Why is prayer particularly humbling?  Because when we pray we are acknowledging and accepting our total dependence upon God.  Why would a man pray to God unless he believed that God was capable of doing something he could not?  When we pray we confess that God, being the creator and sustainer of all things, must act or all else is undone.  In our neglect of prayer we live our lives as though we are able to meet all of our own needs without the protection and provision of our all-powerful father.

Watson lays out for us what it is to pray to God in the Spirit:

1. A spiritual prayer is when we pray with knowledge.  There is no special age or level of maturity that must be achieved before a Christian can start praying.  All Christians, no matter how mature, are expected to let their requests be made known to God.  But it is possible to pray to God with a false knowledge of who he is.  Watson says, “We must know the majesty and holiness of God so that we may be deeply affected with reverence when we come before him.”  Many times Christians approach God in prayer as if he is some kind of cosmic Santa Claus who only exists to give us what we ask.  We sometimes forget that we are talking to our eternal judge; the one for whom and by whom all things exist.  When we begin to gain a proper understanding of God’s holiness, purity, goodness and power then we will begin to pray as we ought.

2.  A spiritual prayer is a prayer that comes from a broken heart.  Lest we fear that we will not be able to pray like others, Watson answers, “But can you weep and sigh? Does your soul melt out at your eyes?  God accepts broken expressions when they come from broken hearts.”  God is looking for sacrifices of a broken spirit (Ps. 51:17).  Romans 8 tells us that the Holy Spirit intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.  “It is not so much the gifts of the Spirit as the groans of the Spirit which God likes.”  Is your heart broken when you approach God in prayer?  Broken for the countless numbers of unbelievers?  Broken for the degenerate state of our culture?  Broken for the indwelling sin and corruption of your own heart?

3. A spiritual prayer is when we pray in the name of Christ.  We only have access to God by the blood of his son.  We are not able to approach God in the Spirit and we have no right to ask anything of God unless our lives have been washed clean by the blood of Christ’s atonement.  Christ absorbed our wrath on the cross so that God’s wrath against us would be satisfied once and for all.  This is why we pray “in Jesus’ name.”  Watson explains, “As a child claims his estate in the right of his father who purchased it, so we come for mercy in the name of Christ, who has purchased it for us in his blood.  Unless we pray thus, we do not pray at all.”

Watson has a lot more to say to us about the necessity of prayer in the life of the godly.  But let us ask ourselves these questions: Do I know God rightly?  Am I affected by his holiness and purity when I approach him?  What informs my knowledge of God?  Do I know him through his word or through my own human understanding?  Is my heart broken when I pray?  Do I talk to God like he is my rich uncle rather than my righteous judge?  Has my heart been washed clean by the blood of Christ?  Is my access to the father found in my union with Christ or am I forcing myself in by another way?  May we seek our refuge in Christ and pour out our hearts to a holy and caring father who stands ready to help in our time of need.

Probably the most prideful area of my life has been contentment with my current life situation.  It is easy to become discontent with God’s providence when things aren’t shaping up in our lives the way we would like.  Sometimes our humble prayers for God’s will to be accomplished in our lives can turn into accusatory questions that put God in the dock and our selves on the throne.  These are things that I have been dealing with in recent months and they were brought to my mind again when I read Thomas Watson’s chapter on the godly man’s humility.  He says, “Are those who are never pleased with their condition proud?  They speak harshly of God, taxing his care and wisdom, as if he had not dealt well with them.  A proud man…is for ever finding fault and flying in the face of heaven.”

How we handle God’s providence in our lives says a lot about our hearts.  Are you discontent?  Are you always looking for something better than what you have, be it station in life, material possession or status?  Do you covet the lives of others who seem to have been dealt a better hand?  Do you long for more worldly comforts than you have been given?  Do you find yourself re-evaluating your current situation to find out how you got there and then regret your past decisions that brought you to where you are?  Are you neglecting current spiritual duties or commitments because you are still looking for something better?  All of this shows a level of discontent and pride.  I am convinced that only those Christians who are content with God’s sovereign hand working out the details of their lives will be able to exercise true, biblical humility.  Only when we submit to his divine wisdom will we be able to lay down our earthly wisdom.  His judgments are unsearchable.  His ways are inscrutable.  We have given him nothing.  He has given us every good thing we have.  What do we have that we have not received?  God clothes the grass of the field and will we question the ways in which he clothes us?  Had God no right to put Joseph in the pit before the palace?

