1. Prayers of Praise

Introduction

[Slowly sitting at the table and pouring some coffee…]

So one of the things that I love about living here in the Midwest is the changes in the seasons. Of course, sometimes we can get all four seasons in one week even, but this past week we seem to have officially welcomed in the Summer season. With Memorial Day Weekend, graduations and even the school year behind us we seem to be firmly in the Summer months. And the hot weather has made that doubly clear.

But one thing that I hear often from so many people is that they look forward to things slowing down in the Summer…but then summer comes it doesn’t seem like much slows down. We may not have the same routine guiding our days as we do during the rest of the year but vacations, family gatherings, sporting events and so many other “summer things” seem to keep us just as hurried as we are the rest of the year.

So this morning I am trying to wake us up to this with something different. I know how we all love change, but my hope for this short teaching series is to invite you into a different way of interacting with God and His Word by intentionally slowing things down a little.

Tension

I think this will be helpful for us, especially in light of the focus for our series over the next few weeks. For the next four weeks we are going to be looking at what it means to PRAY.

And this is one of the more difficult topics to teach on, but not because no one understands it but because most of us do…and from what we know of it...we don’t do it as we should. I won’t ask, but if I were to ask for a show of hands of how many of us think we are just nailing it when it comes to our prayer life…I doubt many hands would go up.

CRAZY CYCLE

And since this is something that we all struggle with, teaching on it often introduces something of a crazy cycle where the recognition of our failure to pray like we should leads to a guilty feeling that is followed by a short lived season of diligent prayer in an unsustainable way. And since this kind of prayer life isn’t sustainable, it is quickly invaded with distractions that breed discouragement that drops to a new level of disillusionment until the next time the pastor decides to preach on prayer and we have to face our failure again and the crazy starts all over again.

That is what a prayer life motivated by guilt will bring. It may get you moving fast, but it burns hot, it burns bright and it burns out fast. And usually we are left even more discouraged then we were before about the idea of prayer.

But we know we can’t give up on it because God’s world is full of instructions and commands to pray. We ended our last series from the book of Ephesians with the Apostle Paul imploring us to be...

Ephesians 6:18 (ESV)

18 praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints,

But he also told the Church in Thessalonica to...

1 Thessalonians 5:16–18 (ESV)

16 Rejoice always, 17 pray without ceasing, 18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

And also to the Church in Colossae

Colossians 4:2 (ESV)

2 Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.

And there are many more examples we could look at but the idea is that there is clearly something essential to the Christian life that involves meeting with God in prayer…but we don’t really know how to stay faithful in it.

SABBATICAL

And I have to confess that a part of my motivation for exploring this topic is selfish in that this series will be something of an “on-ramp” for my first Sabbatical. In case some of you haven’t heard, after the budget meeting at the end of this month I will be venturing out on my first ever Pastoral Sabbatical.

And I know that this term is not really familiar to all of us, but the word Sabbatical comes from the same root as “Sabbath” and in a similar fasion it means to rest from one’s work. And just like a weekly Sabbath is meant to rest, refresh and renew us, a Sabbatical is meant to do the same thing for a Pastor.

And as I look forward to this new experience, I know that a big part of my being refreshed, renewed and re-energized as a Pastor involves using this time for periods of prayer that are longer and more involved than I typically experience. And if I am honest, that scares me a little bit. I am just as prone to the crazy cycle as anyone else and I have spun it around more than my fair share of time I don’t want to get back on that wheel that leads no where but greater discouragement.

So I chose to spend this time to prepare myself for this new venture and I am dragging you all along for the ride. That being said, I am pretty sure I am not alone in this struggle. I tend to believe that many of us have had seasons when we have set out with great intentions to be more faithful and engaged in our prayer lives only to find that we end up more discouraged than when we started.

So we are going to try and avoid that in this study, by slowing down enough to learn how to be motivated by something with greater staying power than the crazy guilt cycle.

And since prayer is something that is all over the Bible, we will be looking at texts from all over but if you are ready to open your Bibles, and I hope you are, we will be hanging out more in Isaiah chapter 55 than anywhere else. That is on page 615 in the Bibles in the chairs.

Now with all that pressure on us…let’s stop and pray.

