Prayer Encounterz

This post contains the entire content of Andrew Murray‘s Meditations for a Month on John 15:1-16.

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THE TRUE VINE

Meditations for a Month

on John 15:1-16…..

By

Rev. Andrew Murray

“The mystery which hath been hid from ages, but now is made manifest to
His saints: to whom God would make known what is the riches of the
glory of this mystery…which is Christ in you, the hope of
glory.”–Colossians 1.26,27

MOODY PRESS

CHICAGO

ONLY A BRANCH

“I am the vine, ye are the branches.”–John 15.5

“Tis only a little Branch,

A thing so fragile and weak,

But that little Branch hath a message true

To give, could it only speak.

“I’m only a little Branch,

I live by a life not mine,

For the sap that flows through my tendrils small

Is the life-blood of the Vine.

“No power indeed have I

The fruit of myself to bear,

But since I’m part of the living Vine,

Its fruitfulness I share.

“Dost thou ask how I abide?

How this life I can maintain?–

I am bound to the Vine by life’s strong band,

And I only need remain.

“Where first my life was given,

In the spot where I am set,

Upborne and upheld as the days go by,

By the stem which bears me yet.

“I fear not the days to come,

I dwell not upon the past,

As moment by moment I draw a life,

Which for evermore shall last.

“I bask in the sun’s bright beams,

Which with sweetness fills my fruit,

Yet I own not the clusters hanging there,

For they all come from the root.”

A life which is not my own,

But another’s life in me:

This, this is the message the Branch would speak,

A message to thee and me.

Oh, struggle not to “abide,”

Nor labor to “bring forth fruit,”

But let Jesus unite thee to Himself,

As the Vine Branch to the root.

So simple, so deep, so strong

That union with Him shall be:

His life shall forever replace thine own,

And His love shall flow through thee.

For His Spirit’s fruit is love,

And love shall thy life become,

And for evermore on His heart of love

Thy spirit shall have her home.

Freda Hanbury
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PREFACE

I have felt drawn to try to write what young Christians might easily apprehend, as a help to them to take up that position in which the
Christian life must be a success. It is as if there is not one of the
principal temptations and failures of the Christian life that is not
met here. The nearness, the all-sufficiency, the faithfulness of the
Lord Jesus, the naturalness, the fruitfulness of a life of faith, are
so revealed, that it is as if one could with confidence say, Let the
parable enter into the heart, and all will be right.

May the blessed Lord give the blessing. May He teach us to study the
mystery of the Vine in the spirit of worship, waiting for God’s own
teaching.

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THE VINE

I am the True Vine–John 15.1

All earthly things are the shadows of heavenly realities–the
expression, in created, visible forms, of the invisible glory of God.
The Life and the Truth are in Heaven; on earth we have figures and
shadows of the heavenly truths. When Jesus says: “I am the true Vine,”
He tells us that all the vines of earth are pictures and emblems of
Himself. He is the divine reality, of which they are the created
expression. They all point to Him, and preach Him, and reveal Him. If
you would know Jesus, study the vine.

How many eyes have gazed on and admired a great vine with its beautiful
fruit. Come and gaze on the heavenly Vine till your eye turns from all
else to admire Him. How many, in a sunny clime, sit and rest under the
shadow of a vine. Come and be still under the shadow of the true Vine,
and rest under it from the heat of the day. What countless numbers
rejoice in the fruit of the vine! Come, and take, and eat of the
heavenly fruit of the true Vine, and let your soul say: “I sat under
His shadow with great delight, and His fruit was sweet to my taste.”

I am the true Vine.–This is a heavenly mystery. The earthly vine can
teach you much about this Vine of Heaven. Many interesting and
beautiful points of comparison suggest themselves, and help us to get
conceptions of what Christ meant. But such thoughts do not teach us to
know what the heavenly Vine really is, in its cooling shade, and its
life-giving fruit. The experience of this is part of the hidden
mystery, which none but Jesus Himself, by His Holy Spirit, can unfold
and impart.

I am the true Vine.–The vine is the living Lord, who Himself speaks,
and gives, and works all that He has for us. If you would know the
meaning and power of that word, do not think to find it by thought or
study; these may help to show you what you must get from Him to awaken
desire and hope and prayer, but they cannot show you the Vine. Jesus
alone can reveal Himself. He gives His Holy Spirit to open the eyes to
gaze upon Himself, to open the heart to receive Himself. He must
Himself speak the word to you and me.

I am the true Vine.–And what am I to do, if I want the mystery, in all
its heavenly beauty and blessing, opened up to me? With what you
already know of the parable, bow down and be still, worship and wait,
until the divine Word enters your heart, and you feel His holy presence
with you, and in you. The overshadowing of His holy love will give you
the perfect calm and rest of knowing that the Vine will do all.

I am the true Vine.–He who speaks is God, in His infinite power able
to enter into us. He is man, one with us. He is the crucified One, who
won a perfect righteousness and a divine life for us through His death.
He is the glorified One, who from the throne gives His Spirit to make
His presence real and true. He speaks–oh, listen, not to His words
only, but to Himself, as He whispers secretly day by day: “I am the
true Vine! All that the Vine can ever be to its branch, “I will be to
you.”

Holy Lord Jesus, the heavenly Vine of God’s own planting, I beseech
Thee, reveal Thyself to my soul. Let the Holy Spirit, not only in
thought, but in experience, give me to know all that Thou, the Son of
God, art to me as the true Vine.
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THE HUSBANDMAN

And My Father is the Husbandman–John 15.1

A vine must have a husbandman to plant and watch over it, to receive
and rejoice in its fruit. Jesus says: “My Father is the husbandman.” He
was “the vine of God’s planting.” All He was and did, He owed to the
Father; in all He only sought the Father’s will and glory. He had
become man to show us what a creature ought to be to its Creator. He
took our place, and the spirit of His life before the Father was ever
what He seeks to make ours: “Of him, and through him, and to him are
all things.” He became the true Vine, that we might be true branches.
Both in regard to Christ and ourselves the words teach us the two
lessons of absolute dependence and perfect confidence.

My Father is the Husbandman.–Christ ever lived in the spirit of what
He once said: “The Son can do nothing of himself.” As dependent as a
vine is on a husbandman for the place where it is to grow, for its
fencing in and watering and pruning. Christ felt Himself entirely
dependent on the Father every day for the wisdom and the strength to do
the Father’s will. As He said in the previous chapter (14:10): “The
words that I say unto you, I speak not from Myself; but the Father
abiding in Me doeth his works.” This absolute dependence had as its
blessed counterpart the most blessed confidence that He had nothing to
fear: the Father could not disappoint Him. With such a Husbandman as
His Father, He could enter death and the grave. He could trust God to
raise Him up. All that Christ is and has, He has, not in Himself, but
from the Father.

My Father is the Husbandman.–That is as blessedly true for us as for
Christ. Christ is about to teach His disciples about their being
branches. Before He ever uses the word, or speaks at all of abiding in
Him or bearing fruit, He turns their eyes heavenward to the Father
watching over them, and working all in them. At the very root of all
Christian life lies the thought that God is to do all, that our work is
to give and leave ourselves in His hands, in the confession of utter
helplessness and dependence, in the assured confidence that He gives
all we need. The great lack of the Christian life is that, even where
we trust Christ, we leave God out of the count. Christ came to bring us
to God. Christ lived the life of a man exactly as we have to live it.
Christ the Vine points to God the Husbandman. As He trusted God, let us
trust God, that everything we ought to be and have, as those who belong
to the Vine, will be given us from above.

Isaiah said: “A vineyard of red wine; I the Lord do keep it, I will
water it every moment; lest any hurt it, I will keep it night and day.”
Ere we begin to think of fruit or branches, let us have our heart
filled with the faith: as glorious as the Vine, is the Husbandman. As
high and holy as is our calling, so mighty and loving is the God who
will work it all. As surely as the Husbandman made the Vine what it was
to be, will He make each branch what it is to be. Our Father is our
Husbandman, the Surety for our growth and fruit.

Blessed Father, we are Thy husbandry. Oh, that Thou mayest have honor
of the work of Thy hands! O my Father, I desire to open my heart to the
joy of this wondrous truth: My Father is the Husbandman. Teach me to
know and trust Thee, and to see that the same deep interest with which
Thou caredst for and delightedst in the Vine, extends to every branch,
to me too.
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THE BRANCH

Every Branch in me that Beareth Not Fruit, He taketh It away–John 15.2

Here we have one of the chief words of the parable–branch. A vine
needs branches: without branches it can do nothing, can bear no fruit.
As important as it is to know about the Vine, and the Husbandman, it is
to realize what the branch is. Before we listen to what Christ has to
say about it, let us first of all take in what a branch is, and what it
teaches us of our life in Christ. A branch is simply a bit of wood,
brought forth by the vine for the one purpose of serving it in bearing
its fruit. It is of the very same nature as the vine, and has one life
and one spirit with it. Just think a moment of the lessons this
suggests.

There is the lesson of entire consecration. The branch has but one
object for which it exists, one purpose to which it is entirely given
up. That is, to bear the fruit the vine wishes to bring forth. And so
the believer has but one reason for his being a branch–but one reason
for his existence on earth –that the heavenly Vine may through him
bring forth His fruit. Happy the soul that knows this, that has
consented to it, and that says, I have been redeemed and I live for one
thing–as exclusively as the natural branch exists only to bring forth
fruit, I too; as exclusively as the heavenly Vine exists to bring forth
fruit, I too. As I have been planted by God into Christ, I have wholly
given myself to bear the fruit the Vine desires to bring forth.

There is the lesson of perfect conformity. The branch is exactly like
the vine in every aspect–the same nature, the same life, the same
place, the same work. In all this they are inseparably one. And so the
believer needs to know that he is partaker of the divine nature, and
has the very nature and spirit of Christ in him, and that his one
calling is to yield himself to a perfect conformity to Christ. The
branch is a perfect likeness of the vine; the only difference is, the
one is great and strong, and the source of strength, the other little
and feeble, ever needing and receiving strength. Even so the believer
is, and is to be, the perfect likeness of Christ.

There is the lesson of absolute dependence. The vine has its stores of
life and sap and strength, not for itself, but for the branches. The
branches are and have nothing but what the vine provides and imparts.
The believer is called to, and it is his highest blessedness to enter
upon, a life of entire and unceasing dependence upon Christ. Day and
night, every moment, Christ is to work in him all he needs.

And then the lesson of undoubting confidence. The branch has no cure;
the vine provides all; it has but to yield itself and receive. It is
the sight of this truth that leads to the blessed rest of faith, the
true secret of growth and strength: “I can do all things through Christ
which strengtheneth me.”

What a life would come to us if we only consented to be branches! Dear
child of God, learn the lesson. You have but one thing to do: Only be a
branch–nothing more, nothing less! Just be a branch; Christ will be
the Vine that gives all. And the Husbandman, the mighty God, who made
the Vine what it is, will as surely make the branch what it ought to
be.

Lord Jesus, I pray Thee, reveal to me the heavenly mystery of the
branch, in its living union with the Vine, in its claim on all its
fullness. And let Thy all-sufficiency, holding and filling Thy
branches, lead me to the rest of faith that knows that Thou workest
all.
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THE FRUIT

Every Branch in me That Beareth Not Fruit, He Taketh It Away–John 15.2

Fruit.–This is the next great word we have: the Vine, the Husbandman,
the branch, the fruit. What has our Lord to say to us of fruit? Simply
this–that fruit is the one thing the branch is for, and that if it
bear not fruit, the husbandman takes it away. The vine is the glory of
the husbandman; the branch is the glory of the vine; the fruit is the
glory of the branch; if the branch bring not forth fruit, there is no
glory or worth in it; it is an offense and a hindrance; the husbandman
takes it away. The one reason for the existence of a branch, the one
mark of being a true branch of the heavenly Vine, the one condition of
being allowed by the divine Husbandman to share the life the Vine
is–bearing fruit.

And what is fruit? Something that the branch bears, not for itself, but
for its owner; something that is to be gathered, and taken away. The
branch does indeed receive it from the vine sap for its own life, by
which it grows thicker and stronger. But this supply for its own
maintenance is entirely subordinate to its fulfillment of the purpose
of its existence–bearing fruit. It is because Christians do not
understand or accept of this truth, that they so fail in their efforts
and prayers to live the branch life. They often desire it very
earnestly; they read and meditate and pray, and yet they fail, they
wonder why? The reason is very simple: they do not know that
fruit-bearing is the one thing they have been saved for. Just as
entirely as Christ became the true Vine with the one object, you have
been made a branch too, with the one object of bearing fruit for the
salvation of men. The Vine and the branch are equally under the
unchangeable law of fruit-bearing as the one reason of their being.
Christ and the believer, the heavenly Vine and the branch, have equally
their place in the world exclusively for one purpose, to carry God’s
saving love to men. Hence the solemn word: Every branch that beareth
not fruit, He taketh it away.

Let us specially beware of one great mistake. Many Christians think
their own salvation is the first thing; their temporal life and
prosperity, with the care of their family, the second; and what of time
and interest is left may be devoted to fruit-bearing, to the saving of
men. No wonder that in most cases very little time or interest can be
found. No, Christian, the one object with which you have been made a
member of Christ’s Body is that the Head may have you to carry out His
saving work. The one object God had in making you a branch is that
Christ may through you bring life to men. Your personal salvation, your
business and care for your family, are entirely subordinate to this.
Your first aim in life, your first aim every day, should be to know how
Christ desires to carry out His purpose in you.

Let us begin to think as God thinks. Let us accept Christ’s teaching
and respond to it. The one object of my being a branch, the one mark of
my being a true branch, the one condition of my abiding and growing
strong, is that I bear the fruit of the heavenly Vine for dying men to
eat and live. And the one thing of which I can have the most perfect
assurance is that, with Christ as my Vine, and the Father as my
Husbandman, I can indeed be a fruitful branch.

Our Father, Thou comest seeking fruit. Teach us, we pray Thee, to
realize how truly this is the one object of our existence, and of our
union to Christ. Make it the one desire of our hearts to be branches,
so filled with the Spirit of the Vine, as to bring forth fruit
abundantly.
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MORE FRUIT

And Every Branch That Beareth Fruit, He Cleanseth, That it May Bear
More Fruit–John 15.2

The thought of fruit is so prominent in the eye of Him who sees things
as they are, fruit is so truly the one thing God has set His heart
upon, that our Lord, after having said that the branch that bears no
fruit is taken away, at once adds: and where there is fruit, the one
desire of the Husbandman is more fruit. As the gift of His grace, as
the token of spiritual vigor, as the showing forth of the glory of God
and of Christ, as the only way for satisfying the need of the world,
God longs and fits for, more fruit.

More Fruit–This is a very searching word. As churches and individuals
we are in danger of nothing so much as self-contentment. The secret
spirit of Laodicea–we are rich and increased in goods, and have need
of nothing–may prevail where it is not suspected. The divine
warning–poor and wretched and miserable–finds little response just
where it is most needed.

Let us not rest content with the thought that we are taking an equal
share with others in the work that is being done, or that men are
satisfied with our efforts in Christ’s service, or even point to us as
examples. Let our only desire be to know whether we are bearing all the
fruit Christ is willing to give through us as living branches, in close
and living union with Himself, whether we are satisfying the loving
heart of the great Husbandman, our Father in Heaven, in His desire for
more fruit.

More Fruit–The word comes with divine authority to search and test our
life: the true disciple will heartily surrender himself to its holy
light, and will earnestly ask that God Himself may show what there may
be lacking in the measure or the character of the fruit he bears. Do
let us believe that the Word is meant to lead us on to a fuller
experience of the Father’s purpose of love, of Christ’s fullness, and
of the wonderful privilege of bearing much fruit in the salvation of
men.

More Fruit–The word is a most encouraging one. Let us listen to it. It
is just to the branch that is bearing fruit that the message comes:
more fruit. God does not demand this as Pharaoh the task-master, or as
Moses the lawgiver, without providing the means. He comes as a Father,
who gives what He asks, and works what He commands. He comes to us as
the living branches of the living Vine, and offers to work the more
fruit in us, if we but yield ourselves into His hands. Shall we not
admit the claim, accept the offer, and look to Him to work it in us?

