SEVEN - The Ultimate Gift

Lesson 7     If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father, give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him.   Luke 11:13

In the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord had already said ‘How Much More.’  Here in Luke, where He repeats the question, there is a difference.  Instead of speaking as then, of giving good gifts, He says, “How much more shall the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit?”

He teaches us that the chief and the best of these gifts is the Holy Spirit, or rather, that in this gift all others are comprised.  The Holy Spirit is the first of the Father’s gifts, and the one He delights most to bestow.  The Holy Spirit is therefore the gift we ought first to seek.  The unspeakable worth of this gift we can easily understand.  Jesus spoke of the Spirit as ‘the promise of the Father’.  The one promise in which God’s fatherhood revealed itself.  The best gift a good and wise Father can bestow on a child on earth is His own Spirit.  This is the great object of a Father in education, to reproduce in His child his own disposition and character.  If the child is to know and understand his Father, if, as he grows up, he is to enter into all His will and plans; if he is to have his highest joy in the Father, and the Father in him, he must be of one mind and spirit with him.  And so it is impossible to conceive of God giving any higher gift on his child than this, His own Spirit. 

God is what He is through His Spirit; the Spirit is the very life of God.  Just think what it means God giving His own Spirit to His child on earth or was not this the glory of Jesus as a Son upon earth, that the Spirit of the Father was in Him?  At His baptism in Jordan, the 2 were united, the voice, proclaiming Him the beloved Son, and the Spirit, descending upon Him.  And so the apostle says of us, ‘because you were sons, God sent the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying Abba Father.’ 

A king seeks in the whole education of his son to call forth in him a kingly spirit.  Our Father in heaven desires to educate us as His children for the holy, heavenly life in which He dwells, and for this He gives us, from the depths of His heart, His own Spirit.  It was the whole aim of Jesus, after having made atonement with His own blood, that He entered for us into God’s presence, that He might obtain for us, and send down to dwell in us, the Holy Spirit.  As the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, the whole life and love of the Father and the Son are in Him; and, coming down to us, He lifts us up into their fellowship.  As Spirit of the Father, He sheds abroad the Father’s love with which He loves the Son, in our hearts, and teaches us to live in it.  As Spirit of the Son, He breathes in us the childlike liberty, and devotion, and obedience with which the Son lived on the earth.  The Father can bestow no higher or more wonderful gift than this; His own Holy Spirit, the spirit of Sonship.  This truth naturally suggests the thought that this first and chief gift of God, must be the first and chief object of all prayer.  For every thought of the spiritual life this is the one thing that is needful, the Holy Spirit.  All the fullness is in Jesus; the fullness of grace and truth, out of which we receive grace for grace.  The Holy Spirit is the appointed giver, whose special work it is to make Jesus and all there is in Him, ours. A personal appropriation of Grace in blessed experience.  He is the Spirit of life in Christ; as wonderful as the life is, so wonderful is the provision by which such an agent is provided to communicate it to us.  If we but yield ourselves entirely to the disposal of the Spirit, and let Him have his way with us, He will manifest the life of Christ in us.  He will do this with a divine power, maintaining the life of Christ in us in uninterrupted continuity.  Surely, if there is one prayer that should draw us to the Fathers throne and should keep us there, it is this; for the Holy Spirit whom we as children have received, to stream into us and out from us in greater fullness. 

In the variety of the gifts that the Spirit has to dispense, He meets the believer’s every need.  Just think of the names He bears.  The Spirit of Grace, to reveal and impart all there is in Jesus.  The Spirit of Faith, teaching us to begin and go on and increase in ever believing.  The Spirit of adoption and assurance, who witnesses that we are God’s children, and inspires the confiding and confident Abba, Father!  The Spirit of Truth, to lead into all truth and to make each Word of God ours, in deed and in truth.  The Spirit of Prayer, through whom we speak with the Father; prayer that must be heard.  The Spirit that convicts, to search the heart and convince of sin.  The Spirit of holiness, manifesting and communicating the Father’s holy presence within us.  The Spirit of Power, through whom we are strong, to testify boldly and work effectually in the Father’s service.  The Spirit of Glory, the pledge of our inheritance, the preparation and the foretaste of the Glory to come.  Surely the child of God needs but one thing, to be able really to live as a child: it is to be filled with His Spirit. 

And now, the lesson Jesus teaches us today in His school is this; that the Father is longing to give Him to us, if we will but ask in childlike dependence on what He says; “if you know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall Your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him.” 

