By Martin Luther
Thou must learn to pray and not sit alone or lie about, hanging your head and shaking it, brooding over your thoughts, worrying about how you can escape and looking at nothing but yourself and your sad and pitiful condition. Get up you lazy villain, then fall upon your knees, lift up your eyes and hands towards heaven, take a Psalm or The Lord's Prayer, and pour out your trouble with tears before God, lamenting and calling upon him.
The lifting up of hands, prayer and the mentioning of trouble are sacrifices most pleasing to God. He desires it, and it is His will, that you should pour out your trouble before Him, and not let it lie upon yourself, dragging it about with you and being chafed and tortured by it, so that in the end you make two, or even ten or a hundred calamities out of one. He wills that you should be too weak to bear and overcome such trouble, in order that you may learn to find strength in Him, and that He may be praised through His strength in you.Behold, this is how Christians are made!
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