Chapter 7: Concerning the Matter or Words of Prayer
SECT. 1.
There is one thing yet remains, which it may be expected something should be spoken to; and that is, the matter in praying, or words of prayer, whether it be lawful or requisite to use a form or no? Most judge, that as forms are lawful; so prescribed words may be requisite to some young beginners in religion, and other Christians of weak parts that cannot express their desires to God in fit words, to help their rudeness, yet Christians ought to press after more growth and proficiency, that they may lay aside those crutches, and arrive at that gift of prayer, that may be of singular use. As for closet prayer, Doctor Hammond does assert it, that every one may ask his own wants in what form of words he shall think fit. And indeed all particular cases incident and variable, can scarce be comprehended in one constant form. Besides, in secret prayer, God does not so much stand upon phrases or pat sentences, as the workings of the heart in sighs and groans, which are the best rhetoric in his ears. It's inquired, whether we may use the Lord's Prayer? I answer, we may use it as other prayers in Scripture; but, I conceive, the principal end of it, is not to be rehearsed every time we pray, but an example, platform, or directory, according to the contents of which we must direct our prayers.
Therefore for the further help of young professors, I shall briefly touch at the several branches of that admirable compendious rule of prayer you have in Matthew 6:9-14. And the rather because it may seem to refer chiefly (though not only) to closet devotion: what I shall say to it may be a practical analyzing of it, in its several parts and branches.
1. For the preface, "Our Father who are in Heaven," you may thus make use of it: Infinite and Eternal Majesty, the maker of heaven and earth, who dwell in the highest heavens, and in the lowest hearts, who see all things here below, and are a God that hears prayers; I am a poor worm at your footstool, looking up to the throne of your grace. Cast a fatherly eye upon me, and though I be by nature a child of wrath, yet through Jesus Christ make me your child by grace and adoption. Teach me to cry Abba Father, with holy reverence and filial confidence. Raise my heart to heaven, beget in me faith in your promises, love to my brethren, and due apprehensions of your sovereign power, and gracious condescension. That praying by the help of your Spirit, in the name of your Son, I may obtain good at your fatherly hands. Secondly for the petitions.
1. Petition, Hallowed be your name: Thus, O my God, I have dishonored you all my days by my ignorance, pride, hardness, and unthankfulness, and I am unapt and unable to glorify you, but do you glorify yourself in my conversion and salvation. Help me to know and adore you, to make a high account of your titles, attributes, ordinances; to believe your word, admire your works, in mercy or judgment. Help me with spiritual thoughts becoming my holy profession, with divine lips speaking good of your name, and a suitable conversation to walk before the Lord. Holy God, destroy atheism, ignorance, idolatry, and profaneness; magnify your name through the world. And direct and dispose all things to the advancement of your glory, by your overruling providence, and your infinite wisdom.
2. Petition, [Your kingdom come:] Thus improve it: Lord, I must confess, that by nature I am dead in sin, and a bond-slave to the prince of darkness, who rules in my heart, and leads me captive by ignorance, error, disobedience. But do you, by the power of your grace, cast out the strong man, take possession of my heart; sway your blessed scepter in me, bring my whole man to obedience. Destroy Satan's kingdom, propagate the gospel among all nations, purge your house, furnish your church with officers, orders, and pure ordinances. Make kings nursing fathers to it, convert sinners, confirm saints, comfort the sad. Hasten your second coming to judgment, and the blessed kingdom of glory.
3. Petition, [Your will be done in earth as it is in heaven:] Thus, Holy Majesty, I acknowledge my natural ignorance of your will, impotence to obey it, indeed, enmity and antipathy against it. My best services are imperfect, my spirit repining under your hand, and my will wilfully resisting grace, and rushing into sin. But dear Lord, inform my mind, conquer my will, order my affections sweetly to comply with your mind; teach me to do your will in obedience, make me content with your will concerning me in every providence. Beget in me those heavenly dispositions that are in the glorious angels, and glorified saints, that with humility, cheerfulness, diligence and faithfulness, zeal, sincerity and constancy, I may be actively and passively at your dispose.
4. For that petition, [Give us this day our daily bread;] say in this manner: Heavenly Father, I must confess, that by my wretched apostasy in Adam, I have lost my right to every morsel of bread, and deserve not to breathe in your air, or tread on your earth. My sin has put a curse and sting into every comfort, I can obtain nothing by my industry, yet am prone to desire, get, and use your mercies unlawfully. Your blessing is only the staff of my bread, help me to wait on your providence in a moderate use of lawful means. Give me a competency of outward comforts, your blessing in the use thereof, and contentment therewith. And, above all, a right thereto in Christ, and prevent needless cares and sensual delights.
