Prayer


 From the nature of prayer. The whole spiritual life it is a living to God: Gal. ii. 19, ‘I am dead to the law, that I might live unto God.’ The whole tendency and ordination of all acts of the spiritual life they are to God. Even the natural life is overruled and directed to this end; there is an eating and drinking to God; the meat and drink we take, if God be not the last end of it, it is but a meat-offering and a drink-offering to our own appetite, and a sacrifice to Moloch. Now, much more in acts of immediate worship, there God will be principally regarded, for their respect and tendency is mainly to God. In our whole life we are God’s, dedicated to him. Every godly man is set apart for God. A man that is a Christian must be ‘holy in all manner of conversation,’ 1 Pet. i. 15. A Christian must look upon himself as one that is dedicated to God, when he is at his meals, in his trade and calling; and grace is to run out in every act. But much more is this tendency of grace to bewray itself in our solemn sequestration of ourselves when we mate our nearer 71approaches to him: Lev. x. 3, ‘I will be sanctified in them that come nigh me,and before all the people will I be glorified.’ What is it to sanctify God? A thing is sanctified when it is set apart; and God is sanctified when we set apart ourselves wholly for him when he hath more than common affections and common respects. And therefore in prayer, in the first place, we should go to God for God, and surely in such a request we are likely to speed.

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