THREE LAWS OF PRAYER
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THESE words follow immediately on the great prayer promise, All things whatsoever ye pray, believe that ye have received them, and ye shall have them.' We have already seen how the words that preceded that promise, Have faith in God, taught us that in prayer, all depends upon our relation to God being clear; these words that follow it remind us that our relation with fellow men must be clear too. Love for God and love for our neighbor are inseparable: the prayer from a heart that is either not right with God on the one side or with men on the other cannot prevail. Faith and love are essential to each other.
We find that this is a thought to which our Lord frequently gave expression. In the Sermon on the Mount when speaking of the sixth commandment, He taught His disciples how impossible acceptable worship to the Father was if everything were not right with the brother:
23 Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee;
24 Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.
And so later, when speaking of Prayer to God, after having taught us to pray, forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors, he added at the close of the prayer; if you forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your father forgive your trespasses. At the close of the parable of the merciful servant, he applies his teaching:
So shall also my Heavenly Father do unto you, if ye forgive not every one his brother from your hearts. And so here, beside the dried-up fig tree, where He speaks of the beautiful power of faith and the prayer of faith, He all at once, apparently without connection, introduces the thought, Whensoever ye stand praying, forgive if ye have aught against any one; that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.' It is as if the Lord had learned during His life at Nazareth and afterward that disobedience to the law of love to men was the great sin even of praying people and the great cause of the feebleness of their prayer. And it is as if He wanted to lead us into His own blessed experience that nothing gives such liberty of access and such power in believing as the consciousness that we have given ourselves in love and compassion for those whom God loves.
1. Answers In Prayer Require Pardoning Love
We pray and forgive, even as we have forgiven. Scripture says, Forgive one another, even as God also in Christ forgave you!
God's complete and free forgiveness is to be the rule of ours with men. Otherwise, our reluctant, half-hearted forgiveness, which is not forgiveness at all, will be God's rule with us. Every prayer rests upon our faith in God's pardoning grace. No prayer could be heard if God dealt with us after our sins. Pardon opens the door to all God's love and blessing: because God has pardoned all our sins, our prayer can prevail to obtain all we need. The deep, sure ground of answer to prayer is God’s forgiving love. When it has taken possession of the heart, we pray in faith. But also, when it has taken possession of the heart, we live in love.
God's forgiving disposition, revealed in His love to us, becomes a disposition in us; as the power of His forgiving love is shed abroad and dwells within us, we forgive even as He forgives. If there be great and grievous injury or injustice done us, we first seek to possess a God-like disposition, to be kept from a sense of wounded honor, from a desire to maintain our rights, or from rewarding the offender as he has deserved.
In the little annoyances of daily life, we are watchful not to excuse
the hasty temper,
the sharp word,
the quick judgment, the thought that we mean no harm,
that we do not keep the anger long,
or that it would be too much to expect from feeble human nature,
that we should forgive the way God and Christ do. No, we take the command literally.
Even as Christ forgave, so do ye! The blood that cleanses the conscience from the dead works and cleanses us from selfishness, too; the love it reveals is pardoning love that takes possession of us and flows through us to others. Our forgiving love to men is evidence of God's forgiving love in us, and so the condition of the prayer of faith.
2. Answers In Prayer Require Peaceful Lives
How often does the Christian, when he comes to pray, do his utmost to cultivate specific frames of mind that he thinks will be pleasing?
Rom 15:13 Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost.
Rom 15:33 Now the God of peace be with you all. Amen.
Rom 16:20 And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen.
2Co 13:11 Finally, brethren, farewell. Be perfect, be of good comfort, be of one mind, live in peace; and the God of love and peace shall be with you.
Eph 6:23 Peace be to the brethren, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Php 4:9 Those things, which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of peace shall be with you.
2Jn 1:3 Grace be with you, mercy, and peace, from God the Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and love.
He does not understand or forgets that life does not consist of so many loose pieces, of which now the one, then the other, can be taken up.
Life is a whole, and the pious frame of the hour of prayer is judged of by God from the ordinary frame of the daily life of which the hour of prayer is but a small part. It is not the feeling I call up, but the tone of my life during the day, which is God’s criterion for what I am and desire.
My drawing nigh to God is of one piece with my relationship with men and earth: failure here will cause failure there.
