The Secret Power in Prayer (Charles H. Spurgeon, 1888)

John 15:7

“If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.” 

Beloved, the gifts of grace are not immediately enjoyed by new believers. Coming to Christ, we are saved by a true union with him; but it is by remaining in that union that we further receive the purity, the joy, the power, and the blessedness, which are stored up in him for his people. Notice how our Lord states this when he speaks to the believing Jews in the eighth chapter of this gospel, at the thirty-first and thirty-second verses, “To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, ‘If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." We do not know all the truth at once: we learn it by remaining in Jesus. Perseverance in grace is an educational process by which we fully learn the truth. The emancipating power of that truth is also gradually perceived and enjoyed. “The truth will set you free.” One chain after another breaks, and we are truly set free. You that are new to the Christian life may be encouraged to know that there is still something better for you: you have not yet received the full reward for your faith. You will have joyful views of heavenly things as you climb the hill of spiritual experience. As you remain in Christ you will have firmer confidence, richer joy, greater stability, more communion with Jesus, and greater delight in the Lord your God. Infancy is troubled with many evils and problems from which manhood is exempt: it is the same in the spiritual as in the natural world.
There are these degrees of attainment among believers, and the Savior here motivates us to reach a high position by mentioning a certain privilege which is not for everyone who says that they are in Christ, but for only those who remain in him. Every believer must remain in Christ, but many have hardly earned the name yet. Jesus says, “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.” You have to live with Christ to know him, and the longer you live with him the more will you admire and adore him; yes, and the more will you receive from him, grace for grace. Truly, for the person who is only a month old in grace, Christ is most blessed; but these babes can hardly tell what a precious Jesus he is to those who have known him for nearly half a century! To them Jesus grows sweeter and dearer, fairer and lovelier, day by day. Not that he improves in himself, for he is perfect; but that as we increase in our knowledge of him, we appreciate more thoroughly his unparalleled majesty and excellence. How vividly do his old acquaintances exclaim, “He is altogether lovely!” Oh, that we may continue to grow in knowledge of him in all things who is our master, so that we may treasure him more and more!
I ask for your serious attention to our text, begging you to consider with me three questions.
1. First, what is this special blessing? “Ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.”
2. Secondly, how is this special blessing obtained? “If you remain in me and my words remain in you.”
3. Then, thirdly, why is it obtained in this way? Why is it that by remaining in Christ, and having his words remain in us, that we get this liberty and power in prayer?
Oh, that the anointing of the Holy Spirit which remains on us may now make this subject very profitable to us!
I. WHAT IS THIS SPECIAL BLESSING?
Let us read the verse again. Jesus says, “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.”
Observe that our Lord has been warning us that, without him, we can do nothing, and, therefore, we might naturally have expected that he would now show us how we can do all spiritual acts. But the text does not run as we would have expected it to run. The Lord Jesus does not say, “Without me you can do nothing, but, if you remain in me and my words remain in you, you will do all spiritual and gracious things.” He doesn’t speak of what they themselves would be enabled to do, but of what would be given to them: “it will be given you.” He does not say, “Sufficient strength will be given to you for all those holy deeds of which you are incapable of apart from me.” That would have been true, and it is the truth which we expected here; but our most wise Lord goes well beyond what our hearts might have expected and says something even better. He does not say, “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, you will do spiritual things”; but rather, “ask whatever you wish.” By prayer you will be enabled to do spiritual acts; but before all attempts to do them, “ask whatever you wish.” The choice privilege given here is a promise of powerful and successful prayers. Power in prayer is very much the gauge of our spiritual condition; and when that is highly evident in our lives, then we are blessed in every area of our lives.
One of the first results, then, of our remaining in Christ will be that we will pray to Him, “asking him whatever we wish.”
If others neither seek, nor knock, nor ask, yet we will. Those who stay away from Jesus do not pray. Those who neglect to have communion with Christ feel as if they are unable to pray; but Jesus says, “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish.” Prayer is spontaneous to those who remain in Jesus. Prayer is the natural outflow of a soul in communion with Jesus. Just as the leaf and the fruit will come out of the branch, without any conscious effort on the part of the branch, but simply because of its living union with the stem, so prayer buds, and blossoms, and fruits come out of souls remaining in Jesus. Just like stars shine, so do those who remain in Christ pray. It is their purpose and their second nature. They do not say to themselves, “Now it is the time for us to do our duty and pray.” No, they pray just like men eat, namely, when the desire comes upon them. They don’t cry out like those in bondage, saying, “I should be in prayer right now, but I do not feel like it. What a burden it is!” Rather they are happy and rejoice to go to the mercy-seat. Hearts that remain in Christ send forth supplications just like fires send out flames and sparks. Souls that remain in Jesus begin the day with prayer; prayer surrounds them like an atmosphere all day long; at night they fall asleep praying. I have known them to even dream a prayer, and, at any rate, they are joyfully able to say, “When I awake, I am still with you.” Habitual asking comes from remaining in Christ. You will not need to be urged to prayer when you remain in Jesus: he says, “Ask whatever you wish;” and depend on it, you will.
Another result of our remaining in Christ will be that we will most powerfully feel the necessity of prayer. Our great need of prayer will be clearly seen.
Do I hear you say, “I thought we have attained everything when we remain in Christ and his words remain in us?” Far from being satisfied with ourselves; it is then that we feel more than ever that we must ask for more grace. He that knows Christ best, knows his own needs best. He that is most conscious of life in Christ, is also most convinced of his own death apart from Christ. He who most clearly discerns the perfect character of Jesus, will be most urgent in prayer for grace to grow like him. The more I seek to remain in my Lord, the more I desire to obtain from him, since I know that all that is in him is put there for the purpose that I may receive it. The Bible says, “From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another” [John 1:16]. It is in direct proportion as we are linked to Christ’s fullness that we feel the necessity of drawing from it by constant prayer.
Nobody needs to prove the doctrine of prayer to someone who remains in Christ, for we enjoy the personal experience of prayer itself. Prayer is now as much a necessity to our spiritual life as breath is to our natural life: we cannot live without asking favors from the Lord. “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish”: and you will not want to stop asking. He has said, “Seek my face,” and your heart will answer, “Lord, I will seek your face.”
We note next, that the fruit of our remaining in Christ is not only the exercise of prayer, and a sense of the necessity of prayer, but it also includes liberty in prayer: “ask whatever you wish.”
Haven’t you been on your knees at times without any power to pray? Haven’t you felt that you could not plead with God as you desired? You wanted to pray, but the waters were frozen, and would not flow. Sadly, you said, “I can’t pray.” The will was present, but not the freedom to present that will in prayer.
Dear friends, do you desire freedom in prayer, so that you may speak with God as a man speaks with his friend? Then here is the way to do it: “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish.” I don’t mean that you will gain freedom as to mere eloquence of speech, for that is a very inferior gift. Eloquence in prayer is a questionable endowment, especially when it does not include the weight of thought and depth of feeling. Some Christians pray long prayers; but true prayer is measured by weight, and not by length. A single groan before God may have more fullness of prayer in it than a fine discourse of great length. Whoever dwells with God in Christ Jesus, they are the ones most active in prayer. They come boldly because they remain at the throne. They see the golden scepter stretched out, and hears the King saying, “Ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.” It is the person who remains in conscious union with their Lord who has the greatest freedom in prayer. It is easy for them to often come to Christ, for they are in Christ, and remain in him. Don’t attempt to exercise this holy freedom by excitement, or presumption: there is only one way of really obtaining it, and here it is--“If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish” Only by this way will you be enabled to open your mouth wide, so that God may fill it. Thus you will have power with God.
This is not all: those that remain in Christ have the privilege of successful prayer. “Ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.”
You can’t get it on your own, but it will be given to you. You long to bear fruit: ask, and it will be given you. Look at the vine branch. It simply remains in the vine, and by remaining in the vine the fruit comes from it; it is given to it. Brothers and Sisters in Christ, the purpose of your life, its one object and aim, is to bear fruit to the glory of the Father: to gain this end you must remain in Christ, as the branch remains in the vine. This is the method by which your prayer for fruitfulness will become successful, “it will be given you.” You will have wonderful power with God in prayer, insomuch that before you pray he will answer, and while you are still speaking he will hear. “The desire of the righteous will be granted.” “Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart” [Psalm 37:4]. There is great latitude in our text, “Ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.” The Lord gives carte blanche to those who remain in him. He puts into their hand a signed check, and permits them to fill in any amount they wish.
Does the text mean what it says? I never knew my Lord to say anything he did not mean. I am sure that he may sometimes mean more than we understand him to say, but he never means less. Mind you, he does not say to all men and women, “I will give you whatever you ask.” Oh no, that would be a cruel kindness: but he speaks to his disciples, and says, “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.” It is to a certain class of men and women who have already received abundant grace at his hands--it is to them that he gives this marvelous power of prayer. O my dear friends, if I may earnestly desire one thing above every other, it is this; that I may be able to ask what I wish of the Lord, and have it given to me. The minister who is diligent in prayer is the man that will find success in his preaching, for he should be able to prevail with man for God when he has already prevailed with God for men. This is also true for the man facing difficulties in any line of business; for what can baffle him when he can take everything to God in prayer? This kind of man or woman in a church, is worth ten thousand of us common people. In these we find the nobility of the skies. In these are the men and women in whom is fulfilled God’s purpose concerning mankind, whom he made to have dominion over his creation. The stamp of sovereignty is on the foreheads of these men and women: they shape the history of the nations, they guide the current of events through their power in prayer with the Almighty God. We see Jesus with all things put under him by the divine purpose, and as we rise into that image, we too are clothed with dominion, and are made kings and priests unto God. See Elijah, with the keys of the rain swinging at his side: he shuts or opens the windows of heaven! There are such men and women still alive today. Aspire to be such men and women, I beg you, that in you, the text may be fulfilled. “Ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.”
Additionally, the text seems to imply that, if we reach this point of freedom in prayer, this gift will be continual: “Ask,” you will always ask; you will never stop asking, but you will ask successfully, for “ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.” Here we have the gift of continual prayer.
This prevailing power in prayer is not just for a week of prayer, nor for a month of prayer, nor just for a few special occasions; but you will possess this power with God as long as you remain in Christ, and his words remain in you--read the Bible, memorize Scripture, love the Word, love Christ with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength! God will put his omnipotence at your disposal: The entire Trinity will be available to fulfill the desires which the Holy Spirit has planted in you. I wish I could make this jewel glitter before the eyes of all the saints till they cried out, “Oh that we had such power in prayer!” This power in prayer is like the sword of Goliath: may every David say, “There is none like it; give it me.”
This weapon of prevailing prayer defeats the enemy, and, at the same time, enriches its possessor with all the wealth of God. How can anyone lack anything to whom the Lord has said, “Ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.”? Oh, come, let us seek this blessing. Listen, and learn the way. Follow me, while by the light of the text I point out the path. May the Lord lead us in it by his Holy Spirit!
II. How does one obtain the privilege of having powerful prayers? The answer is, “If you remain in me and my words remain in you.” Here are the two feet by which we climb to power with God in prayer.
Beloved, the first part of our text tells us that we are to remain in Christ Jesus our Lord. It is taken for granted that we are already in him. Can it be taken for granted in your case too, dear listener? If so, you are to remain where you are. As believers we are to remain tenaciously clinging to Jesus, lovingly knit to Jesus.
We are to remain in him, by always trusting him, and him only, with the same simple faith which joined us to him in the beginning.
We must never admit any other thing or person into our heart’s confidence as our hope of salvation, but rest alone in Jesus as we received him at the first. His divinity, his manhood, his life, his death, his resurrection, his glory at the right hand of the Father--in a word, Jesus himself must be our heart’s sole reliance. This is absolutely essential. A temporary faith will not save: a continuing faith is needed.
But remaining in the Lord Jesus does not only mean trusting in him; it includes our yielding ourselves up to him to receive his life, and to let that life work out its results in us.
We remain in him when we live by him, for him, and to him. We feel that all our separate life has gone: for “we have died, and our life is now hidden with Christ in God.” [Colossians 3:3] We are nothing if we do not remain in Jesus; we would be withered branches, and fit only to be thrown into the fire. We have no reason for existence except that which we find in Christ; and what a marvelous reason that is! The vine needs the branch as truly as the branch needs the vine. No vine ever bore any fruit except on its branches. Truly it produces all the branches, and so produces all the fruit; but yet it is by the branch that the vine displays its fruitfulness. Thus believers that remain in Christ are necessary to the fulfillment of their Lord’s design. What a wonderful statement, that the saints are also essential to their Savior! The church is his body; His fullness fills everyone. I want you to recognize this, so that you may see your blessed responsibility, your practical obligation to produce fruit, that the Lord Jesus may be glorified in you. Remain in him. Never cease from being dedicated to his honor and glory. Never dream of being your own master. Don’t be the servant of men, but remain in Christ. Let Jesus be the object, as well as the source, of your existence. Oh, if you can so dedicate and consecrate yourselves that you achieve perpetual communion with your Lord, then you will soon realize a joy, a delight, a power in prayer, such as you never knew before.
There are times when we are conscious that we are in Christ, and we know and sense our fellowship with him; and oh, the joy and the peace which we drink from this cup! Let us remain there. “Remain in me,” says Jesus. You are not to come and go, but to remain. Let that blessed sinking of yourself into his life, the spending of all your powers for Jesus, and the firm faith of your union with him continually remain in you. Oh, that we might attain to this by the Holy Spirit!
As if to help us to understand this, our gracious Lord has given us a delightful parable. Let us look through this discourse of the vine and its branches. Jesus says, “…every branch in me that bears…fruit [I will] prune so that it will be even more fruitful” [John 15:2]. Be careful that you remain in Christ when you are being pruned. “Oh,” someone says, “I thought I was a Christian; but, sadly! I now have more troubles than ever before: men ridicule me, the devil tempts me, and my business affairs go wrong.” Brother, if you are to have power in prayer you must be careful that you remain in Christ when the sharp pruning knife is cutting everything away. Endure the trial, and never dream of giving up your faith because of it. Say, “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him” [Job 13:15] Your Lord warned you when you first came into the vine that you would have to be pruned and cut closely; and if you are now feeling the pruning process, you must not think that some strange thing has happened to you. Don’t rebel because of anything you may have to suffer from the dear hand of your heavenly Father, who is the cultivator of the vineyard. No, but cling to Jesus all the more closely. Say to him, “Cut, Lord, cut to the quick if you wish; for I will still cling to you. To whom shall I go? You have the words of eternal life.” Yes, cling to Jesus when the pruning knife is in his hand, and then “ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.”
