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Fourteenth
Lesson
When ye stand praying, forgive;
Or, Prayer and Love.
"And
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."
-Mark
11:25
Faith and love are essential to each other.
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 on it remind us
that our relation with fellow-men must be clear too.
Love to God and
love to our neighbour 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.
...first be reconciled to thy
brother...
We find that this is a thought to which our Lord frequently gave
expression. In the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:23, 24), 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: If thou art offering thy gift at the altar, and there
rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, 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.
...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.
At the close of the parable of the
unmerciful servant He applies His teaching in the words: 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 wonderful 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 afterwards 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.
The deep sure ground of answer to prayer is God's forgiving love.
The first lesson taught here is that of a forgiving disposition. We
pray, Forgive, even as we have forgiven.
Scripture says, Forgive
one another, even as God also in Christ forgave you. God's full 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.
If God dealt with us after our sins, not one prayer could be
heard. Pardon opens the door to all God's love and blessing: because God
has pardoned all our sin, 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.
...to be kept from a sense of wounded
honour, from a desire to
maintain our rights, or from rewarding the offender as he has deserved.
God's forgiving
disposition, revealed in His love to us, becomes a disposition in us; as
the power of His forgiving love shed abroad and dwelling within us, we
forgive even as He forgives. If there be great and grievous injury or
injustice done us, we seek first of all to possess a Godlike
disposition; to be kept from a sense of wounded honour, 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, with 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
really forgive the way God and Christ do.
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.
No, we take the command
literally, Even as Christ forgave, so also do ye.
The
blood that cleanses the conscience from dead works, cleanses 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 the evidence of the reality of God's forgiving love in us, and so
the condition of the prayer of faith.
There is a second, more general lesson: our daily life in the world is
made the test of our intercourse with God in prayer.
How often the
Christian, when he comes to pray, does his utmost to cultivate certain
frames of mind which he thinks will be pleasing. 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.
In our life with men
the one thing on which everything depends is love.
Not the feeling I call up, but the tone of my life during the day, is
God's criterion of what I really am and desire. My drawing nigh to God
is of one piece with my intercourse with men and earth: failure here
will cause failure there. And that not only when there is the distinct
consciousness of anything wrong between my neighbour and myself; but the
ordinary current of my thinking and judging, the unloving thoughts and
words I allow to pass unnoticed, can hinder my prayer.
The effectual
prayer of faith comes out from a life given up to the will and the love
of God. Not according to what I try to be when praying, but what I am
when not praying, is my prayer dealt with by God.
If our
heart condemn us not, we have boldness toward God...
We may gather these thoughts into a third lesson: In our life with men
the one thing on which everything depends is love. The spirit of
forgiveness is the spirit of love. Because God is love, He forgives: it
is only when we are dwelling in love that we can 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, (1 John 4:20, 3:18-21, 23).
Let us love in deed
and truth; hereby shall we assure our heart before Him.
If our
heart condemn 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 Mark 11:24, 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.
We sometimes give ourselves to work for Christ, from zeal for His
cause, as we call it, or for our own spiritual health, without giving
ourselves in personal self-sacrificing love for those whose souls we
seek.
This love is of special consequence when we labour 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 own 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 really
loves; this is the secret of believing prayer and successful
effort. Jesus, in speaking of forgiveness, speaks of love as its root.
...a
loving life is the condition of believing prayer.
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 (Matthew 5:7, 9, 22, 38-48), so we see it here: a
loving life is the condition of believing prayer.
It has been said: There is nothing so heart-searching as believing
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's search us.
It is he who
gives himself to let the love of God dwell in him, and in the practice
of daily life to love as God loves, who will have the power to believe
in the Love that hears his every prayer.
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.
In that love, not
indeed the love of perfect attainment, but the love of fixed purpose and
sincere obedience, faith can alone obtain the blessing. It is he who
gives himself to let the love of God dwell in him, and in the practice
of 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
in the midst of 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.
Lord Jesus! my Blessed Teacher! teach Thou me to forgive and to love.
Blessed Father! Thou art Love, and only he 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 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 day by day 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.
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.
________________________________
Text
is in the Public Domain.
Candle Photo, Logo, & Layout: Copyright © 2003 S.G.P. All rights reserved.
Next Next Topic
Andrew Murray Index
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Andrew Murray
1828-1917
Author of over 250 books,
he was the minister at the Dutch Reformed Church of
Wellington (South Africa) from 1871 to 1906, and lived there until his
death in 1917.
This statue of Andrew Murray was
erected in Wellington in 1923.
His vision for winning Africa
for Christ led him beyond the borders of Wellington. Missionaries from
Wellington penetrated into the heart of Africa.
He was a
proponent and at the forefront in founding schools both of education for
girls, and of Higher Education for women.
______________
Copyright
© 2003 S.G.P. All
rights reserved.
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Andrew
Murray
With
Christ
In
the School
of Prayer:
