Listen To It Here:
Good morning! When I started praying
and trying to figure out what to preach on, I felt that God was telling me I
should share about something I struggle with, something He is wanting me to
develop a deeper understanding of. if you can’t
figure out from that funny little clip we just showed, I will be talking about
prayer today. I don't know about you,
but prayer is one of the spiritual disciplines I struggle with the most.
While meeting with a few people from church, the question always arises:
"How has your prayer life been?"
The answer always seemed to be the same. "it could be worse…
it could be better". Which to me is
a pretty lame answer to give about my communication with God.
Here is a question for you by a show of hands: How many of you have sent
a handful of texts or emails before coming to church? (response). And how many
people have spent times of Facebook when you woke up this morning? (response)
Now don't raise your hands for this next one but answer it to yourself
honestly. How many of you have spent
that same amount of time talking to God today? For myself I can honestly say
that I spend more time texting people and talking on the Facebook then I do in
prayer. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 says
that: We are to rejoice always, pray without ceasing, and give thanks in all
circumstances; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. We are to
pray without ceasing! But I feel like I struggle when just trying to "fit
time into my schedule to pray", and I have a feeling that I might not be
alone in this. There are a few different passages I'd like us to spend some
time in today as we discover just what prayer is supposed to look like and the
significant part it plays in our lives.
As funny as that video was, I do think that it
shows how we view prayer at different times in our walk with God. I know that I
have done just about every one of those things when I have prayed. I would get
myself pumped about prayer: "Ok, ok! I am going to pray! Seriously this
time! I've got this!" Right before
bed, I’d light my candles, set my prayer mood
lighting, turn the worship slow jams on and before you knew it, I’d
be out like a light! Or I would be praying with some of the guys from church
and want to show that I could roll with the big dogs and pray with big people
words. And I know we have all made our
lists of things to pray for. I am not saying that these things are wrong to
do. Lists are great and can keep us on
track and help us to remember what we are bringing to God. And for a lot of
parents, the only time they can get some alone time with the Lord is when the
kids are finally in bed and they themselves are settling down for the night.
But what if prayer was much more then all of that? Although these things are
helpful, sometimes we get too caught up in the lists and the where and whens of
prayer and that can actually take away from our prayer time. Matthew 6:7 says "When you pray, do
not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of
their many words." We need to be praying with intention and not with
just mindless talk. We see specific guidelines on what and how to pray
throughout the entire new testament. If you would please turn your bibles to Luke 11:1-4 well start here and read along:
One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he was finished, one of his
disciples said to him: "Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his
disciples." Time and time again, the disciples had witnessed Jesus
taking time out of his life of ministry to pray. Although He was both God and man , He spent
time in prayer and He understood the necessity of developing a deeper
relationship with God through prayer. Jesus would retire away from the crowds
and even His disciples to pray and there are multiple accounts throughout the
New Testament where He actually broke away from the groups of people in order
to go pray. This was a huge sign to the disciples of how important prayer was….and
it should be a sign to us as well.. As the disciples were witnessing Jesus’
devotion to God through prayer and the way He communicated with His Heavenly
Father, they began to understand that if John taught his disciples how to pray
and Jesus spent just as much time in prayer then how much more should they. One
day, the disciples approached Jesus after He had concluded His time in prayer.
One of the disciples requested that Jesus teach them to pray as John had taught
his disciples. This should be how we approach our own prayer lives. We are to come to the Lord with the simple
mind set of, “ Lord, teach me how to pray.”
Without the Lord’s help we will never be able to pray as
we ought. Jesus is more then willing to teach us how to pray, but we must ask
for His help. We need to be willing to let God change and mold us into the
people wants us to be. If the Son of God needed to spend time in prayer with
God, how much more important is it for us to do the same?
Growing up, I was taught to pray the
Our Father in church every week. We would all stand, join hands, and begin to
pray in unison. I don't know if I actually thought about what I was saying when
I prayed that prayer. I would either be
watching the people in front of me thinking, "Man, I am sure glad I don’t
have to hold hands with him!" Or I would be sitting there having a hand
squeezing contest with my brother. I
feel like the repetition with which the Lord's prayer is prayed, has caused us
to lose the meaning of it, and that when we were taught to memorize it, for
some we were never taught the meaning behind what we were praying. Jesus gave his disciples the Lord’s
Prayer as a model to guide them in praying. It was not meant to become a
robotic answering machine message that is recited out of habit. If we look at
Luke 11:2-4 we see what Jesus taught us to do when we pray. Follow along:
"He said to them, "When you
pray, say: "Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each
day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins
against us. And lead us not into temptation." Jesus did pray in this
manner, as we see when He is praying just before He is arrested for his
crucifixion. The only part of this prayer that Jesus would not have prayed
would have been for the forgiveness of sins, as Jesus was free from all sin.
Let’s go through and look at the model for
prayer that Jesus gave us to better understand how to pray. The prayer starts
off with the word “Father,”. Even though this word has become just another
word in our prayer vocabulary, it is
powerful because it reminds us that we are God’s
children. We are proclaiming an understanding that God is our heavenly Father
and that we depend fully on Him. When we come to the Lord, we are to come as
children, looking up to our Father, longing for His loving affection and
knowing that His desire is to look after us. We continue praying “hallowed
be Your name.”