Also be careful that when the pruning operation has been carried out, that you still cleave to your Lord.
Notice the third and fourth verse: “You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you” [John 15:3]. “Remain in me, and I will remain in you” [John 15:4]. Remain after the cleansing where you were before the cleansing. When you are sanctified, remain where you were when you were first justified. When you see the work of the Spirit increasing in you, don’t let the devil tempt you to boast that now you are somebody, and don’t need to come to Jesus as a poor sinner, and rest alone in his precious blood for salvation. Still remain in Jesus. As you stayed in him when the knife cut you, stay in him now that the tender grapes begin to form. Don’t say to yourself, “What a fruitful branch I am! How greatly I adorn the vine! Now I am full of energy and vitality!” My friend, you are nothing and nobody. Only as you remain in Christ are you one bit better than the scrap wood which is burned in the fire. “But don’t we make progress?” Yes, we grow, but we remain: we never go an inch further, we remain in him; or, if not, we will be cut off and will become withered. Our only hope lies in Jesus during our best times as well as during our worst. Jesus said, “You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, as I have remained in you” [John 15:3-4].
We must remain in Christ in order to bear fruit.
“No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine.” We cannot bear fruit unless we remain in Christ. Someone cries out, “Great! Then, I have something to do.” Certainly you have, but not apart from Jesus. The branch has to bear fruit; but if the branch thinks that it is going to produce a cluster, or even a single grape, all by itself, it is utterly mistaken. The fruit of the branch must come out of the stem. Your work for Christ must be Christ’s work in you, or else it will be good for nothing. I pray that you see to this. Your Sunday-school teaching, your preaching, or whatever you do, must be done in Christ Jesus. You can not win souls by your natural talent, nor can you save men and women by your own plans. Beware of homemade schemes. Do for Jesus what Jesus commands you to do. Remember that our work for Christ, as we call it, must be Christ’s work first, if it is to be accepted by him. Remain in him if you ever wish to bear fruit.
Yes, remain in him as to your very life.
Don’t say, “I have been a Christian man now for twenty or thirty years, I can do without continued dependence upon Christ.” No, you cannot do anything without him, even if you were as old as Methuselah. Your very being as a Christian depends on your still clinging, still trusting, still depending; and this he must give you, for it all comes from him, and him alone.
To sum it all up, if you want that splendid power in prayer of which I just now spoke, you must remain in a loving, living, lasting, conscious, practical, remaining union with the Lord Jesus Christ; and if you attain that by divine grace, then you may ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.
But there is a second qualification mentioned in the text, and you must not forget it-- “…and my words remain in you...”
How important, then, are Christ’s words! He said in the fourth verse, “Remain in me, and I will remain in you,” and now as a parallel to this it is, “If you remain in me and my words remain in you.” What? Are Christ’s words and his person identical--one and the same? Yes, practically speaking. Some people talk about Christ being their Master, but they don’t care what his word declares about doctrines. So long as their hearts are right towards his person they claim freedom of thought. Yes, but this is a mere ploy. We cannot separate Christ from the Word; for, in the first place, he is the Word; and, in the next place, how dare we call him Master and Lord and do not obey his commands, and reject the truth which he teaches? We must obey his commands or he will not accept us as disciples. Especially that command of love which is the essence of all his words. We must love God and our brothers and sisters; yes, we must take pleasure in loving everyone, and seek their good. Anger and hatred must not be a part of us. We must walk even as he walked. If Christ’s words don’t remain in you, both as to belief and practice, then you are not in Christ. Christ and his gospel and his commands are one. If you will not have Christ and his words, neither will he have you nor your words; and you will ask in vain, you will in time give up asking, you will become like a withered branch. Beloved, I am persuaded of better things in your case, and things that accompany salvation, that is why I speak as I do.
Oh for grace to pass through these two gates, these two golden doors! “If you remain in me and my words remain in you.” Push through the two doors, and enter into this spacious room--“Ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.”
III. Lastly this morning, a question, WHY IS IT THAT BY REMAINING IN CHRIST, AND HAVING HIS WORDS REMAIN IN US, THAT WE GET THIS LIBERTY AND POWER IN PRAYER?
Why is this extraordinary power of prayer given to those who remain in Christ? I pray that what I have to say may encourage you to make the glorious attempt to win this pearl of great price! 
1. I answer, first, we get this liberty and power in prayer because of the fullness of Christ.
You can ask whatever you wish, when you remain in Christ, because whatever you may require already resides in him. Do you desire the grace of the Spirit? Go to your Lord’s anointing by the Holy Spirit at his baptism. Do you seek holiness? Go to his example. Do you desire pardon of sin? Look to his blood. Do you need mortification of sin? Look to his crucifixion. Do you need to be buried to the world? Go to his tomb. Do you want to feel the fullness of a heavenly life? Behold his resurrection. Would you rise above the world? Note his ascension. Would you contemplate heavenly things? Remember he sits at the right hand of God, and know that God has “raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms.”
It is clear why the branch gets all that it wishes while it abides in the stem, since all it could ever wish is already in the stem, and is placed there for the sake of the branch. What does the branch want more than the stem can give it? If it did want more it could not get it; for it has no other means of living but by sucking its life out of the stem. O my precious Lord, if I want anything which is not in you, then I will always desire to be without it. I desire to be denied a wish which wanders outside of you. But if everything I need and wish for is already in you, waiting to be given to me, why should I go elsewhere? You are my everything; where else should I look? Beloved, “God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in Christ” [Colossians 1:19], and the good pleasure of the Father is our good pleasure also: we are glad to draw everything from Jesus. We feel sure that we can ask whatever we wish, and it will be given to us, because he has it ready for us.
2. The next reason why we get this liberty and power in prayer is because of the richness of the Word of God.
Catch this thought, “If my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.” The best praying Christian is the one who knows and believes in the promises of God. After all, prayer is nothing but taking God’s promises to him, and saying to him, “My Lord, do as you have said that you would do.” Prayer is the promise utilized. A prayer which is not based on a promise has no true foundation. You that have Christ’s words remaining in you are equipped with those things which the Lord pays close attention too. If the Word of God remains in you, you are the person that can pray, because you commune with the great God of the universe using his own words, and thus overcome omnipotence with omnipotence. You put your finger down on the very lines, and say, “Father, do as you have said you would.” This is the best praying in all the world. O beloved, be filled with God’s Word. Study what Jesus has said, what the Holy Spirit has had recorded in this divinely inspired Book, and in proportion as you feed on the Word, and are filled with the Word, and retain the Word in your faith, and obey the Word in your life--in that same proportion you will be a master in the art of prayer. You have acquired skill as a wrestler with the covenant angel in proportion as you can plead the promises of your faithful God. Be well instructed in the doctrines of grace, and let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, that you may know how to prevail at the throne of grace. Remaining in Christ, and his words remaining in you, are like the right hand and the left hand of Moses, which were held up in prayer, so that the Amalekites were destroyed, Israel was delivered, and God was glorified.
But, let us go a little further: you still may say you do not quite see why a person who remains in Christ, and in whom Christ’s words remain, should be allowed to ask whatever they wish, and have it given to them.
3. I answer you again: we get this liberty and power in prayer, because in such a man as that there is a abundance of grace which causes him to have a renewed will, which is according to the will of God.
Suppose a man of God is in prayer, and he desires a certain thing, yet he remembers that he is nothing but a babe in the presence of his all-wise Father, and so he submits his will, and asks the Father what he should ask for. Even though God commands him to ask whatever he wishes, he shrinks back and cries out, “My Lord, here is a request which I am not quite sure about. As far as I can tell, it is a desirable thing, and I wish to have it; but, Lord, I am not fit to judge for myself, and therefore I pray that you do not give me what I wish, but what you will.”
Dear friends, don’t you see that, when we are in such a condition as this, our will is God’s will? Deep down in our hearts we wish for only that which the Lord himself wills; and what is this, that all we have to do is to ask whatever we wish, and it will be given to us? It is safe for God to say to the holy Christian, “Ask whatever you wish, and it will be given to you.” The heavenly instincts of that man leads him in the right direction; the grace that is within his soul suppresses all greedy lusts and evil desires, and his will is the actual shadow of God’s will. The spiritual life is the master within him, and so his aspirations are holy, heavenly, and Godlike. He has been made a partaker of the divine nature; and as a son is like his father, so now in desire and will he is one with his God. As the echo answers to the voice, so does the renewed heart echo the mind of the Lord. Our desires are reflections of the divine will: ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.
We can clearly see that the holy God cannot say to an unbeliever, “I will give you whatever you wish for.” What would he ask for? He would ask for another drink, or permission to enjoy himself in evil lust. It would be very unsafe to trust the wishes of most unsaved men and women. But when the Lord has taken a person, and has made them a new creation, and has formed them in the image of his dear Son, then he can trust them! Behold, our Father in heaven treats us as he treats his Firstborn. Jesus could say, “I know that you always hear me” and the Lord is teaching us the very same assurance. We can say with confidence, “My God will hear me.”
Don’t your mouths water for this privilege of prevailing prayer? Don’t your hearts long to get at this? It is through holiness, it is through union with Christ, it is by permanently remaining in him, and obediently holding firm to his truth, that you are to come to this privilege. It is the only safe and true way. Once we truly walk in that way, we will then find that it is a most sure and effectual way of gaining substantial power in prayer.
4. I am not quite done yet. A man or woman we get this liberty and power in prayer when their faith is strong; and this is the case with those who remain in Jesus.
It is faith that prevails in prayer. The real eloquence of prayer is a believing desire. “Everything is possible for him who believes” [Mark 9:23]. A man remaining in Christ with Christ’s words remaining in him, is eminently a believer, and consequently eminently successful in prayer. He surely has strong faith, for his faith has brought him into vital contact with Christ, and he is therefore at the source of every blessing, and may drink as much as he wants at the well itself.
5. Such a person, once more, will also possess the indwelling of the Spirit of God.
If we remain in Christ, and his words remain in us, then the Holy Spirit has come and taken up his residence in us; and what better help in prayer can we have? Isn’t it a wonderful thing that the Holy Spirit himself makes intercession for the saints in accordance with the will of God? He “himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express” [Romans 8:26]. “Who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man's spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God” [1 Corinthians 2:11]. The Spirit of God knows the mind of God, and he works in us to will what God wills, so that a believing man’s prayer is God’s purpose reflected in the soul just like in a mirror. The eternal decrees of God project their shadows over the hearts of godly men and women in the form of prayer. What God intends to do he tells to his servants by inclining them to ask him to do what he himself is resolved to do. God says, “I the LORD have spoken, and I will do it,” but then he adds, “I will yield to the plea of the house of Israel and do this for them” [Ezekiel 36:37].” Beloved, how clear it is, that if we remain in Christ, and his words remain in us, we may ask whatever we wish! For we will only ask what the Spirit of God moves us to ask; and it would be impossible that God the Holy Spirit and God the Father would ever be in opposition to one another. What the one prompts us to ask, the other has assuredly determined to bestow.
I just said something just now to which I must return for a single moment. Beloved, don’t you know that when we remain in Christ, and his words remain in us, the Father looks upon us with the same eye with which he looks upon his dear Son? Christ is the vine, and the vine includes the branches. The branches are a part of the vine. God, therefore, looks on us as part of Christ--members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. Such is the Father’s love to Jesus that he denies him nothing. He was obedient to death, even the death of the cross; therefore his Father loves him as the God-man Mediator, and he will grant him all his petitions. And is it true, that when you and I are in real union with Christ, the Lord God looks on us in the same way as he looks on Jesus, and says to us, “I will deny you nothing; you will ask whatever you wish, and it will be given to you”? This is how I understand our text.
I call your attention to the fact that in that fifteenth chapter, the ninth verse, which I did not read this morning, it says: “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.” The same love which God gives to his Son, the Son gives to us; and therefore we dwell in the love of the Father and of the Son. How can our prayers be rejected? Will not infinite love have respect for our petitions?
O dear brothers and sisters in Christ, if your prayers are not quickly answered at the throne, suspect that there is some sin that hinders them: your Father’s love sees a necessity for disciplining you in this way. If you don’t remain in Christ, how can you hope to pray successfully? If you pick and choose his words to believe, and doubt this or that verse, how can you hope to be successful at the throne? If you are willfully disobedient to any one of his words, won’t this account for failure in prayer? But remain in Christ and hold on firmly to his words, and be a totally committed disciple, then he will hear your prayers. Sitting at Jesus’ feet, hearing his words, you may lift up your eyes to his dear face, and say, “My Lord, hear me now”; and he will graciously answer you: he will say to you, “In the time of my favor I heard you, and in the day of salvation I helped you.” “Ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.” Oh for power at the mercy-seat of God!
Beloved friends, don’t listen to this sermon, and then go away and forget it. Try to reach this place of unlimited influence with God. What a church we would be, if you were all mighty in prayer! Dear children of God, do you want to be half starved? Beloved brothers and sisters, do you desire to be poor, little, puny, babbling children, who will never grow up into men and women? I pray that you aspire to be strong in the Lord, and to enjoy this exceptional privilege. What an army we would be if we all had this power with God in prayer! It is within your reach, you children of God! Only remain in Christ, and let his words remain in you, and then this special privilege will be yours. These are not tiresome duties, but they are in themselves a joy. Do them with your whole heart, and then you will get this added to you, that you will ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.
Sadly, for some in this congregation my text says nothing at all; for some of you are not even in Christ, and therefore you cannot remain in him. O people, what will I say to you? You seem to me to be missing the very opportunity for heaven. Even if there were no hell to come after this life, it is hell enough not to know Christ now, not to know what it is to prevail with God in prayer, not to know the choice privilege of remaining in him, and his words remaining in you.
Your first priority right now is that you believe in Jesus Christ in order to save your souls, yielding your souls to his cleansing, your lives to his commands and authority, God has sent him into the world as a Savior, accept him. Receive him as your Teacher; yield yourself up to him as your Master. May his gracious Spirit come and do this work upon you now; and then, after this, but not before, you may aspire to this honor. First of all--“You must be born again.” I cannot say to you as you are now, “Grow,” because you will only grow into a bigger sinner.
No matter how much you may grow and develop, you will only grow and develop what is in you: and that is, you will become more a child of the devil and thereby receive more and more the wrath of God. You must become a new creation in Christ: there must be an absolute change, a reversal of all that you are, thus making you a new creature in Christ Jesus; and then you may aspire to remain in Christ, and let his words remain in you, and the resulting power with God in prayer will be yours.

