Welcome to a year of reading Richard Sibbes together! The reading plan for the entire year can be accessed here. I encourage you to stick with us, allow yourself time to read, and soak in the riches of this gifted and prolific Puritan preacher. You will be edified and encouraged.
If you have trouble with how Sibbes used words, check out the Lexicons of Early Modern English for definitions from the period.
Summary/Engagement
“I have prayed and prayed to the Lord. Why has he not given me what I asked for? He said in the Bible to ask, and it will be given to me. I just don’t understand. It’s a good thing, why would he not answer? … Is he even really there?”
Ever had a conversation like that with someone? Ever been that someone? I know I have. Whether trials and hardships are what we are struggling with, or earnest desires for our good or the good of others, we take these petitions in hand before the Lord. If our understanding of prayer is to take Matthew 7:7-10 in isolation, then we will be perplexed why God does not answer and perhaps begin to doubt our salvation.
Thankfully God has not left us to puzzle about prayer but has spoken elsewhere in his word to give full light to the subject passage. The chief companion verse to Matthew 7:7 to help explain is James 4:3, “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.”
“Not everything we desire is rightly asked, some of which may cross his nature and will; some things also are ill for us, by general and special decree forbidden, as exemption from afflictions and sufferings with him. If God hear us not in this, Christ forfeits not his word, but we our prayers.”
So not only must we ask, but we must ask in keeping with the will of God. Do you know God’s will?
Application / Further Discussion
Prayer is indeed a knot to be unloosed, just as much 400 years ago as now. It is not an optional extra for the “super-christian” or really holy folks. Prayer is both a duty and a privilege that we enjoy.
“The duty of prayer is a common task, so that every Christian who would be in deed and not in name so called only, he must be a man of prayer.”
Prayer is the business of the redeemed. We who are bought with the blood of Christ approach the throne of grace with confidence, seeking help in our time of need. (Hebrews 4:16) We have been given the gift of communion with God through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. He died to secure our relationship with the Father. Would we now not talk to him as Father? Would we now not ask him for his care and gifts as child asks their father? And, like petulant children, would we now stomp off when we don’t get what we want and wrongly conclude that our Father does not love us?
God is under no obligation to answer any prayer contrary to his will. You and I do not know his will, fully and completely. We know in small part what he desires and has decreed from his word. However, our prayers don’t always reflect this. Like children we come asking for anything and everything as it strikes us. Our hearts may be burdened for a particular thing and we ask and ask, not knowing he will never give us as we have asked.
You might pray to win the lottery thinking that God gives good gifts to his children, and surely you’d spend it on the right things and give to missionaries, and clearly this would solve many problems. Yet God is not obligated to make you rich, and in fact knowing your heart better than you do it might be the worst thing in the world for you. Tim Keller said “God will only give you what you would have asked for if you knew everything he knows.”
We ask based on what we know, he gives based on what he knows. Those levels of knowledge are vastly different. Trust that God gives what is best for you and most glorifying to him,
Prayer is not the pull of the slot machine handle. It is not rubbing the genie’s lamp to receive three wishes. Prayer is communion with God. Constant, extensive, and humble communion. In prayer we do not conform God to our wishes, but over time we conform our wishes to God. It is another means of grace whereby God sanctifies us.
Now, don’t go over-thinking this and trying to “solve” prayer with a checklist. Approach God as a child, humbly asking for what you want in accordance with his will. Do not go asking for your sin to be accepted or flourished.
If you have a three year old asking you for a sharp knife, will you give it to them and tell them to run along? No. The knife is not inherently bad, but it is bad for the three year old. Some things are not bad, but they are bad for us at the time. Persevere in prayer. Seek God’s glory and will. The aim of prayer is not for you to get what you want, but for you to understand and conform to what God wants.
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Last week, we read The Rich Pearl.
Next week, we read A Glimpse of Glory.
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