[b] That the Father may be glorified; Or, The Chief End of Prayer.
I go unto the Father. And whatsoever ye shall ask in my Name, that
will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.'--John xiv. 13.
What a humbling thought that so often there is earnest prayer for a
child or a friend, for a work or a circle, in which the thought of our
joy or our pleasure was far stronger than any yearnings for God's
glory. No wonder that there are so many unanswered prayers: here we
have the secret. God would not be glorified when that glory was not
our object. He that would pray the prayer of faith, will have to give
himself to live literally so that the Father in all things may be
glorified in him. This must be his aim: without this there cannot be
the prayer of faith. How can ye believe,' said Jesus, which receive
glory of one another, and the glory that cometh from the only God ye
seek not?' All seeking of our own glory with men makes faith
impossible: it is the deep, intense self-sacrifice that gives up its
own glory, and seeks the glory of God alone, that wakens in the soul
that spiritual susceptibility of the Divine, which is faith. The
surrender to God to seek His glory, and the expectation that He will
show His glory in hearing us, are one at root: He that seeks God's
glory will see it in the answer to his prayer, and he alone.
And how, we ask again, shall we attain to it? Let us begin with
confession. How little has the glory of God been an all-absorbing
passion; how little our lives and our prayers have been full of it.
How little have we lived in the likeness of the Son, and in sympathy
with Him--for God and His glory alone. Let us take time, until the
Holy Spirit discover it to us, and we see how wanting we have been in
this. True knowledge and confession of sin are the sure path to
deliverance.
And then let us look to Jesus. In Him we can see by what death we can
glorify God. In death He glorified Him; through death He was glorified
with Him. It is by dying, being dead to self and living to God, that
we can glorify Him. And this--this death to self, this life to the
glory of God--is what Jesus gives and lives in each one who can trust
Him for it. Let nothing less than these--the desire, the decision to
live only for the glory of the Father, even as Christ did; the
acceptance of Him with His life and strength working it in us; the
joyful assurance that we can live to the glory of God, because Christ
lives in us;--let this be the spirit of our daily life. Jesus stands
surety for our living thus; the Holy Spirit is given, and waiting to
make it our experience, if we will only trust and let Him; O let us not
hold back through unbelief, but confidently take as our watchword--All
to the glory of God! The Father accepts the will, the sacrifice is
well-pleasing; the Holy Spirit will seal us within with the
consciousness, we are living for God and His glory.
And then what quiet peace and power there will be in our prayers, as we
know ourselves through His grace, in perfect harmony with Him who says
to us, when He promises to do what we ask: That the Father may be
glorified in the Son.' With our whole being consciously yielded to the
inspiration of the Word and Spirit, our desires will be no longer ours
but His; their chief end the glory of God. With increasing liberty we
shall be able in prayer to say: Father! Thou knowest, we ask it only
for Thy glory. And the condition of prayer-answers, instead of being
as a mountain we cannot climb, will only give us the greater confidence
that we shall be heard, because we have seen that prayer has no higher
beauty or blessedness than this, that it glorifies the Father. And the
precious privilege of prayer will become doubly precious because it
brings us into perfect unison with the Beloved Son in the wonderful
partnership He proposes: You ask, and I do, that the Father may be
glorified in the Son.'
-excerpted from [url=http://www.ccel.org/ccel/murray/prayer.html]With Christ in the School of Prayer