Truth

So this is not an excuse, but I do think that one of the reasons that we struggle so much in the western world with prayer is because our culture places such a high value on achievement and productivity. Even our summer schedules are so full and our expectation of accomplishing so many things keeps us from spending much time in anything that doesn’t seem to have measurable outcomes.

And this excludes prayer because we don’t really think that prayer accomplishes much.

We would say it is a nice thing to do. It is a good thing to do. It’s something that we all feel like we “should” do...but at the end of the day those things just aren’t motivating in our “production” centered culture.

And if we are honest, our relationship with God is not the only relationship that we treat like this. In many of our other relationships we struggle to spend time just being together. We need to have a reason, an activity, event or a project to draw us together.

When was the last time you talked with your spouse, one of your kids, a good friend…with no other agenda but to just be with them? To choose to intentionally engage like this when we could be doing something else seems unproductive and since we find our value in our productivity…every bone in our body screams, “I gotta do something!”. Some of us will start cleaning something while others of us will reach for our phones or turn on the television.

We have largely lost the ability to just “be” with people in our lives, let alone to just be with our God who we can’t even see and often wonder if He is even listening.

Let me point you to a picture of what this looks like. I hope you have had this experience like I have…but have you ever visited with a friend from out of town that you haven’t seen in a long and you share a meal together and then you push back the dishes, maybe pour a cup of coffee and you just linger there...enjoying being together…talking about whatever comes to mind with no set agenda or expectations.

If you have ever experienced that then you know that there is something in that experience of filling the coffee cup that fills something much deeper. There is something in the aftermath of that dinner that satisfies a deeper appetite than any meal ever could.

That is what time rightly spent with God in prayer feels like. You don’t have to be there. There is no duty, task or activity that has to get done during this time, but this kind of being together fills something in you like no other task, activity or event. Something meaningful has happened…even though you can’t check anything off your “to-do list”.

This is how God describes our relationship with Him from Isaiah 55. Through the prophet Isaiah, we hear God say…

Isaiah 55:1–3 (ESV)

1 “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.

Four times in this one verse we hear God invite us to “come”. In whatever state we find ourselves in, we have been invited to “Come” and to be with Him in ways that will fill our deepest longings... our deepest thirsts.

Did you notice that there are three different liquids mentioned here. Three different ways to quench our deepest thirst and each one tells us something of the one who invites us to “Come”.

Water of Life

The first and most basic of these three is the need for water. In our world, we mostly don’t worry about water till lawn starts getting brown or the garden is looking dry. Otherwise we typically have a steady flow of it by just turning a nob. But this was not the case in Isaiah’s day. The central point of most every community was the location of the well because water to them was a life or death situation. So water was a symbol of life, so God says “come” and fill your cup with my life giving water.

Remember how Jesus began his ministry by talking to a woman at a well in the region of Samaria. He told her about the kind of water God offers when He said,

John 4:14 (ESV)

14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

So the first thirst that coming to God will satisfy is our thirst for life, life that begins when we meet Jesus and continues on into eternity.

Wine of Joy

The next beverage he refers to is wine, which throughout the Bible is used as a symbol of Joy. The Psalmist says of God in Psalm 104 that...

Psalm 104:14–15 (ESV)

14 You cause the grass to grow for the livestock and plants for man to cultivate, that he may bring forth food from the earth 15 and wine to gladden the heart of man...

And I included many more in the notes page. Like many of God’s good gifts, however, in the hands of sinful creatures like us - this one is an easy one to abuse. It’s hard to abuse water, we have found ways to abuse milk (especially as cream) but many of us have experienced the devastating effects of alcohol abuse so that it is hard to see how God would use it as a symbol of a good thing.

But just because man has abuses a gift, doesn’t mean that it wasn’t a good thing when it was given. And there is something about the exhilarating effect of wine that makes it God’s choice for symbolizing the satisfaction found in the exhilarating Joy of spending time with Him. So God says “Come” and fill your cup with His Joyful wine.

Milk of Strength

The third beverage we see is that of milk. God designed that we would feed babies a steady diet of milk to strengthen them, help them grow and give their bodies the special nutrients that they would need to become healthy, stable adults.

Often times a hungry newborn baby will latch onto things that are not milk and are not good for them, and we are no different. We look for our strength in places that are not sustainable and do no last.