“That it may bear more fruit”: do let us believe that as the owner of a
vine does everything to make the fruitage as rich and large as
possible, the divine Husbandman will do all that is needed to make us
bear more fruit. All He asks is, that we set our heart’s desire on it,
entrust ourselves to His working and care, and joyfully look to Him to
do His perfect work in us. God has set His heart on more fruit; Christ
waits to work it in us; let us joyfully look up to our divine
Husbandman and our heavenly Vine, to ensure our bearing more fruit.

Our Father which art in Heaven, Thou art the heavenly Husbandman. And
Christ is the heavenly Vine. And I am a heavenly branch, partaker of
His heavenly life, to bear His heavenly fruit. Father, let the power of
His life so fill me, that I may ever bear more fruit, to the glory of
Thy name.
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THE CLEANSING

Every Branch That Beareth Fruit, He Cleanseth It, That It May Bear More
Fruit–John 15.2

There are two remarkable things about the vine. There is not a plant of
which the fruit has so much spirit in it, of which spirit can be so
abundantly distilled as the vine. And there is not a plant which so
soon runs into wild wood, that hinders its fruit, and therefore needs
the most merciless pruning. I look out of my window here on large
vineyards: the chief care of the vinedresser is the pruning. You may
have a trellis vine rooting so deep in good soil that it needs neither
digging, nor manuring, nor watering: pruning it cannot dispense with,
if it is to bear good fruit. Some tree needs occasional pruning; others
bear perfect fruit without any: the vine must have it. And so our Lord
tells us, here at the very outset of the parable, that the one work the
Father does to the branch that bears fruit is: He cleanseth it, that it
may bear more fruit.

Consider a moment what this pruning or cleansing is. It is not the
removal of weeds or thorns, or anything from without that may hinder
the growth. No; it is the cutting off of the long shoots of the
previous year, the removal of something that comes from within, that
has been produced by the life of the vine itself. It is the removal of
something that is a proof of the vigor of its life; the more vigorous
the growth has been, the greater the need for the pruning. It is the
honest, healthy wood of the vine that has to be cut away. And why?
Because it would consume too much of the sap to fill all the long
shoots of last year’s growth: the sap must be saved up and used for
fruit alone. The branches, sometimes eight and ten feet long, are cut
down close to the stem, and nothing is left but just one or two inches
of wood, enough to bear the grapes. It is when everything that is not
needful for fruit-bearing has been relentlessly cut down, and just as
little of the branches as possible has been left, that full, rich fruit
may be expected.

What a solemn, precious lesson! It is not to sin only that the
cleansing of the Husbandman here refers. It is to our own religious
activity, as it is developed in the very act of bearing fruit. It is
this that must be cut down and cleansed away. We have, in working for
God, to use our natural gifts of wisdom, or eloquence, or influence, or
zeal. And yet they are ever in danger of being unduly developed, and
then trusted in. And so, after each season of work, God has to bring us
to the end of ourselves, to the consciousness of the helplessness and
the danger of all that is of man, to feel that we are nothing. All that
is to be left of us is just enough to receive the power of the
life-giving sap of the Holy Spirit. What is of man must be reduced to
its very lowest measure. All that is inconsistent with the most entire
devotion to Christ’s service must be removed. The more perfect the
cleansing and cutting away of all that is of self, the less of surface
over which the Holy Spirit is to be spread, so much the more intense
can be the concentration of our whole being, to be entirely at the
disposal of the Spirit. This is the true circumcision of the heart, the
circumcision of Christ. This is the true crucifixion with Christ,
bearing about the dying of the Lord Jesus in the body.

Blessed cleansing, God’s own cleansing! How we may rejoice in the
assurance that we shall bring forth more fruit.

O our holy Husbandman, cleanse and cut away all that there is in us
that would make a fair show, or could become a source of
self-confidence and glorying. Lord, keep us very low, that no flesh may
glory in Thy presence. We do trust Thee to do Thy work.
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THE PRUNING KNIFE

Already Ye Are Clean Because of the Word I Have Spoken Unto You–John
15.3

What is the pruning knife of this heavenly Husbandman? It is often said
to be affliction. By no means in the first place. How would it then
fare with many who have long seasons free from adversity; or with some
on whom God appears to shower down kindness all their life long? No; it
is the Word of God that is the knife, shaper than any two-edged sword,
that pierces even to the dividing asunder of the soul and spirit, and
is quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart. It is only
when affliction leads to this discipline of the Word that it becomes a
blessing; the lack of this heart-cleansing through the Word is the
reason why affliction is so often unsanctified. Not even Paul’s thorn
in the flesh could become a blessing until Christ’s Word–“My strength
is made perfect in weakness”–had made him see the danger of
self-exaltation, and made him willing to rejoice in infirmities.

The Word of God’s pruning knife. Jesus says: “Ye are already clean,
because of the word I have spoken unto you.” How searchingly that word
had been spoken by Him, out of whose mouth there went a sharp two-edged
sword, as he had taught them! “Except a man deny himself, lose his
life, forsake all, hate father and mother, he cannot be My disciple, he
is not worthy of Me”; or as He humbled their pride, or reproved their
lack of love, or foretold their all forsaking Him. From the opening of
His ministry in the Sermon on the Mount to His words of warning in the
last night, His Word had tried and cleansed them. He had discovered and
condemned all there was of self; they were now emptied and cleansed,
ready for the incoming of the Holy Spirit.

It is as the soul gives up its own thoughts, and men’s thoughts of what
is religion, and yields itself heartily, humbly, patiently, to the
teaching of the Word by the Spirit, that the Father will do His blessed
work of pruning and cleansing away all of nature and self that mixes
with our work and hinders His Spirit. Let those who would know all the
Husbandman can do for them, all the Vine can bring forth through them,
seek earnestly to yield themselves heartily to the blessed cleansing
through the Word. Let them, in their study of the Word, receive it as a
hammer that breaks and opens up, as a fire that melts and refines, as a
sword that lays bare and slays all that is of the flesh. The word of
conviction will prepare for the word of comfort and of hope, and the
Father will cleanse them through the Word.

All ye who are branches of the true Vine, each time you read or hear
the Word, wait first of all on Him to use it for His cleansing of the
branch. Set your heart upon His desire for more fruit. Trust Him as
Husbandman to work it. Yield yourselves in simple childlike surrender
to the cleansing work of His Word and Spirit, and you may count upon it
that His purpose will be fulfilled in you.

Father, I pray Thee, cleanse me through Thy Word. Let it search out and
bring to light all that is of self and the flesh in my religion. Let it
cut away every root of self-confidence, that the Vine may find me
wholly free to receive His life and Spirit. O my holy Husbandman, I
trust Thee to care for the branch as much as for the Vine. Thou only
art my hope.
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ABIDE

Abide in Me, and I in You–John 15.4

When a new graft is placed in a vine and it abides there, there is a
twofold process that takes place. The first is in the wood. The graft
shoots its little roots and fibers down into the stem, and the stem
grows up into the graft, and what has been called the structural union
is effected. The graft abides and becomes one with the vine, and even
though the vine were to die, would still be one wood with it. Then
there is the second process, in which the sap of the vine enters the
new structure, and uses it as a passage through which sap can flow up
to show itself in young shoots and leaves and fruit. Here is the vital
union. Into the graft which abides in the stock, the stock enters with
sap to abide in it.

When our Lord says: “Abide in me, and I in you,” He points to something
analogous to this. “Abide in me”: that refers more to that which we
have to do. We have to trust and obey, to detach ourselves from all
else, to reach out after Him and cling to Him, to sink ourselves into
Him. As we do this, through the grace He gives, a character is formed,
and a heart prepared for the fuller experience: “I in you,” God
strengthens us with might by the Spirit in the inner man, and Christ
dwells in the heart by faith.

Many believers pray and long very earnestly for the filling of the
Spirit and the indwelling of Christ, and wonder that they do not make
more progress. The reason is often this, the “I in you” cannot come
because the “abide in me” is not maintained. “There is one body and one
spirit”; before the Spirit can fill, there must be a body prepared. The
graft must have grown into the stem, and be abiding in it before the
sap can flow through to bring forth fruit. It is as in lowly obedience
we follow Christ, even in external things, denying ourselves, forsaking
the world, and even in the body seeking to be conformable to Him, as we
thus seek to abide in Him, that we shall be able to receive and enjoy
the “I in you.” The work enjoined on us: “Abide in me,” will prepare us
for the work undertaken by Him: “I in you.”

In–The two parts of the injunction have their unity in that central
deep-meaning word “in.” There is no deeper word in Scripture. God is in
all. God dwells in Christ. Christ lives in God. We are in Christ.
Christ is in us: our life taken up into His; His life received into
ours; in a divine reality that words cannot express, we are in Him and
He in us. And the words, “Abide in me and I in you,” just tell us to
believe it, this divine mystery, and to count upon our God the
Husbandman, and Christ the Vine, to make it divinely true. No thinking
or teaching or praying can grasp it; it is a divine mystery of love. As
little as we can effect the union can we understand it. Let us just
look upon this infinite, divine, omnipotent Vine loving us, holding us,
working in us. Let us in the faith of His working abide and rest in
Him, ever turning heart and hope to Him alone. And let us count upon
Him to fulfill in us the mystery: “Ye in me, and I in you.”

Blessed Lord, Thou dost bid me abide in Thee. How can I, Lord, except
Thou show Thyself to me, waiting to receive and welcome and keep me? I
pray Thee show me how Thou as Vine undertaketh to do all. To be
occupied with Thee is to abide in Thee. Here I am, Lord, a branch,
cleansed and abiding–resting in Thee, and awaiting the inflow of Thy
life and grace.
__________________________________________________________________

EXCEPT YE ABIDE

As the Branch Cannot Bear Fruit of Itself, Except It Abide In the Vine;
No More Can Ye, Except Ye Abide in Me–John 15.4

We know the meaning of the word except. It expresses some indispensable
condition, some inevitable law. “The branch cannot bear fruit of
itself, except it abide in the vine. No more can ye, except ye abide in
me.” There is but one way for the branch to bear fruit, there is no
other possibility, it must abide in unbroken communion with the vine.
Not of itself, but only of the vine, does the fruit come. Christ had
already said: “Abide in me”; in nature the branch teaches us the lesson
so clearly; it is such a wonderful privilege to be called and allowed
to abide in the heavenly Vine; one might have thought it needless to
add these words of warning. But no–Christ knows so well what a
renunciation of self is implied in this: “Abide in me”; how strong and
universal the tendency would be to seek to bear fruit by our own
efforts; how difficult it would be to get us to believe that actual,
continuous abiding in Him is an absolute necessity! He insists upon the
truth: Not of itself can the branch bear fruit; except it abide, it
cannot bear fruit. “No more can ye, except ye abide in me.”

But must this be taken literally? Must I, as exclusively, and
manifestly, and unceasingly, and absolutely, as the branch abides in
the vine, be equally given up to find my whole life in Christ alone? I
must indeed. The except ye abide is as universal as the except it
abide. The no more can ye admits of no exception or modification. If I
am to be a true branch, if I am to bear fruit, if I am to be what
Christ as Vine wants me to be, my whole existence must be as
exclusively devoted to abiding in Him, as that of the natural branch is
to abiding in its vine.

Let me learn the lesson. Abiding is to be an act of the will and the
whole heart. Just as there are degrees in seeking and serving God, “not
with a perfect heart,” or “with the whole heart,” so there may be
degrees in abiding. In regeneration the divine life enters us, but does
not all at once master and fill our whole being. This comes as matter
of command and obedience. There is unspeakable danger of our not giving
ourselves with our whole heart to abide. There is unspeakable danger of
our giving ourselves to work for God, and to bear fruit, with but
little of the true abiding, the wholehearted losing of ourselves in
Christ and His life. There is unspeakable danger of much work with but
little fruit, for lack of this one thing needful. We must allow the
words, “not of itself,” “except it abide,” to do their work of
searching and exposing, of pruning and cleansing, all that there is of
self-will and self-confidence in our life; this will deliver us from
this great evil, and so prepare us for His teaching, giving the full
meaning of the word in us: “Abide in me, and I in you.”

Our blessed Lord desires to call us away from ourselves and our own
strength, to Himself and His strength. Let us accept the warning, and
turn with great fear and self-distrust to Him to do His work. “Our life
is hid with Christ in God!” That life is a heavenly mystery, hid from
the wise even among Christians, and revealed unto babes. The childlike
spirit learns that life is given from Heaven every day and every moment
to the soul that accepts the teaching: “not of itself,” “except it
abide,” and seeks its all in the Vine. Abiding in the Vine then comes
to be nothing more nor less than the restful surrender of the soul to
let Christ have all and work all, as completely as in nature the branch
knows and seeks nothing but the vine.

Abide in Me. I have heard, my Lord, that with every command, Thou also
givest the power to obey. With Thy “rise and walk,” the lame man
leaped, I accept Thy word, “Abide in me,” as a word of power, that
gives power, and even now I say, Yea, Lord, I will, I do abide in Thee.
__________________________________________________________________

THE VINE

I am The Vine, Ye Are The Branches–John 15.5

In the previous verse Christ had just said: “Abide in me.” He had then
announced the great unalterable law of all branch-life, on earth or in
Heaven: “not of itself”; “except it abide.” In the opening words of the
parable He had already spoken: “I am the vine.” He now repeats the
words. He would have us understand–note well the lesson, simple as it
appears, it is the key of the abiding life–that the only way to obey
the command, “Abide in me,” is to have eye and heart fixed upon
Himself. “Abide in me…I am the true vine.” Yea, study this holy
mystery until you see Christ as the true Vine, bearing, strengthening,
supplying, inspiring all His branches, being and doing in each branch
all it needs, and the abiding will come of itself. Yes, gaze upon Him
as the true Vine, until you feel what a heavenly Mystery it is, and are
compelled to ask the Father to reveal it to you by His Holy Spirit. He
to whom God reveals the glory of the true Vine, he who sees what Jesus
is and waits to do every moment, he cannot but abide. The vision of
Christ is an irresistible attraction; it draws and holds us like a
magnet. Listen ever to the living Christ still speaking to you, and
waiting to show you the meaning and power of His Word: “I am the vine.”

How much weary labor there has been in striving to understand what
abiding is, how much fruitless effort in trying to attain it! Why was
this? Because the attention was turned to the abiding as a work we have
to do, instead of the living Christ, in whom we were to be kept
abiding, who Himself was to hold and keep us. we thought of abiding as
a continual strain and effort–we forget that it means rest from effort
to one who has found the place of his abode. Do notice how Christ said,
“Abide in Me; I am the Vine that brings forth, and holds, and
strengthens, and makes fruitful the branches. Abide in Me, rest in Me,
and let Me do My work. I am the true Vine, all I am, and speak, and do
is divine truth, giving the actual reality of what is said. I am the
Vine, only consent and yield thy all to Me, I will do all in thee.”

And so it sometimes comes that souls who have never been specially
occupied with the thought of abiding, are abiding all the time, because
they are occupied with Christ. Not that the word abide is not needful;
Christ used it so often, because it is the very key to the Christian
life. But He would have us understand it in its true sense–“Come out
of every other place, and every other trust and occupation, come out of
self with its reasonings and efforts, come and rest in what I shall do.
Live out of thyself; abide in Me. Know that thou art in Me; thou
needest no more; remain there in Me.”

“I am the Vine.” Christ did not keep this mystery hidden from His
disciples. He revealed it, first in words here, then in power when the
Holy Spirit came down. He will reveal it to us too, first in the
thoughts and confessions and desires these words awaken, then in power
by the Spirit. Do let us wait on Him to show us all the heavenly
meaning of the mystery. Let each day, in our quiet time, in the inner
chamber with Him and His Word, our chief thought and aim be to get the
heart fixed on Him, in the assurance: all that a vine ever can do for
its branches, my Lord Jesus will do, is doing, for me. Give Him time,
give Him your ear, that He may whisper and explain the divine secret:
“I am the vine.”