Gracious Lord, help us this morning. Poor creatures that we are, we can only lie at your feet. Please come, and lift us up to yourself, for your mercy’s sake! Amen.
 
https://www.biblebb.com/

Prayer – Guaranteed To Succeed (Charles H. Spurgeon, 1873

Luke 11:9-10 

9 And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.

10 For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.

To seek aid in the time of distress from a supernatural being is an instinct of human nature. We are not saying that unredeemed men and women ever offer truly spiritual prayer, or ever exercise saving faith in the living God; but still, they are like children crying in the dark, with a painful longing for help from somewhere or someone. Or like the soul in deep sorrow almost invariably cries to some supernatural being for help. No one has been more ready to pray in time of trouble than those who have ridiculed prayer in their days of peace and prosperity; and probably no prayers have been more true to the needs of the hour than those which atheists have offered under the pressure of the fear of death. In one of his papers, Addison describes a man, who, on board ship, loudly boasted of his atheism. Then a strong storm came up and he fell to his knees and confessed to the chaplain that he had been an atheist. The average sailor, who had never heard the Word before, thought it was strange, but were more surprised when they heard the atheist say, “that he never believed until that day that there was a God.” One of the old sailors whispered to one of the officers, that it would be a good idea to throw him overboard, but this was a cruel suggestion, for the poor creature was already in enough misery—his atheism had evaporated, and in mortal terror he cried to God to have mercy on him.

