. Paul’s); Charles E. Jefferson, D.D.; John
Kelman, D.D.; J. Fort Newton, D.D.; F. W. Norwood,
D.D. (London), and Frederick F. Shannon, D.D.
.sp 2
SIDNEY M. BERRY, M.A.
.pm verse-start
Carr’s Lane Church,
Birmingham.
.pm verse-end
.pm verse-start
Revealing Light . . . $1.50.
.pm verse-end
The British Weekly says: “He is a young man’s man
with bold, optimistic outlook.... He flashes into debate
like a knight entering battle.”
Christian Century says: “The secret of Dr. Berry’s
success is that he is in vital touch with life as men live
it to-day.”
.sp 2
MALCOLM J. McLEOD, D.D.
.pm verse-start
Minister of The Collegiate Church of St. Nicholas,
New York City.
.pm verse-end
.pm verse-start
The Revival of Wonder . . . $1.25.
.pm verse-end
Dr. McLeod utilizes apt illustrations drawn from everyday
life,—from the fountains of literature and from the
experiences of humanity.
“Dr. McLeod has the gift of finding the hearts of men
and women, and he knows how to comfort those who are
in trouble and to help the distressed.”—Baptist Standard.
.sp 2
RT. REV. CHARLES D. WILLIAMS, D.D.
.pm verse-start
Late Bishop of Michigan.
.pm verse-end
The Gospel of Fellowship
.pm verse-start
The Cole Lectures, 1923. . . . $1.50.
.pm verse-end
The choice of Bishop Williams as Cole Lecturer was a
notable one, and the subject chosen by him is one eminently
characteristic. Death, however, claimed the Bishop,
and his lecture-course, which he left completed, was delivered
by Samuel S. Marquis, D. D.
.sp 2
ROBERT J. MacALPINE, M.A., D.D.
.pm verse-start
Minister, Central Presbyterian Church, Buffalo, N. Y.
.pm verse-end
.pm verse-start
What Is True Religion? . . . $1.50.
.pm verse-end
“There can be no question that these addresses, here
collected in permanent form, will bring solace, encouragement,
and strength to struggle onward, to many disheartened
and doubting souls.”—Hartford Courant.
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