“Prayer”
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Welcome:
Announcements:
Prayer:
Why does God want us to pray?
How can we pray effectively?
How would we define prayer? Prayer may be defined as follows: Prayer is personal communication with God. What we call prayer includes prayers of requests for ourselves or for others (sometimes called prayers of petition or intercession), confession of sin, adoration, praise, and thanksgiving, and God communicating to us indications of his response.
Read why does God want us to pray? (page 201)
What we see here is that there are 4 main reasons on why God wants us to pray. Let’s take a look at each one of these. It is also important to note here that we do not pray so that God can find out what we need, He already knows.
8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
A. God wants you to pray because prayer expresses our trust in God. Do you really trust God? Then you go to Him in prayer. We are to pray with faith, which means trust or dependence on God. And when we do this our Creator delights in being trusted by us as his creatures.
In Matthew chapter six we see that when we pray this way it acknowledges our dependence on God as a loving and wise Father and also recognize that he rules over all from his heavenly throne.
*As children look to their fathers to provide for them, so God expects us to look to him in prayer. Since God is our Father, we should ask in faith.
22 And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.”
B. God wants you to pray because it shows our love for Him and that we desire to have fellowship with him. Prayer does bring us into a deeper fellowship with God. He delights when we meet with him. In fact, all that we think or feel about God comes to expression in our prayer.
C. God wants us to pray because prayer allows us a creatures to be involved in activities that are eternally important. When we pray the work of God’s kingdom is advanced.
D. God wants us to pray because in praying we give glory to God. Praying in humble dependence on God indicates that we are genuinely convinced of God’s wisdom, love, goodness, and power.
The effectiveness of prayer: The question that we will look at is how does prayer work, and does prayer not only do us good but also effect God and the world?
1. God genuinely responds to our prayers by changing the way he acts in the world. We see this many times throughout Scripture.
2 You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask.
When we fail to ask God it can deprive us of what God would otherwise have given us. When we earnestly and sincerely pray, our God will respond. We also see this in the gospel of Luke.
9 And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 10 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.
Again, when we ask the Lord responds.
9 And the Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people. 10 Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, in order that I may make a great nation of you.”
11 But Moses implored the Lord his God and said, “O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? 12 Why should the Egyptians say, ‘With evil intent did he bring them out, to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your burning anger and relent from this disaster against your people.
When Moses prayed, God responded.
(Read bottom part of page 202)
2. Effective prayer is made possible by our mediator, Jesus Christ. Because we are sinful and God is holy we have no right on our own to enter into God’s presence. We need a mediator to come between us and god and to bring us into God’s presence.
5 For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,
However, the question remains will God hear the prayers of unbelievers? Since God is omniscient, he always hears in a sense that he is aware of the prayers made by unbelievers. God may even from time to time, answer their prayers out of his mercy and in a desire to bring them to salvation through Christ. However God has no where promised to respond to the prayers of unbelievers. The only prayers that he has promised to hear, in the sense of listening with a sympathetic ear and undertaking to an answer when the prayers are according to his will, are the prayers of Christians.
6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
3. What is praying in Jesus’ name? We see this in the gospel of John.
13 Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.
16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.
We would say that clearly it does not mean adding the phrase “In Jesus name” after every prayer, because Jesus did not say, If you ask anything and then add the words in Jesus name after your prayer, I will do it. In other words, Jesus is not speaking here about adding certain words, as if they were a kind of magical formula that would give power to our prayers.
A. So praying in Jesus name is therefore prayer made on his authorization, on the basis of his mediatorial work for us.
B. We would also say that praying in Jesus name means praying according to his character.
4. Should we pray to Jesus and to the Holy Spirit?
Most of what we see in prayers throughout the Old Testament were prayers offered to God the Father. We don’t find much evidence of prayer offered directly to God the Son or God the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament. However this changes when we come to the New Testament.
24 And they prayed and said, “You, Lord, who know the hearts of all, show which one of these two you have chosen
59 And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”
22 If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed. Our Lord, come!
These verses give us an encouragement to come directly to Jesus in prayer, expecting that he will sympathize with our weaknesses as we pray.
