SOULJournal

DAY 10

• Matthew 7:9-11 (NIV) ⁹  "Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? ¹⁰  Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? ¹¹  If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!

In these words Jesus continues to confirm what He had said of the certainty of an answer to prayer. To remove all doubt, and show us on what sure ground His promise rests, He appeals to what everyone has seen and experienced here on earth. We are all children, and know what we expected of our fathers. In the best light we understand that one of the most natural things there can be is for a father to hear his child.  And the Lord asks us to look up from earthly parents, of whom the best are but evil, and to calculate HOW MUCH MORE the heavenly Father will give good gifts to them that ask Him. Jesus lead us up to see that as much greater as God is than sinful man, so much greater our assurance ought to be that He will, more than any earthly father, grant our childlike petitions.

Jesus wants to remind us that the prayer of a child owes its influence entirely to the relation in which he stands to the parent. The prayer can exert that influence only when the child is really living in right relationship, in the home, in the love, in the service, of the Father. The power of the promise, ‘Ask, and it shall be given you,’ lies in the loving relationship between us as children and the Father in heaven; when we live and walk in that relationship, the prayer of faith and its answer will be the natural result. And so the lesson we have today is this: Live as a child of God, then you will be able to pray as a child, and as a child you will most assuredly be heard.

And what is the true child-life?

Living in close relationship with the Father.  Finding pleasure in His presence and in obedience to His will.

Scripture says, ‘As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the children of God:’

We quickly discover that Father-like giving is the Divine response to childlike living.

Some of you are getting discouraged because we cant live up to that standard.

The difficulty is removed if we think a little deeper about this: a child is weak; there is a great difference among children in age and gift. The Lord does not demand of us a perfect fulfilment of the law; only the childlike and whole-hearted surrender to live as a child with Him in obedience and truth. Nothing more. Nothing less.

The Father must have the whole heart. When this is given, and He sees the child with honest purpose and steady will seeking in everything to be and live as a child, then our prayer will count with Him as the prayer of a child.

The secret of effectual prayer is to have the heart filled with the Father-love of God. It is not enough for us to know that God is a Father: He would have us take time to come under the full impression of what that name implies. We must take the best earthly father we know; we must think of the tenderness and love with which he regards the request of his child, the love and joy with which he grants every reasonable desire; we must then, as we think in adoring worship of the infinite Love and Fatherliness of God, consider with how much more tenderness and joy He sees us come to Him, and gives us what we ask for in the right heart and spirit. And then, when we see how much this Divine math is beyond our comprehension, and feel how impossible it is for us to capture God’s readiness to hear us, then He calls us to share that love both near and far so that all can experience that kind of love.

The child who only wants to know the love of the father when he has something to ask, will be disappointed. But he who lets God be Father always and in everything, who would desire to  live his whole life in the Father’s presence and love, who allows God in all the greatness of His love to be a Father to him;  oh, he will experience just how much more the Father loves us!

Day 9

• Matthew 7:7-9 (NIV) ⁷  "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. ⁸  For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. ⁹  "Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone?

In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus returns a second time to speak of prayer. The first time He had spoken of the Father who is to be found in secret, and rewards openly, and had given us the pattern prayer.  Here He wants to teach us and assure us that prayer will be heard and answered.

 

Notice how He uses words which mean almost the same thing and each time He repeats the promise clearly…

It will be given to you, you will find, the door will be opened to you.

Then He gives us the grounds for our faith:  a law of heaven.

Everyone who asks receives

He who seeks finds

To Him who knocks the door will be opened.

He wants to impress deep on our minds this one truth, that we may and must most confidently expect an answer to our prayer.

Next to the revelation of the Father’s love, there is not a more important lesson than this: You prayers will be answered!

 

ASK, refers to the gifts we pray for. But I may ask and receive the gift without the Giver.

