(2.) Again, ivhcn our hearts are enlarr/ed to pray, when we can pray from a broken heart. As you see here, he joins them together. God will deliver me, but it must be by your prayers. When we have hearts to pray, and when others have hearts to pray for us, that is the time of deliverance. Usually there goes before deliverance an enlarged heart to pray to God, as we see in Daniel, chap, ix., a little before they came out of Babylon, he had a large heart to pray to God. And when we can plead with God his promise, ' Remember, Lord, thy promise whei'eiu thou hast caused us to trust,' Ps. cxix. 49 ; when we can cast ourselves upon God's mercy with prayer, and plead with God to remember his promise, it is a sign God means to deliver us. When the heart is shut and closed up, that it cannot speak to God, when there is some sin or other that doth stifle the spirit, that it cannot vent itself with that liberty to God, it is a sign that it is not the time yet of God's deliverance.
God will at the length deliver. Therefore from both these, that he doth defer deliverance, and that he will dehver at length, let us infer this lesson of waiting ; let us wait therefore, and wait with comfort. Let us remember these principles.
First, God hath a time, as for all things, so for our deliverance.
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Secondly, that God's time is the best time. He is the best disccrner of oii]K)rtunities.
Thirdly, remember that this shall be when he hath wrought bis work upon our souls, specially when he hath made us to trust iij him. As here, when St Paul had learned to trust in God, then he delivered him. And why should we desire to do our bodies good, or our estates good, till God hath wrought his cure on our souls ? for God intends our souls in the first place. Our souls, they arc the whole man, in a manner. The welfare of the soul draws the welfare of the body, and the welfare of the estate after it. The body shall do well, if the soul do well.
Therefore we should desire rather that the Lord would let the affliction stay, than that it should part without the message for which God sends it. Every affliction is God's messenger. We should desire the Lord to let it stay for the answer for which he hath sent it.
And indeed, it will never part without the answer for which God sends it, till it have humbled us, till it have brou{,'ht us to trust in God, till we be such as we should be. And a Chiistian soul rather desii'es to be in the furnace, to be under the affliction, to be purged better yet, than to have the cross and affliction removed, and not to be a whit the better for it. There- fore, considering that there will be a time, and that God's time is the best time, and that this time will be when he hath fitted us, we should learn to wait in any cross, and not to be over hasty.
Again, consider, though the time be long, yet he will deliver at length by death. Death will end all miseries.
And consider, that how long soever we endure anything, yet what is that that we endure here, to that that we are freed from by Christ ? We are freed from misery, from all misery, from the wrath of God, from damnation. And what is that that we can suffer here, to the glory and joy that remains for us in heaven ? What is all that we can sufter here, to that that Christ hath endm'ed for us ? "What is all that we can endure here, to that that we have deserved ? Considering, then, what we ai'e delivered from, what God hath reserved for us, what Christ hath endured, and what we deserve, it will make us wait, and wait with patience. Especially considering, as I said before, that God is working his good work for our good. Though we at the first, perhaps, for a while do not see the meaning of the affliction, the meaning of the cross, we cannot read it perfectly, yet in general we may know it is for our good. God of his infinite wisdom will not sufler a hair to fall from our heads, without his providence. ' And all shall work together for the best to those that love him,' Kom. viii. 28.
It is long then, we see, ere God deliver ; and why ? and at the last he will deliver one way or other ; and therefore let us wait quietly. And this the saints of God have practised in all ages. ' Yet, my soul, keep silence to the Lord,' Ps. Ixii. 5. He had a shrewd conflict with himself, when he saw how good causes were trampled on, and he saw the insolence of wicked persons, how they lift up their heads, ' Yet, my soul, keep silence to the Lord.' So he begins, 'Yet God is good to Israel,' Ps. Ixxiii. 1, for all this. And God chargeth it upon his people that they should wait, ' If I tarry, wait thou,' Hab. ii. 2. And the blessing is promised to those that can wait and not murmur, as in Ps. cxlvii. 11. It is a duty that we are much urged to, and very hardly brought to the practice of. Therefore we are to hear it pressed the more, ' The Lord taketh pleasure in them that fear him, in those that hope in his mercy,' Ps. cxlvii. 11, in those that trust in his mercy.