5. As to that petition, [Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors:] Thus plead it: Lord, I am woefully guilty of original and actual sin, and am thereby a debtor to divine justice. I owe millions, and cannot pay the least farthing, therefore deserve to be cast into the dark dungeon of eternal torments. But, dear Lord, you have found a ransom who stands in man's stead to be surety for him. O accept me in your beloved Son Jesus Christ, wash away my sins in his blood, clothe my naked soul with his glorious robes, give me saving faith to embrace him upon his own terms. Free my soul from guilt and punishment of sin, pardon my daily failings, and seal an acquittance in my conscience, which tells me I do freely forgive all offences against myself.
6. The last petition [And lead us not into temptation, but deliver from evil] you may render thus: Lord, it were righteous with you to leave me to be assaulted and conquered by Satan, my soul's cruel enemy; my heart is growing wanton, proud, and careless, apt to thrust myself into temptations, but unable to resist or overcome them: you may justly bring me into occasions and leave me to myself therein; but oh my God, keep my soul from being tempted, or assist me in the hour of temptation, or recover me out of my foils and falls; sanctify my slips make my standing surer in your strength, tread Satan under my feet conquer the world for me, crucify me to the world, subdue my flesh within, and in due time take my soul above all sins and snares, into your immediate presence.
And then shut up all with such like words as these on that conclusion. [For yours is the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory, for ever, Amen:] Oh my God, I am unworthy you should grant my petitions for anything in myself; all my arguments in prayer, and grounds of acceptance I fetch from yourself: You have a kingdom of grace, and throne of grace, from where you hear prayers, and dispense blessings; all the power is in your hands, to give and forgive, to kill or make alive, and the glory shall be yours, if you hear my prayer: and blessed be my God, for all my mercies. I ascribe to you, and you alone, eternal sovereignty, omnipotence, and glorious excellency, which as I desire all may be given to God, so I am humbly emboldened by faith to rest upon your power and promise, that in due time you will hear my requests; And as a token of that my desire and confidence, my soul does echo forth, Amen, Even so be it.
Thus I have given you a hint from the Lord's Prayer, of directions for the matter of our prayers. I shall but propound another Scripture instance concerning arguments in prayer.
Sect. 2. An example, from Jacob, of pleading with God.
God would have his people converse with him in a [reconstructed: rational] way, and God's children have made use of many pleas in prayer, which they have produced in vehement expostulations, as we may find sprinkled up and down in Scripture, as Moses, Nehemiah, Ezra, and Daniel, in their approaches to God: and above all, David through the book of Psalms is exceeding full this way. But I shall pass by the rest, and fix only upon one Scripture instance, and the rather because it was a secret or solitary prayer (of which we are now speaking:) and there are notable pleas therein, which may possibly suit our condition; therefore I shall briefly touch the parts of it, and recommend it to our imitation: It is that of good Jacob (who was trained up in this holy art of wrestling with God) in (Genesis 32:9-12). His pleas there may be reduced to these ten heads.
1. He makes use of suitable titles of God, he calls him Lord or Jehovah; which denotes God's self-existence, and giving being or existence to the promises, in first making them, and then making them good. Thus do you; Sirs, raise in your hearts suitable apprehensions of God, and let your expressions be answerable; tell God, he is an infinite, omniscient, omnipotent Majesty, able to do beyond what you can ask or think, and that you neither need nor desire any more than what his almighty power can effect: tell him, if all-sufficiency cannot supply you, you are content to go unsped; but you question neither his hand nor heart; you are sure he both can and will help his children in their need; he will make good with his hand, what he has spoken with his mouth, for he is Jehovah.
2. He pleads covenant-relation to God. O God of my father Abraham, and God of my father Isaac, and so my God! this is an admirable plea: if God own a soul in a covenant-relation, he will certainly do it good; though his grace be free, yet when God has chosen a soul to be his, he has (as it were) engaged himself to own it; now he has laid his truth to pledge. Thus then a soul may plead, Lord you have been my father's God, and will you not be my God? And will you be my God, and withhold such a mercy from me? My ancestors found grace in your sight, and obtained those very good things I am craving; and am I not under the very same covenant with them? Are not promises the same? Is there not the same Mediator? Lord, I come to you in a covenant-relation for a covenant-mercy, and will you deny me?
