3. The Wants Which Are to Be Bewailed

1. In this petition we are taught first that we are to have a fervent desire, and to hunger, that God would give us his Spirit to reign and rule in our hearts, and to bow them to all obedience and subjection of his will: and further, whereas our hearts have been as it were filthy sties and stables of the devil, that he would renew them, and make of them fit temples to entertain his Holy Spirit. Psalm 51:10: Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit in me, etc. Establish me with your free spirit. If we shall consider the conversation of the wicked and the godly, and their corrupt hearts together, we shall see little difference but in this, that the wicked is delighted and glad to sin: but the godly do wrestle, as for life and death with their temptations, and do resist the devil, and do desire the grace of God's Spirit, and cry to heaven to be freed from this bondage, however their hearts are always ready to rebel against God.

2. Forasmuch as the kingdom of grace is erected in God's church here upon earth, in this petition we are commanded to pray for the Church of God, and the parts thereof. Psalm 122:6: Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love you. Isaiah 62:7: You which are the Lord's remembrancers, give him no rest, until he set up Jerusalem the praise of the world.

And that God's church may flourish and be in good estate, we are to pray for Christian kings and princes; that God would bless them, and increase the number of them. For they are as nursing fathers, and nursing mothers to the church. And we especially are bound to pray for the Queen's most excellent majesty, as also for the French king, that they may be blessed and God's kingdom by them advanced.

And again because ministers are the Lord's watchmen in the church, we are here also put in mind to seek their good; and to pray that their hearts may be set for the building of God's kingdom, for the beating down of the kingdom of sin and Satan, and for the saving of the souls of his people. And the rather, because the devil labors night and day to overthrow them in this glorious work, and to resist them in their ministry: as appears in Zechariah 3:1, when Joshua the high priest stood before the angel of the Lord, Satan stood at his right hand, namely to resist him. Therefore, also we are to pray for them, that the Lord would keep them, and furnish them with gifts, and withal make them faithful. For where vision fails the people are left naked, says Solomon (2 Thessalonians 3:1): Brethren, pray for us that the word of the Lord may have a free passage and be glorified.

Thirdly, we must pray for all Christian schools of learning. However some think but basely of them; yet they are the ordinary means to maintain the ministry, and so the church of God. A man that has diverse orchards, will also have a seminary full of young plants to maintain it. Schools, they are as seminaries to God's church, without which the church falls to decay: because they serve to make supply of ministers.

3. Thirdly, we are to desire, that the Lord would hasten the second coming of Christ, as the saints in heaven pray, Come Lord Jesus, come quickly: and therefore the godly are said to love the coming of Christ (2 Timothy 4:8). A penitent sinner so abhors his own corruptions, and the irksome temptations of Satan, that in this respect he desires that Christ would hasten his particular coming to him by death, for no other cause but that he might make an end of sinning and displeasing of God.