Pray Always Part 2

Dependent on God

Strength in battle is totally correlated to our dependence and trust in Jesus. The metric for dependence - prayer. Prayer = dependence. No prayer = independence. The consequence of a thriving prayer life is dependence.

And in prayer we can dream big with God, ask God for big things.

Ephesians 6:10–20 (NIV)

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people. Pray also for me, that whenever I speak, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should.

Prayer is “rebellion against the world’s evil status quo.”

Karl Barth said, “To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the spirit of the world.”

Prayer = Spiritual War

Martin Luther said, “Prayer is the most important thing in my life. If I should neglect prayer for a single day, I should lose a great deal of the fire of faith.”

Saint Augustine said, “What can be more excellent than prayer; what is more profitable to our life; what sweeter to our souls; what more sublime, in the course of our whole life, than the practice of prayer!”

An Analogy:

Imagine you were diagnosed with such a lethal condition that the doctor told you that you would die within hours unless you took a particular medicine—a pill every night before going to sleep. Imagine that you were told that you could never miss it or you would die.

Would you forget? Would you not get around to it some nights? No—it would be so crucial that you wouldn’t forget, you would never miss. Because everything in your life would depend on you taking this pill.

I am persuaded that I am not stretching it, that prayer is like that pill. If we don’t pray together to God, we are refusing to take up his battle. We are refusing to depend on him and we will not make it. We will eventually lose our faith and become apostate and won’t make it. We have to pray daily and not forget or let is slip - our lives are dependent upon it.

Is your love for Jesus burning with passion?

Is your heart absolutely broken for the lost?

Are you zealous to serve the Lord with spiritual fervency?

Do you look forward above all else to the moment when you see the King in His Beauty?

Prayer is the fuel that we need.

With that, I will share two points that will help us in our prayer life.

(the first one deals with a paradigm shift in our minds)

Unanswered prayer should encourage us rather than discourage us.

Unanswered prayer is a blessing

What I mean by unanswered is: God says no or does not answer in the way or time you expected. Which means your prayer may be answered in a way that you are even unaware of. You prayed for a greater anointing and the next you know you are in a very difficult and frustrating situation...

One, I am still being sanctified...

I still have selfish tendencies and I still pray selfish, self-centered prayers. Selfish prayers God will not answer because it will take us off God’s plan for our lives. God wants to cultivate character in us, it isn’t only moral character but hope infused perseverance. He is interested in who we are being - that will lead to right doing. Therefore God answering a selfish, self-centered prayer would throw me off course.

If God was simply a genie in the sky answering every prayer I prayed, my imperfections in prayer would destroy me and those around me and short-circuit God’s plan and purpose for my life.

If God did not have discretionary powers, prayer would be way too powerful in the hands of imperfect people.

James 4:2–3“You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives (notice it isn’t the thing you are asking for but rather the motivation of the ask), that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.”

The barometer for my motive is asking for my own glory or his?

One way petitionary prayer can actually do us harm is if we see it as a means to say to God, “My will be done.”

There is nothing wrong with telling God your desires… Jesus in the garden. Luke 22:42 ““Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.””

Jesus teaches us to pray, beginning with, “Our Father… Holy is your name… Your Kingdom/Will be done.

We pray God centered Prayers: What does he value most, what does He want to do, what is important to him?

Two, I am not omniscient and all wise...

I am limited in my perspective and knowledge.

So Thank God some prayers are not answered because that would mean that God didn’t have any other perspective or wisdom that there is something better. But that He in his discretion does not answer means there is something better.

God’s thoughts are infinitely higher than ours.

Isaiah 55:9 ““As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

Cosmic scale tour:

Stars in the night sky are in our own galaxy - still in your house but in the other room.

The house next door would be our closest galaxy - Andromeda. 2.5 million light years (for some perspective if you traveled at the speed of light, it would take you 8 minutes to get to our sun - 186k miles per second).

JADES-GS-z14-0: 14 billion light years away.

Because God’s perspective and knowledge and wisdom and understanding is infinitely higher than mine, when He doesn’t answer my prayer the way I wanted or expected, it’s because He is up to something else that is so much better and at a better time.

Transitional statement: It is possible in the face of all these necessary warnings about asking amiss to be too timid to ask at all.

We should rather than quitting, reflect with God, pour our hearts before Him.

Let him know our desires of our heart and ask him to align our hearts desires with His.

We should reflect on the priorities of Scripture and see if it sounds like the prayers we pray.

We should seek in prayer to pray according to what we know pleases Him and ask that he give us wisdom.

John Calvin says, “God grants our prayer, even if he does not always respond to the exact form of our request… even when he does not comply with our wishes, he is still attentive and kindly to our prayers, so that hope relying upon his word will never disappoint us.”

God is a loving Father, we can leave our concerns with him knowing that he will hear them and act as he sees best and will answer for us what is best and give us what is best.

In other words: “God will either give us what we ask or He will give us what we would have asked for if we knew everything he knew.”

Pray without quitting

Luke 18:1–8“Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’ “For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’ ” And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?””

Jesus’ argument goes: if a judge, who is no respecter of persons, hears the cry of the widow, how much more will a compassionate God hear the cries of his people!

The quality Jesus exemplifies is the woman’s persistence.

The question he leaves us with is: Will the delay that is assumed in the parable affect the faith of some?

The only true metric for failure is quitting.

My part is to pray without quitting. His part is to answer according to His own will and His own way and in His own time.

We should be confident that God will hear us and also extremely patient with God’s timing, waiting months or years or decades or generations… For our time frames are not the ultimate reality as God’s - 2 Peter 3:9 “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”

Noah had to wait 100 years to see God’s promise come to pass.

Abraham and Sarah waited 17 years for the promise of Isaac to come to pass.

Israel waited 400 years for freedom from slavery

Naomi lost her husband and two sons and called herself Mara (meaning the Lord has dealt bitterly with me), yet God gave her a grandson, Obed who would be the great grandfather of David the King and also have the lineage of Christ the King.

David waited and ran for his life for 13 years waiting to be king

Mankind waited 4000 years for the crushing of the serpents head.

And as Paul said in Galatians 4:4–6“But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.””

Perhaps you have been praying and waiting, rest assured with this illustration from Jesus:

Luke 11:11–13““Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!””

If earthly fathers, who are sinful, ordinarily want to make their children happy, “how much more” committed is our perfect heavenly Father to our well-being and happiness?

That means there has never been a parent on earth who wants joy for his or her children as much as your Father in heaven wants joy for you, his child.

There has never been a human father who wanted to answer his child’s petitions as much as God wants to answer yours.

Yet we deserve the sting of the scorpion, we deserve the snake.

And God is not only loving but holy and just. How can he shower blessings down on sinful people who deserve the opposite? The answer is that Jesus got the scorpion and the snake so that we could have food at the Father’s table. He received the sting and venom of death in our place.

So that we could enjoy fellowship at his table and trust him with our petitions and requests, knowing that his no’s are for his kingdom and our good, his “not yet’s” are blessings for his kingdom and our lives, for he knows all, and understands all.

Yet even in the mysteries of prayers unanswered and we have no explanation, we realize that He Himself is the gift He gives.