Prayer with Thanksgiving
‘Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be j?iade known 7into God.’’’’ — Philip-PIANS iv. 6.
HE two precepts of this verse balance each other. Both must be included in one view. The first, especially, would be misunderstood if it stood alone. The first forbids carefulness; the second enjoins prayerfulness. These two precepts are so. connected by the particle “but” as to exclude each other. You may have either, but you cannot have both. The careful is not prayerful; the prayerful is not careful. These two seem to lie before us for our choice; and a heavenly monitor comes to tell us which is the good part. Put away the care, and betake yourself to prayer. Do not attempt to bear the government on your own shoulders, but cast your burden on the Lord. Do not cumber and crush your spirit by the many things not needful; but go to Jesus’ feet and await his will.
The apostles followed the Lord in their doctrinal teaching more closely than most readers of the Bible perceive. I think in balancing the two precepts of this verse, Paul had Martha and Mary in his eye. Be not careful, Martha: sit like Mary at the Redeemer’s feet. Do not attempt to be a god unto yourself: avouch the Lord to be your God. It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps. “Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass. And he shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday.”
The first clause points only to such carefulness as is inconsistent with prayerfulness. Whatever kind and degree of care can go along with a simple trust in God at every turn, is lawful and right. The apostle forbids only that atheistic care which asserts the government of life for the creature, and refuses to cast its burden for time and eternity on the Lord. In husbandry we are fellow-workers with God; he prescribes our specific work, and undertakes his own. So also in the culture of human spirits, our own and others, as a field for fruit unto God; Paul must plant, Apollos water, and God giveth the increase.
Consider now the second and larger of the two precepts by itself. Henceforth we confine our regard to the specific and minute injunction regarding prayer: “In every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.”
I shall endeavour to explain the three clauses of the text separately and in succession, beginning, however, with the last and ascending to the first.
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I. Let your requests be made known unto God. 11. By prayer and supplication with thanksgiving. III. In everything.
I. Let your requests be made knozvji unto God.
‘^Requests!’ — All creatures are dependent. The earth by dumb signs asks rain from heaven to refresh its dust, and make it fruitful. The air asks continual supply of moisture out of its store-house in the ocean. The ocean itself, although it is sometimes, on account of its comparative vastness, considered an emblem of immensity, yet seeks and gets its wants made up by the constant inflow of all the rivers. All are needy, none self-existent: all seek their supply, and obtain it, from Him in whom all fulness dwells. Living creatures, too, seek their meat from God. These all wait on him. That which he scatters on the ground they gather.
Man, with the greatest capacity, is distinguished from the rest by the greatest need. As the child in the human family is much more dependent on a parent’s care than the young of other creatures, so man himself, the child of God’s family, needs much more from the heavenly Father’s hand. The capacity of man is very great; and when he is empty, it requires much to fill the void. How many times a man of threescore and ten has breathed since first he saw the light! All these years, summer and winter, day and night, he has every moment been opening his mouth wide, and every time getting it filled with vital air. How vast the supply of air provided, and how closely it lies to his lips! A whole heaven full overhead, and the edge of it continually leaning on our lips wherever we go. We do not need, when we travel, to provide waggons to carry our breathing air with us. Like the water out of the rock, it follows us in plenty all the way. The act of breathing seems an emblem at once of the creature’s continual need, and the Creator’s abundant supply. With us there is emptiness, with him there is fulness; and, as in the case of breathing, the emptiness of the creature draws supply from God. His goodness has compassed us about, like the atmosphere; and when we open our mouth, it is filled with good.
“Let your requests be made known itnto God:’’ The lower part of our nature we have in common with the beasts, and God supplies its wants as he supplies theirs. He gives us breath when we sleep, and are as unconscious as the cattle grazing in the field. But God desires company among his creatures. He did not find among them any one fit for communion with himself, until he had made man in his own image. He made an intelligent being, that he might have intercourse with the work of his own hands. We have had fathers of our flesh who loved to supply the wants of their children. Inconceivably greater is God’s delight in hearing the requests and supplying the wants of those whom he made to be his children. Fathers of our flesh are subject to two infirmities — a defective love in their hearts, and a defective supply in their hands; that is, they sometimes will not.
and sometimes cannot, give what their children desire. But our Father in heaven is not limited on either side; his joy, therefore, in hearing prayer and answering it, is full.
Further: when man fell, and the relation was broken off, — when the branch was withered, and the channel by which the Vine had supplied it was conclusively shut up, he was not willing that it should continue shut. At a great price, by the sacrifice of his own Son, he opened the channel again. So much did God delight in giving to supply the need of men, that when that relation was broken off by our sin, he restored it again, by a new and living way through the blood of the Lamb, that he might enter again into his own peculiar joy, — the joy of giving to the needy at their cry.
