Matthew Henry’s “Method For Prayer”

Lament your Disposition to Evil and Confess your Blind Understanding and Stubborn Will

Confession 2.3 | KJV

I must lament my present corrupt disposition to that which is evil, and my indisposedness to and impotency in that which is good. I must look into my own heart and confess with holy blushing:

The blindness of my understanding and its unaptness to admit the rays of the divine light.

By nature my understanding is darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in me, because of the blindness of my heart. Ephesians 4:18(KJV)

The things of the Spirit of God are foolishness to the natural man, neither can I know them, because they are spiritually discerned. 1 Corinthians 2:14(KJV)

I am wise to do evil, but to do good I have no knowledge. Jeremiah 4:22(KJV) I know not, neither do I understand; I walk on in darkness. Psalm 82:5(KJV)

God speaketh once, yea, twice, but I perceive it not; Job 33:14(KJV) but hearing, I hear and do not understand; Matthew 13:14(KJV) and I see men as trees walking. Mark 8:24(KJV)

The stubbornness of my will and its unaptness to submit to the rules of the divine law.

I have within me a carnal mind, which is enmity against God and is not in subjection to the law of God, neither indeed can be. Romans 8:7(KJV)

Thou hast written to me the great things of thy law, but they have been accounted by me a strange thing; Hosea 8:12(KJV) and my corrupt heart has been sometimes ready to say, What is the Almighty, that I should serve him? Job 21:15(KJV) And that I would certainly do whatsoever thing goeth forth out of my own mouth. Jeremiah 44:17(KJV) For I have walked in the way of my own heart and in the sight of my eyes, Ecclesiastes 11:9(KJV) fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind. Ephesians 2:3(KJV)

My neck hath been an iron sinew, Isaiah 48:4(KJV) and I have made my heart as an adamant stone; I have refused to hearken, have pulled away the shoulder, Zechariah 7:11-12(KJV) and stopped my ears like the deaf adder that will not hearken to the voice of the charmer, charm he never so wisely. Psalm 58:4-5(KJV)

How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof, and have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined my ear to them that instructed me. Proverbs 5:12-13(KJV)

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