(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.
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