Part 3
We must not conclude by and by that it is a token of displeasure, and say with Job, "Why do you contend with me?" Job 10.2; but we should acknowledge the sovereignty of divine wisdom and love in things which seem contrary to us in our petitions for temporal mercies; and submit to the
1 Indigence: A state of extreme poverty or destitution. 2 Studying: thinking intently and at length, as for spiritual purposes.
counsel of Elihu (Job 33.13),1 since God gives no account of any of his matters. Nor can we find out the unsearchable methods of his holy ways to any satisfaction.
There are other cases and scruples2 that might be addressed; such as prescribed forms of prayer in secret prayer, to which I need say little, since those who are truly converted, Gal. 4.6; they have the promise of the Spirit of God to assist and enable men.
Those that have the fountain do not need to drink from another man's bucket, nor use stilts and crutches that have spiritual strength; nor are words and phrases the nerves of prayer – faith and holy groans are. Rom. 8.26. Zech. 12.10. Acts 9.11. Yet, for some help to young beginners, it is of use to observe the style of the spirit, as well as the heavenly matter of several prayers in the Holy Scriptures.
Nor do I need to press frequency to a holy heart that has fallen in love with spiritual communion, for he delights to be with God continually; the thoughts of God are so precious to him that his soul is sick from affection, and it prays to be stayed with more of "the flagons," and comforted with "the apples" in even greater abundance. Cant. 2.5. To some, but I fear very few, it may be necessary to say how far it may be expedient to withdraw from prayer for the needs of their frail body in this vale of tears. It may be said to them, that the Lord is very pitying and gracious toward our frailties; he would rather have mercy than sacrifice in some cases. Though I doubt these phoenixes,3 which are very rare, are in danger of expiring in prayer, as martyrs of holy love, as Gerson expresses it.
Having now finished the foregoing queries with what brevity I could, I should address short, sudden, occasional prayers, commonly called ejaculations; but indeed that requires a set discourse. Yet because of a promise recited earlier, I shall give a few hints, and then conclude with some application.
1 Job 33:12-14 "Look, in this you are not righteous. I will answer you, For God is greater than man. 13 Why do you contend with Him? For He does not give an accounting of any of His words. 14 For God may speak in one way, or in another, yet man does not perceive it."
2 Scruple: An ethical or moral principle that governs or inhibits action. 3 Phoenix – A bird in Egyptian mythology that lived in the desert for 500 years and then consumed itself by fire, later to rise from its ashes, renewed.
EJACULATORY PRAYER.
Ejaculatory Prayer is a sudden, short breathing of the soul toward heaven upon an instant and surprising emergency. In holy persons it is quick and lively, rising from a vehement ardor of spirit, swifter than the flight of eagles, and it keeps pace with a flash of lightning. It flies upon the wings of a holy thought into the third heavens in the twinkling of an eye, and it fetches auxiliary forces in time of need.
There are many precedents recorded in the sacred page on great and notable occasions, with unusual success. When good magistrates are busy in the work of reformation, let them imitate Nehemiah when redressing the profaning of the Sabbath: "Remember me, O my God, concerning this thing." Neh. 13.14, 22. When captains and generals go to war, observe Israel's appeal to God rather than acclamations to men:
"The Lord your God be with you, as he was with Moses." Josh. 1.17. In times of battle, or in pursuit of the enemy, valiant Joshua darts up such a prayer as this: "O that the Lord would lengthen this triumphant day," Josh. 10.12; and the Lord heard his voice. The tribes beyond Jordan in a battle with the Hagarites: 1Chr. 5.10, 20. When Jehoshaphat was in a sore strait, 2Chr. 18.31. Samson, ready to perish at Lehi with thirst, and when blind and exposed to contempt in the temple of Dagon, Judges 15.18; 16.28. Elisha at Dothan surrounded by a Syrian host, prayed, "Lord, open this young man's eyes." 2 Kings 6.17. David nearly being stoned at Ziklag, 1Sam. 30.6, and when flying from Absalom in the ascent of Mount Olivet. 2Sam. 15.31. In the midst of lawful and laborious callings, Boaz said to the reapers, "The Lord be with you." Ruth 2.4. It sanctifies the plough, as Jerome said of the fields of Bethlehem: "The tillers of the fields and the dressers of the vineyards sang David's psalms." It keeps the shop, and it inclines the hearts of customers; it bars the doors; it quenches fires; it blesses your children within you; it preserves your going out and coming in.
