Daily Devotionals

Devotional: June 14th

" Verily, verily, I say unto you, whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you." - John 16:23.

Christ says this for the purpose, as it were, of inducing us to consent to his departure. Having come into the world and constituted himself our good Shepherd, and accustomed us to lean on him for everything, we are rather confounded at the suggestion that he is to go away again. Seeing this, he gives us this reassuring promise. Whatsoever we ask of the Father, he will give it. Well, suppose we ask for Christ. He will be given. Not with the limitations of an earthly body. " If thou hadst been here, my brother had not died." These reproaches are painful to the heart of Christ. It is expedient that he go, that he may come again in spirit, in glorious omnipresence, and be the shepherd of a flock feeding on ten thousand hills.

Will the Father, indeed, give us everything that we ask? Is thy name so potent in influence at the throne of grace, that it is impossible for any gift to be withheld, if demanded in that name? It is not merely the half of his kingdom that the Father must yield to us, if we ask; whatsoever we ask we must receive. But in fact the gift has already been made. " The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hands." When, therefore, we ask anything in thy name, we ask for what has already been made over to thee.

But to whom is this promise made? To the apostles and to all who stand in the position that the apostles stood in. To those who have apostolic work to do, and apply themselves to it with apostolic consecration. With promises so vast, how vast should have been the performance of the Church, how rapid and signal her successes! Every generation of believers that has come into existence, read the Gospel of John, and gone its way, must stand condemned in the presence of these unapprehended promises. Are we grasping them? Or even looking them in the face? Or feeling our way towards them?

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