Above all, remember, Christ is the Vine of God’s planting, and you are
a branch of God’s grafting. Ever stand before God, in Christ; ever wait
for all grace from God, in Christ; ever yield yourself to bear the more
fruit the Husbandman asks, in Christ. And pray much for the revelation
of the mystery that all the love and power of God that rested on Christ
is working in you too. “I am God’s Vine,” Jesus says; “all I am I have
from Him; all I am is for you; God will work it in you.”

I am the Vine. Blessed Lord, speak Thou that word into my soul. Then
shall I know that all Thy fullness is for me. And that I can count upon
Thee to stream it into me, and that my abiding is so easy and so sure
when I forget and lose myself in the adoring faith that the Vine holds
the branch and supplies its every need.
__________________________________________________________________

YE THE BRANCHES

I Am The Vine, Ye Are the Branches–John 15.5

Christ had already said much of the branch; here He comes to the
personal application: “Ye are the branches of whom I have been
speaking. As I am the Vine, engaged to be and do all the branches need,
so I now ask you, in the new dispensation of the Holy Spirit whom I
have been promising you, to accept the place I give you, and to be My
branches on earth.” The relationship He seeks to establish is an
intensely personal one: it all hinges on the two little words I and
You. And it is for us as intensely personal as for the first disciples.
Let us present ourselves before our Lord, until He speak to each of us
in power, and our whole soul feels it: “I am the Vine; you are the
branch.”

Dear disciple of Jesus, however young or feeble, hear the voice. “You
are the branch.” You must be nothing less. Let no false humility, no
carnal fear of sacrifice, no unbelieving doubts as to what you feel
able for, keep you back from saying: “I will be a branch, with all that
may mean–a branch, very feeble, but yet as like the Vine as can be,
for I am of the same nature, and receive of the same spirit. A branch,
utterly helpless, and yet just as manifestly set apart before God and
men, as wholly given up to the work of bearing fruit, as the Vine
itself. A branch, nothing in myself, and yet resting and rejoicing in
the faith that knows that He will provide for all. Yes, by His grace, I
will be nothing less than a branch, and all He means it to be, that
through me, He may bring forth His fruit.”

You are the branch.–You need be nothing more. You need not for one
single moment of the day take upon you the responsibility of the Vine.
You need not leave the place of entire dependence and unbounded
confidence. You need, least of all, to be anxious as to how you are to
understand the mystery, or fulfill its conditions, or work out its
blessed aim. The Vine will give all and work all. The Father, the
Husbandman, watches over your union with and growth in the Vine. You
need be nothing more than a branch. Only a branch! Let that be your
watchword; it will lead in the path of continual surrender to Christ’s
working, of true obedience to His every command, of joyful expectancy
of all His grace.

Is there anyone who now asks: “How can I learn to say this aright, Only
be a branch!’ and to live it out?” Dear soul, the character of a
branch, its strength, and the fruit it bears, depend entirely upon the
Vine. And your life as branch depends entirely upon your apprehension
of what our Lord Jesus is. Therefore never separate the two words: “I
the Vine–you the branch.” Your life and strength and fruit depend upon
what your Lord Jesus is! Therefore worship and trust Him; let Him be
your one desire and the one occupation of your heart. And when you feel
that you do not and cannot know Him aright, then just remember it is
part of His responsibility as Vine to make Himself known to you. He
does this not in thoughts and conceptions–no–but in a hidden growth
within the life that is humbly and restfully and entirely given up to
wait on Him. The Vine reveals itself within the branch; thence comes
the growth and fruit, Christ dwells and works within His branch; only
be a branch, waiting on Him to do all; He will be to thee the true
Vine. The Father Himself, the divine Husbandman, is able to make thee a
branch worthy of the heavenly Vine. Thou shalt not be disappointed.

Ye are the branches. This word, too Lord! O speak it in power unto my
soul. Let not the branch of the earthly vine put me to shame, but as it
only lives to bear the fruit of the vine, may my life on earth have no
wish or aim, but to let Thee bring forth fruit through me.
__________________________________________________________________

MUCH FRUIT

He That Abideth in Me, and I in Him, the Same Bringeth Forth Much
Fruit–John 15.5

Our Lord had spoken of fruit, more fruit. He now adds the thought: much
fruit. There is in the Vine such fullness, the care of the divine
Husbandman is so sure of success, that the much fruit is not a demand,
but the simple promise of what must come to the branch that lives in
the double abiding–he in Christ, and Christ in him. “The same bringeth
forth much fruit.” It is certain.

Have you ever noticed the difference in the Christian life between work
and fruit? A machine can do work: only life can bear fruit. A law can
compel work: only love can spontaneously bring forth fruit. Work
implies effort and labor: the essential idea of fruit is that it is the
silent natural restful produce of our inner life. The gardener may
labor to give his apple tree the digging and manuring, the watering and
the pruning it needs; he can do nothing to produce the apple: “The
fruit of the Spirit is love, peace, joy.” The healthy life bears much
fruit. The connection between work and fruit is perhaps best seen in
the expression, “fruitful in every good work.” (Col. 1.10). It is only
when good works come as the fruit of the indwelling Spirit that they
are acceptable to God. Under the compulsion of law and conscience, or
the influence of inclination and zeal, men may be most diligent in good
works, and yet find that they have but little spiritual result. There
can be no reason but this–their works are man’s effort, instead of
being the fruit of the Spirit, the restful, natural outcome of the
Spirit’s operation within us.

Let all workers come and listen to our holy Vine as He reveals the law
of sure and abundant fruitfulness: “He that abideth in me, and I in
him, the same bringeth forth much fruit.” The gardener cares for one
thing–the strength and healthy life of his tree: the fruit follows of
itself. If you would bear fruit, see that the inner life is perfectly
right, that your relation to Christ Jesus is clear and close. Begin
each day with Him in the morning, to know in truth that you are abiding
in Him and He in you. Christ tells that nothing less will do. It is not
your willing and running, it is not by your might or strength, but–“by
my Spirit, saith the Lord.” Meet each new engagement, undertake every
new work, with an ear and heart open to the Master’s voice: “He that
abideth in me, beareth much fruit.” See you to the abiding; He will see
to the fruit, for He will give it in you and through you.

O my brother, it is Christ must do all! The Vine provides the sap, and
the life, and the strength: the branch waits, and rests, and receives,
and bears the fruit. Oh, the blessedness of being only branches,
through whom the Spirit flows and brings God’s life to men!

I pray you, take time and ask the Holy Spirit to give you to realize
the unspeakably solemn place you occupy in the mind of God. He has
planted you into His Son with the calling and the power to bear much
fruit. Accept that place. Look much to God, and to Christ, and expect
joyfully to be what God has planned to make you, a fruitful branch.

Much fruit! So be it, blessed Lord Jesus. It can be, for Thou art the
Vine. It shall be, for I am abiding in Thee. It must be, for Thy Father
is the Husbandman that cleanses the branch. Yea, much fruit, out of the
abundance of Thy grace.
__________________________________________________________________

YOU CAN DO NOTHING

Apart From Me Ye Can Do Nothing–John 15.5

In everything the life of the branch is to be the exact counterpart of
that of the Vine. Of Himself Jesus had said: “The Son can do nothing of
himself.” As the outcome of that entire dependence, He could add: “All
that the Father doeth, doeth the Son also likewise.” As Son He did not
receive His life from the Father once for all, but moment by moment.
His life was a continual waiting on the Father for all He was to do.
And so Christ says of His disciples: “Ye can do nothing apart from me.”
He means it literally. To everyone who wants to live the true disciple
life, to bring forth fruit and glorify God, the message comes: You can
do nothing. What had been said: “He that abideth in me, and I in him,
the same beareth much fruit,” is here enforced by the simplest and
strongest of arguments: “Abiding in Me is indispensable, for, you know
it, of yourselves you can do nothing to maintain or act out the
heavenly life.”

A deep conviction of the truth of this word lies at the very root of a
strong spiritual life. As little as I created myself, as little as I
could raise a man from the dead, can I give myself the divine life. As
little as I can give it myself, can I maintain or increase it: every
motion is the work of God through Christ and His Spirit. It is as a man
believes this, that he will take up that position of entire and
continual dependence which is the very essence of the life of faith.
With the spiritual eye he sees Christ every moment supplying grace for
every breathing and every deepening of the spiritual life. His whole
heart says Amen to the word: You can do nothing. And just because he
does so, he can also say: “I can do all things in Christ who
strengtheneth me.” The sense of helplessness, and the abiding to which
it compels, leads to true fruitfulness and diligence in good works.

Apart from me ye can do nothing.–What a plea and what a call every
moment to abide in Christ! We have only to go back to the vine to see
how true it is. Look again at that little branch, utterly helpless and
fruitless except as it receives sap from the vine, and learn that the
full conviction of not being able to do anything apart from Christ is
just what you need to teach you to abide in your heavenly Vine. It is
this that is the great meaning of the pruning Christ spoke of–all that
is self must be brought low, that our confidence may be in Christ
alone. “Abide in me”–much fruit! “Apart from me”–nothing! Ought there
to be any doubt as to what we shall choose?

The one lesson of the parable is–as surely, as naturally as the branch
abides in the vine, You can abide in Christ. For this He is the true
Vine; for this God is the Husbandman; for this you are a branch. Shall
we not cry to God to deliver us forever from the “apart from me,” and
to make the “abide in me” an unceasing reality? Let your heart go out
to what Christ is, and can do, to His divine power and His tender love
to each of His branches, and you will say evermore confidently: “Lord!
I am abiding; I will bear much fruit. My impotence is my strength. So
be it. Apart from Thee, nothing. In Thee, much fruit.”

Apart from Me–you nothing. Lord, I gladly accept the arrangement: I
nothing–Thou all. My nothingness is my highest blessing, because Thou
art the Vine, that givest and workest all. So be it, Lord! I, nothing,
ever waiting on Thy fullness. Lord, reveal to me the glory of this
blessed life.
__________________________________________________________________

WITHERED BRANCHES

If a Man Abide Not in Me, He is Cast Forth as a Branch, and is
Withered; and They Gather Them, and Cast Them into the Fire, and They
are Burned–John 15.6

The lessons these words teach are very simple and very solemn. A man
can come to such a connection with Christ, that he counts himself to be
in Him, and yet he can be cast forth. There is such a thing as not
abiding in Christ, which leads to withering up and burning. There is
such a thing as a withered branch, one in whom the initial union with
Christ appears to have taken place, and in whom yet it is seen that his
faith was but for a time. What a solemn call to look around and see if
there be not withered branches in our churches, to look within and see
whether we are indeed abiding and bearing fruit!

And what may be the cause of this “not abiding.” With some it is that
they never understood how the Christian calling leads to holy obedience
and to loving service. They were content with the thought that they had
believed, and were safe from Hell; there was neither motive nor power
to abide in Christ–they knew not the need of it. With others it was
that the cares of the world, or its prosperity, choked the Word: they
had never forsaken all to follow Christ. With still others it was that
their religion and their faith was in the wisdom of men, and not in the
power of God. They trusted in the means of grace, or in their own
sincerity, or in the soundness of their faith in justifying grace; they
had never come even to seek an entire abiding in Christ as their only
safety. No wonder that, when the hot winds of temptation or persecution
blew, they withered away: they were not truly rooted in Christ.

Let us open our eyes and see if there be not withered branches all
around us in the churches. Young men, whose confessions were once
bright, but who are growing cold. Or old men, who have retained their
profession, but out of whom the measure of life there once appeared to
be has died out. Let ministers and believers take Christ’s words to
heart, and see, and ask the Lord whether there is nothing to be done
for branches that are beginning to wither. And let the word Abide ring
through the Church until every believer has caught it–no safety but in
a true abiding in Christ.

Let each of us turn within. Is our life fresh, and green, and vigorous,
bringing forth its fruit in its season? (See Ps. 1.3; 92.13, 14; Jer.
17.7, 8.) Let us accept every warning with a willing mind, and let
Christ’s “if a man abide not” give new urgency to His “abide in me.” To
the upright soul the secret of abiding will become ever simpler, just
the consciousness of the place in which He has put me; just the
childlike resting in my union with Him, and the trustful assurance that
He will keep me. Oh, do let us believe there is a life that knows of no
withering, that is ever green; and that brings forth fruit abundantly!

Withered! O my Father, watch over me, and keep me, and let nothing ever
for a moment hinder the freshness that comes from a full abiding in the
Vine. Let the very thought of a withered branch fill me with holy fear
and watchfulness.
__________________________________________________________________

WHATSOEVER YE WILL

If Ye Abide in Me, and My Words Abide in You, Ask Whatsoever Ye Will,
and it Shall be Done Unto You–John 15.7

The Whole place of the branch in the vine is one of unceasing prayer.
Without intermission it is ever calling: “O my vine, send the sap I
need to bear Thy fruit.” And its prayers are never unanswered: it asks
what it needs, what it will, and it is done.

The healthy life of the believer in Christ is equally one of unceasing
prayer. Consciously or unconsciously, he lives in continual dependence.
The Word of his Lord, “You can do nothing,” has taught him that not
more unbroken than the continuance of the branch in the vine, must be
his asking and receiving. The promise of our text gives us infinite
boldness: “Ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto you.”

The promise is given in direct connection with fruit-bearing. Limit it
to yourself and your own needs, and you rob it of its power; you rob
yourself of the power of appropriating it. Christ was sending these
disciples out, and they were ready to give their life for the world; to
them He gave the disposal of the treasures of Heaven. Their prayers
would bring the Spirit and the power they needed for their work.

The promise is given in direct connection with the coming of the
Spirit. The Spirit is not mentioned in the parable, just as little as
the sap of the vine is mentioned. But both are meant all through. In
the chapter preceding the parable, our Lord had spoken of the Holy
Spirit, in connection with their inner life, being in them, and
revealing Himself within them (14.15-23). In the next chapter He speaks
of the Holy Spirit in connection with their work, coming to them,
convincing the world, and glorifying Him (16.7-14). To avail ourselves
of the unlimited prayer promises, we must be men who are filled with
the Spirit, and wholly given up to the work and glory of Jesus. The
Spirit will lead us into the truth of its meaning and the certainty of
its fulfillment.

Let us realize that we can only fulfill our calling to bear much fruit,
by praying much. In Christ are hid all the treasures men around us
need; in Him all God’s children are blessed with all spiritual
blessings; He is full of grace and truth. But it needs prayer, much
prayer, strong believing prayer, to bring these blessings down. And let
us equally remember that we cannot appropriate the promise without a
life given up for men. Many try to take the promise, and then look
round for what they can ask. This is not the way; but the very
opposite. Get the heart burdened with the need of souls, and the
command to save them, and the power will come to claim the promise.

Let us claim it as one of the revelations of our wonderful life in the
Vine: He tells us that if we ask in His name, in virtue of our union
with Him, whatsoever it be, it will be done to us. Souls are perishing
because there is too little prayer. God’s children are feeble because
there is too little prayer. We bear so little fruit because there is so
little prayer. The faith of this promise would make us strong to pray;
let us not rest till it has entered into our very heart, and drawn us
in the power of Christ to continue and labor and strive in prayer until
the blessing comes in power. To be a branch means not only bearing
fruit on earth, but power in prayer to bring down blessing from Heaven.
Abiding fully means praying much.

Ask what ye will. O my Lord, why is it that our hearts are so little
able to accept these words in their divine simplicity? Oh, give me to
see that we need nothing less than this promise to overcome the powers
of the world and Satan! Teach us to pray in the faith of this Thy
promise.
__________________________________________________________________

IF YE ABIDE

If Ye Abide in Me, and My Words, Abide in You, Ask Whatsoever Ye Will,
and it Shall be Done Unto You–John 15.7

The reason the Vine and its branches are such a true parable of the
Christian life is that all nature has one source and breathes one
spirit. The plant world was created to be to man an object lesson
teaching him his entire dependence upon God, and his security in that
dependence. He that clothes the lilies will much more cloth us. He that
gives the trees and the vines their beauty and their fruits, making
each what He meant it to be, will much more certainly make us what He
would have us to be. The only difference is what God works in the trees
is by a power of which they are not conscious. He wants to work in us
with our consent. This is the nobility of man, that he has a will that
can cooperate with God in understanding and approving and accepting
what He offers to do.

