Jonah 2:4

Hindrances and aids to prayer.

I. Prayer is founded on knowledge and prayer is prompted by desire. If then for knowledge there be error, and if instead of desire there be coldness, then is prayer hindered. It cannot be denied that we are all prone to error as to God's character and mind towards us. A wrong idea of God, of His character as unlovely, or of His mind as unloving towards us, is one chief impediment to the work of prayer. The other is a wrong feeling towards Him. Not misconception, not error, but (in the plainest sense of the words) some form or other of sin.

II. Whatever makes us know God better, and love Him more, will be an aid and help to prayer. (i) It is one chief office of the Bible to assist prayer by revealing God. Look upon it as you look upon visiting one who is to you as your own soul; an opportunity of increased knowledge, which increase of knowledge is evermore also an increase of love. (ii) Thus will it be also with the hearing of the Word in public. "Praying's the end of preaching." The value of each particular sermon may be estimated, not by the beauty of its language, and not by the power of its argument, but by this question rather, Did it make me pray? (iii) Another of the aids to prayer is what we term comprehensively the discipline of life. (iv) The chiefest of the helps to prayer is prayer.

Pray once, and you will pray again. Fray as you can today to-morrow you shall pray better.

C. J. Vaughan, Voices of the Prophets, p. 177.

References: Jonah 2:4.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxx., No. 1813. Jonah 2:8.—J. Duncan, The Pulpit and Communion Table, p. 307. Jonah 2:9.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. iii., No. 131; Ibid., Morning by Morning, p. 57. Jonah 2:10.—A. Watson, Sermons for Sundays: Festivals and Fasts, 3rd series, p. 399.