What shall be my first suggestion? It shall point to the Throne of Grace. Preface the pastoral round with special secret prayer. Sermons are usually (I wish it were always so now) prefaced with prayer in the pulpit that the heavenly blessing may rest upon the ordinance. Is it less fitting, less necessary, to prepare for the afternoon's or evening's visitation with a secret petition in your own room that the apostolic ordinance of domestic visitation [Acts xx. 20, 21.], to be administered now by you, may have the special grace of God in it? Pray for yourself, my younger Brother.
Ask that you may go out well furnished with the peace, and patience, and wisdom laid up for you in your Lord; that you may have "by the Holy Spirit a right judgment in all things"; that you may have "the tongue of the taught,[15] to speak a word in season to them that are weary"; whatever sort of weariness it is. Pray for that secret skill of discernment which can see the difference of spiritual states, and allot warning or comfort not at random but "in due season." Pray for that readiness for the unexpected which is best secured and best maintained in a close and conscious intimacy with your Saviour. The man "found in Him" will be found ready _in spirit_ (and that is after all the essential in spiritual work) for the sudden question, whether anxious or captious, for the sudden rudeness of ignorance or opposition, and again for the chronic and so to speak passive difficulty of indifference. "The tongue of the taught," while the "taught" man is found in Christ, will ever be sweet, wise, and truthful, as the owner of it goes his round. But we must seek for it; "He will be enquired of for this thing." [SN: Ezek. xxxvi. 37.]
[15] Isai. l. 4. Obviously the word "learned" in our Version is there used in its old English sense, "instructed, taught." No slight on "book-learning" is ever conveyed in the Scriptures. But the man in view here is not the highly-educated person, but the believer who has listened with _the ear_ "of the taught" (see the end of the verse), as a disciple at the Master's feet; and so goes forth to speak with "_the tongue_ of the taught," as a messenger who has learned sympathy, insight, holy tact and truthfulness, from the Master's heart. The whole passage is full of the blessed Messiah Himself, I know. But it has its reflected reference for all His true followers, and above all for all His true Ministers. May He give us, in His mercy, for every act of our messenger-work, both the ear and the tongue of His "taught" ones.
Then, as you pray for yourself, you will pray also for the people you are about to visit. Perhaps they are as yet strange to you, and you can ask for them only in general. But if you know anything at all about them it will be worth while to individualize your prayer, however briefly. Special, detailed prayer _is_ a power with God. And it is a power with man too. To be dealing with one for whom you know you have prayed is already to have a foothold there. Perhaps you may have an opportunity to _say_, quite naturally, that you have been praying for him; and this may very possibly be a direct vehicle of blessing.
You will go out then, as directly as possible, from the secret place of heavenly intercourse. That is a bracing atmosphere:
"Fresh airs and heavenly odours breathe around The throne of grace;"
and those airs can quicken the young Pastor's spirit for the heaviest hours of a sultry afternoon or evening, till he comes back weary to his rooms, "tired in the Lord's work, but not tired of it," as dying Whitefield said.