William Gurnall: The Christian in Complete Armour

The Inward Principle of Prayer.

‘In the Spirit.’

[To pray in the spirit, we must have FERVENCY.]

 

[Arguments to enkindle our zeal and fervency in prayer.]

 

Argument 1. Consider the excellency of zeal and fervency. If a saint, you have a principle that inclines you 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 you are in your duty, and the more zeal you express therein, the nearer you come 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 between man and man, is better than zeal. So Solomon says, ‘A man of understanding is of an excellent spirit,’ Proverbs 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 has good ingredients in it, yet being laid cold upon the wound, hurts it rather than heals it.

 

Argument 2. God deserves the prime and strength of your soul should be bestowed on him in your prayers.

(1.) He gave you the powers of your soul and all your affections. According to the mould so is the statue that is cast in it; such you are as you were in the idea of the divine mind. Now, may not your Maker call for that which was his gift? He that made the stone an inanimate being, and confined the narrow souls of brutes to act upon low sensitive good, ennobles you with a rational appetite and spiritual affections. Now, will you not employ those divine powers in the worship of your God, from whom, you had them? This were hard indeed—that God should be denied what himself gave, and not suffered to taste of his own cost. ‘I came unto my own,’ says Christ, ‘and they would not receive me.’ Thus here, I came to my own creature; he had his life from me, and brings a dead heart unto me! Suppose a friend should give you notice that he will ere long be at your house, and sends you in beforehand a vessel of rich wine; which you, when he comes, grudge to broach it for his entertainment, and put him off with that which is dead and flat? Expect you a better friend to be your guest than your God? The psalmist calls upon us to ‘serve the Lord with gladness,’ and what is his enforcement? ‘Know you that the Lord he is God: it is he that has made us,’ Psalm 100:2, 3. Who plants a vineyard and looks not to drink of the wine? If God calls our corn and wine his, he therefore expects to be served with them; much more with our love and joy, for surely he allows us not to alienate the best of his gifts from him. When you are therefore going to pray, call up your affections, which haply are asleep on some creature's lap, as Jonah in the sides of the ship: ‘What mean you, O sleeper? arise, call upon your God.’

 

(2.) He deserves your affections because he gives you his. He is jealous of you because he is zealous for you. Well may he complain of your cold dreaming prayers whose heart is on a flame of love to you. High and admirable are the expressions with which he sets forth his dear love to his people; whatever he does for them is with a zeal. In protecting of them, ‘as birds flying, so will the Lord defend Jerusalem,’ that is, swiftly, as a bird flies full speed to her nest when she perceives her young is in danger; in avenging them of their enemies, ‘the zeal of the Lord of hosts shall perform this;’ in hearing their prayers he does it ‘with delight;’ in forgiving their sins he is ready to forgive,’ ‘multiplies to pardon;’ when they ask one talent he gives them two. Jacob desires a safe egress and regress. He does this and more than he desired, for he brings him home with two bands. Not the least mercy he gives but he draws forth his souls and heart with it; even in his afflicting providences, where he seems to show least love, there his heart overflows with it. ‘O Ephraim, what shall I do unto you? my heart is turned within me.’

 

(3.) He is a good pay-master for his people’s zeal. ‘He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him,’ Heb. 11:6. Never did fervent prayer find cold welcome with him. Elijah’s prayer fetched fire from heaven because it carried fire to heaven. The tribe of Levi for their zeal were preferred to the priesthood. And why? Surely they who were so zealous in doing justice on their brethren would be no less zealous in making atonement for them by their sacrifices. Most men lose their fervency and strength of their desires by misplacing them; they are zealous for such things as cannot, and persons that oft will not, pay them for their pains. O how hot is the covetous man in his chase after the world's pelf! He ‘pants after the dust of the earth,’ and that ‘on the head of the poor.’ But what reward has he for his labour? After all his getting, like the dogs in pursuit of the hare, he misses his game, and at last goes often poor and supperless to bed in his grave; to be sure he dies ‘a fool,’ Jeremiah 17:11. How many court-spaniels—that have fawned and flattered, yea, licked up their master’s spittle, and all for some scraps of preferment —have befooled themselves, when at last they have seen their creeping sordid practices rewarded with the fatal stroke of the headsman, or a lingering consumptive death in their prince’s favour? Which made that ambitious cardinal say too late, If he had been as observant of his heavenly Master as he had been of his earthly, he could not have been left so miserable at last. In a word, do we not see the superstitious person knocking his breast and cutting his own flesh, out of a zeal to his wooden god, that has neither ear to hear nor hand to help him? Now, does not the living God, your loving Father, deserve your zeal more than their dead and dumb idols do theirs? For shame! Let not us be cold in his worship when the idolater sweats before his god of clouts; let not the worldling’s zeal in pursuit of his earthly mammon leave you lagging behind with a heedless heartless serving of your God. Neither fear the world’s hooting at you for your zeal; they think you a fool, but you know them to be so.

 

[How to raise our affections to fervency in prayer.]

 

Question. But how may we get this fervency of spirit in prayer?

