Four rules whereby to know if we act faith in prayer or no 3/3

         (c.)  If thou actest faith in prayer, thy faith will not only make thee choice of the means thou usest, but curious and careful in using the means that God chooseth for thee.  Thou wilt be afraid lest it should stand in God’s light, by stealing thy confidence in him to trust in it.  Faith will teach thee to use means as God’s ordinance, but rely on God to bless it.  While faith’s hand is on the plow, her eye is to heaven. Annus non ager facit fructum—the influences of heaven, not the tillage of the husband, make it a fruit¬ful year.  Sometimes the physician appoints a powder to be taken in wine or beer.  Now it is not the beer or wine that does the cure, but the powder, which they are only used to convey and carry into the stomach. Thus mercy is handed over to us by the blessing of God in the use of means, yet think not the means do it, but the blessing of God mingled with it and infused into it.

         (d.)  If thou actest faith in prayer, as thou wilt be careful to improve means when God provides them, so thou wilt not suspend thy faith when God denies them.  The believing soul dares not trust to the means when he hath them, therefore he dares not distrust God when he wants them.  Faith knows, though God useth means, yet he needs none.  The sun and showers are the means he useth for the growth of the grass and herbs; yet he made these to grow out of the earth before there was sun or rain, Gen. 1:11.  Ploughing and sowing are the ordinary means whereby man is provided with bread; but he fed Israel with bread without their pains and husbandry.  Ships [are] the means to waft us over the seas; but God carried Israel through the Red Sea without ship or boat.  May be times are hard, and thou art poor; thy charge is great, and thy comings in little; with the widow in the prophet, thou art making the last cake of the little meal that is left.  To reason and sense thou must either beg, steal, or die.  Canst thou now, upon praying to thy God, wait upon his promise which tells thee, ‘verily, thou shalt be fed,’ Ps. 37:3; and on his providence, which records his care of the sparrows on purpose to assure us he will much more provide for his children?  Or, at least, dost thou chide thy heart for its distrustful fears after praying, charging it to hope in God, to whom thou hast made thy moan? Truly, if thy heart hath not some hold on God after duty to stay it, more than before in this thy strait; either thou hast no faith, or if thou hast faith, thou didst not act it in that prayer.  True faith will either expel these dejections of heart, or at least protest against them.

Four rules whereby to know if we act faith in prayer or no 2/3

         (3.) Rule.  Dost thou stint God, or canst thou trust him to answer thy prayer in his own way without thy prescription?  When we deal with a man whose ability or faithfulness we have in doubt, then we labour to make sure of him by tying him up to our terms.  But if we stand assured of their power and truth, we leave them to themselves.  Thus the patient sends for the physician, desires his help, but leaves him to write his own bill.  The merchant sends over his goods to his factor, and relies on him to make such returns as his wisdom tells him will come to the best market.  Thus the believing soul, when he hath opened his heart to God in prayer, resigns himself to the goodness, wisdom, and faithfulness of God to return an answer: ‘Remember me, O my God,’ said Nehemiah, ‘concerning this also, and spare me according to the greatness of thy mercy,’ Neh. 13:22.  See here, this good man makes bold to be God’s remembrancer, but dares not be his counsellor or prescriber. He remits the shaping of the answer to ‘the greatness of his mercy.’  Hence it follows, that whatever way God cometh in, the believing soul bids him welcome.

         Doth he pray for health, and miss of that? yet he blesseth God for support under sickness.  Doth he pray for his children, and they notwithstanding prove a cross? yet he finds an answer another way, and satisfies himself with it.  After many a prayer that David had put up no doubt for his family, we find him entertaining an answer to those prayers with a composed spirit, though they came not in at the fore door, buy having mercy in the letter: ‘Though my house be not so with God; yet he hath made with me an everlasting covenant,’ &c.; and this, he tells us, is ‘all his desire,’ II Sam. 23:5.  Indeed, a believer cannot miss his desires, ‘He will fulfil the desire of them that fear him,’ Ps. 145:19.  Because they disown those desires which clash with God’s will.  Who could pray more fervently for their children than Job did for his? He was with God for them every day; but, after all his religious care of them, he meets with heavy tidings, and hears them to be made a sacrifice by death for whom he had offered up so many sacrifices to God; yet he doth not foolishly charge God, or say it was in vain that he prayed: no, that ointment was not lost the savour whereof was poured into his own soul, from the posture of which we might read a gracious answer, in the supporting grace that enabled him to love and bless God over the gravestone of his slain children.

