Arguments to enkindle our zeal and fervency in prayer 1/2

           Argument 1.  Consider the excellency of zeal and fervency.  If a saint, thou hast a principle that in­clines thee to approve of things that are excellent; and such is this.  Life is the excellency of beings, yea, even in inanimate creatures there is an analogical life, and therein consists its excellency.  The spirits of wine commend it; what is it worth when dead and flat?  In the diamond, the sparkle gives the worth; in fountain water, that which makes it more excellent than other is its motion, called therefore ‘living water.’  Much more in beings that have true life; for this the flea or fly are counted nobler creatures than the sun.  The higher kind of life that beings have, their nature is thereby the more advanced—beasts above plants, men above beasts, and angels above men.  Now as life gives the excellency to being, so vivacity and vigour in operating gives excellency to life.  Indeed the nobler the life of the creature is, the greater energy is in its actings.  The apprehension of an angel is quicker, and zeal stronger, than in a man. So that, the more lively thou art in thy duty, and the more zeal thou expres­sest therein, the nearer thou comest to the nature of those glorious spirits who, for their zeal in service of God, are called ‘a flame of fire.’ 

 I confess, to be calm and cool in inferior things, and in our own matters betwixt man and man, is better than zeal.  So Solomon saith, ‘A man of understanding is of an excellent spirit,’ Prov. 17:27.  In the Hebrew it is a cool spirit.  Injuries do not put him into a flame, neither do any occurrences in the world heat him to any height of joy, grief, or anger.  Who more temperate in these than Moses? but set this holy man to pray, he is fire and tow, all life and zeal. Indeed it is one excel­lency of this fervency of spirit in prayer, that it allays all sinful passions.  David’s fervency in praying for his child when alive, made him bear the tidings of his death so calmly and patiently.  We hear not an angry word that Hannah replies to her scolding companion Peninnah.  And why, but because she had found the art of easing her troubled spirit in prayer?  What need she contend with her adversary, who could, by wrest­ling with God, persuade him to espouse her quarrel? And truly were there nothing else to commend fer­vency of spirit in prayer, this is enough—that, like David's harp, it can charm the evil spirit of our passions, which in their excess the saint counts great sins, and I am sure finds them grievous troubles. When are you more placate and serene, than when the most life and fervour your souls can mount up in the flame of your sacrifices into the bosom of God? Possibly you may come, like Moses, down the mount with greater heat, but it will be against sin, not for self; whereas a formal prayer, like a plaster, which hath good ingredients in it, yet being laid cold upon the wound, hurts it rather than heals it.

         

User Application of Fervent Prayer

           Use First.  This sadly shows there is little true praying to be found among us, because few that pray fervently.  Let us sort men into their several ranks.

1. The ignorant, do these pray fervently?  Their hearts, alas! must needs be frozen up in the duty; they dwell too far from the sun to have any of this divine heat in their devotions.
2. The profane person, that is debauched with his filthy lusts, his heat runs out another way.  Can the heart which is inflamed with lusts be any other than cold in prayer?  Hell-fire must be quenched before this from heaven can be kindled.
3. The soul under the power of roving thoughts—whose mind, like Satan, is walking to and fro the earth, while his eyes seem nailed to heaven—can he be fervent?  Can the affections be intended and the mind inattentive?  Fervency unites the soul and gathers in the thoughts to the work in hand.  It will not suffer diversions, but answers all foreign thoughts, as Nehemiah, in another case, did them that would have called him off from building, ‘I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down: why should the work cease?’ Neh. 6:3.  It is said of Elias {Elijah}, ‘He prayed earnestly,’ he prayed in praying, so the Greek. As in Ezekiel’s vision, there was ‘a wheel in a wheel,’ so a prayer in his prayer.  Whereas the roving soul is prayerless, his lips pray and his mind plays; his eye is up to heaven, as if that were his mark, but he shoots his thoughts down to the earth.
4. He to whom the duty is tedious and weari­some, who doth not sigh and groan in the duty, but under it; who prays as a sick man works in his calling, finding no delight or joy in it.  True fervency suffers no weariness, feels no pain.  The tradesman, when hot at his work, and the soldier in fight, the one feels not his weariness nor the other his wounds.  Affec­tions are strong things, able to pull up a weak body. Therefore, he that shrugs at a duty, and turns this way and that way, as a sick man from one side of his bed to the other for ease, shows he hath little content in the duty, and therefore less zeal. These aches of the spirit in prayer—though he be a saint—come of some cold he hath gotten, and declare him to be under a great distemper.  A man in health finds not more savour in his food and refreshing from it, than the Christian doth in the offices of religion, when his heart is in the right temper.