 

Answer (a). You who propound the question are a saint or not; if not, there is another question must precede this. How you, that are at present in a state of spiritual death, may have spiritual life? There must be life in the soul before there can be life in the duty. All the rugs in the upholsterer’s shop will not fetch a dead man to warmth, nor any arguments, though taken from the most moving topics in the Scripture, will make you pray fervently while your soul lies in a dead state. Go first to Christ that you may have life, and having life, then there is hope to chafe you into some heat. But,

 

Answer (b). If you be a saint, it yet calls for your utmost care to get, and when you have got, to keep, your soul in a kindly heat. As the stone cannot of itself mount up into the air, so the bird—though it can do this, yet—cannot stay there long without some labour and motion with its wings. The saints have a spark of heavenly fire in their bosom, but this needs the bellows of their care and diligence to keep it alive. There is a rust that breeds from the gold, a worm from the wood, a moth from the garment, that in time waste them; and ashes from the coal that choke the fire; yea, and in the saint too, which will damp his zeal if not cleared by daily watchfulness. Observe therefore what is your chief impediment to fervency in prayer, and set yourself vigorously against it. If you be remiss in this precedaneous duty you will be much more remiss in prayer itself. He that knows of a slough in the way, and mends it not before he takes his journey, has no cause to wonder when his chariot is laid fast in it.

 

Answer (c). Now this is not the same in all, and therefore it is necessary that you be so much acquainted with your own estate as to know what is your great clog in this duty. Certainly, were not the firmament of the saint’s soul cooled with some malignant vapours that arise from his own breast, and weaken the force of divine grace in him, it would be summer all the year long with him, his heart would be ever warm, and his affections lively in duty. Look therefore narrowly whence your cooling comes. Perhaps your heart is too much let out upon the world in the day, and at night your spirits are spent, when you should come before the Lord in prayer. If you will be hotter in duty you must be colder towards the world. A horse that carries a pack all day is unfit to go post at night. Wood that has the sap in it will not burn easily; neither will your heart readily take fire in holy duties who comes so sopped in the world to them. Drain, therefore, your heart of these eager affections to that, if you mean to have them warm and lively in this. Now, no better way for this than to set your soul under the frequent meditation of Christ's love to you, your relation to him, with the great and glorious things you expect from him in another world. This, or nothing, will dry up your love to this world, as your wood which is laid a sunning is made fit for the fire. Whereas, let your hearts continue soaking in the thoughts of an inordinate love to the world, and you will find, when you come to pray, that your heart will be in a duty even as a foggy wet log at the back of a fire, long in kindling, and soon out again. Haply the deadness of your heart in prayer arises from want of a deep sense of your wants and mercies you desire to have supplied. Could you but pray feelingly no doubt but you would pray fervently. The hungry man needs no help from art to learn him how to beg; his pinched bowels make him earnest and eloquent.

 

Is it pardon of sin you would pray for? First see what anguish of spirit they put you to. Do with your soul as the chirurgeon with his patient’s wounds, who syringes them with some sharp searching water to try what sense he has of them. Apply such considerations to your soul as may make you feel their smart, and be sensible of your deplored estate by reason of them; then go and sleep at prayer if you can. We have David first affecting his heart, and expressing the dolor of his soul for his sin: ‘My iniquities are gone over my head: as an heavy burden they are too heavy for me,’ Psalm 38:4. Now when his heart is sick with these thoughts, as one with strong physic working in his stomach, he pours out his soul in prayer to God, ‘All my desire is before you; and my groaning is not hid from you,’ verse 9.

 

Are you to pray for others? First pierce your heart through with their sorrows, and, by a spirit of sympathy, bring yourself to feel their miseries as if you were in their case. Then will your heart be warm in prayer for them when it flows from a heart melted in compassion to them. Thus we read Christ troubled himself for Lazarus before he lifted up his eyes to heaven for him, John 11:33, 38, compared.

 

Again, it may be your want of zeal proceeds from a defect in your faith. Faith is the back of steel to the bow of prayer; this sends the arrow with a force to heaven. Where faith is weak the cry will not be strong. He that goes about a business with little hope to speed will do it but faintly; he works, as we say, for a dead horse. It is a true axiom, the less we hope the less we endeavour. We read of strong cries that Christ put up in the days of his flesh. Now mark what enforced his prayer—‘unto him that was able to save him;’ and not only so, but if you look into that prayer to which this refers, you shall find that he clasped about God as his God—‘My God, my God.’ His hold on God held up his spirit in prayer. So in the several precedents of praying saints upon Scripture record, you may see how the spirit of prayer ebbed and flowed, fell and rose, as their faith was up and down. This made David press so hard upon God in the day of his distress: ‘I believed, therefore have I spoken: I was greatly afflicted,’ Psalm 116:10. This made the woman of Canaan so invincibly importunate. Let Christ frown and chide, deny and rebuke her, she yet makes her approaches nearer and nearer, gathering arguments from his very denials, as if a soldier should shoot his enemy’s bullets back upon him again; and Christ tells us what kept her spirit undaunted, ‘O woman, great is your faith!’

 

Again, may be it proceeds from some distaste you have given to the Holy Spirit, who alone can blow up your affections; and then, no wonder you are cold in prayer when he is gone that should keep your heart warm at it. What is the body without the soul but cold clay, dead earth? and what the soul without the Spirit? truly no better. O invite him back to your soul, or else your praying work is at an end. And, if you would persuade him to return, observe what was the thing that distasted him, and remove it. That which makes this dove forsake its lockyers will hinder his return if not taken away.