Prayer

(Stop song leader as he goes to sit down do you have your wallet on you, can I have a dollar. If he says yes Oh do you have another one, if he gives it to me how a bout a 20.........)

(give him his money back)

What happens to a child who is given everything they ask for, they just want more, and then over time they begin to expect it and expect that they will be given everything they want, they get spoiled.

What do you think about a parent who gives a child everything they ask for? How would you respond to your child asking for something? Would you only give them what they have earned, most parents are willing to give their kids gifts from time to time without them having to earn it, we love our kids and we like to see them happy but we don’t want to overdo it. We don’t want them to get lazy or spoiled. Most parents have some system or idea of how much or how often we should just give them things and how much, how often, or which things they should have to work for. sometimes we make them earn it all themselves and sometimes we meet them half way. We do this because we want our kids to learn the value of work, of saving, and learn to do for themselves. We want them to learn to be adults, to grow up.

James 4:1–3 NASB95

What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members? You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.

Many have taken part of this passage out of context by just using the you do not have because you do not ask part to say that we should just take all of our petitions to God and he will give them to us just because we asked him. Of course if you read the rest of this passage it is obvious that James is not claiming that it is God’s job to give us everything we ask for but that it is our job to make sure our hearts are right and our motives are right. In fact he is telling us to grow up.

Today I want to talk to you about Prayer. In fact I will be covering more spiritual disciplines in the following weeks but I wanted to start with prayer. What is prayer, how should we pray, what should we pray for, what is the purpose of prayer?

If we understand what prayer is and why we should pray, what prayer is supposed to accomplish it will be easier to pray with the right motives and the right attitude. You see I think we often misunderstand the most basic purpose of prayer.

Most of our prayers, at least most of the prayers I hear have to do with asking for things. We might ask for help when we are in trouble, healing when we are sick, the salvation of someone we love, the growth of our church, or the health of our marriage. In fact most of the prayers that I have heard are almost completely about us asking God to do something or to give something to us or someone else.

If you listened to the prayers that most people pray and formed your ideas about what prayer is and what prayer is intended to do you would probably come away with the idea of something like an ATM machine. You contact God and request what you want and he checks your account balance and either sends your request on its way or responds with account balance insufficient to meet your request. At that point many of us try to make a get a loan, God if you will do this for me I will start being good, if you will just advance me one answered prayer I will pay you back with extra righteousness. Do you really think that is the way God works.

Now I am not saying that we should not ask God for things or that he does not give us things but that cannot be the ultimate purpose of something as wonderful and sacred as prayer.

Abraham once prayed a prayer for the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Genesis 18:23–33 NASB95

Abraham came near and said, “Will You indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? “Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; will You indeed sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous who are in it? “Far be it from You to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous and the wicked are treated alike. Far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?” So the Lord said, “If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare the whole place on their account.” And Abraham replied, “Now behold, I have ventured to speak to the Lord, although I am but dust and ashes. “Suppose the fifty righteous are lacking five, will You destroy the whole city because of five?” And He said, “I will not destroy it if I find forty-five there.” He spoke to Him yet again and said, “Suppose forty are found there?” And He said, “I will not do it on account of the forty.” Then he said, “Oh may the Lord not be angry, and I shall speak; suppose thirty are found there?” And He said, “I will not do it if I find thirty there.” And he said, “Now behold, I have ventured to speak to the Lord; suppose twenty are found there?” And He said, “I will not destroy it on account of the twenty.” Then he said, “Oh may the Lord not be angry, and I shall speak only this once; suppose ten are found there?” And He said, “I will not destroy it on account of the ten.” As soon as He had finished speaking to Abraham the Lord departed, and Abraham returned to his place.

This exchange sounds like a negotiation between Abraham and God about what God would do. Do you really think this was about Abraham changing God’s mind? After all if God is perfect and he makes perfect decisions why would he let Abraham change his mind? God already knew exactly what he was going to do and he already knew exactly how many righteous people he would find in those cities. All of this conversation between God and Abraham did not change God’s purpose at all, and God never intended for it to.