God has through Christ made known his fulness; surely we should through Christ make known to him our need. “Yotir requests;” your own; not what other people have asked, or what you have learned to repeat. Jesus took a little child and set him in the midst of his disciples, and said they must receive the kingdom like this little child. Even among his own chosen followers, who were in the main true, he was grieved with their formal Pharisaism. There was much of what was put on, — things done by imitation and by custom. He longed to have his disciples free from mere earthly conventionality; he loathed all that was unreal. The atoms of the unreal and formal that mingled in their service, were to him like stones in the bread that he ate. Give me, he said, a little child’s simplicity. The wants it cries for are its own wants; the cries it utters, whether intelligent or not, are real, and not feigned. They spring like water in a well. Such are the prayers that God loves to hear. Not long, or short; elegant, or rude; printed, or extemporaneous — not these. What then y what requests does he love to hear y “Your requests.”
“Such pity as a father hath
Unto his children dear;
Like pity shews the Lord to such
As worship him in fear.” (Ps. ciii. 13.)
Search and see what element it is in the request of his little child that goes like an arrow to a parent’s heart, filling that heart with delight, and opening sluices for a flood of gifts — it is this, they are the own requests of his own child. ‘^ Yotir requests.” This quality oi yours will cover a multitude of sins against grammar and other earthly laws.
II. By prayer and supplication with tJianksgiviiig.
“Prayer!’ — This is the soul’s believing and reverential approach unto God. It is the prelude or preface alike to the request and the thanksgiving. It is the act of getting yourself introduced, and the intercourse begun. The pattern prayer which Jesus dictated contains this part at its commencement, in the words, “Our Father who art in heaven.” This, you perceive, is neither a request nor a thanksgiving. It is neither a petition for some benefit nor an ascription of praise. These both 158 PRAYER WITH THANKSGIVING.
follow. The supplications accompanied with the thanksgiving immediately follow; but this appellation goes first. This is the sharp point sent upward first, to make way for the prayer that is about to follow.
Siipplicationy — This term specifically means the re-’ quest the suppliant prefers. But while the word means asking, its radical signification is zvant. It indicates, in its origin, emptiness, need; and thence it came to mean a craving for supply. It means the need which demands supply, or the asking which springs from a sense of emptiness. The six petitions of the Lord’s Prayer constitute the supplication.
“WitJi tJianksgivingr — This does not mean that the supplication and the thanksgiving necessarily in all cases refer to the same thing. Indeed, the ordinary rule is quite the reverse. The supplication is sent up for something which at the moment you do not possess; whereas the thanksgiving is ofTered on account of something that you have already obtained.
Assuming what has been already explained, that the first, the prayer, is the introduction or approach of the soul to God — the opening of the conference, clearing the way alike for supplication and for praise — let us now fix our thoughts on the union and relation of these two constituent elements of a soul’s communion with God — these two, asking for mercies, and offering thanks.
Notice, first of all, the peculiar form of the phraseology, — “Supplication with thanksgiving.” It seems to intimate that we are apt to leave out this latter ingredient, and to warn us that the omission of this will vitiate all. To ply the asking, without the song of praise, seems like taking some ingredients of the physician’s prescription and leaving out one. The want of that one renders the whole application of none effect. “With thanksgiving,” — this should accompany every prayer.
The currents of grace run in circles as well as those of nature. The electric current does not o along the wire unless it comes back through the earth to complete the circle. A picture of it is seen in a well-known apparatus for ventilation. A tube divided longitudinally into two, or two tubes joined together, stretch from the interior of a building through the roof into the air. The air flows up through one lobe of the tube out of the building, and down through the other lobe into the building. When the process is set agoing it continues. But if you stop the ascending current, you thereby also make the descending current to cease; and if you stop the descending current, the ascending one is arrested too.
A fact in the ministry of the Lord contains the same lesson that is here taught by his apostle. Indeed the apostle is here only exercising his function of explaining the lessons of the Master’s life. The ten lepers came to Jesus with prayer and supplication. They lifted up their voices and said, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” He gave them their request. But only one of the ten put in his request with thanksgiving; only one remem-
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bered to put that ingredient in his communion with the Lord; only one continued the circle, and answered the getting of mercy by the giving of praise. The Lord marked and mentioned the omission. He felt well pleased with the circle of communion completed in the one who returned to give thanks; but he left on record for all ages his disappointment with those who greedily snatched the gift and forgot the Giver: ‘* Were there not ten cleansed t but where are the nine y”
When there is spiritual life, the weight of God’s mercies pressing down forces the sacrifice of thanksgiving up. The pressure of the air does not make the heavy, sluggish water rise; whatever weight of air may press upon it, the water lies heavy in its bed. But when water is etherealized into vapour, then the weight of the air makes the vapour rise. The load of benefits that pressed on the nine lepers, finding their souls dull and dead, did not move them upwards; but the same load on the one Samaritan, finding him spiritually quickened, pressed his thanksgiving up to the Throne.
