Sermon Tone Analysis

BY PASTOR GLENN PEASE

If we had as many answers to prayer as we have books on prayer the battle would be won.

Unfortunately it is easier to write a book on prayer than to pray effectively.

It is easier to preach a sermon on prayer than to pray.

It is easier to give a lecture on prayer than to pray.

It is easier to do just about anything concerning prayer than to actually pray well and wisely.

The reason this is so is because we have not taken Christ as our guide to prayer, and have tried to follow men who claim to be experts, but who have made the matter of such complexity that it is too discouraging, and we lose our motivation.

If we went into a library and found a dozen volumes on how to order a hamburger, we would probably figure it is too complicated, and never brother to order one.

So it is with prayer.

There are books galore, and seminars, and special retreats, and so many people trying to teach us how to pray, that we automatically assume that it is in the same category with learning brain surgery and international law.

So we lose hope, and just accept the role of being poor at prayer.

People who are good at saying prayers only confirm our despair.

We say, come Lord Jesus be our guest, let this daily food be blest.

They can give a lesson on Bible history, and give guidance to government leaders, and a challenge for world missions, all in a prayer of thanks for a hamburger.

It makes the rest of us feel like we are not even really thankful for our hamburger, and also feeling like we just don't know how to pray.

The vast majority of Christians would list as one of the weaknesses of their Christian life, their prayer life.

We do not spend enough time in prayer.

We don't pray for enough people.

We don't pray as fervently as we ought, or as persistently as we ought.

There is hardly any aspect of prayer that we do as adequately as we ought.

Christian guilt feelings about this make them easy targets of manipulation.

They can be made to feel they need to go along with some prayer gimmicks to get back into God's favor.

Maybe it's an all night prayer meeting, or some kind of prayer chain, or large group prayer service, as if the length of your prayers or the quantity of them is the key to God's reluctant heart.

All of this Jesus put into the category of paganism in Matt.

6, where He said the pagans think they will be heard because of their many words.

Jesus taught that God already knows what we need, and so a short and simple prayer is all that is necessary.

He never told His disciples to get a big crowd together, but said get alone in your own room and close the door.

He didn't give them a manuscript of hundreds of prayers when they asked Him to teach them to pray.

He gave them a single prayer of about 50 words as an example.

My point is, the reason that prayer is so hard for Christians is because they have made it hard.

The Bible doesn't.

Jesus didn't.

Christians have so complicated the simplicity of the Bible with pagan ideas, they have put a satisfying life of prayer beyond the reach of the average Christian.

One Christian writer said she could visualize the millions of prayers hurtling toward God at mealtime, and so she decided to do her praying between meals when the prayer traffic was not so thick.

She also got up early to get her prayer in before the heavy breakfast crowd.

Of course, this is silly, but so is every aspect of prayer that implies God is not omniscient.

Jesus said in Matt.

6:8, "Your father knows what you need before you ask Him."

If that is the case, then being eloquent is no big deal, for we do not have to persuade God.

It is not as if we have to be intellects, and be able to speak with great logic to get through to God.

Neither the quantity nor the quality of our prayers are the issue, for God already knows what we seek to communicate.

This puts all God's children on the same level.

So what if we can go on for a half hour with flowery words of oratory, and another can only say thank you Lord for today, give me guidance for tomorrow?

The Pharisee in the temple was no doubt better at prayer than the publican.

If we took a vote among men after hearing them both pray, the Pharisee would win on both length and eloquence, but Jesus said the publican went away justified, not the Pharisee.

"God be merciful to me a sinner," was his prayer, and on the cross the thief said, "Remember me when you come into your kingdom."

And the father of the demonized boy prayed, "Lord I believe, help thou my unbelief."

When you look at the prayers that Jesus answered in his life, you can't help but be impressed with their brevity and simplicity.

They are little more than cries for help.

When the disciples were caught in the storm, and feared the ship was going down, they woke Jesus and their prayer was, "Lord, save us!

We are going to drown."

When Peter was going under his prayer was, "Lord, save me!"

All these prayers were answered.

Of course, they were emergency situations where eloquence and length are not only irrelevant, but potentially deadly.

But what we want to see as we examine the prayer life of Jesus is that even the normal prayer life of the believer is to be simple and not complex.

Our text reveals three simple truths about prayer that can make effective praying possible for all of us.

First-

I. THE PRIORITY OF PRAYER.

Notice Mark 1:35 says Jesus got up to pray very early in the morning while it was still dark.

Prayer was a priority in His day.

It was the first thing on His list.

Prayer was not reserved for some crisis, or great need out of the ordinary.

Almost everybody prays when they come to their Gethsemane.

When there is a terrible time ahead, or one faces problems that are overwhelming, then prayer becomes a priority.

But for Jesus prayer was a priority when all was going well, and there was no great opposition, or huge obstacles to hurdle.

This text comes early in His ministry when people were delighted, and even His future enemies were not yet sniping at Him.

Yet, Jesus made prayer a priority in His life-style.

From this we need to see that prayer is not primary a tool for crisis.

A hammer can be used to fight off an attacker, or to break through a wall to rescue someone from a fire.

But this is not its usual function.

It is usually used just to pound nails, to fix things, and to hang pictures.

Prayer has its crisis value, but like all tools, prayer has its usual commonplace function as a tool of communication.

We need to make prayer habitual and not situational.

Look at your relationships to people, and what you will see is that some of them are based on habitual communication, and some on situational communication.

I have people I relate to once a year because we communicate through Christmas cards.

There may be a crisis that leads to more communication during the year, but basically this is it-crisis or Christmas.

Some of these people were at one time very close friends or relatives.

There was a lot of communication, but times change.

They moved, or we moved, and new relationships developed, and the old ones got pushed to the back burner.

They no longer have a place of priority.

The ones that have priority are those where there is habitual communication.

You talk to these people on a regular basis.

There does not have to be any crisis or occasion, you just open the lines of communication, and you relate to these people.

Now the point is, the degree of intimacy you experience in any relationship is determined by the priority you give to communicating with them.

What happens in life is that we lose intimacy with those we love because we let communication slip from a place of priority.

Husbands and wives do this all the time.

It does not make them cease to love each other.

But it does mean they have lost their intimacy, and it can only be restored by renewed communication.

I had a friend many years ago who was a book fanatic just like me.

Every time we got together we could go on endlessly about books, authors, and ideas.

Talk, talk, talk.

We were the best of friends.

But he moved away, and then I moved, and we just lost touch with each other for many years.

I still have fond memories, and would consider him a friend, but he has no priority in my life at all, for lack of communication has ended all the intimacy we had.

This happens with people, but it also happens with our relationship to God.

We drift away from God.

We do not necessarily love Him less or trust Him less, but we cease to put communication with Him on the front burner.

It is no longer a top priority, and the result is we lose intimacy with God.

There's no longer that closeness that we call fellowship.

Every relationship of life faces this same struggle of keeping intimacy alive.