SEEK is the word Scripture uses of God Himself; Christ assures me that I can find Himself. But it is not enough to find God in time of need, without coming to abiding fellowship:

KNOCK speaks of admission to dwell with Him and in Him.

Asking and receiving the gift leads to seeking and finding the Giver, and this again to the knocking and opening of the door of the Father’s home and love.

One thing is sure: the Lord does want us to count most certainly on it that asking, seeking, knocking, cannot be in vain: receiving an answer, finding God, the opened heart and home of God, are the certain fruit of prayer.

With Christ in the School of Prayer - Andrew Murray

 

Today why not take a moment to ask, to seek and to knock.

Knock on the door and seeking to find an audience with the Father.  Spend time with Him enjoying His presence and then and only then ask Him for His blessings.

Day 6

• Matthew 6:9-13 (NIV) ⁹  "This, then, is how you should pray: "'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, ¹⁰  your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. ¹¹  Give us today our daily bread. ¹²  Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. ¹³  And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.'

 

‘Give us this day our daily bread.’

When we submit ourselves to the Father’s care, being passionate about His Name, His Kingdom and His Will, it gives us the privilege of asking confidently for our needs.  A master cares for the food of his servant, a general of his soldiers, a father of his child. So will not the Father in heaven care for the child who has in prayer given himself up to His interests?

 

‘And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.’

As bread is the first need of the body, so forgiveness for the soul. And the provision for the one is as sure as for the other. We are forgiven children ourselves; our right of access to the Father’s presence we owe to the precious blood and the forgiveness it has won for us. Be careful to not let the prayer for forgiveness become a formality: only what is really confessed is really forgiven.

 

Let us accept the forgiveness as promised: as a spiritual reality, an actual transaction between God and us, it is the entrance into all the Father’s love and all the privileges of children. Such forgiveness, as a living experience, is impossible without a forgiving spirit to others: as forgiven expresses the heavenward, so forgiving the earthward, relation of God’s child. In each prayer to the Father I must be able to say that I know of no one whom I do not heartily love.

 

‘And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’

Our daily bread, the pardon of our sins, and then our being kept from all sin and the power of the evil one, in these three requests all our personal need is addressed.

The prayer for bread and pardon must be accompanied by the surrender to live in all things in holy obedience to the Father’s will, and the believing prayer in everything to be kept by the power of the indwelling Spirit from the power of the evil one.

 

Take time today to pray the Lord’s Prayer with these things in mind.

 

With Christ in the School of Prayer - Andrew Murray

Day 5

• Matthew 6:9-13 (NIV) ⁹  "This, then, is how you should pray: "'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, ¹⁰  your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. ¹¹  Give us today our daily bread. ¹²  Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. ¹³  And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.'

 

Our Father in heaven

To get the full impact of this it would interesting to note that till this moment no one in the Scriptures had ever dared address God as their Father.  Jesus is wanting us to remember the reason for His mission – to restore us to right relationship as children of God.

 

The words are the key to the whole prayer, to all prayer. The acknowledging of God’s love of great importance. It is in the personal relation to the living God, and the personal conscious fellowship of love with Himself, that prayer begins. Prayer finds its life and joy in the Father who loves us and wants to spend time with us.

 

‘Hallowed be Your name.’

While we ordinarily first bring our own needs to God in prayer, and then think of what belongs to God and His interests, Jesus reverses the order. First, Your name, Your kingdom, Your will; then, give us, forgive us, lead us, deliver us. The lesson is of more importance than we think. In true worship the Father must be first, must be all. The sooner I learn to forget myself in the desire that HE may be glorified, the richer will the blessings of prayer be. No one ever loses by what he sacrifices for the Father.

 

‘Hallowed be Your name.’

What name? This new name of Father. The word Holy is the central word of the Old Testament; the name Father of the New. In this name of Love all the holiness and glory of God are now to be revealed and we are to treat the Father with deep respect.

 

‘Your kingdom come.’

