Counsel and direction for the weak Christian in persevering prayer 3/3

 Third.  This not persevering in prayer proceeds oft from unbelief.  The creature prays, God is silent, and no answer comes.  Now, thinks Satan, is my time come to do this person a mischief; and therefore he labours to persuade the creature that there is no mercy to be expected from God.  If, saith the tempter, God had meant to come, he would have been here be­fore now.  So many days and months are now gone, and no news of his approach.  Thou hast stayed too long to meet with disappointment at last; give over, and take some other course. Thus he dealt with our Saviour.  No enemy appeared in the field for forty days, and then he appears.  This is his way with the saints also.  He lets them alone while he thinks they are softened into a compliance by long standing upon duty, and hopes their ammunition grows low; then he comes to parley with them, and take them off from waiting upon God, by starting many fears and doubts in their thoughts concerning the power, mercy, and truth of God; so that the poor Christian is at last put to a stand, and knows not whether he should pray or not pray.  Or if he holds up the duty, yet not his heart in it; he prays faintly, and with a kind of despair, as the poor widow made ready her last handful of meal with no other thoughts than of dying when she had ate it.  Thus he prays, but lots upon nothing but death and misery to follow it.  O this is sad praying, to expect no good from God in the performance!  Un­belief is a soul‑enfeebling sin; it is to prayer as the moth to the cloth, which bites the very threads asunder, and crumbles it to nothing; it wastes the soul's strength, that it cannot look up to God with any hope.  ‘For they all made us afraid, saying, Their hands shall be weakened,’ Neh. 6:9.  Resist therefore Satan, steadfast in the faith.  Never let thy heart suf­fer the power, mercy, or truth of God to be called into question; thou hadst as good question whether he can cease to be God.  These attributes of the divine na­ture are to thy faith like the stone to Moses, which Aaron and Hur put under him to sit upon; they will sustain thy spirit, that thou shalt not faint or grow weary at the work, though God makes thee wait till ‘the going down of the sun.’  O this waiting posture highly pleaseth God, and never puts the soul to shame.  Mary, that stayed by the sepulchre, though she missed her Lord there, got at last a happy sight of him.  Quæramus et nos Christum, saith one upon the place, ex fide, et astabit nobis licet non illicò eum ag­noverimus—let us but seek Christ in faith, and he will at last be with us, though we do not presently see him.

           Fourth.  Some persevere not in prayer, because they have their eye upon some other than God from whom they expect help.  It is no wonder he gives over praying who thinks he hath another string to his bow. While the carnal heart prays for deliverance, he hath other projects in his head how to wriggle himself out of the briers in which he is caught, and on these he lays more stress and weight than on God to whom he prays; therefore, at last, he leaves praying, to betake himself to them.  Whereas another, that looks for all from God, and sees no way to help himself but by calling in God to his aid, will say as Peter to Christ —asking his disciples whether they would leave him as others had done—‘Lord, to whom shall we go but unto thee? thou hast the words of eternal life.’  I know not another door to knock at—saith the poor soul—but thine; the creature hath it not to give, but thou hast; I will therefore never leave thee.  We know not what to do, said good Jehoshaphat, but our eyes are up unto thee.

           Fifth.  It proceeds from a want of inward com­placency which the creature should have in God, and communion with him.  ‘Will he delight himself in the Almighty? will he always call upon God?’ Job 27:10.  He will not always call upon him, because he never did ordinarily delight in him.  We easily let go what we take no great content to enjoy.  The sincere soul is tied to God by the heart‑strings, his communion is founded in love; and ‘love is stronger than death,’ ‘many waters cannot quench it.’  A stranger may have an errand that brings him to a man's house; but that done his acquaintance ceaseth.  But a friend, he comes to sit with him, and the delight he takes in his company will not suffer him to discontinue his ac­quaintance long.  Get therefore thy affections but once placed upon God as thy chief good, and the spark or stone will as soon forget the way to their centre, as thou the way to thy God in prayer.  The hypocrite useth prayer as we use physic—not because he loves the taste of it; the sincere soul as food—it is sweet to his gust^[6].  David, from the inward satis­faction he found in the presence of God, cries out, ‘It is good for me to draw near to God;’ Ps. 73:28, as one that, tasting some rich wine or sweet morsel, lays his hand on his stomach—where he finds the cheering of it—and saith to the standers‑by, ‘O it is good!’  Never will such a soul part with it.  No, he will say, as the fig‑tree in Jotham's parable, Shall I forsake my sweet­ness, and the good fruit I have found in communion with my God!  I will never do it.