Reflecting on God's Faithfulness Through Prayer

I love the Lord because he have heard my voice and my supplication Psalm 116 verse 1 prayer answered love nourished a sermon delivered Sabbath morning February the 27th 1859 by CH Spurgeon in the Christian pilgrimage it is well for the most part to be looking forward whether it be for hope for joy for consolation or for the inspiring of our love the future after all must be the grand object of the eye of faith looking into the future we see sin cast out the body of sin and death destroyed the soul made perfect and fit to be a partaker of the inheritance of the Saints in light and looking further yet the believers soul can see deaths River past the gloomy stream for did he can behold the hills of light on which standeth the celestial city he seeth himself enter within the pearly gates hailed is more than a conqueror crowned by the hand of Christ embraced in the arms of Jesus glorified with him made to sit together with him on his throne even as he is overcome and is sat down with the father upon his throne the site of the future may well relieve the darkness of the past the hopes of the world to come may banish all the doubting zuv the present hush my fears this world is but a narrow span and thou shalt soon have passed it hush hush my doubts death is but a narrow stream and thou shall soon have forded it time how short eternity how long death how brief immortality how endless oh the transporting rapturous scene that rises to my sight sweet fields arrayed in living Green and rivers of delight filled with delight my raptured soul would hear no longest day though Jordans waves around me roll fearless I'd launch away yet nevertheless the Christian may do well sometimes to look backward he may look back to the whole of the pit and the miry clay whence he was digged the retrospect will help him to be humble it will urge him to be faithful he may look back with satisfaction to the glorious hour when first he saw the Lord when spiritual life for the first time quickened his dead soul then he may look back through all the changes of his life to his troubles and his joys to his peace gars and to his Eng Gettys to the land of the Hermon Heights and the hill Mizar he must not keep his I always backward for the fairest scene lies beyond it will not benefit to him to be always considering the past for the future is more glorious far but nevertheless at times a retrospect may be as useful as a prospect and memory may be as good a teacher as even faith itself this morning I bid you stand upon the hilltop of your present experience and look back upon the past and find therein motives for love to God and may the Holy Spirit so help me in preaching and you in hearing that your love may be inflamed and that you may retire from this Hall declaring in the language of the psalmist I love the Lord because he hath heard my voice and my supplication the particular objects which you are now to look back upon are the manifold and manifest answers to prayer which God has given you I want you now to take up a book which you ought often to read the book of remembrance which God has written in your heart of his great goodness and continued mercies and I want you to turn to that golden page where in our recorded the instances of God's grace in having listened to your voice and having answered your supplications I shall give you seven reflections each of which shall stir up your hearts to love our God whose memorial is that he hears and answers prayers and the first thing I would have you recollect is your own prayers if you look at them with an honest eye you'll be struck with wonder that ever God should have heard them there may be some men who think their prayers worthy of acceptance I dare say the Pharisee did but all such men shall find that however worthy they may esteem their prayers God will not answer them at all the true Christian in looking back weeps over his prayers and if he could retrace his steps he would desire to pray better for he sees that all his attempts at prayer in the past have been rather blundering attempts than actual successes look back now Christian upon thy prayers and remember what cold things they have been thou has been on there thy knees in thy closet and there thou oughtest who have wrestled as Jacob did but instead of that thy hands have fallen down and thou has forgotten to strive with God the desires have been but faint and they have been expressed in such sorry language that the desire itself seemed to freeze upon the lips that uttered it and yet strange to say God has heard those cold prayers and has answered them too though they have been such that we have been broken because we felt as if we could not feel and our only prayer was God forgive us that we cannot pray yet notwithstanding God has heard this inward groaning of spirit the feeble prayer which we ourselves despised and which we thought would have died at the gate of Mercy has been nurse and nurtured and fostered and accepted and it has come back to us a full grown blessing bearing mercy in both its hands then again believer how unfrequent and fewer your prayers and yet how numerous and how great of God's blessings been you have prayed in times of difficulty very earnestly but when God is delivered you where was your former fervency in the day of trouble you besieged his throne with all your might and in the hour of your prosperity you could not wholly cease from supplication but oh how faint was the prayer compared with that which was wrung out of your soul by the rough hand of your agony yet we're not withstanding that though you have ceased to pray as he once did God has not ceased to bless when