Directions for Daily Communion with God
continual occasion to bless him.
It was (they say) the custom of the pious Jews of old, whatever delight they took in any creature, to give to God the glory of it; when they smelled a flower, they said, blessed be he that made this flower sweet; if they eat a morsel of bread, blessed be he that appointed bread to strengthen man's heart. If thus we taste in every thing that the Lord is gracious, and suck all satisfaction from the breasts of his bounty, we shall thereby be engaged constantly to depend on him, as the child is said to hang on the mother's breast.
2. See every creature to be nothing without God; the more we discern of the vanity and emptiness of the world, and all our enjoyments in it, and their utter insufficiency to make us happy, the closer we shall cleave to God, and the more intimately we shall converse with him, that we may find that satisfaction in the Father of spirits, which we have in vain sought for in the things of sense. What folly is it to make our court to the creatures, and to dance attendance at their door, whence we are sure to be sent away empty, when we have the Creator himself to go to, who is rich in mercy to all that call upon him, is full, and free, and faithful. What can we expect from lying vanities? Why often should we observe them, and neglect our own mercies? Why should we trust to broken reeds, when we have a rock of ages, to be the foundation of our hopes? And why should we draw from broken cisterns, when we have the God of all consolation to be the foundation of our joys.
3. Live by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. We cannot with any confidence wait upon God, but in and through a Mediator, for it is by his Son that God speaks to us; and hears from us: all that passeth between a just God and poor sinners, must pass through the hands of that blessed days-man, who has laid his hand upon them both; every prayer passeth from us to God, and every mercy from God to us by that hand; it is in the face of the anointed, that God looks upon us; and in the face of Jesus Christ, that we behold the glory and grace of God shining; it is by Christ that we have access to God, and success with him in prayer, and therfore must make mention of his righteousness, even of his only; and in that habitual attendance we must be all the day giving upon God, we must have an habitual dependence on him, who always appears in the presence of God