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Notes on prayer culled from the late Andrew Murray’s book
“If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you” (Jn 15.7NIV). The vital connection between God's Word and prayer is one of the simplest and earliest lessons of the Christian life. As that newly converted Christian put it: I pray—I speak to my father; I read—my Father speaks to me.
Before prayer, it is God's Word that prepares me for prayer by revealing what the Father has bid me ask. In prayer, it is his Word which strengthens me by giving faith both its warrant and its plea. And, after prayer, it is God's Word, again, that brings me the answer when I have prayed, for in it the Spirit enables me to hear the Father's voice. Prayer is not monologue but dialogue; God's voice in response to mine is its most essential part. Listening to God's voice is the secret of the assurance that He will listen to mine. His listening will depend on ours; the entrance his Words find with me, will be the measure of the power of my words with him. What God's words are to me, is the test of what He himself is to me, and so of the genuineness of my desire after him in prayer.
When God, the infinite Being, in whom everything is life and power, spirit and truth, in the very deepest meaning of the words—when God speaks forth himself in his words, he does give himself, his love and his life, his will and his power, to those who receive these words, in a reality passing comprehension. In every promise he puts himself in our power to lay hold of and possess; in every command he puts himself in our power for us to share with him his will, his holiness, his perfection. In God's Word God gives us himself; and as Scripture says, the Word became flesh in Christ Jesus. So all Christ's words are God's words full of a Divine quickening life and power.
Hearing God's Word is preliminary to power in prayer.
We have noticed that to pray in the Spirit, to speak words that reach and touch God, that affect and influence the power of the unseen world—such praying, such speaking, depends entirely upon our hearing God's voice. Just as far as we listen to the voice and language that God speaks, and in the words of God receive his thoughts, his mind, his life, into our heart, we shall learn to speak in the voice and the language that God hears.
Let us be clear that this hearing the voice of God is something more than the thoughtful study of the Bible. Our society knows too many who study and know the Scripture but have little real fellowship with the living God. But when there is a reading of the Bible, in the very presence of the Father, and under the leading of the Spirit, in which the Word comes to us in living power from God himself—that brings blessing and strength, and awakens the response of a living faith that reaches the heart of God again.
Jesus said, “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given to you.” In his words, the Savior gives himself. We must have the words in us, taken up into our will and life, reproduced in our disposition and conduct. We must have these words remaining in us: our whole life one continued exposition of the words that are within, and filling us; the words revealing Christ within, and our life revealing him without. It is as the words of Christ enter our very heart, become our life and influence it, that our words will enter his heart and influence him. My prayer will depend on my life—if I do what God says, God will do what I pray.
When we know God's will and pray God's will, God will answer!
Jesus' condition is simple and clear, “If my words remain in you.“ In his words his will is revealed.
As Jesus' words remain in me, his will rules me; my will becomes the empty vessel which his will fills, the willing instrument which his will wields, he fills my inner being. In the exercise of obedience and faith my will becomes ever stronger, and is brought into deeper inner harmony with him. He can fully trust it/me to will nothing but what he wills, he is not afraid to give the promise, “If my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.” To all who believe it, and act upon it, he will make it literally true.
Disciples of Christ! is it not becoming more and more clear to us that while we have been excusing our unanswered prayers, our impotence in prayer, with a fancied submission to God's wisdom and will, the real reason has been that our own feeble life has been the cause of our feeble prayers. Nothing can make strong men but the word coming to us from God's mouth: by that we must live. It is the word of Christ, loved, lived in, remaining in us, becoming through obedience and action part of our being, that makes us one with Christ, that fits us spiritually for touching, for taking hold of God. All that is of the world passes away; he that does the will of God abides for ever.
O let us yield heart and life to the words of Christ, the words in which he ever gives himself, the personal living Savior, and his promise will be our rich experience: “If you remain in me, and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.” Because this is so crucial for prayer, I've taken longer to explore and reiterate the simple message—Christ in me, the open but often unused secret.
“The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective” (Ja 5.16 NIV). Entire consecration to the fulfillment of our calling is the condition of effectual prayer, and is the key to the unlimited blessings of Christ's wonderful prayer promises.
There are Christians who fear that such a statement is at variance with the doctrine of free grace. Not so, if grace is rightly understood. There is a danger in our evangelicalism of looking too much at what it offers from one side, as a certain experience to be obtained in prayer and faith. There is another side which God's Word puts very strongly, that of obedience as the only path to blessing. What we need is to realize that in our relationship to the Infinite Being whom we call God who has created and redeemed us, the first sentiment that ought to animate us is that of subjection: the surrender to his supremacy, his glory, his will, his pleasure, ought to be the first and uppermost thought of our life. The question is not, how we are to obtain and enjoy his favor, for in this the main thing may still be our selves! But what God rightfully claims, and is infinitely and unspeakably worthy of, is that his glory and pleasure should be my one object.