If ye abide–Here is the difference between the branch of the natural
and the branch of the spiritual Vine. The former abides by force of
nature: the latter abides, not by force of will, but by a divine power
given to the consent of the will. Such is the wonderful provision God
has made that, what the power of nature does in the one case, the power
of grace will do in the other. The branch can abide in the Vine.

If ye abide in me…ask whatsoever ye will–If we are to live a true
prayer life, with the love and the power and the experience of prayer
marking it, there must be no question about the abiding. And if we
abide, there need be no question about the liberty of asking what we
will, and the certainty of its being done. There is the one condition:
“If ye abide in me.” There must be no hesitation about the possibility
or the certainty of it. We must gaze on that little branch and its
wonderful power of bearing such beautiful fruit until we truly learn to
abide.

And what is its secret? Be wholly occupied with Jesus. Sink the roots
of your being in faith and love and obedience deep down into Him. Come
away out of every other place to abide here. Give up everything for the
inconceivable privilege of being a branch on earth of the glorified Son
of God in Heaven. Let Christ be first. Let Christ be all. Do not be
occupied with the abiding–be occupied with Christ! He will hold you,
He will keep you abiding in Him. He will abide in you.

If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you–This He gives as the
equivalent of the other expression: “I in you. If my words abide in
you”–that is, not only in meditation, in memory, in love, in
faith–all these words enter into your will, your being, and constitute
your life–if they transform your character into their own likeness,
and you become and are what they speak and mean–ask what ye will; it
shall be done unto you. Your words to God in prayer will be the fruit
of Christ and His words living in you.

Ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you–Believe in the truth
of this promise. Set yourself to be an intercessor for men; a
fruit-bearing intercessor, ever calling down more blessing. Such faith
and prayer will help you wonderfully to abide wholly and unceasingly.

If ye abide. Yes, Lord, the power to pray and the power to prevail must
depend on this abiding in Thee. As Thou art the Vine, Thou art the
divine Intercessor, who breathest Thy spirit in us. Oh, for grace to
abide simply and wholly in Thee, and ask great things!
__________________________________________________________________

THE FATHER GLORIFIED

Herein is My Father Glorified, that Ye Bear Much Fruit–John 15.8

How can we glorify God? Not by adding to His glory or bringing Him any
new glory that He has not. But simply by allowing His glory to shine
out through us, by yielding ourselves to Him, that His glory may
manifest itself in us and through us to the world. In a vineyard or a
vine bearing much fruit, the owner is glorified, as it tells of his
skill and care. In the disciple who bears much fruit, the Father is
glorified. Before men and angels, proof is given of the glory of God’s
grace and power; God’s glory shines out through him.

This is what Peter means when he writes: “He that ministers, let him
minister as of the ability that God giveth, that God in all things may
be glorified through Jesus Christ.” As a man works and serves in a
power which comes from God alone, God gets all the glory. When we
confess that the ability came from God alone, he that does the work,
and they who see it, equally glorify God. It was God who did it. Men
judge by the fruit of a garden of what the gardener is. Men judge of
God by the fruit that the branches of the Vine of His planting bears.
Little fruit brings little glory to God. It brings no honor to either
the Vine or the Husbandman. “That ye bear much fruit, herein is my
Father glorified.”

We have sometimes mourned our lack of fruit, as a loss to ourselves and
our fellow men, with complaints of our feebleness as the cause. Let us
rather think of the sin and shame of little fruit as robbing God of the
glory He ought to get from us. Let us learn the secret of bringing
glory to God, serving of the ability which God giveth. The full
acceptance of Christ’s Word, “You can do nothing”; the simple faith in
God, who worketh all in all; the abiding in Christ through whom the
divine Husbandman does His work and gets much fruit–this is the life
that will bring glory to God.

Much fruit–God asks it; see that you give it. God can be content with
nothing less; be you content with nothing less. Let these words of
Christ–fruit, more fruit, much fruit–abide in you, until you think as
He does, and you be prepared to take from Him, the heavenly Vine, what
He has for you. Much fruit: herein is my Father glorified. Let the very
height of the demand be your encouragement. It is so entirely beyond
your power, that it throws you more entirely upon Christ, your true
Vine. He can, He will, make it true in you.

Much fruit–God asks because he needs. He does not ask fruit from the
branches of His Vine for show, to prove what He can do. No; He needs it
for the salvation of men: it is in that He is to be glorified. Throw
yourself in much prayer on your Vine and your Husbandman. Cry to God
and your Father to give you fruit to bring to men. Take the burden of
the hungry and the perishing on you, as Jesus did when He was moved
with compassion, and your power in prayer, and your abiding, and your
bearing much fruit to the glory of the Father will have a reality and a
certainty you never knew before.

The Father glorified. Blessed prospect–God glorifying Himself in me,
showing forth the glory of His goodness and power in what He works in
me, and through me. What a motive to bear much fruit, just as much as
He works in me! Father, glorify Thyself in me.
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TRUE DISCIPLES

Herein is My Father Glorified, that Ye Bear Much Fruit: So Shall Ye Be
My Disciples–John 15.8

And are those who do not bear much fruit not disciples? They may be,
but in a backward and immature stage. Of those who bear much fruit,
Christ says: “These are My disciples, such as I would have them
be–these are true disciples.” Just as we say of someone in whom the
idea of manliness is realized: That is a man! So our Lord tells who are
disciples after His heart, worthy of the name: Those who bear much
fruit. We find this double sense of the word disciple in the Gospel.
Sometimes it is applied to all who accepted Christ’s teaching. At other
times it includes only the inner circle of those who followed Christ
wholly, and gave themselves to His training for service. The difference
has existed throughout all ages. There have always been a smaller
number of God’s people who have sought to serve Him with their whole
heart, while the majority have been content with a very small measure
of the knowledge of His grace and will.

And what is the difference between this smaller inner circle and the
many who do not seek admission to it? We find it in the words: much
fruit. With many Christians the thought of personal safety, which at
their first awakening was a legitimate one, remains to the end the one
aim of their religion. The idea of service and fruit is always a
secondary and very subordinate one. The honest longing for much fruit
does not trouble them. Souls that have heard the call to live wholly
for their Lord, to give their life for Him as He gave His for them, can
never be satisfied with this. Their cry is to bear as much fruit as
they possibly can, as much as their Lord ever can desire or give in
them.

Bear much fruit: so shall ye be My disciples–Let me beg every reader
to consider these words most seriously. Be not content with the thought
of gradually doing a little more or better work. In this way it may
never come. Take the words, much fruit, as the revelation of your
heavenly Vine of what you must be, of what you can be. Accept fully the
impossibility, the utter folly of attempting it in your strength. Let
the words call you to look anew upon the Vine, an undertaking to live
out its heavenly fullness in you. Let them waken in you once again the
faith and the confession: “I am a branch of the true Vine; I can bear
much fruit to His glory, and the glory of the Father.”

We need not judge others. But we see in God’s Word everywhere two
classes of disciples. Let there be no hesitation as to where we take
our place. Let us ask Him to reveal to us how He ask and claims a life
wholly given up to Him, to be as full of His Spirit as He can make us.
Let our desire be nothing less than perfect cleansing, unbroken
abiding, closest communion, abundant fruitfulness–true branches of the
true Vine.

The world is perishing, the church is failing, Christ’s cause is
suffering, Christ is grieving on account of the lack of wholehearted
Christians, bearing much fruit. Though you scarce see what it implies
or how it is to come, say to Him that you are His branch to bear much
fruit; that you are ready to be His disciple in His own meaning of the
word.

My disciples. Blessed Lord, much fruit is the proof that Thou the true
Vine hast in me a true branch, a disciple wholly at Thy disposal. Give
me, I pray Thee, the childlike consciousness that my fruit is pleasing
to Thee, what Thou countest much fruit.
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THE WONDERFUL LOVE

Even as the Father Hath Loved Me, I Also Have Loved you–John 15.9

Here Christ leaves the language of parable, and speaks plainly out of
the Father. Much as the parable could teach, it could not teach the
lesson of love. All that the vine does for the branch, it does under
the compulsion of a law of nature: there is no personal living love to
the branch. We are in danger of looking to Christ as a Saviour and a
supplier of every need, appointed by God, accepted and trusted by us,
without any sense of the intensity of personal affection in which
Christ embraces us, and our life alone can find its true happiness.
Christ seeks to point us to this.

And how does He do so? He leads us once again to Himself, to show us
how identical His own life is with ours. Even as the Father loved Him,
He loves us. His life as vine dependent on the Father was a life in the
Father’s love; that love was His strength and His joy; in the power of
that divine love resting on Him He lived and died. If we are to live
like Him, as branches to be truly like our Vine, we must share in this
too. Our life must have its breath and being in a heavenly love as much
as His. What the Father’s love was to Him, His love will be to us. If
that love made Him the true Vine, His love can make us true branches.
“Even as the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you.”

Even as the Father hath loved Me–And how did the Father love Him? The
infinite desire and delight of God to communicate to the Son all He had
Himself, to take the Son into the most complete equality with Himself,
to live in the Son and have the Son live in Him–this was the love of
God to Christ. It is a mystery of glory of which we can form no
conception, we can only bow and worship as we try to think of it. And
with such a love, with this very same love, Christ longs in an infinite
desire and delight to communicate to us all He is and has, to make us
partakers of His own nature and blessedness, to live in us and have us
live in Himself.

And now, if Christ loves us with such an intense, such an infinite
divine love, what is it that hinders it triumphing over every obstacle
and getting full possession of us? The answer is simple. Even as the
love of the Father to Christ, so His love to us is a divine mystery,
too high for us to comprehend or attain to by any effort of our own. It
is only the Holy Spirit who can shed abroad and reveal in its
all-conquering power without intermission this wonderful love of God in
Christ. It is the vine itself that must give the branch its growth and
fruit by sending up its sap. It is Christ Himself must by His Holy
Spirit dwell in the heart; then shall we know and have in us the love
that passeth knowledge.

As the Father loved Me, so have I loved you–Shall we not draw near to
the personal living Christ, and trust Him, and yield all to Him, that
He may love this love into us? Just as he knew and rejoiced every
hour–the Father loveth Me–we too may live in the unceasing
consciousness–as the Father loved Him, so He loves me.

As the Father loved Me, so have I loved you. Dear Lord, I am only
beginning to apprehend how exactly the life of the Vine is to be that
of the branch too. Thou art the Vine, because the Father loved Thee,
and poured His love through Thee. And so Thou lovest me, and my life as
branch is to be like Thine, a receiving and a giving out of heavenly
love.
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ABIDE IN MY LOVE

Even as the Father Hath Loved Me, I Also Have Loved You: Abide Ye in My
Love–John 15.9

Abide in My love–We speak of a man’s home as his abode. Our abode, the
home of our soul, is to be the love of Christ. We are to live our life
there, to be at home there all the day: this is what Christ means our
life to be, and really can make it. Our continuous abiding in the Vine
is to be an abiding in His love.

You have probably heard or read of what is called the higher, or the
deeper life, of the richer or the fuller life, of the life abundant.
And you possibly know that some have told of a wonderful change, by
which their life of continual failure and stumbling had been changed
into a very blessed experience of being kept and strengthened and made
exceeding glad. If you asked them how it was this great blessing came
to them, many would tell you it was simply this, that they were led to
believe that this abiding in Christ’s love was meant to be a reality,
and that they were made willing to give up everything for it, and then
enabled to trust Christ to make it true to them.

The love of the Father to the Son is not a sentiment–it is a divine
life, an infinite energy, an irresistible power. It carried Christ
through life and death and the grave. The Father loved Him and dwelt in
Him, and did all for Him. So the love of Christ to us too is an
infinite living power that will work in us all He delights to give us.
The feebleness of our Christian life is that we do not take time to
believe that this divine love does really delight in us, and will
possess and work all in us. We do not take time to look at the Vine
bearing the branch so entirely, working all in it so completely. We
strive to do for ourselves what Christ alone can, what Christ, oh, so
lovingly, longs to do for us.

And this now is the secret of the change we spoke of, and the beginning
of a new life, when the soul sees this infinite love willing to do all,
and gives itself up to it. “Abide ye in my love.” To believe that, it
is possible so to live moment by moment; to believe that everything
that makes it difficult or impossible will be overcome by Christ
Himself; to believe that Love really means an infinite longing to give
itself wholly to us and never leave us; and in this faith to cast
ourselves on Christ to work it in us; this is the secret of the true
Christian life.

And how to come to this faith? Turn away from the visible if you would
see and possess the invisible. Take more time with Jesus, gazing on Him
as the heavenly Vine, living in the love of the Father, wanting you to
live in His love. Turn away from yourself and your efforts and your
faith, if you would have the heart filled with Him and the certainty of
His love. Abiding means going out from everything else, to occupy one
place and stay there. Come away from all else, and set your heart on
Jesus, and His love, that love will waken your faith and strengthen it.
Occupy yourself with that love, worship it, wait for it. You may be
sure it will reach out to you, and by its power take you up into itself
as your abode and your home.

Abide in My love. Lord Jesus, I see it, it was Thy abiding in Thy
Father’s love that made Thee the true Vine, with Thy divine fullness of
love and blessing for us. Oh, that I may even so, as a branch, abide in
Thy love, for its fullness to fill me and overflow on all around.
__________________________________________________________________

OBEY AND ABIDE

If Ye Keep My Commandments, Ye Shall Abide In My Love–John 15.10

In our former meditation reference was made to the entrance into a life
of rest and strength which has often come through a true insight into
the personal love of Christ, and the assurance that that love indeed
meant that He would keep the soul. In connection with that transition,
and the faith that sees and accepts it, the word surrender or
consecration is frequently used. The soul sees that it cannot claim the
keeping of this wonderful love unless it yields itself to a life of
entire obedience. It sees too that the faith that can trust Christ for
keeping from sinning must prove its sincerity by venturing at once to
trust Him for strength to obey. In that faith it dares to give up and
cut off everything that has hitherto hindered it, and to promise and
expect to live a life that is well pleasing to God.

This is the thought we have here now in our Saviour’s teaching. After
having in the words, “Abide in my love,” spoken of a life in His love
as a necessity, because it is at once a possibility and an obligation,
He states what its one condition is: “If ye keep my commandments, ye
shall abide in my love.” This is surely not meant to close the door to
the abode of His love which he had just opened up. Not in the most
distant way does it suggest the thought which some are too ready to
entertain, that as we cannot keep His commandments, we cannot abide in
His love. No; the precept is a promise: “Abide in my love,” could not
be a precept if it were not a promise. And so the instruction as to the
way through this open door points to no unattainable ideal; the love
that invites to her blessed abode reaches out the hand, and enables us
to keep the commandments. Let us not fear, in the strength of our
ascended Lord, to take the vow of obedience, and give ourselves to the
keeping of His commandments. Through His will, loved and done, lies the
path to His love.

Only let us understand well what it means. It refers to our performance
of all that we know to be God’s will. There may be things doubtful, of
which we are not sure. A sin of ignorance has still the nature of sin
in it. There may be involuntary sins, which rise up in the flesh, which
we cannot control or overcome. With regard to these God will deal in
due time in the way of searching and humbling, and if we be simple and
faithful, give us larger deliverance than we dare expect. But all this
may be found in a truly obedient soul. Obedience has reference to the
positive keeping of the commandments of our Lord, and the performance
of His will in everything in which we know it. This is a possible
degree of grace, and it is the acceptance in Christ’s strength of such
obedience as the purpose of our heart, of which our Saviour speaks
here. Faith in Christ as our Vine, in His enabling and sanctifying
power, fits us for this obedience of faith, and secures a life of
abiding in His love.

If ye keep My commandments, ye shall abide in My love–It is the
heavenly Vine unfolding the mystery of the life He gives. It is to
those abiding in Him to whom He opens up the secret of the full abiding
in His love. It is the wholehearted surrender in everything to do His
will, that gives access to a life in the abiding enjoyment of His love.

