Our Prayer Book: Unpacking Prayer
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1 O Lord, hear me as I pray;
pay attention to my groaning.
2 Listen to my cry for help, my King and my God,
for I pray to no one but you.
3 Listen to my voice in the morning, Lord.
Each morning I bring my requests to you and wait expectantly.
1 We proclaim to you the one who existed from the beginning, whom we have heard and seen. We saw him with our own eyes and touched him with our own hands. He is the Word of life. 2 This one who is life itself was revealed to us, and we have seen him. And now we testify and proclaim to you that he is the one who is eternal life. He was with the Father, and then he was revealed to us. 3 We proclaim to you what we ourselves have actually seen and heard so that you may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. 4 We are writing these things so that you may fully share our joy.
4 We are writing these things so that you may fully share our joy.
1 We proclaim to you the one who existed from the beginning, whom we have heard and seen. We saw him with our own eyes and touched him with our own hands. He is the Word of life. 2 This one who is life itself was revealed to us, and we have seen him. And now we testify and proclaim to you that he is the one who is eternal life. He was with the Father, and then he was revealed to us. 3 We proclaim to you what we ourselves have actually seen and heard so that you may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. 4 We are writing these things so that you may fully share our joy.
5 This is the message we heard from Jesus and now declare to you: God is light, and there is no darkness in him at all. 6 So we are lying if we say we have fellowship with God but go on living in spiritual darkness; we are not practicing the truth. 7 But if we are living in the light, as God is in the light, then we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin.
8 If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth.
1 Long ago God spoke many times and in many ways to our ancestors through the prophets. 2 And now in these final days, he has spoken to us through his Son. God promised everything to the Son as an inheritance, and through the Son he created the universe.
PRAY
1 In the beginning the Word already existed.
The Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
2 He existed in the beginning with God.
3 God created everything through him,
and nothing was created except through him.
4 The Word gave life to everything that was created,
and his life brought light to everyone.
5 The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness can never extinguish it.
6 God sent a man, John the Baptist, 7 to tell about the light so that everyone might believe because of his testimony. 8 John himself was not the light; he was simply a witness to tell about the light.
1 In the beginning the Word already existed.
The Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
2 He existed in the beginning with God.
3 God created everything through him,
and nothing was created except through him.
4 The Word gave life to everything that was created,
and his life brought light to everyone.
5 The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness can never extinguish it.
Today we are beginning a series called Our Prayer Book.
I John 1
Today we are beginning a series called Our Prayer Book.
Looking at prayer through the lens and the parameters of scripture.
Now I want to show you an image that may frighten some of you.
So I want you to prepare.
Pic#1
Now the moment I say “prayer”......the room if full of different ideas.
Some of you depending on you upbringing maybe had no association with prayer, maybe you were part of a religion that prayed, but it was different than how we pray here at TC.
Maybe you’ve had
You’ve done the horrific circle prayer.
And even if you think you’ve got it, you aren’t even listening to any of the other prayers.
Because while you’re saying “yes Lord,” “hmm, hmm,” even “Amen, yes Jesus” that is all smoke and mirrors, because what is really going on is you aren’t even listening to the other prayers going on is that you are preparing for your turn.
When people will realize that you are no chump!!
So in your head you are going...... “Holy and all perfect Father…I need a scripture...
Holy and perfect father, your Word tells us that you are love and you are a God of mercy, and ........and
I need a metaphor, “Like a rock you are a solid ground to stand on in troubled times”
You are ready doesn’t mater that that was not a metaphor but a simili you are ready for your turn........
Then this happens.... The girl before, she starts praying, and it’s like she crawled into your mind and stole all your ideas…NOW WHAT!!!!????
shark circling and you are just waiting for your turn.
So prayer can not only feel foreign, it can be a stresser, not only publicly but even in our private lives, how do we approach the God of Scripture in prayer.
Ill. cars in the parking lot??
Question:
Take one or two minutes with those around you to talk about why you find prayer difficult.
Why is prayer difficult?
Notice my assumption!!??
If you are one of us who is completely untouched by the fall of humanity; um lie or get out!! Let’ be honest with each other.
If you are not even a Christian, this is new, maybe you are staunch atheist and you thought this was some theatre production this morning, your safe here, we are so glad you are here....you can be upfront.....
You might just say.....”I am not convinced anyone is listening!!!”
Take a few minutes with those around you.
