Teach Me To Pray by Murray Andrew

Author:Murray, Andrew [Murray, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2002-05-31T16:00:00+00:00

—Chapter 19 —

Power for Prayer and

Work

I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name.

John 14:12–13

The Savior opened His public ministry with His disciples with the Sermon on the Mount. Now He closes it by the parting address preserved for us by John. In both He speaks more than once of prayer—but with a difference. The Sermon on the Mount is to disciples who have just entered His school, who scarcely know that God is their Father, and whose prayer’s chief reference is to their personal needs. In His closing address, He speaks to disciples whose training time has now come to an end, and who are ready as His messengers to take His place and do His work. In the former, the chief lesson is to be childlike, to pray in faith, and to trust the Father to give you good gifts. Now He points to something higher. Now they are His friends to whom He has made known all He has heard from His Father. They are His messengers who have entered into His plans and into whose hands the care of His work and kingdom on earth is to be entrusted. They are to go out and do His work, and in the power of His approaching exaltation even greater works. Prayer is to be the channel through which that power is received for their work. With Christ’s ascension to the Father, a new epoch begins, both for their work and for their life of prayer.

How clearly this connection comes out in our text. As Christ’s body here on earth, as those who are one with Him in heaven, the disciples are now to do greater works than He had done. Their success and their victories are to be greater than His. He mentions two reasons for this. First, because He was to go to the Father to receive all power. Second, because they might now ask and expect anything in His name. ‘‘Because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name.’’ His going to the Father would in this way bring a double blessing. They would ask and receive all in His name, and as a consequence be able to do the greater works. The first mention of prayer in our Savior’s parting words teaches us two important lessons. He that would do the works of Jesus must pray. He that would pray in His name must work.

He who would work must pray. In prayer, power for work is obtained. As long as Jesus was here on earth, He did the greatest works. The same demons that the disciples could not cast out fled at His word. When Jesus went to the Father, He was no longer here in body to do the work. The disciples became His body.

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