by Dale Shumaker
Spirit Savvy Network
www.spiritsavvy.net
Finding your mission, Empowering your life through prayer,
Becoming a Missionary in the Marketplace
Leading others to be Missionaries in the Marketplace
An
all-time Christian Classic on prayer which is a foundational study on
prayer that anyone interested in Prayer should read. So, I decided to
summarize it chapter by chapter. With Christ in the School of Prayer is a
classroom on the Power of Prayer in your Life.
With Christ in the School of Prayer by Andrew Murray,
Chapter 27, Christ the High Priest:
“In
the teaching of our Lord on this last night, we have learned to
understand that these astonishing prayer-promises have not been given in
our own behalf: it is from the Lord Himself alone that we can learn
what the prayer in His Name is to be and to obtain. We have understood
that to pray in His Name is to pray in perfect unity with Himself: the
high-priestly prayer will teach all that the prayer in the Name of Jesus
may ask and expect.
This
prayer is ordinarily divided into three parts. (John 17)
Our Lord first prays
for Himself (v. 1-5),
then for His disciples (6-19),
and last for all
the believing people through all ages (20-26).
First
of all, Jesus prays for Himself, for His being glorified, that so He
may glorify the Father. ‘Father! Glorify Thy Son. And now, Father,
glorify me.’
Draw
near and appear before the Father in Christ. Plead His finished work.
Say that you are one with it, that you trust on it, live in it. Say
that you too have given yourself to finish the work the Father has given
you to do, and to live alone for His glory. And ask then confidently
that the Son may be glorified in you.
This
is praying in the Name, in the very words, in the Spirit of Jesus, in
union with Jesus Himself. Such prayer has power. If with Jesus you
glorify the Father, the Father will glorify Jesus by doing what you ask
in His Name. It is only when your own personal relation on this point,
like Christ’s, is clear with God, when you are glorifying Him, and
seeking all for His glory, that like Christ, you will have power to
intercede for those around you.
Our
Lord next prays for the circle of His disciples. He speaks of them as
those whom the Father has given Him. Their chief mark is that they have
received Christ’s word. He says of them that He now sends them into
the world in His place, just as the Father had sent Himself. And He
asks two things for them:
that the Father keep them from the evil one,
and sanctify them through His Word,
because He sanctifies Himself for
them.
Just like the Lord, each believing intercessor has his own immediate circle for whom he first prays.
And
then follows our Lord’s prayer for a still wider circle. ‘I pray not
only for these, but for them who through their word shall believe.’ His
priestly heart enlarges itself to embrace all places and all time, and
He prays that all who belong to Him may everywhere be one, as God’s
proof to the world of the divinity of His mission, and then that they
may ever be with Him in His glory.
He
prays especially for the unity of the Spirit and of love. He prays for
its being one in Christ, as a witness to the world of Christ. Every
believer ought to pray much that the unity of the Church, not in
external organizations, but in spirit and in truth, may be made
manifest.
If
we but abide in Him, living, and walking, and doing all things in His
Name; if we but come and bring each separate petition, tested and
touched by His Word and Spirit, and cast it into the mighty stream of
intercession that goes up from Him —we shall have the full confidence
that we receive the petitions we ask: the ‘Father! I will’
will be breathed into us by the Spirit Himself. We shall lose
ourselves in Him, and become nothing, to find that in our impotence we
have power to prevail and succeed.”
More on Christ the High Priest,
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/murray/prayer.XXVII.html
The Christian Classics Ethereal Library has many classic works on prayer and living a Spirit-filled life.
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