The circulations of the ocean constitute a plain and permanent picture of these relations between a human soul and a redeeming God. The sea is always drawing what it needs down to itself, and also always sending up of its abundance into the heavens. It is always getting, and always giving. So, when in the covenant the true relation has been constituted, the redeemed one gets and gives, gives and gets; draws from God a stream o£ benefits, sends up to God the incense of praise.
III. In every tiling. In every tiling prayer zuitli tliafiksgiving.
I. “7/2 every thing prayer!’ — Approach to God and make your requests known at all times, in all places, and about all things. It is not in some great emergencies that you should pray, and transact the lesser affairs of life on your own account Not on the Sabbath only, but on all the days of the week. Not only in the church, or in the prayer-meeting, but in the work-shop and the counting-house. Not only before and after religious solemnities, but also in connection with your gain, or your rest, or your relaxation.
Our Father takes it ill if we send in our request for the pardon of sin, but ask not his counsel about the choice of a companion, or an investment in trade.
He is not a man of little faith who puts little things into his prayer. That very thing shows him to be a man of great faith. A feeble pulsation in the heart may keep the life-blood circulating for a while near the centre and in the vitals; but it requires a great strong life in the heart to send the blood down into the tips of the fingers, and make it circulate through the outmost, smallest branches of the veins. In like manner, it is the strongest spiritual life that animates the whole course, even to the minutest transactions, and brings to God the smallest matters of our personal history as well as the great concern of pardon and eternal life.,
‘’Every thing:’’ whatever is a thing to you, whatever lodges about your heart, either as a joy that you cherish or a grief that you are unable to shake away, — in with it into your prayer, up with i.t to the Throne. It is not right to choose, out of the multitude of thoughts within you, all the grave and goodly, and marshal them by themselves into a prayer. This is like one who had wheat to sell, and sat down and picked out all the full and plump seeds and brought them to market, while the heap was half made up of shrivelled, unripened grains. Prayer in secret, is a pouring out of the soul before God; and if it is not a pouring, it is not prayer. Anything left behind, cherished in you but concealed from God, vitiates all, — stakes away the comfort from you, and hinders the answer from God.
2. “7;^ every tJiingwitJi thanksgivingr — There is nothing here enjoined that is contrary to nature. His commandments are not grievous. You need not give thanks for suffering; but even in sorrow there is room for praise.
There are two things for which we may and should give praise at all times, even in suffering. One is, thanks in suffering for the things that you do not suffer: for example, when in bodily pain, if the mind is clear; or when suffering from calumny, thanks for a good conscience toward God; or when you have lost your money, if your children survive.
Another is, for the good that even sorrow brings, for the fruit that it bears unto holiness. Suppose your tears flow for conviction of your sins; your peace is disturbed; the terrors of the Lord are drinking you up: “Oh, wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me.’’” The very next word that escaped the apostle’s lips after that wail of agony is, “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Thank God for convictions of sin, for they are the marks of his mercy; these are the footsteps of the Redeemer when he comes to save.
But in all cases, even in all extremities, there still remains that short, strong anthem, “Thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift.” However dark the day may be, impenetrable clouds covering all the heavens and shutting out the day, you know well that the sun is in the heavens, and will shine forth again as bright as ever when these clouds have passed away: so, “The Lord liveth. Blessed be my Rock.”
But the end of the whole matter is this, — this command will not be obeyed by those who are at enmity with God. This command is addressed to disciples, and only disciples can render obedience to it. There is one commandment that must go foremost, and make a way for all the rest; and this is his commandment, that ye should believe on his Son whom he has sent. To be reconciled unto God through the death of his Son, — this is the one thing needful to all true obedience; and so especially this law of God, that in every thing we should pray to him and give thanks, cannot be put in practice by an alienated and suspicious heart.
Command, did I say y No, not the command of a master which the slave must obey; it is rather a privilege conferred, which a dear child will gladly accept.
The Queen does not make requests, does not even offer gifts; she commands those whom she favours to accept what she desires to bestow. Such is the formula which has grown into use as the most fitting medium for conveying a sovereign’s gifts. The form is seemly, and the idea in which it originated is just. Yet the command of the sovereign is in its essence a bounty bestowed, is the greatest favour that a subject can receive.
So here, when the King eternal means to confer on his child the richest privilege, he throws it into the form of a command. “In every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God;” — that is the King’s method of conveying to me the glad intelligence that I am permitted to pour out all my joys and sorrows on his breast. “Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.” He who spared not his own Son, but freely gave him up for us all, how shall he not with him freely give us all things?
[Not many weeks before his death, Mf. Avnot came on this verse in the
course of expounding the Epistle to the Philippians. He gave a short
summary of it, which he had found somewhere, and thought well worth
preserving: —
“Be careful for ;/^thing.
Be prayerful for ^’<?rj’thing.
Be thankful for ^/ything.”
A little child some time afterwards, overhearing his father speaking with anxiety about business, quoted these words, saying: “Do you remember what Mr. Arnot told us? “]