Thursday, October 30, 2008

A Wider Blessing



My brethren, if you pray tomorrow for God to send a favorable wind to waft the missionary-ship to its haven, the same wind will waft a merchantman, or a pirate too, if they are going the same way. It may be that you pray that rain may come to extinguish a fire, and perhaps a shower comes, but you do not expect it to fall just where the fire is, but also for miles around. If you know some poor man living in Lancashire, and you pray for him, that God would deliver him from poverty. If your prayer is heard, it may very likely be by quickening the trade of the whole country, and conferring a blessing on the people of the whole neighborhood. In fact, you know yourselves if you are praying to God to bless your children, it is not possible that your children should be blessed without the blessing coming down upon others, because God’s blessing any one man is the means indirectly of blessing other people. You cannot have a godly family down a court, without the whole court being the better for it. You cannot have one Christian man favored by his God without his household having some portion of the favor. God sends the favor only to his servants-that is the special intention, but still there comes with that a wider blessing.

From a sermon entitled "General And Yet Particular," delivered April 24, 1864. Flickr photo by Chris Gin; some rights reserved.

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