Similar incidents have occurred, more than once or twice. Indeed, so frequently does boastful skepticism fail in the end that we always expect it that it will. Take away unnatural restraint from the mind, and it may be said of all men and women that, like the sailors with Jonah, every person  cries out to his or her God in their time of trouble. As birds fly to their nests, so men and women in agony fly to a superior being for help and comfort in the hour of need.

God has given to all the animals he created some special form of strength—one has the ability to run very fast when being chased by a predator; another with a  great horn pushes down its enemy, and a third with tooth and claw tears its adversary to pieces. To man he gave only a little strength compared with the animals among which he placed in Eden, and yet man was king over everything, because the Lord was his strength. So long as he knew where to look for the source of his power, man remained the unbeatable and unchallenged king of all those around him. That image of God which was evident in his life sustained his sovereignty over the birds of the air, and the animals of the field, and the fish of the sea. By instinct man turned to his God in Paradise; and now, though he is to a sad degree a dethroned monarch, there lingers in his memory shadows of what he was, and remembrances of where his strength must still be found. Therefore, no matter where you find a man or a woman, when you meet one who is in distress, they will ask for supernatural help. I believe in the truthfulness of this instinct, and that men and women pray because there is something in prayer. When the Creator gives his creature the power of thirst, it is because water exists to meet its thirst; and just as he creates hunger there is food to correspond to the appetite; so when God prompts men and women to pray it is because prayer has a corresponding blessing connected with it.

We find a powerful reason for expecting prayer to be effective in the fact that it is an institution of God.

In God’s Word we are, over and over again, commanded to pray. God’s commands and means of fulfillment are not foolishness. Can I believe that the infinitely wise God has ordained for me an exercise which is ineffective, and is no more than child’s play? Does he command me to pray, and yet has prayer produce no more result than if I whistled in the wind, or sang to a bunch of trees? If there is no answer to prayer, then prayer is a monstrous absurdity and God is the author of it; which is blasphemy to assert. No one, unless they are a fool will continue to pray when you have once proved to them that prayer has no effect with God, and never receives an answer. If prayer yields no results then it is an exercise for idiots and madmen, and not for sane persons!

I will not this morning enter into any arguments on the matter; rather, I am coming to my text, which to me, at least, and to you who are followers of Christ, is the end of all controversy. Our Savior knew very well that many difficulties would arise in connection with prayer which might tend to stagger his disciples, and therefore he has balanced every opposition by an overwhelming assurance. Read those words in our text, “I say to you,” I—your Teacher, your Master, your Lord, your Savior, your God: “…say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” [Luke 11:9-10]

In the text our Lord meets all difficulties first by giving us the weight of his own authority, “I say to you “; next by presenting us with a promise, “Ask, and it will be given to you, seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you”; and then by reminding us of an indisputable fact, “everyone who asks receives.” Here are three mortal wounds for a Christian’s doubts as to prayer.

I. First, then, OUR SAVIOR GIVES TO US THE WEIGHT OF HIS OWN AUTHORITY, “I say to you.”

The first mark of a follower of Christ is that they believe their Lord. We do not follow the Lord at all if we raise any questions on points upon which he speaks positively. Even though a doctrine may be surrounded with ten thousand difficulties, the fact is that “Jesus said it’—even though it cannot be proved at the moment, sweeps away every doubt, so far as true Christians are concerned.

Our Master’s declaration is all the argument we need, “I say to you,” is our logic. We read in the scriptures that Jesus, “…has become for us wisdom from God” (1 Corinthians 1:30). He cannot be wrong, he cannot lie, and if he says, “I say to you,” then that is the end of all debate.

But, brothers and sisters, there are certain reasons that should lead us all the more confidently to rest in our Master’s word upon this point. There is power in every word of the Lord Jesus, but there is special force in his words before us today.

Some have argued against prayer, saying that it is not possible that prayers could be answered, because the laws of nature are unalterable, and they must and will go on whether men and women pray or not.

They say that not a drop of water will change its position in a single wave, or a particle of infectious matter be altered from its course, though all the saints in the universe should plead against storms and disease.

Now, concerning that matter, we are in no hurry to give an answer; our adversaries have more to prove than we have, and they seem to prefer to prove a negative. To us it does not seem needful to prove that the laws of nature are disturbed. God can work miracles, and he may work them yet again as he has done in the past, but it is not a part of the Christian faith that God must work miracles in order to answer the prayers of his servants. When a man in order to fulfill a promise has to rearrange all his affairs, and, so to speak, to stop all his processes, it proves that he is only a man, and that his wisdom and power are limited; but God is able, without reversing any power, or removing a single step in his plans, to fulfill the desires of his people as they come up before him. The Lord is so omnipotent that he can work results, similar to miracles, without in the slightest degree suspending any one of his laws. He did, as it were, in the past, stop the mechanism of the universe to answer prayer, but now, with equally godlike glory, he orders events so as to answer believer’s prayers, and yet does not suspend any natural law.

We hear the voice of the One who is competent to speak on the matter, and he says, “I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you.” Whether the laws of nature are reversible or irreversible, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find.” Now, who is he that says this? It is he who made all things, without whom “…nothing was made that has been made.” (John 1:3).  He is certainly able to speak the way he does. O eternal Word, you who were with God in the beginning, balancing the clouds and fastening the foundations of the earth, you know what the laws and the unalterable constitutions of nature are, and if you say, “Ask and it will be given to you,” then surely it will be so, no matter what the laws of nature may be. Besides, our Lord is adored by us as the sustainer of all things; and, seeing that all the laws of nature are only operative through his power, and are sustained in their motion by his might, he therefore must be aware of the motion of all the forces in the world; and if he says, “Ask and it will be given to you,” he does not speak in ignorance, but knows what he affirms. We may be assured that there are no forces which can prevent the declarations of the Lord’s own word. From the Creator and the Sustainer, the word “I say to you,” settles all controversy forever.

But another objection has been raised which is a very old argument, and has a great appearance of force. It is raised not so much by skeptics, as by those who hold a part of the truth; it is this—

That prayer can never produce any results, because the decrees of God have settled everything, and those decrees are unchangeable.

Now we have no desire to deny the assertion that the decrees of God have settled all events. It is our full belief that God has foreknown and predestined everything that happens in heaven above or in the earth beneath, and that the foreknown position of a reed by the river is as fixed as the place of the throne of a king, and “the blown dust of the earth is steered just as the stars in their courses.” Predestination embraces the great and the small, and reaches to all things; thus the question is, why do we pray? Ok, let us ask this—wouldn’t it be just as logical to ask why breathe, eat, move, or do anything? We have an answer which satisfies us, namely, that our prayers are in the predestination, and that God has ordained his people’s prayers as anything else, and when we pray we are producing links in the chain of ordained facts. Destiny declares that I must pray—I pray; destiny decrees that I will be answered, and the answer comes to me. Moreover, in other matters we never regulate our actions by the unknown decrees of God; as for instance, a man never questions whether he will eat or drink, because it may or may not be decreed that he will eat or drink, a man never questions whether he will work or not on the ground that it is decreed how much he will do or how little, as it is inconsistent with common sense to make the secret decrees of God a guide to us in our general conduct, likewise we feel it would be the same in reference to prayer, and therefore we still pray. But we have even a better answer than all this.

Our Lord Jesus Christ comes forward, and he says to us this morning, “My dear children, the decrees of God needn’t trouble you, there is nothing in them inconsistent with your prayers being heard. ‘I say to you, Ask, and it will be given to you.’” Now, who is he that says this? Why it is he who was with God the Father from the beginning (John 1:2) — and he knows what the purposes of the Father are and what the heart of God is, for he has told us in another place, “the Father himself loves you.” Now since Jesus knows the decrees of the Father, and the heart of the Father, he can tell us with the absolute certainty of an eyewitness that there is nothing in the eternal purposes in conflict with this truth, that he who asks receives, and he who seeks finds. He has read the decrees from beginning to end: has he not taken the book, and opened the seven seals, and declared the ordinances of heaven? He tells you there is nothing there inconsistent with your intense prayers mixed with tears, and with the Father’s opening the windows of heaven to shower upon you the blessings which you seek. Moreover, Christ is God himself: the purposes of heaven are his own purposes, and he who ordained the purpose here gives the assurance that there is nothing in it to prevent the effectiveness of prayer. “I say to you.” O you that believe in Jesus, your doubts are scattered to the winds, for you know that he hears your prayers.

But sometimes there arises in our mind a third difficulty, which is associated with our own judgment of ourselves and our estimate of God. We feel that God is very great, and we tremble in the presence of his majesty. We feel that we are very little, and that, in addition, we are also vile; and it does seem an incredible thing that such guilty nothings should have power to move the arm which moves the world.

I believe that fear often hampers us in prayer. But Jesus answers it so sweetly: he says — “I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you.” And I ask again, who is it that says, “I say to you?” Why, it is he who knows both the greatness of God and the weakness of all men and women. He is God, and out of his excellent Majesty I hear him say, “I say to you, Ask, and it will be given to you.” But Jesus is also man like ourselves, and he says, “Don’t fear your littleness, for I am, bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh, and I assure you that God hears the prayers of men and women.” The words come to us with the harmony of blended notes; the God Jesus, the man Jesus, both speak to us — “Don’t fear my majesty, your prayer is heard. Don’t fear your own weakness; I as a man have been heard by God.”

And yet, again, if the fear of sin should haunt us, and our own sorrow should depress us, I would remind you that Jesus Christ, when he says, “I say to you,” gives us the authority, not only of his person, but of his experience. Jesus needed to pray. No one ever prayed like he did. He spent whole nights and days in prayer and in earnest intercession; and he says to us, “I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you.” I think I see him coming fresh from the dense shrubs of the hills, where he had knelt all night in prayer, and he says, “My disciples, Ask, and it will be given to you, for I have prayed, and it has been given to me.” I think I hear him say it, with his face and his clothes all bloody red, as he rises from Gethsemane, with his soul overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. He was heard in that he feared, and therefore he says to us, “I say to you, knock and the door will be opened to you.” Yes, and I think I hear him speak to us from the cross, with his face bright with the first beam of sunlight after he had borne our sins in his own body, and had suffered all our griefs to the very last bit of shooting pain. He had cried, “My God, my God,

why have you forsaken me,” and now, having received an answer, he cries in triumph, “It is finished,” and, in so doing, commands us also “to ask, and it will be given to us.” Jesus has proved the power of prayer.

