Reading: “And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us.” —1 John 5:14

It is of immense service in prayer to look steadfastly to the power by which its requests are fulfilled. It is not power as it resided in the infinite Father, but power as it is confided to the Son and exercised by Him. It is power brought within our reach. The exercise of this power has been officially assigned to One who, having provided redemption by His blood, must see its benefits secured in those for whom it is designed.

In prayer we touch constantly the kingly scepter of our ascended Lord, simply because in this office He consummates “the salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” It steadies prayer and gives it strength, to know that it is not spoken into the air, but that it is addressed directly to Him whose function it is to hear and answer. The scepter of the King is always extended to the supplicant.

Nor is this all. The approach in prayer is made with increasing confidence, since this king is our “Elder Brother,” clothed with all the sensibilities, affections, and sympathies of our nature, and who especially can “be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, having been in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.”

(Edited from Theology of Prayer, B. M. Palmer, 282–283)

 

 

The Father hears Him pray, His dear anointed One;
He cannot turn away, the presence of His Son;
His Spirit answers to the blood,
His Spirit answers to the blood,
And tells me I am born of God

—Charles Wesley