34.
We must now attend not only to a surer method, but also form of
prayer, that, namely, which our heavenly Father has delivered to us by his
beloved Son, and in which we may recognize his boundless goodness and
condescension (Matth. 6:9; Luke 11:2). Besides admonishing and exhorting us to
seek him in our every necessity (as children are wont to betake themselves to
the protection of their parents when oppressed with any anxiety), seeing that we
were not fully aware how great our poverty was, or what was right or for our
interest to ask, he has provided for this ignorance; that wherein our capacity
failed he has sufficiently supplied. For he has given us a form in which is set
before us as in a picture everything which it is lawful to wish, everything
which is conducive to our interest, everything which it is necessary to demand.
From his goodness in this respect we derive the great comfort of knowing, that
as we ask almost in his words, we ask nothing that is absurd, or foreign, or
unseasonable; nothing, in short, that is not agreeable to him. Plato, seeing the
ignorance of men in presenting their desires to God, desires which if granted
would often be most injurious to them, declares the best form of prayer to be
that which an ancient poet has furnished: "O king Jupiter, give what is best,
whether we wish it or wish it not; but avert from us what is evil even though we
ask it" (Plato, Alcibiad. ii). This heathen shows his wisdom in discerning how
dangerous it is to ask of God what our own passion dictates; while, at the same
time, he reminds us of our unhappy condition in not being able to open our lips
before God without dangers unless his Spirit instruct us how to pray aright
(Rom. 8:26). The higher value, therefore, ought we to set on the privilege, when
the only begotten Son of God puts words into our lips, and thus relieves our
minds of all hesitation.
This book has been accessed more than 148012 times since June 1, 2005.