Acts 17 tells us that God “made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him.”  Brothers and sisters God has determined your life.  Let that not be a source of trepidation but of contentment and humility.  You have nothing to fear.  You have been given your current lot so that you might reach out for God with what you have and find him.  Let his providence bring you low thoughts of yourself and high thoughts of Jesus, our righteous judge.  His eyes run to and fro throughout the whole world to support those whose hearts are blameless towards him (2 Chron. 16:9).  And let us find contentment in the truth that even though the lot is cast into the lap, every decision is from the Lord (Prov. 16:33).

It is a grounded knowledge:

It is a knowledge that is informed by the Word of God and brought about by the work of the Holy Spirit.  Jesus chastises his Jewish kinsmen in John 5 for searching the Scriptures to find eternal life not realizing that those very Scriptures bear witness to their Messiah who is standing right in front of them.  In one sense these Jews knew God but their zeal for God did not accord with right knowledge (Rom. 10:1-4).  But in another sense they were rejecting him because they were rejecting the one sent from God.  Their knowledge was not grounded in the Word of God.  They were blinded by their own expectations of a Messiah who would deliver them from earthly oppression and set up an earthly kingdom in Israel.  They had set their hope in Moses, but it was Moses who was accusing them.

It is an enlivening knowledge:

John the Baptist was described as a “burning and shining lamp.”  The work of the Spirit in the life of John resulted in a deep affection for his Messiah and a willingness to forsake all worldly comforts in order to prepare the way for him.  Here we must be careful to maintain a proper balance.  There are those who have a deep affection for God but it is not grounded in the Word of God.  They are tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine because their minds have not been trained to discern truth from error.  Such a person is like an untrained hunting dog chasing every car that passes while neglecting the pheasant in his own back yard.

It is a transforming knowledge:

When we have a true knowledge of Christ and we view him in all of his beauty and splendor we actually partake of his divine nature.  Second Corinthians tells us that “with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.  For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”  We become what we behold.  The spiritual man, when he spends his days gazing at the perfections of God, revealed in his Word, is transformed more and more into his likeness.  Many Christians will say that they are seeking to be like Christ yet spend no time meditating on his divine attributes revealed in the Scriptures.  Oh how we could be changed by the holiness of Christ, the authority of Christ, the judgment of Christ, the love of Christ, the goodness of Christ, the omniscience of Christ, the unchangeableness of Christ, the righteousness of Christ, the eternity of Christ, the dual nature of Christ, and on top of all of this the manifold perfections displayed perfectly in the work of the cross.

Conclusion:

Watson has a lot more to say to us about a godly man’s knowledge.  But my question for us is simply this: do you know God as he has revealed himself?  Have you fashioned for yourself a god of your own understanding?  Does the knowledge of God that you possess result in affection for Christ that leads to transformation?  To know God is to know his Son and to know his Son is to know the Scriptures.  Let us be people of the book and search the Scriptures in order to find Christ.

In his book, A Godly Man’s Picture, Thomas Watson opens his introduction with these words, “The soul being so precious, and salvation so glorious, it is the highest point of prudence to make preparations for another world.  It is beyond all dispute that there is an inheritance in light, and it is most strenuously asserted in Holy Scripture that there must be a fitness and suitability for it.”  Just like the kids I work with I long for the day when I can get out.  I long for my true heavenly home.  I long for my new physical body and most of all I long to eat at my Father’s table.  It is at this point I hear Watson whisper in my ear, “Do you think that what you are doing now is preparing you for that life?”

As Christians we are being fitted for heaven.  That’s not something we hear a lot about in our Christian bubbles but it’s true.  Psalm 24 asks the question, “Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord and who shall stand in his holy place?  He who has clean hands and a pure heart.”  Okay, but what does it mean to be fitted for heaven?   What does it mean to have a pure heart or clean hands?  What does that look like?  That is Thomas Watson’s goal in A Godly Man’s Picture.  He wants to give us a picture of true piety.  What is piety?  To put it simply, to be pious is to be devoted and conformed to God in all aspects of our lives.  I’m going to take the next several blog posts and do my best to present what Watson says is a true picture of piety.

You see, the truth is that I am just like the kids I work with every day.  Sometimes I can’t believe how they can be deceived so easily or how they can do what they’re doing and expect to get out of their current situation.  But how many times have I traded eternal pleasure for those that are fleeting and temporary just like them?  Perhaps as we think about what it means to be fitted for heaven we will admit with Watson that “[piety] is the grand business that should swallow up your time and thoughts.”  Maybe we will stop going spiritually AWOL.  Maybe we will stop trying to justify our minimal commitment to the gospel and the church of Christ by comparing ourselves to other minimalistic Christians.  Maybe we will stop self-destructing.  Maybe we will stop buying in to the deception of the world around us.  Maybe we will start to see that our souls are precious and our salvation is glorious and we will seek to do everything we can, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to prepare ourselves for the day we finally get out.