Attributes of God - Charnock - LIII - Chapter 13 (God's dominion) concluded

Required reading
Attributes of God by Charnock (Available from Amazon or free on the internet, here for example) - Conclude Chapter 13 (A discourse upon God's dominion).

My summary
Today Charnock gives us his fifth and last 'use' of the doctrine of God's dominion. 

Charnock teaches us that the doctrine of God's dominion exhorts us to:
(i) humility;
(ii) praise and thankfulness;
(iii) advance him as supreme;
(iv) fear and reverence him;
(v) prayer;
(vi) obedience;
(vii) patience.

What grabbed me
I appreciated the point about God's dominion driving you to prayer: 'Prayer to God, and trust in him, is inferred from his sovereignty. If be be the supreme Sovereign, holding heaven and earth in his hand, disposing all things here below, not committing every thing to the influence of the stars or the humours of men, we ought, then, to apply ourselves to him in every case, implore the exercise of his authority; we hereby own his peculiar right over all things and persons. He only is the supreme Head in all causes, and over all persons: 'Thine is the kingdom' (Matt vi. 13), concludes the Lord's prayer, both as a motive to pray, and a ground to expect what we want. He that believes not God's government will think it needless to call upon him, will expect no refuge under him in a strait, but make some creature-reed his support. If we do not seek to him, but rely upon the dominion we have over our own possessions, or upon the authority of any thing else, we disown his supremacy and dominion over all things; we have as good an opinion of ourselves, or of some creature, as we ought to have of God; we think ourselves, or some natural cause we seek to or depend upon, as much sovereigns as he, and that all things which concern us are as much at the dispose of an inferior, as of the great Lord. It is, indeed, to make a god of ourselves, or of the creature; when we seek to him, upon all occasions, we own this Divine eminency, we acknowledge that it is by him men's hearts are ordered, the world governed, all things disposed; and God, that is jealous of his glory, is best pleased with any duty in the creature that doth acknowledge and desire the glorification of it, which prayer and dependence on him doth in a special manner, desiring the exercise of his authority, and the preservation of it in ordering the affairs of the world.'

If I don't pray about what I need, then I assert that I have dominion over my needs.  Which is completely delusional.

Next week's reading
Commence Chapter 14 (A discourse upon God's patience) by reading up to the paragraph beginning 'II. The second thing, how this patience or slowness to anger is manifested'.

Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.