1 Peter 2:2–3 (ESV)

2 Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— 3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

And this is God’s invitation. Even though we might just think that prayer is just this nice thing to do, it is actually an invitation to have these deep longings of the heart filled…longings that we typically try and fill with our own efforts but it never really happens. We hope that maybe the next project, the next event, the next activity the next purchase will bring us satisfaction in life, a sense of joy and the strength we need to keep going but God says it will never work.

Continuing in Isaiah 55, God asks:

2 Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.

This is poetic language that God is using to teach us how futile our efforts are to try and satisfy this hunger and thirst that he has placed in us with out Him

3 Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live; and I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David.

Here in Isaiah we hear God say that what is most important, more important than any other task or accomplishment to get done…is that we come to Him, linger with Him, hear from Him and live out of what we experience in those moments.

In that we can have the kind of lasting, loving covenant relationship that King David, a man after God’s own heart, had with God. This covenant God made with David was on that promised a coming King, the King of Kings. This is where our access to everything that God has for us begins…in Jesus Christ.

And it is in Jesus that we are also called to come.

John 6:35 (ESV)

35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.

When we wrap our mind around this, it serves as a much better motivator than the crazy cycle of feeling guilty for not praying like we know we should and then over compensating by trying to add prayer into our life in an unsustainable way.

Instead we just need to remember what is waiting there for us. That the God who designed us and loves us is calling us to come to Him and in that we will have our cup filled with true life, lasting joy and empowering strength.

Application

So at this point, my hope is that however many times you have spun around the crazy cycle of prayer in the past…maybe you are willing to try something new now. I hope you didn’t hear anything this morning that left you with the guilty motivation that we have struggled with in the past, but instead you heard God’s loving invitation to meet with him in PRAYER because He has something for you in the experience.

And while there is no magic formula for prayer, sometimes it does help to have something of a plan to follow. Even the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray and we will look into that teaching in the coming weeks.

For today though, I am just going to introduce the major themes of His teaching in the acrostic P.R.A.Y. and since we don’t have a lot of time left for today, we will just look at the first theme which is to praise God when we pray.

P is for PRAISE

Praising God can encompass many different things including worship, thanksgiving, honoring, blessing his name etc. but as we begin this series I want us to think about two things this week.

In the ancient world there were many polytheistic nations which meant that they had many different gods and goddesses and they were often offering them praises. They would speak eloquently about things like their power, strength and beauty…their Attributes.

This is largely because their relationship was a transaction where they were trying to first get the gods attention, and then somehow earn their favor so that they could have what ever it was that they wanted. Think of the prophets of Baal when they went up against Elijah.

But what was unique about how the Bible teaches us to praise God is that along with praising Him for His Attributes, we are also called to praise Him for His Actions. You see our God is not just a God who is, but He is a God who does. He is intimately involved the world that He created and so to praise Him is to consider both his Attributes like his his power, strength and magnificence but also his Actions like his forgiveness, mercy, faithfulness and loving kindness. As Isaiah proclaims in Isaiah 25:1

Isaiah 25:1 (ESV)

1 O Lord, you are my God; I will exalt you; I will praise your name, for you have done wonderful things, plans formed of old, faithful and sure.

Landing

So thanks for coming along this morning on the first leg of our journey to learn how to be better motivated to PRAY. I think it will be a benefit to us all to dive into these things together, but I am especially eager to learn in anticipation of my upcoming Sabbatical.

What I want to do to end this part of the service is to give you an opportunity to try doing what we just talked about. Of course you don’t have to participate, we are trying to stay away from that kind of motivation, but because our lives are so busy, to try something new we really do have to intentionally carve out time to do so.

To help us do this I left some room on the front of the notes page under the title headings “ATTRIBUTES” and “ACTIONS” for you to list those things that come to mind in these categories and then just silently praise and thank God for them. In addition, I have printed Psalm 145 on the back of this page and that too may help remind you of some of the Attributes of God and then also the Actions that He has taken in your life as they may be similar to the ones that David listed there.

So lets quietly enter into a time of praise filled prayer together and then I will draw us back together and close this part of the service in group prayer.

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As we remember all God’s Attributes and His Actions, one of the greatest Actions that we praise and thank Him for is the gift of His Son Jesus and how he died for us on the cross. We are called to celebrate what is often called the Lord’s Supper together to remember the joyful gift of eternal life that we have been given....

Communion!!!!!