EVERYONE! Lesson 5

Ask, and it shall be given to you, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you.  For everyone who asks, receives, and those who seek will find and to the one who knocks, it shall be opened.

 Matthew 7:7-8

You ask and you do not receive because you ask amiss.  Jas 4:3

Our Lord returns here in the Sermon on the Mount, a second time to speak of prayer.  The first time He had spoken of the Father, who is to be found in secret and rewards openly and gave us the pattern prayer - Mat 6.  Here, He wants to teach us, what, in all scripture is considered the chief thing of prayer; the assurance that prayer will be heard and answered.  Observe how He uses words which mean almost the same thing and each time repeats the promise so distinctly;  ‘You shall receive … You shall find … and it shall be opened to you.”

And then gives as ground for such assurance, the law of the Kingdom.  ‘He that asks receives, he that seeks finds, to him that knocks it shall be opened.’  We cannot but feel how, in this six fold repetition, He wants to impress deep on our minds this one truth, that we may and must, most confidently expect an answer to our prayer.  Next to the revelation of the Fathers love, there is, in the whole course of the school of prayer, not a more important lesson than this. 

Everyone who asks receives. 

In the three words the Lord uses, ask, seek, knock, a difference in meaning has been sought.   If such was indeed His purpose then the first, ask, refers to the gifts we pray for.  But I may ask and receive the gift without the giver.  Seek is the word that scripture uses of God Himself; Christ assures me that I can find Him, if I will seek.  But it is not enough to find God in time of need, without coming to an abiding fellowship.  Knock speaks of a mission to dwell with him and in Him.

Asking and receiving the gift would thus lead to seeking and finding the giver.  This again is the knocking and opening of the door to the Fathers heart and love.  One thing is sure, the Lord wants us to count most certainly on it; that asking, seeking and knocking, cannot be in vain: receiving an answer, finding God, the open heart and home of God, are the certain fruit of prayer.

That the Lord should have thought it needful in so many forms to repeat the truth, is a lesson of deep importance.  It proves that He knows our heart, how doubt and mistrust toward God is natural to us and how easily we are inclined to rest in prayer as a religious work without an answer.  He knows also how, even when we believe that God is the hearer of prayer, believing prayer that lays hold of the promise, is something spiritual, too high for the half hearted disciple.  He therefore at the very outset of His instruction to those who would learn to pray, seeks to lodge this truth deep in their hearts: prayer does avail much; ask and you shall receive, for everyone who asks receives.  This is the fixed eternal law of the Kingdom; if you ask and receive not, there must be that there is something amiss or wanting in the prayer.  Hold on; let the word and the Spirit teach you to pray aright, but do not let go the confidence He seeks to awaken, that, everyone who asks, receives. 

‘Ask and it shall be given you.’  Christ has no mightier stimulus to persevering prayer in His school, than this.  As a child has to prove a sum to be correct, so the proof that we have prayed aright is the answer.  If we ask and do not receive, it is because we have not learned to pray rightly, let every learner in the school of Christ, therefore take the masters word in all simplicity; everyone who asks receives.  He had good reason for speaking so unconditionally, let us beware of weakening the Word with our Human wisdom, when he tells us heavenly things, let us believe Him:  His word will explain itself to him who believes it fully.  If questions and difficulties arise, let us not seek to have them settled before we accept the Word. 

No; let us entrust them all to Him; it is His to solve; our work is to accept and hold fast to the Promise.  Let in the inner chamber of our heart, the word be inscribed in letters of light, ‘everyone who asks, receives’. 

According to His teaching, prayer consists of two parts, two sides, a human and the Devine.  The human is the asking, the Divine is the giving.  Or, to look at both from the human side, there is the asking and the receiving, the two halves that make up the whole.  It is as if He would tell us to not rest without and answer, because it is the will of God, the rule in the Fathers family; every childlike believing petition is granted.   If no answer comes; we are not to sit down in the sloth called resignation; there must be something in the prayer that would not as God would have it, childlike and believing, we must seek for grace to pray so that the answer may come.  It is far easier to the flesh to submit without the answer than to be searched and purified by the Spirit, until it has learned to pray the prayer of faith. 