Not only when there is a distinct consciousness of anything wrong between my neighbor and myself but also when the
1. The daily course of my thinking and judging,
2. unloving thoughts
3. unloving words I allow to pass unnoticed, can hinder my prayer.
The effectual prayer of faith comes from a life given up to God’s will and love.
It is not according to what I try to be when praying, but what I am when not praying is my prayer dealt with by God.
Pharisees:
Mat 23:27 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness.
Pardoning Love
Peaceful Lives
3. Answers In Prayer Require Patient Love
All Things in Human Relationships Depend on Love
The spirit of forgiveness is the spirit of love. Because God is love, He forgives: only when we dwell in love can we forgive as God forgives. In love to the brethren, we have the evidence of love to the Father, the ground of confidence before God, and the assurance that our prayer will be heard
20 If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?
18 My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth.
19 And hereby we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before him.
20 For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.
21 Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God.
23 And this is his commandment, That we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as he gave us commandment.
Let us love in deed and truth; hereby shall we assure our heart before Him. If our heart condemns us not, we have boldness toward God, and whatever we ask, we receive of Him.' Neither faith nor work will profit if we have not love; it is love that unites with God, it is love that proves the reality of faith. As essential as in the word that precedes the great prayer promise in
24 Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.
Have faith in God, is this one that follows it, Have love to men.'
The right relations to the living God above me, and the living men around me, are the conditions of effectual prayer.
This love is of unique consequence when we labor for such and pray for them. We sometimes give ourselves to work for Christ, from zeal for His cause, as we call it, or for our spiritual health, without giving ourselves in personal self-sacrificing love for those whose souls we seek. No wonder that our faith is feeble and does not conquer. To look on each wretched one, however unloveable he be, in the light of the tender love of Jesus the Shepherd seeking the lost; to see Jesus Christ in him, and to take him up, for Jesus' sake, in a heart that loves, --this, this is the secret of believing prayer and successful effort. Jesus, in speaking of forgiveness, speaks of love as its root. Just as in the Sermon on the Mount, He connected His teaching and promises about prayer with the call to be merciful, as the Father in heaven is merciful so we see it here: a loving life is a condition of believing prayer.
9 Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
22 But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.
38 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:
39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
40 And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also.
41 And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.
42 Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.
43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.
44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
46 For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?
47 And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?
48 Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
7 Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
It has been said that there is nothing so heart-searching as believing in prayer or even the honest effort to pray in faith. O let us not turn the edge of that self-examination by the thought that God does not hear our prayer for reasons known to Himself alone. By no means. Ye ask and receive not, because ye ask amiss.' Let that word of God search us. Let us ask whether our prayer be indeed the expression of a life wholly given over to the will of God and the love of man. Love is the only soil in which faith can strike its roots and thrive. As it throws its arms up, and opens its heart heavenward, the Father always looks to see if it has them opened towards the evil and the unworthy too. Faith can alone obtain the blessing in that love, not the love of perfect attainment, but the love of fixed purpose and sincere obedience. He gives himself to let the love of God dwell in him, and in daily life to love as God loves, who will have the power to believe in the Love that hears his every prayer. It is the Lamb who is on the throne: it is suffering and forbearing love that prevails with God in prayer. The merciful shall obtain mercy; the meek shall inherit the earth.
'LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY!
Blessed Father! Thou art Love, and only be that abideth in love abideth in Thee and in fellowship with Thee. The Blessed Son hath this day again taught me how deeply true this is of my fellowship with Thee in prayer. O my God! let Thy love, shed abroad in my heart by the Holy Spirit, be in me a fountain of love to all around me, that out of a life abiding in love may spring the power of believing prayer. O my Father! grant by the Holy Spirit that this may be my experience, that a life in love to all around me is the gate to a life in the love of my God. And give me especially to find in the joy with which I forgive daily whoever might offend me, the proof that Thy forgiveness to me is a power and a life.
Lord Jesus! my Blessed Teacher! Teach Thou me to forgive and to love. Let the power of Thy blood make the pardon of my sins such a reality, that forgiveness, as shown by Thee to me, and by me to others, may be the very joy of heaven. Show me whatever in my intercourse with fellowmen might hinder my fellowship with God so that my daily life in my own home and in society may be the school in which strength and confidence are gathered for the prayer of faith. Amen.