Obey and abide. Gracious Lord, teach me this lesson, that it is only
through knowing Thy will one can know Thy heart, and only through doing
that will one can abide in Thy love. Lord, teach me that as worthless
as is the doing in my own strength, so essential and absolutely
indispensable is the doing of faith in Thy strength, if I would abide
in Thy love.
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YE, EVEN AS I

If Ye Keep My Commandments, Ye Shall Abide in My Love, Even as I have
Kept My Father’s Commandments, and Abide in His Love–John 15.10

We have had occasion more than once to speak of the perfect similarity
of the vine and the branch in nature, and therefore in aim. Here Christ
speaks no longer in a parable, but tells us plainly out of how His own
life is the exact model of ours. He had said that it is alone by
obedience we can abide in His love. He now tells that this was the way
in which He abode in the Father’s love. As the Vine, so the branch. His
life and strength and joy had been in the love of the Father: it was
only by obedience He abode in it. We may find our life and strength and
joy in His love all the day, but it is only by an obedience like His we
can abide in it. Perfect conformity to the Vine is one of the most
precious of the lessons of the branch. It was by obedience Christ as
Vine honored the Father as Husbandman; it is by obedience the believer
as branch honors Christ as Vine.

Obey and abide–That was the law of Christ’s life as much as it is to
be that of ours. He was made like us in all things, that we might be
like Him in all things. He opened up a path in which we may walk even
as He walked. He took our human nature to teach us how to wear it, and
show us how obedience, as it is the first duty of the creature, is the
only way to abide in the favor of God and enter into His glory. And now
He comes to instruct and encourage us, and asks us to keep His
commandments, even as He kept His Father’s commandments and abides in
His love.

The divine fitness of this connection between obeying and abiding,
between God’s commandments and His love, is easily seen. God’s will is
the very center of His divine perfection. As revealed in His
commandments, it opens up the way for the creature to grow into the
likeness of the Creator. In accepting and doing His will, I rise into
fellowship with Him. Therefore it was that the Son, when coming into
the world, spoke: “I come to do thy will, O God”! This was the place
and this would be the blessedness of the creature. This was what he had
lost in the Fall. This was what Christ came to restore. This is what,
as the heavenly Vine, He asks of us and imparts to us, that even as He
by keeping His Father’s commandments abode in His love, we should keep
His commandments and abide in His love.

Ye, even as I–The branch cannot bear fruit except as it has exactly
the same life as the Vine. Our life is to be the exact counterpart of
Christ’s life. It can be, just in such measure as we believe in Him as
the Vine, imparting Himself and His life to His branches. “Ye, even as
I,” the Vine says: one law, one nature, one fruit. Do let us take from
our Lord the lesson of obedience as the secret of abiding. Let us
confess that simple, implicit, universal obedience has taken too little
the place it should have. Christ died for us as enemies, when we were
disobedient. He took us up into His love; now that we are in Him, His
Word is: “Obey and abide; ye, even as I.” Let us give ourselves to a
willing and loving obedience. He will keep us abiding in His love.

Ye, even as I. O my blessed Vine, who makest the branch in everything
partake of Thy life and likeness, in this too I am to be like Thee: as
Thy life in the Father’s love through obedience, so mine in Thy love!
Saviour, help me, that obedience may indeed be the link between Thee
and me.
__________________________________________________________________

JOY

These Things Have I Spoken Unto You, That My Joy May Be in You, and
That Your Joy May Be Fulfilled–John 15.11

If any one asks the question, “How can I be a happy Christian?” our
Lord’s answer is very simple: “These things,” about the Vine and the
branches, “I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that
your joy may be fulfilled.” “You cannot have My joy without My life.
Abide in Me, and let Me abide in you, and My joy will be in you.” All
healthy life is a thing of joy and beauty; live undividedly the branch
life; you will have His joy in full measure.

To many Christians the thought of a life wholly abiding in Christ is
one of strain and painful effort. They cannot see that the strain and
effort only come, as long as we do not yield ourselves unreservedly to
the life of Christ in us. The very first words of the parable are not
yet opened up to them: “I am the true Vine; I undertake all and provide
for all; I ask nothing of the branch but that it yields wholly to Me,
and allows Me to do all. I engage to make and keep the branch all that
it ought to be.” Ought it not to be an infinite and unceasing joy to
have the Vine thus work all, and to know that it is none less than the
blessed Son of God in His love who is each moment bearing us and
maintaining our life?

That My joy may be in you–We are to have Christ’s own joy in us. And
what is Christ’s own joy? There is no joy like love. There is no joy
but love. Christ had just spoken of the Father’s love and His own
abiding in it, and of His having loved us with that same love. His joy
is nothing but the joy of love, of being loved and of loving. It was
the joy of receiving His Father’s love and abiding in it, and then the
joy of passing on that love and pouring it out on sinners. It is this
joy He wants us to share: the joy of being loved of the Father and of
Him; the joy of in our turn loving and living for those around us. This
is just the joy of being truly branches: abiding in His love, and then
giving up ourselves in love to bear fruit for others. Let us accept His
life, as He gives it in us as the Vine, His joy will be ours: the joy
of abiding in His love, the joy of loving like Him, of loving with His
love.

And that your joy may be fulfilled–That it may be complete, that you
may be filled with it. How sad that we should so need to be reminded
that as God alone is the fountain of all joy, “God our exceeding joy,”
the only way to be perfectly happy is to have as much of God, as much
of His will and fellowship, as possible! Religion is meant to be in
everyday life a thing of unspeakable joy. And why do so many complain
that it is not so? Because they do not believe that there is no joy
like the joy of abiding in Christ and in His love, and being branches
through whom He can pour out His love on a dying world.

Oh, that Christ’s voice might reach the heart of every young Christian,
and persuade him to believe that His joy is the only true joy, that His
joy can become ours and truly fill us, and that the sure and simple way
of living in it is–only this–to abide as branches in Him our heavenly
Vine. Let the truth enter deep into us–as long as our joy is not full,
it is a sign that we do not yet know our heavenly Vine aright; every
desire for a fuller joy must only urge us to abide more simply and more
fully in His love.

My joy–your joy. In this too it is: as the Vine, so the branch; all
the Vine in the branch. Thy joy is our joy–Thy joy in us, and our joy
fulfilled. Blessed Lord, fill me with Thy joy–the joy of being loved
and blessed with a divine love; the joy of loving and blessing others.
__________________________________________________________________

LOVE ONE ANOTHER

This is My Commandment, That Ye Love One Another–John 15.12

God is love. His whole nature and perfection is love, living not for
Himself, but to dispense life and blessing. In His love He begat the
Son, that He might give all to Him. In His love He brought forth
creatures that He might make them partakers of His blessedness.

Christ is the Son of God’s love, the bearer, the revealer, the
communicator of that love. His life and death were all love. Love is
His life, and the life He gives. He only lives to love, to live out His
life of love in us, to give Himself in all who will receive Him. The
very first thought of the true Vine is love–living only to impart His
life to the branches.

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of love. He cannot impart Christ’s life
without imparting His love. Salvation is nothing but love conquering
and entering into us; we have just as much of salvation as we have of
love. Full salvation is perfect love.

No wonder that Christ said: “A new commandment I give unto you”; “This
is my commandment”–the one all-inclusive commandment–“that ye love
one another.” The branch is not only one with the vine, but with all
its other branches; they drink one spirit, they form one body, they
bear one fruit. Nothing can be more unnatural than that Christians
should not love one another, even as Christ loved them. The life they
received from their heavenly Vine is nothing but love. This is the one
thing He asks above all others. “Hereby shall all men know that ye are
my disciples…love one another.” As the special sort of vine is known
by the fruit it bears, the nature of the heavenly Vine is to be judged
of by the love His disciples have to one another.

See that you obey this commandment. Let your “obey and abide” be seen
in this. Love your brethren as the way to abide in the love of your
Lord. Let your vow of obedience begin here. Love one another. Let your
intercourse with the Christians in your own family be holy, tender,
Christlike love. Let your thoughts of the Christians round you be,
before everything, in the spirit of Christ’s love. Let your life and
conduct be the sacrifice of love–give your self up to think of their
sins or their needs, to intercede for them, to help and to serve them.
Be in your church or circle the embodiment of Christ’s love. The life
Christ lives in you is love; let the life in which you live it out be
all love.

But, man, you write as if all this was so natural and simple and easy.
Is it at all possible thus to live and thus to love? My answer is:
Christ commands it: you must obey. Christ means it: you must obey, or
you cannot abide in His love.

But I have tried and failed. I see no prospect of living like Christ.
Ah! that is because you have failed to take in the first word of the
parable–“I am the true Vine: I give all you need as a branch, I give
all I myself have.” I pray you, let the sense of past failure and
present feebleness drive you to the Vine. He is all love. He loves to
give. He gives love. He will teach you to love, even as He loved.

Love one another. Dear Lord Jesus, Thou art all love; the life Thou
gavest us is love; Thy new commandment, and Thy badge of discipleship
is, “Love one another.” I accept the charge: with the love with which
Thou lovest me, and I love Thee, I will love my brethren.
__________________________________________________________________

EVEN AS I HAVE LOVED YOU

This is My Commandment, That Ye Love One Another, Even as I Have Loved
You–John 15.12

This is the second time our Lord uses the expression–Even as I. The
first time it was of His relation to the Father, keeping His
commandments, and abiding in His love. Even so we are to keep Christ’s
commandments, and abide in His love. The second time He speaks of His
relation to us as the rule of our love to our brethren: “Love one
another, as I have loved you.” In each case His disposition and conduct
is to be the law for ours. It is again the truth we have more than once
insisted on–perfect likeness between the Vine and the branch.

Even as I–But is it not a vain thing to imagine that we can keep His
commandments, and love the brethren, even as He kept His Father’s, and
as He loved us? And must not the attempt end in failure and
discouragement? Undoubtedly, if we seek to carry out the injunction in
our strength, or without a full apprehension of the truth of the Vine
and its branches. But if we understand that the “even as I” is just the
one great lesson of the parable, the one continual language of the Vine
to the branch, we shall see that it is not the question of what we feel
able to accomplish, but of what Christ is able to work in us. These
high and holy commands–“Obey, even as I! Love, even as I”–are just
meant to bring us to the consciousness of our impotence, and through
that to waken us to the need and the beauty and the sufficiency of what
is provided for us in the Vine. We shall begin to hear the Vine
speaking every moment to the branch: “Even as I. Even as I: My life is
your life; and have a share in all My fullness; the Spirit in you, and
the fruit that comes from you, is all just the same as in Me. Be not
afraid, but let your faith grasp each “Even as I” as the divine
assurance that because I live in you, you may and can live like Me.”

But why, if this really be the meaning of the parable, if this really
be the life a branch may live, who do so few realize it? Because they
do not know the heavenly mystery of the Vine. They know much of the
parable and its beautiful lessons. But the hidden spiritual mystery of
the Vine in His divine omnipotence and nearness, bearing and supplying
them all the day–this they do not know, because they have not waited
on God’s Spirit to reveal it to them.

Love one another, even as I have loved you–“Ye, even as I.” How are we
to begin if we are really to learn the mystery? With the confession
that we need to be brought to an entirely new mode of life, because we
have never yet known Christ as the Vine in the completeness of His
quickening and transforming power. With the surrender to be cleansed
from all that is of self, and detached from all that is in the world,
to live only and wholly as Christ lived for the glory of the Father.
And then with the faith that this “even as I” is in very deed what
Christ is ready to make true, the very life the Vine will maintain in
the branch wholly dependent upon Him.

Even as I. Ever again it is, my blessed Lord, as the Vine, so the
branch–one life, one spirit, one obedience, one joy, one love.

Lord Jesus, in the faith that Thou art my Vine, and that I am Thy
branch, I accept Thy command as a promise, and take Thy “even as I” as
the simple revelation of what Thou dost work in me. Yea, Lord, as Thou
hast loved, I will love.
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CHRIST’S FRIENDSHIP: ITS ORIGIN

Greater Love Hath No Man Than This, That a Man Lay Down His Life for
His Friends–John 15.13

In the three following verses our Lord speaks of His relation to His
disciples under a new aspect–that of friendship. He point us to the
love in which it on His side has its origin (v.13): to the obedience on
our part by which it is maintained (v.14); and then to the holy
intimacy to which it leads (v.15).

Our relation to Christ is one of love. In speaking of this previously,
He showed us what His love was in its heavenly glory; the same love
with which the Father had loved Him. Here we have it in its earthly
manifestation–lay down His life for us. “Greater love hath no man than
this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Christ does indeed
long to have us know that the secret root and strength of all He is and
does for us as the Vine is love. As we learn to believe this, we shall
feel that here is something which we not only need to think and know
about, but a living power, a divine life which we need to receive
within us. Christ and His love are inseparable; they are identical. God
is love, and Christ is love. God and Christ and the divine love can
only be known by having them, by their life and power working within
us. “This is eternal life, that they know thee”; there is no knowing
God but by having the life; the life working in us alone gives the
knowledge. And even so the love; if we would know it, we must drink of
its living stream, we must have it shed forth by the Holy Spirit in us.

“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man give his life for his
friends.” The life is the most precious thing a man has; the life is
all he is; the life is himself. This is the highest measure of love:
when a man gives his life, he hold nothing back, he gives all he has
and is. It is this our Lord Jesus wants to make clear to us concerning
His mystery of the Vine; with all He has He has placed Himself at our
disposal. He wants us to count Him our very own; He wants to be wholly
our possession, that we may be wholly His possession. He gave His life
for us in death not merely as a passing act, that when accomplished was
done with; no, but as a making Himself ours for eternity. Life for
life; He gave His life for us to possess that we might give our life
for Him to possess. This is what is taught by the parable of the Vine
and the branch, in their wonderful identification, in their perfect
union.

It is as we know something of this, not by reason or imagination, but
deep down in the heart and life, that we shall begin to see what ought
to be our life as branches of the heavenly Vine. He gave Himself to
death; He lost Himself, that we might find life in Him. This is the
true Vine, who only lives to live in us. This is the beginning and the
root of that holy friendship to which Christ invites us.

Great is the mystery of godliness! Let us confess our ignorance and
unbelief. Let us cease from our own understanding and our own efforts
to master it. Let us wait for the Holy Spirit who dwells within us to
reveal it. Let us trust His infinite love, which gave its life for us,
to take possession and rejoice in making us wholly its own.

His life for His friends. How wonderful the lessons of the Vine, giving
its very life to its branches! And Jesus gave His life for His friends.
And that love gives itself to them and in them. My heavenly Vine, oh,
teach me how wholly Thou longest to live in me!
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CHRIST’S FRIENDSHIP: ITS EVIDENCE

Ye Are My Friends, if Ye Do the Things Which I Command You–John 15.14

Our Lord has said what He gave as proof of His friendship: He gave His
life for us. He now tells us what our part is to be–to do the things
which He commands. He gave His life to secure a place for His love in
our hearts to rule us; the response His love calls us to, and empowers
us for, is that we do what He commands us. As we know the dying love,
we shall joyfully obey its commands. As we obey the commands, we shall
know the love more fully. Christ had already said: “If ye keep my
commandments, ye shall abide in my love.” He counts it needful to
repeat the truth again: the one proof of our faith in His love, the one
way to abide in it, the one mark of being true branches is–to do the
things which He commands us. He began with absolute surrender of His
life for us. He can ask nothing less from us. This alone is a life in
His friendship.

This truth, of the imperative necessity of obedience, doing all that
Christ commands us, has not the place in our Christian teaching and
living that Christ meant it to have. We have given a far higher place
to privilege than to duty. We have not considered implicit obedience as
a condition of true discipleship. The secret thought that it is
impossible to do the things He commands us, and that therefore it
cannot be expected of us, and a subtle and unconscious feeling that
sinning is a necessity have frequently robbed both precepts and
promises of their power. The whole relation to Christ has become
clouded and lowered, the waiting on His teaching, the power to hear and
obey His voice, and through obedience to enjoy His love and friendship,
have been enfeebled by the terrible mistake. Do let us try to return to
the true position, take Christ’s words as most literally true, and make
nothing less the law of our life: “Ye are my friends, if ye do the
things that I command you.” Surely our Lord asks nothing less than that
we heartily and truthfully say: “Yea, Lord, what Thou dost command,
that will I do.”