1 or 2 minutes
Alright, What have we come up with?
lack of focus
lack of time (too busy)
difficulty
boredom
don’t need it
too bitter
too ashamed
I don’t know how
I don’t buy it
I don’t buy it
English minister and author Martin Lloyd Jones once wrote…that he had never written on prayer because of a sense of personal inadequacy in this area.
I confess the same thing!!
I cannot and do not pretend to be a prayer giant, I’m hardly a prayer.....squirrel.
Bt the bottom line is prayer is important, and the reason we know that it is important to who we are as humans (not just Christians) is that our spirit is inclined to call out in prayer.
It is a human condition to call out beyond.
Even skeptics or nonreligious are shocked to find themselves praying despite not even formally believing in God. Herbert gives us his explanation for that phenomenon. The Hebrew word for “Spirit” and “breath” is the same, and so, Herbert says, there is something in us from God that knows we are not alone in the universe, and that we were not meant to go it alone. Prayer is a natural human instinct.
I. Who Prays?
This is evident around the world and in every culture.
In the great monotheistic religions of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, prayer is at the very heart of what it means to believe. Muslims are called to pray five times a day, while Jews have traditionally prayed three times a day. Each branch of the Christian church is saturated with various traditions of common prayer, private prayer, and pastoral prayer.
And this is what is interesting......
Keller, Timothy. Prayer (p. 35). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Studies in the psychology of religion say...
Even deliberately nonreligious people pray at times. Studies have shown that in secularized countries, prayer continues to be practiced not only by those who have no religious preference but even by many of those who do not believe in God. One 2004 study found that nearly 30 percent of atheists admitted they prayed “sometimes,” and another found that 17 percent of nonbelievers in God pray “regularly”. The frequency of prayer increases with age, even among those who do not return to church or identify with any institutional faith. Italian scholar Giuseppe Giordan summarized: “In virtually all studies of the sociology of religious behaviour it is clearly apparent that a very high percentage of people declare they pray every day—and many say even many times a day.”
Efforts to find cultures, even very remote and isolated ones, without some form of religion and prayer have failed.
All cultures and involving the overwhelming majority of people at some point in their lives. Efforts to find cultures, even very remote and isolated ones, without some form of religion and prayer have failed. There has always been some form of attempt to “communicate between human and divine realms.”
All cultures have some attempt to “communicate between human and divine realms.”
But not all prayers are the same.
II. What is Christian Prayer?
The Christian view of prayer is that it is a response to the knowledge of God.
Not ultimately an attempt to attain divinity, not an attempt to gain acceptance, not a grasping for a divinity that we do not know is there.
The psalms are not a blind reach they are a response to a God who has already spoken.
Now some people have said that they hear God speaking to them, audibly.
I have never had that kind of experience. But that doesn’t mean God has not spoken to me;
in fact he spoke first!!
No Christian prayer is first contact.
In the Bible, God’s living Word, we can hear God speaking to us and we respond in prayer.
gospel. In the Bible, God’s living Word, we can hear God speaking to us and we respond in prayer, though we should not call this simply a “response.” Through the Word and Spirit, prayer becomes answering God—a full conversation.
1 Long ago God spoke many times and in many ways to our ancestors through the prophets. 2 And now in these final days, he has spoken to us through his Son. God promised everything to the Son as an inheritance, and through the Son he created the universe.
Hebrews 1:
All prayer is responding to God. In all cases God is the initiator—“hearing” always precedes asking. God comes to us first.
Ill. I learned along time ago, that communication that works is not the kind where I am forming my rebuttal while my wife is speaking!!
A dialogue in theatre between two actors that are so concerned about their next line they pay no attention to the person they are dialoguing with and the tone and delivery of the the lines is awkward and feels out of place.
Job learned how to pray well, and informed and with a clearer idea of his situation after thy listened to God. He finally prays a mighty prayer of repentance and adoration ().
1 Then Job replied to the Lord:
2 “I know that you can do anything,
and no one can stop you.
3 You asked, ‘Who is this that questions my wisdom with such ignorance?’
It is I—and I was talking about things I knew nothing about,
things far too wonderful for me.
4 You said, ‘Listen and I will speak!
I have some questions for you,
and you must answer them.’
5 I had only heard about you before,
but now I have seen you with my own eyes.
6 I take back everything I said,
and I sit in dust and ashes to show my repentance.”
Which by the way is also how I’ve learned to respond to my wife when we have a disagreement… “I take back everything I said, and I sit in dust and ashes to show my repentance.”
Now here is the thing.
If prayer is a response to what we read what he has revealed to us, what if we don’t like it?
