Prayer is an ordinance of God, and that to be used both in public
and private; yea, such an ordinance will bring those that have the
spirit of supplication into great familiarity with God; and is also
so prevalent an action, that it gets of God, both for the person
that prays, and for them that are prayed for, great things. It is
the opener of the heart of God, and a means by which the soul,
though empty, is filled. By prayer the Christian can open his heart
to God, as to a friend and obtain fresh testimony of God's
friendship to him - I might spend many words in distinguishing
between public and private prayer as also between that in the
heart, and that with the vocal voice. Something also might be
spoken to distinguish between the gifts and graces of prayer; but
as eschewing this method my business shall be at this time only to
show you the very heart of prayer, without which, all your lifting
up both of hands, and eyes, and voices, will be to no purpose at
all. Prayer is a sincere, sensible, affectionate pouring out of the
heart or soul to God, through Christ, in the strength and
assistance of the Holy Spirit, for such things as God has promised,
or according to the Word for the good of the Church, with
submission, in faith, to the will of God. 1. For the first of
these: it is a sincere pouring out of the soul to God. Sincerity is
such a grace as runs through all the graces of God in us, and
through all the actings of a Christian, and has the sway in them
too, or else their actings are not anything regarded of God, and so
of and in prayer, of which particularly David speaks, when he
mentions prayer: "7 cried unto the Lord with my mouth, and He was
extolled with my tongue. If I regardiniquity in my heart, the Lord
will not hear me" (Psa. 68:18). Part of the exercise of prayer is
sincerity, without which God looks not upon it as prayer in a good
sense. "And ye shall seek Me, and find Me, when ye shall search for
Me with all your heart" (Jer. 29:13). The want of this made the
Lord reject their prayers in Hos. 7:14, where He says, "They have
not cried to Me with their hearts (that is, in sincerity), when
they howled upon their beds " But for a pretense, for a show, in
hypocrisy, to be seen of men, and applauded for the same, they
pray. Sincerity was that which Christ commended in Nathaniel when
he was under the fig-tree: "Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is
no guile" (John 1:47). Probably this good man was pouring out of
his soul to God in prayer under the fig-tree, and that in a sincere
and unfeigned spirit before the Lord. The prayer that has this in
it as one of the principal ingredients is the prayer that God looks
at: "The prayer of the upright is His delight." Bunyan (1628-1688)
rose from an humble beginning to being a preacher to a little house
church, to 12 years in jail because he would not agree to quit
preaching, to a huge church in London. He wrote 66 books, nearly
all while in jail. Goodwin (1600-1679) was rightly described as
''one of the twin pillars of the Puritan movement.'' His 12 volumes
are filled with information not to be found in any other works.
Thomas Shepard was an early New England Puritan. His work was
praised at once by eminent divines, four of them being Westminster
Confession participants. Jonathan Edwards quoted from Shepard more
than any other.
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