It is one of the terrible marks of the deceased state of Christian life in these days.   That there are so many that rest content without the distinct experience of answers to prayer.  They pray daily, they ask many things, and trust that some of them will be heard, but so little of direct definite answer to prayer as the rule of daily life.  And it is this the Father wills; He seeks daily relationship with His children in listening to and granting their petition.  He wills that I should come to Him day by day with distinct requests; He wills day by day to do what I ask.  It was in His answer to prayer that the saints of old learned to know God as the living one, and were stirred to praise and love, (psalm 34 – ps 66:19 ps 116:1).

Our teacher waits to imprint this upon our mind: prayer and its answer, the child asking and the Father giving, belong to each other. 

There may be cases, in which the answer is refusal, because the request is not according to Gods Word, as when Moses asked to enter Canaan, but still there was an answer; God did not leave His servant in uncertainty.  The gods of the heathen are dumb and cannot speak.  Our Father lets His children know when He cannot give them what they ask and they withdraw the petition even as the Son did in Gethsemane.  First Moses and then Christ the Son, knew that what they asked was not according to what the Lord had spoken; their prayer was the humble supplication whether it was possible for the decision to be changed.  God will teach those who are teachable and give Him time by His Word and Spirit, whether their requests be according to His will or not.  Let us withdraw the request, if it is not according to Gods mind or persevere until the answer comes. 

Prayer is appointed to obtain the answer.  It is in prayer and its answer that the interchange of love between the Father and His child takes place.  How deep the estrangement of our heart from God must be, that we find it so difficult to grasp such promises, even while we accept the words and believe their truth, the faith of the heart, that fully has them, and rejoices in them, comes so slowly.  It is because our spiritual life is still so weak, and the capacity for taking Gods thoughts so feeble.  But let us look to Jesus to teach us as no other can teach.  If we take His words in simplicity, and trust Him by His Spirit to make them within us, life and power, they will so enter into our inner being that the Spiritual Divine reality of the truth they contain will indeed take possession of us, and we shall not rest content until every petition we offer is borne heavenward on Jesus own words; ‘Ask and it shall be given to you.’

Beloved fellow disciples in the school of Jesus!  Let us set ourselves to learn this lesson well.   Let us take these words just as they were spoken.  Let us not suffer human reason to weaken their force, let us take them as Jesus gives them, and believe them.   He will teach us in due time, how to understand them fully: let us begin by implicitly believing  them.  Let us take time, as often as we pray, to listen to His voice; everyone who asks receives.  Let us not make the feeble experiences of our unbelief be the measure of what our faith may expect.  Let us seek, not only in our seasons of prayer, but at all times, to hold fast the joyful assurance; mans prayer on earth and Gods answer from heaven belong together.  Let us trust Jesus to teach us to pray that the answer will come.  He will do it if we hold fast the word He gives today; Ask and you will receive.

LORD TEACH US TO PRAY

Oh Lord Jesus.  Teach me to understand and believe what You have now promised me.  It is not hidden from You, o Lord, with what reasons my heart seeks to satisfy itself, when no answer comes.  There is the thought that my prayer is not in harmony with the Fathers secret counsel, that there is perhaps something better that you would give me, or that prayer as fellowship with God is blessing enough without an answer. My blessed Lord, I find in Your, teaching on prayer that You do not speak of these things, but did say so plainly, that prayer may and must expect an answer.  You do assure us that this is the fellowship of the child with the Father; the child asks and the Father gives.  Blessed Lord, Your Words are faithful and true.  It must be, because I pray amiss, that my experience of answered prayer is not clearer.  It must be, because I live too little in the spirit, that my prayer is too little in the spirit, that the power and the prayer of faith is wanting.  Lord, teach me to pray.  Lord Jesus I trust you for it; teach me to pray in faith.  Lord, teach me this lesson for today; everyone who asks receives.  AMEN  

Our Father ... Lesson 4

The Model Prayer

After this manner therefore pray;  ‘Our Father, which is in heaven”  Mat 6:9

Every teacher knows the power of example.  He not only tells the child what to do and how to do it, but shows him how it really can be done.  In condescension to our weakness, our heavenly Teacher has given us the very words we are to take with us as we draw near to our Father.  We have in them a form of prayer in which there breathe the freshness and fullness of the Eternal Life.  So simple that the child can lisp it, so divinely rich that it comprehends all that God can give.  A form of prayer that becomes the model and inspiration for all other prayer, and yet always draws us back to itself as the deepest utterance of our souls before our God. 

