Pentecostal Prayer

Wait for the promise of the Father.” — Acrts i. 4.

THE disciples were the heirs of the Father’s promise — heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ.”” They were present at the death of the testator (Heb. ix. 16), And now the last command of the risen Lord, ere He ascends to heaven, is: ‘“‘ Tarry, till ye be endued with power from on high.” Wait till you have inherited the promise. This alone, but this most certainly, will be your sufficient strength for the work I have entrusted to you.”

The disciples knew from the Old Testament the meaning and the power of the word: “‘ Wait.” ‘“‘ They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.” The Lord had said they would be bap-

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A, =, tized with the Holy Ghost, they would receive power after the Holy Ghost was come upon them. When He had gone up to heaven they went at once to the Upper Room, and continued there with one accord in prayer and supplication. Their number was but one hundred and twenty, the few out of the tens of thousands who had come up to the feast, who believed in Christ as the Risen Lord.

Their expectation was not disappointed. With Pentecost, the promise of the Father came true, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. As essential as the promise of the Father was the prayer of His children; the one as indispensable as the other. As inconceivably glorious as was the promise, was the glory and the power of the prayer by which the gift was to be brought down to earth. And such will be our prayer too, as we set ourselves with all our hearts to wait for the gift.

That prayer of the first disciples is an example throughout the ages, and a pledge of how much prayer can avail. It is the assured proof that true, united, continuous prayer will always have the power of bringing down the outpouring of the Holy Spirit to this earth. Their prayer invites us to ask what it was that gave that prayer such power, and what it was in the petitioners that enabled them to pray that effectual prayer which availed so much — two questions of the deepest importance.

The first thing we fiotice is the un — limited faith with which the disciples counted upon their Lord in heaven. They knew Him as the Faithful and True. They had had fellowship with Him the risen One, in the living experience of His power. They had seen Him go up to heaven. There was no thought of His not fulfilling His promise./ We feel inclined to say: ‘‘ No wonder? that they should have faith; they had what we never can have.’ And yet we have a right to say we have all they had, and even more. We have the same Lord Jesus, revealed in us in His heavenly glory by the power of the Holy Spirit. We have what they had not, the inconceivable wonder of what had taken place with them; the Holy Spirit actually descending from heaven and filling them with heavenly power. Our faith has in very deed the same sure ground on which they rested, with the addition of the confirmation of the lanswer to their prayer.

But we must not only think of their faith. “We remember the words of our Lord Jesus (John xiv. 15, 16), “If ye love Me, keep My commandments. And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Comforter.” Their love to the Lord Jesus, seen in the keeping of His commandments, is stated to be the ground on which He could plead with the Father to send them the Spirit.

There was in very deed with the disciples an intimate burning love to the Lord who had ascended to heaven, and an unconditional surrender to obey His commandments to the very least. J They had given proof when He calledy them of their readiness to forsake all and to follow Him. With all their failings, they had indeed counted it their highest happiness to be with Him, and to obey His commands. They had followed Him to the cross and the grave. Though they had seen Him die, and were not able to believe that He would rise again, yet their hearts were so attached to Him, their love could think of nothing but of Him as their only Lord. It was this complete surrender of the whole heart and life that was accepted by Christ as the preparation that made them capable of receiving the fulness of the Spirit. el The question arises whether we, in our prayer for the Spirit, do indeed yield ourselves with the same passionate love, whole-hearted devotion, and absolute obedience to the Lord and all His commandments, to be led by the Spirit and to be used wholly and only in His service and the fulfilment ‘of His will. We cannot understand the prayer of Pentecost in its Divine power except as we study the whole disposition of the disciples and test ourselves by it.

Another thought. These men, as we have looked at them, were in very deed ready to yield themselves entirely to the control of the Spirit, and to allow themselves in everything to be led by Him. They were literally dead to the world; they had no thought of finding pleasure in its favour or help, they knew that the world hated them as it had hated Christ. They had no hope or desire, but that the Spirit of the glorified Lord Jesus should have complete possession and mastery. It was their one desire that just as they had lived with Him here on earth in love and obedience, so they should live as those who belonged wholly to their glorified Lord in heaven by the power of His indwelling Spirit.

Is it not just here that we find the great lack in our prayer for the power of the Holy Spirit? We think too little that the Spirit comes as God, to take complete possession of my life, with all that this means. As I pray for His power there must at least be an intense desire to follow Him every moment of the day and so to walk after the Spirit. What we need to realize is that the Spirit as God will impart Himself to each one as completely as if he were the only one on earth in whom God dwells. As God He claims to have everything in my heart and life under His direct control, and in the inner man, in the life of knowing, feeling and willing, and by His direct operation to be my life. It is only when such is the aim of our spirits that we can with a Divine confidence expect that the Spirit will, as in the disciples, in full power take possession of us.

There is something more. The disciples were bound together in the bonds of a sacred, a Divine love. Jesus Christ was the centre round which they were all united. At the Last Supper that love was not yet in existence; they there disputed as to who should be the chief. But Christ’s cross had bound them together as nothing else could have done. The Spirit that they received on the evening of the resurrection day made them one spirit and one body.

During the ten days of prayer each did not seek the Spirit for himself, but as in a fiery oven, all their selfishness was melted, and they indeed became one Body in which the Holy Spirit could have His dwelling, and God His habitation. It is when God’s people not only pray, each’ for His own circle or Church, but as members of Christ’s body throughout the world, when they plead as those who are perfect in one even as the Father and the Son are one, that such united prayer will have an answer beyond all that we can ask or think.

There is another question that may be asked: Why was this united continual prayer needed? The Lord knew how they loved Him, how they longed to have His heavenly presence in their hearts; why could it not have been given without all that prayer? The question leads us into one of the deepest mysteries of godliness. In prayer God seeks to waken strong desire; it is then alone that our whole being opens up to receive His gifts, and that we will value those gifts as we should.

But there is something that goes deeper. When God gave the earth to man to rule over it as king it was with the purpose that, even by Himself, nothing should be done without man’s will. God has limited Himself, and made Himself dependent in the dispensing of His gifts, on what man really wills and desires. This is one of the highest tokens of man’s nobility, that he has the power to say to God what he desires, and then to expect the answer.

So it was that the prayer at Pentecost was a proof of the power Christ had entrusted to His disciples that they should ask what they would, and it should be done to them. That prayer is therefore of indescribable value to us, aS an encouragement and assurance that if we with our whole heart unite in asking God for the display of the power of the Spirit, it will most surely be given. We are “a royal priesthood.” That is not only a title of honour or the expression of a blessed experience. We have in very deed the office and the right to ask in the name of Christ, and in answer to our prayer the Father will give the Spirit to the souls round about us.

Would God that we believed with our whole heart in the glory of the prayer of Pentecost, and the courage it gives us to expect great things from our God!