           Use Second. For exhortation.  Dost thou pray? Pray fervently, or thou dost nothing.  Cold prayer is no more prayer than painted fire is fire.  That prayer which warms not thine own heart, will it, thinkest thou, move God’s?  Thou drawest the tap, but the vessel is frozen.  A man hath not the use of his hand clung up with cold, neither canst thou have the use of thy spirit in duty till thy heart chafed into some sense and feeling of what thou prayest for.  Now to bring thy cold heart into some spiritual heat,

Why we must pray in the spirit fervently 2/2

2.He is the living God.  Is a dead‑hearted prayer a sacrifice suitable to a living God?  How can that be accepted of him which never came from him?  Lay not your dead prayers by his side.  The lively prayer is his, the dead thine own.  What the psalmist saith of persons, we may say of prayers, The living, the living they shall praise him.’  The glorious angels, who for their zeal are called seraphims, and a flame of fire, these he chooseth to minister to him in heaven; and the saints below—who, though they sojourn on earth, yet have their extraction from heaven, and so have spirits raised and refined from the dulness of their earthly constitution—these he sets apart for himself as priests to offer up spiritual sacrifices unto him. The quicker any one is himself, the more offensive is a dull leaden heeled messenger or slow‑handed work­man to him.  How then can God, who is all life, brook thy lazy listless devotions?  When he com­manded the neck of an ass to be broke, and not offered up unto him, was it because he was angry with the beast?  No sure, it was his own workmanship; no other than himself made it; but to teach us how unpleasant a dull heart is to him in his service.          

3. He is a loving God, and love will be paid in no coin but its own.  Give God love for love, or he ac­counts you give him nothing.  ‘If ye love me, keep my commandments,’ John 14:15.  And, ‘If a man would give the substance of his house for love, it would be contemned,’ Song 8:7.  So, if a man thinks to commute with God, and give him anything in prayer instead of his love and fervent affection, it will be contemned. Let the prayer be never so pithy, the posture of the body never so devout, the voice never so loud, if the affections of the heart be not drawn out after God in the duty, he disdains and rejects it, because it doth not correspond with the dear affections which God expresseth to us.  He draws out the heart with his purse, and gives his very soul and self with all his gifts to his people.  Therefore he expects our hearts should come with all our services to him.  It is no wonder to see the servant, whose master is hard and cruel, have no heart to or mettle in his work; but love in the master useth to put life into the servant. And there­fore God, who is incomparably the best master, dis­dains to be served as none but the worst among men use to be.

           Answer Third.  We must pray in the spirit, be­cause the promise is only to fervent prayer.  A still-born child is no heir, neither is a prayer that wants life heir to any promise.  Fervency is to prayer what fire was to the spices in the censer—without this it cannot ascend as incense before God.  Some have attempted a shorter cut to the Indies by the north, but were ever frozen up in their way; and so will all sluggish prayers be served.  It were an easy voyage indeed to heaven if such prayers might find the way thither.  But never could they show any of that good land's gold who prayed thus, though he were a saint. The righteous man indeed is declared heir, as to all other promises, so to this of having his prayer heard; but if he hath not aptitudinem intrandi—he is not in a fit posture to enter into the possession of this promise, or claim present benefit from it, while his heart remains cold and formal in the duty.  There is a qualification to the act of prayer as necessary as of the person praying: ‘The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.’  When God intends a mercy for his people, he stirs up a spirit of prayer in them: ‘I said not unto the seed of Jacob, Seek ye me in vain,’ Isa. 45:19; that is, I never stirred them up to it, and helped them in it, and then let them lose their labour.  ‘Then ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you: and ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart,’ Jer. 29:12, 13.  Feeble desires, like weak pangs, go over, and bring not a mercy to the birth.  As the full time grows nearer, so the spirit of prayer grows stronger. ‘Shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, I tell you that he will avenge them speedily,’ Luke 18:7, 8.  None in the house per­haps will stir for a little knock at the door; they think he is some idle beggar, or one in no great haste; but if he raps thick and loud, then they go, yea, out of their beds.  ‘Though he will not rise and give him, because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity,’ Luke 11:8.

