How do I pray?

Íñigo López de Oñaz y Loyola was a soldier in the 1500s in Spain. He started in the military when he was 17, and was known for loving going to war and winning glory for Spain.

All that changed, however, when he shattered his right leg after being hit by an exploding cannonball.

He spent months laying in a bed trying to heal. Before the invention of anesthetics (pain drugs to knock you out) he went through multiple surgeries to break and reset his leg so that he would be able to walk again.

During this time, he asked to have books to be brought to him (because YouTube didn’t exist back then). He wanted to have stories of action and romance, which were books that he really loved, but they didn’t have any in the castle that he was staying.

His sister-in-law, who cared for him a great deal, instead brought him two different books: a Bible, and a collection of stories of people who had followed Jesus.

It was then that Inigo discovered something: he liked praying!

All before that, prayer was something that he was supposed to do, it was a part of his life that was required; but there, in the room that he stayed in to recover for so long, spent reading books about Jesus and His followers, Inigo found life in prayer.

It wasn’t just talking to God for him, it was spending time with God.

He eventually did heal, but his right leg wound up being shorter than his left, and he would walk with a limp for the rest of his life, and his military career was over.

So, faced with the growing realization of his faith and wanting to understand what it is that he was feeling, he travelled around Spain and Israel, and eventually ended up at the monastery of Santa Maria de Montserrat, where he gave up all of his fine clothes and hung up his sword and dagger at the cross.

After this, Inigo changed his name to Ignatius (the latin version) and decided to spend time working and living with the poor and spending hours at a time refining how he prayed and forming a method for prayer, called the Spiritual Practices.

Finally, he began a Christian society of believers that were sent all over the known world to start schools to teach people about Jesus. The motto for that society is “Go, set the world on fire.”

Prayer is scary.

It, like reading your Bible, is something that we know we’re supposed to do, but we have a really hard time doing it.

We feel like we’re supposed to pray for a really long time, but at the same time, we have no idea how to do that!

We get through all the things that we’re supposed to talk about, and it’s only been about 45 seconds, and then we feel like a failure for not praying enough.

OR

We just don’t pray. We forget about it, it’s not that big a deal for us, and so maybe we do it at meal times, maybe if we remember we’ll say something before a test, but we don’t actually pray that much.

Maybe we don’t think it’s that important, maybe we don’t think that prayer actually works, but whatever it is, prayer is really hard for us to do!

So, I want us to look at what Jesus has to say about prayer, and then we’ll talk a bit about what He says.

Luke 18:1-14

So, what we’re going to see in this short section of Scripture is 3 essential truths that we need to know about prayer.

So, the first story that we see here, there is a woman who was wronged and wants it to be right, and a judge who’s just a huge jerk.

Women didn’t have much in the way of power or authority at that point in history, so the judge doesn’t have to listen, but he’s being a huge jerk for not paying attention.

So, this lady decides that she’s just going to bother the judge until he gives in… AND IT WORKS!

He eventually gives her what she needed because she kept bugging him.

And then Jesus says one of the craziest things that I can think of, He says that just like the woman with the judge, we should pray like that to God.

Now, to be clear, God isn’t a jerk, and He’s not just answering you because you bugged Him enough for Him to pay attention.

It doesn’t matter how much you pray about it, you’re not going to get whatever you want just because you kept trying.

BUT, this does show something really important about prayer!

Prayer isn’t instant

That’s almost never the way that prayer works! Just because you prayed for something once, doesn’t mean it will instantly happen! God isn’t a genie! It takes time and intention.

Prayer is relational, and relationships are slow.

When you look at how Jesus did ministry, it was really, really slow.

He would talk with people, He would walk wherever He went, He would disappear for days at a time to pray.

All of this points to how relational Jesus was with His people. He wasn’t looking for the fastest way to get what everyone needed, He was looking to love them and grow their love.

God works slowly, which is what prompted the Japanese theologian Kosuke Koyama to write,

“Love has its speed. It is a spiritual speed. It is a different kind of speed from the technological speed to which we are accustomed. It goes on in the depth of our life, whether we notice or not, at three miles an hour. It is the speed we walk and therefore the speed the love of God walks.”

