Five observables touched upon, from Paul’s being in bonds 3/3

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3.  To engage their prayers for him.  Suffering saints have ever been very covetous of prayers.  Paul acts all the churches at work for him.  ‘Pray, pray, pray,’ was the usual close to Mr. Bradford’s letters out of prison.  And great reason for it; for a suffering condition is full of temptations.  When man plays the persecutor, the devil forgets not to be a tempter.  He that followed Christ into the wilderness will ever find a way to get to his saints in the prison.  Sometimes he will try whether he can soften them for impressions of fear, or make them pity themselves; and he shall not want them that will lend their tears to melt their courage and weaken their resolu­tion—may be wife and children, or friends and neighbours, who wish them well, but are abused by Satan to lay a snare be­forethem, while they express their affection to them. No doubt those good people meant well to Paul, who, with tears and passionate entreaties, endeavoured to keep him from Jerusalem—where it was foretold he should come into trouble—but Satan had a design against Paul therein, who hoped they might not only break his heart, but weaken his courage, with their tears.  When he cannot make a coward of the saint, to run from the cross; then he will try to sour and swell his spirit with some secret anger against those that laid it on.  O it is no easy matter to receive evil, and wish none to him from whose hands we have it.  To reserve love for him that shows wrath and hatred to us is a glorious but a difficult work.  If he cannot leaven him with wrath against his persecutor, then he will try to blow him up with a high conceit of himself, who dares suffer for Christ, while others shrink in their heads, and seek to keep themselves safe within their own shell.  O this pride is a salamander, that can live in the fire of suffering!  If any one saint needs the humility of many saints, it is he that is called to suffer.  To glory in his sufferings for Christ becomes him well, II Cor. 12:9; Gal. 6:14; but to glory in himself for them is hateful and odious.  Needs not he a quick eye, and a steady hand, that is to drive his chariot on the brow of so dangerous a precipice?

           In a word, a suffering condition is full of temp­tations, so the saint’s strength to carry him safely through them is not in his own keeping.  God must help, or the stoutest champion’s spirit will soon quail. ‘In all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need,’ Php. 4:12. This was a hard lesson indeed to learn .  Who was his master?  See, ‘I can do all things through Christ that strengtheneth me,’ ver. 13.  Now, as the saints’ strength to suffer is not in themselves, but Christ, so prayer is the best means to fetch it in for their help; for by it they confess their own weakness, and so God is secured from having a co-rival in the praise.  Which Paul is here free to do, and more than so; for, as he confesseth he can do nothing without Christ’s strength to enable and embolden him, so he dares not rely on his own solitary single prayers for the obtain­ing it, but calls in the auxiliary forces of his fellow-saints to besiege heaven for him; that, while he is in the valley suffering for the gospel, they might be lifting up their hands and hearts in the mount of prayer for him