With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray, excerpt 203

This post continues a series of excerpts from With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray. I do this, not because I'm a powerful prayer warrior, but because I'm not. Murray was. I thank the Christian Classics Ethereal Library for making this public domain work available. To see their post of the book, go here. His book is based on Mark 11:22-24. The previous post in this series is here. As usual in this blog, long quotations are in this color. Murray's book is based on Mark 11:22-24.

Brother! what we need to pray in the Name of Christ, to ask that we may receive that our joy may be full, is the baptism of this Holy Ghost. This is more than the Spirit of God under the Old Testament. This is more than the Spirit of conversion and regeneration the disciples had before Pentecost. This is more than the Spirit with a measure of His influence and working. This is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the glorified Jesus in His exaltation-power, coming on us as the Spirit of the indwelling Jesus, revealing the Son and the Father within. (John xiv:16-23.) It is when this Spirit is the Spirit not of our hours of prayer, but of our whole life and walk, when this Spirit glorifies Jesus in us by revealing the completeness of His work, and making us wholly one with Him and like Him, that we can pray in His Name, because we are in very deed one with Him. Then it is that we have that immediateness of access to the Father of which Jesus says, ‘I say not that I will pray the Father for you.’ Oh! we need to understand and believe that to be filled with this, the Spirit of the glorified One,  is the one need of God’s believing people. Then shall we realize what it is, ‘with all prayer and supplication to be praying at all seasons in the Spirit,’ and what it is, ‘praying in the Holy Ghost, to keep ourselves in the love of God.’ ‘At that day ye shall ask in my Name.’

With Christ in the school of prayer, by Andrew Murray, excerpt 196

This post continues a series of excerpts from With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray. I do this, not because I'm a powerful prayer warrior, but because I'm not. Murray was. I thank the Christian Classics Ethereal Library for making this public domain work available. To see their post of the book, go here. His book is based on Mark 11:22-24. The previous post in this series is here. As usual in this blog, long quotations are in this color. Murray's book is based on Mark 11:22-24.

Disciples of Jesus! Let the lessons of this day enter deep into your hearts. The Master says: Only pray in my Name; whatsoever ye ask will be given. Heaven is set open to you: the treasures and powers of the world of spirit are placed at your disposal on behalf of men around you. O come, and let us learn to pray in the Name of Jesus. As to the disciples, He says to us, ‘Hitherto ye have not asked in my Name: ask, and ye shall receive.’ Let each disciple of Jesus seek to avail himself of the rights of his royal priesthood, and use the power placed at his disposal for his circle and his work. Let Christians awake and hear the message: 

your prayer can obtain what otherwise will be withheld, can accomplish what otherwise remains undone. O awake, and use the name of Jesus to open the treasures of heaven for this perishing world. Learn as the servants of the King to use His Name: ‘WHATSOEVER ye shall ask in my Name, THAT WILL I DO.’
‘LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY.’

With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray, excerpt 166

This post continues a series of excerpts from With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray. I do this, not because I'm a powerful prayer warrior, but because I'm not. Murray was. I thank the Christian Classics Ethereal Library for making this public domain work available. To see their post of the book, go here. His book is based on Mark 11:22-24. The previous post in this series is here. As usual in this blog, long quotations are in this color. Murray's book is based on Mark 11:22-24.

... use of the name of a person may be in virtue of a legal union. A merchant leaving his home and business, gives his chief clerk a general power, by which he can draw thousands of pounds in the merchant’s name. The clerk does this, not for himself, but only in the interests of the business. It is because the merchant knows and trusts him as wholly devoted to his interests and business, that he dares put his name and property at his command.
When the Lord Jesus went to heaven, He left His work, the management of His kingdom on earth, in the hands of His servants. He could not do otherwise than also give them His Name to draw all the supplies they needed for the due conduct of His business. And they have the spiritual power to avail themselves of the Name of Jesus just to the extent to which they yield themselves to live only for the interests and the work of the Master. The use of the Name always supposes the surrender of our interests to Him whom we represent.
Or such a use of the name may be in virtue of a life union. In the case of the merchant and his clerk, the union is temporary. But we know how oneness of life on earth gives oneness of name: a child has the father’s name because he has his life. And often the child of a good father has been honoured or helped by others for the sake of the name he bore. But this would not last long if it were found that it was only a name, and that the father’s character was wanting. The name and the character or spirit must be in harmony. When such is the case, the child will have a double claim on the father’s friends: the character secures and increases the love and esteem rendered first for the name’s sake. So it is with Jesus and the believer: we are one, we have one life, one Spirit with Him; for this reason we may come in His Name. Our power in using that Name, whether with God, or men, or devils depends on the measure of our spiritual life-union. The use of the name rests on the unity of life; the Name and the Spirit of Jesus are one. 

With Christ in the school of prayer, by Andrew Murray, excerpt 125

This post continues a series of excerpts from With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray. I thank the Christian Classics Ethereal Library for making this public domain work available. To see their post of the book, go here.  His book is based on Mark 11:22-24. The previous post in this series is here. As usual in this blog, long quotations are in this color. In this excerpt, Murray continues a discussion about prayer and the Trinity. His book is based on Mark 11:22-24.

‘I go unto the Father!’
Or, Power for Praying and Working.
‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father. And whatsoever ye shall ask in my Name, that will I do.’—John xiv. 12, 13.
As the Saviour opened His public ministry with His disciples by the Sermon on the Mount, so He closes it by the Parting Address preserved to us by John. In both He speaks more than once of prayer. But with a difference. In the Sermon on the Mount it is as to disciples who have only just entered His school, who scarcely know that God is their Father, and whose prayer chiefly has reference to their personal needs. In His closing address He speaks to disciples whose training time is now come to an end, and who are ready as His messengers to take His place and His work. In the former the chief lesson is: Be childlike, pray believingly, and trust the Father that He will give you all good gifts. Here He points to something higher: They are now His friends to whom He has made known all that He has heard of the Father; 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 now to go out and do His works, and in the power of His approaching exaltation, even greater works: prayer is now to be the channel through which that power is to be received for their work. With Christ’s ascension to the Father a new epoch commences for their working and praying  both.
See how clearly this connection comes out in our text. As His body here on earth, as those who are one with Him in heaven, they 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. The one, because He was to go to the Father, to receive all power; the other, because they might now ask and expect all in His Name. ‘Because I go to the Father, and—notice this and—and, whatsoever ye shall ask, I will do.’ His going to the Father would thus bring the double blessing: they would ask and receive all in His Name, and as a consequence, would do the greater works. This first mention of prayer in our Saviour’s parting words thus teaches us two most important lessons. He that would do the works of Jesus must pray in His Name. He that would pray in His Name must work in His Name.