Why we must pray in the spirit fervently 1/2

           Question.  But why must we pray in the spirit fervently?  Answer First.  We must pray in the spirit fervently, from  the command.  ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might; and these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart,’ Deut. 6:5, 6; which imports the affectionate perfor­mance of every command and duty.  Sever the out­ward from the inward part of God’s worship, and he owns it not.  ‘Who hath required this at your hands?’ Isa. 1:12.  As if he had said, Did I ever command you to give a beast’s heart in sacrifice, and keep back your own?  Why dost thou pray at all?  Wilt thou say, Be­cause he commands it?  Then, why not fervently, which the command intends chiefly?  When you send for a book, would you be pleased with him that brings you only the cover?  And will God accept the skin for the sacrifice?  The external part of the duty is but as the cup.  Thy love, faith, and joy are the wine he de­sires to taste of.  Without these, thou givest him but an empty cup to drink in.  Now, what is this but to mock him?

           Answer Second.  We must pray in the spirit, to comport with the name of God.  The common de­scription of prayer is calling on the name of God. Now, as in prayer we call upon the name of God, so it must be with a worship suitable to his name, or else we pollute it and incur his wrath.  This is the chief meaning of the third commandment.  In the first, God provides that none besides himself, the only true God, be worshipped; in the second, that he, the true God, be not served with will‑worship, but his own institutions; and in the third, that he be not served vainly and slightily in his own worship.  There is no attribute in God but calls for this fervency in his worship.

1. He is a great and glorious God; and as such it becomes us to approach his presence with our affec­tions in the best array.  Are yawning prayers fit for a great God’s hearing? Darest thou speak to such a majesty before thou art well awake, and hast such a sacrifice prepared as he will accept?  ‘Cursed be the deceiver, which hath in his flock a male, and voweth, and sacrificeth unto the Lord a corrupt thing: for I am a great King, saith the Lord of hosts, and my name is dreadful among the heathen,’ Mal. 1:14.  See here, first, anything less than the best we have is a corrupt thing.  He will accept a little, if the best, but he abhors that thou shouldst save thy best for another.  Again he that offers not the best—the strength of his affections—is a deceiver; because he robs him of his due, and he is a great God.  It is fit the prince’s table should be served with the best that the market affords, and not the refuse.  When Jacob intended a present to the governor of the land, he bids his children ‘take of the best of the fruit of the land in your vessels.’  Lastly, the awful thoughts which God extorts from the very heathen by his mighty works, do reproach us who live in the bosom of the church, and despise his name by our heedless and heartless serving of him.

To pray in the spirit, we must have fervency

 

           Second.  We pray in the spirit when we pray in fervency.  The soul keeps the body warm while it is in it.  So much as there is our soul and spirit in a duty, so much heat and fervency.  If the prayer be cold, we may certainly conclude the heart is idle, and bears no part in the duty.  Our spirit is an active creature: what it doth is with a force, whether bad or good.  Hence in Scripture, to set the heart and soul upon a thing, im­ports vehemency and fervour.  Thus the poor labour­ing man is said to ‘set his heart on his wages,’ Deut. 24:15.  The hopes of what he shall have at night makes him sweat at his work in the day.  Darius ‘set his heart on Daniel to deliver him;’ and it follows, ‘He laboured till the going down of the sun to deliver him,’ Dan. 6:14.  When the spirit of a man is set about a work, he will do it to purpose.  ‘If thou shalt seek the Lord with all thy heart and with all thy soul,’ Deut. 4:29, that is, fervently.  This consists not in a violent agitation of the bodily spirits.  A man may put his body into a sweat in duty, and the prayer be cold. That is the fervent prayer that flows from a warm heart and enkindled affections; like an exhalation which first is set on fire in the cloud, and then breaks forth into thunder.  ‘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. 39:3, 4.  Now as zeal is not one single affection, but the edge and vehemency of them all; so fervency in prayer is, when all the affections act strongly and suit­ably to the several parts of prayer.

           In confession, then have we fervency, when the soul melts into a holy shame and sorrow for the sins he spreads before the Lord, so that he feels a holy smart and pain within, and doth not act a tragical part with a comical heart.  For, as Chrysostom saith, ‘To paint tears is worse than to paint the face.’  Here is true fervency: ‘I mourn in my complaint, and make a noise,’ Ps. 55:2.  There may be fire in the pan, when none in the piece; a loud wind, but no rain with it. David made a noise with his voice, and mourned in his spirit.