These commands are to be done as a proof of friendship. The power to do
them rests entirely in the personal relationship to Jesus. For a friend
I could do what I would not for another. The friendship of Jesus is so
heavenly and wonderful, it comes to us so as the power of a divine love
entering in and taking possession, the unbroken fellowship with Himself
is so essential to it, that it implies and imparts a joy and a love
which make the obedience a delight. The liberty to claim the friendship
of Jesus, the power to enjoy it, the grace to prove it in all its
blessedness–all come as we do the things He commands us.

Is not the one thing needful for us that we ask our Lord to reveal
Himself to us in the dying love in which He proved Himself our friend,
and then listen as He says to us: “Ye are My friends.” As we see what
our Friend has done for us, and what as unspeakable blessedness it is
to have Him call us friends, the doing His commands will become the
natural fruit of our life in his love. We shall not fear to say: “Yea,
Lord, we are Thy friends, and do what Thou dost command us.”

If ye do. Yes, it is in doing that we are blessed, that we abide in His
love, that we enjoy His friendship. “If ye do what I command you!” O my
Lord, let Thy holy friendship lead me into the love of all Thy
commands, and let the doing of Thy commands lead me ever deeper into
Thy friendship.
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CHRIST’S FRIENDSHIP: ITS INTIMACY

No Longer Do I Call You Servants; for the Servant Knoweth Not What His
Lord Doeth: But I Have Called You Friends; for All Things That I Heard
From My Father, I Have Made Known Unto You–John 15.15

The highest proof of true friendship, and one great source of its
blessedness, is the intimacy that holds nothing back, and admits the
friend to share our inmost secrets. It is a blessed thing to be
Christ’s servant; His redeemed ones delight to call themselves His
slaves. Christ had often spoken of the disciples as His servants. In
His great love our Lord now says: “No longer do I call you servants”;
with the coming of the Holy Spirit a new era was to be inaugurated.
“The servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth”–he has to obey without
being consulted or admitted into the secret of all his master’s plans.
“But, I have called you friends, for all things I heard from my Father
I have made known unto you.” Christ’s friends share with Him in all the
secrets the Father has entrusted to Him.

Let us think what this means. When Christ spoke of keeping His Father’s
commandments, He did not mean merely what was written in Holy
Scripture, but those special commandments which were communicated to
Him day by day, and from hour to hour. It was of these He said: “The
Father loveth the Son, and showeth him all things that he doeth, and he
will show him greater things.” All that Christ did was God’s working.
God showed it to Christ, so that He carried out the Father’s will and
purpose, not, as man often does, blindly and unintelligently, but with
full understanding and approval. As one who stood in God’s counsel, He
knew God’s plan.

And this now is the blessedness of being Christ’s friends, that we do
not, as servants, do His will without much spiritual insight into its
meaning and aim, but are admitted, as an inner circle, into some
knowledge of God’s more secret thoughts. From the Day of Pentecost on,
by the Holy Spirit, Christ was to lead His disciples into the spiritual
apprehension of the mysteries of the kingdom, of which He had hitherto
spoken only by parables.

Friendship delights in fellowship. Friends hold council. Friends dare
trust to each other what they would not for anything have others know.
What is it that gives a Christian access to this holy intimacy with
Jesus? That gives him the spiritual capacity for receiving the
communications Christ has to make of what the Father has shown Him? “Ye
are my friends if ye do what I command you.” It is loving obedience
that purifies the soul. That refers not only to the commandments of the
Word, but to that blessed application of the Word to our daily life,
which none but our Lord Himself can give. But as these are waited for
in dependence and humility, and faithfully obeyed, the soul becomes
fitted for ever closer fellowship, and the daily life may become a
continual experience: “I have called you friends; for all things I have
heard from my Father, I have made known unto you.”

I have called you friends. What an unspeakable honor! What a heavenly
privilege! O Saviour, speak the word with power into my soul: “I have
called you My friend, whom I love, whom I trust, to whom I make known
all that passes between my Father and Me.”
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ELECTION

Ye Did Not Choose Me, But I Chose You, and Appointed You That Ye Should
Go and Bear Fruit–John 15.16

The branch does not choose the vine, or decide on which vine it will
grow. The vine brings forth the branch, as and where it will. Even so
Christ says: “Ye did not choose me, but I chose you.” But some will say
is not just this the difference between the branch in the natural and
in the spiritual world, that man has a will and a power of choosing,
and that it is in virtue of his having decided to accept Christ, his
having chosen Him as Lord, that he is now a branch? This is undoubtedly
true. And yet it is only half a truth. The lesson of the Vine, and the
teaching of our Lord, points to the other half, the deeper, the divine
side of our being in Christ. If He had not chosen us, we had never
chosen Him. Our choosing Him was the result of His choosing us, and
taking hold of us. In the very nature of things, it is His prerogative
as Vine to choose and create His own branch. We owe all we are to “the
election of grace.” If we want to know Christ as the true Vine, the
sole origin and strength of the branch life, and ourselves as branches
in our absolute, most blessed, and most secure dependence upon Him, let
us drink deep of this blessed truth: “Ye did not choose me, but I chose
you.”

And with what view does Christ say this? That they may know what the
object is for which He chose them, and find, in their faith in His
election, the certainty of fulfilling their destiny. Throughout
Scripture this is the great object of the teaching of election.
“Predestinated to be conformed to the image of his son.” (to be
branches in the image and likeness of the Vine). “Chosen that we should
be holy.” “Chosen to salvation, through sanctification of the Spirit.”
“Elect in sanctification of the Spirit unto obedience.” Some have
abused the doctrine of election, and others, for fear of its abuse,
have rejected it, because they have overlooked this teaching. They have
occupied themselves with its hidden origin in eternity, with the
inscrutable mysteries of the counsels of God instead of accepting the
revelation of its purpose in time, and the blessings it brings into our
Christian life.

Just think what these blessings are. In our verse Christ reveals His
twofold purpose in choosing us to be His branches: that we may bear
fruit on earth, and have power in prayer in Heaven. What confidence the
thought that He has chosen us for this gives, that He will not fail to
fit us for carrying out His purpose! What assurance that we can bear
fruit that will abide, and can pray so as to obtain! What a continual
call to the deepest humility and praise, to the most entire dependence
and expectancy! He would not choose us for what we are not fit for, or
what He could not fit us for. He has chosen us; this is the pledge, He
will do all in us.

Let us listen in silence of soul to our holy Vine speaking to each of
us: “You did not choose Me!” And let us say, “Yea, Lord, but I chose
You! Amen, Lord!” Ask Him to show what this means. In Him, the true
Vine, your life as branch has its divine origin, its eternal security,
and the power to fulfill His purpose. From Him to whose will of love
you owe all, you may expect all. In Him, His purpose, and His power,
and His faithfulness, in His love let me abide.

I chose you. Lord, teach me what this means–that Thou hast set Thy
heart on me, and chosen me to bear fruit that will abide, and to pray
prayer that will prevail. In this Thine eternal purpose my soul would
rest itself and say: “What He chose me for I will be, I can be, I shall
be.”
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ABIDING FRUIT

I Chose You, and Appointed You, That Ye Should Go and Bear Fruit, and
That Your Fruit Should Abide–John 15.16

There are some fruits that will not keep. One sort of pears or apples
must be used at once; another sort can be kept over till next year. So
there is in Christian work some fruit that does not last. There may be
much that pleases and edified, and yet there is no permanent impression
made on the power of the world or the state of the Church. On the other
hand, there is work that leaves its mark for generations or for
eternity. In it the power of God makes itself lastingly felt. It is the
fruit of which Paul speaks when he describes the two styles of
ministry: “My preaching was not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in
demonstrations of the Spirit and of power; that your faith should not
stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.” The more of man
with his wisdom and power, the less of stability; the more of God’s
Spirit, the more of a faith standing in God’s power.

Fruit reveals the nature of the tree from which it comes. What is the
secret of bearing fruit that abides? The answer is simple. It is as our
life abides in Christ, as we abide in Him, that the fruit we bear will
abide. The more we allow all that is of human will and effort to be cut
down short and cleansed away by the divine Husbandman, the more
intensely our being withdraws itself from the outward that God may work
in us by His Spirit; that is, the more wholly we abide in Christ, the
more will our fruit abide.

What a blessed thought! He chose you, and appointed you to bear fruit,
and that your fruit should abide. He never meant one of His branches to
bring forth fruit that should not abide. The deeper I enter into the
purpose of this His electing grace, the surer my confidence will become
that I can bring forth fruit to eternal life, for myself and others.
The deeper I enter into this purpose of His electing love, the more I
will realize what the link is between the purpose from eternity, and
the fruit to eternity: the abiding in Him. The purpose is His, He will
carry it out; the fruit is His, He will bring it forth; the abiding is
His, He will maintain it.

Let everyone who professes to be a Christian worker, pause. Ask whether
you are leaving your mark for eternity on those around you. It is not
your preaching or teaching, your strength of will or power to
influence, that will secure this. All depends on having your life full
of God and His power. And that again depends upon your living the truly
branchlike life of abiding–very close and unbroken fellowship with
Christ. It is the branch, that abides in Him, that brings forth much
fruit, fruit that will abide.

Blessed Lord, reveal to my soul, I pray Thee, that Thou hast chosen me
to bear much fruit. Let this be my confidence, that Thy purpose can be
realized–Thou didst choose me. Let this be my power to forsake
everything and give myself to Thee. Thou wilt Thyself perfect what Thou
hast begun. Draw me so to dwell in the love and the certainty of that
eternal purpose, that the power of eternity may posses me, and the
fruit I bear may abide.

That ye may bear fruit. O my heavenly Vine, it is beginning to dawn
upon my soul that fruit, more fruit–much fruit–abiding fruit is the
one thing Thou hast to give me, and the one thing as branch I have to
give Thee! Here I am. Blessed Lord, work out Thy purpose in me; let me
bear much fruit, abiding fruit, to thy glory.
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PREVAILING PRAYER

I Appointed You That Ye Should Go and Bear Fruit, and That Your Fruit
Should Abide: That Whatsoever Ye Shall Ask of the Father in My Name, He
May Give It You–John 15.16

In the first verse of our parable, Christ revealed Himself as the true
Vine, and the Father as the Husbandman, and asked for Himself and the
Father a place in the heart. Here, in the closing verse, He sums up all
His teaching concerning Himself and the Father in the twofold purpose
for which He had chosen them. With reference to Himself, the Vine, the
purpose was, that they should bear fruit. With reference to the Father,
it was, that whatsoever they should ask in His name, should be done of
the Father in Heaven. As fruit is the great proof of the true relation
to Christ, so prayer is of our relation to the Father. A fruitful
abiding in the Son, and prevailing prayer to the Father, are the two
great factors in the true Christian life.

That whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it
you.–These are the closing words of the parable of the Vine. The whole
mystery of the Vine and its branches leads up to the other
mystery–that whatsoever we ask in His name the Father gives! See here
the reason of the lack of prayer, and of the lack of power in prayer.
It is because we so little live the true branch life, because we so
little lose ourselves in the Vine, abiding in Him entirely, that we
feel so little constrained to much prayer, so little confident that we
shall be heard, and so do not know how to use His name as the key to
God’s storehouse. The Vine planted on earth has reached up into Heaven;
it is only the soul wholly and intensely abiding in it, can reach into
Heaven with power to prevail much. Our faith in the teaching and the
truth of the parable, in the truth and the life of the Vine, must prove
itself by power in prayer. The life of abiding and obedience, of love
and joy, of cleansing and fruit-bearing, will surely lead to the power
of prevailing prayer.

Whatsoever ye shall ask–The promise was given to disciples who were
ready to give themselves, in the likeness of the true Vine, for their
fellow men. This promise was all their provision for their work; they
took it literally, they believed it, they used it, and they found it
true. Let us give ourselves, as branches of the true Vine, and in His
likeness, to the work of saving men, of bringing forth fruit to the
glory of God, and we shall find a new urgency and power to pray and to
claim the “whatsoever ye ask.” We shall waken to our wonderful
responsibility of having in such a promise the keys to the King’s
storehouses given us, and we shall not rest till we have received bread
and blessing for the perishing.

“I chose you, that ye may bring forth fruit, and that your fruit may
abide; that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may
give it to you.” Beloved disciple, seek above everything to be a man of
prayer. Here is the highest exercise of your privilege as a branch of
the Vine; here is the full proof of your being renewed in the image of
God and His Son; here is your power to show how you, like Christ, live
not for yourself, but for others; here you enter Heaven to receive
gifts for men; here your abiding in Christ has led to His abiding in
you, to use you as the channel and instrument of His grace. The power
to bear fruit for men has been crowned by power to prevail with God.

“I am the vine, my Father is the Husbandman.” Christ’s work in you is
to bring you so to the Father that His Word may be fulfilled in you:
“At that day ye shall ask in my name; and I say not that I will pray
the Father for you; for the Father himself loveth you.” The power of
direct access to the Father for men, the liberty of intercession
claiming and receiving blessing for them in faith, is the highest
exercise of our union with Christ. Let all who would truly and fully be
branches give themselves to the work of intercession. It is the one
great work of Christ the Vine in Heaven, the source of power for all
His work. Make it your one great work as branch: it will be the power
of all your work.

In My name. Yes, Lord, in Thy name, the new name Thou hast given
Thyself here, the true Vine. As a branch, abiding in Thee in entire
devotion, in full dependence, in perfect conformity, in abiding
fruitfulness, I come to the Father, in Thee, and He will give what I
ask. Oh, let my life be one of unceasing and prevailing intercession!
Amen!

 

Prayer and Divine Providence (Continued)

A proper idea of prayer is the pouring out of the soul before God, with the hand of faith placed on the head of the Sacrificial Offering, imploring mercy, and presenting itself a free-will offering of itself unto God, giving up body, soul and spirit, to be guided and governed as may seem good to His heavenly wisdom, desiring only perfectly to love Him, and to serve Him with all its powers, at all times, while He has a being.—Adam Clarke

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TWO kinds of providences are seen in God’s dealings with men, direct providences and permissive providences. God orders some things, others He permits. But when He permits an afflictive dispensation to come into the life of His saint, even though it originate in a wicked mind, and it be the act of a sinner, yet before it strikes His saint and touches him, it becomes God’s providence to the saint. In other words, God consents to some things in this world, without in the least being responsible for them, or in the least excusing him who originates them, many of them very painful and afflictive, but such events or things always become to the saint of God the providence of God to him. So that the saint can say in each and all of these sad and distressing experiences, “It is the Lord; let him do what seemeth him good.” Or with the Psalmist, he may say, “I was dumb; I opened not my mouth, because thou didst it.”

This was the explanation of all of Job’s severe afflictions. They came to him in the providence of God, even though they had their origin in the mind of Satan, who devised them and put them into execution. God gave Satan permission to afflict Job, to take away his property, and to rob him of his children. But Job did not attribute these things to blind chance, nor to accident, neither did he charge them to Satanic agency, but said, “The Lord hath given, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” He took these things as coming from his God, whom he feared and served and trusted.

And to the same effect are Job’s words to his wife when she left God out of the question, and wickedly told her husband, “Curse God and die.” Job replied, “Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. What! Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?”

It is no surprise under such a view of God’s dealings with Job that it should be recorded of this man of faith, “In all this did not Job sin with his lips,” and in another place was it said, “In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.” In nothing concerning God and the events of life do men talk more foolishly and even wickedly than in ignorantly making up their judgments on the providences of God in this world. O that we had men after the type of Job, who though afflictions and privations are severe in the extreme, yet they see the hand of God in providence and openly recognize God in it.

The sequel to all these painful experiences are but illustrations of that familiar text of Paul, “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God.” Job received back more in the end than was ever taken away from him. He emerged from under these tremendous troubles with victory, and became till this day the exponent and example of great patience and strong faith in God’s providences. “Ye have heard of the patience of Job,” rings down the line of Divine revelation. God took hold of the evil acts of Satan, and worked them into His plans and brought great good out of them. He made evil work out for good without in the least endorsing the evil or conniving at it.

