Power in PrayerSample

Childlike Love

The next essential to continued success in prayer is childlike love: “That we should believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ and love one another, as He gave us commandment.” The great commandment after faith is love. As it is said of God, “God is love,” so may we say that “Christianity is love.” If we were each one incarnation of love, we should have attained the complete likeness of Christ.

We should abound in love to God, Christ, the church, sinners, and men everywhere. When a man has no love for God, he is like a child without love for his father. Shall his father promise absolutely to fulfill all the desires of his unloving heart? Or if a child has no love for his brothers and sisters, shall the father trust him with an absolute promise, and say, “Ask and it shall be given to you”? Why, the unloving son would impoverish the whole family by his selfish demands; regardless of all the rest of the household, he would only care to indulge his own passions. He would soon seek the kingdom for himself.

Selfishness cannot be trusted with power in prayer. Unloving spirits cannot be trusted with great, broad, unlimited promises. If God is to hear us, we must love God and each other. For when we love God, we shall not pray for anything that would not honor God and shall not wish to see anything happen that would not also bless our brethren. You must get rid of selfishness before God can trust you with the keys of heaven, but when self is dead, then He will enable you to unlock His treasuries.

We must have childlike ways as well: “he who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him.” It is one of a child’s ways to love his home. The good child to whose requests his father always listens loves no place so much as the house where his parents live. Now he who loves and keeps God’s commandments dwells in Him—he has made the Lord his dwelling. He has become like God, and now his prayers are such as God can answer.

To dwell in God is needful to power with God. Suppose one of you had a boy who said, “Father, I do not like my home, I do not care for you, and I will not endure the restraints of family rule; I am going to live with strangers, but I shall come to you every week, and I shall require many things of you, and I expect you to give me whatever I ask.” You will say, “My son, how can you speak to me in such a manner? If you utterly disregard me, can you expect me to support you in your cruel unkindness and wicked insubordination? No, my son, if you will not remain with me and own me as a father, I cannot promise you anything.” And so it is with God.

If we will dwell with Him, He will give us all things. If we love Him as He should be loved and trust Him as He ought to be trusted, then He will hear our requests. But if not, it is unreasonable to expect it. Indeed, it would be a slur upon the divine character to fulfill unholy desires and gratify evil whims. He may give you the bread and water of affliction, but certainly, He will not give you what your heart desires.