Private Thoughts About Prayer

No true prayer is lost, though we may have forgot it.

The loss of prayer is the greatest of all losses; and yet how many prayers are rendered fruitless, if not turned into sin, through inattention, levity of spirit, unbelief, insensibility of want, or greater desire of something else in the heart.

If we pray at all, we must be poor, helpless, and resigned; neither thinking we have already what we ask, or that we can give it to ourselves, or setting a time, or prescribing a measure to God.

Nothing is more easy than to say the words of a prayer; but to pray hungering and thirsting is the hardest of all works.

What more need to be said of prayer, than that it brings God into the heart, and keeps sin out?

There is abundant comfort in the thought that God has given me a desire and will to pray for the blessings of Jesus; whether with greater or less fervor at the time of praying, it matters little as to the event. I may repose myself quietly on His Word, in full assurance that there will be a performance of all His promises, in life, death, and eternity.

No man need be miserable or unhelped, so long as there is a way open to the throne of grace.

Prayer is living with God; and, if founded upon right principles of religion, puts us upon searching the heart, leads us to the knowledge of our wants and weakness, and fixes us in dependence upon God.

All prayer is hypocrisy and sad deceit, if we do not ask what God would have us to ask, and really desire what we ask.

“Ask, and it shall be given to you”: I ask, therefore it is given me. The consequence is infallible; only let God choose the time and manner of giving.

We eat for bodily strength, and for strength to labor. So the spiritual life must be renewed and maintained by continual supplies of grace, to the end we may perform the service we owe to God. The consequence is, we must pray at least as often as we eat.

“O God, give me what thou knowest to be good, and Thou alone knowest what is good; give me more than I can ask or think. If the reverse of what I ask is what I should ask, give me that; let me not be undone by my prayers.”

Blessed be God, I do not only begin to pray when I kneel down, and do not cease praying when I rise up.

Many pray not to be be kept from sin, but to keep it; and with a secret hope that prayer will excuse it, and be accepted instead of reformation.

Nothing is more easy, as a bare duty or lip-service, and nothing more difficult than the performance of it in truth and sincerity.

Rev. Thomas Adam (1701-1784) was a godly divine and student of John Newton, who pastored a congregation in Lincolnshire for 58 years. Like John Newton, he remained within the Anglican Church all his life.

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