Desires for Grace

The Holy Spirit assists us in prayer, by working in us such dispositions and desires as make us to seek for those supplies of grace which we need, with earnest, importunate, and persevering supplication: “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?”

Naturally we nave no such disposition or desire. The carnal mind, which is enmity against God, is naturally averse from those spiritual blessings of which it stands in need. True, it is desirous of exemption from pain and punishment and danger; but whatever is spiritual is obnoxious to its taste, insomuch that, were an unrenewed mind supposed (if we may suppose a case which is never realised in actual experience) to be sensible, on the one hand, of its sin and misery and danger, and enabled to perceive, on the other, the number and variety of the blessings which have been purchased and offered by Christ; it would, if left to follow its own inclination without the restraining and renewing grace of the Spirit, refuse to accept God’s great salvation!The awakening of spiritual desire in the heart is the work of God’s Spirit; and that desire must be kept alive by his continued agency: “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness; for they shall be filled.” This new disposition or desire makes prayer natural, easy, and delightful to the people of God. Just as a natural man hungers and thirsts for food and drink, so the renewed man hungers and thirsts after righteousness. He has a new spiritual appetite, which naturally and spontaneously seeks its proper spiritual aliment. And hence those commands and observances which are a burden and bondage to mere formalists are an easy yoke to every living ChristianThe Holy Spirit helps us in prayer by strengthening and exciting into lively exercise those spiritual graces which are essentially implied in communion with God. Prayer properly consists in the exercise of these graces. It is not the mere utterance of words, nor is it even the mere expression of natural feeling; it is an exercise of repentance, of faith, of love, of trust and delight in God: of repentance, which is expressed in the language of confession; of faith, for he that cometh to God must believe that he is the rewarder of them that “diligently seek him;” of love, for we call him “Abba, Father,” “our Father which art in heaven;” of trust, for we commit our case into his hands; and of delight, for the promise is, “Delight thyself in the Lord, and he will give thee the desires of thine heart.” These graces are not only presupposed or implied in prayer, but prayer properly consists in the lively exercise of them, insomuch, that where these graces are awanting, there is no prayer, whatever forms may be observed, and whatever words employed. Now let it be remembered, that all these graces are the fruits of the Spirit, that they are at first implanted, and must ever afterwards be nourished, by the Spirit, and you will perceive at once how the Spirit may assist us in prayer simply by strengthening and exciting into lively exercise all the gracious affections of the soul. By this means he gives us freedom and comfort in prayer: for where these graces are absent, prayer is a mere form; where they are weak, prayer is cold and languid; but where they abound, prayer is the soul’s communion with God.