If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.
If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you. Mark the change from the inhabitation of Himself to that of His words. But as we are clean through His word (John 15:2), and sanctified through His word (John 17:17), so He dwells in us through "His words" - those words of His, the believing reception of which alone opens the heart to let Him come in to us. So in the preceding chapter (John 14:23), "If a man love Me, he will keep My words: and My Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him." And so in the last of His letters to the churches of Asia, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice" - and so my words abide in him, "I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me" (Revelation 3:20).
Ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. A startling latitude of asking this seems to be. Is it, then, to be understood with limitations? and if not, would not such boundless license seem to countenance all manner of fanatical extravagance? The one limitation expressly mentioned is all-sufficient to guide the askings so as to ensure the answering. If we but abide in Christ, and Christ's words abide in us, "every thought" is so "brought into captivity to the obedience of Christ," that no desires Will rise and no petition be offered but such as are in harmony with the divine will. The soul, yielding itself implicitly and wholly to Christ, and Christ's words penetrating and moulding it sweetly into conformity with the will of God, its very breathings are of God, and so cannot but meet with a divine response.