“Our Father, which is in Heaven!”   To appreciate this word of adoration aright, I must remember that none of the saints had in Scripture ever ventured to address God as their Father.  The invocation places us at once in the centre of the wonderful revelation the Son came to make of His Father as our Father too.

It comprehends the mystery of redemption – Christ delivering us from the curse that we might become the children of God.  The mystery of regeneration – the Spirit in the new birth giving us the new life, and the mystery of faith – ere yet the redemption is accomplished or understood, the word is given on the lips of the disciples to prepare them for the blessed experience still to come. 

The words are the key to the whole prayer, to all prayer.  It takes time, it takes life to study them; it will take eternity to understand them fully.  The knowledge of Gods Father-love is the first and simplest, but also the last and highest lesson in the school of prayer.  It is in the personal relation to the living God, and the personal conscious fellowship of love with himself, that prayer begins.  It is in the knowledge of God’s Fatherliness, revealed by the Holy Spirit, that the power of prayer will be found to root and grow.  In the infinite tenderness and pity and patience of the infinite Father, in His loving readiness to hear and to help, the life of prayer has its joy.  O let us take time, until the Spirit has made these words to us Spirit and truth, filling heart and life. ‘Our Father, which is in heaven.”  Then we are indeed within the veil, in the secret place of power where prayer always prevails. 

‘Hallowed by Your name: or May Your name be kept holy.  There is something here that strikes us at once.  While we ordinarily first bring our own needs to God in prayer, and then think of what belongs to God and His interests, the Master reverses the order.  Firstly, it is; ‘Your name, Your Kingdom, Your will’; then, ‘give us, forgive us, lead us, deliver us.’  The lesson is of more importance that we think.  In true worship the Father must be first, must be all.  The sooner I learn to forget myself in the desire that He may be glorified, the richer will the blessing be that prayer will bring to myself.  No one ever loses by what he sacrifices for the Father. 

This must influence all our prayer.  There are two sorts of prayer: personal and intercessory.  The latter ordinarily occupies the lesser part of our time and energy.  This must not be.  Christ has opened the school of prayer specially to train intercessors for the great work of bringing down, by their faith and prayer, the blessings of His work and love on the world around.  There can be no deep growth in prayer unless this is made our aim.  The little child may ask of the father only what it needs for itself; and yet it soon learns to say, ‘give some for sister too.’  But the grown-up son, who only lives for the father’s interest and takes charge of the father’s business asks more largely, and gets all that is asked.  And Jesus would train us to the blessed life of consecration and service, in which our interests are all subordinate to the Name, and the Kingdom, and the Will of the Father. 

O let us live for this, and let, on each act of adoration, saying, ‘Our Father,’ there follow in the same breath, ‘Your name, Your Kingdom, Your will;’ – for this we look up and long. 

‘Hallowed be Your name.’  What name? this new name of Father.  The word Holy, is the central word of the Old Testament; the name Father, of the new.  In this name of Love all the holiness and glory of God are now to be revealed.  And how is the name to be hallowed?  By God Himself, ‘I will hallow my great name which has been profaned’.  Our prayer must be that in ourselves, in all God’s children, in presence of the world, God Himself would reveal the holiness, the Divine power, the hidden glory of the name of Father.  The Spirit of the Father is the Holy Spirit; it is only when we yield ourselves to be led of Him, that the name will be hallowed in our prayers and our lives.  Let us learn the prayer: ‘Our Father, hallowed be Your name.”

“Your Kingdom come.”  The father is a King and has a Kingdom.  The son and heir of a king has no higher ambition that the glory of his Father’s kingdom.  In time of war or danger this becomes his passion; he can think of nothing else.  The children of the Father are here in the enemy’s territory, where the kingdom, which is in heaven, is not yet fully manifested.  What is more natural than, when they learn to hallow the Father name, they should long and cry with deep enthusiasm: ‘Thy kingdom come.”  The coming of the kingdom is the one great event on which the revelation of the Father’s glory, the blessedness of His children, the salvation of the world depends. 

