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Our prayer ought to be,

Our prayer ought to be,

Our prayer ought to be, “Oh that you would bless me indeed, with real faith, with real salvation, with the trust in Jesus that is the essential of faith; not with the conceit that begets credulity. God preserve us from imaginary blessings!” I have met with people who said, “I believe I am saved, because I dreamed it.” Or, “Because I had a text of Scripture that applied to my own case. Such and such a good man said so and so in his sermon.” Or, “Because I took to weeping and was excited, and felt as I never felt before.” Ah! but nothing will stand the trial but this, “Do you abjure all confidence in everything but the finished work of Jesus, and do you come to Christ to be reconciled in him to God?” If you do not, your dreams, and visions, and fancies, are but dreams, and visions, and fancies, and will not serve your turn when most you need them. Ask the Lord to bless you indeed, for of that sterling verity in all your walk and talk there is a great scarcity.

Too much I am afraid, that even those who are saved; saved for time and eternity; need this caution, and have good cause to pray this prayer that they may learn to make a distinction between some things which they think to be spiritual blessings, and others which are blessings indeed. Let me show you what I mean.

Is it certainly a blessing to get an answer to your prayer after your own mind? I always like to qualify my most earnest prayer with, “Not as I will, but as you will.” Not only ought I to do it, but I would like to do it, because otherwise I might ask for something which it would be dangerous for me to receive. God might give it me in anger, and I might find little sweetness in the grant, but much soreness in the grief it caused me. You remember how Israel of old asked for flesh, and God gave them quails; but while the meat was yet in their mouths the wrath of God came upon them. Ask for the meat, if you like, but always put in this: “Lord, if this is not a real blessing, do not give it me.” “Bless me indeed.”

I hardly like to repeat the old story of the good woman whose son was ill; a little child near death’s door; and she begged the minister, a Puritan, to pray for its life. He did pray very earnestly, but he put in, “If it be your will, save this child.” The woman said, “I cannot bear that: I must have you pray that the child shall live. Do not put in any ifs or buts.” “Woman,” said the minister, “it may be you will live to rue the day that ever you wished to set your will up against God’s will.”

Twenty years afterwards, she was carried away in a fainting fit from under Tyburn gallows-tree, where that son was put to death as a felon. Although she had lived to see her child grow up to be a man, it would have been infinitely better for her had the child died, and infinitely wiser had she left it to God’s will.

Do not be quite so sure that what you think an answer to prayer is any proof of divine love. It may leave much room for you to seek unto the Lord, saying, “Oh that you would blessed me indeed!” So sometimes great exhilaration of spirit, liveliness of heart, even though it be religious joy, may not always be a blessing. We delight in it, and oh, sometimes when we have had gatherings for prayer here, the fire has burned, and our souls have glowed! We felt at the time how we could sing; “My willing soul would stay In such a frame as this, And sit and sing herself away To everlasting bliss.”

So far as that was a blessing we are thankful for it; but I should not like to set such seasons up, as if my enjoyments were the main token of God’s favor; or as if they were the chief signs of his blessing. Perhaps it would be a greater blessing to me to be broken in spirit, and laid low before the Lord at the present time. When you ask for the highest joy, and pray to be on the mountain with Christ, remember it may be as much a blessing; yes, a blessing indeed to be brought into the Valley of Humiliation, to be laid very low, and constrained to cry out in anguish, “Lord, save, or I perish!”

“If today he deigns to bless us With a sense of pardoned sin, He tomorrow may distress us, Make us feel the plague within, All to make us Sick of self, and fond of him.”

These variable experiences of ours may be blessings indeed to us, when, had we been always rejoicing, we might have been like Moab, settled on our lees, and not emptied from vessel to vessel. It fares ill with those who have no changes; they fear not God. Have we not, dear friends, sometimes envied those people that are always calm and unruffled, and are never perturbed in mind? Well, there are Christians whose evenness of temper deserves to be emulated. And as for that calm repose, that unwavering assurance which comes from the Spirit of God, it is a very delightful attainment; but I am not sure that we ought to envy anybody’s lot because it is more tranquil or less exposed to storm and tempest than our own.

There is a danger of saying, “Peace, peace,” where there is no peace, and there is a calmness which arises from callousness. Dupes there are who deceive their own souls. “They have no doubts,” they say, but it is because they have little heart searching. They have no anxieties, because they have not much enterprise or many pursuits to stir them up. Or it may be they have no pains, because they have no life. Better go to heaven, halt and maimed, than go marching on in confidence down to hell. “Oh that you would bless me indeed!” My God, I will envy no one of his gifts or his graces, much less of his inward mood or his outward circumstances, if only you will “bless me indeed.” I would not be comforted unless you comfort me, nor have any peace but Christ my peace, nor any rest but the rest which comes from the sweet savor of the sacrifice of Christ. Christ shall be all in all, and none shall be anything to me except himself.

O that we might always feel that we are not to judge as to the manner of the blessing, but must leave it with God to give us what we would have, not the imaginary blessing, the superficial and apparent blessing, but the blessing indeed!