It is not coincidence that just after the proclamation that God is
our Father, we are announcing that His name is above all
names. We are stating that His name is the one True, Holy, Just, and Awesome
name. “Your kingdom come” is a longing that not only would God's
heavenly kingdom come to earth but that His will would be done on this earth
through us. Oftentimes this line is prayed: “Your
kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”
. We are praying that God's plan be fulfilled on this earth and that we are
happy with its outcome, even if it is beyond our understanding. We long for His word be fulfilled in every
way, because we know that His word is just and true. The statement "give
us our daily bread" is asking that God would give us our basic needs
daily. Our daily bread is a slight reference to when the Jews were in the
desert for 40 years, depending on God to give them daily Manna. We are praying for the same thing. We are
asking God to bring us what we need to survive day by day. God knows what we
need and how much of it. Often times ,we
think we need more then we really do, when in reality we have far more then is
needed in life.….We are told to pray for what we need
to survive. The next part of the prayer
model is the open confession of our sins to God, God already knows our sins,
even though we might be thinking we are hiding them. By confessing our sins, we are admitting that
we have done wrong against God and that we need His forgiveness and help to
overcome the temptation of sin in our lives. Thankfully, God sent His Son to
die on the cross for all of our sins, and by this sacrifice, our sins are
forgiven and wiped clean. The next part I don't know if we take to heart too
much when praying. Or possibly we pray
it without fully meaning it. We are told to forgive those who have sinned
against us. I am going to give that a
few seconds to sink in. ...forgive those...who have sinned against you as God
has forgiven you. How many of us have prayed
this to God and not fully forgiven all those in our lives who have hurt
us? Although because we are sinners, we
might not be able to fully forgive those who have sinned against us, we need to
realize that in God’s power we CAN forgive them. We need to come before God and confess to Him
that we struggle with these people and ask Him for the strength to forgive
them. This is something we need to take more seriously in our lives, as it is a
straight command from God. He never said to tolerate those around us and put up
with them. He said to forgive them. Forgiveness may not be an instantaneous thing
that happens in our lives, but with the help of God , we can overcome all of
the hurts in our lives I have a brother, who most of you are not aware of. Concerning
forgiveness, my brother has been my biggest struggle over the past five years.
He has said things to my parents that have deeply hurt them and has hurt the
entire family. For many years, even
though I could forgive other people, I
could not bring myself to forgive my brother. It took the help of and the power
of God to finally be able to forgive him.
I will confess that I don’t have a relationship with him and he
is not in my life. Maybe one day that will change. God is the only one can work in his life and
turn him from the path of destruction that he is going down. But the great news for all of us, including
my brother, is that God's grace and forgiveness is unconditional. It is
available for everyone, no matter what choices we have made in our lives. There is nothing we can do to stop God's love
from reaching us! Because that is just
who God is! Finally, we are to pray for
God to protect us from the temptation of sin in our lives. We need God to help
us with the sin in our lives. We need a
longing to draw closer to God. We need a longing to eliminate sin from our
lives. But this longing can only be
done with God’s help. Christ gave us this model for
prayer in our lives so that can pray effectively to the Lord without babbling.
All of these things that we follow
in this pray model help us to pray effectively. What if I told you that
sometimes God doesn't hear your prayers? That seems like a crazy statement
because all this time we are told that God is always watching us, always listening,
always willing and longing to help. And
that is true. In the prayer model that
Christ gives us, He is teaching us to pray effectively so that we might be
heard by God. By the confession of sins and having the blood of Christ to
cleanse us, we can come before the Lord, humbly and with God's will in our
hearts. This does not necessarily mean that our prayers will be answered the
way we want them to be. We are to pray with God's will in our hearts and be
joyful no matter what the outcome. God has our best interests in mind and if we
pray according to His will, then we are pleasing the Lord. The last part is
simple and straight the point. When we pray, we are to pray with full faith
that God will come through and His plan will be fulfilled. Mark 11:24 states: Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer,
believe that you have received it and it will be yours. If we are praying a
prayer pleasing to the Lord, praying according to his word and His will and if
we are praying with the ultimate trust that He will provide, then we can see
great, amazing, outta this world things happen! I am sure we can talk for hours
about the miraculous ways God has worked in our lives, but I will leave you
with these two short examples. When I was a teenager, last week, I was
attending a conference with over 2000 teens.
We were told that one of the teens wanted to attend badly but was in the
hospital and the doctors told him he was way too sick to leave anytime soon. We all prayed for him that night and the
next day we were told that at around the same time we had been praying, this
young man was having horrible pains, bad enough that the nurses and doctors
were all in the room but couldn't figure out what was wrong! So again we prayed
for this young man, that God would watch over him while he was in the hospital.
The next day, when we were preparing for church, we were given an announcement
that the boy we had been praying for was with us and had been healed and was
able to share in church and communion with us!! Two days prior he had been told
he was going to be in the hospital for a long while! God is good! This last account is recent. We all know there were horrific fires in
Colorado. Each year there is a huge music festival called Heaven Fest. This year the entire staff, their friends,
and families got together to pray for rain to pass over the state. They prayed
for a good long time, petitioning the Lord to bring rain. As they were leaving, a storm cloud rolled
over and it began to rain! How great is
our God! For the five of you here who might have possibly read my blog , you know that I always give a challenge and I
will do the same today. I challenge all
of us to pray this prayer model for one month! I give thanks for each and
everyone of my brothers and sisters here! If each and every one of us, sitting
in this church today devoted ourselves to prayer, imagine the ways God would work through us.