In the Words of God promise, “I will pour out my Spirit abundantly”; and of His command; “Be filled with the Spirit”.  We have the measure of what God is ready to give, and what we may obtain.  As God’s children, we have already received the Spirit.  But we still need to ask and pray for His special gifts and operations as we require them.  And not only this, but for Himself to take complete possession; for His unceasing momentary guidance.  Just as the branch, already filled with the sap of the vine, is ever crying for the continued and increasing flow of that sap, that it may bring its fruit to perfection, so the believer, rejoicing in the possession of the Spirit, ever thirsts and cries for more.  And what the great Teacher would have us learn is, that nothing less than God’s promise and Gods’ command may be the measure of our expectation and our prayer; we must be filled abundantly.  He would have us ask with the assurance that the wonderful, ‘how much more’, of the Fathers love is the pledge that, when we ask, we do most certainly receive. 

Let us now believe this.  As we pray to be filled with the Spirit, let us not seek for the answer in our feelings.  All spiritual blessings must be received, that is, accepted and taken in faith.  Let me believe, the Father gives the Holy Spirit to His praying child.  Even now, while I pray, I must say in faith; I have what I ask, the fullness of the Spirit is mine.  Let us continue steadfast in this faith.  On the strength of God’s word, we know that we have what we ask.  Let us, with thanksgiving that we have been heard, and that we have received and taken and now hold as ours, continue steadfast in believing prayer that the blessing, which has already been given us, in which we hold in faith, may break through and fill our whole being.  It is in such believing, thanksgiving and prayer, that our soul opens up for the Spirit to take entire and undisturbed possession.  It is such prayer that not only asks and hopes, but takes and holds, that inherits the full blessing.  In all our prayer let us remember the lesson, the Saviour would teach us this day, that if there is one thing on earth that we can be sure of it is this; that the Father desires us to be filled with His Spirit, that He delights to give us His Spirit.  And when once we have learned to believe this, for ourselves, and each day to take out of the treasure we hold in heaven what liberty and power, to pray for the outpouring of the Spirit on the Church of God, on all flesh, individuals or on special efforts!  He that has once learned to know the Father in prayer for himself, learns to pray most confidently for others too.  The Father gives the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him, not least, but most, when they ask for others.

Lord Teach us to Pray

Father in Heaven, you sent your son to reveal yourself to us, the Father love, and all that the love has for us.  And He has taught us that the gift above all gifts which You would bestow in answer to prayer is, the Holy Spirit.  Oh Father, I come to You with this prayer; There is nothing I desire more than to be filled with the Holy Spirit.  The blessings He brings are so unspeakable and just what I need.  He sheds abroad the Father’s love in my heart and fills it with Yourself.  I long for this.  He breathes the mind and life of Christ in me, so that I live as He did, in and for the Fathers love.  I long for this.  He endues with power from on high for my walk and my work.  I long for this.  Oh Father, I ask You, give me this day the fullness of Your Spirit.  Father, I ask this, resting on Jesus words; “how much more the Holy Spirit.”  I do believe that You hear my prayer; I receive now what I ask.  Father, I claim and I take it; the fullness of Your Spirit is mine.  I receive the gift this day as a faith gift; in faith I reckon my Father works through His Spirit all that He has promised.  The Father delights to breath His Spirit into His waiting child as he tarries in fellowship with You.  AMEN

Daddy ... Daddy ... I ask ....

“How much more?” – The infinite fatherliness of God

“Or what man is there of you, who, if his son ask him for a loaf of bread, will give him a stone; or if he shall ask for a fish, will give him a serpent?  If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father in heaven give good things to them that ask Him?”

In these words our Lord proceeds further to confirm what He had said of the certainty of an answer to prayer.  To remove all doubt, and show us the sure ground His promise rests on, He appeals to what everyone has seen and experienced here on earth.  We are all children, and know what we expected of our fathers.  We are fathers, or continually see them; and everywhere we see it as the most natural thing there can be, for a father to hear his child.  And the Lord asks us to look up from earthly parents, of whom the best are still evil, and to calculate how much more our heavenly Father will give good gifts to them that ask Him. 

Jesus would lead us up to see, that as much greater as God is than sinful man, so much greater our assurance ought to be that He will more surely than any earthly father grant our childlike petitions.  As much greater as God is than man, so much surer is it that prayer will be heard with the Father in heaven than with a father on earth. 