Oh but, one says, “he has not proved what it is to pray about the troubles I am facing.” How foolish you are, for the Savior’s troubles were worse than yours could ever be. There are no depths so deep that he has not dived to the bottom of them. Christ has prayed out of the lowest dungeon and out of the most horrible pit. “Yes but he has not cried under the burden of sin.” How can you speak so thoughtlessly! Was there ever such a burden of sin borne by any man as was laid on him?” True, the sins were not his own, but they were sins, and sins with all their crushing weight in them too; yet was he heard, and he was helped to the end. Christ gives you, in his own experience, the divine proof that the asking will be followed by the receiving, even when sin lies at the door.

This much is certain, if you, who are believers, cannot believe in the effectiveness of prayer based on the very words of Christ, then it has come to a strange pass; for, O beloved, you are leaning all your soul’s weight on Jesus. If he is not true, then are you trusting in a false Savior. If he does not speak truth, then you are deceived. If you can trust him with your soul, you must of necessity trust him with your prayers.

Remember, too, that if Jesus our Lord could speak so positively here, there is a yet greater reason for believing him now, for he has gone back into heaven, where he sits at the right hand of God the Father, and the voice does not come to us from the man of poverty, wearing earthly clothes, but from the enthroned priest with the golden sash around his chest, for it is he who now says, from the right hand of God: “I say to you, Ask, and it will be given to you.” Don’t you believe in his name? How then can a prayer that is sincerely offered in that name fall on deaf ears? When you present your petition in Jesus’ name, a part of his authority clothes your prayers. If your prayer is rejected, Christ is dishonored: you cannot believe that. You have trusted him, then believe that prayer offered through him must and will win the day.

We cannot talk longer on this point, but we trust the Holy Spirit will impress it upon all our hearts.

II. We will now remember that OUR LORD PRESENTS US WITH A PROMISE.

Note that the promise is given to several types of prayer, “I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” The text clearly asserts that all forms of true prayer will be heard, provided they are presented through Jesus Christ, and are for promised blessings.

Some are vocal prayers, men and women ask; never should we fail to offer up every day and continually the prayer which is uttered by the tongue, for the promise is that the asker will be heard.

But there are others who, not neglecting vocal prayer, are far more abundant in active prayer, for by humble and diligent use of the means they seek for the blessings which they need. Their heart speaks to God by its longings, strivings, emotions, and labors. Let them not cease seeking, for they will surely find.

There are others who, in their earnestness, combine the most eager forms, both seeking and speaking, with knocking, for knocking is a loud kind of asking, and a vehement form of seeking. If our prayer is vocal speech with God, or if it is the practical use of ordained means, which is real prayer, or if it should, best of all, be the continued use of both, or if it is expressed only by a tear or a sigh, or even if it remain quite unexpressed in a trembling desire, it will be heard. All varieties of true prayer will meet with responses from heaven.

Now observe that these varieties of prayer are put on an ascending scale. It is said first that we ask: I suppose that refers to the prayer which is a mere statement of our needs, in which we tell the Lord that we want this and that, and ask him to grant it. But as we learn the art of prayer we go on further to seek: which signifies that we marshal our arguments, and plead reasons for the granting of our desires, and we begin to wrestle with God for the mercies needed. And if the blessing does not come soon in time, we then rise to the third degree, which is knocking: we become demanding, we are not content with asking and giving reasons, but we express a deep sincerity and seriousness into our requests, and demonstrate the scripture which says, “…the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful men [and women] lay hold of it” [Matthew 11:12].

So the prayers grow from asking—which is the statement, to seeking—which is the pleading; and to knocking—which is the urgent persistence in the request. Now to each of these stages of prayer there is a distinct promise. Those who asks will receive what they ask for, but those who  go further and seek will find, will enjoy, will take hold of, will know that they have obtained what they wanted; and those who knock will go even further, for they will understand, and to them will the precious thing be opened—they will not merely have the blessing and enjoy it, but they will comprehend it, will “understand with all saints, what are the heights and depths.”

I want; however, you to notice this fact, which covers everything — whatever form your prayer may assume it will succeed. If you only ask you will receive, if you seek you will find, if you knock, the door will be opened to you, but in each case, according to your faith, it will be done to you.

The clauses of the promises in our text today are not to be viewed jointly, that is together: he that asks and seeks and knocks will receive, but they are to be viewed separately, distinct from each other: those who ask will receive, those who seek will find, and those who knock will have the door opened. It is not when we combine all three that we get the blessing, though doubtless if we did combine them, we would get the combined reply; but if we exercise only one of these three forms of prayer, we will still get that which our souls seek after.

These three methods of prayer exercise a variety of our graces. Some have said this passage tells us that faith asks, hope seeks, and love knocks. Faith asks because she believes God will give; hope having asked expects, and therefore seeks for the blessing; love comes nearer still, and will not take a denial from God, but desires to enter into his house, and to sup with him—to eat and drink with him, and, therefore, knocks at his door until he opens it.

But, again, let us come back to the main point; it does not matter which grace is exercised; a blessing comes to each one, if faith asks it will receive; if hope seeks it will find; and if love knocks, the door will be opened to her.

These three modes of prayer suit us in different stages of distress. There I am, a poor beggar at mercy’s door, I ask for help and I receive it: but in time I lose my way, I get confused, and can’t remember how to find the one who helped me before, so I seek him with a certainty that I find him again; then I am in the last stage of all, not merely poor and bewildered, but so defiled as to feel shut out from God, like a leper shut out of the camp, then I may knock and knock, and the door will open to me.

Each of these different descriptions of prayer is very simple. If anybody said “I cannot ask,” our reply would be, you do not understand the word. Surely everybody can ask. A little child can ask. Long before an infant can speak it can ask—it does not need to use words in order to ask for what it wants, and there is not one among us who is incapacitated from asking, for our prayers do not need to be fancy with elegant sentences. I believe God abhors those kinds of prayers. If a person asks for charity with elegant sentences he is not likely to get it. Finery in dress or language is out of place in habitats of the poor and needy. I heard a man in the street one day begging out loud by means of a magnificent speech. He used grand language in very pompous style, and I dare say he thought he was surely going to receive an abundant amount of money by his fine speech, but I, for one, gave him nothing, but felt more inclined to laugh at his pretense. Is it not likely that many great prayers are about as useless? Many prayers during our Prayer Meetings are a great deal too fine. Keep your figures of speech and metaphors for others, use them for those who want to be instructed, but do not parade them before God. When we pray, the simpler our prayers are the better; the plainest, humblest language which expresses our meaning is the best.

The next word is seek, and surely there is no difficulty about seeking? In finding there might be, but in seeking there is none. When the woman in the parable lost her money, she lit a candle and looked for it. I don’t suppose she had ever been to the university, or qualified as a lady physician, or that she could have sat on the School Board as a woman of superior intelligence—but she could seek. Anybody who desires to do so can seek, whether they are a man, a woman, or a child; and for their encouragement the promise is not given to some particular philosophical form of seeking, but simply that “he who seeks finds.”

Then there is knocking: well, that is something that is not difficult. We used to do it when we were boys, sometimes—too much for the neighbors’ comfort.  If the knocker on the door was a little too high, we had ways and means of knocking at the door even then; a stone would do it, or the heel of a boot, anything would make a knocking: it was not beyond our capacity by any means. Therefore, it is put in this fashion by Christ himself, as much as to tell us, “You don’t need any scholarship, any training, any talent, and any intelligence for prayer; ask, seek, knock, that is all, and the promise is to everyone who uses these means of praying.

Will you believe the promise? It is Christ who gives it. No lie ever came from his lips. O don’t doubt him. Keep on praying if you have prayed, and if you have never prayed before, God help you to begin today!

III. Our third point is that JESUS TESTIFIES TO THE FACT THAT PRAYER IS HEARD.

Having given a promise he then adds, in effect — “You may be quite sure that this promise will be fulfilled, not only because I say it, but because it is and always has been true.” When a man says the sun will rise tomorrow morning, we believe it because it has always risen. Our Lord tells us that, as a matter of indisputable fact, all through the ages true asking has been followed by receiving. Remember that he who stated this fact knew it.

Now, as a finite human, if we state a fact then we must also state, “Yes, as far as my observation goes, it is true,” but the observations of Christ have no limits. He has heard every true prayer ever offered to him. Prayers acceptable to the Most High God—the Father Himself, come up to him through the very wounds of Christ. Therefore the Lord Jesus Christ can speak by personal knowledge, and his declaration is that prayer has succeeded: “Everyone that asked received and he that sought found.”

Now here we must, of course, understand the limitations which would be made by ordinary common sense, and which are made by Scripture. Not everyone that flippantly or wickedly asks or pretends to ask of God gets what he asks for. It is not every silly, idle, unconsidered request of unregenerate hearts that God will answer. In addition, Scripture limits it again, “You do not have, because you do not ask God. Or, when you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures” [James 4:2-3]. If we ask that we may consume the good things on our lust we will not have them, or if we ask for that which would not be for our good then we will not receive what we asked for. But except for these things, the statement of our Lord has no other qualification — “every one that asks receives.”

Let it also be remembered that frequently even when the ungodly and the wicked have asked of God they have received! Often in the time of their distress they have called on God, and he has answered them. Now, some say this is simply not true—God does not answer the prayers of unbelievers, but Scripture says he does! Ahab’s prayer was answered, and the Lord said, “Have you noticed how Ahab has humbled himself before me? Because he has humbled himself, I will not bring this disaster in his day, but I will bring it on his house in the days of his son” [1 Kings 21:29]. Likewise, the Lord also heard the prayer of Jehoahaz, the son of Jehu, who did evil in the sight of the Lord [2 Kings 13:1-4]. The Israelites also, because of their sins they were given over to their enemies, cried to God for deliverance, and they were answered, yet the Lord himself testified concerning them that they only flattered him with their mouth. Does this stagger you; Does he not hear the young ravens when they cry? Do you think he will not hear man that is formed in his own image? Do you doubt it? Remember Nineveh. The prayers offered at Nineveh, were they spiritual prayers? Did you ever hear of a church of God in Nineveh? I have not, neither do I believe the Ninevites were ever visited by converting grace; but they were by the preaching of Jonah convinced that they were in danger from the great Jehovah, and they proclaimed a fast, and humbled themselves, and God heard their prayer, and Nineveh for a while was preserved.