What if we read something the Apostle Paul has said and we are like, “What?? This is weird.”
We read the psalms and David goes on a rant, what do we do?
How do we respond?
Honestly!
Struggle with God over it!
Ask him for clarity. Tell Him you don’t like it!
Our desire in prayer is often more the wrestling match with God than it is to ignore everything that we find difficult in his revelation.
And wrestling makes you stronger
Many of David’s psalms are of confusion and full of questions.
Habakkuk begins his book asking,
2 How long, O Lord, must I call for help?
But you do not listen!
“Violence is everywhere!” I cry,
but you do not come to save.
Hab
You that is gonna be a good conversation.
But after his wrestling, Habakkuk is content to rest in God, declaring,
17 Even though the fig trees have no blossoms,
and there are no grapes on the vines;
even though the olive crop fails,
and the fields lie empty and barren;
even though the flocks die in the fields,
and the cattle barns are empty,
18 yet I will rejoice in the Lord!
I will be joyful in the God of my salvation!
But that contentment came after struggling/wrestling.
Part of Christian prayer is understanding that confidence in Christ allows us to struggle with, question, cry out and it does not have a bearing on our position, or our salvation; our relationship with God.
"Ultimately, Christian prayer is a response to how God has already lovingly revealed Himself to us."
All speech is a response to speech.
You and I did not learn to to speak because we taught ourselves.
We were born into an ocean of language and thoughts communicated by speech.
And slowly we acquire the ability to say dad, and mama, and there are weird words in the evolution of our language.
But we were all spoken to before we spoke!
And if we were not we would have some major deficiencies
studies have shown that children’s ability to understand and communicate is profoundly affected by the number of words and the breadth of vocabulary to which they are exposed as infants and toddlers. We speak only to the degree we are spoken to.
We should listen, study, think, reflect, and ponder the Scriptures until there is an answering response in our hearts and minds. It may be one of shame or of joy or of confusion or of appeal—but that response to God’s speech is then truly prayer and should be given to God.
It is only though this struggle, meditation, study that we can truly know the God to whom we are praying!
Answering God (Eugene Peterson)
Now here is an important question and connected to the previous one..
III. Who are we praying to?
The answer to this question will have a massive impact on how we go about approaching.
Some prayers in the Bible are like an intimate conversation with a friend, others like an appeal to a great monarch, and others approximate a wrestling match.
Many who write on prayer and claim to be writing helpful spiritual books can miss the importance of this!
Anne Lamott’s book on prayer entitled Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers. She declares up front that your view of God is not really important for prayer:
Let’s say [prayer is] what the Greeks called the Really Real, what lies within us, beyond the scrim of our values, positions, convictions, and wounds. Or let’s say it is a cry from within to Life or Love, with capital L’s. Nothing could matter less than what we call this force. . . . Let’s not get bogged down on whom or what we pray to. Let’s just say prayer is communication from our hearts to the great mystery, or Goodness . . . to the animating energy of love we are sometimes bold enough to believe in: to something unimaginably big, and not us. We could call this force Not Me . . . or for convenience we could just say “God.”
Now there is something in this that might actually sound attractive to some people.
There is a kind of don’t worry about it. Come as you are, you do not need to have it all together, mindset, and I think some of that is accurate. It is hard to read the visions of Isaiah or Daniel or John and say…I completely get God!
However, to approach God in the way Lamott would suggest completely ignores the fact that God has revealed himself. A personal creator. A relational God. Who loves, hurts and desires.
Imagine I was asked to describe what it is like to be in a relationship with my wife:
Tell me about the woman you go home to at the end of the day, and with whom you have two children!
Well, She is really real!!
Well what’s her name?
Nothing could matter less!!
What is she like?
She is just a big mystery!
Do you love her?
What is her name?
Well, she’s not me!
And when I’m bold enough I believe she is listening, and for convenience I call her Lalainia!!
See the problem!
The problem with Lamott’s description of the object of our prayer is that it ignores what he has told us about himself and tells us to imagine God the way we would like, and then pray to that God.
The late great Eugene Peterson, (who can always add some wisdom) writes this in his book Answering God,
That kind of prayer will not be fruitful, because it is done in ignorance of who we are talking to.
Telling someone to pray and not worry about who God is or what we believe about him cannot serve as a sustaining operating principle of prayer, because you cannot grow in a relationship with a person unless you learn who he or she is.
How do we grab a hold of something so lacking in solidity!
