Isaiah 35:1 The wilderness will rejoice and blossom.

• DAY 2 BIBLE READING

Matthew 9-16


• DAY 2 PRAYER DEVOTIONAL

Isaiah 35:1

THE FATHER WANTS TO ANSWER YOUR PRAYERS

Jesus says that the Father ‘waits to hear every prayer of faith’…. ‘to give us whatsoever we will’, and ‘whatsoever we ask in his name’. Are these promises bearing fruit in your prayer life?

In Matthew 7:7,8 we read ‘Ask and it shall be given you; seek and you shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you; for every one that asks receives, and he that seeks finds and to him that knocks it shall be opened.’ Andrew Murray says, ‘We cannot but feel how in this sixfold repetition he wants to impress deep on our minds this one truth, that we may and must most confidently expect an answer to our prayer…. that the Lord should have thought it needful in so many forms to repeat the truth, is a lesson of deep import. He therefore at the very outset of His instruction to those who would learn to pray, seeks to lodge this truth deep into their hearts; prayer does avail much; ask and you shall receive; every one that asks, receives. This is the fixed eternal law of the kingdom: if you ask and receive not, it must be because there is something amiss or wanting in prayer.

As a child has to prove a sum to be correct, so the proof that we have prayed aright is the answer. If we ask and receive not, it is because we have not learned to pray aright…. Let us seek not only just in our seasons of prayer, but at all times, to hold fast the joyful assurance: man’s prayer on earth and God’s answer in heaven are meant for each other. Let us trust Jesus to teach us to pray that the answer can come.

Andrew Murray says, ‘We have become so accustomed to limit the wonderful love and the large promises of our God, that we cannot read the simplest and clearest statement of our Lord and without the qualifying clauses by which by which we guard and expound them. If there is one thing I think the church needs to learn, it is that God means prayer to have an answer, and that it has not entered into the heart of man to conceive what God will do for His child who gives himself to believe that his prayer will be heard. God hears prayer; this is a truth universally admitted but of which very few understand the meaning or experience the power.’

Many complain they had not the power to pray in faith, to pray the effectual prayer that availeth much. Andrew Murray says ‘the message I bring is that Jesus is waiting, is longing to teach them this. Christ is our life; in heaven He ever lives to pray; His life in us is an ever-praying life, if we will but trust Him for it. Christ teaches us to pray not only by example, by instruction, by command, by promises but by showing us himself the ever-living intercessor as our Life. It is when we believe this and go and abide in Him for our prayer-life too, that our fears of not being able to pray aright will vanish, and we shall joyfully and triumphally trust our Lord to teach us to pray, to be Himself the life and the power of our prayer


• Thank you Lord for your promise to give to me whatsoever I ask in your name. May the truth that you Father intend my prayers to be answered take root in my heart. Teach me to pray, Lord Jesus. You Lord ever-live to pray. You are my life. Give me that joyful assurance that my prayers on earth and your answer in heaven are meant for each other. LET MY WILDERNESS REJOICE AND BLOSSOM AS YOUR LIFE, YOUR EVER-PRAYING LIFE FLOWS THROUGH ME.

Murray, A With Christ in the School of Prayer 10,11