Lesson 49: The Power of United Prayer, part 2
The second mark is the gathering in, or into, the Name of Jesus. We shall afterwards have much more to learn of the need and the power of the Name of Jesus in prayer. Here our Lord teaches us that the Name must be the center of union to which believers gather, the bond of union that makes them one, just as a home contains and unites all who are in it. “The Name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous runs into it and escapes.” That Name is such a reality to those who understand and believe it, that to meet within it is to have Himself present. The love and unity of His disciples are infinitely attractive to Jesus: “Where two or three are gathered in my Name, there am I in the midst of them.” It is the living presence of Jesus, in the fellowship of His loving praying disciples, that gives united prayer its power.
The third mark is the sure answer: “It shall be done for them of my Father.” A prayer-meeting for maintaining religious fellowship, or seeking our own edification, may have its use but this was not the Savior’s view in its appointment. He meant it as a means of securing special answer to prayer. A prayer meeting without recognized answer to prayer ought to be an anomaly. When any of us have distinct desires about which we feel too weak to exercise the needful faith, we ought to seek strength in the help of another. In the unity of faith and of love and of the Spirit, the power of the Name and the Presence of Jesus acts more freely and the answer comes more surely. The mark that there has been true united prayer is the fruit, the answer, the receiving of the thing we have asked: “I say unto you, It shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven.”
What an unspeakable privilege this is of united prayer, and what a power it might be. If the believing husband and wife knew that they were joined together in the Name of Jesus to experience His presence and power in united prayer (1 Peter); if friends believed what mighty help two or three praying in concert could give each other; if in every prayer meeting the coming together in the Name, the faith in the Presence, and the expectation of the answer, stood in the foreground; if in every Church united effectual prayer were regarded as one of the chief purposes for which they are banded together, the highest exercise of their power as a Church; if in the Church universal the coming of the kingdom, the coming of the King Himself, first in the mighty outpouring of His Holy Spirit, then in His own glorious person, were really a matter of unceasing united crying to God;—O who can say what blessing might come to, and through, those who thus agreed to prove God in the fulfilment of His promise.
Prayer: Oh Father, we pray for Your people, and for every smaller circle of those who meet together, that they may be one. Remove, we pray, all selfishness and self-interest, all narrowness of heart and estrangement, by which that unity is hindered. Cast out the spirit of the world and the flesh, through which Your promise loses all its power. Oh let the thought of Your presence and the Father’s favor draw us all nearer to each other.