Lesson 72: The Word and Prayer, part 3
“If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatsoever you will, it shall be done unto you.” We see what this means, in the words the Savior Himself gives. We must have the words in us, taken up into our will and life, reproduced in our character and actions. We must have them abiding in us: our whole life one continued display of the words that are within, and filling us; the words revealing Christ within, and our life revealing Him without. It is as the words of Christ enter our very heart, become our life and influence it, that our words will enter His heart and influence Him. My prayer will depend on my life; what God’s words are to me and in me, my words will be to God and in God. If I do what God says, God will do what I say.
How well the Old Testament saints understood this connection between God’s words and ours, and how truly prayer with them was the loving response to what they had heard God speak! If the word were a promise, they counted on God to do as He had spoken. “Do as You have said;” “For You, Lord, have spoken it;” “According to Your promise;” “According to Your word;” in such expressions they showed that what God spoke in promise was the root and the life of what they spoke in prayer. If the word was a command, they simply did as the Lord had spoken: “So Abram departed as the Lord had spoken.” Their life was fellowship with God, the interchange of word and thought. What God spoke, they heard and did; what they spoke, God heard and did. In each word He speaks to us, the whole Christ gives Himself to fulfil it for us. For each word, He asks no less than we give the whole man to keep that word, and to receive its fulfilment.
“If My words abide in you;” the condition is simple and clear. In His words, His will is revealed. As the words abide in me, His will rules me; my will becomes the empty vessel which His will fills, the willing instrument which His will wields; He fills my inner being. In the exercise of obedience and faith my will becomes ever stronger, and is brought into deeper inner harmony with Him. He can fully trust it to will nothing but what He wills; He is not afraid to give the promise, “If My words abide in you, ask whatsoever you will, and it shall be done unto you.” To all who believe it, and act upon it, He will make it literally true.
Disciples of Christ, is it not becoming more and more clear to us that while we have been excusing our unanswered prayers, our impotence in prayer, with a fancied submission to God’s wisdom and will, the real reason has been that our own weak life has been the cause of our weak prayers. Nothing can make strong men but the word coming to us from God’s mouth: by that we must live. It is the word of Christ, loved, lived in, abiding in us, becoming through obedience and action part of our being, that makes us one with Christ, that fits us spiritually for touching, for taking hold of God. All that is of the world passes away; he that does the will of God abides forever. Oh let us yield heart and life to the words of Christ, the words in which He ever gives HIMSELF, the personal living Savior, and His promise will be our rich experience: “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatsoever you will, and it shall be done unto you.”
Prayer: Lord, we pray with John, we must decrease and You must increase!