something very different from coming in contact with Christian truth
on a Sunday, when somebody else preaches to us what he has found in
the Bible, and we take in a little of it. It means the whole of the
conscious nature of a man being, so to speak, saturated with Christ's
words; his desires, his understanding, his affections, his will, all
being steeped in these great truths which the Master spoke. Put a
little bit of colouring matter into the fountain at its source, and
you will have the stream dyed down its course for ever so far. See
that Christ's words be lodged in your inmost selves, by patient
meditation upon them, by continual recurrence to them, and all your
life will be glorified and flash into richness of colouring and
beauty by their presence.

The main effect of such abiding of the Lord's words in us which our
Lord touches upon here is, that in such a case, if our whole inward
nature is influenced by the continual operation upon it of the words
of the Lord, then our desires will be granted. Do not so vulgarise
and lower the nobleness and the loftiness of this great promise as to
suppose that it only means--If you remember His words you will get
anything you like. It means something a great deal better than that.
It means that if Christ's words are the substratum, so to speak, of
your wishes, then your wishes will harmonise with His will, and so
'ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.'

Christ loves us a great deal too well to give to our own foolish and
selfish wills the keys of His treasure-house. The condition of our
getting what we will is our willing what He desires; and unless our
prayers are a great deal more the utterance of the submission of our
wills to His than they are the attempt to impose ours upon Him, they
will not be answered. We get our wishes when our wishes are moulded