prayer

You Have But to Ask and Have

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, prayer, promises 5 Comments

Give us this day our daily bread. – Matthew 6:11; Luke 11:3

In no condition are you so rich as not to need something from your God. It is not possible for you to say, “I have all things,” or, if you can, you have them only in Christ, and from Christ you must continue to seek them. As you are always in need, so beg always at mercy’s gate. Moreover, blessings are always waiting for you. Angels are ready with favors that you know not of, and you have but to ask and have. Oh, could you see what might be had for the asking you would not be so slack. The priceless benisons of heaven which lie on one side as yet, oh, did you but perceive that they are only waiting for you to pray, you would not hesitate a moment. The man who knows that his farming is profitable, and that his land brings forth abundantly, will be glad to sow a broader stretch of land another year; and he who knows that God answers prayer, and is ready still to answer it, will open his mouth yet wider that God may fill it.

Continue to pray, brethren, for even if you should not want prayer yourself there are others who do-there are the dying, the sick, the poor, the ignorant, the backsliding, the blaspheming, the heathen at home, and the heathen abroad. “Pray without ceasing,” for the enemy works incessantly, and as yet the kingdom has not come unto Zion. You shall never be able to say, “I left off praying, for I had nothing to pray for.” This side of heaven the objects for prayer are as multitudinous as the stars of the sky. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1039.cfm

Prayer is Worship

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, prayer, promises, The Father 10 Comments

Pray without ceasing. – 1 Thessalonians 5:17

Why should we obey this precept? Of course we should obey it because it is of divine authority; but, moreover, we should attend to it because the Lord always deserves to be worshipped. Prayer is a method of worship; continue, therefore, always to render to your Creator, your Preserver, your Redeemer, your Father, the homage of your prayers. With such a King let us not be slack in homage. Let us pay Him the revenue of praise continually. Evermore may we magnify and bless His name. His enemies curse Him; let us bless Him without ceasing. Moreover, brethren, the spirit of love within us surely prompts us to draw near to God without ceasing. Christ is our husband. Is the bride true to her marriage vows if she cares not for her beloved’s company? God is our Father. What sort of a child is that which does not desire to climb its father’s knee and receive a smile from its father’s face? If you and I can live day after day and week after week without anything like communion with God, how dwelleth the love of God in us? “Pray without ceasing,” because the Lord never ceases to love you, never ceases to bless you, and never ceases to regard you as His child.

“Pray without ceasing,” for you want a blessing on all the work you are doing. Is it common work? “Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.” Is it business? It is vain to rise up early and sit up late, and eat the bread of carefulness, for without God you cannot prosper. You are taught to say, “Give us this day our daily bread,”-an inspired prayer for secular things. Oh, consecrate your seculars by prayer. And, if you are engaged in God’s service, what work is there in which you can hope for success without His blessing? Pray, therefore, as long as you work. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1039.cfm

We Need Waking Up

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, prayer, promises, Sovereignty of God 8 Comments

And when He returned, He found them asleep again, for their eyes were heavy; and they did not know what to answer Him. – Mark 14:40

Beloved brother, say unto thy soul, thus-“here have I come to the throne of grace to worship God and seek His blessing, and I am not going away till I have done this; I will not rise from my knees, because I have spent my customary minutes, but here will I pray till I find the blessing.” Satan will often leave off tempting when he finds you thus resolute in prayer. Brethren, we need waking up. Routine grows upon us. We get into the mill-horse way-round, and round, and round the mill. From this may God save us. It is deadly. A man may pray twenty years with regularity, as far as the time goes, and the form goes, and never have prayed a single grain of prayer in the whole period. One real groan fetched from the heart is worth a million litanies, one living breath from a gracious soul is worth ten thousand collects. May we be kept awake by God’s grace, praying without ceasing.

We must take care, dear brethren, if we would perform this duty, that we fight against anything like despair of being heard. If we have not been heard after six times we must, as Elijah, go again seven times; if our Peter is in prison, and the church has prayed God to liberate him, and he still is in fetters bound in the inner prison, let us pray on, for one of these days Peter will knock at the gate. Be importunate, heaven’s gate does not open to every runaway knock. Knock, and knock, and knock again; and add to thy knocking and to thy asking seeking, and be not satisfied till thou gettest a real answer. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1039.cfm

 

Prayer is a Joy

Sherry Character of Jesus, Christian Life, prayer, promises, The Holy Spirit 6 Comments

…For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us… – Romans 8:26

I believe that no man loves prayer until the Holy Spirit has taught him the sweetness and value of it. If you have ever prayed without ceasing you will pray without ceasing. The men who do not love to pray must be strangers to its secret joy. When prayer is a mechanical act, and there is no soul in it, it is a slavery and a weariness; but when it is really living prayer, and when the man prays because he is a Christian and cannot help praying, when he prays along the street, prays in his business, prays in the house, prays in the field, when his whole soul is full of prayer, then he cannot have too much of it. He will not be backward in prayer who meets Jesus in it, but he who knows not the Well-beloved will count it a drudgery.

