Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 354
“Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving.” Colossians 4:2. THOSE of you who constantly listen to my voice are aware that on the first Sabbath of the year I always receive of a venerable Clergyman—a veteran warrior in the Lord’s hosts—a verse of Scripture which I accept as my New Year’s text, and which after being printed becomes the motto of my congregation for the following year. It is somewhat amazing that my venerable friend should have sent me in the envelope about a month ago this text. He knew nothing of the proposition for a week of prayer. I do not know that it had been even determined upon at that date—certainly neither to his knowledge nor to mine—and I could not but help thinking when I opened my envelope, and saw what was to be my text, that he had been directly and specially guided of God, that my text might be in keeping with the engagements of the week. “Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving.” How greatly do I rejoice that the Churches are awakened to prayer. My honored and venerable Brother will this morning stand up in his village Church, lift up holy hands, and bid his people join in the common supplication, and I feel but too happy as his younger Brother in Christ—as but a babe compared to so experienced a pastor—to follow his example in stirring you up that you, too, as a great host, may join with the general company of the faithful and besiege the Throne of Grace till you carry the gates of Heaven by storm, and obtain the mercy which both you and the world so much require! Without further preface, let me observe that there are three exhortations in the text connected with prayer. The first is continue; the second is watch; and the third is give thanks. “Continuance” sits like Moses on the top of the hill, while Watching and Thanksgiving, like Aaron and Hur, hold up its hands. I. And first, in regard to prayer, the Apostle says “continue.”
Be you not, O you intercessors with God for men—be you not as those whose goodness is as the morning cloud and as the early dew. Do not begin to pray, and then suddenly cease your supplications. That will prove an ignorance as to the value of the mercy which you seek, and a lack of earnestness as to your obtaining it. How many there are who, under a powerful sermon, or during a trying Providence, have bent their knees suddenly in hasty prayer! They have risen from their knees, and they have forgotten what manner of men they were. Take away the whip from them, and they have ceased to run; remove from them the tempest, and they have ceased to fly before it; they have ceased to pray when God has ceased to smite! O Church of God, imitate not these heathen men and publicans! Wake not yourself up to a sudden fit of prayer, and then return again to your sloth; stir not yourself a moment from your bed to throw your heavy head back again upon your pillow, but continue in supplication—cease not to pray!
There is a great distinction between the prayer of the real convert and the merely convicted sinner. The merely convicted sinner, terrified by the Law, calls but once; the awakened heart, renewed of the Holy Spirit, never ceases to cry until the mercy comes! A few days ago, by the seaside, on the coast of the Isle of Wight, a woman thought she heard, in the midst of the howling tempest, the voice of a man. She listened. It was repeated. She strained her ears again, and she caught, amid the crack of the blast, and the thundering of the winds, another cry for help. She ran at once to the lifeguards who launched their boat, and some three poor mariners who were clinging to a mast were saved! Had that cry been but once and not again, either she might have doubted as to whether she had heard it at all, or else she would have drawn the melancholy conclusion that they had been swept into the watery waste, and that help would have come too late. So when a man prays but once, either we may think that he cries not at all, or else that his desires are swallowed up in the wild waste of his sins, and he himself is sucked down into the vortex of destruction. If the Church of God shall offer prayer this week, and then shall cease to be in earnest, we shall think her never to have meant her prayers! If she shall but now and then start up, and make her supplications, we shall write her down as a hypocrite intent for a moment upon keeping appearances, but afterwards relapsing into her lukewarm Laodicean condition! The exhortation of my text, I think, stands in contrast, then, to the transient prayer which is often offered by ungodly men. Continue in prayer; do not pray once, and have done with it, but continuein it.
I think further, that the exhortation to continue may be put in opposition to the common dealings of many with God, who pray and pause, and pray and pause—are earnest and then cool, earnest and colder still. There is a sharp frost—a rapid thaw, and then a frost again. Their spiritual state is as variable as our own weather. A shower, sunshine, mist, shower, sunshine again! They are everything by turns, and nothing long. There are too many Churches which are just of this character. See them one week, you would believe they would carry all before them. and convert the town or village in which they are located; see them next week and they are, “As sound asleep as a church,” which is a common Proverb, a church being too often the sleepiest thing in all the world! Sometimes they ran and they did run well—what did hinder them? But they stopped, they paused, they looked about them, and after a while they ran again—but they moved not swiftly enough to be able to make up the time lost when they were standing still!