Sword & Trowel 2016: Issue 1
secondary comforts. Therefore we should summon all our mental pow-
ers to engage in a full programme of praise and prayer, theoretical as it may feel, trusting that God will in due time restore the heart to feel. We are also helped to pray by the
realisation that failure to pray steals praise from God, depriving him of his due. We may not feel as we would like to, but we still owe him a debt of thanksgiving and worship and must not deny him that. Even if praise is rendered with the mind only, it is entirely valid and acceptable before God, because the mind is the most important department of the soul, and the palace of faith.
PRAYER TROUBLES IN THE PSALMS
When we pray with the mind alone, the heart often responds, as we see in the examples of prayer in
the Psalms. Some haunting words of David in Psalm 13 show his sad heart melting following an emphatic af- fi rmation of God’s faithfulness, with the result that the shadows lifted, and assurance returned. Isaac Watts puts the sense of David’s words into a magnifi cent hymn of experience:
How long wilt thou conceal thy face? My God, how long delay? When shall I feel those heavenly rays That chase my fears away?
See how the prince of darkness tries All his malicious arts:
He spreads a mist around my eyes, And throws his fi ery darts.
How would the tempter boast aloud If I became his prey!
And how the sons of earth grow proud At thy so long delay.
But hell shall fl y at thy rebuke, And Satan hide his head;
He knows the terrors of thy look, And hears thy voice with dread.
The Cruelties of Atheism, Remember the Lord’s Day and The Purposes of the Lord’s Supper by Dr Masters have been published in Slovak by Soli Deo Gloria, Zilina. (Available in UK from Tabernacle Bookshop.)
page 10 Remedies for Problems in Prayer
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