you have forgotten your closet he has not forgotten your house nor your heart when you have neglected the mercy seat God has not left it empty but the bright light of the Shekinah has always been visible between the wings of the cherubim oh i'm marvel that the lord should regard those intermittent spasms of opportunity which come and go with our necessities oh what a god is he that he should hear the prayers of men who come to him when they have once but who neglect him when they have received a mercy who approach him when they are forced to come but who almost forget to go to him when mercies are plentiful and sorrows a few look at your prayers again in another aspect how unbelieving if they often been you and I have gone to the mercy seat and we have asked God to bless us but we have not believed that he would do so he has said whatsoever you ask in prayer believe that ye shall have it and you shall have it oh how could i smite myself this morning when I think how on my knees I have doubted my god what would you think of a man who came before you with a petition and said sir you have promised to give me such and such a thing if I asked for it I asked for it but I do not believe you will give it me you would say get you gone until you believe me better I'll give nothing to a man who doubts my word often might the Lord have spurned us from his mercy seat when we have come to him not believing the very promises which we were pretending to plead how small two is the faith of our most faithful prayers when we believe the most how little do we trust how full of doubting is our heart even when our faith has grown to its greatest extent what Christian is there here who is not ashamed of himself for having often doubted a God who never yet denied himself who was never once untrue nor once unfaithful to his word yet strange to tell God has heard our prayers though we believed not he abode faithful he has said poor heart thy weakness makes the doubt me but my love compels me to fulfill the promise even though thou doubt hist he has heard us in the day of our trouble he has brought a sweet deliverance even when we dishonoured him by trembling at his mercy seat I say again look back upon your prayers and wonder that God should ever have heard them often when we awake in the morning and find our house and family all secured and remember what a poor family prayer we uttered the night before we miss wonder the house was not burnt and all that is in it and you in the church after you have been to the prayer meeting and prayed there and God has actually listened to you and multiplied the church and bless the minister do you not say afterwards I wonder that he should have heard such poor prayers as those that were uttered at the prayer meeting I am sure beloved we shall find much reason to love God if we only think of those pitiful abortions of Prayer those unripe figs those stringless boughs those headless arrows which we call prayers and which he has born with in his long suffering the fact is that sincere prayer may often be very feeble to us but it is always acceptable to God it is like some of those one-pound notes which they use in Scotland dirty ragged bits of paper one would hardly look at them one seems always glad to get rid of them for something that looks a little more like money but still when they are taken to the bank they are always acknowledged and accepted as being genuine however rotten and old they may be so without prayers they are foul with unbelief decayed with imbecility and worm-eaten with wandering thoughts but nevertheless God accepts them at heavens own bank and gives us rich and ready blessings in return for our supplications again I hope we shall be led to love God for having heard our prayers if we consider the great variety of mercies which we have asked in prayer and the long list of answers which we have received now Christian again be thine own preacher it is impossible for me to depict Eiling experience as well as the alkanes read it thyself what multitudes of prayers have you and I put up from the first moment when we learnt to pray the first prayer was a prayer for ourselves we ask God that he would have mercy upon us and blot out our sin he heard that but when he had blotted out our sins like a cloud then we had more prayers for ourselves we had to pray for sanctifying grace for constraining and restraining grace we have been led to ask for a fresh assurance of faith for the comfortable application of the promise for deliverance in the hour of temptation for help in the time of duty and for succor in the day of trial we have been compelled to go to God for our souls as constant beggars asking for everything bear witness children of God you have never been able to get anything for your own Souls elsewhere all the bread your soul has eaten has come down from heaven and all the waterer of which in his drunk has come out of that living Rock Christ Jesus the Lord your soul has never grown rich in itself it has always been a pensioner upon the daily bounty of God and hence your prayers have had to ascend to heaven for a range of spiritual mercies all but infinite your wants were innumerable and therefore the supplies have been innumerable and your prayers have been as varied as the mercies have been countless but it is not for your soul alone that you have pleaded your body has had its cries you have been poor and you have asked for food and raiment how frequently have they been given to you not by miracles it is true the Ravens do not bring you bread and meat but bread and meat comes without the Ravens which is a greater miracle still it is true your raiment has waxed old and therefore you've