GOD’S WORD FOR JUNE 12

OUR PERSONAL PROMISES:

JESUS, YOU…….. GAVE ME VICTORY ….1Cor. 15:57

JESUS, YOU………KEEP TRACK OF MY MISERY, AND KEEP MY TEARS IN A BOTTLE….Ps 56:8

JESUS, YOU……..GIVE YOUR CHILDREN THE NEW EARTH…PS 115:16

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THE WORD FOR TODAY

John 15:7

“If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.”

Beginning chapter 21 in “Abide in Christ” by Andrew Murray:  the title of the chapter is “So You Will Have Power in Prayer.”

Prayer is both one of the means and one of the fruits of union to Christ.  As a means, it is of unspeakable importance.  All the things of faith, all the pleadings of desire, all the yearnings after a fuller surrender, all the confessions of shortcoming and of sin, all the exercises in which the soul gives up self and clings to Christ, find their utterance in prayer.  In each meditation on abiding in Christ, as some new feature of what Scripture teaches concerning this blessed life is apprehended, the first impulse of the believer is at once to look up to the Father and pour out his heart into His, and ask from Him the full understanding and the full possession of what he has been shown in the word.

It is the believer who is not content with this spontaneous expression of his hope, but who takes time in secret prayer to wait until he has received and laid hold of what he has seen, who will really grow strong in Christ.  However feeble the soul’s first abiding, its prayer will be heard, and it will find prayer to be one of the great means of abiding more abundantly.

But it is not so much as a means, but as a fruit of the abiding, that the Savior mentions it in the parable of the Vine.  He does not think so much of prayer – as we, alas, too exclusively do—as a means of getting blessing for ourselves, but as one of the chief channels of influence by which, through us as fellow workers with God, the blessings of Christ’s redemption are to be dispensed to the world.  He sets before Himself and us the glory of the Father, in the extension of His kingdom, as the object for which we have been made branches; and He assures us that if we but abide in Him, we will be Israels, having power with God and man.  Ours will be the effectual, fervent prayer of the righteous man, availing much, like Elijah’s for ungodly Israel (James 5:16-17).  Such prayer will be the fruit of our abiding in Him and the means of bringing forth much fruit.

To the Christian who is not abiding wholly in Jesus, the difficulties connected with prayer are often so great as to rob him of the comfort and the strength it could bring.  Under the guise of humility, he asks how one so unworthy could expect to have influence with the Holy One.  He thinks of God’s sovereignty, His perfect wisdom and love, and cannot see how his prayer can really have any distinct effect.  He prays, but it is more because he cannot rest without prayer, than from a loving faith that the prayer will be heard.  But what a blessed release from such questions and perplexities is given to the soul who is truly abiding in Christ!  He realizes increasingly how it is in real spiritual unity with Christ that we are accepted and heard.  The union with the Son of God is a life union; we are indeed one with Him – our prayers ascend as His prayer.  It is because we abide in Him that we can ask what we will and it is given to us.

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