`If we ask according to His will; Or, Our Boldness in
Prayer.
`And this
is the boldness which we have toward 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 which we
have asked of Him.'-I JOHN v. 14, 15.
ONE of the greatest
hindrances to believing prayer is with many undoubtedly this: they know
not if what they ask is according to the will of God. As long as they are
in doubt on this point, they cannot have the boldness to ask in the assurance
that they certainly shall receive. And they soon begin to think that, if
once they have made known their requests, and receive no answer, it is best to
leave it to God to do according to His good pleasure. The words of John,
`If we ask anything according to His will, He heareth
us,' as they understand them, make certainty as to answer
to prayer impossible, because they cannot be sure of what really may be the will
of God. They think of God's will as His hidden counsel-how should man be
able to fathom what really may be the purpose of the all-wise
God.
This is the very opposite of what John aimed at in
writing thus. He wished to rouse us to boldness, to confidence, to full
assurance of faith in prayer. He says, `This is the boldness which we
have toward Him,' that we can say: Father! Thou knowest and I
know that I ask according to Thy will: I know Thou hearest me. `This
is the boldness, that if we ask anything according to His will, He heareth us.'
On this account He adds at once: `If we know that He heareth us
whatsoever we ask, we know,' through this faith, that we have,' that we
now while we pray receive `the petition,' the special things, `we have asked of
Him.' John supposes that when we pray, we first find out if our prayers
are according to the will of God. They may be according to God's will, and
yet not come at once, or without the persevering prayer of faith. It is to
give us courage thus to persevere and to be strong in faith, that He tells us:
This gives us boldness or confidence in prayer, if we ask anything
according to His will, He heareth us. It is evident that if it be a matter
of uncertainty to us whether our petitions be according to His will, we cannot
have the comfort of what he says, `We know that we have the petitions which we
have asked of Him.'
But just this is the difficulty.
More than one believer says: `I do not know if what I desire be
according to the will of God. God's will is the purpose of His infinite
wisdom: it is impossible for me to know whether He may not count something
else better for me than what I desire, or may not have some reasons for
withholding what I ask.' Every one feels how with such thoughts the prayer
of faith, of which Jesus said, `Whosoever shall believe that these things
which he saith shall come to pass, he shall have whatsoever he
saith,' becomes an impossibility. There may be the prayer of submission,
and of trust in God's wisdom; there cannot be the prayer of faith. The
great mistake here is that God's children do not really believe that it is
possible to know God's will. Or if they believe this, they do not take the
time and trouble to find it out. What we need is to see clearly in what
way it is that the Father leads His waiting, teachable child to know that his
petition is according to His will.1 It is through God's holy
word, taken up and kept in the heart, the life, the will; and through God's Holy
Spirit, accepted in His indwelling and leading, that we shall learn to know that
our petitions are according to His will.
Through the word. There is a secret will of
God, with which we often fear that our prayers may be at variance. It is
not with this will of God, but His will as revealed in His word, that we have to
do in prayer. Our notions of what the secret will may have decreed, and of
how it might render the answers to our prayers impossible, are mostly very
erroneous. Childlike faith as to what He is willing to do for His
children, simply keeps to the Father's assurance, that it is His will to hear
prayer and to do what faith in His word desires and accepts. In the word
the Father has revealed in general promises the great principles of His will
with His people. The child has to take the promise and apply it to the
special circumstances in His life to which it has reference. Whatever he
asks within the limits of that revealed will, he can know to be according to the
will of God, and he may confidently expect. In His word, God has given us
the revelation of His will and plans with us, with His people, and with the
world, with the most precious promises of the grace and power with which through
His people He will carry out His plans and do His work. As faith becomes
strong and bold enough to claim the fulfilment of the general promise in the
special case, we may have the assurance that our prayers are heard: they
are according to God's will. Take the words of John in the verse following
our text as an illustration: `If any man see his brother sinning a sin not
unto death, he shall ask and God will give him life.' Such is the
general promise; and the believer who pleads on the ground of this promise,
prays according to the will of God, and John would give him boldness to know
that he has the petition which he asks.
But
this apprehension of God's will is something spiritual, and must be spiritually
discerned. It is not as a matter of logic that we can argue it out:
God has said it; I must have it. Nor has every Christian the same
gift or calling. While the general will revealed in the promise is the
same for all, there is for each one a special different will according to God's
purpose. And herein is the wisdom of the saints, to know this special will
of God for each of us, according to the measure of grace given us, and so to ask
in prayer just what God has prepared and made possible for each. It is to
communicate this wisdom that the Holy Ghost dwells in us. The
personal application of the general promises of the word to our special personal
needs-it is for this that the leading of the Holy Spirit is given
us.
It is this union of the teaching of the word and
Spirit that many do not understand, and so there is a twofold difficulty in
knowing what God's will may be. Some seek the will of God in an inner
feeling or conviction, and would have the Spirit lead them without the word.
Others seek it in the word, without the living leading of the Holy Spirit.
The two must be united: only in the word, only in the Spirit, but in
these most surely, can we know the will of God, and learn to pray according to
it. In the heart the word and the Spirit must meet: it is only by
indwelling that we can experience their teaching. The word must dwell,
must abide in us: heart and life must day by day be under its influence.
Not from without, but from within, comes the quickening of the word by the
Spirit. It is only he who yields himself entirely in his whole life to the
supremacy of the word and the will of God, who can expect in special cases to
discern what that word and will permit him boldly to ask. And even as with
the word, just so with the Spirit: if I would have the leading of the
Spirit in prayer to assure me what God's will is, my whole life must be yielded
to that leading; so only can mind and heart become spiritual and capable of
knowing God's holy will. It is he who, through word and Spirit, lives
in the will of God by doing it, who will know to pray according to that will
in the confidence that He hears us.