Many a time in the hour of sickness, and in the time of woe, God has heard the prayers of the unthankful and the evil. Do you think God gives nothing except to the righteous? What were you when you first began to pray? Were you good and righteous? Has not God commanded you to do good to those who are evil? Will he command you to do what he will not do himself? Has he not said that he “sends rain on the just and on the unjust,” and is it not true? Is he not daily blessing those who curse him, and doing good to those who despitefully use him? This is one of the glories of God’s grace; and when there is nothing else good in the man, yet if there is a cry lifted up from his heart the Lord often agrees to send relief from trouble. Now, if God has heard the prayers even of men who have not sought him in the highest manner, and has given them temporary deliverances in answer to their cries will he not much more hear you when you are humbling yourself in his sight, and desiring to be reconciled to him. Surely there is an argument here.

But to come more fully to the point with regard to real and spiritual prayers, everyone that asks receives without any limit whatever. There has never been an instance yet of a man really seeking spiritual blessings of God without his receiving them. The tax collector stood far off, and was so broken in his heart that he dared not look up to heaven, yet God looked down on him. Manasseh laid in the dungeon, he had been a cruel persecutor of the saints; there was nothing in him that could commend him to God; but God heard him out of the dungeon, and brought him forth to liberty of soul. Jonah had by his own sin brought himself into the whale’s belly, and he was a bad-tempered servant of God at the best, but out of the belly of hell he cried and God heard him. “Every one that asks receives, and he that seeks finds, and to him that knocks, the door will be opened”—every one.

If I wanted evidence I would be able to find it in this church. I would ask anyone here who has found Christ, to bear witness that God heard his prayer. I do not believe that among the damned in hell there is one who dare say “I sought the Lord and he rejected me.” There will not be found at the last Day of Judgment, one single soul that can say. “I knocked at mercy’s door, but God refused to open it.” There will not stand before the great white throne, a single soul that can plead, “O Christ, I would have been saved by you, but you would not save me. I gave myself up into your hands, but you rejected me. I repentantly asked for your mercy, but I did not receive it.” Every one that asks receives. It has been this way until this day—it will be so until Christ himself will come again. If you doubt it, try it, and if you have tried it, try it again. Are you in rags?—that does not matter, every one that asks receives. Are you foul with sin?—that is not significant, “every one that seeks finds.” Do you feel yourself as if you were completely shut out from God?—that doesn’t matter either; “knock, and the door will be opened to you, for every one that asks receives.” “Is there no election there?” Yes, yes, doubtless there is, but that does not alter this truth which has no limit to it whatsoever—“every one.” What a rich text it is!” Every one that asks receives.”

When our Lord spoke this, he could have pointed to his own life as evidence; at any rate, we can refer to it now and show that no one asked of Christ who did not receive. The Canaanite woman at first had her request rejected when the Lord referred to her as a dog [Matthew 15:26], but when she had the courage to say, “yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the table,” she soon discovered that everyone that asks receives. Likewise, the woman who came behind Jesus in the crowd and touched the hem of his garment, she was no asker, but she was a seeker, and she found.

I think I hear, in answer to all this, the sad wail of one who says, “I have been crying to God a long time for salvation; I have asked, I have sought, and I have knocked, but it has not come yet.” Well, dear friend, if I am asked which is true, God or you, I know whom I will stand by, and I would advise you to believe God before you believe yourself. God will hear prayer, but do you know there is one thing before the prayer of salvation? What is it? Why, it’s the gospel! The gospel does not say—he who prays will be saved, that is not the gospel; I believe he will be saved, but that is not the gospel I am told to preach to you. “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature; he “—what?—” he that believes and is baptized will be saved.”

Now, you have been asking God to save you—do you expect him to save you without you believing and being baptized? Surely you have not had the nerve to ask God to ignore his own word! He would say to you, “Do as I command you, believe my Son, he that believes [in Me] has everlasting life.” Let me ask you; do you believe Jesus Christ? Will you trust him? “Oh, I trust him,” one says, “I trust him completely.” Soul, do not ask for salvation any more—you have it already—you are saved. If you trust Jesus with all your soul, your sins are forgiven you, and you are saved; and the next time you approach the Lord, go with praise as well as with prayer, and sing and bless his name. “But how do I to know that I am really saved?” One says. God says, “He that believes and is baptized, will be saved.” Have you believed, have you been baptized? If so, you are saved. How do I know that? On the best evidence in all the world: God says you are—do you want any evidence but that? “I want to feel this.” Feel! Are your feelings better than God’s witness? Will you make God a liar by asking more signs than his sure word of testimony? I have no evidence this day that I dare trust in concerning my salvation but this, that I rest on Christ alone with all my heart, and soul, and strength. “I have no other refuge,” and if you have that evidence it is all the evidence that you need seek for this day. Other witnesses of grace in your heart will come in time, and cluster around you, and adorn the doctrine you profess, but now your first business is to believe in Jesus.

“I have asked for faith,” one says, “Well, what do you mean by that? To believe in Jesus Christ is the gift of God, but it must be your own act as well. Do you think God will believe for you, or that the Holy Spirit believes instead of us? What has the Holy Spirit to believe? You must believe for yourself, or be lost. He cannot lie, will you not believe in him? He deserves to be believed, trust in him, and then you are saved, and your prayer is answered.

I think I hear another say, “I trust and believe that I am already saved; but I have been seeking for the salvation of others in answer to my prayers;” Dear friend, you will get it. “He that asks receives, and he that seeks finds; and to him that knocks, the door will be opened.” “But I have sought the conversion of one person for years with many prayers.” You will have it, or you will know one day why you don’t have it, and you will be made content not to have it. Continue to pray on in hope. Many a person has had his prayer for others answered after they had had died. I think I have reminded you before of the father who had prayed for many years for his sons and daughters, and yet they were not converted, but all became very worldly. His time came to die. He gathered his children around his bed, hoping to bear such a witness for Christ at the end that it might be blessed to their conversion; but unhappily for him he was in deep distress of soul, he had doubts about his own salvation in Christ. He was one of God’s children who are put to bed in the dark; this being above all the worst fear of his mind, that he feared his dear children would see his distress and be prejudiced against religion. The good man was buried and his sons came to the funeral, and God heard the man’s prayer that very day, for as they went away from the grave one of them said to the other, “Brother, our father died a most unhappy death.” “He did, brother; I was very much astonished at it, for I never knew a better man than our father.” “Ah,” said the first brother, “if a holy man such as our father found it a hard thing to die, it will be a dreadful thing for us who have no faith when our time comes.” That same thought had struck them all, and drove them to the cross, and so the good man’s prayer was heard in a mysterious manner. Heaven and earth will pass away, but while God lives, prayer must be heard. While God remains true to his word, supplication is not in vain. The Lord give you grace to exercise it continually. Amen.

https://www.biblebb.com/

Prayer Found in the Heart (Charles H. Spurgeon, 1876)

2 Samuel 7:27

“For thou, O LORD of hosts, God of Israel, hast revealed to thy servant, saying, I will build thee an house: therefore hath thy servant found in his heart to pray this prayer unto thee.” 

It is a very blessed thing for a child of God to be anxious to glorify his Heavenly Father, whether his wish is realized or not. The strong desire to magnify God is acceptable to him, and is an indication of spiritual health. It is certain, in the long run, to bring blessing to our own souls; and I have frequently noticed that, when we earnestly desire to do something special for the Lord, he generally does something for us very much of the same kind. David wished to build a house for God. "No," says Jehovah, "thou hast been a man of war, and I will not employ a warrior in spiritual business; but I will build thee a house." So, although David may not build a house for God, it is well that the plan of it is in his heart; and God, in return, builds up his house, and sets his son, and his son's son, upon the throne after him. But, my dear friend, if thou shouldst not find an opportunity to do all that is in thine heart, yet, nevertheless, it is well that it is there. Carry out the project if thou canst; but if thou canst not, it may be that, as thou hast desired to deal with the Lord, so will he really deal with thee. If you have sown sparingly, you shall reap sparingly. If you have sown liberally, you shall reap largely; for, often and often, the Lord's dealings with his own people are a sort of echo to their hearts of their dealings with him.

Sometimes it happens that God will not let his servants do what they would most of all like to do. David had long been storing up gold and silver in great quantities that he might build that house for the Lord. It had been the great project of his life that he might make a fit sanctuary for the ark of the covenant. "I dwell," said he, "in a house of cedar, but the ark of God dwelleth within curtains." The dream of his life was that he might build a magnificent temple, which should be supremely gorgeous for architecture, and rich in all the treasures of the ends of the earth, that there the ark of his God might be appropriately housed. But the Lord would not have it so. David might pray about it, and think about it, and plan about it, and save his money for it; but the Lord would not have it so. It was not in that particular way that David was to serve his God. And I have known some good Christian young men who felt that they must be preachers. They had not the proper gifts and qualifications for the ministry, but they felt that they must preach; so they have striven very hard, but at all points they have met with rebuffs. People, who have heard them once, have been quite satisfied, and have not desired to hear them again. Doors have been shut against them, no conversions have followed their efforts, and thus God has said to each one of them, "Not so, my son; not in that way shalt thou serve me." And there are others who have had other plans in their heads,—brethren and sisters, who have arranged wonderful schemes and plans, which they have dreamed over, and said, "Thus and thus will we serve God." Yet, hitherto, my brother, you have had to keep to the workman's bench; and you, my sister, have had to keep to nursing those little children. Up till now, you have not been very successful in any special path of usefulness, or that which is commonly thought to be the path of usefulness. But God knows best, and he has uses for all the vessels in his house, and it is not right for any one vessel to say, "I will be used here, or there, or not at all;" but it is for God to use us as he pleases.

