Hello, my name is Fergus Scarfe, and welcome to God Today. You know, I’ve been a Christian for over 30 years and I do pray, I think I pray every day, but I’ve never thought of myself as a great ‘pray-er.’ I’ve never thought of myself as one of those intercessors called to go to the Secret Place. But if we are to function as believers, if we are to be in relation and connecting to our Father, then a life of prayer, however we do it, isn’t really an option.
But how do we pray? And to Whom do we pray? And what happens when we pray? Well, you know the night that Jesus was crucified, He spent time with His disciples. He gathered the 12 around Him. And those last moments before the great drama of the crucifixion took place, when His body was hung on a tree in the most horrible, horrible of ways, He shared with those that He discipled, the ones that He had walked with day in, day out for more than three years. He shared with them His best things. He shared with them His most urgent things. He wanted them to be comforted. He knew what was coming up. They weren’t to know what was coming up, but He shared with them things that down through the ages brings each one of us comfort. You see, John 14, 15, 16, and 17, at least in my Bible, they’re all in red. They’re the words of Jesus when He shared these thoughts with the people He loved. But at the end of John 16, there’s one of those verses that I’m not sure we will understand unless we spend some real time in the book. Verse 22, “Therefore, now you have sorrow, but I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and your joy, nobody will take from you. And in that day you will ask me nothing. Most assuredly I say to you, whatsoever you ask the Father in my name, he will give you.”
That’s the key to rejoicing right there, but it’s not the end of Jesus’ thought. He says, “Until now, you’ve asked nothing in my name. Ask and you will receive, that your joy may be full.” Ask that you may receive that your joy may be full. Ask that you will receive that your joy may be full. You know, the way I pray, I’m just glad if I think I’ve been heard, and then seemingly if I get it answered well, that’s amazing, but that’s actually not where Jesus stops. He doesn’t stop when my prayers are answered. When we pray to the Father in the Name of Jesus and things happen. Rather, that when we pray to the Father in the Name of Jesus and things happen that our joy would be full. And a couple of verses earlier, that our joy then, no man will take from us. My wife and I often say this to one another, “We really should be the happiest, smiliest, most joyous people on the face of this earth.” Whether it’s going well, whether it’s going not so well, whether things are easy or frankly, whether things are impossible, we should still have a twinkle in our eye and a little curve that goes up on each side of our mouth, that our joy should be full. If that’s a struggle for you, if you didn’t even realize that was in the Bible, then maybe we’ve got some homework to do before we go and face our day: John 16, 22, 23 and 24, because Jesus says, “Ask, and you will receive that your joy may be full.”