Lesson 71: The Word and Prayer, part 2
When God, the infinite Being, in whom everything is life and power, spirit and truth, in the very deepest meaning of the words—when God speaks forth Himself in His words, He does indeed give HIMSELF, His Love and His Life, His Will and His Power, to those who receive these words, in a reality passing comprehension. In every promise, He puts Himself in our power to lay hold of and possess; in every command, He puts Himself in our power for us to share with Him His Will, His Holiness, and His Perfection. In God’s Word God gives us HIMSELF; His Word is nothing less than the Eternal Son, Christ Jesus. And so all Christ’s words are God’s words, full of a Divine quickening life and power. “The words that I speak to you, they are spirit and they are life.”
Those who have made the deaf and dumb their study, tell us how much the power of speaking depends on that of hearing, and how the loss of hearing in children is followed by that of speaking too. This is true in a wider sense: as we hear, so we speak. This is true in the highest sense of our relationship with God. To offer a prayer—to give speech to certain wishes and to appeal to certain promises—is an easy thing, and can be learned of man by human wisdom. But to pray in the Spirit, to speak words that reach and touch God, that affect and influence the powers of the unseen world—such praying, such speaking, depends entirely upon our hearing God’s voice. Just as far as we listen to the voice and language that God speaks, and in the words of God receive His thoughts, His mind, and His life, into our heart, we shall learn to speak in the voice and the language that God hears. It is the ear of the learner, wakened morning by morning, that prepares for the tongue of the learner, to speak to God as well as men, as it should (Isaiah 50:4).
This hearing the voice of God is something more than the thoughtful study of the Word. There may be a study and knowledge of the Word, in which there is little real fellowship with the living God. But there is also a reading of the Word, in the very presence of the Father, and under the leading of the Spirit, in which the Word comes to us in living power from God Himself; it is to us the very voice of the Father, a real personal fellowship with Himself. It is the living voice of God that enters the heart, that brings blessing and strength, and awakens the response of a living faith that reaches the heart of God again.
It is on this hearing the voice, that the power both to obey and believe depends. The chief thing is, not to know what God has said we must do, but that God Himself says it to us. It is not the law, and not the book, not the knowledge of what is right, that works obedience, but the personal influence of God and His living fellowship. And even so it is not the knowledge of what God has promised, but the presence of God Himself as the Promiser, that awakens faith and trust in prayer. It is only in the full presence of God that disobedience and unbelief become impossible.
Prayer: Lord, deliver me from the closed ear. Give me the opened ear of the learner, wakened morning by morning to hear the Father’s voice. Even as You only speak what You hear, may my speaking be the echo of Your speaking to me. “When Moses went into the tabernacle to speak with Him, he heard the voice of One speaking unto him from off the mercy-seat.” Lord, may it be so with me too. Let a life and character bearing the one mark, that Your words abide and are seen in it, be the preparation for the full blessing: “Ask whatsoever you will, and it shall be done unto you.”