Blessed Jesus! it is You who has unlocked to Your people the
gates of prayer. Without You, they must have been shut forever. It was Your
atoning merit on earth that first opened them; it is Your intercessory
work in Heaven that keeps them open still.
How unlimited the promise — "Whatever you shall ask!" It
is the pledge of all that the needy sinner requires all that an Omnipotent
Savior can bestow! As the great Steward of the mysteries of grace, He seems to
say to His faithful servants, "Take your request, and under this, My
superscription, write what you please." And then, when the blank is filled up,
He further endorses each petition with the words, "I WILL do it!"
He further encourages us to ask "in His name." In the
case of an earthly petitioner there are some pleas more influential in obtaining
a benefit than others. Jesus speaks of this as forming the key to the
heart of God. As David loved the helpless cripple of Saul's house "for
Jonathan's sake," so will the Father, by virtue of our covenant relationship
to the true Jonathan (lit., "the gift of God"), delight in giving us even
"exceedingly abundantly above all that we can ask or think."
Reader, do you know the blessedness of confiding your every
need and every care your every sorrow and every cross into the ear of the
Savior? He is the "Wonderful Counselor." With an exquisitely tender sympathy, He
can enter into the innermost depths of your need. That need may be great but
the everlasting arms are underneath it all. Think of Him now, at this moment, the great Angel of the Covenant, with the censer full of much incense, in which
are placed your feeblest aspirations, your most burdened sighs, the
odor-breathing cloud ascending with acceptance before the Father's throne.
The answer may tarry these your supplications may seem to be kept long on the wing, hovering around the mercy-seat. A gracious God sometimes sees it fitting thus to test the faith and patience of His people. He delights to hear the music of their importunate pleadings to see them undeterred by difficulties unrepelled by apparent forgetfulness and neglect. But He will come at last the pent-up fountain of love and mercy will at length burst out the soothing accents will in His own good time be heard, "Be it unto you according to your word!"
The answer may tarry these your supplications may seem to be kept long on the wing, hovering around the mercy-seat. A gracious God sometimes sees it fitting thus to test the faith and patience of His people. He delights to hear the music of their importunate pleadings to see them undeterred by difficulties unrepelled by apparent forgetfulness and neglect. But He will come at last the pent-up fountain of love and mercy will at length burst out the soothing accents will in His own good time be heard, "Be it unto you according to your word!"
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John 14:13-14 ... And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it.
1 John 5:14-15 ... And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: And if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him.
Ephesians 3:20 ... Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, ❤
1 John 5:14-15 ... And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: And if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him.
Ephesians 3:20 ... Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, ❤
