Sibbes on Prayer

A Christian complains he cannot pray. ‘Oh, I am troubled with so many distracting thoughts, and never more than now!’ But has he put into your heart a desire to pray? Then he will hear the desires of his own Spirit in you… God can pick sense out of a confused prayer. These desires cry louder in his ears than your sins. Sometimes a Christian has such confused thoughts that he can say nothing but, as a child, cries, ‘O Father,’ not able to express what he needs…

‘Oh, but is it possible’, thinks the misgiving heart, ‘that so holy a God should accept such a prayer?’ Yes, he will accept that which is is own, and pardon that which is ours…

God accepts our prayers, though weak, because we are his own children, and they come from his own Spirit; because they are according to his own will; and because they are offered in Christ’s mediation, and he takes them, and mingles them with his own incense.

There is never a holy sigh, never a tear we shed, which is lost. And as every grace increases by exercise of itself, so does the grace of prayer. By prayer we learn to pray.

from The Bruised Reed, by Richard Sibbes, 1630.