           So, in petition we have fervency, when the heart is drawn out with vehement desires of the grace it prays for, not some lazy woundings or wishings, or weak velleities, but passionate breathings and break­ings of heart.  Sometimes it is set out by the violence of thirst, which is thought more tormenting than that of hunger.  As the hunted hart panteth after the cool waters, so did David’s soul after God, Ps. 42.  Some­times it is set out by the strainings of a wrestler—so Jacob is said to wrestle with the angel; and of those that run in a race, ‘instantly serving God day and night,’ Acts 26:7, ¦< ¦6J,<,\‘—they stretched out themselves.  ‘My soul breaketh for longing,’ Ps. 119:20, as one that with straining breaks a vein.

APPLICATION of The Inward Principle Of Prayer

           Use First.  How few then pray in the spirit! Were this the only character to try many by, would they not be cast over the bar for mere babblers?  As, first, those in the Popish church, where most know not a word what they say in prayer.  If it be such a weakness to subscribe a petition to a king, or to a parliament, which we never read or understood, what shall we then think of such brutish prayers as these sent to heaven and indorsed with an ignoramus on the back of them?  Yea, amongst ourselves, many, who though they pray in their mother language, yet are as ignorant as to the matter of their prayers; how else could they patter over the creed and commandments with their blind devotion instead of prayers?  Are there more deplored ruins of mankind to be found among the Indians than such?  Yea, when they join with their minister in prayer, neither know that God to whom the prayer is directed, nor the Mediator under the favour of whose name it is presented.  Before Nebu­chadnezzar could bless God, he had the under­standing of a man given him, which these yet want. Do you not think such ignorant wretches as these might be easily persuaded to kneel before an image gaudily dressed up, or to put their letter into some angel or saint's hand for despatch, being made to believe that it will find a kinder welcome by the mediation of such favourites?  O what a darkness is there even at this day upon the face of our waters! on which, had but the pope’s instruments opportunity to sit brooding awhile, they might soon bring their de­sired work to a perfection among the multitude of ignorant souls that are amidst us!  We see there is need not only to stir up our people to pray, or else we send them before they have learned their errand, as if we should call a child to read before he hath learned his letters.

           Use Second.  It speaks to all that are at any time the mouth to God for others in prayer, so to pray, that those who join with them may clearly understand what they put up to God for them.  Who is more to be blamed—he that prayeth in an unknown tongue, or he that with such uncouth phrases and high-flown expressions as are not understood by half the com­pany?  Suppose thine own spirit prays, as the apostle saith, yet thy understanding is unfruitful unto them. They, alas! are at a loss, and stand gazing, as the dis­ciples did when the cloud parted Christ from them. Either come down from thy high towering expres­sions, or help them up to thee.  They may say of thee as those of Moses, ‘We know not what is become of the man.’  No wonder if, while they cannot keep sight of the matter in hand, that their thoughts rove and dance about some object of their own framing.  Dost thou pray to be admired for thy rouling tongue, height of gifts, or the like?  Perhaps thou mayest have this thy reward of some ignorant ones, and others that would as fain commend themselves upon the same account; but consider what a low and base end thou propoundest in so high a service, unworthy of a Chris­tian’s thought.  What! no net to fish with for thy credit and applause but a sacred ordinance!  The whip which Christ made in the gospel belongs to thy back.  Our blessed Saviour, that was all on fire with zeal to see his house of prayer made a house of merchandise, O how doth his soul loathe the base­ness of thy mercenary spirit, who dost the same, though in another dress!

To pray in the spirit, we must have knowledge and understanding

           First.  To pray acceptably, or in the spirit, it is required that we pray with knowledge and under­standing.  A blind sacrifice was rejected in the law, Mal. 1:8; much more are blind devotions under the gospel.  As knowledge aggravates a sin, so ignorance takes from the excellency of an action that is good: ‘I bear them witness,’ saith Paul, ‘they have a zeal, but not according to knowledge.’  The want of an eye dis­figures the fairest face, the want of knowledge the devoutest prayer: ‘Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews,’ John 4:22, where we see what a fundamental defect the want of knowledge is in acts of worship, such as brings damnation with it.

           Question First.  But why is knowledge so requi­site to acceptable praying?

           Answer First.  Because without this it is not a ‘reasonable service;’ for we know not what we do. God calls for 8@(486¬< 8"JD,\"<—‘reasonable serv­ice,’ Rom. 12:1, which some oppose to the legal sacri­fices.  They offered up beasts to God; in the gospel we are to offer up ourselves.  Now the soul and spirit of a man is the man.  Why did not God lay a law on beasts to worship him, but because they have not a rational soul to understand and reflect upon their own actions? And will God accept that service and worship from man, wherein he doth not exercise that faculty that distinguisheth him from a beast?  ‘Show yourselves men,’ saith the prophet to those idolaters, Isa. 46:8.  And truly he that worships the true God ig­norantly is brutish in his knowledge as well as he that prays to a false god.