not realized the miracle of the children of Israel in the wilderness whose clothes never grew old nevertheless you have had a greater miracle still for you have had new ones when you wanted them all your necessities have been provided for as they have arisen how often if these necessities come upon you so great have they been at times that you have said surely the Lord will forsake me and deliver me over I shall not have my bread given me nor shall my water be sure but here the to God has fed you you were not starved yet and by the grace of God you won't be you've been told many a time by unbelief that you would die in the workhouse but you were out of it even now though it seems as if a thousand miracles have been put together to keep you from it then again how often sickness is laid hold upon you and like Hezekiah you have turned yourself to the wall and cried Lord spare thy servant and let him not go down to the grave in the midst of his days and here you are the living the living to praise God recollect the fever and the cholera and all those other fierce diseases which have laid you low remember those prayers you uttered and those vows you made oh do not you love the Lord because he have heard your voice and your supplication how frequently - have you prayed for journeying mercies and he has protected you in the midst of accidents you've asked for blessings in your going out and your coming in blessings of the day and of the night and of the son and of the moon and all these have been vouchsafed to you your prayers were innumerable you asked for countless mercies and they have all been given only look at yourself oh not you adorned and bejeweled with mercies as thickly as the sky with stars think how you have prayed for your family when you first knew the Lord your husband feared him not but how you wrestled for your husband's soul and now the tear is in your eye while you see your husband sitting by your side in the house of God and recollected is not many months ago since he would have been in the tavern your children to have through your prayers been brought to God mothers you wrestled with God that your children might be God's children and you have lived to see them converted how great the mercy to see our offspring called in early youth all love the Lord because in this respect - he has heard your voice and your supplication how often have you presented before your God your business and he has helped you in that matter how frequently have you laid your household sorrows before him and he has delivered you in that case and some of us can sing of blessings given to us in the service of God in his church we have lived to see the empty sanctuary crowded to the full we have seen our largest attempts successful beyond our most sanguine hopes we have prayed for sinners and seen them saved we have asked for backsliders and have seen them restored we have cried for a Pentecost and we have had it and by God's grace we are crying for it again and we shall have it once more oh minister Deacon elder church member father mother man of business hast thou not indeed cause to say I love the Lord because he hath heard my voice and my supplications I'm afraid the very fact that God hears our prayers so constantly leads us to forget the greatness of his mercy let it not be so bless the Lord O my soul and forget not all his benefits let this today be brought to mind and let me raise a song to the God who hath heard the voice of my supplication let us note again the frequency of his answers to our frequent prayers if a beggar comes to your house when you give him arms you will be greatly annoyed if within a month he shall come again and if you then discover that he has made it a rule to wait upon you monthly for a contribution you will say to him I gave you something once but I did not mean to establish it as a rule suppose however that the beggar should be so impudent and impertinent that he should say but I intend sir to wait upon you every morning and every evening then you would say I intend to keep my gate locked then you shall not me and suppose he should then look you in the face and add still more so I intend waiting upon you every hour nor can I promise that I won't come to you sixty times in an hour but I just vow and declare that as often as I want anything so often will I come to you if I only have a wish I will come and tell it to you the least thing and the greatest thing shall drive me to you I will always be at the post of your door you would soon be tired of such importuning as they and wish the beggar anywhere rather than that he should come and tease you so yet recollect this is just what you have done to God and he has never complained of you for doing it but rather he has complained of you the other way he has said that was not called upon me o Jacob he is never murmured at the frequency of your prayers but as complained that you have not come to him enough every morning when you have risen your cries gone up to him again with the family you have cried to the God of Jacob and Eventide you have gathered together and have prayed to him and whenever you have a trial or a want or a doubt or a fear you have if you have done rightly sped away swiftly to his throne and told him all speak now Saint has he once said to you get you gone that weariest me has he ever said my near is heavy that it cannot hear my arm is shortened that it cannot save as he said away with thee I want not thus to be perpetually hearing thee what is thy heart grating voice that I should always give my mind and heart to it am I not harkening to the songs of angels to the shouts of cherubim away with thee tease me not at certain seasons