`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. At that day ye shall
ask in my Name: and I say not, that I will pray the Father for you,
for the Father Himself loveth you.'-JOHN xvi. 23-26.
`Praying
in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God.'-JUDE 20,
21.
THE
words of John (I John ii. 12-14) to little children, to young men, and to
fathers suggest the thought that there often are in the Christian life three
great stages of experience. The first, that of the new-born child, with
the assurance and the joy of forgiveness. The second, the transition stage
of struggle and growth in knowledge and strength: young men growing
strong, God's word doing its work in them and giving them victory over the Evil
One. And then the final stage of maturity and ripeness: the Fathers,
who have entered deeply into the knowledge and fellowship of the Eternal
One.
In Christ's teaching on prayer there appear to be three
stages in the prayer-life, somewhat analogous. In the Sermon on the Mount
we have the initial stage: His teaching is all comprised in one word,
Father. Pray to your Father, your Father sees, hears, knows, and will
reward: how much more than any earthly father! Only be
childlike and trustful. Then comes later on something like the transition
stage of conflict and conquest, in words like these: `This sort goeth not
out but by fasting and prayer;' `Shall not God avenge His own elect who cry day
and night unto Him?' And then we have in the parting words, a higher
stage. The children have become men: they are now the Master's
friends, from whom He has no secrets, to whom He says, `All things that I heard
from my Father I made known unto you;' and to whom, in the oft-repeated
`whatsoever ye will,' He hands over the keys of the kingdom. Now the time
has come for the power of prayer in His Name to be proved.
The
contrast between this final stage and the previous preparatory ones our Saviour
marks most distinctly in the words we are to meditate on: `Hitherto
ye have asked nothing in my Name;' `At that day ye shall ask in my Name.
` We know what `at that day' means. It is the day of the
outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The great work Christ was to do on the
cross, the mighty power and the complete victory to be manifested in His
resurrection and ascension, were to issue in the coming down from heaven, as
never before, of the glory of God to dwell in men. The Spirit of the
glorified Jesus was to come and be the life of His disciples. And one of
the marks of that wonderful spirit-dispensation was to be a power in prayer
hitherto unknown-prayer in the Name of Jesus, asking and obtaining whatsoever
they would, is to be the manifestation of the reality of the Spirit's
indwelling.
To understand how the coming of the Holy Spirit was
indeed to commence a new epoch in the prayer-world, we must remember who He is,
what His work, and what the significance of His not being given until Jesus was
glorified. It is in the Spirit that God exists, for He is Spirit. It
is in the Spirit that the Son was begotten of the Father: it is in the
fellowship of the Spirit that the Father and the Son are one. The eternal
never-ceasing giving to the Son which is the Father's prerogative and the
eternal asking and receiving which is the Son's right and blessedness-it is
through the Spirit that this communion of life and love is maintained. It
has been so from all eternity. It is so specially now, when the Son as
Mediator ever liveth to pray. The great work which Jesus began on earth of
reconciling in His own body God and man, He carries on in heaven. To
accomplish this He took up into His own person the conflict between God's
righteousness and our sin. On the cross He once for all ended the struggle
in His own body. And then He ascended to heaven, that thence He might in
each member of His body carry out the deliverance and manifest the victory He
had obtained. It is to do this that He ever liveth to pray; in His
unceasing intercession He places Himself in living fellowship with the unceasing
prayer of His redeemed ones. Or rather, it is His unceasing intercession
which shows itself in their prayers, and gives them a power they never had
before.
And He does this through the Holy Spirit. The
Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the glorified Jesus, was not (John vii, 39), could
not be, until He had been glorified. This gift of the Father was something
distinctively new, entirely different from what Old Testament saints had known.
The work that the blood effected in heaven when Christ entered within the
veil, was something so true and new, the redemption of our human nature into
fellowship with His resurrection-power and His exaltation-glory was so intensely
real, the taking up of our humanity in Christ into the life of the Three-One God
was an event of such inconceivable significance, that the Holy Spirit, who had
to come from Christ's exalted humanity to testify in our hearts of what Christ
had accomplished, was indeed no longer only what He had been in the Old
Testament. It was literally true `the Holy Spirit was not yet, for Christ
was not yet glorified.' He came now first as the Spirit of the glorified
Jesus. Even as the Son, who was from eternity God, had entered upon a new
existence as man, and returned to heaven with what He had not before, so the
Blessed Spirit, whom the Son, on His ascension, received from the Father (Acts
ii. 33) into His glorified humanity, came to us with a new life, which He had
not previously to communicate. Under the Old Testament He was invoked as
the Spirit of God: at Pentecost He descended as the Spirit of the
glorified Jesus, bringing down and communicating to us the full fruit and power
of the accomplished redemption.
It is in the intercession of Christ that
the continued efficacy and application of His redemption is maintained.
