Matthew Henry’s “Method For Prayer”

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

Confession 2.3 | NASB

I must lament my present corrupt disposition to that which is evil, and my aversion 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.

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

By nature I am darkened in my understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in me, because of the hardness of my heart. Ephesians 4:18(NASB)

The things of the Spirit of God are foolishness to the natural man; neither can I understand them, in and of myself, because they are spiritually appraised. 1 Corinthians 2:14(NASB)

I am shrewd to do evil, but to do good I do not know. Jeremiah 4:22(NASB) I do not know nor do I understand; I walk about in darkness. Psalm 82:5(NASB)

Indeed, God speaks once, or twice, yet I do not notice it; Job 33:14(NASB) I keep on hearing, but I do not understand; Matthew 13:14(NASB) and I see men as trees, walking around. Mark 8:24(NASB)

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

I have within me a mind set on the flesh, which is hostile toward God and does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so. Romans 8:7(NASB)

You have written for me ten thousand precepts of Your law, yet they have been regarded by me as a strange thing; Hosea 8:12(NASB) and my corrupt heart has been sometimes ready to say, “Who is the Almighty, that I should serve Him?” Job 21:15(NASB) And that I would certainly carry out every word that has proceeded from my mouth. Jeremiah 44:17(NASB) For I have followed the impulses of my heart and the desires of my eyes, Ecclesiastes 11:9(NASB) indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind. Ephesians 2:3(NASB)

My neck has been an iron sinew, Isaiah 48:4(NASB) and I have made my heart like flint; I have refused to pay attention, turned a stubborn shoulder, Zechariah 7:11-12(NASB) and stopped my ears like a deaf cobra that does not hear the voice of charmers, or a skillful caster of spells. Psalm 58:4-5(NASB)

How I have hated instruction! And my heart has spurned reproof! I have not listened to the voice of my teachers, nor inclined my ear to my instructors. Proverbs 5:12-13(NASB)

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