We know Matthew Henry as a man of the Word. His expositions of Scripture continue to help generations of Bible students. But it is the prayers of a man that truly reveal his heart. The spiritual insight that he demonstrated in his published commentaries was cultivated in the secret place of communion with God.

4 Lessons from the Prayer Life of Matthew Henry 

Matthew Henry recorded many of his deepest prayers and thoughts in a personal diary. Below are four of those entries from multiple years on New Year’s Day. Take the time to slowly read each and then pause to make your own New Year’s Prayer of consecration to God. As you read godly Matthew Henry’s New Year’s prayers, you will observe 4 things:

1. His continued struggle with sin.

Holy men are not free from fleshly lusts, but they are still in the battle. Humble hearts are quick to confess their sin and need. In the first of these prayers, you will see an unsettledness in his own mind. A lesson for us all: we cannot lean on our good frame of mind, and we must not be led astray by a bad frame of mind! “I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus name.”

2. His constant reconsecration to Christ.

This is the secret to a life of integrity and faithfulness. Dedication is not an event; it is a way of life. We all fail to keep so many things we have committed to God. But this is no reason to give up! God is a God of new beginnings, and we must choose to start again. Pick up where you left off and go on with God. ^“And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not” (Galatians 6:9).

3. His certain faith in the faithfulness of God.

It is evident from his prayers, especially in 1704, that he had no idea what the year ahead would hold. Yet he was confident that whatever the year brought, God’s grace would be sufficient for all of the extremes of life. The longer we all live, the less confidence we have in ourselves and the more confident we are in God’s enabling.

4. His consistent surrender to serve the Lord.

In the final entry below, it is evident that, even in the later years of his life, his passion was to stay useful in the work of God. Three years removed from this entry, he was with Christ. Just days before his death friend asked if he had any last statement to give to others. These were his words: ”A life spent in the service of God and communion with Him is the most comfortable and pleasant life that anyone can live in this world.” The next day he went to Heaven. Some year will be our last, and our prayer should be that we will continue to bear fruit until God calls us home.

Matthew Henry’s January 1st Prayers

Matthew Henry once wrote, “Wherever man has a tent, God should have an altar.” It is my hope that when you finish reading his New Year’s prayers, you too will find a place to have an altar and make your own New Year’s prayer to the Lord. May God help us all to make the first day of this year a day of prayer…

His Cry from a Broken Heart // January 1, 1703

“Unfixedness of thought, a wretched desultoriness; some speak of time well spent in thinking, but I find unless in speaking, reading or writing, my thinking doth not turn to much account, though I have had comfort in some broken good thoughts, yet I can seldom fix my heart to a chain of them; O that the thought of my heart may be forgiven.”

A Prayer of Resolution // January 1, 1704

“This New Years Day I have in much weakness, and compassed about with many infirmities, upon my knees made a fresh surrender of myself, my whole self, all I am, all I have, all I can do, to God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, my Creator, Owner, Ruler and Benefactor; all my affections to be ruled by the divine grace, and all my affairs overruled by the divine providence, so as I may not come short of glorifying God in this World, and being glorified with him in a better World. Confirming and ratifying all former resignations of myself to God, and lamenting all the disagreeableness of my heart and life therewith, and depending upon the merit of the redeemer to make this and all my other services acceptable, and the grace of the Sanctifier to enable me to make good these engagements, I again bind my soul with a bond to the Lord, and commit myself entirely to him; particularly, as to the events of this year which I am now entering upon, not knowing the things that may abide me in it.

• If this year should be a year of continued health and comfort, I commit myself to the grace of God to be preserved from carnal security, and to be enabled in a day of prosperity to serve God with joy.
• If my opportunities as a minister, should be this year continued, I commit my studies, and ministerial labors at home and abroad, to the blessing of God; having afresh consecrated them all to his service and honor, earnestly desiring mercy of the Lord to be faithful and successful.
• If I should be this year at any time tried with doubts concerning my duty, I commit myself to the divine conduct, with an unbiased desire, praying to know what God will have me to do, with a fixed resolution by his grace to follow his direction in the integrity of my heart.
• If I should this year be afflicted in my body, family, name or estate, I commit my all to the divine dispose; the will of the Lord be done; only begging that the grace of God may go along with the providence of God in all my afflictions, to enable me both to bear them well and to use them well.
• If this year I should be disturbed or molested in the exercise of my ministry, if I should be silenced, or other ways suffer for well doing, I commit the keeping of my soul to God as to a faithful Creator; depending upon him to guide me in my call to suffer, and to make that clear, and to preserve me from perplexing snares; depending upon him to support and comfort me under my sufferings, and to bring glory to himself out of them, and then welcome his whole will.”

Matthew Henry’s Dedication to Holiness // January 1, 1705

“Not renouncing, but repeating and ratifying all my former covenants with God, and lamenting it, that I have not lived up more closely to them; I do in the beginning of this New Year solemnly make a fresh surrender of my self, my whole self, body, soul and spirit, to God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, my Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier, covenanting and promising, not in any strength of my own, for I am very weak, but in the strength of the grace of Jesus Christ, that I will endeavor this year to stand complete in all the will of God. I know this is the will of God, even my sanctification; Lord grant that this year I may be more holy, and walk more closely than ever in all holy conversation; I earnestly desire to be filled with holy thoughts, to be carried out in holy affections, determined by holy aims and intentions, and governed in all my words and actions by holy principles. O that a golden thread of holiness may run through the whole web of this year.”

His Prayer for Usefulness to God // January 1, 1711

”What work I have to do for Thee this year, O my God, I depend upon thy grace throughly to furnish me for it, and to work all my works in me; particularly to assist me in the great work of my expositions, that I may write nothing that is frivolous or foreign, nothing that is foolish or flat, that may give just offense, or lead into any mistakes; but that all may be clear and pertinent and affecting; that I may find out genuine expositions, useful observations, profitable matter, and acceptable words, if it shall please God to spare me to go on with it.”

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