The prayer you have offered is filled with right desires: you seek God’s favor, you ask for open doors, and you call upon the name of Jesus Christ. This is good. But let us examine the foundation of such a request, lest we unwittingly quench the very Spirit whose help we need. For you also ask for success in every circumstance and the fulfillment of promises today. Hear what the Apostle says: “Quench not the Spirit.” And how is this precious gift quenched? By an impure life, yes, but also by casting upon its light the dust of earthly things and the cares of fluctuating matters. If your heart is a lamp, the oil is your faith working through love, and the door of that lamp is your mouth. When you demand a breakthrough on your own schedule, insisting that today must be the day, you risk opening a door for a violent blast of impatience. This wind can extinguish the light of grace. Shut that door with the fear of God. Do not add force to the storm of your anxieties by dictating terms to the Almighty.
Consider the blessed Paul and Silas, confined in the inner prison, their feet in the stocks. They did not pray for a job or for open doors of a temporal kind; they prayed and sang praises to God at midnight. The breakthrough came suddenly: an earthquake, open doors, loosened bands. Yet their true desire was not for their own release, for they did not flee. The providence of God was aimed at the jailer’s salvation. You see, their physical chains were loosed so that the spiritual chains of a whole household might be broken. They sought first the Kingdom, and the earthly door was opened merely as a servant to that higher end. You ask God to make a way where there seems to be no way. He does this perfectly, but the way He makes is first a highway for His grace into the hearts of men, for the jailer fell trembling and cried, “What must I do to be saved?” not, “What must I do to find a better wage?”
Therefore, let your prayer be this: that you may not be a cause for the Spirit to be quenched. If you would have a Queen to intercede for you and open the gates of heaven, then court her with your own deeds. For mercifulness is a most excellent art and a protector of those who labor at it. She is a queen indeed, making men like God. When she approaches the heavenly doors, no guard dares ask who she is; they all straightway receive her. Let your first ambition, then, be to practice this art purely, not as extortion, but as a free gift to those in need. As you seek favor for the work of your hands, let your own hands be open. The chains that most need shattering are not those of your current circumstances, but the inward bonds of sin and anxiety. As the earthquake came for the jailer, so your true restoration will come not when you merely secure employment, but when, like him, you wash the stripes of the afflicted and are yourself washed clean. Seek first that miracle, and then, with a heart guarded from vainglory and a mouth shut in faithful patience, you may see just how God ordains the doors of your life to open, in His time and for His glory. Rejoice, believing in God with all your house.