And it is through the Holy Spirit descending from Christ to us that we are
drawn up into the great stream of His ever-ascending prayers. The Spirit
prays for us without words: in the depths of a heart where even thoughts
are at times formless, the Spirit takes us up into the wonderful flow of the
life of the Three-One God. Through the Spirit, Christ's prayers become
ours, and ours are made His: we ask what we will, and it is given to us.
We then understand from experience, `Hitherto ye have not asked in my
Name. At that day ye shall ask in my Name.'
Brother!
what we need to pray in the Name of Christ, to ask that we may receive
that our joy may be full, is the baptism of this Holy Ghost. This is more
than the Spirit of God under the Old Testament. This is more than
the Spirit of conversion and regeneration the disciples had before Pentecost.
This is more than the Spirit with a measure of His influence and
working. This is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the glorified Jesus in His
exaltation-power, coming on us as the Spirit of the indwelling Jesus, revealing
the Son and the Father within. (John xiv. 16-23.) It is when this
Spirit is the Spirit not of our hours of prayer, but of our whole life and walk,
when this Spirit glorifies Jesus in us by revealing the completeness of His
work, and making us wholly one with Him and like Him, that we can pray in His
Name, because we are in very deed one with Him. Then it is that we have
that immediateness of access to the Father of which Jesus says, `I say not that
I will pray the Father for you.' Oh! we need to understand and
believe that to be filled with this, the Spirit of the glorified One, is the one
need of God's believing people. Then shall we realize what it is, `with
all prayer and supplication to be praying at all seasons in the Spirit,' and
what it is, `praying in the Holy Ghost, to keep ourselves in the love of God.'
`At that day ye shall ask in my Name.'
And so
once again the lesson comes: What our prayer avails, depends upon what we
are and what our life is. It is living in the Name of Christ that is the
secret of praying in the Name of Christ; living in the Spirit that fits for
praying in the Spirit. It is abiding in Christ that gives the right and
power to ask what we will: the extent of the abiding is the exact measure
of the power in prayer. It is the Spirit dwelling within us that prays,
not in words and thoughts always, but in a breathing and a being deeper than
utterance. Just so much as there is of Christ's Spirit in us, is there
real prayer. Our lives, our lives, O let our lives be full of Christ, and
full of His Spirit, and the wonderfully unlimited promises to our prayer will no
longer appear strange. `Hitherto ye have asked nothing in my Name.
Ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full. At that day ye
shall ask in my Name. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall
ask the father in my Name, He will give it you.'
`LORD , TEACH US TO PRAY.'
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O my God! in holy awe I bow before
Thee, the Three in One. Again I have seen how the mystery of prayer is the
mystery of the Holy Trinity. I adore the Father who ever hears, and the
Son who ever lives to pray, and the Holy Spirit, proceeding from the Father and
the Son, to lift us up into the fellowship of that ever-blessed, never-ceasing
asking and receiving. I bow, my God, in adoring worship, before the
infinite condescension that thus, through the Holy Spirit, takes us and our
prayers into the Divine Life, and its fellowship of love.
O my
Blessed Lord Jesus! Teach me to understand Thy lesson, that it is the
indwelling Spirit, streaming from Thee, uniting to Thee, who is the Spirit of
prayer. Teach me what it is as an empty, wholly consecrated vessel, to
yield myself to His being my life. Teach me to honour and trust Him, as a
living Person, to lead my life and my prayer. Teach me specially in prayer
to wait in holy silence, and give Him place to breathe within me His unutterable
intercession. And teach me that through Him it is possible to pray without
ceasing, and to pray without failing, because He makes me partaker of the
never-ceasing and never-failing intercession in which Thou, the Son, dost appear
before the Father. Yea, Lord, fulfil in me Thy promise, At that day ye
shall ask in my Name. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall
ask the Father in my Name, that will He give.' Amen.
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NOTE.
Prayer has often been compared to breathing: we
have only to carry out the comparison fully to see how wonderful the place is
which the Holy Spirit occupies. With every breath we expel the impure air
which would soon cause our death, and inhale again the fresh air to which we owe
our life. So we give out from us, in confession the sins, in prayer the
needs and the desires of our heart. And in drawing in our breath again, we
inhale the fresh air of the promises, and the love, and the life of God in
Christ. We do this through the Holy Spirit, who is the breath of our
life.
And this He is because He is the breath of God.
The Father breathes Him into us, to unite Himself with our life. And
then just as on every expiration there follows again the inhaling or drawing in
of the breath, so God draws in again His breath, and the Spirit returns to Him
laden with the desires and needs of our hearts. And thus the Holy Spirit
is the breath of the life of God, and the breath of the new life in us. As
God breathes Him out, we receive Him in answer to prayer; as we breathe Him back
again, He rises to God laden with our supplications. As the Spirit of God,
in whom the Father and the Son are one, and the intercession of the Son reaches
the Father, He is to us the Spirit of prayer. True prayer is the living
experience of the truth of the Holy Trinity. The Spirit's breathing, the
Son's intercession, the Father's will, these three become one in
us.