The Father is a King and has a kingdom. The son and heir of a king has no higher ambition than the glory of his father’s kingdom. In time of war or danger this becomes his passion; he can think of nothing else. The children of the Father are here in the enemy’s territory, where the kingdom, which is in heaven, is not yet fully manifested.

 

 ‘Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.’

In heaven God’s will is done, and Jesus teaches us to ask that the will may be done on earth just as in heaven: in the spirit of adoring submission and ready obedience. The will of God is the glory of heaven, so to do His will is to experience the joy of heaven.

Wherever faith has accepted the Father’s love, obedience accepts the Father’s will. The surrender to, and the prayer for a life of heaven-like obedience, is the spirit of childlike prayer.

 

Take time today to pray the Lord’s Prayer with these things in mind.

 

With Christ in the School of Prayer - Andrey Murray

Day 4

• Matthew 6:6-8 (NIV) ⁶  But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. ⁷  And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. ⁸  Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him..

 

Jesus came to bring us into relationship with God the Father.  In this relationship of fatherhood relationship is paramount so one of the first things Jesus teaches His disciples is about prayer. 

And one of the first things we see regarding prayer is that we must have a secret place for prayer.  A meeting place to be alone with our Father God.

Jesus has taught us at Samaria that worship is no longer confined to times and places; that worship, spiritual true worship, is a thing of the spirit and the life; the whole man must in his whole life be worship in spirit and truth.

Yet God wants each one to choose a fixed spot where He can daily meet us. That spot may be anywhere; that spot may change from day to day; but we must have a secret place where in the quietness of the moment we come into the presence of Jesus to be prepared by Him to worship our Father. 

In this quiet place we must prepare to meet and then meet with the Father.

First, ‘Pray to the Father in secret.’

God is a God who hides Himself to the human eye. As long as in our worship of God we are chiefly occupied with our own thoughts and exercises, we will not meet Him who is a Spirit, the unseen One. But, to the person who withdraws from all that is of the world and man, and prepares to wait upon God alone, the Father will reveal Himself.

As we shut out the world and surrender to be led by Christ into the secret of God’s presence, we will begin to experience the Father’s love.

The Father is waiting for us, where He is always to be found.

Christians often complain that private prayer is not what it should be. They feel weak and sinful, the heart is cold and dark; it is as if they have so little to pray, and no faith or joy. They are discouraged and kept from prayer by the thought that they cannot come to the Father as they ought or as they wish. Listen to what Jesus tells us that when we go to private prayer: the Father is in secret, the Father waits for me there.

When your heart is cold and prayerless, get into the presence of the loving Father. Do not be thinking of how little you have to bring God, but of how much He wants to give you. Just place yourself before Him, and look up into His face; think of His love, His wonderful, tender love. Just tell Him how sinful and cold and dark all is: it is the Father’s loving heart will give light and warmth to yours.

Do what Jesus says: Just shut the door, and pray to your Father.

Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

Jesus assures us that secret prayer will not be fruitless: its blessing will show itself in our life. God will see to it that the answer to prayer is seen in His blessing upon us. With a simple childlike faith we should pray in secret and walk with confidence that our prayer is met with blessing. 

He gives blessing not because we prayed with great passion or fervency but He gives blessings simply upon the fact that He is our loving Father and wants to bless His children. 

Your Father knows what you need before you ask him

At first glance it might appear as if this thought made prayer unnecessary: God knows far better than we what we need. But as we get a deeper insight into what prayer really is, this truth will help much to strengthen our faith. It will teach us that we do not need, with the multitude and urgency of our words, to compel an unwilling God to listen to us.

My Father knows I need it and must have it. And if there is any delay in the answer, it will teach me in quiet determination to hold on and trust with quiet confidence. 

Let’s do that today.  Find a quiet place and allow the life and love of the Father to fill us.  He knows what we need.  Just take the time to be with the Father.  Enjoy His love and His approval.

DAY 3

• John 4:23-24 (NIV) ²³  Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. ²⁴  God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."

