"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened." Matthew 7:7-8
The threefold promise annexed to the threefold precept, should encourage all Christians to be instant, fervent, and constant in prayer.
Though prayer is not the ground, nor the cause of obtaining favors and mercies from God—yet it is the means, it is the silver channel, it is the golden pipe, through which the Lord is pleased to convey to His people all temporal, spiritual, and eternal favors. God promises to give them the cream, the choicest, the sweetest of all spiritual, eternal, and temporal blessings; but mark, Ezekiel 36:37, "I will yet for this be inquired of by the house of Israel, to do it for them." Though God is very prompt and ready to bestow upon His people the best and the greatest of blessings—yet He will by prayer be sought unto, for the actual enjoyment of them. He who has no heart to pray for a mercy, he has no ground to believe that God will ever give him the mercy. There is no receiving without asking, no finding without seeking, no opening without knocking. The proud beggar gets nothing from men, and the dumb sinner gets nothing of God. As there is no mercy too great for God to give, so there is no mercy too little for us to crave. Certainly that man has little worth in him who thinks any mercy not worth a seeking.
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Thomas Brooks (1608 - 1680)
Much of what is known about Thomas Brooks has been ascertained from his writings. Born, likely to well-to-do parents, in 1608, Brooks entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge in 1625, where he was preceded by such men as Thomas Hooker, John Cotton, and Thomas Shepard. He was licensed as a preacher of the Gospel by 1640. Before that date, he appears to have spent a number of years at sea, probably as a chaplain with the fleet.After the conclusion of the First English Civil War, Thomas Brooks became minister at Thomas Apostle's, London, and was sufficiently renowned to be chosen as preacher before the House of Commons on December 26, 1648. His sermon was afterwards published under the title, 'God's Delight in the Progress of the Upright', the text being Psalm 44:18: 'Our heart is not turned back, neither have our steps declined from Thy way'. Three or four years afterwards, he transferred to St. Margaret's, Fish-street Hill, London. In 1662, he fell victim to the notorious Act of Uniformity, but he appears to have remained in his parish and to have preached as opportunity arose. Treatises continued to flow from his pen.[3]
Thomas Brooks was a nonconformist preacher. Born into a Puritan family, he was sent to Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He soon became an advocate of the Congregational way and served as a chaplain in the Civil War. In 1648 he accepted the rectory of St. Margaret's, New Fish Street, London, but only after making his Congregational principles clear to the vestry.
On several occasions he preached before Parliament. He was ejected in 1660 and remained in London as a Nonconformist preacher. Government spies reported that he preached at Tower Wharf and in Moorfields. During the Great Plague and Great Fire he worked in London, and in 1672 was granted a license to preach in Lime Street. He wrote over a dozen books, most of which are devotional in character. He was buried in Bunhill Fields.