EM Bounds

“He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall
he not with him freely give us all things?”
What a basis have we here for prayer and faith, illimitable, measureless in
breadth, in depth and in height! The promise to give us all things is backed up by
the calling to our remembrance of the fact that God freely gave His only Begotten
Son for our redemption. His giving His Son is the assurance and guarantee that
He will freely give all things to him who believes and prays.
What confidence have we in this Divine statement for inspired asking! What
holy boldness we have here for the largest asking! No commonplace
tameness should restrain our largest asking. Large, larger, and
largest asking magnifies grace and adds to God’s glory .
Feeble asking impoverishes the asker, and restrains God’s purposes
for the greatest good and obscures His glory.
Prayer puts God in the matter with commanding force: “Ask of Me things to come
concerning My sons,” says God, “and concerning the work of My hands command
ye Me.” We are charged in God’s Word “always to pray,” “in everything
by prayer,” “continuing instant in prayer,” to “pray everywhere,”
“praying always.” The promise is as illimitable as the command is
comprehensive. “All things whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer,
believing, ye shall receive,” “whatever ye shall ask,” “if ye shall ask
anything.” “Ye shall ask what ye will and it shall be done unto you.”
“Whatsoever ye ask the Father He will give it to you.” If there is
anything not involved in “All things whatsoever,” or not found in the
phrase “Ask anything,” then these things may be left out of prayer.
Language could not cover a wider range, nor involve more fully all
minutia. These statements are but samples of the all-comprehending
possibilities of prayer under the promises of God to those who meet
the conditions of right praying.
In Bible terminology prayer means calling upon God for things we
desire, asking things of God. Thus we read: “Call upon me and I will
answer thee, and will show thee great and mighty things which thou
knowest not” (Jeremiah 33:3). “Call upon me in the day of trouble,
and I will deliver thee” (Psalm 50:15). “Then shalt thou call, and the
Lord shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am” (Isaiah
58:9).
Prayer is revealed as a direct application to God for some temporal or
spiritual good. It is an appeal to God to intervene in life’s affairs for
the good of those for whom we pray. God is recognized as the source
and fountain of all good, and prayer implies that all His good is held
in His keeping for those who call upon Him in truth.
“All things whatsoever ye ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive,”
says Jesus, and this all-comprehensive condition not only presses us
to pray for all things, everything great and small, but it sets us on and
shuts us up to God, for who but God can cover the illimitable of
universal things, and can assure us certainly of receiving the very
thing for which we may ask in all the Thesaurus of earthly and
heavenly good?
Our temporal matters have much to do with our health and
happiness. They form our relations. They are tests of honesty and
belong to the sphere of justice and righteousness. Not to pray about
temporal matters is to leave God out of the largest sphere of our
being. He who cannot pray in everything, as we are charged to do by
Paul in Philippians, fourth chapter, has never learned in any true
sense the nature and worth of prayer. To leave business and time out
of prayer is to leave religion and eternity out of it. He who does not
pray about temporal matters cannot pray with confidence about
spiritual matters. He who does not put God by prayer in his struggling
toil for daily bread will never put Him in his struggle for heaven. He
who does not cover and supply the wants of the body by prayer will
never cover and supply the wants of his soul. Both body and soul are
dependent on God, and prayer is but the crying expression of that
dependence.
Thus, when we open our eyes in the morning, our thought instantly mounts
heavenward. To many Christians the morning hours are the most precious
portion of the day, because they provide the opportunity for the hallowed
fellowship that gives the keynote to the day’s program. And what better
introduction can there be to the never-ceasing glory and wonder of a new day
than to spend it alone with God? It is said that Mr. Moody, at a time when no
other place was available, kept his morning watch in the coal-shed, pouring out
his heart to God, and finding in his precious Bible a true “feast of fat things.”
“I saw the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of
the Word of God, and to meditation on it, that thus my heart might be comforted,
encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed; and that thus, by means of the Word
of God, whilst meditating on it, my heart might be brought into mental
communion with the Lord. I began, therefore, to meditate on the New Testament
early in the morning. The first thing I did, after having asked in a few words for
the Lord’s blessing upon his precious Word, was to begin to meditate on the
Word of God, searching, as it were, into every verse to get blessing out of it; not
for the sake of the public ministry of the Word, not for the sake of preaching on
what I had meditated on, but for the sake of obtaining food for my own soul. The
result I have found to be almost invariably thus, that after a very few minutes my
soul has been led to confession, or to thanksgiving, or to intercession or to
supplication; so that, though I did not, as it were, give myself to prayer, but to
meditation, yet it turned almost immediately more or less into prayer.”
The study of the Word and prayer go together, and where we find the one truly
practised, the other is sure to be seen in close alliance.
But we do not pray always. That is the trouble with so many of us. We need to
pray much more than we do and much longer than we do.