On our prayers too the coming of the Kingdom waits.  Shall we not join in the deep longing cry of the redeemed: ‘Your Kingdom come’?  Let us learn it in the school of Jesus. 

‘Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.’ This petition is too frequently applied alone to the suffering of the will of God.  In heaven God’s will is done, and the master teaches the child to ask that His will may be done on earth just as in heaven.  In the spirit of adoring submission and ready obedience.  Because the will of God is the glory of heaven, the doing of it is the blessedness of heaven.  As the will is done, the kingdom of heaven comes into the heart.  And wherever faith has accepted the Father’s love, obedience accepts the Father’s will.  The surrender to, and the prayer for a life of heaven-like obedience, is the spirit of childlike prayer.

‘Give us this day our daily bread.’ When first the child has yielded himself to the Father in the care for His Name, His Kingdom, and His will, he has full liberty to ask for his daily bread.  A master cares for the food of his servant, a general of his soldiers, a father of his child.  And will not the Father in heaven care for the child who has in prayer given themselves up to His interests?  We may indeed in full confidence say: Father, I live for Your honour and Your work; I know that You care for me.  Consecration to God and His will gives wonderful liberty in prayer for temporal things: the whole earthly life is given to the Father’s loving care.

‘And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”    As bread is the first need of the body, so forgiveness for the soul.  And the provision for the one is as sure as for the other.  We are children but sinners too; our right of access to the Father’s presence we owe to the precious blood and the forgiveness it has won for us.  Let us beware of the prayer for forgiveness becoming a formality; only what is really confessed is really forgiven.  Let us in faith accept the forgiveness as promised; as a spiritual reality, an actual transaction between God and us, it is the entrance into all the Father’s love and all the privileges of children.  Such forgiveness, as a living experience, is impossible without a forgiving spirit to others: as forgiven expresses the heavenward, so forgiving the earthward, relation of God’s child.  In each prayer, I must be able to say that I know of no one whom I do not heartily love.

‘And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’  Our daily bread, the pardon of our sins, and then our being kept from all sin and the power of the evil one, in these three petitions all our personal need is comprehended.  The prayer for bread and pardon must be accompanied by the surrender to live in all things in holy obedience to the Father’s will, and the believing prayer in everything to be kept by the power of the indwelling Spirit from the power of the evil one. 

Children of God!  It is thus Jesus would have us to pray to our Father in heaven.  O let His name and Kingdom and will, have the first place in our love; His providing, and pardoning and keeping love will be our sure portion.  So the prayer will lead us up to the true child-life: the Father all to the child, the Father all for the child.  We shall understand how Father and child, the ‘Yours’ and the ‘Our’ are all one, and how the heart that begins its prayer with the God-devoted ‘Yours’, will have the power in faith to speak out the ‘our’ too.  Such prayer will, indeed, be the fellowship and interchange of love, always bringing us back in trust and worship to Him who is not only the Beginning but the End.  “For Yours is the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory for ever AMEN.”  Son of the Father, teach us to pray, ‘Our Father…”

LORD TEACH US TO PRAY

O Lord You are the only begotten Son, teach us, we plead, to pray. “Our Father.”  We thank You Lord, for these Living Blessed Words that You have given us.  We thank You for the millions who in them have learnt to know and worship the Father, and for what they have been to us.  Lord! It is as if we needed days and weeks in Your school with each separate petition; so deep and full are they.   But we look to You to lead us deeper into their meaning: do it we pray, for Your names sake’ Your name is Son of the Father.

Lord, You said once, ‘No man knows the Father except the Son, and he to whom the Son reveals Him” and again: ‘I make known to them Your name, and will make it known, that the love with which you loved me may be in them.’  Lord Jesus, reveal to us the Father, let his name, his infinite Father-love, the love with which He loved You, according to Your prayer, be in us.  Then shall we say rightly, ‘Our Father’.  Then shall we apprehend Your teaching, and the first spontaneous breathing of our heart will be; “Our Father, Your Name, Your Kingdom, Your Will,” and we shall bring our needs and sins and our temptation to Him in the confidence that the love of such a Father cares for all.  Blessed Lord, we Your scholars, trust You; do teach us to pray, ‘Our Father’, AMEN

Lesson 3 - Awesome!

