“Our prayers & God’s mercy are like two buckets in a well. One ascends, and one descends. Our prayers ascend to God in heaven, and his mercies and blessings descend to us”
Ezekiel Hopkins , Works III. 582 – 585
Always Praying
The Scriptures teach us to pray without ceasing. This implies that we should always be praying. To pray without ceasing does not mean that I am kneeling all the time & praying. Rather it means that I have, first of all, set aside time to pray regularly (as Daniel did). It means to pray with emotion & readiness. I must labor & persevere. Nobody said that praying is easy. It is not. It requires diligence & a commitment to do it. To pray without ceasing means that I take every opportunity that is presented to me throughout the day to offer up to God thanksgiving. I can do this if I meditate on God & on His Word. To pray without ceasing means that I must keep & guard my heart so that I can pray, so that I am ready to pray.
Ezekiel Hopkins (1633 – 1689) says, that in order to seek God’s face before the throne of grace, we must do 2 things.
1. Do not be too much involved in the business and pleasures of this life because the affections of the world will stifle and extinguish our ardor for communion with God.
2. I n order to maintain a praying frame of mind we must be careful not to fall into the committing of any known or presumptuous sin. The guilt of sin will deaden the conscience and kill prayer.
So we must learn to pray like this. It requires effort, but the Lord will bless the efforts of a willing heart.
Reason to be Thankful
God alone is the author of all good that comes to us, or is done by us, at any time.
Christ is Everything to Us
Unless we understand what this really means – we will languish in doubt. When Scripture makes statements of fact concerning our Union with our Lord Jesus – we are called upon to believe it & then live in the light of it.
You can sense this in this Puritan prayer:
“You have taught me that Christ has all fullness and so all plenitude of the Spirit, that all fullness I lack in myself is in him, for his people, not for himself alone, he having perfect knowledge, grace, righteousness, to make me see, to make me righteous, to give me fullness; that it is my duty, out of a sense of my emptiness, to go to Christ, possess, enjoy his fullness as mine, as if I had it in myself, because it is for me in him; that when I do this I am full of the Spirit, as a fish that has got from the shore to the sea, and has all fullness of waters to move in, for when faith fills me, then I am full; that this is the way to be filled with the Spirit – first faith, then fullness, like Stephen – for this way makes me most empty and so most fit for the Spirit to fill.”
Sin’s Power
We are often carried into sin & overcome by it because we love it. But we also often continue in it because we are afraid of the consequences that might occur should we repent & give full disclosure. Sin is powerful. Watch & Pray!
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