Motive 5.
Consider, all you that go about without prayer, how soon you may no longer have the capacity to pray. Now you do not wish the opportunity to pray, and shortly you may never have one more such opportunity; now unbelief shuts your mouths, and shortly death may do it. How soon you may be past your prayers, both your own and others’, and be fixed by death in an unalterable condition? Seek the Lord therefore while He may be found; call upon Him while He is yet near.
Now is your praying season; hereafter there will be no use of prayer. The Psalmist says, “For this shall every one that is godly pray unto Thee, in a time when thou mayest be found: surely in the floods of great waters, they shall not come nigh unto him” (Ps 32:6) – that is, says Diodati2 on the place, in the time of the general destruction of sinners, as it was in the deluge, there is no coming nigh to God by prayer, and you cannot come nigh to Him in the day of your particular destruction, by the flood of great waters. Therefore do not live a day longer in the profane and sinful neglect of this great duty of prayer!
Objection.
But I observe those that do not pray generally escape as well as they that do.
Answer.
This objection was once made by a soldier in the time of fight, when he was pressed by his companion to pray; and God quickly stopped his blasphemous mouth with a mortal bullet. Have a care of such bold atheistical pleas; they greatly provoke the Lord against you. I had rather die praying, than live prayerless.
Objection.
But to what purpose is it for me to pray, if I am unregenerate? God does not hear such prayers if I make them. Besides, the prayers of the wicked are an abomination to the Lord.
Answer.
Labour therefore to get into a regenerate state, and be not persuaded to rest a day longer in so sad a condition. However in the mean time you must know that prayer, being a part of natural worship, all men, even the unregenerate, are obliged to engage in it by the light and law of nature; otherwise the neglect of it could not be their sin.
Objection.
But many pray, and receive not. I myself have often done so.
Answer.
“Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss” (Jas 4:3). If we were as disposed to receive as God is to give, we should not be long without the answer to our prayers.
(1.) If your persons were accepted through Christ, your prayers would be accepted too (Gen 4:4). But you are in a state of nature, destitute of the Spirit. And so your voice is, to God, the voice of a stranger, not of a child.
(2.) If your prayers were regulated by the will of God, they could not miss the desired success. “If we ask any thing according to His will, He heareth us” (1 Jn 5:14).
(3.) If your prayers had more faith and fervency, they would not return empty (see Jas 1:6, 5:16). Well then, object no more against your duty, but apply yourselves to it in the fear of God, and do not dare go forth for any reason, until you have by prayer recommended yourself and your affairs to God. Go alone, my friends, go aside from the world; and do not say you cannot spare time for prayer; better anything else were neglected than this. Tell the Lord you are now launching forth into the ocean, and do not know what this voyage may bring forth. Possibly thou may never return to the land of your birth any more; but however it shall please Him to dispose the event, beseech Him with all earnestness that you may have the pardon of sin sealed to you before thou go. O beg Him to separate guilt from your person before you are separated from your habitation and relations, lest the stroke that shall separate your soul from your body should eternally separate both soul and body from God.
Desire of the Lord that His presence may go with you wherever you shall go. Tell Him it is the fountain both of your safety and comfort. Desire Him not to carry you hence if His presence may not go with you. All the relief you had against trouble is wrapped up in that promise of His: I will be with him in trouble. Tell Him those will be tasteless comforts and succourless troubles in which He is not.
Entreat the Lord with all importunity to keep you, by His fear, from the sins and temptations that are in the world. Tell Him you are affected by the danger which your own corrupt heart will everywhere expose you to: sins in buying and selling, into which you may easily be drawn by an earthly covetous heart; sins in drinking, wherein you may be entangled by evil company and an irregular appetite (unless He keeps you); sins of uncleanness, by which you may be overcome, in the absence of lawful remedies and the presence of alluring objects, unless His fear quenches the temptation and breaks the snare.
Be earnest also with the Lord to protect you graciously in all dangers. Tell Him you cannot be in safety anywhere but under the shadow of His wings. Tell Him you will trust in Him, whatever time you are afraid, and beseech Him that, when your heart shall be overwhelmed with fears and troubles, He will lead you to the rock that is higher than you. Beseech Him also to give you counsel in all your difficulties, so that you may not lean on your own understanding, but that He will make your way plain before you.
And if it will be His good pleasure, that He would bless your just and honest enterprises with success and prosperity. If He shall do so, tell Him it is your desire – and beg the assistance of His grace – that you may use all your mercies to His praise. If you thus set forth in the fear of God, you may expect sweet success and a happy outcome.
1The last part of a sermon entitled “The Seaman’s Farewell”, taken with editing from The Seaman’s Companion, published in Flavel’s Works, vol 5. This is one of a series of motives Flavel uses to persuade his hearers not to neglect such an excellent duty as prayer.
2Giovanni Diodati (1576-1649) was a Reformed theologian who translated the Bible into Italian.