The dispensation of the Holy Ghost was ushered in by prayer. Read these words from Acts 1:13—“And when they were come in, they went up into an upper room where abode both Peter and James and John and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James, the son of Alpheus, and Simon Zelotes, and Judas, the brother of James. These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women, and Mary, the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren.”
This was the attitude which the disciples assumed after Jesus had ascended to Heaven. That meeting for prayer ushered in the dispensation of the Holy Spirit, to which prophets had looked forward with entranced vision. And to prayer in a marked way has this dispensation, which holds in its keeping the fortune of the Gospel, been committed.
Apostolic men knew well the worth of prayer and were jealous of the most sacred offices which infringed on their time and strength and hindered them from “giving themselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the Word.” They put prayer first. The Word depends on prayer that it “may have free course and be glorified.” Praying apostles make preaching apostles. Prayer gives edge, entrance and weight to the Word. Sermons conceived by prayer and saturated with prayer are weighty sermons. Sermons may be ponderous with thought, sparkle with the gems of genius and of taste, pleasing and popular, but without they have their birth and life in prayer, for God’s uses, they are trifles, dull and dead.
The Lord of the harvest sends out labourers, full in number and perfect in kind, in answer to prayer. It needs no prophetic ken to declare that if the Church had used prayer force to its utmost the light of the gospel would have long since girdled the world.
God’s Gospel has always waited more on prayer than on anything else for its successes. A praying Church is strong though poor in all besides. A prayerless Church is weak though rich in all besides. Praying hearts only will build God’s Kingdom. Praying hands only will put the crown on the Saviour’s head.
The Holy Spirit is the Divinely appointed Substitute for and representative of the personal and humanised Christ. How much is He to us! And how we are to be filled by Him, live in Him, walk in Him, and be led by Him! How we are to conserve and kindle to a brighter and more consuming glow the holy flame! How careful should we be never to quench that pure flame! How watchful, tender, loving ought we to be so as not to grieve His sensitive, loving nature! How attentive, meek and obedient, never to resist His Divine impulses, always to hear His voice, and always to do His Divine will. How can all this be done without much and continuous prayer?
The importunate widow had a great case to win against helpless, hopeless despair, but she did it by importunate prayer. We have this great treasure to preserve and enhance, but we have a Divine Person to entertain and help. We can only be enabled to meet our duties by exceeding much prayer.
Prayer is the only element in which the Holy Spirit can live and work. Prayer is the golden chain which happily enslaves Him to His happy work in us.
Everything depends upon our having this Second Christ, and retaining Him in the fullness of His power. With the disciples, Pentecost was made by prayer. With them, Pentecost was continued by giving themselves to continued prayer. Persistent and unwearied prayer is the price we will have to pay for our Pentecost, by instant and continued prayer. Abiding in the fact and in the spirit of prayer is the only surety of our abiding in Pentecostal power and purity.
Not only should the many-sided operation of the Holy Spirit in us and for us, teach us the necessity of prayer for Him, but His condition with our praying assumes another attitude, the attitude of mutual dependence, that of action and reaction. The more we pray the more He helps us to pray, and the larger the measure of Himself He gives to us. We are not only to pray and press and wait for His coming to us, but after we have received Him in His fullness, we are to pray for a fuller and still larger bestowment of Himself to us. We are to pray for the largest and ever-increasing and constant fullness of capacity. “That ye might be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man,” as Paul prayed for the Spirit-baptised Ephesian Church. It will be remembered that He also prayed that “Christ might dwell in your hearts by faith,” rooted and grounded in love, measuring up to the breadth, length, depth and height of the most perfect sainthood, and up to the immeasurable love of Christ, being “filled with all the fullness of God.”