I. Prayer is the Divinely appointed means of obtaining all the promised blessings needful for our spiritual and eternal welfare. This truth is quite clear to the student of Scripture. The lips of eternal truth have uttered words which prove the necessity of prayer, and also prove the omnipotent efficacy of prayer: "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: for every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened"; "If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give good things" give the Holy Spirit "to them that ask Him." "Be careful for nothing," says St. Paul, "but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God." God says, "Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it." What wonder, then, if those who neglect the means of grace and prayer grow into a state of spiritual poverty and destitution! "They have not because they ask not," or, if they ask at all, they "ask amiss" they ask coldly; they ask carelessly. They talk much about God in public, but talk very little with God in private. They are known to engage in exercises many, but not devotional ones. They are seen in numerous attitudes, but seldom on their knees. Therefore the Holy Ghost is not fully given, because not fervently and properly implored.
II. We cannot lay down any specific rule as to the length of our prayers; this will at all times depend upon the circumstances in which we are placed. The best prayer that was ever composed is a very short one, but we must not forget that He who composed it while on earth spent whole nights in prayer.
III. What we want in our prayers is a sincerity of soul, a hard-breathed earnestness, such a feeling as marked the wrestling Jacob when he said, "I will not let Thee go except Thou bless me." Another reflection on the subject of prayer is that we should endeavour, in Divine strength, to keep up a communion with God right through the day. "Pray without ceasing"; walk with God, live in God, and wait on God, for He says, "Them that honour Me I will honour." Again, when we approach our God in prayer, we should cherish a spirit of reverential awe. It is our duty, before we bow the knee in supplication, to seek to have our spirit suitably affected by the consideration of the majesty of the Being we address, for we speak in prayer to Him before whom heaven's highest archangels presume not to appear but with veiled faces; we speak in prayer with Him who chargeth those angels with folly, and in whose sight the very heavens are not clean.
W. W. Lane, Church Sermons,vol. i., p. 153.
Christian Morality Based upon Christian Faith.
I. The ethics of Christianity are in close connection with its doctrines. The Christian's character is to be built up, as St. Jude tells us, on the strong foundation of the Christian's most holy faith. "Christianity purports to be, not a system of moral teaching only, but a system of revealed facts which centre in our Lord, and on which moral teaching is to rest" Try to make out a scheme of practical Christianity detached from the Christian creed, and you are attempting a hopeless task; if you tear away the dogmas, the precepts lose their sanction and motive power. A writer of eminence, who stands apart from Christian orthodoxy and thinks that there is a want of masculine breadth in the current moral teaching of the Churches, yet declines to hold "any Church dogma responsible for this insufficiency," predicts that it would take centuries to establish any morality on a non-Christian basis, and affirms that the ethical teaching of the present day, to be influential, ought to grow out of Christianity. Truly it ought, for Christianity is a life as much as a creed, a life which, "in virtue of its distinctive doctrine, is nourished with a richer goodness than all other religious life."
II. What is the animating principle of a life that is truly and effectively Christian? It is faith in the living Christ as a personal Saviour, Divine and human, who is not only the example to be imitated, but the very source of that moral power and that spiritual life which are to make imitation possible. It is the Christ of St. Paul and St. John, the Christ of the catholic creeds, who has been the true Author of all that purity, tenderness, devotedness, which has made Christian morality a new thing in the world.
W. Bright, Morality in Doctrine,p. 15.
References: Jude 1:20. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xii., No. 719; Preacher's Monthly,vol. viii., p. 168.