Every private soldier would like to be an officer, but it is only a very few who ever will be; and if every private soldier could be an officer, what sort of an army would it be where all were officers, and none were men in the ranks? So we would, perhaps, each of us, like to do something more remarkable than we have hitherto done; but it is for our great Commander to say to this man, "Stand here," or to that man, "Go there;" and it ought to be equally a matter of contentment. So us whether God permits us to serve him here or there. I think it was good Mr. Jay who used to say that, if there were two angels in heaven, and God wanted one of them to go and be the ruler of a kingdom, and the other to sweep a crossing, the two angels would not have the slightest choice which post they would have provided that they knew they had the Lord's command to occupy either position. Brother, if ever the Lord should rebuff thee, and seem to refuse that which thou desirest to offer to him, do not sulk; do not get into a bad spirit, as some have done in similar circumstances; but know that the very essence of Christian service is to be willing not to serve in that particular way if, by not serving, God would be the more glorified. Be willing, O vessel in the house of the Lord, to be hung up on a nail in the wall, be willing to be laid aside in a corner, if so God would be glorified, for thus was it with David. God would not let him erect the temple which he wished to build, but he gave him great blessings in return for his desires; and then David, instead of sulking, and saying, "Well, then, as I cannot have my own will, I will do nothing at all," went in, and sat before the Lord, and blessed and praised him, and never uttered one grumbling or surly word, but blessed the name of the Lord from the beginning of his meditation even to its close. Oh, to have a heart moulded after the like fashion!

In the midst of David's memorable address to God, we meet with this suggestive expression: "Thy servant hath found in his heart to pray this prayer unto thee." I am going to speak upon that subject in this way. First, concerning David's prayer, how did he come by it? Secondly, how came this prayer to be in his heart? And, thirdly how may we get into such a condition that we shall find prayers in our hearts?

I. First, then, HOW DID DAVID COME BY HIS PRAYER? He tells us that he found it in his heart: "Thy servant hath found in his heart to pray this prayer unto thee."
Then it is pretty clear that he looked for it in his heart. How many men seem to begin to pray without really thinking about prayer! They rush, without preparation or thought, into this presence of God. Now, no loyal subject, would seek an audience of his sovereign, to present a petition, without having first carefully prepared it; but many seem to think there is no need to look for a prayer, or to find one, when they approach the mercy-seat. They appear to imagine that they have only just to repeat certain words, and to stand or kneel in a certain attitude, and that is prayer. But David did not make that mistake; he found his prayer in his heart. David and his heart were well acquainted; he had long been accustomed to talk with himself. There are some men, who know a thousand other people, but who do not know their own selves; the greatest stranger to them, in the whole world, is their own heart. They have never looked into it, never talked with it, never examined it, never questioned it. They follow its evil devices, but they scarcely know that they have a heart, they so seldom look into it. But David, when he wanted to pray, went and looked in his heart to see what he could find there, and he found in his heart to pray this prayer to God.

This leads me to say, dear friends, that the best place in which to find a prayer is to find it in your heart. Some would have fetched down a book, and they would have said, "Let us see; what is the day of the month,—how many Sundays after Advent? This is the proper prayer for to-day." But David did not go to a book for his prayer, he turned to his heart to see what he could find there that he might pray unto God. Others of us would, perhaps, have been content to find a prayer in our heads. We have been accustomed to extemporize in prayer, and so, perhaps, bowing the knee, we should have felt that the stream of supplication would flow because we are so habituated to speaking with God in prayer. Ah, dear friend, it is no worse to find a prayer in a book than to find it in your head! It is very much the same thing whether the prayer be printed or be extemporized; unless it comes from the heart, it is equally dead in either case.

How many, too, have found a prayer upon their lips! It is a very common thing with those who pray in prayer-meetings, and those of us who pray in public, for our lips to run much faster than our hearts move, and it is one of the things we need to cry to God to keep us from, lest we should be run away with by our own tongues, as men are, sometimes, run away with by their horses, which they cannot restrain; and you know, the horse never goes faster than when he has very little to carry. And, sometimes, words will come at a very rapid rate when there is very little real prayer conveyed by them. This is not as it ought to be with us, and we must look into our hearts for the desire to pray, and if we do not find it in our hearts to pray a prayer, let us rest assured that we shall not be accepted before the throne of God.

How was it that David found this prayer in his heart? I think it was because his heart had been renewed by divine grace. Prayer is a living thing; you cannot find a living prayer in a dead heart. Why seek ye the living among the dead, or search the sepulcher to find the signs and tokens of life? No, sir, if you have not been made alive by the grace of God, you cannot pray. The dead cannot pray, and the spiritually dead cannot pray; but the moment you begin to pray, it is a sign that life has been given to you. Ananias knew that Saul was a living soul when God said to him, "Behold, he prayeth." "It is all right," said Ananias; "for the Lord must have quickened his heart." David found this prayer in his heart because his was a living heart.

And he found it there, also, because his was a believing heart. How can a man pray if he does not believe in God, or if he merely thinks that there may be a supernatural Being, somewhere or other in the universe, but that he is not within hail,—and cannot be made to hear,—or is not a living personality, or, if he is, he is too great to care about us, or to listen to the words of a man. But, when the Lord has taught you the truth about his own existence, and his real character, when he has come so near to you that you know that he is the Rewarder of them that diligently seek him, then, in that believing heart of yours prayer will spring up as the corn springs up in the furrows of the field. The Lord, who has sown in your heart the seed of faith, will make that seed to spring up in the green blade of prayer. It must be so; but, until you do believe in God, you cannot pray. It would be useless for me to say to some men, "You should pray," when I recollect that Christ has said, "God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth;" and that is what these men cannot do. How can they, therefore, pray acceptably? "He that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a Rewarder of them that diligently seek him." Where there is that true faith in God, there is fervent prayer in the heart, but nowhere else.

David's was also a serious heart. Some men's hearts are flippant, trifling, full of levity. God forbid that we should condemn holy cheerfulness! As oil to the wheels of a machine, so is cheerfulness to a man's conversation; but there is a frothiness, a superficiality, a frivolity, which is far too common. Some men do not seem to think seriously about anything. They have no settled principles; they are "everything by starts, and nothing long." "The Vicar of Bray" is their first cousin. Perhaps they have scarcely as much principle as he had, for they do not so steadily seek their own interests, and scarcely seek any interest at all but that of the transient pleasure of the hour. If that is your case, I do not wonder that you cannot pray. A man says, "I cannot find prayer in my heart." No, how should you? Yours is a heart full of chaff, full of dust, full of rubbish,—a heart tangled and overgrown with weeds,—a sluggard's heart, where grow the nettles of evil desire and unholy passion,—where live the docks and thistles of idleness and neglect. Oh, may God grant us the grace to have serious hearts,—hearts that are in solemn earnest,—hearts that are intense,—hearts that can really give due heed to things according to their merits, and that give to eternal things their chief concern, because eternal things deserve them best. David's heart was a serious heart; and, therefore, he found this prayer in it.

And, once again, David's was a humble heart, for a man who is proud will not pray. A man who is self-righteous will not pray, except it be in the fashion of the Pharisee, and that was no prayer at all. But a man, humbly conscious of his soul's needs, and realizing the guilt of his sins,—that is the man to pour out his heart in prayer before the living God. I pray the Lord graciously to break your hearts; for, unless our hearts are broken in penitence, we shall never find in them a real prayer unto God.

There are some of you who have got on wonderfully since your Lord called you by his grace. You were wretched enough when he looked at you, cast out in the open field, covered with blood and filthiness; and he washed you, and clothed you, and nourished you, and now he has even begun to use you in his service, and you are already beginning to be rather proud that he has given you some success. I charge you, brothers and sisters, not to pilfer any of the glory that belongs to God alone. Never begin to throw up your caps, and to cry, "Well done!" It is all up with us if we do that. Keep down low, my brother; keep down low, my sister. The lower we keep, and the more we fear and tremble,—not through unbelief, mark you, (that kind of fear I denounce with all my heart,) but with that really believing trembling and believing fear that grows out of genuine love to Christ, and is not inconsistent with that love,—the more we have of that sort of fear, the more securely shall we walk, and the more will it be safe for God to trust us with his goodness. When your ship floats very high upon the water, I hope that you will not have much sail spread, or else the vessel will almost certainly go over; but when it floats low almost down to the Plimsoll line, you may crowd on as much sail as you like. If you carry but little ballast, and you have huge sails up aloft, the first gust of wind will topple you over; but if you are well ballasted,—that is to say, if you are weighed down with a sense of your own unworthiness, you will weather any gale that may come upon you, God the Holy Ghost being in the vessel with you, and holding the helm.

I pause here a moment just to ask each one,—Do you pray? Do you present to God prayers that come from your heart? I do not ask whether you use a form of prayer, or not; but does your heart really go with the prayer you offer? I think I hear someone say, "I always say my prayers." Ah, my dear friend, there is as great a difference between saying prayers and really praying as there was between the dead child and the living one that were brought before Solomon! Saying prayers is not praying. Why, you might as well say your prayers backward as forward unless your heart goes with them! It is quite extraordinary how some people can use a form of prayer without any thought whatever as to its meaning. Some time ago, a man, seventy years of age, was asked if he prayed; he replied that he always had prayed, and he would tell the enquirer the prayer he used. It turned out that he still persisted in repeating what his mother taught him when he was a child, "Pray, God, bless father and mother, and make me a good boy." He had got those words so deeply engraved upon his memory that he still kept to them at his advanced age. Naturally, you smile at the story; yet it is very pitiful. It may be an extreme instance, but still it is a clear instance of what I mean,—that there is a way of merely saying prayers which is rather a mockery of God than a real approach to him such as he desires.

"Well," saith one, "I never pray." I question the truth of that assertion; but if it is true, there is another thing that I do know, and that is this, the time will come when you will want to pray. Let me explain what I mean when I say that I question your assertion about never praying. I have heard men pray who would have thought themselves insulted if they had been told that they did. What awful prayers they have presented to God when they have imprecated upon their souls, and bodies, and eyes, and limbs, and children, and everything else, the most terrible curses from God! There are some men who will do this at the least provocation. O sirs, mind that God does not grant you your wicked requests! I am afraid that, when an ungodly man prays in that shameless way, he does find his prayer in his heart; and I am also afraid that his heart must be full of damnation, or he would not find so many oaths in it; for that which comes out of a man is what is in him, and when you hear a man swear, you know that there is a deal of "swear" in his heart, for the language in which he dares to imprecate God's vengeance proves how alienated his heart must be from God.

