Praying Like Monks 1

Introduction

Good evening guys

Introduction

testimony

I wanna start with some Q&A. I want you to be honest

Who here has prayed in the past week on their own without someone telling them to, or doing it out of a schedule of doing it

Last 2 weeks, last year

Prayer is a difficult thing for us

Now here is a harder question

What is your holy ground?

Think of Moses, just a shepard now, for his father in law

Going to the same bush he has went to over and over again to punch the clock but now its on fire

Exodus 3:5

5 Then he said, “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”

All it takes is a moment for God to turn some place that you wouldn’t think twice about

A classroom at school, a field you practice at, a desk you walk by

All of these things are what you make them out to be

Make the places your holy ground

Who here is a step by step kinda person

Philippians 4:6

6 do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.

We don’t have to be anxious about anything because God has given us the opportunity to bring those things to him

If that’s the trade off

We get to bring our anxieties to him

He gets to take them away and fill us with Peace

Pretty good deal

So why don’t we pray?

We don’t buy it

We don’t think it is that simple

Anxiety is more prevalent more than ever

Our society has accepted it

Why don’t you pray?

You’re social

You have a job

You’re busy

You want to be successful

You have a phone

Most of us still work or go to school

Maybe play a sport

Eat, sleep

Maybe workout

We make time for what matters to us

So why isn’t it prayer?

The short answer is that prayer does not solve our anxieties

Because prayer for us makes us anxious, because it uncovers our fears about prayer

We have fears

We don’t pray out of fear of being naive

Everything we do is out of two modes

We avoid discomfort and seek pleasure

How to move up the ladder at work

We find the most efficient way to get to a place

How to eat with chopsticks without looking dumb

And if we can’t do those things

We switch jobs

Buy a faster car

Avoid chinese food

We find both of things in being affirmed in what we believe

When we are mocked or given reason to doubt or why what we believe is not reliable we face both discomfort and no pleasure

But when we pray we are under the submission of authority

When we pray we are doing something that may seem a little silly

Prayer can’t be mastered like we try to do all the time

There is only humility and hope

To pray is risk playing the fool, trusting someone who may let you down

To pray is to get our hopes up

We don’t pray out of fear of silence

Our lives are all noise

We spend a lot of time saying stuff about God, wear the shirts, the hats, etc

“Silence is frightening because it strips us as nothing else does, throwing us upon the stark realities of our life.” “And in that quiet, what if there turns out to be very little between us and God?” - Dallas Willard

Prayer is facing that silence and like a drug addict we go through a detox that we get fromt the noise

It’s facing a God we have mastered talking about, singing, learning. It means we really have to interact with that God

What if it’s awkward, boring?

We don’t pray for fear of selfish motives

We love to self evaluate

What am I, what job should I have etc

When we do this to ourselves when speaking to God we are stuck

Why do I really want this, do i have enough credit built up to ask for this

Lets say your friend doesn’t know Christ

You pray that they would accept Christ

Why are you praying that?

So that both of you can agree, so that you can be affirmed in something you weren’t really sure of, is it because you feel religious guilt from your grandma, do you think you're better than her?

We get paralyzed by this

We don’t pray for fear of doing it wrong

We don’t want to sound dumb

Why should we pray?

Pray because youre overwhelmed

The greatest social sin we can commit is being naive why

The great social sin of the modern world is naivete. Belief is out; cynicism is in.

Where did that modern phenomenon come from? Historically, the Enlightenment set forth the great myth of human progress, which assumes that with the passing of time, everything is improving, people are becoming more whole, and the world is getting steadily better. That assumption, which served as the backbone of the developing world, was deflated by two world wars and the bloodiest, most barbaric century in recorded history.

The balloon was popped on the optimism of human progress, leading to an equally widespread sweep of disillusionment. You and I have been groomed by a post-Enlightenment story of deconstruction that doesn’t trust God anymore but has plenty of reasons not to trust people either.

The result is multiple generations of people who find safety in pretending they don’t need either one—I can trust myself, guide myself, be enough for myself.

We do everything to do everything for ourselves and we dwindle god down to someone as overwhelmed as us

Constantly overwhelmed lives should drive us to prayer at its purest and rawest, but the tendency for many of us is to pray safe, calculated prayers that insulate us from both disappointment and freedom.

We pray because trust comes before faith

English Standard Version Chapter 11

11:1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Before we can have faith that God will answer a given request, we simply have to learn to trust the character of the God we’re talking to.

Trust allows us to say, “I don’t understand what God is doing right now, but I trust that God is good.”

What if I pray and the cancer doesn’t disappear? Or I don’t get the job? Or she doesn’t come back? Or he’s still addicted?

Without trust, we suppress the disappointment that God’s silence leaves with us. We build a wall to protect ourselves from the very God we pray to. We carefully make our prayers plain and generic, guarding ourselves against allowing God to disappoint us like that a second time

Jesus hasn’t revealed a God we can perfectly understand, but he has revealed a God we can perfectly trust. Trust is the certainty that the listening God hears and cares. I trust the God who, even when he doesn’t make the suffering go away, wears the suffering alongside me. Trusting the God revealed in Jesus means silence is real, but it’s not forever.

Pray because complaints are welcome

God is not concerned with you having mixed motives

English Standard Version Psalm 140

10 Let burning coals fall upon them!

Let them be cast into fire,

into miry pits, no more to rise!

English Standard Version Psalm 69

3 I am weary with my crying out;

my throat is parched.

My eyes grow dim

English Standard Version Psalm 142

2 I pour out my complaint before him;

I tell my trouble before him.

These are holy scriptures

Why would these prayers be in the bible when if a preacher said them from the stage it’d be hearsay

Because they’re honest

God is looking for relationship not well prepared speeches

Who has served in childrens ministry?

You know how kids talk

That is what God is dealing with

C. S. Lewis said of prayer, “We must lay before Him what is in us, not what ought to be in us.”

Pray Because the Only Way to Get It Wrong Is by Trying to Get It Right

Jesus prays a simple prayer in the Gospels, Give us our daily bread

Roberta Bondi, “If you are praying, you are already ‘doing it right.’”

What a simple request! Bring your felt needs to God—the needs of this day—and talk to him about them. How should we pray?

The most straightforward response is to talk to God about what’s on your mind. That’s it! You talk to God like a friend. You vent. You ask. You laugh. You listen. You unload. You just talk. You don’t try to sound more holy or pure or spiritual than you are.

Prayer isn’t a monologue; it’s a free-flowing conversation, and the only way to get prayer wrong is to try to get it right.

Pray together