By Stephen Green
First Published in Christian Voice June 2011
John 15:7 If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.
The last few months have been something of a challenge to me. Three dear friends for whom Judy and I were praying to be healed have gone to be with the Lord. And we were not the only ones praying. Christians with stronger faith than us were believing for restoration and healing for these precious servants of the Lord.
The words of our Lord are as clear as can be. “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.” Clearly there is either something wrong with the promise or with our prayers or with us. And it cannot be that there is something wrong with the promise.
Andrew Murray, in his book “with Christ in theSchoolofPrayer” cautions against inserting a condition to qualify the words of our Lord. He observes that many believers add the expression “If it be the will of the Lord”. Murraysays that to add such a condition has an outward show of piety but diminishes the power of God and the force of the words. It is not what our Lord actually said.
Faith is obviously a key. Many times in the Gospels we hear our Lord commend people for their faith. “Thy faith hath made thee whole,” he told both the woman with the flow of blood and the blind man. I often feel like the man who cried out to him, “Lord I believe; help thou my unbelief.”
Perhaps a university education in the dark, satanic, rationalist mill of one of our oldest seats of learning did not help me to see beyond the physical to the spiritual reality. If the friends for whom I was praying depended on my prayers for their healing I should not be surprised if they and I were disappointed.
It has been said, “Never spoil a good prayer with a bad confession.” How many times do we catch ourselves, having prayed as fervently as we will for some positive outcome, turning away after the final powerful amen and thinking to ourselves, “I’m not sure the Lord is going to do that.” Both Christ in Mark 11:23 and Paul in Romans 10:9 speak of what can be done if you “believe in your heart.”
Please don’t get me wrong. I have prayed for people and they have been healed. I have witnessed miracles of healing. It is just that three deaths in as many months, three times in which prayer has gone unanswered, can be something of a spiritual setback. I can blame my lack of faith for the lack of results. And yet, as I say, there were believers with far greater faith than mine praying for these brothers and our sister.
In one of the chapters of “with Christ in theSchoolofPrayer”,Murrayobserves that confidence in the promise is only as good as confidence in the promiser. That leads me to wonder if I should be focusing more on the Lord himself than on what he can do for me.
Were we praying for ourselves when we prayed for our friends to recover, or was it for the glory of God? Yes, knowing that God is likely to answer prayers that he be glorified, and wanting to see him glorified in any case, we naturally prayed that God would be glorified in the return to health of the sick. But in our hearts, was it our benefit or the good of the Kingdom which occupied our minds? In John15:16the Lord links our requests to the father with the bringing forth of fruit.
John 15:16 Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you.
Let us not forget that, aside from the Lord’s prayer, the only specific thing Jesus told his disciples to pray for was for labourers to be sent into the harvest field. Such a prayer is a prayer for mission, it is a prayer for the Kingdom. Perhaps prayers for the terminally ill to recover can be made because we do not want to see them go from us rather than because their recovery will be for the good of the Kingdom, or possibly even good for them.
After all, do we not console ourselves by expressing the thought that the departed are in “a better place” . A funeral can be more about us marking a rite of passage for the benefit of our frailties than about the departed. In the same way, although we may stand beside the sickbed pleading with God to be glorified in this person’s healing, we may be thinking of how much we should miss them should they go. Looking at their achievements for the Kingdom and how they had exercised their talents, it could be that these two men and one woman of God had faithfully done all their duty and were now called home to rest.
When all else fails it is good to go to the Psalms. There we find all our human hopes and fears, our misery and our joy, the depths of the soul and the glory of God expressed in a way which can lift our spirits. To pick up again onMurray’s recommendation that we concentrate more on the giver than the gift, we can ease ourselves into that frame of mind by this verse from Psalm 37:
Psalm 37:4 Delight thyself also in the LORD; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.
We can read this verse looking to the promise in the second half, but perhaps to delight in the Lord is an end in itself. A couple of weeks ago I had the great privilege of taking part in a house group study on the first Psalm. The first two verses say this:
Psalm 1:1 Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. 2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.
If we look to the Hebrew, the second verse can be translated: “but his delight is in the Torah of Yahweh.” We see the same expression over and over in Psalm 119. The very first verse says:
Psalm 119:1 ALEPH. Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the LORD.
Again the expression “the law of the Lord” is really “the Torah of Yahweh.” We find an echo in the verse with which we opened, where Christ said: “if my words abide in you”. In truth we find the character of God expressed in his word. Christ is God incarnate so every word of Scripture is a word from the Messiah himself. To delight in the Lord is to delight in his instruction. In order to pray with the mind of God we must know the mind of God, and we shall find the mind of God in the Scriptures and above all in his Torah. Then we can say with the Psalmist:
Psalm 40:8 I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart.
It is said of Rhys Howells then he reached the point where he would pray for the sick and the Lord would reveal to him whether they would be healed or not. To have something of the Spirit the Lord placed in Howells would be an undoubted advantage. It would certainly save time in prayer if we knew what the will of the Lord was for each individual for whom we prayed. That being said, I really cannot envisage putting myself through what that man endured for the sake of his closer walk with God. Thank God we serve a Lord who knows our frailties, generously deals with us as individuals and meets us at the point of our need.
Solomon asked merely for wisdom from on high in order to discharge the duty the Lord had laid upon him. He did not ask for riches, wealth or honour. The Almighty, hearing his prayer, granted him wisdom, and because he had only asked for that, gave him riches, wealth and honour as well (2Chron1:10-11). In the same way I believe that as we concentrate more on, or as the Bible puts it, “delight in” the Lord, in his law and in our duty towards him, the desires of our hearts will be added. Not that we will stop articulating the desires of our heart in our prayers, consoling ourselves rather with the thought that the Lord knows what we need before we ask. No, we shall still ask, over and again if necessary, but we shall have things in a right perspective.
I have found that as I pray to know God more deeply, and back up that prayer by fasting, such prayer is answered. Unexpectedly at such times the Lord has also granted me other encouragements, things which I was scarcely aware I was praying for.
So the events of the last three months, the disappointments, the anguish, the sadness, have spurred me on to seek the Lord more in prayer and in his word, to delight in him, and to strive to be in a place where I know the mind of God and attain by his grace a deeper faith in the one who promises that if we seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness then all else will be added.
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