But should we pray to the Holy Spirit? Though no prayers are directly addressed to the Holy Spirit as we look to the New Testament, there is nothing that would forbid such prayer. For the Holy Spirit, like God the Father and God the Son, is fully God, He too is worthy of prayer, and is powerful to answer our prayers.
Some important considerations in effective prayer:
Scripture gives us so helpful things to consider as we think about the kind of prayer that God desires from us.
Praying according to God’s will. When we offer up our prayers to God they should not always be about what we want but about God’s will for our lives.
14 And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. 15 And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.
Jesus teaches us to pray that your will be done God and He himself prayed in the Garden. But what exactly is God’s will? This is the question that so many people ask me all the time. God’s will is that His Word be obeyed and that His commandments be kept.
We can have great confidence that God will answer our prayers when we ask him for something that accords with a specific promise or command of Scripture like this.
2. Praying with faith. Jesus tells us what praying with faith is all about in Mark chapter 11.
24 Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.
The Greek text actually says, believer that you have received it. Now of course this may be tough when you actually have not yet received it but we trust in God to do what He says that he will do and we wait on him to answer us.
This assured faith will often come when we ask God for something and then quietly wait before him for an answer.
1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
3. Obedience. Since prayer occurs within our relationship with God as a person, anything in our lives that displeases him will be a hindrance to prayer.
18 If I had cherished iniquity in my heart,
the Lord would not have listened.
On the opposite side of this coin we also know that the prayers of the upright or righteous are not only heard by God but also answered.
8 The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord,
but the prayer of the upright is acceptable to him.
29 The Lord is far from the wicked,
but he hears the prayer of the righteous.
It is important to remember here that this teaching must not be misunderstood. We do not have to be totally free from sin completely before God can be expected to answer our prayers. In God only answered the prayers of sinless people, then no one in the whole Bible except Jesus would have had a prayer answered. However, we must not neglect the biblical emphasis on personal holiness of life. Prayer and holy living should go together.
4. Confession of sins. Because our obedience to God is never perfect in this life, we continually depend on God to forgive our sins. This means that confession of sins in almost daily necessary in order for God to forgive us in the sense of restoring his day-by-day relationship with us.
12 and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
When we take time to pray, it is good for us to confess all known sin to the Lord and to ask for his forgiveness. There also may be times where we need to confess a certain sin to a brother or sister in Christ.
16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.
5. Forgiving others. One of the most difficult things Christians struggle with is forgiving others. This is difficult because often times what has been done to us or said about us is very hurtful. Many Christians hold onto hurt and pain for years. We need to be quick to forgive others because we are reminded that Jesus has forgiven us .
14 For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, 15 but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
Until sin is forgiven and the relationship is restored, prayer will of course be difficult. Moreover, if we have unforgiveness in our hearts against someone else, then we are not acting in a way that is pleasing to God or helpful to us.
6. Humility. James tells us that God opposes the proud people. He desires for us to be humble.
6 But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”
10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.
Humility is thus the right attitude to have in praying to God, whereas pride is altogether inappropriate.
(The example of the Pharisee and the tax collector)
The Pharisee was boastful while the tax collector was humble and prayed, “God be merciful to me a sinner.”
7. What about unanswered prayer? Yes, there may be times where our prayers go unanswered. These are difficult times because we want God to answer us in our timing. Sometimes we think that our solution is the best, but God often has a better plan.
As long as God is God and we are fallen human sinful beings there will be times of unanswered prayer. This is because God keeps hidden his own wise plans for the future, and even though people pray, many events will not come about until the time that God has decreed.
*The Jewish people prayed for years that the Messiah would come. And he eventually did at just the perfect time.
4 But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law,
There may be periods of long delay during which our prayers go unanswered because the people praying do not know God’s wise timing.
Praise and Thanksgiving: Praising God and giving Him thanks are also a very vital part of prayer. When we think about all that God has done for us it should cause us to give Him praise and thanksgiving. Stop for a moment to give thanks to God every time you pray. We can all find 5 things everyday to give thanks to God for.
6 do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.
2 Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.
(Questions)
(Close in Prayer)
