“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
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