Jacob found it to rest upon, as his children went on a journey to Egypt. Gen. 43.14. It closes the eye with sweet sleep, Psalm 3.5, gives songs in the night, and wakens the soul in the arms of mercy. Job 35.10. Psalm 139.18. It sits at the helm when the storm rises at sea; it gives strength to anchors in roads, and prosperous gales to the venturous merchant. Psalm 107.28. Jonah 1.6. When Nehemiah presents the cup to his prince in the palace at dinner, he also presents a Michtam, a golden prayer to the King of Heaven. Neh. 2.4. At the reading of the law, Josiah was heard in secret cries to Heaven. 2Chr. 34.27. At a holy conference on a journey, the disciples prayed, "Lord, increase our faith." Luke 17.5. Jacob, on his dying pillow, predicting future events to his children, falls into a holy rapture: "I have waited for your salvation, O Lord." Gen. 49.18. At his sacred death in martyrdom, Zechariah cries out, "the Lord look upon it and require it." 2Chr. 2.4. And Stephen under a shower of stones melts into prayer for the stony hearts that flung them. "Lord, do not lay this sin to their charge." Acts7.60.
And our blessed Saviour in his greatest agonies, makes a tender-hearted prayer: "Father, forgive them," etc. Luke 23.34. And lastly, in the distresses of others, Eli puts up a sudden prayer for Hannah: "The God of Israel grant your petition." 1Sam. 1.17.
In these and many similar cases, the Holy Word supplies us with patterns for ejaculation in all extremities, which I cannot now digest and improve. Only in a few words, let us take a view of the usefulness of such a sudden flight of the soul to heaven.
1. It helps us to a speedy preparation for all our duties; with such an ejaculation let us lift up our hands to God in the heavens. Lam. 3.41.
2. It is a guard against secret sins in their first rising, and in the first assaults of temptation.
3. It does not allow divine mercies to slip by unobserved in a wakeful Christian, and it proves a fruitful mother of gratitude and praise.
4. It sanctifies all our worldly employments; it fastens the stakes in the hedge of divine protection; and it turns everything to a blessing. 1Tim. 4.4-5.
5. It is a saint's buckler1 against sudden accidents, a present antidote against frights and evil tidings. It is good at all occasions, and it consecrates to us not only our meals, but every gasp of air, etc.
6. It is a sweet companion that the severest enemies cannot abridge.2 They may cut off our outward ordinances and even our closet duties; they may pluck out the little nail in the holy place. Ezra 9.8.3 But no labyrinth, no prison, not the worst of company can hinder this; in the very face of adversaries we may lift our souls to God.
Let us conclude with some uses:
Use 1. To convince others of their dangerous state if they neglect their secret duties, or have no heart for communion, and who draw no water out of the sealed fountain. But everything they do is only in public. This is a suspicious token of hypocrisy, since the kernel and soul of religion lies so much in the heart and in the closet. Mark the phrase in the text. God's eye is open upon you in the closet, and if your eye is open upon his eye, you may see a glorious beauty. The excellence of grace lies in making us conscious of secret sins and secret duties.
Use 2. To examine those who perform their secret duty, but not from a sincere principle, like Amaziah. He prays, but not with a perfect heart. 2Chr. 25.2. Like Ahab, they mourn only with crocodile tears; those who do it only because they find a precept or an example for it, and therefore to quiet their conscience, they converse only in the shell and trunk of a duty; they rest in the naked performance. But it does not matter whether they taste of the sweet streams that flow in from heaven in the golden pipe of an ordinance. What account can they render when they go into their closet, but like Domitian, it is only to catch flies – and when the doors are shut to the world, their hearts are shut to heaven and to communion with God? He that sees in secret beholds the evil frame of such a heart; and one day he will openly punish it.
