Friday July 26, 2024
John 16:24
“Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.”
The other day we said that the real purpose of prayer is to glorify God. Today we are told that prayer has still another function, that of making us happy—yes, of making our joy full.
However we cannot experience this prayer-joy before we have learned to make use of prayer, not to gain some advantage for ourselves but as a means of glorifying God.
The reason why we experience disappointment and weariness rather than joy in connection with prayer is that we strive against the Spirit of prayer when we pray. On the other hand, when we want only to glorify the name of God by our prayers, we are in complete harmony with the Spirit of prayer. Then there is peace and joy in our hearts, both while we pray and after we have prayed; for we have sought by our prayers only those things which would glorify God.
Then we can also wait for the Lord.
He Himself must of course determine what will glorify His name most, either an immediate answer to our prayers or a delayed one.
When we have learned to pray like this, even in a small way, we can also experience the joy of having everything that occurs in our daily life take the form of prayer and thanksgiving—even the things that are hard and unpleasant.
We do not expect anything of ourselves alone. Therefore we tell everything to the Savior and wait for His strength to assert itself through our weakness.
If we bring to Jesus all the failures round about us in connection with people, conditions, and institutions, we shall see the heavenly light of hope shining upon everything that is wrong and awry. Then we shall not be indifferent toward, critical of, or impatient with, everything we see and hear.
“What a friend we have in Jesus,
All our sins and griefs to bear;
What a privilege to carry
Everything to God in prayer!”
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD 
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