            “PRAY TO YOUR FATHER, WHICH IS IN SECRET …”

                  Alone with God

‘But, when you pray, enter into your chamber and having shut the door, pray to your Father which is in secret and Your Father which sees in secret shall reward you’

After Jesus had called His first disciples, He gave them their first public teaching in the Sermon on the Mount.  He, there expounded to them the Kingdom of God, its laws and its life.  In that Kingdom God is not only King, but Father; He not only gives all, but is Himself all.  In the knowledge and fellowship of Him alone is its blessedness.  Hence, it came as a matter of teaching concerning the New Kingdom He came to set up. 

Moses gave neither command nor regulation with regard to prayer: even the prophets say little directly of the duty of prayer; it is Christ who teaches us to pray.

And the first thing the Lord teaches His disciples is that they must have a secret place for prayer.

Every one must have some solitary spot where they can be alone with God.  Every teacher must have a school room.  We have learnt to know and accept Jesus as our only teacher in the school of prayer.  He has already taught us at Samaria that worship is no longer confined to times and places; that worship, true spiritual worship is a thing of the spirit and the life, the whole man must in his whole life be ‘in spirit and truth’.  And yet He wants each one to choose for themself, the fixed spot where they can daily meet Him.  That inner chamber, that solitary place is Jesus’ schoolroom.  That spot may be anywhere; that spot may change from day to day if we have to change our abode; but the secret place there must be with the quiet time in which the pupil places themselves in the Master’s presence, to be by Him prepared to worship the Father. 

There alone, but there most surely, Jesus comes to us to teach us to pray. 

A teacher is always anxious that his schoolroom should be bright and attractive, filled with the light and air of heaven, a place where pupils long to come, and love to stay.  In His first words on prayer here, Jesus seeks to set the inner chamber before us in its most attractive light.  If we listen carefully, we soon notice what the chief thing is He has to tell us of our tarrying there.  Three times He uses the name of Father: ‘Pray to your Father’; ‘Your Father will’; ‘Your Father knows’.  The first thing in closet prayer is; I must meet my Father, the light that shines in the closet must be; the light of the Father’s countenance.  The fresh air from heaven with which Jesus would have it filled, the atmosphere in which I am to breathe and pray, is, God’s Father-love, God’s infinite Fatherliness.  Thus each thought or petition we breath out will be simple, hearty, childlike, trust in the Father.  This is how the Master teaches us to pray: He brings us into the Father’s living presence.  What we pray there must avail.  Let us listen carefully to hear what the Lord has to say to us. 

First, ‘Pray to your Father who is in secret’.  God is a God who hides Himself to the carnal eye.  As long as in our worship of God we are chiefly occupied with our own thoughts and exercises, we shall not meet Him who is a Spirit, the Unseen One.  But to the one who withdraws themself from all that is of the world and man, and prepares to wait upon God alone, the Father will reveal Himself.  As he forsakes and gives up and shuts out the world, and the life of the world, and surrenders himself to be led of Christ into the secret of God’s presence, the light of the Fathers love will rise upon them.  The secrecy of the inner chamber and the closed door, the entire separation from all around us is an image of and so a help, to that inner spiritual sanctuary, the secret of God’s tabernacle, within the veil, where our spirit truly comes into contact with the Invisible One. 

And so we are taught, at the very outset of our search after the secret of effectual prayer, to remember that it is in the inner chamber where we are alone with the Father, which we shall learn to pray aright. 

‘The Father is in secret’: in these words Jesus teaches us where he is waiting us, where He is always to be found.  Christians often complain that private prayer is not what it should be.  They feel weak and sinful, the heart is cold and dark; it is as if they have so little to pray, and in that little no faith or joy.  They are discouraged and kept from prayer by the thought that they cannot come to the Father as they ought or as they wish.  Child of God!  Listen to your Teacher, He tells you that when you go to private prayer your first thought must be, The Father is in secret, there!  The Father waits me there.  Just because your heart is cold and prayerless, get yourself into the presence of the loving Father.  As a father pities his children, so the Lord pities you.  Do not be thinking of how little you have to bring God, but of how much He wants to give you.  Just place yourself before Him, and look up into His face and think of His love, His wonderful, tender and compassionate love.  Just tell Him how sinful and cold and dark all is; it is the Father’s loving heart which will give light and warmth to yours.  O do what Jesus says; just shut the door, and pray to the Father which is in secret.  Is it not wonderful to be able to go alone with God, the infinite God and then to look up and say; my Father.