Equally too with regard to our work and service, I think our prayer should always be, “Oh that you would bless me indeed!” It is lamentable to see the work of some good men, though it is not ours to judge them, how very pretentious, but how very unreal it is. It is really shocking to think how some men pretend to build up a church in the course of two or three evenings. They will report, in the corner of the newspapers, that there were forty-three people convinced of sin, and forty-six justified, and sometimes thirty-eight sanctified; I do not know what besides of wonderful statistics they give as to all that is accomplished. I have observed congregations that have been speedily gathered together, and great additions have been made to the church all of a sudden.

And what has become of them? Where are those churches at the present moment? The dreariest deserts in Christendom are those places that were fertilized by the fertilizer of certain revivalists. The whole church seemed to have spent its strength in one rush and effort after something, and it ended in nothing at all. They built their wooden house, and piled up the hay, and made a stubble spire that seemed to reach the heavens, and there fell one spark, and all went away in smoke; and he that came to labor next time; the successor of the great builder; had to get the ashes swept away before he could do any good.

The prayer of every one that serves God should be, “Oh that you would bless me indeed.” Plod on, plod on. If I only build one piece of masonry in my life, and nothing more, if it be gold, silver, or precious stones, it is a good deal for a man to do; of such precious stuff as that, to build even one little corner which will not show, is a worthy service. It will not be much talked of, but it will last. There is the point: it will last.

“Establish the work of our hands upon us; yes, the work of our hands establish it.” If we are not builders in an established church, it is of little use to try at all. What God establishes will stand, but what men build without his establishment will certainly come to nothing.

“Oh that you would bless me indeed!” Sunday-school teacher, be this your prayer. Tract distributer, local preacher, whatever you may be, dear brother or sister, whatever your form of service, do ask the Lord that you may not be one of those plaster builders using sham substances that only requires a certain amount of frost and weather to make it crumble to pieces. Be it yours, if you cannot build a cathedral, to build at least one part of the marvellous temple that God is piling for eternity, which will outlast the stars.

I have one thing more to mention before I bring this sermon to a close. The blessings of God’s grace are blessings indeed, which in right earnest we ought to seek after. By these marks shall you know them. Blessings indeed, are such blessings as come from the pierced hand; blessings that come from calvary’s bloody tree, streaming from the Savior’s wounded side; your pardon, your acceptance, your spiritual life: the bread that is food indeed, the blood that is drink indeed; your oneness to Christ, and all that comes of it; these are blessings indeed.

Any blessing that comes as the result of the Spirit’s work in your soul is a blessing indeed. Though it humble you, though it strip you, though it kill you, it is a blessing indeed. Though the harrow go over and over your soul, and the deep plough cut into your very heart; though you be maimed and wounded, and left for dead, yet if the Spirit of God does it, it is a blessing indeed. If he convinces you of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment, even though you have not hitherto been brought to Christ, it is a blessing indeed. Anything that he does, accept it; do not be dubious of it; but pray that he may continue his blessed operations in your soul.

Whatever leads you to God is in like manner a blessing indeed. Riches may not do it. There may be a golden wall between you and God. Health will not do it: even the strength and marrow of your bones may keep you at a distance from your God. But anything that draws you nearer to him is a blessing indeed. What though it be a cross that raises you? yet if it raise you to God it shall be a blessing indeed. Anything that reaches into eternity, with a preparation for the world to come, anything that we can carry across the river, the holy joy that is to blossom in those fields beyond the swelling flood, the pure cloudless love of the brotherhood which is to be the atmosphere of truth forever; anything of this kind that has the eternal, immutable mark is a blessing indeed.

And anything which helps me to glorify God is a blessing indeed. If I be sick, and that helps me to praise him, it is a blessing indeed. If I be poor, and I can serve him better in poverty than in wealth, it is a blessing indeed. If I be in contempt, I will rejoice in that day and leap for joy, if it be for Christ’s sake; it is a blessing indeed. Yes, my faith shakes off the disguise, snatches the vizor from the fair forehead of the blessing, and counts it all joy to all into diverse trials for the sake of Jesus and the recompense of reward that he has promised. “Oh that we may be blessed indeed!”

Now, I send you away with these three words: “Search.” See whether your blessings are blessings indeed, and be not satisfied unless you know that they are of God, tokens of his grace, and pledges of his saving purpose.

“Weigh”; that shall be the next word. Whatever you have, weigh it in the scale, and ascertain if it be a blessing indeed, conferring such grace upon you as causes you to abound in love, and to abound in every good word and work.

And lastly, “Pray.” So pray that this prayer may mingle with all your prayers, that whatever God grants or whatever he withholds you may be blessed indeed. Is it a joy-time with you? O that Christ may mellow your joy, and prevent the intoxication of earthly blessedness from leading you aside from close walking with him! In the night of sorrow, pray that he will bless you indeed, lest the wormwood also intoxicate you and make you drunk, lest your afflictions should make you think hardly of him. Pray for the blessing, which having, you are rich to all the intents of bliss, or which lacking, you are poor and destitute, though plenty fill your store. “If your presence go not with me, carry us not up hence.” But “Oh that you would bless me indeed!”