And prayer is an act of love from God, so it’s going to be slow.

So, what does this mean for us?

Prayer isn’t just request/receive.

If God moves slowly and intentionally, then prayer cannot just be a mixture of ask/request.

I recently have started working with an AI platform to organize my notes, and it’s crazy how I can ask something, and then within two minutes, I get an answer and a solution.

But God is not an AI, He’s not your servant, He is the Lord of all who wants you to be with Him, which means it’s more than that!

So, maybe we should just sit and listen for a little bit to God?

Maybe we can turn on some worship music and sit quietly for a couple of minutes while trying to ask God what He wants from us?

Maybe we could read a Psalm and pray through it, so that we can stop asking for things and just give ourselves over to God?

We need to keep praying.

Just because you asked for something once doesn’t mean it just happens, sometimes it takes a long time to ask!

I think that this is because God doesn’t want to make us greedy, so He doesn’t give us everything we want. Just like good parents have boundaries on what they give their children, God has boundaries on what He gives and how He gives it.

So, if you pray to become wise, He probably won’t just make you a genius, He’ll probably put opportunities for growth in your way that you can take or avoid. A wise person will take those opportunities and become more wise, a fool won’t.

So, maybe you could keep a list on all the things that you’re praying for?

I have a little prayer book that I like to write down different things that I’m praying for, and it’s been super helpful to me!

But don’t give up praying just because it hasn’t been answered yet, sometimes we are being answered, we’re just not paying attention.

Then, we move on to the next story

Luke 18:9-14

In this story, we see two people praying

One is a Pharisee, the religious leaders and pastors of the day.

This guy was pretty confident! He goes up to the temple and standing confidently and just tells God how he’s better than everyone else.

The other is a tax collector, which was considered the worst type of person in the Jewish world.

He kneels far away, because he’s ashamed of who he is, and he cries out to God without looking up to the Lord and says “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

Something I just learned recently is that the article “a” isn’t actually in the original, it was added in to make the sentence make sense grammatically. So, what that means is that this guy goes to God and says “have mercy on me, the sinner.”

He looks around at everyone else and thinks, “I am the most wretched sinner there’s ever been! LOOK AT ME! All of these other people don’t hold a candle to my sin. LORD, I need you!”

You would think that in this story, the pastor would get the spotlight and the trash that is the tax collector would get dumped on, but Jesus goes a different direction.

Jesus tells us that the one who pretended to be better than he was is farther from God than the one who can at least look at himself honestly.

Prayer is Honest

Prayer requires us to know who we are.

When we fool ourselves into thinking that we’re better than we really are, we feel like we don’t need to pray!

People who don’t need to pray don’t pray.

If we believe that we’re good, that we can figure out life on our own, that we don’t actually need God in our life, we won’t have any need to pray, so we will stop praying!

But, the inverse of this statement is also true!

People who do need to pray, pray!

When we know who we are, we know the sin that we live in and the necessity of change in our lives, then we can’t help but pray!

So then, the real question is

Who are you?

This is one of those really difficult questions that I don’t think that we can answer in a small group or something like that. You have to want to answer this question for yourself.

What is it that drives you?

What is the reason that you keep moving and working in the world?

Why do you do the things that you do?

We all act, constantly, why?

What do you actually want from God in prayer?

We might be asking for a car, but there’s something behind a car that we want.

We might be asking for wisdom, but there’s something behind wisdom that we want. WHAT IS IT?

Do you need Jesus?

Look at your life. Look at the decisions that you make, the friends you keep, the thoughts that you think. Is God running throughout them? When you think about your life, is Jesus the anchor point in your life, or is it something else?

If we don’t need Him, we won’t feel the need to pray

Here’s the thing, you are more sinful and flawed than you ever dared believe.

You and I are very messed up people.

We were created by God to be whole and complete and lovely, but then when sin entered into the world, we abandoned that and became people who do wrong and only look after ourselves.