Would that Christians might see what incalculable
harm they do themselves by the thought that because possibly their prayer is not
according to God's will, they must be content without an answer. God's
word tells us that the great reason of unanswered prayer is that we do not pray
aright: `Ye ask and receive not, because ye ask amiss.' In not
granting an answer, the Father tells us that there is something wrong in our
praying. He wants to teach us to find it out and confess it, and so to
educate us to true believing and prevailing prayer. He can only attain His
object when He brings us to see that we are to blame for the withholding of the
answer; our aim, or our faith, or our life is not what it should be. But
this purpose of God is frustrated as long as we are content to say: It is
perhaps because my prayer is not according to His will that He does not hear me.
O let us no longer throw the blame of our unanswered prayers on the secret
will of God, but on our praying amiss. Let that word, `Ye receive not
because ye ask amiss,' be as the lantern of the Lord, searching heart and life
to prove that we are indeed such as those to whom Christ gave His promises of
certain answers. Let us believe that we can know if our prayer be
according to God's will. Let us yield our heart to have the word of the
Father dwell richly there, to have Christ's word abiding in us. Let us
live day by day with the anointing which teacheth us all things. Let us
yield ourselves unreservedly to the Holy Spirit as He teaches us to abide in
Christ, to dwell in the Father's presence, and we shall soon understand how the
Father's love longs that the child should know His will, and should, in the
confidence that that will includes all that His power and love have promised to
do, know too that He hears the petitions which we ask of Him. `This
is the boldness which we have, that if we ask anything according to His
will, He heareth us.'
`LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY.'
-----0-----
Blessed Master! With my whole heart
I thank Thee for this blessed lesson, that the path to a life full of answers to
prayer is through the will of God. Lord! Teach me to know this
blessed will by living it, loving it, and always doing it. So shall I
learn to offer prayers according to that will, and to find in their harmony with
God's blessed will, my boldness in prayer and my confidence in accepting the
answer.
Father! it is Thy will that Thy child
should enjoy Thy presence and blessing. It is Thy will that
everything in the life of Thy child should be in accordance with Thy will, and
that the Holy Spirit should work this in Him. It is Thy will that
Thy child should live in the daily experience of distinct answers to prayer, so
as to enjoy living and direct fellowship with Thyself. It is Thy will
that Thy Name should be glorified in and through Thy children, and that it
will be in those who trust Thee. O my Father! let this Thy
will be my confidence in all I ask.
Blessed
Saviour! Teach me to believe in the glory of this will. That will is
the eternal love, which with Divine power works out its purpose in each human
will that yields itself to it. Lord! Teach me this. Thou canst
make me see how every promise and every command of the word is indeed the will
of God, and that its fulfilment is secured to me by God Himself. Let
thus the will of God become to me the sure rock on which my prayer and my
assurance of an answer ever rest. Amen.
NOTE.
There is often great confusion as to the will of God.
People think that what God wills must inevitably take place. This is
by no means the case. God wills a great deal of blessing to His people,
which never comes to them. He wills it most earnestly, but they do not
will it, and it cannot come to them. This is the great mystery of man's
creation with a free will, and also of the renewal of his will in redemption,
that God has made the execution of His will, in many things, dependent on the
will of man. Of God's will revealed in His promises, so much will be
fulfilled as our faith accepts. Prayer is the power by which that comes to
pass which otherwise would not take place. And faith, the power by which
it is decided how much of God's will shall be done in us. When once God
reveals to a soul what He is willing to do for it, the responsibility for the
execution of that will rests with us.
Some are
afraid that this is putting too much power into the hands of man. But all
power is put into the hands of man in Christ Jesus. The key of all prayer
and all power is His, and when we learn to understand that He is just as much
with us as with the Father, and that we are also just as much one with Him as He
with the Father, we shall see how natural and right and safe it is that to those
who abide in Him as He in the Father, such power should be given. It
is Christ the Son who has the right to ask what He will: it is through the
abiding in Him and His abiding in us (in a Divine reality of which we have too
little apprehension) that His Spirit breathes in us what He wants to ask and
obtain through us. We pray in His Name: the prayers are really ours
and as really His.
Others again fear that to believe that prayer has such
power is limiting the liberty and the love of God. O if we only knew how
we are limiting His liberty and His love by not allowing Him to act in the only
way in which He chooses to act, now that He has taken us up into fellowship with
himself-through our prayers and our faith. A brother in the ministry once
asked, as we were speaking on this subject, whether there was not a danger of
our thinking that our love to souls and our willingness to see them blessed were
to move God's love and God's willingness to bless them. We were just
passing some large water-pipes, by which water was being carried over hill and
dale from a large mountain stream to a town at some distance. Just look at
these pipes, was the answer; they did not make the water willing to flow
downwards from the hills, nor did they give it its power of blessing and
refreshment: this is its very nature. All that they could do is to
decide its direction: by it the inhabitants of the town said they want the
blessing there. And just so, it is the very nature of God to love and to
bless. Downward and ever downward His love longs to come with its
quickening and refreshing streams. But He has left it to prayer to say
where the blessing is to come. He has committed it to His believing people
to bring the living water to the desert places: the will of God to bless
is dependent upon the will of man to say where the blessing must descend.
`Such honour have His saints.' `And this is the boldness
which we have toward 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 which we have asked of
Him.'
1See this illustrated in the extracts from George
Muller at the end of this volume.