Grace Presbyterian Church

Prayer

 Richard Sibbes – On Prayer

A Christian complains he cannot pray. `Oh, I am troubled with so many distracting thoughts, and never more than now!’ But has he put into your heart a desire to pray? Then he will hear the desires of his own Spirit in you. `We know not what we should pray for as we ought’ (nor how to do anything else as we ought), but the Spirit helps our infirmities with `groanings which cannot be uttered’ (Romans 8:26), which are not hid from God. `My groaning is not hid from thee’ (Psalm 28:9). God can pick sense out of a confused prayer. These desires cry louder in his ears than your sins. Sometimes a Christian has such confused thoughts that he can say nothing but, as a child, cries, `O Father’, not able to express what he needs, like Moses at the Red Sea.

Richard Sibbes, Complete Works of Richard Sibbes: (Volume 1), p.75.