There is a remedy revealed for man's need, as wide and broad and deep as man's disease. We need not be afraid to look at sin, and study its nature, origin, power, extent, and vileness, if we only look at the same time at the almighty medicine provided for us in the salvation that is in Jesus Christ. Though sin has abounded, grace has much more abounded.
J.C. Ryle

Prayer Before Blessings

Prayer Before Blessings

Gem #29 – Prayer Before Blessings

If we had the blessings without asking for them, we would think them mere common things; but prayer makes the common pebbles of God’s worldly provisions more precious than diamonds; and our spiritual prayer cuts the diamond, and makes it glisten more.

After a long chase, the hunter prizes the animal, because he has set his heart upon it, and is determined to have it; and yet more true, after a long hunger, he who then eats finds his food much more tasty. So prayer does sweeten the mercy.

Prayer teaches us its preciousness. It is the reading over of the bill of sale, the account, the property lists, before the estate and the properties are themselves transferred. We know the value of the purchase by reading over the will of it in prayer, and when we have groaned out our own expression of its matchless price, then it is that God bestows the benediction on us. Prayer goes before the blessing, because it shows us the value of it.