As simple and intelligible as this parable is, so deep and spiritual is the teaching it contains.  The Lord would remind us that the prayer of a child owes its influence entirely to the relation in which he stands to the parent.  The prayer can exert that influence only when the child is really living that relationship, in the home, in the love, in the service of the Father.  The power of the promise, “Ask and it shall be given you, “ lies in the loving relationship between us as children and our Father in heaven.  When we live and walk in that relationship, the prayer of faith and its answer will be the natural result.  And so the lesson we have today in the school of prayer is this: live as a child of God, then you will be able to pray as a child and as a child you will most assuredly be heard. 

And what is the true child-life?  The answer can be found in any home.  The child that by preference forsakes the father’s house, who finds no pleasure in the presence and love and obedience to the father, and still thinks to ask and obtain what he will, will surely be disappointed.  On the contrary, he whose relationship, honour and love of the father are the joy of his life, will find that it is the father’s joy to grant his requests. 

Scripture says, “As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the children of God,”  the childlike privilege of asking all - is inseparable from the childlike life under the leading of the Spirit.  He will lead him that gives himself to be led by the Spirit in his life, in his prayers too.  And he will find that Father-like giving is the Divine response to childlike living.

To see what this childlike living is, in which childlike asking and believing have their ground, we have only to notice what our Lord teaches in the Sermon on the Mount of the Father and His children.  In it the prayer-promises are imbedded in the life-precepts; the two are inseparable.  They form one whole; and He alone can count on the fulfillment of the promise, who accepts too all that the Lord has connected with it.  It is as if in speaking the word, “Ask and you shall receive,” He says: I give these promises to those whom in the beatitudes I have pictured in their childlike poverty and purity, and of whom I have said, “They shall be called the children of God”: to children, who “let your light shine before men, so that they may glorify your Father in heaven”: to those who walk in love, “that you may be children of your Father who is in heaven,” and who seek to be perfect “even as your Father in heaven is perfect” whose fasting and praying and giving is not before men, but before the Father who sees in secret, who forgive, even as their Father has forgiven them….  Such are the children of the Father, and such is the life in the Father’s love and service; in such a child-life answered prayers are certain and abundant. 

But will not such teaching discourage the feeble one?”  If we are first to answer to this portrait of a child, must not many give up all hope of answers to prayer?  The difficulty is removed if we think again of the blessed name of father and child.  A child is weak; there is a great difference among children in age and gift.  The Lord does not demand of us a perfect fulfillment of the law; no, but only the childlike and whole-hearted surrender to live as a child with Him in grace and truth, nothing more, but also nothing less.  The Father must have the whole heart.  When this is given, and He sees the child with honest purpose and steady will seeking in everything to be and live as a child, then our prayer will count with Him as the prayer of a child.  Let any one simply and honestly begin to study the Sermon of the Mount and take it as his guide in life, and he will find, not withstanding weakness and failure, an ever-growing liberty to claim fulfillment of its promises in regard to prayer.  In the name of father and child he has the pledge that his petitions will be granted.  This is the one chief thought on which Jesus dwells here, and which He would have all His scholars take in. 

He would have us see that the secret of effectual prayer is: to have the heart filled with the Father-love of God.  It is not enough for us to know that God is a Father, He would have us take time to come under the full impression of what that name implies.  We must take the best earthly father we know; we must think of the tenderness and love with which he regards the request of his child, the love and joy with which he grants every reasonable desire; we must then, as we think in adoring worship of the infinite Love and Fatherliness of God.  Consider with how much more tenderness and joy He sees us come to Him and give us what we ask aright.  And then, when we see how how much more this Divine arithmetic is beyond our comprehension, and feel how impossible it is for us to apprehend God’s readiness to hear us, then He would have us come and open our heart for the Holy Spirit to shed abroad God’s Father-love there.  Let us do this not only when we want to pray, but let us yield heart and life to dwell in that love.  The child, who only wants to know the love of the father when he has something to ask, will be disappointed.  But he who lets God be Father always and in everything, who would rather live his whole life in the Father’s presence and love, who allows God in all greatness of His love to be a Father.  Yes, He will experience most gloriously that life in which God’s infinite Fatherliness and continual answers to prayer are inseparable.