We have the same gracious truth of Divine providence evidenced in the story of Joseph and his brethren, who sold him wickedly into Egypt and forsook him and deceived their old father. All this had its origin in their evil minds. And yet when it reached God’s plans and purposes, it became God’s providence both to Joseph and to the future of Jacob’s descendants. Hear Joseph as he spoke to his brethren after he had discovered himself to them down in Egypt,-in which he traces all the painful events back to the mind of God and made them have to do with fulfilling God’s purposes concerning Jacob and his posterity:

“Now therefore be not grieved nor angry with yourselves that ye sold me hither; for God did send me before you to preserve life. And God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity on the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance.

“So that it was not you that sent me hither, but God.”
Cowper’s well-known hymn might well be read in this connection, one verse of which is sufficient just now:

“God moves in a mysterious way,
His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.”

The very same line of argument appears in the betrayal of our Lord by Judas. Of course it was the wicked act of an evil man, but it never touched our Lord till the Father gave His consent, and God took the evil design of Judas and worked it into His own plans for the redemption of the world. It did not excuse Judas in the least that good came out of his wicked act, but it does magnify the wisdom and greatness of God in so overruling it as that man’s redemption was secured. It is so always in God’s dealings with man. Things which come to us from second causes are no surprise to God, nor are they beyond His control. His hand can take hold of them in answer to prayer and lie can make afflictions, from whatever quarter they may come, “work for us a more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.”

The providence of God goes before His saints, opens the way, removes difficulties, solves problems and brings deliverances when escape seems hopeless. God brought Israel out of Egypt by the hand of Moses, His chosen leader of that people. They came to the Red Sea. But there were the waters in front, with no crossing nor bridges. On one side were high mountains, and behind came the hosts of Pharaoh. Every avenue of escape was closed. There seemed no hope. Despair almost reigned. But there was one way open which men overlooked, and that was the upward way. A man of prayer, Moses, the man of faith in God, was on the ground. This man of prayer, who recognized God in providence, with commanding force, spoke to the people on this wise:

“Fear ye not; stand still and see the salvation of the Lord.”

With this he lifted up his rod, and according to Divine command, he stretched his hand over the sea. The waters divided, and the command issued forth, “Speak unto the children of Israel that they go forward.” And Israel went over the sea dry shod. God had opened a way, and what seemed an impossible emergency was remarkably turned into a wonderful deliverance. Nor is this the only time that God has interposed in behalf of His people when their way was shut up.

The whole history of the Jews is the story of God’s providence. The Old Testament cannot be accepted as true without receiving the doctrine of a Divine, overruling providence. The Bible is preeminently a Divine revelation. It reveals things. It discovers, uncovers, brings to light things concerning God, His character and His manner of governing this world, and its inhabitants, not discoverable by human reason, by science or by philosophy. The Bible is a book in which God reveals Himself to men. And this is particularly true when we consider God’s care of His creatures and His oversight of the world, His superintendence of its affairs. And to dispute the doctrine of providence is to discredit the entire revelation of God’s Word. Everywhere this Word discovers God’s hand in man’s affairs.

The Old Testament especially, but also the New Testament, is the story of prayer and providence. It is the tale of God’s dealings with men of prayer, men of faith in His direct interference in earth’s affairs, and with God’s manner of superintending the world in the interest of His people and in carrying forward His work in His plans and purposes in creation and redemption.

Praying men and God’s providence go together. This was thoroughly understood by the praying ones of the Scripture. They prayed over everything because God had to do with everything. They took all things to God in prayer because they believed in a Divine providence which had to do with all things. They believed in an ever present God, who had not retired into the secret recesses of space, leaving His saints and His creatures to the mercy of a tyrant, called nature, and its laws, blind, unyielding, with no regard for any one who stood in its way. If that be the correct conception of God, why pray to Him? He is too far away to hear them when they pray, and too unconcerned to trouble Himself about those on earth.
These men of prayer had an implicit faith in a God of special providence, who would gladly, promptly and readily respond to their cries for help in times of need and in seasons of distress.

The so-called “laws of nature” did not trouble them in the least. God was above nature, in control of nature, while nature was but the servant of Almighty God. Nature’s laws were but His own laws, since nature was but the offspring of the Divine hand. Laws of nature might be suspended and no evil would result. Every intelligent person is conversant every day when he sees man overruling and overcoming the law of gravitation, and no one is surprised or raises his hand or voice in horror at the thought of nature’s laws being violated. God is a God of law and order, and all His laws in nature, in providence and in grace work together in perfect accord, with no clash nor disharmony.

God suspends or overcomes the laws of disease and rain often without or independent of prayer. But quite often He does this in answer to prayer. Prayer for rain or for dry weather is not outside the moral government of God, nor is it asking God to violate any law which He has made, but only asking Him to give rain in His own way, according to His own laws. So also the prayer for the rebuking of disease is not a request at war with law either natural or otherwise, but is a prayer in accordance with law, even the law of prayer, a law set in operation by Almighty God as the so-called natural law which governs rain or which controls disease.

The believer in the law of prayer has strong ground on which to base his plea. And the believer in a Divine providence, the companion of prayer, stands equally on strong granite foundations, from which he need not be shaken. These twin doctrines stand fast and will abide forever.

“In every condition, in sickness, in health,
In poverty’s vale or abounding in wealth;
At home or abroad, on the land or the sea,
As thy days may demand shall thy strength ever be.”

Hopefully you have enjoyed reading this great treatise on prayer. There will be more good reading forthcoming. God Bless!

 

Prayer and Divine Providence

Again a poor soul is tempted to doubt the being of a God; arguments by way of reason and wisdom may convince him he may get a little light from them; but sometimes God will come into his soul with an immediate beam and scatter all his doubts, more than a thousand arguments can do; the way of wisdom thus of knowing there is a God, that unties the knot; but the other cuts it in pieces presently; so it is in all temptations else a man goes the way of wisdom and sanctified reason, and looks into his own heart and there sees the work of grace and argues from all God’s dealings with him; yet all these satisfy not a man: but God comes with a light in his spirit and all his bolts and shackles are knocked off in a moment; here we see the way of Wisdom and the way of Revelation.—Thos. Goodwin

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PRAYER and the Divine providence are closely related. They stand in close companionship. They cannot possibly be separated. So closely connected are they that to deny one is to abolish the other. Prayer supposes a providence, while providence is the result of and belongs to prayer. All answers to prayer are but the intervention of the providence of God in the affairs of men. Providence has to do specially with praying people. Prayer, providence and the Holy Spirit are a trinity, which cooperate with each other and are in perfect harmony with one another. Prayer is but the request of man for God through the Holy Spirit to interfere in behalf of him who prays.

What is termed providence is the Divine superintendence over earth and its affairs. It implies gracious provisions which Almighty God makes for all His creatures, animate and inanimate, intelligent or otherwise. Once admit that God is the Creator and Preserver of all men, and concede that He is wise and intelligent, and logically we are driven to the conclusion that Almighty God has a direct superintendence of those whom He has created and whom He preserves in being. In fact creation and preservation suppose a superintending providence. What is called Divine providence is simply Almighty God governing the world for its best interests, and overseeing everything for the good of mankind.

Men talk about a “general providence” as separate from a “special providence.” There is no general providence but what is made up of special providences. A general supervision on the part of God supposes a special and individual supervision of each person, yea, even every creature, animal and all alike.

God is everywhere, watching, superintending, overseeing, governing everything in the highest interest of man, and carrying forward His plans and executing His purposes in creation and redemption. He is not an absentee God. He did not make the world with all that is in it, and turn it over to so-called natural laws, and then retire into the secret places of the universe having no regard for it or for the working of His laws. His hand is on the throttle. The work is not beyond His control. Earth’s inhabitants and its affairs are not running independent of Almighty God.

Any and all providences are special providences, and prayer and this sort of providences work hand in hand. God’s hand is in everything. None are beyond Him nor beneath His notice. Not that God orders everything which comes to pass. Man is still a free agent, but the wisdom of Almighty God comes out when we remember that while man is free, and the devil is abroad in the land, God can superintend and overrule earth’s affairs for the good of man and for His glory, and cause even the wrath of man to praise Him.

Nothing occurs by accident under the superintendence of an all-wise and perfectly just God. Nothing happens by chance in God’s moral or natural government. God is a God of order, a God of law, but none the less a superintendent in the interest of His intelligent and redeemed creatures. Nothing can take place without the knowledge of God.

“His all surrounding sight surveys
Our rising and our rest;
Our public walks, our private ways,
The secrets of our breasts.”

Jesus Christ sets this matter at rest when He says, “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not, therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.”

God cannot be ruled out of the world. The doctrine of prayer brings Him directly into the world, and moves Him to a direct interference with all of this world’s affairs.

To rule Almighty God out of the providences of life is to strike a direct blow at prayer and its efficacy. Nothing takes place in the world without God’s consent, yet not in a sense that He either approves everything or is responsible for all things which happen. God is not the author of sin.

The question is sometimes asked, “Is God in everything?” as if there are some things which are outside of the government of God, beyond His attention, with which He is not concerned. If God is not in everything, what is the Christian doing praying according to Paul’s directions to the Philippians?
“Be careful for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God.”

Are we to pray for some things and about things with which God has nothing to do? According to the doctrine that God is not in everything, then we are outside the realm of God when “in everything we make our requests unto God.”

Then what will we do with that large promise so comforting to all of God’s saints in all ages and in all climes, a promise which belongs to prayer and which is embraced in a special providence: “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God”?

If God is not in everything, then what are the things we are to expect from the “all things” which “work together for good to them that love God”? And if God is not in everything in His providence what are the things which are to be left out of our praying? We can lay it down as a proposition, borne out by Scripture, which has a sure foundation, that nothing ever comes into the life of God’s saints without His consent. God is always there when it occurs. He is not far away. He whose eye is on the sparrow is also upon His saints. His presence which fills immensity is always where His saints are. “Certainly I will be with thee,” is the word of God to every child of His.

“The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him and delivereth them.” And nothing can touch those who fear God only with the permission of the angel of the Lord. Nothing can break through the encampment without the permission of the captain of the Lord’s hosts. Sorrows, afflictions, want, trouble, or even death, cannot enter this Divine encampment without the consent of Almighty God, and even then it is to be used by God in His plans for the good of His saints and for carrying out His plans and purposes:

“For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,

“Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

These evil things, unpleasant and afflictive, may come with Divine permission, but God is on the spot, His hand is in all of them, and He sees to it that they are woven into His plans. He causes them to be overruled for the good of His people, and eternal good is brought out of them. These things, with hundreds of others, belong to the disciplinary processes of Almighty God in administering His government for the children of men.

The providence of God reaches as far as the realm of prayer. It has to do with everything for which we pray. Nothing is too small for the eye of God, nothing too insignificant for His notice and His care. God’s providence has to do with even the stumbling of the feet of His saints:

“For he shall give his angels charge concerning thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.

“They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.”

Read again our Lord’s words about the sparrow, for He says, “Five sparrows are sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God.” Paul asks the pointed question, “Doth God care for oxen?” His care reaches to the smallest things and has to do with the most insignificant matters which concern men. He who believes in the God of providence is prepared to see His hand in all things which come to him, and can pray over everything.

Not that the saint who trusts the God of providence, and who takes all things to God in prayer, can explain the mysteries of Divine providence, but the praying ones recognize God in everything, see Him in all that comes to them, and are ready to say as John said to Peter at the Sea of Galilee, “It is the Lord.”
Praying saints do not presume to interpret God’s dealings with them nor undertake to explain God’s providences, but they have learned to trust God in the dark as well as in the light, to have faith in God even when “cares like a wild deluge come, and storms of sorrow fall.”

“Though he slay me, yet will I trust him.” Praying saints rest themselves upon the words of Jesus to Peter, “What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter.” None but the praying ones can see God’s hands in the providences of life. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” shall see God here in His providences, in His Word, in His Church. These are they who do not rule God out of earth’s affairs, and who believe God interferes with matters of earth for them.

While God’s providence is over all men, yet His supervision and administration of His government are peculiarly in the interest of His people.

Prayer brings God’s providence into action. Prayer puts God to work in overseeing and directing earth’s affairs for the good of men. Prayer opens the way when it is shut up or straitened.

Providence deals more especially with temporalities. It is in this realm that the providence of God shines brightest and is most apparent. It has to do with food and raiment, with business difficulties, with strangely interposing and saving from danger, and with helping in emergencies at very opportune and critical times.

The feeding of the Israelites during the wilderness journey is a striking illustration of the providence of God in taking care of the temporal wants of His people. His dealings with those people show how He provided for them in that long pilgrimage.

“Day by day the manna fell,
O to learn this lesson well!
Still by constant mercy fed,
Give me, Lord, my daily bread.

“Day by day the promise reads,
Daily strength for daily needs;
Cast foreboding fears away,
Take the manna of to-day.”

Our Lord teaches this same lesson of a providence which clothes and feeds His people, in the Sermon on the Mount, when He says, “Take no thought what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on.” Then He directs attention to the fact that it is God’s providence which feeds the fowls of the air, clothes the lilies of the field, and asks if God does all this for birds and flowers, will He not care for them?

All of this teaching leads up to the need of a childlike, implicit trust in an overruling providence, which looks after the temporal wants of the children of men. And let it be noted specially that all this teaching stands closely connected in the utterances of our Lord with what He says about prayer, thus closely connecting a Divine oversight with prayer and its promises.

We have an impressive lesson on Divine providence in the case of Elijah when he was sent to the brook Cherith, where God actually employed the ravens to feed His prophet. Here was an interposition so plain that God cannot be ruled out of life’s temporalities. Before God will allow His servant to want bread, He moves the birds of the air to do His bidding and take care of His prophet.

Nor was this all. When the brook ran dry, God sent him to a poor widow, who had just enough meal and oil for the urgent needs of the good woman and her son. Yet she divided with him her last morsel of bread. What was the result? The providence of God interposed, and as long as the drouth lasted, the cruse of oil never failed nor did the meal in the barrel give out.

The Old Testament sparkles with illustrations of the provisions of Almighty God for His people, and show clearly God’s overruling providence. In fact the Old Testament is largely the account of a providence which dealt with a peculiar people, anticipating their every temporal want, which ministered to them when in emergencies, and which sanctified to them their troubles.

It is worth while to read that old hymn of Newton’s, which has in it so much of the providence of God:

“Though troubles assail, and dangers affright,
Though friends should all fail, and foes all unite,
Yet one thing secures me, whatever betide,
The promise assures us, the Lord will provide.

“The birds without barns, or storehouse are fed,
From them let us learn, to trust for our bread;
His saints what is fitting, shall ne’er be denied,
So long as it’s written, the Lord will provide.”

In fact many of our old hymns are filled with sentiments in song about a Divine providence, which are worth while to be read and sung even in this day.

God is in the most afflictive and sorrowing events of life. All such events are subjects of prayer, and this is so for the reason that everything which comes into the life of the praying one is in the providence of God, and takes place under His superintending hand. Some would rule God out of the sad and hard things of life. They tell us that God has nothing to do with certain events which bring such grief to us. They say that God is not in the death of children, that they die from natural causes, and that it is but the working of natural laws.

Let us ask what are nature’s laws but the laws of God, the laws by which God rules the world? And what is nature anyway? And who made nature? How great the need to know that God is above nature, is in control of nature, and is in nature? We need to know that nature or natural laws are but the servants of Almighty God who made these laws, and that He is directly in them, and they are but the Divine servants to carry out God’s gracious designs, and are made to execute His gracious purposes. The God of providence, the God to whom the Christians pray, and the God who interposes in behalf of the children of men for their good, is above nature, in perfect and absolute control of all that belongs to nature. And no law of nature can crush the life out of even a child without God giving His consent, and without such a sad event occurring directly under His all-seeing eye, and without His being immediately present.

David believed this doctrine when he fasted and prayed for the life of his child, for why pray and fast for a baby to be spared, if God has nothing to do with its death should it die?

Moreover, “does care for oxen,” and have a direct oversight of the sparrows which fall to the ground, and yet have nothing to do with the going out of this world of an immortal child? Still further, the death of a child, no matter if it should come alone as some people claim by the operation of the laws of nature, let it be kept in mind that it is a great affliction to the parents of the child. Where do these innocent parents come in under any such doctrine? It becomes a great sorrow to mother and father. Are they not to recognize the hand of God in the death of the child? And is there no providence or Divine oversight in the taking away of their child to them? David recognized the facts clearly that God had to do with keeping his child in life; that prayer might avail in saving his child from death, and that when the child died it was because God had ordered it. Prayer and providence in all this affair worked in harmonious cooperation, and David thoroughly understood it. No child ever dies without the direct permission of Almighty God, and such an event takes place in His providence for wise and beneficent ends. God works it into His plans concerning the child himself and the parents and all concerned. Moreover, it is a subject of prayer whether the child lives or dies.