How do we grab a hold of something so lacking in solidity!
It is so vague it is impossible to catch a glimpse of it.
Without immersion in God’s words, our prayers may not be merely limited and shallow but also untethered from reality.
Left to ourselves, we will pray to some god who speaks what we like hearing, or to the part of God we manage to understand. But what is critical is that we speak to the God who speaks to us, and to everything that he speaks to us. . . . There is a difference between praying to an unknown God whom we hope to discover in our praying, and praying to a known God, revealed through Israel and Jesus Christ, who speaks our language. In the first, we indulge our appetite for religious fulfillment; in the second we practice obedient faith. The first is a lot more fun, the second is a lot more important. What is essential in prayer is not that we learn to express ourselves, but that we learn to answer God.
Answering God (Eugene Peterson)
Fortunately, we are not left without some tools. Not only do we have the fullest revelation of God in the person and work of Jesus Christ to look at as the fullest revelation of who God is....
Jesus made it clear when he was talking to his disciples who had asked him about God,
9 Jesus replied, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and yet you still don’t know who I am? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father! So why are you asking me to show him to you?
And not only do we have Christ as the greatest revelation of God’s heart and character, also we have the entire collection of the Hebrew Scripture and the writings of the Christian New Testament full of descriptions of God’s character, words from his mouth, and models of prayer from the faithful yet imperfect who have come before us!
IV. Our Powerful Manual for Prayer
that doesn’t mean that every prayer prayed in Scripture is applicable and it still means that there is some work to be done in study
But scripture is a rich resource for our prayer life, both in its description of the character of God as well as the examples we read of prayer within.
I have dabbled in acting, but you can always tell a seasoned actor from an amateur by what they are doing when they are not talking. When they are listening!
We have all seen performances where someone is simply repeating lines from a script, and are thrown out without any work to be a response to the character they are sharing the stage with.
If you have two inexperienced actors on the stage you have in reality two monologues going on in syncopation.
It is robotic, impersonal and without passion.
What I would like to introduce you to, as we walk through this series, is an invitation to invite the revealed words of God and the revelation of his character and the words of those who have gone before us, to inform and inflate, and enliven our prayer life.
What I do NOT want to do is give you 3 principles.
I do not want to give you a latest fad on prayer and tell you that God promises you some sort of blessing you will receive if you pray a certain way; that is anti-gospel and simply a lie.
AND ultimately they can never transform the heart, because they are starting with what we think we need, not what God has proclaimed.
What I want to propose is that ...
Our prayers ought to be shaped and inspired by the Person and revelation of God.
We see this done be the early church in their prayers, - quoting Psalm 2 and
Jesus in....
Jesus on the cross----
And speaking in a loud voice, Jesus said, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit".
From ,
Psalm 78
Jesus on the cross----
“Why have you forsaken me!”
In his anguish it was the psalms that best captured his torment.
Prayer rooted in scripture do a few things for us:
Prayer rooted in scripture do a few things for us:
Prayer rooted in scripture...
This kind of prayer will do a few things for us:
Keeps our prayers fuelled
some complain that they cannot find anything to pray about, or are not sure ho to pray. Scripture gives us an endless supply of fuel for prayer.
2. Keep our prayers orthodox
it keeps us from the ideas of those who are trying to make God accessible but in doing so remove his character, and elf- revelation
3. Give us greater meditation on scripture
Our bible reading can become more than something on the Christian list, and become an actually interaction, dialogue with God.
A diving deeper than the surface read of scripture.
PAUSE
If I said here is my good friend...
Telling someone to pray and not worry about who God is or what we believe about him cannot serve as a sustaining operating principle of prayer, because you cannot grow in a relationship with a person unless you learn who he or she is.
step. Telling someone to pray and not worry about who God is or what we believe about him cannot serve as a sustaining operating principle of prayer, because you cannot grow in a relationship with a person unless you learn who he or she is.
Lloyd-Jones once said that he had never written on prayer because of a sense of personal inadequacy in this area.
If we give priority to the outer life, our inner life will be dark and scary. We will not know what to do with solitude. We will be deeply uncomfortable with self-examination, and we will have an increasingly short attention span for any kind of reflection. Even more seriously, our lives will lack integrity.
Tim Keller
Keller, Timothy. Prayer (p. 5). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
It is the same in prayer.
I’m not sure the goal of prayer is necessarily an answer, but a person
If the goal is an answer, it will drastically change the heart, the direction and the desired outcome of the prayer.