‘And your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you.’ 

Here Jesus assures us that secret prayer cannot be fruitless; its blessing will show itself in our life.  We have but in secret, alone with God, to entrust our life before men to Him; He will reward us openly; He will see to it that the answer to prayer be made manifest in His blessing upon us.  Our Lord would teach us that as, infinite Fatherliness and Faithfulness, is how God meets us in secret, so on our part there should be the childlike simplicity of faith, the confidence that our prayer does bring down a blessing.  ‘He that comes to God must believe that He is a rewarder of those that seek Him.’  Not on the strong or the fervent feeling with which I pray does the blessing of the closet depend, but upon the love and the power of the Father to whom I there entrust my needs.  And therefore the Master has but one desire; remember your Father is, and sees and hears in secret; go there and stay there, and go again from there in confidence; He will reward.  Trust Him for it; depend upon Him; prayer to the Father cannot be in vain; He will reward you openly.

Still further to confirm this faith in the Father love of God, Christ speaks a third word; ‘Your Father knows what things you need’.  At first this might appear as if this thought made prayer less needful, God knows far better than we what we need.  But as we get deeper insight into what prayer really is, this truth will help much to strengthen our faith.  It will teach us that we do not need, as the heathen, with the multitude and urgency of our words, to compel an unwilling god to listen to us.  It will lead to a holy thoughtfulness and silence in prayer as it suggests the question; does my Father really know that I need this?  It will, when once we have been led by the Spirit to the certainty that our request is indeed something that, according to the Word, we do need for God’s glory, give us wonderful confidence to say, My Father knows I need it and must have it.  And if there be any delay in the answer, it will teach us in quiet perseverance to hold on; Father You know I need it.  O the blessed liberty and simplicity of a child that Christ our Teacher would cultivate in us, as we draw near to God; let us look up to the Father until His Spirit works it in us.  Let us sometimes in our prayers, when we are in danger of being so occupied with our fervent, urgent petitions, as to forget that the Father knows and hears, let us hold still and just quietly say; my Father sees, my Father hears, my Father knows, it will help our faith to take the answer, and to say; we know that we have the petitions we have asked of Him. 

And now all you who have anew entered the school of Christ to be taught to pray, take these lessons, practice them, and trust Him to perfect you in them.  Dwell much in the inner chamber, with the door shut – shut in from others, shut up with God; it is there the Father waits you, it is there Jesus will teach you to pray. Learn to be alone in secret with the Father, let this be your highest joy.  To be assured that the Father will openly reward the secret prayer, so that it cannot remain unblessed; this is your strength day by day.  And to know that the Father knows that you need what you ask, this is your liberty to bring every need, in the assurance that your God will supply it according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus. 

Lord teach us to pray;

         Blessed Saviour with my whole heart I bless You for the appointment of the inner chamber, as the school where you meet each of your pupils alone and reveal to them the Father.  Oh my Lord, strengthen my faith so that in the Fathers tender love and kindness, as often as I feel sinful or troubled, the first instinctive feeling may be to go where I know the Father waits and where prayer can never go unblessed.  Let the thought that He knows my need before I ask, bring me a great restfulness of faith to trust that He will give what His child requires.  O let the place of secret prayer become to me the most beloved spot on earth.

And Lord, hear me as I pray that You would everywhere bless the closets of Your believing people.  Let Your wonderful revelation of a Fathers tenderness, free all young Christians from every thought of secret prayer as a duty or a burden and lead them to regard it as the highest privilege of their life, a joy and a blessing.  Bring back all who are discouraged because they cannot find ought to bring You in prayer.  O give them to understand that they have only to come, with their emptiness to Him who has all to give and delights to do it not, what they have to bring to Father, but what the Father wants to give them be their one thought.  And bless especially the inner chamber of all Your servants who are working for You, as the place where God’s Truth and God’s Grace is revealed to them; where they are daily anointed with fresh oil, where their strength is renewed and the blessings are received in Faith, with which they are to bless their fellow man.  Lord, draw us all in the closet nearer to Yourself and the Father, AMEN

Lesson 2 As children pray ...