Beloved fellow disciple, we begin to see what the reason is that we know so little of daily answers to prayer, and what the chief lesson is which the Lord has for us in His school.  It is all in the name of Father.  We thought of new and deeper insight into some of the mysteries of the prayer world as what we should get in Christ’s school and He tells us the first is the highest lesson.  We must learn to say well, “Abba Father!”  “Our Father, who is in heaven…” 

He who can say this, has the key to all prayer.  In all the compassion with which a father listens to his weak or sickly child, in all the joy with which he hears his stammering child, in all gentle patience with which he bears with a thoughtless child, we just, as in so many mirrors, study the heart of our Father until every prayer be borne upward on the faith of this Divine word: “How much more shall your heavenly Father give good gifts to them that ask Him.”

LORD TEACH US TO PRAY

Blessed Lord, You know that this , though it be one of the first and simplest and most glorious lessons in Your school, is to our hearts one of the hardest to learn.  We know so little of the love of the Father, Lord, teach us so to live with the Father that His love may be to us nearer, clearer, dearer, than the love of any earthly father.  And let the assurance of His hearing our prayer, be as much greater than the confidence in an earthly parent, as the heavens are higher than the earth and as God is infinitely greater than man. Lord, show us that it is only our un-childlike distance from the Father that hinders the answer to prayer, and lead us on to the true life of God’s children.  Lord Jesus, it is father-like love that wakens childlike trust, so reveal to us the Father, and His tender, pitying love, that we may become childlike, and experience how in the child-life lies the power of prayer.

Blessed Son of God, the Father loves You and has given You all things.  You know the Father, and have done everything He commanded You, and therefore has the power to ask all things.  Lord Give us Your own Spirit, and make us child-like and let every prayer be breathed in the faith that as the heaven is higher than the earth, so God’s Father-love, and His readiness to give us what we ask, surpasses all we can think or conceive, AMEN

The earthly model ... no matter how good ... doesn't come close!

“How much more?” – The infinite fatherliness of God

“Or what man is there of you, who, if his son ask him for a loaf of bread, will give him a stone; or if he shall ask for a fish, will give him a serpent?  If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father in heaven give good things to them that ask Him?”

In these words our Lord proceeds further to confirm what He had said of the certainty of an answer to prayer.  To remove all doubt, and show us the sure ground His promise rests on, He appeals to what everyone has seen and experienced here on earth.  We are all children, and know what we expected of our fathers.  We are fathers, or continually see them; and everywhere we see it as the most natural thing there can be, for a father to hear his child.  And the Lord asks us to look up from earthly parents, of whom the best are still evil, and to calculate how much more our heavenly Father will give good gifts to them that ask Him. 

Jesus would lead us up to see, that as much greater as God is than sinful man, so much greater our assurance ought to be that He will more surely than any earthly father grant our childlike petitions.  As much greater as God is than man, so much surer is it that prayer will be heard with the Father in heaven than with a father on earth. 

As simple and intelligible as this parable is, so deep and spiritual is the teaching it contains.  The Lord would remind us that the prayer of a child owes its influence entirely to the relation in which he stands to the parent.  The prayer can exert that influence only when the child is really living that relationship, in the home, in the love, in the service of the Father.  The power of the promise, “Ask and it shall be given you, “ lies in the loving relationship between us as children and our Father in heaven.  When we live and walk in that relationship, the prayer of faith and its answer will be the natural result.  And so the lesson we have today in the school of prayer is this: live as a child of God, then you will be able to pray as a child and as a child you will most assuredly be heard. 

And what is the true child-life?  The answer can be found in any home.  The child that by preference forsakes the father’s house, who finds no pleasure in the presence and love and obedience to the father, and still thinks to ask and obtain what he will, will surely be disappointed.  On the contrary, he whose relationship, honour and love of the father are the joy of his life, will find that it is the father’s joy to grant his requests. 

Scripture says, “As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the children of God,”  the childlike privilege of asking all - is inseparable from the childlike life under the leading of the Spirit.  He will lead him that gives himself to be led by the Spirit in his life, in his prayers too.  And he will find that Father-like giving is the Divine response to childlike living.