We have sin in our lives, What is sin?

And with every action that we take that draws us further away from God, it is another choice that we make that deeply wounds God. We hurt Him when we sin.

And yet still, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Jesus, who is God in the flesh, lived and died as a sacrifice for you and I and became the Vessel that could hold all of our sin and died for us, taking all of the guilt and punishment for us.

So, if we truly believe that Jesus really is God and that He really did die for us and become followers to the Lord of all creation, then we can be forgiven and go into relationship with Him.

BUT WE STILL SIN!

We still hurt God, and this time we don’t even have the excuse of not knowing!

And every sin is another reason that Christ had to die for us, so that when the tax collector in vs. 13 says that he is the sinner, I can say that he’s wrong, because I am the sinner. I’m the one who goes against God all the time and sins even though I’ve been forgiven and drawn into relationship with Him. I’m the one who betrays God!

And when we come to the Father with all that and mourn over our sin and lay ourselves at His feet, He listens! He holds us, He comforts us, and He draws us further into Himself.

Sophia with “Daddy hold you”

When we come to the Father in heaven honestly, we get to go down to our house justified.

Prayer Works

This is one of the biggest questions and difficulties with everyone with prayer. Does this thing that we do actually work?

We’re not going to fully answer this question, because one of the main thoughts behind this question is, “Is God actually listening” which is what we’re going to talk about next week, but we’ll start to answer the question.

Does prayer actually work? When I pray something, can I trust that it will happen?

The quick answer is yes and no.

God answers prayer all of the time, but often not in ways that we expect.

He will not answer “yes” to something that will hinder you from coming to Him, and He will not always answer quickly (remember, He moves at 3 miles an hour?)

So, you won’t get whatever you want, and you might actually get something that you don’t want but will be what you needed.

I pray all the time that I would grow to love God more, and there was a time in my life where I felt really isolated and hurt. I started having panic attacks that I’d never had before in my life, I was depressed, and I was pretty angry at God for letting all of this pain happen to me.

But then, something crazy happened, I started to get a lot closer to God.

I think that I had been doing ok for so long that I stopped relying on God in my life to change me and grow me, but then when I was overwhelmed and had nowhere to go, I suddenly desperately needed God, and so I drew near to Him in a way that I hadn’t before.

I had asked for growth, and what I had gotten was pain that I didn’t ask for, but God used that pain to give me the growth that I wanted and needed.

Prayer opens us up to wanting God’s will, not ours.

That’s the real secret sauce to all of this. That’s why Jesus prays in the Our Father, “Your will be done,” is that that’s what’s going to happen, but when we pray it we begin to become more willing to have God’s will in our life, not just ours!

And that’s where prayer works.

You can pray all you want for a Bugatti, but unless it’s in God’s will, you’re not going to get it.

But, every time I’ve prayed honestly for wisdom, I’ve slowly been given it.

And I really think that God wants us to want it before giving it to us!

He could just make us smart instantly, but then we wouldn’t want it.

The desire for it, the wanting to be close to God and listening to what He wants is a really important part to all of this!

I’ve seen God provide resources where there were none, I’ve seen Him heal mental and physical illnesses that we’re never going to go away, I’ve seen Him break addictions and change hearts, but every time, it’s drawn that person and the people around them to Jesus. It’s always been a gift that continues to give by showing the love of God!

So the question is,

What are you praying for?

Is it something that you’re praying for because you think that it’s a gift from God that He will give, or do you just want something?

Are we praying because we want to hear from God, or because we desire something that’s not going to grow us?

Is what we want something that God wants, or do I just want a Bugatti because I want a fast car?

So, we’re going to practice that a little bit tonight. What I want us to do is for you to pray in your small groups. If you get through all of that, that’s awesome and we can talk about some questions, but let’s start by talking to the people that you see every week about what they need guidance and healing from the Lord on and ask Him to move in our lives. And let’s believe that He really will do something, because He really can do something!

After hearing this sermon, how would you define prayer?

What about prayer is difficult for you? What is easy?

How can the youth group become a more prayerful place?