Lesson 81: The Holy Spirit and Prayer, part 3
It is now in the intercession of Christ that the continued success and application of His redemption is maintained. And it is through the Holy Spirit descending from Christ to us that we are drawn up into the great stream of His ever-ascending prayers. The Spirit prays for us without words: in the depths of a heart where even thoughts are at times formless, the Spirit takes us up into the wonderful flow of the life of the Three-One God. Through the Spirit, Christ’s prayers become ours, and ours are made His: we ask what we will, and it is given to us. We then understand from experience, “Until now you have not asked in my Name. At that day, you shall ask in my Name.”
Disciple, what we need to pray in the Name of Christ, to ask that we may receive that our joy may be full, is the filling of this Holy Spirit. This is more than the Spirit of God under the Old Testament. This is more than the Spirit of conversion and regeneration the disciples had before Pentecost. This is more than the Spirit with a measure of His influence and working. This is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the glorified Jesus in His exaltation-power, coming on us as the Spirit of the indwelling Jesus, revealing the Son and the Father within. (John 14:16-23.) It is when this Spirit is the Spirit - not of our hours of prayer, but of our whole life and walk; when this Spirit glorifies Jesus in us by revealing the completeness of His work, and making us wholly one with Him and like Him, that we can pray in His Name, because we are in very deed one with Him. Then it is that we have that immediateness of access to the Father of which Jesus says, “I say not that I will pray the Father for you.” Oh how we need to understand and believe that to be filled with Him, the Spirit of the glorified One, is the one need of God’s believing people. Then shall we realize what it is, “with all prayer and supplication to be praying at all seasons in the Spirit,” and what it is, “praying in the Holy Spirit, to keep ourselves in the love of God.” “At that day, you shall ask in my Name.”
And so once again the lesson comes: What our prayer accomplishes depends upon what we are and what our life is. It is living in the Name of Christ that is the secret of praying in the Name of Christ; living in the Spirit that fits for praying in the Spirit. It is abiding in Christ that gives the right and power to ask what we will: the extent of the abiding is the exact measure of the power in prayer. It is the Spirit dwelling within us that prays, not in words and thoughts always, but in a breathing and a being deeper than utterance. Just so much as there is of Christ’s Spirit in us, is there real prayer. Our lives, our lives, oh let our lives be full of Christ, and full of His Spirit, and the wonderfully unlimited promises to our prayer will no longer appear strange. “Until now you have asked nothing in My Name. Ask, and you shall receive, that your joy may be full. At that day, you shall ask in my Name. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatever you shall ask the Father in my Name, He will give it to you.”
Prayer: Oh my Blessed Lord Jesus, teach me specially in prayer to wait in holy silence, and give Him place to breathe within me His unutterable intercession. And teach me that through Him it is possible to pray without ceasing, and to pray without failing, because He makes me partaker of the never-ceasing and never-failing intercession in which You, the Son, appear before the Father. Yes, Lord, fulfil in me Your promise, “At that day you shall ask in My Name. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatever you shall ask the Father in My Name, that will He give.”