thou mayst come on the Sabbath day there may spray but I want not to hear thee in the week No no he is sweetly embraced us every time he is always bowed to heaven and come down to listen to our feeble cries he has never denied a promise never broken his word even when we have pleaded a thousand times a day oh I will love the name of such a patient God as this who bears with my prayers though they be as a cloud of Hornets in the air go a little further and you will have another thought arising think of the greatness of the mercy for which you have often asked him we never know the greatness of our mercies till we get into trouble and want them I talked today of pardoned sin but I confess I do not feel its preciousness as I once I did there was a time when my sins lay heavy upon me conscience accused me and the law condemned me and I thought if God would but pardon me it would be the greatest thing he ever did the creating of a world seemed to me but little compared with the taking away of my desperately evil sins oh how I cried how I groaned before him and he has pardoned me and blessed be his name for it but I cannot estimate the value of his pardon today so well as I could when I was seeking it almost driven to despair I'll remember soul when thou didst ours for pardon that was - asking for that which world's could not buy that was - asking for that which could only be procured through the lifeblood of the son of God oh what a boon was that and yet he did not look thee in the face and say thou hast asked too much no but he gave it freely he upbraided not he blotted out all thy sins and wash thee at once in the river of the Savior's blood since that time what large things has thou asked there was in trouble once it seemed as if bankruptcy must overtake thee and thou didst cry to him if the world heard it it would have said what a fool art thou to ask this if I God he will never deliver thee unbelief like Rab Shakur wrote a blasphemous letter and thou didst lay it before the Lord but even when thou was dim prayer thy heart said the Lord will not deliver thee at this time the lion will surely devour thee the furnace will most certainly burn the up but you did put up a poor groaning prayer and you dared to ask great things namely that God would put his hand out of heaven and save you from the waters that the flood might not overflow you are you not surprised at this time that you dared to ask so much he would not dare to ask so largely of any of your friends you would not have gone to one and said I must have a thousand pounds by such and such a day will you lend it to me you knew you would not get it you asked it of your God it came and here you are the living to praise His name and if this were the right place you would stand up and testify that God did hear you that in the day of sorrow and tribulation he delivered you now do you not love him for giving you such great things as these God's mercies are so great that they cannot be magnified they're so numerous that they cannot be multiplied so precious that they cannot be overestimated I say look back today upon these great mercies with which the Lord is favoured thee in answer to thy great desires and will now not say I love the Lord because he has heard my voice of my supplications another aspect of this case perhaps will reach our hearts more closely still how trivial have been the things which we have often taken before God and yet how kindly as he condescended to hear our prayers it is a singular thing that our hearts are often more affected by little than by great things you may feed a child all the year round and never get its thanks but give it a sweet meat or orange and you may have its heart and its gratitude strange that the bounties of a whole year should seem to be lost while the gift of a moment is greatly prized a little thing I say may often touch the heart more than a great thing now how often have we've we have acted rightly taking little things before the Lord I believe it is the Christians privilege to take all his sorrows to his God be they little or be they great I've often prayed to God about a matter at which you would laugh if I should mention it in looking back I can only say it was a little thing but it seemed great at the time it was like a little thorn in the finger it caused much pain and might have brought forth at last a great wound I learned to lay my little troubles at the feet of Jesus why should we not and all our great ones little and is there after all much difference between great troubles and little ones in the sight of God the Queen will stand one hour listening to her ministers who talked with her about public business but does she seem less a queen when afterwards a little child runs to her as its mother because a gnat has stung it is there any great condescension in the matter she who was a right royal queen when she stood in the privy chamber is his right royal a queen and his well beloved a mother of the nation when she takes a little child upon her knee and gives it a maternal kiss her ministers must not present trifling petitions but her children may so the worldly may say this morning how absurd to think of taking little troubles to God I might be absurd to you but to God's children it is not though you were gods Prime Minister if you were not his child you would have no right to take your private troubles to him but God's meanest child has the privilege of casting his care upon his father and he may rest assured that his father's heart will not disdain to consider even his mean affairs now let me think of the innumerable little things God has done for me in looking back my unbelief compels me to wonder it myself