Surrender to his perfect and blessed will, a life of service and obedience, is the beauty and the charm of heaven. Service and obedience, these were the thoughts that were uppermost in the mind of Jesus, the Son, when he dwelt upon earth. Service and obedience, these must become with us the chief objects of desire and aim, more so than rest or light or joy or strength: in them we shall find the path to all the higher blessedness that awaits us.
Obedience is the only path that leads to the glory of God. Not obedience instead of faith, nor obedience to supply the shortcomings of faith; no, but faith's obedience gives access to all the blessings our God has for us. It is the effectual fervent prayer of such a person that accomplishes much.
Jesus promised, “Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive and your joy will be complete” (Jn 16.24 NIV). What is a person's name? It's that word or expression by which the person is called up or represented to us. The name of a king includes his honor, his power, his kingdom. His name is the symbol of his power. And so each name of God embodies and represents some part of the glory of the Unseen One. And the Name of Christ is the expression of all he has done and all he is and lives to do as our mediator.
So what is it to do a thing in the name of another? It is to come with the power and authority of the other, as his representative and substitute. We know that such a use of another's name always supposes a commonality of interest. No one would give another the free use of his name without first being assured that his honor and interest were as safe with that other person as with himself.
So what does it mean when Jesus gives us power over his name, the free use of it, with the assurance that whatever we ask in it will be given to us? Here Jesus solemnly gives to all his disciples a general and unlimited power of the free use of his name at all times for all they desire. He could not do this if he did not know that he could trust us with his interests, that his honor would be safe in our hands.
In sum, the name represents the person; to ask in the name is to ask in full union of interest and life and love with himself, as one who lives in him and for him. Let the name of Jesus only have undivided supremacy in my heart and life, then my faith will grow to the assurance that what I ask in that name cannot be refused. The name and the power of asking go together: when the name of Jesus has become the power that rules my life, its power in prayer with God will be seen too.
Jesus told Peter before his denial, “I have prayed for you, that your faith fail not” (Lk 22.32 NIV). But Hebrews makes this general, adding that he is able to save us completely, “Because he always lives to intercede for them” (Heb 7.25 NIV).
All growth in the spiritual life is connected with clearer insight into what Jesus is to us. The more I realize that Christ must be all to me and in me, that all in Christ is indeed for me, the more I learn to live the real life of faith, which, dying to self, lives wholly in Christ—when so invested, I find that he himself still intercedes for me.
This intercession is an intense reality, a work that is absolutely necessary, and without which the continued application of redemption cannot take place. In the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus the wondrous reconciliation took place, by which man became partaker of the Divine life and blessedness. But the real personal appropriation of this reconciliation in each of his members here below cannot take place without the unceasing exercise of his divine power by the head in heaven.
In all conversion and sanctification, in every victory over sin and the world, there is a real extension of the power of him who is mighty to save. And this exercise of his power only takes place through his prayers: he asks of the Father, and receives from the Father. There is not a need of his people but he receives in intercession what the Godhead has to give: his mediation on the throne is as real and indispensable as on the cross. Nothing takes place without his intercession: it engages all his time and powers, is his unceasing occupation at the right hand of the Father.
For your prayers and mine to be heard, to succeed, Jesus must intercede. The Bible says he does. From first lisp to final exclamations of praise, prayer must be connected with Christ.
We will close our study with prayer.
“O my Father, with my whole heart I praise you for this wonderful life of never-ceasing prayer, never-ceasing fellowship, never-ceasing answers, and never-ceasing experience of my oneness with him who ever lives to pray. O my God! keep me ever so dwelling and walking in the presence of your glory, that prayer may be the spontaneous expression of my life with you.
Blessed Savior! with my whole heart I praise you that you came from heaven to share with me in my needs and crises, that I might share with you in your all-prevailing intercession. And I thank you that you have taken me into the school of prayer, to teach the blessedness and the power of a life that is all prayer. And most of all that you have taken me up into the fellowship of your life of intercession, that through me, too, your blessings may be dispensed to those around me.
Holy Spirit! with deep reverence I thank you for your work in me. It is through you I am lifted up into a share in the relationship between the Son and the Father, and so to enter into the fellowship of the life and love of the Holy Trinity. Spirit of God! perfect your work in me; bring me into perfect union with Christ my intercessor. Let your unceasing indwelling make my life one of unceasing intercession. And so, let my life become one that is unceasingly to the glory of the Father, and to the blessing of those around me. Amen.”
May God continue to motivate you to pray.