Ask of the Father

Thurs­day. [Acts 25:13–19; John 16:23–33] Ver­i­ly, ver­i­ly, I say un­to you, What­so­ev­er ye shall ask the Fa­ther in my name, he will give it you (John 16:23) the Lord said, even con­firm­ing the point: Ver­i­ly, ver­i­ly, I say un­to you. What a shame for us that we do not know how to make use of such a true prom­ise! It would be al­right if were on­ly the shame this caus­es; but a shad­ow is cast al­so over the prom­ise it­self, as though it were too great and im­pos­si­ble. No, the guilt lies en­tire­ly on us, main­ly be­cause we rec­og­nize that we are not faith­ful ser­vants of Christ, and our con­science does not al­low us to ex­pect mer­cy from the Lord. In ad­di­tion it hap­pens that if some­one starts ask­ing God a­bout some­thing, he does it with di­vid­ed soul: he men­tions that thing in his prayer once or twice as if in pass­ing — and drops it, and then says lat­er: “God does not hear.” No, when ask­ing for some­thing in par­tic­u­lar, one must be per­sis­tent and in­de­fat­i­ga­ble in prayer, like the wid­ow who forced even the heart­less judge to sat­is­fy her pe­ti­tion by sim­ply not giv­ing him any peace. When true men of prayer ask for some­thing in prayer, they unite with it fast­ing, vig­il, all sorts of dep­ri­va­tion, and char­i­ty; fur­ther­more they ask not for a day or two, but for months and years. For this they re­ceive it. Im­i­tate them, if you de­sire to have suc­cess in prayer.