           Answer Second.  Because the understanding is JΠº(,µT<46Î<—the leading faculty of the soul, and so the key of the work.  The inward worship of the heart is the chief.  Now, the other powers of the soul are disabled if they want this their guide which holds the candle to them.  As for those violent passions of seeming zeal, sorrow, and joy, which sometimes ap­pear in ignorant worshippers and their blind devo­tions, they are spurious.  Christ’s sheep, like Jacob’s, conceive by the eye.

1. The saint’s eye is enlightened to see the maj­esty and glorious holiness of God, and then it reveres him, and mourns before him in the sense of his own vileness: ‘Now mine eye seeth thee, wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes,’ Job 42:6.
2. Again, by an eye of faith he beholds the goodness and love of God to poor sinnersin Christ, and in particular to him, and this eye affects his heart to love and rely on him, which it is impossible the ignorant soul should do.

           Question First. But you will say, what is neces­sary for the praying soul to know?

           Answer First. There is required a knowledge that he to whom he directs his prayer is the true God.  Re­ligious worship is an incommunicable flower in the crown of the deity, and that both inward and outward. We are religiously to worship him only, who, by rea­son of his infinite perfections, deserves our supreme love, honour, and trust.  He must have the crown that owes the kingdom.  ‘The kingdom and power’ are God’s.  Therefore ‘the glory’ of religious worship be­longs to him alone, Matt. 6:13.  Angels are the highest order of creatures, but we are forbid to ‘worship any of the host of heaven,’ Deut. 17:3.  ‘Who would not fear thee, O King of nations? for to thee it doth appertain’—where fear is put for religious worship, as appears by the circumstance of the place.  The want of this knowledge filled the heathen world with idol­atry.  For, where they found any virtue or excellency in the creature, presently they adored and worshipped it, like some ignorant rustic, who coming to court, thinks every one he sees in brave clothes to be the king.

           Answer Second.  There is required a knowledge of this true God, what his nature is.  ‘He that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him,’ Heb. 11:6.  It is confessed, a perfect knowledge of the divine per­fections is incomprehensible by a finite being.  He answered right who said—when asked quid est Deus? what is God?—si scirem essem ipse Deus—if I knew, I myself would be God.  None indeed knows God thus but God himself; yet a Scripture knowledge of him is necessary to the right performance of this duty. The want of understanding his omniscience and in­finite mercy, is the cause of vain babbling, and a con­ceit to prevail by long prayers, which our Sav­iour charges upon the heathen, and prevents in his disciples by acquainting them with these attributes, Matt. 6:7, 8.  They came rather narrare than rogare—to inform God than to beg.  The ignorance of his high and glorious majesty is the cause why so many are rude and slovenly in their gesture, so saucy and ir­reverently familiar with God in their expressions.  We are bid to ‘be sober, watching unto prayer.’  Truly there is an insobriety in our very language, when we do not clothe the desires of our hearts with such hum­ble expressions as may signify the awe and dread of his sacred majesty in our hearts.  In a word, the rea­son why men dare come reeking out of the adulterous embraces of their lusts, and stretch forth their un­washen hands to heaven in prayer—whence is it? —but because they know not God to be of such infinite purity as will have no fellowship with the workers of iniquity?  ‘Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself,’ Ps. 50:21.

           Answer Third. We must understand the matter of our prayers, what we beg, what we deprecate. With­out this we cannot in faith say amen to our own prayers, but may soon ask that which neither becomes us to desire, nor is honourable for God to give.  This Christ rebuked, when she in the gospel put up her ambitious request for her children to be set one at the right the other at the left hand of Christ in his kingdom.  God never gave us leave thus to indite our own prayers by the dictate of our private spirit, but hath bound us up to ask only what he hath promised to give.

           Answer Fourth. There is required a knowledge of the manner how we are to pray; as, in whose name, and what qualifications are required in the prayer and person praying.  We find Paul begging prayers, ‘that ye strive together with me in your prayers.’  In another place he tells us of a lawful striving, II Tim. 2:5.  There is a law of prayer which must be observed, or we come at our own adventure.  Even in false wor­ship they go by some rule in their addresses to their gods.  Therefore those smattering Samaritans, when a plague was on them, concluded the reason to be be­cause they ‘knew not the manner of the god of the land,’ II Kings 17:26.  The true God will be served in due order, or else expect a breach.  A word or two for application of this branch.