_Direct._ I. See that you understand what prayer is; even the expressing or acting of our desires before another, to move or some way procure him to grant them. True christian prayer is, the believing and serious expressing or acting of our lawful desires before God, through Jesus our Mediator, by the help of the Holy Spirit, as a means to procure of him the grant of these desires. Here note, 1. That inward desire is the soul of prayer. 2. The expressions or inward actings of them, is as the body of prayer. 3. To men it must be desire so expressed, as they may understand it; but to God the inward acting of desires is a prayer, because he understandeth it.[54] 4. But it is not the acting of desire, simply in itself, that is any prayer; for he may have desires, that offereth them not up to God with heart or voice; but it is desires, as some way offered up to God, or represented, or acted towards him, as a means to procure his blessing, that is prayer indeed. _Direct._ II. See that you understand the ends and use of prayer. Some think that it is of no use, but only to move God to be willing of that which he was before unwilling of; and therefore because that God is immutable, they think that prayer is a useless thing. But prayer is useful, 1. As an act of obedience to God's command. 2. As the performance of a condition, without which he hath not promised us his mercy, and to which he hath promised it. 3. As a means to actuate, and express, and increase our own humility, dependence, desire, trust, and hope in God, and so to make us capable and fit for mercy, who else should be uncapable and unfit. 4. And so, though God be not changed by it in himself, yet the real change that is made by it on ourselves, doth infer a change in God by mere relation or extrinsical denomination; he being one that is, according to the tenor of his own established law and covenant, engaged to disown or punish the unbelieving, prayerless, and disobedient, and after engaged to own or pardon them that are faithfully desirous and obedient: and so this is a relative, or at least a denominative change. So that in prayer, faith and fervency are so far from being useless, that they as much prevail for the thing desired by qualifying ourselves for it, as if indeed they moved the mind of God to a real change: even as he that is in a boat, and by his hook layeth hold of the bank, doth as truly by his labour get nearer the bank, as if he drew the bank to him.