If, however, prayer itself does not prove an effectual safeguard from persistence in sin, you will ask what other means can be hopefully employed.  None—­none whatever; that from which real prayer cannot preserve us is an inevitable misfortune.  But think you that any kind of sin can be among those misfortunes that cannot be avoided?  No, my friend:  “He is able to succour them that are tempted;"[26] and we are also assured that He is willing.  Cease, then, from accusing the All-merciful, even by implication, of being the cause of your continuing in sin, and examine carefully into the nature of those prayers which you complain have never been answered.  The Scripture reason for such disappointments is clearly and distinctly given:  “Ye ask and receive not, because ye ask amiss."[27] Examine, then, in the first place, whether you yourself are asking “amiss?” What is your primary motive for desiring the removal of this besetting sin?  Is it the consideration of its being so hateful in the sight of God, of its being injurious to the cause of religion? or is it not rather because you feel that it makes you unloveable to those around you, and inflicts pain on those who are very dear to you, at the same time lessening your own dignity and wounding your self-respect?  These are all proper and allowable motives of action while kept in their subordinate place; but if they become the primary actuating principle, instead of a conscientious hatred of sin because it is the abominable thing that God hates,[28] if pleasing man be your chief object, you have no reason to complain that your prayers are unanswered.  The word of God has told you that it must be so.  You have asked “amiss.”  There is also a secondary sense in which we may “ask amiss:”  when we pray without corresponding effort.  Some worthy people think that prayer alone is to obtain for them all the benefits they can desire, and that the influences of the Holy Spirit will, unassisted by human effort, produce a transforming change in the temper and the conduct.  This they call magnifying the grace of God, as if it could be supposed that his gracious help would ever be granted for the purpose of slackening, instead of encouraging and exciting, our own exertions.  Do not the Scriptures abound in exhortations, warnings, and threatenings on the subject of individual watchfulness, diligence, and unceasing conflicts?  “To the law and to the testimony, if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them."[29] Perhaps you have prayed under the mental delusion I have above described; you have expected the work should be done for you, instead of with you; that the constraining love of Christ would constrain you necessarily to abandon your sinful habits, while, in fact, its efficacy consists in constraining you to carry on a perpetual struggle against them.