However, if the goal is more of the person we are engaging in, the very act of engaging/talking with that person brings us pleasure.
Abraham and Sodom and Gommora ()
1 It was the first year of the reign of Darius the Mede, the son of Ahasuerus, who became king of the Babylonians. 2 During the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, learned from reading the word of the Lord, as revealed to Jeremiah the prophet, that Jerusalem must lie desolate for seventy years. 3 So I turned to the Lord God and pleaded with him in prayer and fasting. I also wore rough burlap and sprinkled myself with ashes.
4 I prayed to the Lord my God and confessed:
“O Lord, you are a great and awesome God! You always fulfill your covenant and keep your promises of unfailing love to those who love you and obey your commands. 5 But we have sinned and done wrong. We have rebelled against you and scorned your commands and regulations. 6 We have refused to listen to your servants the prophets, who spoke on your authority to our kings and princes and ancestors and to all the people of the land.
7 “Lord, you are in the right; but as you see, our faces are covered with shame. This is true of all of us, including the people of Judah and Jerusalem and all Israel, scattered near and far, wherever you have driven us because of our disloyalty to you. 8 O Lord, we and our kings, princes, and ancestors are covered with shame because we have sinned against you. 9 But the Lord our God is merciful and forgiving, even though we have rebelled against him. 10 We have not obeyed the Lord our God, for we have not followed the instructions he gave us through his servants the prophets. 11 All Israel has disobeyed your instruction and turned away, refusing to listen to your voice.
“So now the solemn curses and judgments written in the Law of Moses, the servant of God, have been poured down on us because of our sin. 12 You have kept your word and done to us and our rulers exactly as you warned. Never has there been such a disaster as happened in Jerusalem. 13 Every curse written against us in the Law of Moses has come true. Yet we have refused to seek mercy from the Lord our God by turning from our sins and recognizing his truth. 14 Therefore, the Lord has brought upon us the disaster he prepared. The Lord our God was right to do all of these things, for we did not obey him.
15 “O Lord our God, you brought lasting honor to your name by rescuing your people from Egypt in a great display of power. But we have sinned and are full of wickedness. 16 In view of all your faithful mercies, Lord, please turn your furious anger away from your city Jerusalem, your holy mountain. All the neighboring nations mock Jerusalem and your people because of our sins and the sins of our ancestors.
17 “O our God, hear your servant’s prayer! Listen as I plead. For your own sake, Lord, smile again on your desolate sanctuary.
18 “O my God, lean down and listen to me. Open your eyes and see our despair. See how your city—the city that bears your name—lies in ruins. We make this plea, not because we deserve help, but because of your mercy.
Daniel
(9:1-18)
no cheating
So this week I have two bits of homework for you.
interviews where we are asked tell us one negative thing about you----”I work too hard”
“I pray too much”
So two challenges for this week:
Challenges for this week:
1. Log your prayer
2. Describe the character of God as you encounter Him in scripture this week.
Journal.
And as we finish off this morning, I would like to take a scriptural text and use it as the basis of our prayer.
1 O Lord, hear me as I pray;
pay attention to my groaning.
2 Listen to my cry for help, my King and my God,
for I pray to no one but you.
3 Listen to my voice in the morning, Lord.
Each morning I bring my requests to you and wait expectantly.
1 In the beginning the Word already existed.
The Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
2 He existed in the beginning with God.
3 God created everything through him,
and nothing was created except through him.
4 The Word gave life to everything that was created,
and his life brought light to everyone.
5 The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness can never extinguish it.
1 In the beginning the Word already existed.
The Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
2 He existed in the beginning with God.
3 God created everything through him,
and nothing was created except through him.
4 The Word gave life to everything that was created,
and his life brought light to everyone.
5 The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness can never extinguish it.
6 God sent a man, John the Baptist, 7 to tell about the light so that everyone might believe because of his testimony. 8 John himself was not the light; he was simply a witness to tell about the light.
Response
Read Scripture and write down what you learn about the character of God/
1 Oh, the joys of those who do not
follow the advice of the wicked,
or stand around with sinners,
or join in with mockers.
2 But they delight in the law of the Lord,
meditating on it day and night.
3 They are like trees planted along the riverbank,
bearing fruit each season.
Their leaves never wither,
and they prosper in all they do.
4 But not the wicked!
They are like worthless chaff, scattered by the wind.
5 They will be condemned at the time of judgment.
Sinners will have no place among the godly.
6 For the Lord watches over the path of the godly,
but the path of the wicked leads to destruction.