Three acts by which faith discovers itself in reference to prayer 2/3

2. Act. Faith puts forth an assisting act in prayer.  To instance only in two particulars.

           (1.) It assists the soul with importunity.  Faith is the wrestling grace.  It comes up close to God; takes hold of God, and will not easily take a denial.  It in­fires all the affections, and sets them on work.  This is the soul's eye, by which it sees the filth, the hell, that is in every sin.  And seeing affects the heart, and puts it into a passion of sorrow when the soul spreads its abominations before the Lord.  The creature now needs no onion to make it weep.  Tears come alone freely, as water from a flowing spring.  It makes a discovery of Christ to the soul in the excellencies of his person, love, and graces, from the glass of the promise, at the sight of which it is even sick with longing after them, and such pangs of love come upon it, as make it send forth strong cries and supplications for that it so impatiently desires.  Yea, further, faith doth not barely set the creature’s teeth on edge by displaying the excellency of Christ and his grace; but it supplies him with arguments, and helps the soul to wield and use them both valiantly and victoriously upon the Almighty.  Never could he tell what to do with a promise in prayer, till now that faith teacheth him to press God with it, humbly, yet boldly.  ‘What wilt thou do unto thy great name?’ Joshua 7:9.  As if he had said, ‘Thou art so fast bound to thy people by promise and oath, that thou canst not leave them to perish, but thy name will suffer with them.’  Faith melts promises into arguments, as the soldier doth lead into bullets, and then helps the Christian to send them with a force to heaven in a fervent prayer; whereas a promise in an unbeliever’s mouth is like a shot in a gun's mouth without any fire to put to it.  O how cold and dead doth a promise drop from him in prayer!  He speaks promises, but cannot pray prom­ises or press promises.  And therefore, try thyself not by naked praying, but by importunity in prayer; and that, not by the agitation of thy bodily spirits, but the inward working of thy soul and spirit, whether carried out to plead the promise and urge it upon God with an humble importunity, or not.

           (2.) Faith enables the soul to persevere in the work.  False faith may show some mettle at hand, but it will jade at length.  Will the hypocrite pray always? Job 27:10.  No; as the wheel wears with turning, till it breaks at last; so doth the hypocrite.  He prays himself weary of praying.  Something or other will in time make him quarrel with that duty which he never inwardly liked; whereas the sincere believer hath that in him which makes it impossible he should quite give over praying, except he should also cease believing. Prayer, it is the very breath of faith.  Stop a man’s breath, and where is he then? It is true the believer through his own negligence may find some more dif­ficulty of fetching his prayer-breath at one time than at another—as a man in a cold doth for his natural breath. Alas! who is so careful of his soul’s health that needs not to bewail this?  But for faith to live, and this breath of prayer to be quite cut off, is impossible. We see David did but hold his breath a little longer than ordinary, and what a distemper it put him into, till he gave himself ease again by venting his soul in prayer.  ‘I held my peace, even from good; and my sorrow was stirred.  My heart was hot within me, while I was musing the fire burned: then spake I with my tongue, Lord, make me to know mine end,’ Ps. 39:2.  Dost thou, O man, find thyself under a necessity of praying?  As the little babe who cannot choose but cry when it ails or wants anything—because it hath no other way to help itself than by crying to hasten its mother or nurse to its help—[so] the Chris­tian’s wants, sins, and temptations continuing to return upon him, he cannot but continue also to pray against them.  ‘From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee,’ saith David, Ps. 61:2.  Wherever I am I will find thee out.  Prison me, banish me, or do with me what thou wilt, thou shalt never be rid of me, ‘I will abide in thy tabernacle for ever,’ ver. 4.  But how could David do that when banished from it?  Surely he means by prayer.  The praying Christian carries a ‘tabernacle’ with him.  As long as David can come at the tabernacle he will not neglect it; and when he cannot through sickness, banishment, &c., then he will look towards it, and as devoutly worship God in the open fields as if he were in it.  ‘Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense; and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice,’ Ps. 141:2.  He speaks of such a time when he could not come to of­fer sacrifice at the tabernacle