The Lord Jesus was standing at the graveside of Lazarus. The man had been dead for four days. He commanded that the stone that sealed the tomb be removed. He was about to command Lazarus to come out of the tomb. Normally, it ought to have been a tense moment. He ought to have been afraid, asking, “What will happen if my command to him to come out meets with silence and nothing happens?” The Lord did not react that way. He lifted up His eyes and said, “Father I thank Thee that thou hast heard me. I know that thou hearest me always.” He prayed or rather He proclaimed aloud so that everyone might hear Him – “Father, Thou hast heard Me. Father, I know that Thou hearest Me always.”
Father, I Thank Thee That Thou Hast Heard Me
The Lord Jesus was praying for the first time publicly at that occasion. Why did He thank the Father for hearing Him? When did He ask and was heard? It must be a report of what happened in the private arena of His praying. As we said in the last chapter, He must have carried out much praying in private to God. He must have wrestled through to victory. He must have asked and received in prayer in the privacy of His communion with the Father. It was secret business that was now coming to the public. There are people whose transactions with God are all a matter of the public. They know nothing of secret dealings with Him. They know nothing of an hour, a day, a week, or a month in private with Him so that He may say something to them that remains a secret between Him and them. This is a great pity; for no one can make progress beyond the elementary, unless there are secret dealings between God and him. Let me ask you a question, “What is it that ever transpired between the Lord and you that you have not shared with anybody? Is there something in your relationship with Him, something that unites both of you, something that is precious to Him and to you, something that is too intimate, so that you just know that this must never be shared? Has He ever told you something and added, ‘Please, do not tell any man this thing that I have told you’?” If there is nothing between you and the Lord that you are reluctant to share, then your relationship with Him is superficial. May you consecrate more time to being in His presence. May you give Him in- creasing opportunity to enjoy your presence. As you linger increasingly in His presence, He will one day whisper something into your ear which is deeply personal and from that day your relationship with Him will pass from the ordinary to the special. May you labour so much in prayer alone with Him that there will be an increasing number of things about which you can say to Him in private as a testimony, “Father, I thank Thee that Thou hast heard me.” May you learn to deal with Him al- ways in private first; so that when you speak in public, your word will not fall to the ground because it is rooted in honesty with God. May you decide that you will say nothing in public which you have not sorted out in private with Him. May you spend so much time with Him in private that everything you say in public will bear the marks of authenticity. Those who settle things in private with God before they speak before man, carry with them unusual authority. The problem with too many of us is that we are not patient enough to wait until an issue is deeply settled with God before it is announced. The result is that we can say one thing today and tomorrow we are forced to contradict ourselves. Lord, for- give me for this. Do you, too, need forgiveness? If you do, ask Him for it and then go away and be different.
I Know That Thou Hearest Me Always
It was tremendous boldness for the Lord Jesus to make the statement, “I know that thou hearest me always.” In a few minutes He was going to command Lazarus to come out of the grave. If the Father always heard Him, then it would soon be obvious. If He was lying, then the truth of it would soon be made manifest. Not long from then, the Lord called out to Lazarus and he came out of the grave alive, having died four days earlier. That incident left no doubts in any man’s mind about the fact that the Father always heard the Son. When the Lord was making that statement, He was not guessing. He was stating a plain fact. He knew it. The Father knew it and soon man knew it. That was a confession indeed.
The Father Always Hears You?
The question we must now ask is, “Can you also say, ‘Father, I know that Thou hearest me always’?” If you made that statement, would it be true? Is it backed by your past or present history? I am afraid that I can only say, “Father, I know that You hear me most of the time.” I know that that confession belittles God. Lord, for- give me for being the type of son who cannot bring joy to You by confessing that You always hear him. Lord, I repent. I will do something about it. Because many believers can only say that the Lord sometimes hears them, we need to ask, what are the qualifications of a person who can say without fear of contradiction, “I know that the Father always hears me”? We outline the following:
- The person must be pure in heart. He must be holy. Anyone who practises sin will not always be heard.
- The person must be delivered from the love of the world and the love of the things of the world; for if anyone loves the world, the love of the Father would be absent in him. Where the love of the Father is absent, there can be no mighty and continuous manifestations of the Father.
- The person must know deep-seated deliverance from the “self” life. Without this deep-seated deliverance, God’s will will always be blurred by the self and, without a knowledge of God’s will, there can be no praying aright.
- The person must be resolutely committed to the will of the Lord and to no other will. The Lord will move to accomplish His will and to accomplish the will of no other. The apostle wrote, “And this is the confidence that we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have obtained the requests made of him” (1 John 5:14-15). One of the first prerequisites for praying about anything is to ensure that it is the will of God. Any prayers made outside the will of God will not be answered, even if they are made by a consecrated person whose heart is pure. A person can decide something of his own and make it the subject of prayer, he may then pray it for six hours every day for fifty years. If that thing is not the will of God, his many intense prayers will be to no avail.
The First Prerequisite In Prayer Is To Seek To Know God’s Will About The Matter.
- The person must know the secret of praying until the Lord answers. He must be able to ask and keep asking, seek and keep seeking and to knock and keep knocking until the Lord answers. Those who are pre- pared to start a prayer project and then give it up, cannot become those whom the Father always hears. The full price must be paid in every way.
- The person must pray in faith. It is possible to pray the same matter over and over without exercising any faith. Without faith it is impossible to please God. How can the one who cannot please God also be the one whom the Father always hears?
- The person must be an absolutely consecrated man. His all must be surrendered to the Lord in a very clear and resolute way. His will must have been put aside once and for all in everything and for all time, and that consecration must be renewed every day. God must be having absolute sway, every second in the person’s life. These are seven conditions that must be fulfilled by anyone who wants to stand in the position in which he can say, “I know the Father always hears me.” That is the position in which the Lord Jesus stood. That is the position that He maintained all through His life on earth. That is why the Father honoured Him so fully and so completely. The Father will again honour those who walk the way that the Lord Jesus walked. He will allow them do the things that He did. He will allow them to do greater things than what He did. He wants to begin today. Will you give Him an opportunity to do it? Will you let Him begin with you now?