Shepherd the Flock

“…we should pray that we may learn to be thankful to Him for those mercies we have received from Him. For if God should bestow mercies upon us unasked we would forget them…What we win with prayer, we wear with thankfulness. And what we get without prayer, we spend and use without any lifting up of the heart to God in praising Him, and acknowledging His hand in bestowing it upon us….”"…There is no day where we do not use many of His blessings and take many of His comforts. Now we may not take any of them without His permission, so that you are bound to ask for them before you take them, and pray a blessing upon them, or else you have no right to them…if we neglect [prayer/thankfulness], we rob God of His mercies. We take them without His permission.” - Taken from The Puritans on Prayer, in the section penned by John Preston