Spiritual Disciplines - Praying
Spiritual Disciplines • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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When people at work ask me what I am preaching about I explain we are preaching through the spiritual disciplines and then I explain that we are preaching about reading our Bibles and Praying and things like that
And that is exactly what we are digging into today
Something so simply and yet something so over looked
We look at it from the perspective as a growing Christian when do I need to be doing to continue to grow in my faith
We know that we are to read out Bibles and we talked about that last week
And we now dig into prayer
Lets just get this fact out there to be thinking it through
But you can’t expect to grow a relationship with anyone without communication
At it’s simplest it is communication with God
And if you expect your relationship with God to grow then you must be praying
1 Now He was telling them a parable to show that at all times they ought to pray and not to lose heart,
We are to be praying
A few years ago I shared this allongy of how we should view prayer
It was meant to be about reading your Bible when I orginally heard it but it is still true for prayer
We often turn to the Bible as Tylenol when we have a pain that needs taken care of
But we should turn and use the Bible as vitemans or something we take everyday as a precaution instead of reactive
We are to use prayer as vitamens to keep our faith healthy instead of trying things on our own without vitamens
Then when things go wrong we reach for meds and get upset they aren’t working fast enough
Church we know we are to be praying
View it has preventative instead of reactionary
17 pray without ceasing;
It is to be constant
It doesn’t get much more simpliar than that
We are to be praying
We are to be praying in private and in public
We are to be praying privately and coorproatly
This last week was See You At the Pole
A national time for Students to gather at their schools flag pole and prayer
It was so fun to watch students gather at their flag pole at Topeka West
Not very many of them were comfortable praying in front of other people and yet church some of them did
I think at times we over complicate prayer and get nervous about praying out loud
If prayer is communciation with God then do just that communicate with God
But to help you pray an acronm to help you pray is
ACTS
We have talked about it
As you pray
ACTS stands for
ADORATION
1 Praise the Lord! Praise God in His sanctuary; Praise Him in His mighty expanse. 2 Praise Him for His mighty deeds; Praise Him according to His excellent greatness. 3 Praise Him with trumpet sound; Praise Him with harp and lyre. 4 Praise Him with timbrel and dancing; Praise Him with stringed instruments and pipe. 5 Praise Him with loud cymbals; Praise Him with resounding cymbals. 6 Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord!
Adoration is defines as deep love, respect, worship
When we start praying by adoring God and saying how God good is
It puts us in right prespective to God
Rather then simply giving God a laundry list of things we want or think we need or maybe they are things we actually need
Then we move on
That is not communcation that is sharing a wish list with God
But when we start with worshiping God we start in the right prespective of things
So we praise God for who He is and what He has done in my own personal life
Then after we have spent time adoring God
we move to confession
CONFESSION
13 He who conceals his transgressions will not prosper, But he who confesses and forsakes them will find compassion.
When we talk about confessing
It is exactly what you are thinking
It is confessing our sins to God and when needed to others
But when we don’t confess it is like we are carrying a bag of sin around that weighs us down and is yucky
When we confess that sin before God again it puts us in right relationship with God
Becuase before we were carrying it around
God can’t and wont be a part of sin
Which is why we are also called to flee from sin
Rather than seeing how close you can get to the line without crossing it you should see how far away from the line you can stay
Church confession is good for us as it takes the weight of the sin we have been carrying and removes it
That is exactly what Christ came to do
So why are we still caryying it around
If you know God knows the numbers of hairs on your head or that aren’t on your head then whatever you confess to Him he already knows and guess what
He still loves you
9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Please hear me this morning
When we confess our sins to God scripture is right
God is faithful to forgive us
He also expects us to go and sin no more
He also loves us enough to not leave us inthe same place where He found us
We know that when we confess our sins we cleanse ourselves and our soul
It is refreshing
Doyal has always told me confessing is good and we need to do it regualrly to keep the list short
Because we have spent time confessing we have reason to be thankful
THANKSGIVING
1 Oh give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, For His lovingkindness is everlasting.
What greater reason to be thankful than for our own salvation
We should thank God that He sent Jesus to die for our sins
ANd what I am learning is that doesn’t make sense to a lost a broken world and yet church that is the grace and mercy of God on display
You and I didn’t desrve forgiveness and we did deserve punishment
And instead we got Jesus
We didn’t get punishment
We got Jesus
And yet I am willing to bet we have more to be thankful for
We can be thankful for our jobs or retirement
Our houses, our cars, families, church, ministry, co workers, and the list goes on and on
Church we are incredible blessed to live in this great nation and we can be thankful for that
We can be thankful for what God has done in your own life
And church when we start to express that to God is brings it back to our memory
For myself I think often of my time in the hospital
Thankful for my job and the sick leave I had to use
Thankful for those healthcare workers who told me to get my own pillow and talk to my family through facetime and that prayer made all the difference
Thaknful for insurance
Never thought I would say that lol
And when we bring it to our minds sometimes it has a tendency to humble us
which is always a good thing
Then we move to what we normally think of praying
SUPPLICATION
5 So Peter was kept in the prison, but prayer for him was being made fervently by the church to God.
When we start to think about prayer
As we have said earlier it usually means I will add you to a prayer list and prayer through that list like it is a wish list
And yet that is now what we are to be doing
When make supplication we are taking that person’s name or cause to the feet of Jesus and laying it there
What power there is when we do that
See praying for someone or something is not just hoping it happens
It is laying it at the feet of the creator of the universe
It is laying it at the feet of the God who created dirt
Church there is power when we spend time praying
Please hear me pray is not about praying to get what you want or to change the mind of God like you could do that anyway
Prayer is not about changing God to bend to your own will but rather changing our heart to match the heart of God
To make our prayers more of God’s desires than our own
And to add to supplication here we see the church fervently praying for Peter while he is in jail
Church they were praying passionately for Peter
That is who we should be praying especially when we are praying for those who we know to be lost
When we are praying for the lost people we know it should not just be in passing but to pray passionately for them that God would save them
Church as a Spiritual Discipline this is what we are to be doing
We are to be praying
We are to be communicating with the God of the universe
We use tools to help us pray better and more often
Like any relationship communication is vital for growth within the communication
I hope this morning you understand that you need to be praying as an individual to grow your own faith in Christ
It is also important for a church to be praying
We here at Maranatha have seen this time and time again when we have gathered to pray in hosptial parking lots or when we send out those prayer emails at all hours of the night
Coorprate prayer is vital for a churches health
You know what Spurgeon has said that it is the lungs of the church
Without lungs you can’t survive
And you and I won’t gather to pray unless we are praying as individuals
So church do you see how important it is to be praying in your walk with Christ
This morning as we come to a close
The band is going to come up
If you are here this morning and do not know Christ personally I would invite you to come and speak with someone about how you can know Christ personally this morning
Because of Christ’s work on the cross and in the tomb you can be saved
Or maybe you are here and already have a personal relationship with Christ and like last week this is the catalsyt you need to begin to pray
No better place than to start here this morning
maybe you need to spend sometime in the prayer
Or maybe you are to nervous to walk down the front and pray you can sit in your seat and spend sometime praying
The alter is open
