Sometimes our prayers can seem to get stuck on the same note. Perhaps we find it easier to give thanks for all our blessings than to confess our sins. Perhaps we request a fulsome list of petitions and don’t remember nearly so often to praise the name of our Lord. Or perhaps we rehearse the same wide range of topics in every prayer, but all in the same tone of voice. Our thanksgiving is not noticeably more thankful than our petitions, nor our confession much more mournful than our supplications. The Covenanting preacher John King (d. 1679) challenged his hearers on this issue. Pointing to the prayer of Habakkuk, John King observed that the notes struck by the Lord’s people in their prayers in Scripture go up or down depending largely on the welfare of the Lord’s cause. They are in harmony with the progress of the Lord’s work, whether in their own soul and personal circumstances, or the public situation more broadly. Habakkuk’s own desperate questions in the earlier part of his prophecy change by the end of the prophecy into a devoted commitment to the faithful Lord. In the following updated extract from his August 1678 sermon on Habakkuk 3:2, John King gives various examples of variety in the prayers of other believers. Some months later, John King was arrested. Along with his friend John Kid he was tortured and executed in the Edinburgh Grassmarket, going to glory almost exactly a year after this sermon was preached.

Habakkuk’s prayer is inscribed, “a prayer upon Sigionoth,” or “to the several tunes,” or as the margin of some Bibles says, “a prayer on the various songs, or tunes.” It is a prayer in many ways for the comforting of the poor people of God.

You will see in Scripture that the prayers of the people of God are not all on one and the same tune, so to speak. Some are in one arrangement, some in another. Sometimes they are up, and sometimes down. The Lord’s people have sometimes cause to mourn, and sometimes cause to rejoice. Sometimes their hearts are up, and again sometimes they are down.

Sometimes, if not often, the case of God’s people is like Hezekiah’s. “Like a crane, or a swallow, so did I chatter; I did mourn as a dove” (Isa. 38:14). Sometimes they roar and cry out, like David, “My bones waxed old through my roaring all day long” (Psa. 32:3). Sometimes they are made to sigh and groan, and can do more.

Their approaches to God are changeable, and what are the reasons of this? Why, because their exercises are changeable. Sometimes David says, “I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul” (1 Sam. 27:1), and yet again he says, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil” (Psalm 23:4). Many and various are the exercises of the people of God in their approaches to Him.

Unchanging prayers are unspiritual prayers

Well, friends, I name these exercises to let you see the worthlessness of many of our prayers. I feel that the prayers and approaches that many of us make are not worth much. What is the reason for this? Only that there is no alteration. We do not care whether the work of God is up or down. There are few changes and little exercise. People hold their heads high, and their prayers are worth little.

Many people say, “Thank God, I’ve never changed my prayer!” Many folk never change their tune or their prayers. Perhaps, for some worldly thing, they will. But though the cause of God, and the case of their soul, are of such great momentousness, they never trouble themselves with these. Saying this will upset many people who pray, or think they can. But remember that the prayers of God’s people are various, and their exercises are changeable.

Again, because there are no changes, their prayers cannot be spiritual. There are no ups and downs with them; they cannot address themselves to God. I cannot tell if their prayers are worth much more; on the contrary, it is good evidence that our addresses to God, either for God’s work or on behalf of our own soul, are acceptable, when you find many ups and downs in your soul’s case. But I think there is little of this exercise amongst us at present.

Difficult times are times for praying

The prophet is looking at the prosperity of the wicked, and the sad situation of the godly. When people look at that, they think themselves far off from the Lord. It is mysterious to flesh and blood to see the Lord casting down His own people, laying them low, and permitting them to be trodden and trampled on, as if they were earthworms, by enemies and adversaries who have everything going well with them.

It is indeed a perplexing business. It perplexed Jeremiah when he saw such dispensations (Jer. 12). “Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper? Wherefore are all they happy that deal very treacherously?” And yet he does not dare to say anything other than, “The Lord is righteous,” and prays to the Lord to pull them out, like sheep for the slaughter.

Asaph was similarly perplexed (Psa. 73). You must not be afraid of religion. New beginners, don’t be afraid of the cross. But if you get the cross on your back, as others have, will you be afraid? Or will you suffer? Will you lay down your lives, if you are called to it? The psalmist wonders at it. It is astonishing that he was afflicted all day long, and when he got strokes all day long, it was mighty perplexing to him. “For all the day long I have been plagued, and chastened every morning” (Psa. 73:14). He was saying, as you will say, “I have washed my hands in innocency.”

But then, you see, he turns it to another tune. “In the sanctuary I understood … Surely thou didst set them in slippery places … So foolish was I, and ignorant! … Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory …” (Psa. 73:16–28). Well then, set yourselves for it. Know, that though you meet with evil things, yet the good of all is coming. Therefore don’t let this scare you away from religion and the pursuit of godliness, even though it was perplexing to the psalmist.

Praying tunefully comes from thinking of eternity

Then notice this about Habakkuk’s prayer. In this perplexing situation, with the wicked prospering, and the church cast down, we don’t know what to do. We are plagued, and they prosper. Notice that the best way to get out of all this is to go to God by prayer. Habakkuk prayed, as you have it in the text, and the godly man in Psalm 73 started praying, when he was almost swept off his feet, for all his rash saying about “cleansing his heart in vain,” etc. He continued like that until he went to the sanctuary, and then he saw their end. It was not all gold that glittered with them! No, it was hardly as much as a picture of happiness. The prosperity of the wicked is sometimes not long, and we don’t know how soon the vengeance of God may fall on them.

Many, nowadays, say that their mountain stands strong, and they shall never be moved. But you don’t know how soon they shall be brought to destruction, and so come to nothing. Thanks be to God, that all they can get of His people here is only temporary. But the sorrows of the wicked are for a long duration, ever-more.

Do not grudge about your persecution and bad treatment. You must be content with what you get along with the rest of His children, while you are here, and take what He allots you.

An excerpt from a sermon by John Kid, who was executed alongside John King, can be found here, “Ten ways to best make use of free grace.“

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