e six promises are not meant for all. Let it be said very
plainly. They are meant only for those who will square their lives by
these razor-edged words.

I may not go fully into the significance of these deep-cutting words here.
They have been gone into at some length in a previous set of talks as
suggesting the price of power. To him whose heart burns for power in
prayer I urge a careful review of that talk in this new setting of it. "If
any man would come after Me" means a rock-rooted purpose; the jaw locked;
the tendrils of the purpose going down around and under the gray granite
of a man's will, and tying themselves there; and knotting the ties; sailor
knots, that you cannot undo.

"Come after Me" means all the power of Jesus' life, and has the other
side, too. It means the wilderness, the intense temptation. It may mean
the obscure village of Nazareth for you. It may mean that first Judean
year for you--lack of appreciation. It may mean for you that last six
months--the desertion of those hitherto friendly. It will mean without
doubt a Gethsemane. Everybody who comes along after Jesus has a Gethsemane
in his life. It will never mean as much to you as it meant to Him. That is
true. But, then, it will mean everything to you. And it will mean too
having a Calvary in your life in a very real sense, though different from
what that meant to Him. This sentence through gives the process whereby
the man with sin grained into the fibre of his will may come into such
relationship with God as to claim without any reservation these great
prayer promises. And if that sound hard and severe to you let me quickly
say that it is an easy way for the man who is _willing._ The presence of
Jesus in the life overlaps every cutting thing.

If a man will go through Matthew 16:24, and habitually live there he may
ask what he wills to ask, and that thing will come to pass. The reason,
without question, why many people do not have power in prayer is simply
because they are unwilling--I am just talking very plainly--they are
unwilling to bare their breasts to the keen-edged knife in these words of
Jesus. And on the other side, if a man will quietly, resolutely follow the
Master's leading--nothing extreme--nothing fanatical, or morbid, just a
quiet going where that inner Voice plainly leads day by day, he will be
startled to find what an utterly new meaning prayer will come to have for
him.

<u>The Controlling Purpose.</u>

Vital rel