As we approach lent and think about the lead up to Gethsemane, and as we imagine the walk to Calvary, it seems so right to be here at the feet of Jesus, saying Lord teach us to pray. I cannot and do not want to process these meditations daily.  I need more time to absorb the richness in each one, and even then it is a lifetime of receiving.

Lesson 2 – “In spirit and truth …’

‘The hour comes and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such does the Father seek to be His worshippers.  God is Spirit; and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and truth’ John 4:23

These words of Jesus to the woman of Samaria are His first recorded teaching on the subject of prayer.  They give us some wonderful first glimpses into the world of prayer.  The Father seeks worshippers: our worship satisfies His loving heart and is a joy to Him.  He seeks true worshippers, but finds many not such as He would have them.  True worship is that which is in spirit and truth.  The son has come to open the way for this worship in spirit and in truth, and teach it to us.  And so one of our first lessons in the school of prayer must be to understand what it is to pray in spirit and in truth, and to know how we can attain to it. 

To the woman of Samaria our Lord spoke of a threefold worship.  There is first, the ignorant worship of the Samaritans: “Ye worship that which you know not”.  The second, the intelligent worship of the Jew, having the true knowledge of God: “we worship that which we know; for salvation is of the Jews.”  And then the new, the spiritual worship He Himself has come to introduce: “The hour is coming, and is now, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth.”  From the connection it is evident that the words ‘in spirit and truth’ do not mean, as is often thought, earnestly, from the heart, in sincerity.  The Samaritans had the five books of Moses and some knowledge of God; there was doubtless more than one among them who honestly and earnestly sought God in prayer.  The Jews had the true full revelation of God in the Word, as thus far given; there were among them godly men, who called upon God with their whole heart; and yet not ‘in spirit and truth’, in the full meaning of the words.  Jesus says, ‘the hour is coming, and now is’ it is only in and through Him that the worship of God will be in spirit and truth. 

Among Christians one still finds the three classes of worshippers.   Some who in their ignorance hardly know what they ask; they pray earnestly, and yet receive but little.  Others there are, who have more correct knowledge, who try to pray with all their mind and heart, and often pray most earnestly, and yet do not attain to the full blessedness of worship in spirit and truth.  It is into the third class we must ask our Lord Jesus to take us; we must be taught of Him how to worship in spirit and truth.   This alone is spiritual worship; this makes us worshippers such as the Father seeks.  In prayer everything will depend on our understanding well and practising the worship in spirit and truth. 

‘God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him, must worship Him in spirit and truth.’  The first thought suggested here by the Master is that there must be harmony between God and His worshippers; such as God is, must his worship be.  This is according to a principle which prevails throughout the universe; we look for correspondence between an object and that to which it reveals or yields itself.  The eye has an inner fitness for the light, the ear for sound.  The man who would truly worship God, would find and know and possess and enjoy God, must be in harmony with Him, must have the capacity for receiving Him.  Because God is Spirit, we must worship in spirit, as God is, so His worshipper.

And what does this mean?  The woman had asked our Lord whether Samaria or Jerusalem was the true place of worship.  He answers that henceforth worship is no longer to be limited to a certain place: ‘Woman, believe Me, the hour comes, when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem shall you worship the Father.’  As God is Spirit, not bound by space or time, but in His infinite perfection always and everywhere the same, so His worship would henceforth no longer be confined by place or form, but spiritual as God Himself is spiritual.  A lesson of deep importance. 

How much our Christianity suffers from this that it is confined to certain times and places.  A man, who seeks to pray earnestly in the church or in the closet, spends the greater part of the week or the day in a spirit entirely at variance with that in which he prayed.  His worship was the work of a fixed place or hour, not of his whole being.  God is a Spirit: He is the everlasting and unchangeable One; what He is, He is always and in truth.  Our worship must even so be in spirit and truth: His worship must be the spirit of our life; our life must be worship in spirit as God is Spirit.

