John 17:1

There is no doubt that it is by praying that we learn to pray, and that the more we pray, the better our prayers will be. People who pray in spurts are never likely to attain to the kind of prayer described in the Scriptures as “powerful and effective” (James 5:16).

Great power in prayer is within our reach, but we must work to obtain it. We should never even imagine that Abraham could have interceded so successfully for Sodom if he had not communed with God throughout the previous years of his life. Jacob’s entire night of wrestling at Peniel was certainly not the first encounter he had with his God. And we can even look at our Lord’s most beautiful and wonderful prayer in John 17, before His suffering and death, as the fruit of His many nights of devotion, and of His rising often before daybreak to pray.

Jesus . . . lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, . . . Holy Father, . . . O righteous Father.—He said, Abba, Father.—Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.—For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father. Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints and of the household of God.

Doubtless thou art our father, . . . thou, O Lord , art our father, our redeemer; thy name is from everlasting.

As the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ.

For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.

I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect.

Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect. I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

Jesus lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father.—My Father, and your Father.

Ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.—Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.

Home of our hearts, lest we forget What our redemption meant to Thee, Let our most reverent thought be set Upon Thy Calvary.

When Christ hung on the Cross of Calvary He was, apparently, the biggest failure the world had ever seen; for no other man had even dared to make such astounding claims as He, yet there He hung; nailed to the cross of shame, exposed to the view of a coarse, mocking crowd; cut off in early manhood; betrayed by one of His own personal friends; deserted by all of the other apostles—one of whom, after loud professions of devotion had denied Him with oaths and curses. It seemed as if that most wonderful and touching of all intercessory prayers (recorded in John 17) had never reached the Father’s ear; and as if the words “Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son” (John 17:1) were impossible of fulfillment.