Lesson 45: Prayer and Love, part 1
Mark 11:25 - And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.
These words follow immediately on the great prayer-promise, “All things whatsoever you pray, believe that you have received them, and you shall have them.”
We have already seen how the words that preceded that promise, “Have faith in God,” taught us that in prayer all depends upon our relation to God being clear. These words that follow on it remind us that our relationship with fellow-men must be clear too. Love to God and love to our neighbor are inseparable: the prayer from a heart, that is either not right with God on the one side, or with men on the other, cannot prevail. Faith and love are essential to each other.
We find that this is a thought to which our Lord frequently gave expression. In the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:23, 24), when speaking of the sixth commandment, He taught His disciples how impossible acceptable worship to the Father was if everything was not right with the brother: “If you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has anything against you, leave there your gift before the altar, and go your way; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.” And so later, when speaking of prayer to God, after having taught us to pray, “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors,” He added at the close of the prayer; “If you forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” At the close of the parable of the unmerciful servant He applies His teaching in the words, “So shall also my Heavenly Father do unto you, if you forgive not everyone his brother from your hearts.” So here, beside the dried-up fig-tree, where He speaks of the wonderful power of faith and the prayer of faith, He all at once, apparently without connection, introduces the thought, “Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone; that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.” It is as if the Lord had learned during His life at Nazareth and afterwards that disobedience to the law of love to men was the great sin even of praying people, and the great cause of the feebleness of their prayer. It is as if He wanted to lead us into His own blessed experience that nothing gives such liberty of access and such power in believing as the consciousness that we have given ourselves in love and compassion, for those whom God loves.
Prayer: Blessed Father, You are Love, and only he that abides in love abides in You and in fellowship with You. The Blessed Son has again taught me this day how deeply true this is of my fellowship with You in prayer.