Amen, amen I say to you,
if you ask the Father anything in my name,
He will give it you.
—St. John xvi. 23.
These are the words of Christ, taken from the Gospel of to-day; we cannot doubt them for a moment. They are the words of him who is the infallible Truth, who can neither deceive nor be deceived.
And yet how seldom do we act as if we really believed them! How seldom do you, my brethren, ask anything of the Father in the name of Christ with real confidence that you will receive what you ask for.
Many people say prayers, but few really pray. That is, many say over certain forms of prayer which they know by heart or read out of their prayer-books; many even feel bound to say some particular set of prayers every day, for the scapular which they wear, or for some other reason; but if you should ask them what they are praying for, what particular thing they wish to obtain from God when they say these prayers, few would be able to tell you, unless, indeed, they happened to be making a novena for some special object.
So, I say, it does not seem as if we Christians believed what our Lord tells us in these words. For surely, if we did, almost all our prayers would be petitions for some particular thing which we wanted, instead of mere devotional exercises. And why? Because we are always in want of something, and we must certainly believe that Almighty God has the power to give us what we want; should we not, then, be always praying for what we want, did we fully believe that he has the will to give it to us?
Is it, then, really true that God will give us all good things which we ask in prayer? Yes, it certainly is; that is exactly the meaning of these words of Christ. All good things, I say; for it is only good things which we can ask in his name. And if God would give us bad things which we should ask for, our Saviour's promise would be a curse, not a blessing as it really is.
No; God will not answer bad prayers—that is, prayers for what is bad. People sometimes make such prayers and expect him to answer them. They pray for vengeance on those who have injured them; they pray that others may suffer as much as they have made them suffer, and the like. Or they pray for something which seems to them good, but really is not so—that they may get rich, for instance, when riches will only be an occasion of sin to them. The prayer seems to them good, but it is not; perhaps even those prayers for vengeance may seem so. But God knows better, and will not, as he says in the Gospel of to-morrow, give us a stone when we ask for what seems to be bread. If anything, he will give better, instead of worse, than what we ask.
But really most things that Christians would think of praying for are not bad; but you do not pray for them, because you think that if they are good for you, you will get them, if you try, whether you pray or not. Now, that is the great mistake which our Lord wishes to correct. When he says, "If you ask the Father anything in my name, he will give it you," that means, also, that if you do not ask he will not, or at least not in such abundance.
Try, then, to bring this truth home to yourselves and make it practical: that if you want anything the way to get it is to ask it from God, not forgetting, of course, to work for it as well as to pray; for no one prays in earnest who does not do that. And the way not to get it is not to ask for it.