 These words of Jesus to the woman of Samaria gives us insight on the subject of prayer.

• The Father seeks worshippers: our worship satisfies His loving heart and is a joy to Him.
• He seeks true worshippers, but finds many not such as He would have them.
• True worship is that which is in spirit and truth.

Jesus mentions three forms of worship:

Ignorant worship:  people who in their ignorance don’t really know what they ask.  They may be earnest in their prayer but yet their prayers are anemic and powerless.

Intellectual worship:  people who have more correct knowledge, who try to pray with all their mind and heart and who also may pray quite earnestly and yet do not experience the powerful results that prayer promises.

 Spirit and truth worship

‘God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him, must worship Him in spirit and truth.’

 

The first thought suggested here by Jesus is that there must be harmony between God and His worshippers; as God is, so must His worship be. The man who would truly worship God, would find and know and possess and enjoy God, must be in harmony with Him, must have the capacity for receiving Him. Because God is Spirit, we must worship in spirit. As God is, so His worshipper.

 

But what does this mean?

Jesus tells the woman that there is no set geographical place for worship because God is not bound by time and space.

I wonder how often we have our “worship time.”  A time that is confined by a place and a form.

A man, who seeks to pray earnestly in the church or in the closet, spends the greater part of the week or the day in a spirit entirely at variance with that in which he prayed. His worship was the work of a fixed place or hour, not of his whole being. God is a Spirit: He is the Everlasting and Unchangeable One; what He is, He is always and in truth. Our worship must even so be in spirit and truth: His worship must be the spirit of our life; our life must be worship in spirit as God is Spirit.

 

‘God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and truth.’

The second thought that comes to us is that the worship in the spirit must come from God Himself. God is Spirit: He alone has Spirit to give.  This is why He sent His Son, to fit us for such spiritual worship.  Jesus helped us with the sin problem so that now we can come before the Father and worship Him.  Then Jesus sent us the Holy Spirit so that we can worship and pray in the power of the Spirit.

 

And in truth.

That does not only mean, in sincerity. Nor does it only signify, in accordance with the truth of God’s Word. The expression is one of deep and Divine meaning.

Jesus is ‘the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.’

‘The law was given by Moses; grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.’

 

Jesus says, ‘I am the truth and the life.’ In the Old Testament all was shadow and promise; Jesus brought and gives the reality, the substance, of things hoped for. In Him the blessings and powers of the eternal life are our actual possession and experience. Jesus is full of grace and truth; the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth; through Him the grace that is in Jesus is ours in deed and truth, a positive communication out of the Divine life. And so worship in spirit is worship in truth; actual living fellowship with God, a real correspondence and harmony between the Father, who is a Spirit, and the child praying in the spirit.

What Jesus said to the woman of Samaria, she could not at once understand. The Holy Spirit’s coming on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2) was needed to reveal its full meaning.

 

Here is what we know…

We are flesh and cannot bring God the worship He seeks.

But Jesus came to give the Spirit: He has given Him to us.

Let there be in us…

• a deep confession of our inability to bring God the worship that is pleasing to Him;
• the childlike teachableness that waits on Him to instruct us;
• the simple faith that yields itself to the breathing of the Spirit.

 

Above all, let us hold fast the blessed truth—the secret of prayer in spirit and truth is that Christ opened up the way for us. To have Christ the Son, and the Spirit of the Son, dwelling within us, and revealing the Father, this makes us true, spiritual worshippers.

 

With Christ in the School of Prayer:  Andrew Murray

Day 2

• Luke 11:1 (NIV) ¹ One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples."

 

The disciples had been with Christ, and seen Him pray. They started making the connection between His life in public, and His secret life of prayer, so they came to Him with the request, ‘Lord, teach us to pray.’   As we being our journey for the next 28 days I seen no better way to invest it than in the school of prayer.

 

Today I want you to pray these words emphasizing a different word every time.

