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 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:
“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.”
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.
“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 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.
“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 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.”
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:
“And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be
overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, 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.”
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 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 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.”
VII
JESUS CHRIST AN EXAMPLE OF PRAYER
_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.
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 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 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.
“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.”
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.
“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 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
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 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 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 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 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 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.
VIII
PRAYER INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF OUR LORD