We shall begin with the first direction, which points to the time of performing the duty of prayer —‘always.’ This word ‘always’ hath a threefold importance. First. To pray ‘always’ is as much as if he had said, ‘pray in everything,’ according to that of the same apostle in another epistle—‘In every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.’ Second. To pray ‘always’ may import as much as to pray in all conditions. Third. To pray ‘always’ is to pray daily.
Threefold import of the expression ‘praying always.’
First. To pray always is to pray in everything. Prayer is a catholic duty, with which, like a girdle, we are to compass in all our affairs. It is to be as bread and salt on our table; whatever else we have to our meal, these are not forgot to be set on: whatever we do, or would have, prayer is necessary, be it small or great. Not as the heathen, who prayed for some things to their gods, and not for other. If poor, they prayed for riches; if sick, for health; but as for the good things of the mind, such as patience, contentment, and other virtues, they thought they could carve well enough in these for themselves, without troubling their gods to help them. The poet it seems was of this mind— It is enough,
To pray of Jove who gives and takes away That he may give me life and wealth: I will myself prepare the equal soul.
O how proud is ignorance! let God give the less, and man will do the greater.
But their folly is not so much to wondered at, as the irreligion of many among ourselves, who profess to know the true God, and have the light of his word to direct them what worship to give him. Some are so brutish in their knowledge, that they hardly pray to God for anything others for everything. May be they look upon pardon of sin, and salvation of their souls —as fruit on the top branches of a tree—out of the reach of their own arm, and therefore now and then put up some slighty prayers to God for them. But as for temporals, which seem to hang lower, they think they can pluck them by their own industry, without setting up the ladder of prayer to come at them. They that should see some—how busy they are in laying their plots, and how seldom in prayer—could not but think they expected their safety from their own policy, and not God’s providence. Or, should they observe how hard they work in their shop, and how seldom and lazy they are at prayer for God’s blessing on their labour in their closet, they must conclude these men promise themselves their estates more from their own labour than the divine bounty.
In a word, it is some great occasion that must bring them upon their knees before God in prayer. May be, when they have an extraordinary enterprise in hand, wherein they look for strong opposition or great difficulty, in such a case God shall have them knocking at his door—for now they are at their wits’ end and know not how to turn them; but the more ordinary and common actions of their lives they think they can please their master at their pleasures, and so pass by God’s door without bespeaking his presence or assistance. Thus, one runs into his shop, and another into the field, and takes no notice that God is concerned in their employments. If to take a long journey by the sea or land, where eminent dangers and hazards present themselves unto their thoughts, then God hath their company; but if to stay at home, or walk to and fro in their ordinary employments, they bespeak not the providential wing of God to overshadow them. This is not to ‘pray always.’ If thou wilt, therefore, be a Christian, do not thus part stakes with God, committing the greater transactions of thy life to him, and trusting thyself with the less: but ‘acknowledge God in all thy ways, and lean not to thine own understanding’ in any. By this thou shalt give him the glory of his universal providence, with which he encircles all his creatures and all their actions. As nothing is too great to be above his power, so nothing is too little to be beneath his care. He is the God of the valleys as well as of the mountains. The sparrow on the hedge and the hair on our head are cared for by him; and this is no more derogatory to his glorious majesty than it was to make them at first. Nay, thou shalt, by this, not only give God his glory, but secure thyself, for there is no passage in thy whole life so minute and inconsiderable, which—if God should withdraw his care and providence—might not be an occasion of a sin or danger to thee. And that which exposeth thee to these calls upon thee to engage God for thy defence.
First. The least passage in thy life may prove an occasion of sin to thee. At what a little wicket, many times, a great sin enters, we daily see. David’s eye did but casually light on Bathsheba, and the good man’s foot was presently in the devil’s trap. Hast thou not then need to pray that God would set a guard about thy senses wherever thou goest? and to cry with him, ‘Keep back mine eyes from beholding vanity?’ Dinah went but to give her neighbours, ‘the daughters of the land,’ a visit—which was but an ordinary civility—and we may imagine that she little thought, when she went out, of playing the strumpet before she came home; yet, alas! we read how she was deflowered! What need then hast thou, before thou goest forth, to charge God with the keeping of thee, that so thou mayest be in his fear from morning till night!
Second. No passage of thy life so small wherein thou mayest not fall into some great danger. How many have been choked with their food at their own table?—received their deadly wound by a beam from their own house? Knowest thou what will be the end of any action when thou beginnest it? Joseph was sent by his father to see his brethren in the field, and neither of them thought of a longer journey; yet this proved the sad occasion of his captivity in a strange land. Job’s servants were destroyed with lightning from heaven when they were abroad about their master’s business. Where canst thou be safe if heaven’s eye be not on thee? A slip of thy foot as thou walkest, or a trip of thy horse as thou ridest, may break thy bones, yea thy neck. O what need, then, of a God to make thy path plain before thee! It is he that ‘preserveth man and beast;’ and canst thou have faith to expect his protection when thou hast not a heart to bespeak it in thy humble prayers at his hand? What reason hath God to care for thy safety, who carest no more for his honour?
Second. To pray always may import as much as to pray in all conditions; that is, in prosperity as well as in adversity. So Calvin takes it: omni tempore perinde valet, atque tam prosperis quâm adversis—it holds at all times equally, and as much in prosperity as in adversity. Indeed, when God doth afflict, he puts an especial season for prayer into our hands; but when he enlargeth our state, he doth not discharge us of the duty, as if we might then lay it aside, as the traveller doth his cloak when the weather is warm. Prayer is not a winter garment. It is then to be warn indeed; but not to be left off in the summer of prosperity. If you would find some at prayer you must stay till it thunders and lightens; not go to them except it be in a storm or tempest. These are like some birds that are never heard to cry or make a noise but in or against foul weather. This is not to pray always; not to serve God, but to serve ourselves of God; to visit God, not as a friend for love of his company, but as a mere beggar for relief of our present necessity; using prayer as that pope is said to have used preaching, for a net to compass in some mercy we want, and when the fish is got then to throw away the duty. Well, Christian, take heed of this; thou hast arguments enough to keep this duty always on its wheels, let thy condition be what it will.