         (4.) Rule.  By the soul’s comporting itself towards the means used for obtaining the mercy prayed for.

         (a.)  If thou prayedst in faith, it will set thee to use other means besides prayer.  Mark how the apostle joins these together, ‘Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord; rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing instant in prayer,’ Rom. 12:11, 12.  As faith useth her wings of prayer to fly to heaven; so she useth her feet of duty and obedi¬ence, with which she walks and bestirs herself on earth.

         (b.)  Faith will make thee, as use means, so to be choice of the means thou usest for the obtaining what thou bespeakest of God in prayer.  Faith is a working grace, but it will be set on work by none but God.  Am I in God’s way, saith faith? Is this the means he hath appointed?  If it be not, away he turns from it, disdaining to work with any of the devil's tools.  God can never answer my prayer, saith the believer, without the help of my sin.  If riches be good for me, I need not be at the cost to purchase them with a lie or a cheat.  If health be a mercy, he can send me it, though I advise not with the devil’s doctors.  If joy and comfort, there is no need to take down the devil’s music.  If times be evil, he can hide me without running under the skirt of this great man and that by base flattery and dissimulation.  When Ezra had committed himself and his company to God—now on their march towards Jerusalem—by a solemn day of fasting and prayer, and had made a holy boast of his God, what he would do for them that seek him, he thought it unbeseeming his professed faith, and also dishonourable to his God, whom he had so magnified in the hearing of the Persian king, to beg armed troops for a convoy to them in their way, lest his faith should be brought into suspicion for an empty bravado and groundless confidence: ‘I was ashamed to require of the king a band of soldiers and horsemen to help us against the enemy in the way: because we had spoken unto the king, saying, The hand of our God is upon all them for good that seek him;’ Ezra 8:22.

Four rules whereby to know if we act faith in prayer or no 1/3

         (1.) Rule.  We may know if we have acted faith by the serenity and composure of our spirits after prayer.  Faith may live in a storm, but it will not suffer a storm to live in it.  As faith rises, so the blustering wind of discontented troublesome thoughts go down.  In the same proportion that there is faith in the heart there is peace also.  They are joined together, ‘quietness and confidence,’ Isa. 30:15: ‘In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength.’  Therefore called ‘peace in believing,’ Rom. 15:13. Even where it is weakest it will not let the unquietness of the heart pass without a chiding.  ‘Why art thou disquieted, O my soul! trust still in God,’ Ps. 42:5, 11.  What! soul no sooner off thy knees, but clamorous!  Hast not thou made thy moan to a God able to help thee, and will not that ease thee? Faith disburdens the soul in prayer of that which oppresses it; whereas the unbelieving soul still carries about it the cause of its trouble, because it had not strength to cast forth it sorrows, and roul its cares upon God in the duty. Christian, dost thou carry away the same burden on thy back from prayer which thou didst bring to it? surely thou didst want faith to lift it off thy shoulder. Had faith been there, and that been active and lively, it would have bestowed this elsewhere, and brought thee away with a light heart: as Hannah, who rose from praying ‘to eat, and her countenance was no more sad;’ and as Christ, who kneeled down with as sorrowful a heart as ever any, but comes off with a holy courage, to go and meet his approaching death, and his bloody enemies now on the way to attack him.  ‘Rise,’ saith he to his disciples, ‘let us be going, behold he is at hand that doth betray me,’ Matt. 26:46. May it not put us to the blush to think that we could come less satisfied from God’s presence than we do sometimes from a sorry man’s?  If you were poor, and had a rich friend that bids you send your children to him, and he will provide for them; would not this ease your mind of all your cares and distracting thoughts concerning their maintenance?  And doth not God promise more that this comes to when he bids us ‘be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God?’

         (2.) Rule.  Dost thou continue praying even when God continues to deny?  An unbelieving heart may have some mettle at hand, but will be sure to jade in a long journey.  Faith will throw in the net of prayer again and again, as long as God commands and the promise encourageth.  The greyhound hunts by sight, when he cannot see his game he gives over running; but the true hound by scent, he hunts over hedge and ditch though he sees not the hare he pursues all the day long.  An unbelieving heart, may be, drawn out, upon some visible probabilities and sensible hopes of a mercy coming, to pray, but when these are out of sight his heart fails him; but faith keeps the scent of the promise and gives not over the chase.