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.