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[HOW TO PRAY by R.A.Torrey]
CHAPTER VII
ABIDING IN CHRIST
"If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall ask
what ye will, and it shall be done unto you." (John 15:7) The whole
secret of prayer is found in these words of our Lord. Here is prayer
that has unbounded power: "Ask WHAT YE WILL, and it shall be done
unto you."
There is a way then of asking and getting precisely what we
ask and getting all we ask. Christ gives two conditions of this all-
prevailing prayer:
1. The first condition is, "If ye abide in Me."
What is it to abide in Christ?
Some explanations that have been given of this are so
mystical or so profound that to many simple-minded children of God
they mean practically nothing at all; but what Jesus meant was really
very simple.
He had been comparing Himself to a vine, His disciples to the
branches in the vine. Some branches continued in the vine, that is,
remained in living union with the vine, so that the sap or life of
the vine constantly flowed into these branches. They had no
independent life of their own. Everything in them was simply the
outcome of the life of the vine flowing into them. Their buds, their
leaves, their blossoms, their fruit, were really not theirs, but the
buds, leaves, blossoms and fruit of the vine. Other branches were
completely severed from the vine, or else the flow of the sap or life
of the vine into them was in some way hindered. Now for us to abide
in Christ is for us to bear the same relation to Him that the first
sort of branches bear to the vine; that is to say, to abide in Christ
is to renounce any independent life of our own, to give up trying to
think our thoughts, or form our resolutions, or cultivate our
feelings, and simply and constantly look to Christ to think His
thoughts in us, to form His purposes in us, to feel His emotions and
affections in us. It is to renounce all life independent of Christ,
and constantly to look to Him for the inflow of His life into us, and
the outworking of His life through us. When we do this, and in so
far as we do this, our prayers will obtain that which we seek from
God.
This must necessarily be so, for our desires will not be our
own desires, but Christ's, and our prayers will not in reality be our
own prayers, but Christ praying in us. Such prayers will always be
in harmony with God's will, and the Father heareth Him always. When
our prayers fail it is because they are indeed our prayers. We have
conceived the desire and framed the petition of ourselves, instead of
looking to Christ to pray through us.
To say that one should be abiding in Christ in all his
prayers, looking to Christ to pray through Him rather than praying
himself, is simply saying in another way that one should pray "in the
Spirit." When we thus abide in Christ, our thoughts are not our own
thoughts, but His, our joys are not our own joys, but His, our fruit
is not our own fruit, but His; just as the buds, leaves, blossoms and
fruit of the branch that abides in the vine are not the buds, leaves,
blossoms and fruit of the branch, but of the vine itself whose life
is flowing into the branch and manifests itself in these buds,
leaves, blossoms and fruit.
To abide in Christ, one must of course already be in Christ
through the acceptance of Christ as an atoning Savior from the guilt
of sin, a risen Savior from the power of sin, and a Lord and Master
over all his life. Being in Christ, all that we have to do to abide
(or continue) in Christ is simply to renounce our self-life--utterly
renouncing every thought, every purpose, every desire, every
affection of our own, and just looking day by day and hour by hour
for Jesus Christ to form His thoughts, His purposes, His affections,
His desires in us. Abiding in Christ is really a very simple matter,
though it is a wonderful life of privilege and of power.
2. But there is another condition stated in this verse,
though it is really involved in the first: "And My words abide in
you."
If we are to obtain from God all that we ask from Him,
Christ's words must abide or continue in us. We must study His
words, fairly devour His words, let them sink into our thought and
into our heart, keep them in our memory, obey them constantly in our
life, let them shape and mold our daily life and our every act.
This is really the method of abiding in Christ. It is
through His words that Jesus imparts Himself to us. The words He
speaks unto us, they are spirit and they are life. (John 6:33) It is
vain to expect power in prayer unless we meditate much upon the words
of Christ, and let them sink deep and find a permanent abode in our
hearts. There are many who wonder why they are so powerless in
prayer, but the very simple explanation of it all is found in their
neglect of the words of Christ. They have not hidden His words in
their hearts; His words do not abide in them. It is not by seasons
of mystical meditation and rapturous experiences that we learn to
abide in Christ; it is by feeding upon His word, His written word as
found in the Bible, and looking to the Holy Spirit to implant these
words in our hearts and to make them a living thing in our hearts.
If we thus let the words of Christ abide in us, they will stir us up
in prayer. They will be the mold in which our prayers are shaped,
and our prayers will be necessarily along the line of God's will, and
will prevail with Him. Prevailing prayer is almost an impossibility
where there is neglect of the study of the Word of God.
Mere intellectual study of the Word of God is not enough;
there must be meditation upon it. The Word of God must be revolved
over and over and over in the mind, with a constant looking to God by
His Spirit to make that Word a living thing in the heart. The prayer
that is born of meditation upon the Word of God is the prayer that
soars upward most easily to God's listening ear.
George Muller, one of the mightiest men of prayer of the
present generation, when the hour for prayer came would begin by
reading and meditating upon God's Word until out of the study of the
Word a prayer began to form itself in his heart. Thus God Himself
was a real author of the prayer, and God answered the prayers which
He Himself had inspired.
The Word of God is the instrument through which the Holy
Spirit works, it is the sword of the Spirit in more senses than one;
and the one who would know the work of the Holy Spirit in any
direction must feed upon the Word. The one who would pray in the
Spirit must meditate much upon the Word, that the Holy Spirit may
have something through which He can work. The Holy Spirit works His
prayers in us through the Word, and neglect of the Word makes praying
in the Holy Spirit an impossibility. If we would feed the fire of
our prayers with the fuel of God's Word, all our difficulties in
prayer would disappear.