1 Buckler: armor carried on the arm to intercept blows; a shield. 2 Abridge: to lessen, diminish, or curtail. 3 Ezr 9.8 And now for a little while grace has been shown from the LORD our God, to leave us a remnant to escape, and to give us a peg in His holy place, that our God may enlighten our eyes and give us a measure of revival in our bondage.
Use 3. To excite and awaken everyone to this excellent duty, and to manage it in an excellent manner. Would you live delightfully? Would you translate heaven to earth? Then keep up communion in secret prayer, to know God, to discern his face, to behold the lustre of his eye that shines in secret. Remember the glorious person that meets in your closet. All the world yields no such glittering beauty
as a gracious person sees when he is in a happy frame at secret prayer. Shut your eyes when you come out, for all other objects are but vile and sordid, and not worth the glances of a noble soul. O the sweetness of the hidden manna that the soul tastes when in lively communion with God! It is a part of what is laid up for the saints in glory; let us relish our souls with it a little.
1. Consider what affectionate agonies the soul delights to conflict with in secret; fears that raise confidence, humility that exalts, tremblings that embolden, bright clouds that shine upon the Israelites in the night, and darkness that enlightens, solitudes full of heavenly company, and tears brimful of joy, and holy sighs, like a cooling wind in harvest, sick fits that are symptoms of health, and holy faintings that are the soul's cordials, a weariness to the flesh that is the healthful exercise of it, and vigor to the spirit, and a continual motion that never tires. As Austin said of divine love: "It is the weight of my soul, it carries me up and down in all that I speak and act."
2. Consider its ecstacies and heavenly raptures, which allure and draw the heart from earthly vanities. The soul shuts its eyes to worldly delights, and with Solomon it says of laughter, It is mad, and of mirth, what are you doing? The soul can't warm its thoughts at the crackling of thorns under a pot, or be joyful in the house of a fool. Ecc. 2.2; 7.64. It is the soul's pleasure to loath pleasure itself; there is none so beautiful to him as Christ, the chiefest of ten thousand;Sol 5.10 there is no sweetness like that of the tree in the midst of the wood, the tree of life in the midst of the paradise of God. He sits under it with great delight, while it drips sweeter than honey into his closet. Rev. 2.7. 1Sam. 14.26.
3. Consider its admirable prophecies: prayer stands upon Mount Zion with a divining, presaging1 spirit. It foretells great things to the church's joy, and to its enemies' terror. Elijah at prayer in Horeb receives an answer of the ruin of the house of Ahab, and he is bid to go and anoint Jehu the son of Nimshi king over Israel. 2 Kings 9.2-3. The two witnesses under the Roman defection have the power to strike the earth with plagues as often as they will, Rev. 11, consonant2 with what Tertullian said of old, "The prayers of Christians confounded the nations," and so it will shortly prove;
the doom of Babylon comes out of the temple. When the sanctuary is full of the smoke of the incense of prayer, the seven angels come out with the seven last vials full of the wrath of God to pour them out upon the anti-Christian world. Rev. 15.7-8; 16.1. Prayer calculates and hastens the ruin of Rome. Once the spirit of prayer is poured out, it brings deliverance to Mount Zion, and gathers the nations into the valley of Jehoshaphat for judgment. Joel 2.23,
1 Presaging: seeing signs of something to come, esp. something important, whether good or bad. 2 Consonant: in keeping with, or in agreement with.
32, and 3.1-2. Let us never be discouraged; if prayer falls to work and awakens Christ in the ship of the church, then her storms will cease in a halcyon1 calm. Luke 8.24.2
4. Consider its comforting evidences: secret prayer which is duly managed is a notable evidence of our adoption. Pray to your Father who is in secret, and sees in secret, and knows the secrets of your heart. Your groanings are not hidden from him; none but a child of promise has this sweet freedom with God as a Father.