To see what this childlike living is, in which childlike asking and believing have their ground, we have only to notice what our Lord teaches in the Sermon on the Mount of the Father and His children.  In it the prayer-promises are imbedded in the life-precepts; the two are inseparable.  They form one whole; and He alone can count on the fulfillment of the promise, who accepts too all that the Lord has connected with it.  It is as if in speaking the word, “Ask and you shall receive,” He says: I give these promises to those whom in the beatitudes I have pictured in their childlike poverty and purity, and of whom I have said, “They shall be called the children of God”: to children, who “let your light shine before men, so that they may glorify your Father in heaven”: to those who walk in love, “that you may be children of your Father who is in heaven,” and who seek to be perfect “even as your Father in heaven is perfect” whose fasting and praying and giving is not before men, but before the Father who sees in secret, who forgive, even as their Father has forgiven them….  Such are the children of the Father, and such is the life in the Father’s love and service; in such a child-life answered prayers are certain and abundant. 

But will not such teaching discourage the feeble one?”  If we are first to answer to this portrait of a child, must not many give up all hope of answers to prayer?  The difficulty is removed if we think again of the blessed name of father and child.  A child is weak; there is a great difference among children in age and gift.  The Lord does not demand of us a perfect fulfillment of the law; no, but only the childlike and whole-hearted surrender to live as a child with Him in grace and truth, nothing more, but also nothing less.  The Father must have the whole heart.  When this is given, and He sees the child with honest purpose and steady will seeking in everything to be and live as a child, then our prayer will count with Him as the prayer of a child.  Let any one simply and honestly begin to study the Sermon of the Mount and take it as his guide in life, and he will find, not withstanding weakness and failure, an ever-growing liberty to claim fulfillment of its promises in regard to prayer.  In the name of father and child he has the pledge that his petitions will be granted.  This is the one chief thought on which Jesus dwells here, and which He would have all His scholars take in. 

He would have us see that the secret of effectual prayer is: to have the heart filled with the Father-love of God.  It is not enough for us to know that God is a Father, He would have us take time to come under the full impression of what that name implies.  We must take the best earthly father we know; we must think of the tenderness and love with which he regards the request of his child, the love and joy with which he grants every reasonable desire; we must then, as we think in adoring worship of the infinite Love and Fatherliness of God.  Consider with how much more tenderness and joy He sees us come to Him and give us what we ask aright.  And then, when we see how how much more this Divine arithmetic is beyond our comprehension, and feel how impossible it is for us to apprehend God’s readiness to hear us, then He would have us come and open our heart for the Holy Spirit to shed abroad God’s Father-love there.  Let us do this not only when we want to pray, but let us yield heart and life to dwell in that love.  The child, who only wants to know the love of the father when he has something to ask, will be disappointed.  But he who lets God be Father always and in everything, who would rather live his whole life in the Father’s presence and love, who allows God in all greatness of His love to be a Father.  Yes, He will experience most gloriously that life in which God’s infinite Fatherliness and continual answers to prayer are inseparable.

Beloved fellow disciple, we begin to see what the reason is that we know so little of daily answers to prayer, and what the chief lesson is which the Lord has for us in His school.  It is all in the name of Father.  We thought of new and deeper insight into some of the mysteries of the prayer world as what we should get in Christ’s school and He tells us the first is the highest lesson.  We must learn to say well, “Abba Father!”  “Our Father, who is in heaven…” 

He who can say this, has the key to all prayer.  In all the compassion with which a father listens to his weak or sickly child, in all the joy with which he hears his stammering child, in all gentle patience with which he bears with a thoughtless child, we just, as in so many mirrors, study the heart of our Father until every prayer be borne upward on the faith of this Divine word: “How much more shall your heavenly Father give good gifts to them that ask Him.”

LORD TEACH US TO PRAY

Blessed Lord, You know that this , though it be one of the first and simplest and most glorious lessons in Your school, is to our hearts one of the hardest to learn.  We know so little of the love of the Father, Lord, teach us so to live with the Father that His love may be to us nearer, clearer, dearer, than the love of any earthly father.  And let the assurance of His hearing our prayer, be as much greater than the confidence in an earthly parent, as the heavens are higher than the earth and as God is infinitely greater than man. Lord, show us that it is only our un-childlike distance from the Father that hinders the answer to prayer, and lead us on to the true life of God’s children.  Lord Jesus, it is father-like love that wakens childlike trust, so reveal to us the Father, and His tender, pitying love, that we may become childlike, and experience how in the child-life lies the power of prayer.

Blessed Son of God, the Father loves You and has given You all things.  You know the Father, and have done everything He commanded You, and therefore has the power to ask all things.  Lord Give us Your own Spirit, and make us child-like and let every prayer be breathed in the faith that as the heaven is higher than the earth, so God’s Father-love, and His readiness to give us what we ask, surpasses all we can think or conceive, AMEN