Something was changed, in fact something very important to God was changed by this conversation. Sodom and Gomorrah were still destroyed, Lot was still preserved but but God took the time to have this conversation, this prayer with Abraham because something critical to God’s plan was taking place during this prayer.

When Abraham first heard Gods plan he apparently thought wow, I can’t believe that God would wipe out all of those people due to a few bad eggs. In fact he all but accused God of being unjust. “shall not the judge of all the earth deal justly”. Apparently Abraham had no idea how bad things were and he still had some doubts about the mercy of God. Imagine if he had still had those doubts when God asked him to sacrifice Isaac, he would never have done it. So God let him have his say. God agreed that if there were just 50 righteous people he would not destroy the city, then 40, then 30 then 20 then 10. God knew there were not even 10, but Abraham did not know this.

God knew what was right and he had already looked at every possible fact and every possible angle but Abraham did not know that. It was important to God that Abraham come to understand that God was just and that God was merciful so God patiently let Abraham make his case. In fact Abraham probably thought 50 was a reasonable number. Anyone would spare a city for 50 Abraham probably intended to negotiate down to 40. Once he got to 30 he began to apologize more and more at each step, Abraham was probably thinking this is too much I am going to make God mad, by the time he got down to 10 Abraham had gone further than even Abraham thought was reasonable, but God agreed. God had proven to Abraham, in a way Abraham could understand, a way Abraham chose that God was even more just and more merciful than anyone had a right to expect.

Nothing changed for Sodom, nothing changed for Gomorrah, but Abraham changed. Abraham’s understanding of God changed, Abraham’s view of God’s mercy and justice changed. God did not change, history did not change, but Abraham’s understanding of God changed, Abraham’s faith changed.

There are lots of examples of this kind of prayer in the bible.

Matthew 26:39 NASB95

And He went a little beyond them, and fell on His face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will.”

I think we are all familiar with this prayer, the prayer of Jesus to the father just before the crucifixion. A God to God prayer. Jesus was still crucified, the plan did not change, history did not change, neither the father nor the son changed their minds, so what changed. I wonder if the disciples who heard this prayer remembered it later, I wonder what they thought about it. I can tell you what I thought about it.

The creator God of the universe was willing to go through that kind of pain and suffering for me. He didn’t want to, no one wants to suffer, no one in their right mind wants so experience a painful death, no one wants to be rejected and mocked, no one who understands what it means would ever want to be suffer what Jesus did, but he did it. He did it for you and he did it for me.

Somehow, knowing that Jesus dreaded it, knowing that he wanted some other way, knowing that he wanted to avoid the pain and the grief and the loss so much that he sweated drops of blood makes it seem like even more of a sacrifice, even more of a gift to you and me. No the prayer of Jesus in the Garden did not change God, but it did change me.

I believe that the ultimate purpose of prayer is just that, to change you and me so that we better understand who God is and what God is doing. I believe in asking for God’s help, asking for healing, prayers of praise and prayers of thanksgiving. There are many types of prayers that we can pray, and they are all valid, they are all things we should pray for, but there is one overriding master goal of prayer. That goal is that we, the ones doing the praying change our minds, our hearts and our motives in such a way that we line ourselves up with the one we are praying to.

I believe that the most important part of prayer is not whether God says yes or God says no, after all God agreed to everything Abraham asked for but Abraham did not get what he wanted. In the same way the father did not let the cup of crucifixion pass from the son but both the father and the son accomplished their purpose. As much as we may want it and as much as we may cry our for what we want the most important thing that happens during prayer is not whether or not we get what we ask for or whether or not we say the right things or assume the right posture, but whether or not our prayers change our minds and our hearts to be more like God, whether or not we trust God and depend on God more after our prayers than we did before.

After all, if it is true that God loves us and wants the best for us, if it is true that God knows everything and can do anything then we will never tell god something he does not know and we will never cause God to rethink his plan and come to a better conclusion, in fact the best we can hope for is that the God who loves us and wants the best for us gets his way so that the best that he wants for us will come true.

When you pray, concern yourself less with what you want to get from God and more with what God is trying to give to you, you will be infinitely better for it.