But because it is a formula, do not let it be mechanical. Always mean it. I am praying because Christ is praying, because Christ has died, because the channel of prayer has been purchased and opened and reserved for me. And I have that privilege, and it is because of him and through him that I will be heard, and that I will have access. Always credit him, dear friends.
Have you thought of the depth of the privilege which is ours when we pray? It is not that I pray alone and struggle to wing my words and my petitions to God. It is that I place my prayers on the great carrier-wave that is always there for me because Christ is interceding for me, he has shed his blood and purchased access. The channel is opened, the moving staircase that carries the prayer, if you pardon the illustration, is moving all the time. This is a tremendous privilege. It is not so much I who pray, it is that I place my prayer on that great carrier-wave, access is secured and purchased. My Saviour constantly intercedes for me. His prayers are effective and I am placing mine upon his. That is a way of seeing prayer, to see the privilege of prayer and the power of prayer. How foolish we are when we do not pray when we stand worrying, and that great surging action heavenward is constantly operating. And I only have to place my pleas and my prayer upon it. That is the promise.
Did not believers always have access to the Father? Yes, they did. There are all the great prayers of the Old Testament and they are addressed to the Father, to the Lord. Believers have always had access to the Father. So what does the Saviour mean when he tells the disciples and us, from now on you will not ask me anything, I am not physically present, but in my name, you will have direct access to the Father. What is new? What is different? The access is different in many ways. In the Old Testament to pray you had to sacrifice, you had to go through the observances of the law. There was no prayer without sacrifice, without the temple, without the priesthood. Oh yes, you could pray, but all your major prayers and all your big prayers, they were all in the context of sacrifice and priesthood. Now, the sacrifice will have been made. The great and effective sacrifice to which all the others pointed, which all the others merely illustrated, Christ has come and suffered and atoned and makes intercession for his people. The channel, as it were, is always open.