Let us avoid, above all things, lethargy and indifference in prayer. Oh, it is a dreadful thing that ever we should insult the Majesty of heaven by words from which our heart has gone. I must, my spirit, I must school thee to this, that thou must have communion with God, and if in thy prayer thou dost not talk with God, thou shalt keep on praying till thou dost. Come not away from the mercy-seat till thou hast prayed. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1039.cfm

Praying is a Saving of Time

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, prayer, promises, Sovereignty of God 2 Comments

But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. – Matthew 6:33

You remember Luther’s remark, “I have so much to do to-day that I shall never get through it with less than three hours’ prayer.” He had not been accustomed to take so much time for prayer on ordinary days, but since that was a busy day, he must needs have more communion with his God. But, perhaps, our occupations begin early, and we therefore say, “How can I get alone with God in prayer?” It is said of Sir Henry Havelock that every morning when the march began at six, he always rose at four, that he might not miss his time for the reading of the Scripture and communion with his God. If we have no time we must make time, for if God has given us time for secondary duties, He must have given us time for primary ones, and to draw near to Him is a primary duty, and we must let nothing set it on one side. There is no real need to sacrifice any duty, we have time enough for all if we are not idle; and, indeed, the one will help the other instead of clashing with it. When Edward Payson was a student at College, he found he had so much to do to attend his classes and prepare for examinations, that he could not spend as much time as be should in private prayer; but, at last, waking up to the feeling that he was going back in divine things through his habits, he took due time for devotion and he asserts in his diary that he did more in his studies in a single week after he had spent time with God in prayer, than he had accomplished in twelve months before. God can multiply our ability to make use of time. If we give the Lord His due, we shall have enough for all necessary purposes. In this matter seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Your other engagements will run smoothly if you do not forget your engagement with God.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1039.cfm

Loving is Praying

Sherry Attributes of God, Christian Life, prayer, Sovereignty of God 4 Comments

Pray without ceasing. – 1 Thessalonians 5:17

If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, and one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit? – James 2:15-16

Let all your actions be consistent with your prayers, and be in fact a continuation of your prayers. We must pursue our prayers, but do it in another manner. Take an instance. This morning I prayed to God to arouse His people to prayerfulness; very well; as I came to this house my soul continued to ejaculate, “O Lord, awaken Thy children to prayerfulness.”:..Is not my sermon the continuation of my prayer, for I am desiring and aiming at the same thing? Is it not a continuing to pray when we use the best means towards the obtaining of that which we pray for? Do you not see my point? He who prays for his fellow creatures, and then seeks their good, is praying still.

“He prayeth best that loveth best
Both man, and bird, and beast.”

Loving is praying. If I seek in prayer the good of my fellow creature, and then go and try to promote it, I am practically praying for his good in my actions. If I seek, as I should do, God’s glory above everything, then if all my actions are meant to tend to God’s glory, I am continuing to pray, though I may not be praying with my thoughts or with my lips. Oh, that our whole life might be a prayer. It can be. There can be a praying without ceasing before the Lord, though there be many pausings in what the most of men would call prayer. Pray then without ceasing, my brother. Let thy whole life be praying. If thou changest the method, yet change not the pursuit; but continue still to worship, still to adore. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1039.cfm

 

Our Hearts in Prayer

Sherry Christian Life, prayer, The Holy Spirit Leave a comment

Pray without ceasing. – 1 Thessalonians 5:17

While your hands are busy with the world, let your hearts still talk with God; not in twenty sentences at a time, for such an interval might be inconsistent with your calling, but in broken sentences and interjections. It is always wrong to present one duty to God stained with the blood of another, and that we should do if we spoiled study or labor by running away to pray at all hours; but we may, without this, let short sentences go up to heaven, ay, and we may shoot upwards cries, and single words, such as an “Ah,” an “Oh,” an “O that;” or, without words we may pray in the upward glancing of the eye or the sigh of the heart. He who prays without ceasing uses many little darts and hand-grenades of godly desire, which he casts forth at every available interval. Sometimes he will blow the furnace of his desires to a great heat in regular prayer, and as a consequence at other times, the sparks will continue to rise up to heaven in the form of brief words, and looks, and desires.

We must be always in the spirit of prayer. Our heart, renewed by the Holy Ghost, must be like the magnetized needle, which always has an inclination towards the pole. It does not always point to that pole, you can turn it aside if you will; in an iron ship it exhibits serious deflections, under all circumstances it is not exactly true; but if you put your finger to that needle and force it round to the east, you have only to take away the pressure, and immediately it returns to its beloved pole again. So let your heart be magnetized with prayer, so that if the finger of duty turns it away from the immediate act of prayer, there may still be the longing desire for prayer in your soul, and the moment you can do so, your heart reverts to its beloved work. As perfume lies in flowers even when they do not shed their fragrance upon the gale, so let prayer lie in your hearts. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1039.cfm