Luke 11:9

COMMANDING PRAYER

‘Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.’

Luke 11:9

There is no particular subject of prayer to which this exhortation is to be applied. It is perfectly general; it is universal. There is no boundary. Ask, ask everything. How large, how grand, how worthy, how like the great God and Saviour!

Are there any pre-requisites to make prayer effectual? Yes, three.

I. It must be made in the name of Jesus.—‘Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in My name He will do it.’ ‘In My name.’ In the name of Jesus. Certainly it is not enough to put the word at the end of your prayer. That is not all. It means, ‘I claim upon the merit of the intercession of the Lord Jesus Christ.’ It means more than that. It means, ‘I personate Him, and He personates me.’ That is true in the case of every Christian. If I am a real Christian, I am a member of Christ, and as a member I represent my Head, and He, as my Head, represents me. Wonderful, almost incredible fact, but it is a fact, and by virtue of that fact I command the answer to my prayer.

II. Prayer must be accompanied by a holy life.—We must lift up holy hands. And David says, ‘If I regard iniquity in my heart the Lord will not hear me.’ And we may say that for this reason, if there were no other, an irreligious life shows that I have not rightly used what God has already given me. I cannot expect He will give me more, when I have abused what he has already given me.

III. There must be faith.—‘Whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.’ And again, ‘what things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.’ That faith is a gift, but though it be a gift yet to make that faith, you must have great ideas of the great God, and you must know your Bible very well.

Fulfil these three conditions and no covenanted thing will ever fail you.

—Rev. James Vaughan.

Illustration

‘What may the supplicant ask? Anything, anything in the whole world he likes, so it be done humbly, reverently, with filial modesty and filial confidence; anything; nothing is too infinitesimally small, nothing is too infinitely great, for we are dealing with Him Who at one and the same time wields the universe and numbers the hairs of our head; to Whom the nations are as a drop in the bucket, Who rules the world, and regulates a sparrow’s fall. We may ask anything. We may ask many things which, perhaps, it would have been better for us not to have asked, which we should not have asked if we had known everything; but a little child is quite ready to pour out all its little heart into a Father’s ear. As it is truly and beautifully said, “When we present our mixed nosegay, God knows well how to separate it, leaving the weeds, and taking only the flowers.” ’