that I should have prayed for such little things my gratitude compels me to say I love the Lord because he has heard these little prayers and answered my little supplications and made me blessed even in little things which after all make up the life of man once more let me remind you in the 6th place of the timely answers which God has given to your prayers and this should compel you to love him God's answers have never come too soon nor yet too late if the Lord has given you his blessing one day before it did come it might have been a curse and there have been times when if he had withheld it an hour longer it would have been quite useless because it would have come too late in the life of mr. Charles Wesley there occurs a memorable scene at devises when he went there to preach the curate of the parish assembled a great mob of people who were determined to throw him into the horse pond and if he would not promise that he would never come into the town again they would kill him he escaped into the house and hid himself upstairs they besieged the house for hours battering at the doors breaking every pane of glass in the windows and at last to his consternation they climbed the roof and began to throw the tiles down into the street so as to enter the house from above he had been in prayer to God to deliver him and he said I believe my God will deliver me but when he saw the heads of the people over the top of the room in which he was concealed and when they were just about to leap down he very nearly gave up all hope and he thought surely God will not deliver him when in rushed one of the leaders of the mob a gentleman of the town who did not wish to incur the guilt of murder and propose to him that he would get him away if he would only promise that he would never come back again no said he I will never promise that but said the man is it your intention that you will not return immediately well he said I do not say I shall come back just yet I do not see any use in it as you drive me away therefore I shall shake off the dust from my feet against you but I mean to come back again before I die well said the man that will do if you only promise you will not come back directly I will get you away and so by a great deliverance he was saved from the door of the lion and the poor of the bear his prayer was answered at the right time five minutes afterwards he would have been dead now cannot you say that the answer has come to you punctually at the very tick of the clock of wisdom not before nor after now the seventh recollection with which I would inspire you is this will you not love the Lord when you recollect the special and great instances of his mercy to you you have had seasons of special prayer and of special answer let me picture a man there was one who feared not God nor regarded man he was engaged in business and his affairs were not propitious but rather everything went against him he went against God and kicked the more because God kicked against him he had servants about him that feared God and worshiped him but as for himself he had no thought or regard for religion his affairs became more and more perplexed and involved one day he passed by the of one of his workmen where prayer was wont to be made and listening he heard what words uttered in supplication that touched his heart though he was the master he went inside and listened to his servant while he preached God touched that man's heart and made him feel his need of a savior he went home and he had now double cause for prayer he went to the Lord and told him he was a poor wretched undone sinner and that he wanted mercy and then he told the Lord beside though he did not make it very prominent that he was a poor almost broken merchant and then if the God did not appear for him he knew not but that he must be driven out of house and home these two cases were laid before God first of all God heard his prayer for his soul he gave him joy and peace in believing and poor as he was at that time he found enough to assist in erecting a house where the gospel might be preached the Lord who had delivered him spiritually now came to his assistance temporarily his affairs took a different turn floods of prosperity rolled in upon him and he is at this very day a living witness of the power of God to answer man's prayer for spiritual and for temporal things - and if it were needed he could bear his willing witness of special answer in that special time of necessity and does he not love his God I know he does for he delights to honor him he delights to give of his substance to him and there may be others offer you here present whose characters have been pictured in this one which I have portrayed before you who were saying surely he means me Oh will you not then at the recollection of what God did in that double mercy say I love him what can I do for him there is nothing too great for me to give nothing too large for me to do only let me know my duty and the recollection of his Avila Svante shall lead me to give of my substance to him to give my whole heart to him I will be wholly his and hope that in death he will receive me to himself men and women my brethren and sisters in Christ will you look back a few short years and recollect the time when you were on your knees before God seeking Him I could fix my eye today upon many a man who has been a drunkard a swearer a breaker of God's holy day a hater of everything good I think I see you in that upper chamber of yours oh how you cried how you groaned Oh with what agony did you pour out your unutterable sighs you rose up and you thought God would not have mercy on you he went to your business but how wretched you