This text helps us to put our finger on the cause of a great deal that is amiss in all of us. It is very likely, it is all but certain, that the reason of all our trouble, and dull discouragement, and want of growth and health is that we are doing just the thing that Job's unkind friend accused him of in the text "restraining prayer before God."
I. There can be no doubt that the neglect of prayer is a sadly common sin. It is likewise, when we calmly think of it, a most extraordinary folly. Prayer is the best means to all right ends; the very last thing in prudence to be omitted; the thing that will bring God's wisdom to counsel us, God's mighty power to uphold and defend us; the thing without which our souls will droop and die, more needful to the growth of grace in us than showers and sunshine are to the growing grass or the green leaves. It is through carelessness that professing Christians neglect prayer, through lack of interest in it, vague dislike to close communion with God, lack of vital faith, the faith of heart as well as head.
II. There are two things which will save us from this sin. One is that we oftentimes pray, "Lord, increase our faith." The other is that we habitually ask that in all our prayers we may be directed, inspired, elevated, composed, by the blessed and Holy Spirit. Remember St. Paul's words, "The Spirit also helpeth our infirmities, for we know not what we should pray for as we ought; but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered."
A. K. H. B., Sunday Afternoons at the Parish Church of a University City,p. 54.
(1) To a believer in revelation it is enough that prayer is most positively enjoined as a primary duty of religion, a duty strictly in itself as the proper manner of acknowledging the supremacy of God and our dependence. (2) Prayer cannot be discountenanced on any principle which would not repress and condemn all earnest religious desires. (3) It is the grand object to augment these desires. Here too is evidence in favour of prayer. For it must operate to make them more strong, more vivid, more solemn, more prolonged, and more definite as to their objects. Forming them into expressions to God will concentrate the soul in them, and on these objects.
I. It may well come upon our thoughts to reflect how much of this exercise in its genuine quality there is or has been in the course of our life habitually. There should be some proportion in things. A matter of pre-eminent importance should not be reduced to occupy some diminutive interstices and corners of the active system. We know that our grand resource of prayer is a blessed privilege granted from heaven, of a peculiarly heavenly quality; where is our consistency if we are indifferent and sparing in the use of it?
II. "Thou restrainest prayer before God." (1) Is there a very frequent or even a prevailing reluctance to it, so that the chief feeling regarding it is but a haunting sense of duty and of guilt in the neglect? This were a serious cause for alarm lest all be wrong within. (2) Is it, in the course of our days, left to uncertainties whether the exercise shall be attended to or not? Is there a habit of letting come first to be attended to any inferior thing that may offer itself? The charge in the text falls upon the state of feeling which forgets to recognise the value of prayer as an important instrument in the transactions of life. The charge falls, too, on the indulgence of cares, anxieties, and griefs with little recourse to this great expedient.
III. Restraint of prayer foregoes the benefits of the intercession of Christ. It precludes the disposition to refer to the Divine Being in social communications. It saps a man's moral and Christian courage. It raises a formidable difficulty in the way of recourse to God on urgent occasions and emergencies.
J. Foster, Lectures,1st series, p. 113.
References: Job 15:10. G. W. McCree, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xii., p. 399; W. Walters, Ibid.,vol. xix., p. 137.