 

‘Lord, teach us to pray.’

To pray. This is what we need to be taught.   Prayer is all at once simple enough that a child can do it yet it is at the same time the highest and holiest work to which we are called. It is fellowship with the Unseen and Holy One.   It is the very essence of true relationship, the channel of all blessings, the secret of power and life. 
Not only for ourselves, but for others, for the Church, for the world, it is to prayer that God has given the right to take hold of Him and His strength. 
It is on prayer that the promises wait for their fulfilment, the kingdom for its coming, the glory of God for its full revelation. Prayer gives us power to accomplish the mission of multiplying Christ-followers everywhere.  It is so easy to do the actions of the mission and miss the power needed for us to accomplish it.  That power comes through  prayer; prayer that takes hold of God’s strength, that opens up the gates of heaven, that brings great reward.  Why would we not pray Lord teach us TO PRAY!

‘Lord, teach us to pray.’

Time and again we read in God’s Word of the mighty deeds God did in response to people praying, so the question for us today is…”Why not us?  And why not now?

Just like the disciples were taught we pray that God will teach US how to pray.  Let us be willing and open students so that we can truly be taught how to pray. ‘Lord, teachUS to pray.’

 

‘Lord, teach us to pray.’ 
We don’t know how to pray as we should!  It is true we have God’s Word, with its clear and sure promises; but sin has darkened our mind so we are not always sure how to apply the word. In spiritual things we do not always seek the most needful things. In this life we are not always able to avail ourselves of the wonderful liberty our Father has given us to ask what we need. And even when we know what to ask, how much there is still needed to make prayer acceptable. It must be to the glory of God, in full surrender to His will, in full assurance of faith, in the name of Jesus, and with a perseverance that, if need be, refuses to be denied. All this must be learned and practice makes perfect. Amid the painful consciousness of ignorance and unworthiness, in the struggle between believing and doubting, the heavenly art of effectual prayer is learnt. Because, even when we do not remember it, there is One, the Beginner and Finisher of faith and prayer, who watches over our praying, and sees to it that in all who trust Him for it their education in the school of prayer shall be carried on to perfection. Let but the deep undertone of all our prayer be the teachableness that comes from a sense of ignorance, and from faith in Him as a perfect teacher, and we may be sure we shall be taught, we shall learn to pray in power. Yes, we may depend upon it, He teaches to pray.

 

‘Lord, teach us to pray.’

None can teach like Jesus, none but Jesus; therefore we call on Him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray.’ A pupil needs a teacher, who knows his work, who has the gift of teaching, who in patience and love will descend to the pupil’s needs. Blessed be God! Jesus is all this and much more. He knows what prayer is. It is Jesus, praying Himself, who teaches to pray. He knows what prayer is. He learned it amid the trials and tears of His earthly life. In heaven it is still His beloved work: His life there is prayer. Nothing delights Him more than to find those whom He can take with Him into the Father’s presence, whom He can clothe with power to pray down God’s blessing on those around them, whom He can train to be His fellow-workers in the intercession by which the kingdom is to be revealed on earth. He knows how to teach. Now by the urgency of felt need, then by the confidence with which joy inspires. Here by the teaching of the Word, there by the testimony of another believer who knows what it is to have prayer heard. By His Holy Spirit, He has access to our heart, and teaches us to pray by showing us the sin that hinders the prayer, or giving us the assurance that we please God. He teaches, by giving not only thoughts of what to ask or how to ask, but by breathing within us the very spirit of prayer, by living within us as the Great Intercessor. We may indeed and most joyfully say, ‘Who teacheth like Him?’ Jesus never taught His disciples how to preach, only how to pray. He did not speak much of what was needed to preach well, but much of praying well. To know how to speak to God is more than knowing how to speak to man. Not power with men, but power with God is the first thing. Jesus loves to teach us how to pray.

 With Christ in the School of Prayer - Andrew Murray