I would remind you, who do not pray, that you will want to pray one day. If there were to be a pledge exacted from you that you never would pray to God,—if you were offered money never to pray, suppose you took the money, and promised never to pray,—I know what you would think; you would say to yourself, "What shall I do with this money, It is the price of my soul's salvation." It would strike you at once that it was an awful thing never to be allowed to pray, and you would feel that you had sold yourself to the devil, body and soul, and you would be in dire trouble. Well, but, as you say that you never pray, you might as well take the money that is offered to you. As you do not pray, I do not see what use the privilege of prayer is to you." If it be of any use to pray to God, "say you, "I shall pray at the last." Then pray now, for you never know what may be your last moment. Who knows how close you may be to your grave even while you are sitting in your pew? You saw one friend faint, just now; and we have seen hearers fall back dead even while gathered in the congregation God grant that we may not see it again! Still, the fact that it has happened is a loud call to all of us bidding us begin to pray.

Thus I have shown you where David found his prayer; he found it in his heart.

II. Now, secondly, HOW CAME DAVID'S PRAYER TO BE IN HIS HEART?
I answer that he found it in his heart because the Lord put it there. Every true heart-prayer, that is accepted of God, first came from God. The Lord Jesus passed by David's heart, and threw this prayer in at the window; and then, when the good man went down to look for a prayer, he found this prayer lying on the floor of his heart ready for him to use.

How does God put prayers into a man's heart? I answer, first, he instructs us how to pray. We none of us know how to pray aright till we have been to school to the Holy Spirit. We know not what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit comes, and shows us our need. Thus we see what to pray for. He also shows us what Christ has provided for us, and thus we see what we may hope to obtain. He shows us, too, that the way to God is through the precious blood of Jesus, and he leads us along that crimson, blood-besprinkled road, and so, by his instruction, he puts the prayer into our hearts.

In the next place, he puts it there by inclining us to pray. Benjamin Beddome wrote,—

"When God inclines the heart to pray
He hath an ear to hear;"—
and his short hymn contains a great truth. God does bend the heart to pray; and, oftentimes, he does this by filling us with sorrow; and, then, in the day of our distress, we cry unto him. But I have also known him do it in the sweeter way, as he did with David, by filling the heart with joy till we have been so glad and grateful that we have felt that we must pray, as David did, on another occasion, when he said, "Because he hath inclined his ear unto me, therefore will I call upon him as long as I live."

So, the Lord puts prayer into our heart by instructing us how to pray and by inclining us to pray.

Then he puts prayer into the heart by encouragement. You notice that my text begins with "Therefore." "Therefore hath thy servant found in his heart to pray this prayer unto thee." What does David mean by that "therefore"? Why, God had promised to do great things for him; and, my brother or sister, you may always safely ask for that which God has promised to give. When he gives you the promise of anything, he does as good as say to you, "Come, my child, ask for this; be not slow to come to me with your requests." If the Lord has said that he will bestow any blessing, what greater encouragement to pray can you possibly desire? But this promise, according to the Hebrew, had been given to David in a very special manner. In our version, it is rendered, "Thou hast revealed to thy servant"; but the marginal reading is, "Thou hast opened the ear of thy servant." A promise in the Bible is, often, a promise to a deaf ear; but the promise, applied by the Spirit of God, goes right through the outer organ, and penetrates to the ear of the soul. I am sure, dear friends, that you can never be backward in prayer when God opens your ear, and puts a promise into it. The richness, the sweetness, the sureness, the preciousness of the promise, when the Holy Spirit seals it home to the heart, makes a man go to his knees, he cannot help doing so; and thus, the Lord greatly encourages the needy soul to pray.

I will not keep you longer upon this point when I have just said that I believe God puts prayers into our hearts by a sense of his general goodness. We see how kind and good he is to the sons of men as a whole; and, therefore, we pray to him. By his special goodness to his own chosen people, we see still more of his compassion and tenderness, and so we are moved to pray to him. Especially does he put prayer into our hearts when he gives us a sight of the cross. We see there how greatly Jesus loved us, and, therefore, we pray. We rightly argue that he, who gave Jesus for us, will deny to us nothing that is for our good; and, therefore, again we pray. Often are we stirred up to pray by the recollection of former answers to prayer, and sometimes by observing how God hears other men and other women pray. Anyhow, it is a blessed thing when the Lord comes by, and scatters the seeds of prayer in our hearts, so that, when we want to pray, we have only to look within our own renewed nature and there we find the prayer that we shall do well to pray unto God.

III. Our last question, upon which I must speak but briefly, is this. WHAT MUST YOU AND I DO IN ORDER TO BE ABLE TO FIND PRAYERS IN OUR HEARTS?
Ah, dear friends, I am afraid that some of you can do nothing in this matter until, first of all, your hearts are renewed by grace. Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? "No one. And who can fetch an acceptable prayer out of an unaccepted person? No one. So, sinner, thou must first come to Jesus, confessing thy sin, and looking to his dear wounds, and finding a broken heart within thee as the result of his pierced heart; and when the Lord has looked upon you in his pardoning love, then you will find many prayers in your heart.

I asked a young friend, "Did you pray before conversion?" She answered that she did pray "after a sort." I then enquired, "What is the difference between your present prayers and those you offered before you knew the Lord?" Her answer was, "Then, I said my prayers; but, now, I mean them. Then, I said the prayers which other people taught me; but, now, I find them in my heart." There is good reason to cry "Eureka!" when we find prayer in our heart. Holy Bradford would never cease praying or praising till he found his heart thoroughly engaged in the holy exercise. If it be not in my heart to pray, I must pray till it is. But, oh, the delight of pleading with God when the heart casts forth mighty jets of supplication, like a geyser in full action! How mighty is supplication when the whole soul becomes one living, hungering, expecting desire!

But some Christian people often feel as if they could not pray; they get into a condition in which they are not able to pray, and that is a very sad state for any child of God to be in. How much do I personally desire ever to possess the true spirit of prayer! When I was at Mr. Rowland Hill's house at Wotton-under-Edge, many years ago, I asked, "Where did Mr. Hill use to pray? "And the answer of someone, who had known him when he was there, was, "He used to pray everywhere." I said, "Yes; but did he not have a special place for prayer? "The reply was, "I do not know; I never saw him when he was not praying." "Well, but," I asked, "did he not study somewhere?" I was told that he was always studying, wherever he went, yet that he was always in the spirit of prayer. The good old man, at last, had got into such a blessed state of mind that, when he sat down on the sofa, he would be going over a familiar hymn; and when he walked in the garden, he would be to-tooting something gracious. You know how they found him, in George Clayton's chapel over yonder. His carriage had not come, after the service, and he was walking up and down the aisles, softly singing to himself,—

"And when I'm to die, 'Receive me,' I'll cry;
For Jesus hath loved me, I cannot tell why;
But this I do find, we two are so joined,
He'll not be in glory, and leave me behind."
Good old soul! he had got to find it in his heart to pray always. He used to wander down the Blackfriars Road, with his hands under his coat tails, and stop to look in very nearly every shop-window; but, all the while, he was talking with God just as much as any man could have done who had shut himself up in a cloister. This is a blessed state of mind to be in,—to find as many prayers in your soul as there are hairs on your head; to pray as often as the clock ticks; to wake up in the night, and feel that you have been dreaming prayers; and when you rise in the morning, to find that your first thought is either that of praising God for his many mercies, or else pleading for somebody or other who needs your prayers.

How are you to get into this state? Well, I cannot tell you, except this; live near to God. If you live near to God, you must pray. He that learns how to live near to God will learn how to pray, and to give thanks to God. Look into your hearts, also, as David did. You cannot find prayer there if you do not look for it. Think much of your own needs, for a realization of how many and how great they are will make you pray. When you see the falls of others, recollect that you also will fall unless God holds you up; so make that a reason and subject for prayer. When you see others who are slack in devotion, or who have become cold in heart remember you will be as they are if grace does not prevent. So, let your own needs drive you to prayer.

Then read the Scriptures very much; study them; suck the sweetness out of them, for they are sweeter than honey and the honeycomb. You cannot fail to be much in prayer if you spend much time in the reading of the Word. If you will let God speak to you, I am sure you will be constrained to speak with God. Dwell much upon the doctrines of the gospel; seek to understand them; live upon them, and upon the promises, too. It is a blessed temptation to find one of God's precious promises, for you feel then as if you were tempted to pray, so as to plead it. If a man were to give me a cheque, I do not think I should be so foolish as not to cash it; and if God gives me a promise, which is better than any man's cheque, the most natural thing is for me to go on my knees to heaven's bank to seek to have it changed,—to get the blessing God really promised he would give me. So, keep hard by the promises, and closer still to the faithful Promiser. Live to God; live for God; live in God; and you will find prayers come out of your soul as sparks come out of the chimney of the blacksmith's smithy. If there is a blazing fire within, and the bellows blowing it up, and the smith is hard at work in his calling, the sparks will fly. And in this cold weather, dear brethren, it is necessary to keep our hearts warm. Have you noticed thatched cottages, and other houses where the snow lies on the roof? You say, "Yes." But have you noticed, where there is a good fire in the house, anywhere near the roof, how soon the snow is melted? And if you want to get warm, and keep warm, in the midst of a cold, graceless world, that chills the very marrow in a believer's bones, keep a warm heart inside, for that will tend to make it warm outside too. God grant you this blessing, and keep you ever abounding in prayer; and he shall have all the praise.

I do trust that some, who never prayed before, will try to pray. Nobody ever sneers at prayer but the man who does not pray, and nobody ever denies its efficacy but the man who knows nothing at all about it. And such men are out of court, and have no right to speak upon this matter. But men who are honest in other things, and who would be believed in a court of law, should be believed when they bear their solemn testimony that, times without number, God has heard their prayers. Try it, friend. God help thee to try it! Especially begin by believing in Jesus, and then shalt thou rightly seek unto the Almighty, and he will be found of thee. Yea, thou shalt lift up thine eyes to heaven, and the Lord will look down upon thee, and accept thee, and bless thee, both now and for ever. So may it be, for his dear Son's sake! Amen.
 
https://www.biblebb.com/