3. It will enliven our prayer.
answered him, ver. 7, 'I am the Lord that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees.' Keep up thy faith; and to that end, remember what I did for thee before in calling thee. Cast thy eye upon that place whence I delivered thee, either from the idolatries of the place, or the persecution he was in for the true worship of God. And as God puts him in mind of his mercy he had shewn to him before, for the encouragement of his faith, so the people of God have made use of them to this end. Goliah's sword was counted by David the fittest for his defence in his flight, because it had been a monument of God's former deliverance of him, 1 Sam. 21:9. When he asks for a sword or spear, Abimelech said, 'The sword of Goliah, whom thou slowest, is here;' and David said, 'There is none like that: give it me.' How hasty he catches at it! There is none like that sword, that hath so signal a mercy writ upon it. That very sword will not only defend me against my enemies, but guard my faith against those temptations that would invade it. This encouragement of faith and hope is the end of God in his transmission of the records of his former providences to us: Ps. 78:6, 7, 'That the generation to come might know them, and declare them to their children' from one posterity to another, 'that they might set their hope in God.'
3. It will enliven our prayer.
It is a mighty plea in prayer. How often doth David urge it! Thou hast been my help, thou hast delivered my soul from death, wilt thou not deliver my feet from falling? But in the church's concerns too: 1
Chron. 16:11, 12, 'Seek the Lord and his strength, seek his face continually. Remember the marvellous works that he hath done.' A reflection upon what God hath done should be enjoined* with our desires of what we would have God to do for us. When Moses was praying upon the top, while Israel was fighting with Amalek at the foot of the hill, he had the rod of God in his hand, Exod. 17:9; that miraculous rod which had amazed Pharaoh, whose motion summoned all the plagues upon them; that rod which had split the sea for their passage, broached the rock for their thirst, and had been instrumental in many miracles: certainly Moses shewed this rod to