5. Consider its rewards and reverences: nothing revives and cheers the spirit so much as answers of love and mercy from heaven. As it feasts the conscience with the royal delicacies
of sincerity, so it sets a lustre upon every mercy, such as being the child of prayer; our closets exert an influence upon our shops, our ships, our fields, and all that we enjoy, so that they smell of the divine blessing. As David said of the precepts, the soul may say, "This I have because I urged the promises." Psalm 119.56.
Use 4. To pity the miserable blind world that does not know where true comfort, joy and strength are to be found, that sees no beauty in the ways of God, and feels no sweetness in communion with him, that finds no pleasure in closets but in play-houses (which Tertullian called the devil's churches), that cry out with Esau that they have enough. Gen. 33.9. Alas! What can be enough in the creature unless it is enough of noise, rattle, and vanity! O how ignorant they are of heavenly treasures, of that fountain of mercies from which prayer drinks and refreshes the spirit of a saint; who do not know that blessed "enough" of which Jacob speaks, that ocean of all those things that are to be found in God! Gen. 33.11. Now let Europe be in flames, and the very ark be in danger, a prayerless man does not care, though the one is burnt and the other is in ashes, so long as
he is safe. And if his concerns catch fire, then he can only repair to Endor or Ekron. 1Sam. 28.7;3 2Kings 1.2.4 They have no acquaintance with God, no hope from God, no interest in the keeper of their souls. The world is a deplorable hospital, the great Lazar house5 of sick, lame and impotent persons, as Gerson terms it. They have no face or heart to go to the physician of souls.
But ah! most lamentable is the state of some profligate wretches of our age that are, I fear, almost incurably gone with spiritual ulcers in their lungs, and putrid cancers on their tongues, that breathe nothing but venom, and openly spit out their rotten atheistic jeers against the spirit of prayer, and mock at communion with God. They scoff at what God has promised as one of the choicest tokens of his love for the church, and at the symptoms of the glory of the latter times, Zech. 12.10. Joel 2.23, 32. Rom. 10.13. This is when God will turn such Ishmaels into the desert, and their drunken songs shall expire in dreadful howlings. They are more profane than many
1 Idyllically calm and peaceful. 2 Luke 8:24 And they came to Him and awoke Him, saying, "Master, Master, we are perishing!" Then He arose and rebuked the wind and the raging of the water. And they ceased, and there was a calm.
3 1Sam 28:7 Then Saul said to his servants, "Find me a woman who is a medium, that I may go to her and inquire of her." And his servants said to him, "In fact, there is a woman who is a medium at En Dor."
4 2Kings 1:2 Now Ahaziah fell through the lattice of his upper room in Samaria, and was injured; so he sent messengers and said to them, Go, inquire of Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron, whether I shall recover from this injury.
5 A leper colony, leprosarium, or lazar house is a place to quarantine leprous people.
heathen in primitive times who had some reverence for Christian worship, though they persecuted [the church]. Amos 8.10; Job 30.31.
But those of this adulterous Roman age, like brute beasts, speak evil of what they are ignorant, and are in danger of perishing in their corruption. 2Peter 2.12. Pity such persons if there is yet hope, and commend their condition to God's mercy, and to penitent sorrow, that they may weep here where tears smart, not in hell where they scald and burn and swell that river of brimstone.
In the meantime, O you that fear the Lord, be diligent to observe and interpret messages after secret prayer, for the life and joy of a Christian is improved by it. God has declared that he is graciously pleased with secret prayer, so as to send an angel, that glorious creature, to fly into Daniel's chamber, and being weary with flying, he moved so swiftly, as the original text expresses it. Dan. 9.21. What a high expression this is, that even angels are represented as weary with hasty flights to bring saints their answers! And of what great account does the Lord esteem his praying people, that angels are said to be tired in bringing tidings of mercy!
6. Meditate on the glory of heaven, where all our prayers shall be turned into praises, when every sigh below shall be an accent to the heavenly music above, and the tears of the valley shall be turned into orient gems in the diadem of glory. Here we live in wants and desires, but there shall be palms in the hand; white robes and everlasting joy are upon the heads and hearts of the saints.