were you went back again to the chamber and how the beam out of the wall could speak now and tell you how you cried and cried and cried again before his mercy seat do you not love him but a little today has your love grown cold' go home and look again upon the chair against which you kneeled look at the very walls and see if they do not accuse you saying I heard you pray to God for mercy and he has heard you now I see your cold-heartedness I mark your lukewarmness in his cause go home to your chamber fall on your knees and with tears of gratitude say o thou my soul bless God the Lord and all that in me is be stirring up his holy name to magnify and bless some of us can recollect other special seasons of Prayer members of my church I remind you of that solemn season when like a hurricane of desolation the judgment of God swept through our midst standing in this pulpit this very morning I recalled to myself that evening of sorrow when I saw my people scattered like sheep without a shepherd trodden upon injured and many often kill do you recollect how you cried for your minister that he might be restored to a reason that was then tottering can you recollect how you prayed that out of evil God would bring forth good that all the curses of the wicked might be rolled back upon themselves and God would yet fill this place with his glory and do you remember how long ago that is and how God has been with us ever since and how many of those who were injured that night and now members of our church and are praising God that they ever entered this house Oh shall we not love the Lord there is not a church in London that has had such answers to prayer as we have there has not been a church that has had such cause to pray we have had special work special trial special deliverance and we ought pre-eminently to be a church loving God and spending and being spent in his service remember again the very times of your sickness when you have been sick saw an iron to death let me picture my own experience that I may remind you of yours I remember when I came to this pulpit in agony and preached you a sermon would seem to cost me my life's blood every word I utter I was taken home to my bed full of grief and agony I remember those weary nights those doleful days that burning brow those roaming thoughts those specters that haunted my dreams that sleep without sleep that rest that knew no rest that torture in that pain then I sought God and cried that he would spare me to stand in this pulpit once again oh I thought then in my poor foolish way that I would preach as I near had preached before as a dying man to dying men I hoped my ministry was not over I trusted I might have an another opportunity of freeing myself from the blood of heroes if any of that blood were on my skirts here I stand and I have to chide myself that I do not love him as I ought yet nevertheless in the recollection of this great mercy saving my soul from death and mine eyes from tears I must love him and I must praise him and I must in remembering each of you of similar deliverances beseech and entreat you to bless the Lord with me o let us magnify his name together we must do something fresh something greater something larger than we have done before having thus delivered these thoughts so I shall want you now for about three minutes to listen to me while I teach you three lessons which ought to spring from this Sevenfold retrospect what shall I say then God has heard my voice in my prayer the first lesson then is this he shall hear my voice in my praise if he heard me pray he shall hear me sing if he listened to me when the tear was in my eye he shall listen to me when my eyes sparkling with delight my piety shall not be that of the dungeon and sickbed it shall be that also of the deliverance and of health I'll praise my maker with my breath and when my voice is lost in death praise shall employ my nobler powers my days of praise shall now be passed while life and thought and being lasts or immortality in doors another lesson has God heard my voice then I will hear his voice if he heard me I will hear him tell me Lord what thou wouldst have me to do and I will do it what wouldst thou have me believe and I will believe it if there be a labor which I've never attempted before tell me to do it and I will say here in my Lord send me is there an ordinance to which I have never attended does thou say do this in remembrance of me is it that command however non-essential it seems to be I will do it because thou has told me to do it if thou has heard my feeble voice I will hear thine even though it be but a still small voice o that you would learn that lesson the last lesson is Lord hast thou heard my voice then I will tell others that thou will hear their voice too didst thou save me O Lord if thou save it's me thou can save anybody didst thou hear my prayer then will I tell to sinner's round what a dear Savior I have found and I will bid them pray - oh you that never pray I beseech you begin from this hour may God the spirit lead you to your chambers to cry to him remember if you ask through Jesus you cannot ask in vain I can prove that in a thousand instances God has heard my supplication there was nothing more in me than there is in you go and plead the promise plead the blood and ask for the help of God's Spirit and there is not one in this assembly who shall not receive the blessing if God shall lead them to pray young man young woman go home plead with God for yourself first you that love him plead for others that every one of us practiced the second verse of this son because he hath inclined his ear unto me therefore will I call upon him as long as I live [00:00:00]