Thomas Brooks in The Privy Key to Heaven gives 20 arguments for private prayer. Every paragraph is a banquet. The one I read today, the 16th, is particularly appropriate for our time: "Consider, the times wherein we live call aloud for secret prayer." Of his day Brooks says, "Ah, England, England! what pride, luxury, lasciviousness, licentiousness, wantonness, drunkenness, cruelties, injustice, oppressions, fornications, adulteries, falsehoods, hypocrisy, bribery, atheism, horrid blasphemies and hellish impieties are now to be found rampant in the midst of thee!" This was the same in Jeremiah's day. What did Jeremiah do? "But if ye will not hear it, my soul shall weep in secret places." And so Brooks calls "every Christian to his closet, and there weep, with weeping Jeremiah, bitterly, for all these great abominations whereby God is dishonoured openly....Oh blush in secret for them that are past all blushing for their sins; for who knows but that the whole land may fare the better for the sakes of a few that are mourners in secret? But however it goes with the nation, such as mourn in secret for the abominatrions of the times, may be confident that when sweeping judgments shall come upon the land, the Lord will hide them in the secret chambers of his providence."
Give me tears, Lord, first for my own sins, then for the sins of my family, church and nation. Send revival.
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