“In each event of life how clear,
Thy ruling hand I see;
Each blessing to my soul most dear,
Because conferred by Thee.”

 

Wonders of God Through Prayer

Wisdom and Revelation distinguished by Experience and Scripture. By Experience. Take a weak understanding (but one exceeding holy), having little knowledge of God by way of discursive wisdom and laying this thing to that, and so knowing God: such poor soul is oftentimes hardly able to speak wisely and he will know more of God in one prayer than a great scholar (though also very holy) hath known of Him in all his life; God often deals thus with the weak who are very holy; for if such were shut up to knowing God by way of a sanctified reason, large understandings would have infinite advantage of them and they would grow little in grace and holiness; therefore God makes a supply by breaking in upon their spirits by such irradiations as these.—Thos. Goodwin

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IN the fearful contest in this world between God and the devil, between good and evil, and between heaven and hell, prayer is the mighty force for overcoming Satan, giving dominion over sin, and defeating hell. Only praying leaders are to be counted on in this dreadful conflict. Praying men alone are to be put to the front. These are the only sort who are able to successfully contend with all the evil forces.

The “prayers of all saints” are a perpetual force against all the powers of darkness. These prayers are a mighty energy in overcoming the world, the flesh and the devil and in shaping the destiny of God’s movements, to overcome evil and get the victory over the devil and all his works. The character and energy of God’s movements lie in prayer. Victory is to come at the end of praying.

The wonders of God’s power are to be kept alive, made real and present, and repeated only by prayer. God is not now so evident in the world, so almighty in manifestation as of old, not because miracles have passed away, nor because God has ceased to work, but because prayer has been shorn of its simplicity, its majesty, and its power. God still lives, and miracles still live while God lives and acts, for miracles are

God’s ways of acting. Prayer is dwarfed, withered and petrified when faith in God is staggered by doubts of His ability, or through the shrinking caused by fear. When faith has a telescopic, far-off vision of God, prayer works no miracles, and brings no marvels of deliverance. But when God is seen by faith’s closest, fullest eye, prayer makes a history of wonders.

Think about God. Make much of Him, till He broadens and fills the horizon of faith. Then prayer will come into its marvellous inheritance of wonders. The marvels of prayer are seen when we remember that God’s purposes are changed by prayer, God’s vengeance is stayed by prayer, and God’s penalty is remitted by prayer. The whole range of God’s dealing with man is affected by prayer. Here is a force which must be increasingly used, that of prayer, a force to which all the events of life ought to be subjected.

To “pray without ceasing,” to pray in everything, and to pray everywhere-these commands of continuity are expressive of the sleepless energy of prayer, of the exhaustless possibilities of prayer, and of its exacting necessity. Prayer can do all things. Prayer must do all things.

“Prayer is the simplest form of speech
That infant lips can try;
Prayer the sublimest strains that reach
The majesty on high.”

Prayer is asking God for something, and for something which He has promised. Prayer is using the divinely appointed means for obtaining what we need and for accomplishing what God proposes to do on earth.

“Prayer is appointed to convey
The blessings God designs to give;
Long as they live should Christians pray,
They learn to pray when first they live.”

And prayer brings to us blessings which we need, and which only God can give, and which prayer can alone convey to us.

In their broadest fullness, the possibilities of prayer are to be found in the very nature of prayer. This service of prayer is not a mere rite, a ceremony through which we go, a sort of performance. Prayer is going to God for something needed and desired. Prayer is simply asking God to do for us what He has promised us He will do if we ask Him. The answer is a part of prayer, and is God’s part of it. God’s doing the thing asked for is as much a part of the prayer as the asking of the thing is prayer. Asking is man’s part. Giving is God’s part. The praying belongs to us. The answer belongs to God.

Man makes the plea and God makes the answer. The plea and the answer compose the prayer. God is more ready, more willing and more anxious to give the answer than man is to give the asking. The possibilities of prayer lie in the ability of man to ask large things and in the ability of God to give large things.

God’s only condition and limitation of prayer is found in the character of the one who prays. The measure of our faith and praying is the measure of His giving. Like as our Lord said to the blind man, “According to your faith be it unto you,” so it is the same in praying, “According to the measure of your asking, be it unto you.” God measures the answer according to the prayer. He is limited by the law of prayer in the measure of the answers He gives to prayer. As is the measure of prayer, so will be the answer.

If the person praying has the characteristics which warrant praying, then the possibilities are illimitable. They are declared to be “all things whatsoever.” Here is no limitation in character or kind, in circumference or condition. The man who prays can pray for anything and for everything, and God will give everything and anything. If we limit God in the asking, He will be limited in the giving.

Looking ahead, God declares in His Word that the wonder of wonders will be so great in the last days that everything animate and inanimate will be excited by His power:

“For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former shall not be remembered nor come to mind.

“But be ye glad and rejoice, forever, in that which I create; for behold I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy.”

But these days of God’s mighty working, the days of His magnificent and wonder-creating power, will be days of magnificent praying.

“And it shall come to pass that before they call, I will answer, and while they are yet speaking, I will hear.”

It has ever been so. God’s marvellous, miracle-working times have been times of marvellous, miracle-working praying. The greatest thing in God’s worship by His own estimate is praying. Its chief service and its distinguishing feature is prayer:

“Even them will I bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt offering and their sacrifices shall be accepted upon my altar, for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all people.”

This was true under all the gorgeous rites and parade of ceremonies under the Jewish worship. Sacrifice, offering and the atoning blood were all to be impregnated with prayer. The smoke of burnt offering and perfumed incense which filled God’s house was to be but the flame of prayer, and all of God’s people were to be anointed priests to minister at His altar of prayer. So all things were to be done with mighty prayer, because mighty prayer was the fruitage and inspiration of mighty faith. But much more is it now true every way under the more simple service of the Gospel.

The course of nature, the movements of the planets, and the clouds, have yielded to the influence of prayer, and God has changed and checked the order of the sun and the seasons under the mighty energies of prayer. It is only necessary to note the remarkable incident when Joshua, through this divine means of prayer, caused the sun and the moon to stand still in order that a more complete victory could be given to the armies of Israel in the contest with the armies of the Amorites.

If we believe God’s word, we are bound to believe that prayer affects God, and affects Him mightily; that prayer avails, and that prayer avails mightily. There are wonders in prayer because there are wonders in God. Prayer has no talismanic influence. It is no mere fetish. It has no so-called powers of magic. It is simply making known our requests to God for things agreeable to His will in the name of Christ. It is just yielding our requests to a Father, who knows all things, who has control of all things, and who is able to do all things. Prayer is infinite ignorance trusting to the wisdom of God. Prayer is the voice of need crying out to Him who is inexhaustible in resources. Prayer is helplessness reposing with childlike confidence on the word of its Father in heaven. Prayer is but the verbal expression of the heart of perfect confidence in the infinite wisdom, the power and the riches of Almighty God, who has placed at our command in prayer everything we need.

How all the gracious results of such gracious times are to come to the world through prayer, we are taught in God’s Word. God’s heart seems to overflow with delight at the prospect of thus blessing His people. By the mouth of the Prophet Joel, God thus speaks:

“Fear not, O land; be glad and rejoice; for the Lord will do great things.

“Be not afraid, ye beasts of the field; for the pastures of the wilderness do spring, for the tree beareth her fruit, the fig-tree and the vine do yield their strength.

“Be glad then, ye children of Zion, and rejoice in the Lord your God; for he hath given you the former rain moderately, and he will cause to come down for you the rain, the former rain, and the latter rain in the first month.

“And the floors shall be full of wheat, and the fats shall overflow with wine and oil.

“And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the canker worm and the caterpillar, and the palmer worm, my great army which I sent among you.

“And ye shall eat in plenty, and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God, that hath dealt wondrously with you; and my people shall never be ashamed.

“And ye shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I am the Lord your God, and none else; and my people shall never be ashamed.”

What wonderful material things are these which God proposes to bestow upon His people! They are marvellous temporal blessings He promises to bestow on them. They almost astonish the mind when they are studied. But God does not restrict His large blessings to temporal things. Looking down the ages, He foresees Pentecost, and makes these exceeding great and precious promises concerning the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, these very words being quoted by Peter on that glad day of Pentecost:

“And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions;

“And also upon the servants and upon the handmaidens in those days will I pour out my Spirit.

“And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke;

“The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the Lord shall come.

“And it shall come to pass that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered; for in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as the Lord hath said, and in the remnant whom the Lord shall call.”

But these marvellous blessings will not be bestowed upon the people by sovereign power, nor be given unconditionally. God’s people must do something precedent to such glorious results. Fasting and prayer must play an important part as conditions of receiving such large blessings. By the mouth of the same prophet, God thus speaks:

“Therefore also now, saith the Lord, turn ye to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning;

“And rend your heart, and not your garments; and turn unto the Lord your God; for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil.

“Who knoweth if he will turn and repent, and leave a blessing behind him, even a meat offering, and a drink offering, unto the Lord your God?

“Blow the trumpet in Zion; sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly.

“Gather the people; sanctify the congregation; assemble the elders; gather the children; and those that suck the breasts; let the bridegroom go forth of his chamber, and the bride out of her closet.

“Let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, Spare thy people, O Lord, and give not thine heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule over them; Wherefore should they say among the people, Where is their God?

“Then will the Lord be jealous for his land, and pity his people.

“Yea, the Lord will answer and say unto his people, Behold I will send you corn, and wine, and oil, and ye shall be satisfied therewith; and I will no more make you a reproach among the heathen.”

Prayer reaches even as far as does the presence of God go. It reaches everywhere because God is everywhere. Let us read from Psa_139:1 :

“If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there; if I make my bed in hell, behold thou art there.

“If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost part of the sea;

“Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.”

This may be said as truly of prayer as it is said of the God of prayer. The mysteries of death have been fathomed by prayer, and its victims have been brought back to life by the power of prayer, because God holds dominion over death, and prayer reaches where God reigns. Elisha and Elijah both invaded the realms of death by their prayers, and asserted and established the power of God as the power of prayer. Peter by prayer brings back to life the saintly Dorcas to the early Church. Paul doubtless exercised the power of prayer as he fell upon and embraced Eutychus who fell out of the window when Paul preached at night.

Our Lord several times explicitly declared the far-reaching possibilities and the illimitable nature of prayer as covering “all things whatsoever.” The conditions of prayer are exalted into a personal union with Himself. That successful praying glorified God was the condition upon which labourers of first quality and sufficient in numbers were to be secured in order to press forward God’s work in the world. The giving of all good things is conditioned upon asking for them. The giving of the Holy Spirit to God’s children is based upon the asking of the children of God. God’s will on earth can only be secured by prayer. Daily bread is obtained and sanctified by prayer. Reverence, forgiveness of sins, and deliverance from the evil one, and salvation from temptation, are in the hands of prayer.

The first jewelled foundation Christ lays as the basic principle of His religion in the Sermon on the Mount reads on this wise: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” As prayer follows from the inner sense of need, and prayer is the utterance of a deep poverty-stricken spirit, so it is evident he who is “poor in spirit” is where he can pray and where he does pray.

Prayer is a tremendous force in the world. Take this picture of prayer and its wonderful possibilities. God’s cause is quiet and motionless on the earth. An angel, strong and impatient to be of service, waits round about the throne of God in heaven, and in order to move things on earth and give impetus to the movements of God’s cause in this world, he gathers all the prayers of all God’s saints in all ages, and puts them before God just like Aaron used to cloud, flavour and sweeten himself with the delicious incense when he entered the holy sanctuary, made awful by the immediate presence of God. The angel impregnates all the air with that holy offering of prayers, and then takes its fiery body and casts it on the earth.

Note the remarkable result. “There were voices and thunderings and lightnings and an earthquake.” What tremendous force is this which has thus convulsed the earth? The answer is that it is the “prayers of the saints,” turned loose by the angel round about the throne, who has charge of those prayers. This mighty force is prayer, like the power of earth’s mightiest dynamite.

Take another fact showing the wonders of prayer wrought by Almighty God in answer to the praying of His true prophet. The nation of God’s people was fearfully apostate in head and heart and life. A man of God went to the apostate king with the fearful message which meant so much to the land, “There shall not be rain nor dew these years but according to my word.” Whence this mighty force which can stay the clouds, seal up the rain, and hold back the dew? Who is this who speaks with such authority? Is there any force which can do this on earth? Only one, and that force is prayer, wielded in the hands of a praying prophet of God. It is he who has influence with God and over God in prayer, who thus dares to assume such authority over the forces of nature. This man Elijah is skilled in the use of that tremendous force.

“And Elijah prayed earnestly, and it rained not on the earth for three years and six months.”

But this is not all the story. He who could by prayer lock up the clouds and seal up the rain, could also unlock. the clouds and unseal the rain by the same mighty power of prayer. “And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth gave forth her fruit.”

Mighty is the power of prayer. Wonderful are its fruits. Remarkable things are brought to pass by men of prayer. Many are the wonders of prayer wrought by an Almighty hand. The evidences of prayer’s accomplishments almost stagger us. They challenge our faith. They encourage our expectations when we pray.

From a cursory compend like this, we get a bird’s-eye view of the large possibilities of prayer and the urgent necessity of prayer. We see how God commits Himself into the hands of those who truly pray. Great are the wonders of prayer because great is the God who hears and answers prayer. Great are these wonders because great are the rich promises made by a great God to those who pray.

We have seen prayer’s far-reaching possibilities and its absolute, unquestioned necessity, and we have also seen that the foregoing particulars and elaboration were requisite in order to bring the subject more clearly, truly and strongly before our minds. The Church more than ever needs profound convictions of the vast importance of prayer in prosecuting the work committed to it. More praying must be done and better praying if the Church shall be able to perform the difficult, delicate and responsible task given to it by her Lord and Master. Defeat awaits a non-praying Church. Success is sure to follow a Church given to much prayer. The supernatural element in the Church, without which it must fail, comes only through praying. More time, in this busy bustling age, must be given to prayer by a God-called Church. More thought must be given to prayer in this thoughtless, silly age of superficial religion. More heart and soul must be in the praying that is done if the Church would go forth in the strength of her Lord and perform the wonders which is her heritage by Divine promise.

“O Spirit of the Living God,
In all thy plenitude of grace,
Where’er the foot of man hath trod,
Descend on our apostate race.

“Give tongues of fire and hearts of love,
To preach the reconciling word,
Give power and unction from above,
Where’er the joyful sound is heard.”

It might be in order to give an instance or two in the life of Rev. John Wesley, showing some remarkable displays of spiritual power. Many times it is stated this noted man gathered his company together, and prayed all night, or till the mighty power of God came upon them. It was at a Watch Night service, at Fetter Lane, December 31, 1738, when Charles and John Wesley, with Whitfield, sat up till after midnight singing and praying. This is the account:

“About three o’clock in the morning, as we were continuing instant in prayer, the power of God came mightily upon us, so that many cried out for exceeding joy, and many fell to the ground. As soon as we had recovered a little from that awe and amazement at the presence of His Majesty, we broke out with one voice, ‘We praise thee, O God! We acknowledge thee to be the Lord!’”

On another occasion, Mr. Wesley gives us this account:

“After midnight, about a hundred of us walked home together, singing, rejoicing and praising God.”
Often does this godly man make the record to this effect, “We continued in ministering the Word and in prayer and praise till morning.”

One of his all-night wrestlings in prayer alone with God is said to have greatly affected a Catholic priest, who was really awakened by the occurrence to a realization of his spiritual condition.

As often as God manifested His power in Scriptural times in working wonders through prayer, He has not left Himself without witness in modern times. Prayer brings the Holy Spirit upon men to-day in answer to importunate, continued prayer just as it did before Pentecost. The wonders of prayer have not ceased.