3. He pleads a warrant for his undertaking, appealing to God that he was in his way, saying, The Lord which said to me, Return to your country: Oh with what encouragement may the soul plead for assistance and protection, that is in God's way and work, according to his own appointment? Thus then plead, Lord, have you not set me about this work? Have you not given me a charge to do what I do? Have I not a plain positive Scripture warrant to bind my conscience? I dare not do otherwise: I may say, If I be deceived, you have deceived me, but I am sure, plain texts are no cheats, I cannot otherwise understand such a command: and oh my God, since you have thus engaged me in your work, will you suffer me to miscarry therein?
4. He pleads a particular promise, I will deal well with you: Surely a comprehensive word, containing in it all that Jacob wanted. Thus must a Christian search the Scriptures, get hold of a promise, spread it before the Lord, whether for spiritual grace, inward comfort, or outward supply, as thus: Lord, I find a promise in such a place, to a person in my very case, apt and pertinent to my very condition, as if it had been calculated purposely for me in this juncture; now Lord, make it good to my soul, and seed; you have made it good to others in my state, and why not to me? Am I not an heir of promise? And must I not have a share in it?
5. Jacob lays himself under the sense of his own unworthiness, I am not worthy, says he, of the least of all your mercies. This is the property and excellency of a saint, to nullify himself, and omnify God, as I may so say: thus Abraham in his pleading calls himself dust and ashes, and the centurion judged himself not worthy that Christ should come under his roof. Thus then, abase yourself. Lord, I am not worthy to enjoy any common mercy, not fit to lift up my eyes to you, less than the least of your mercies; behold I am vile, I am not only destitute of merits, but full of demerits. Hell is my desert, I can challenge nothing as mine but sin, and the fruits thereof, Lord, I condemn myself, do not you condemn me, and cast me from you.
6. He is affected with God's faithfulness in the performance of his promises; acknowledging the truth of God showed to his servant. There is mercy in God's making a promise to Abraham (Micah 7:20), truth in making it good to Jacob. Well then, with Jacob, thus plead: Lord, it is true, there was nothing of desert in me to engage you, either to make or keep your gracious promise, but sure, the word is gone from you, yes and notwithstanding all my treachery and unfaithfulness you have kept it to this day: Oh keep it still, it depends wholly on you; let not my vanity alter the course of your mercy, but pardon and accept as you have done from my Egypt until now.
7. Jacob further recounts his former meanness, his low condition: With my staff I passed over this Jordan, I came here in a poor contemptible manner, a sorry pilgrim: thus do you plead, Truth it is, Lord, your grace is absolutely free, there was neither wit nor wealth to move you to do what you have done; I can remember the time when I was as sorry and silly a creature, as was in all the country; there was no capacity in me to do you any remarkable service, you did not set your love upon me for any natural or moral accomplishments, even so Father because it pleased you: and will you now forsake me? You might have done that at easier rates.
8. Here is Jacob's stone of memorial for past and present mercies, Now, says he, I am become two bands, that is, two great companies of wives, children, servants, flocks, herds; I may say, These — where had they been? It is strange to see poor worm Jacob thus rich, oh the bounty of God! So do you say, Lord take notice what you have done for me, must all this be in vain? Will you throw away these good things? Will you not rather crown these gifts with continuance of your kindness? Will you return to do me hurt, after you have done me all this good? Do you not remember my convictions, consolations; my fears, tears, doubts, refreshments? Oh the passages of love between you and me! Shall I be the grave of these mercies? Lord forget me not.
9. Here is his sense of approaching danger, Deliver me, I pray you, from the hand of my brother — for I fear him, etc. A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city. Jacob's danger was a spur to his prayer. A pursued hart runs fast for shelter; so do you, soul, when afraid; flee to the Lord, and say, Oh my God, I have deadly enemies, within, without; my case is forlorn, desperate; I have none to run to, but yourself: Have you not said, that in you the fatherless find mercy? Other refuge fails me, no man cares for my soul: Lord relieve, deliver this sinful wretch, else I go down into the pit.
10. Once more, does Jacob plead the promise, and enlarge the granted charter: You said, I will surely do you good, and make your seed as the sand of the sea: Thus do you; still seek out, draw sweetness from, and put in suit the promises by earnest prayer: In this manner; Lord, have you not promised a heart of flesh, a broken heart? Why then is my heart hardened from your fear? Do you not say, you will give your holy Spirit to them that ask it? This Lord, I want, to be a spirit of truth and illumination, a spirit of prayer and supplication, a spirit of grace and sanctification, and of satisfaction; Oh bestow this mercy upon me: Do you not promise to take away my iniquities by pardoning grace for your own name's sake? And to subdue my corruption, and increase grace, and bring me to glory? Lord, remember your word to your servant, in which you have caused me to trust:
Thus much, for helps in pleading with God, and for that use of instruction.