‘God is a Spirit and they that worship him must worship Him in spirit and truth.’  The second thought that comes to us is that the worship in the spirit must come from God Himself.  God is Spirit: He alone has Spirit to give.  It was for this He sent His Son, to fit us for such spiritual worship, by giving us the Holy Spirit.  It is of His own work that Jesus speaks when He says twice, ‘the hour comes’, and then adds, ‘and now is’.  He came to baptize with the Holy Spirit; the Spirit could not stream forth till He was glorified.  It was when He had made an end of sin, and entering into the Holiest of all with His blood, had he on our behalf received the Holy Spirit, that He could send Him down to us as the Spirit of the Father.  It was when Christ had redeemed us, and we in Him had received the position of children, that the Father sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts to cry “Abba, Father” … ‘Daddy Daddy’.  The worship in spirit is the worship of the Father in the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of Sonship, as a son / daughter.

This is the reason why Jesus here uses the name of Father.  We never find one of the Old Testament saints personally appropriate the name of child or call God his Father.  The worship of the Father is only possible to those to whom the Spirit of the Son has been given.  The worship in spirit is only possible to those to whom the Son has revealed the Father, and who have received the spirit of Sonship.  It is only Christ who opens the way and teaches the worship in spirit.

And in truth.  That does not only mean in sincerity.  Nor does it only signify, in accordance with the truth of God’s Word.  The expression is one of deep and Divine meaning.  Jesus is ‘the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth’.  ‘The law, was given by Moses; grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.’  Jesus says, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life.’  In the Old Testament all was shadow and promise; Jesus brought and gives the reality, the substance, of things hoped for.  In Him the blessings and power of the eternal life are our actual possession and experience.  Jesus is full of grace and truth; the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth; through Him the grace that is in Jesus is ours in deed and truth, a positive communication out of the Divine life.   And so worship in spirit is worship in truth; actual living fellowship with God, a real correspondence and harmony between the Father who is a Spirit, and the child praying in the spirit. 

What Jesus said to the woman of Samaria, she could not at once understand.  Pentecost was needed to reveal its full meaning.  We are hardly prepared at our first entrance into the school of prayer to grasp such teaching.  We shall understand it better later on.  Let us only begin and take the lesson as he gives it.  We are carnal and cannot bring God the worship He seeks.  But Jesus came to give the Spirit; He has given him to us.  Let the disposition in which we set ourselves to pray be what Christ’s words have taught us.  Let there be the deep confession of our inability to bring God the worship that is pleasing to Him, the childlike teachable-ness that waits on Him to instruct us; the simple faith that yields itself to the breathing of the Spirit.  Above all, let us hold fast the blessed truth – we shall find that the Lord has more to say to us about it – that the knowledge of the Fatherhood of God, the revelation of His infinite Fatherliness in our hearts, the faith in the infinite love that gives us His Son and His Spirit to make us children, is indeed the secret of prayer in spirit and truth.  This is the new and living way Christ opened up for us.  To have Christ the Son, and the Spirit of the Son, dwelling within us, and revealing the Father, this makes us true, spiritual worshippers.

LORD TEACH US TO PRAY

Blessed Lord, I adore the love with which you taught a woman, who had refused you a cup of water, what the worship of God must be.  I rejoice in the assurance that you will no less teach me, your disciple, who comes to you with a heart that longs to pray in spirit and truth.  Teach me that the worship in spirit and truth is not of man, but only comes from You.  That it is not only a thing of times and seasons, but the outflowing of a life in You.  Teach me to draw near to God in prayer under the deep impression of my ignorance and my having nothing in myself to offer Him, and at the same time of the provision that You my Saviour makes for the Spirits breathing in my childlike stammerings.   I do bless You, that in You I am a child, and have a child’s liberty of access; that in You I have the spirit of Sonship and of worship in truth.  Teach me, above all Blessed Son of the Father, how it is the revelation of the Father that gives confidence in prayer; and let the infinite Fatherliness of God’s heart be my joy and strength for a life of prayer and of worship.   Amen