HOW ARE YOU USING PRAYER?

INTRODUCTION

          I heard an old story about a guy who angrily brought his new chain saw back to the hardware store for a replacement.  He stormed through the door and flung his purchase onto the front counter.  It lay there, rocking slowly for a minute, bent and beat up, much of the paint chipped off and the teeth at all angles.

            “I’ve been using this thing all day,” he yelled at the first face within shouting range, “and I haven’t cut even a handful of firewood!”

            The young sales clerk, trying to remain cooperative, assured the man he’d be glad to take a look at it and do what he could.  The saw was a mangled mess.  And trying to see if it might start in this condition seemed a foolish waste of time.  But not knowing where else to begin, he took a chance and yanked hard one time on the ripcord.  Sure enough, after several gasps and coughs, the motor somehow rattled its way to full throttle.

            The red-faced customer suddenly went white, backing two full steps away from the counter in stunned confusion.

            “So that’s what that string was for!”

Here’s the point: before concluding that prayer doesn’t “work” you need to ask yourself how you’ve been trying to use it.

How are you using prayer?

          Here are some questions that need to be answered:

·        What have you been expecting prayer to do for you?

·        And what would it look like to you if it were “working?”

·        In fact, is prayer actually supposed to “work” at all?

·        Does it perhaps have a purpose far more significance than the shallow practicality we expect of a gas-powered lawn tool?

·        Would it be asking far too little of prayer – and far too little of God – to demand that it, and He, perform just the way we want them to?

The answers to most of these questions are found in the sixth chapter of Matthew, in the middle of what we call the Sermon on the Mount.  This teaching of Jesus, which covers three solid chapters of the Bible, contains instructions that are absolutely basic to understanding what it means to be a follower of Christ.  And imbedded among them is a clear pattern of what God says prayer is supposed to be and do.

This is how prayer works.  (Read Mt. 6:6)

6     “But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.

I have frequently heard people despair that their prayer wasn’t answered.  Perhaps someone they loved was sick, and they prayed asking God for healing.  But instead of getting better, the person died.  They had asked for one thing, but they had received another.  Therefore, their prayer didn’t “work.”

Don’t misunderstand me.  God does answer prayer. I know it from experience.  Besides that, the Scripture is full of instances where God’s people prayed and He responded exactly as they had asked.

However, having our requests granted is not the primary goal of prayer.  Prayer is not simply the process of giving God our wish list.  Many times we ask for things that seem to be what we need, but we later recognize that – had we gotten them – they would have been far from our best interests.  God does not exist merely to give us what we want.

Neither is prayer a way to alert God to our needs.  As we’ll see later in this passage, God knows our needs even better than we do, and He needs no formal reminders about where we are and what we’re up against.  Prayer is not something designed to manipulate God into remembering us.

The primary purpose of prayer is to spend time in conversation with our Father.  And when that is our goal, we can pray at all times guaranteed that it will be rewarded.

Will it be answered the way we want it to? Maybe.  But will it be rewarded by bringing us into the Father’s presence? Absolutely!

Illust. What did you bring me?

I had to go to Ft. Worth to take several classes and I got in the habit of always bringing home a small gift for my daughter.  As soon as I got home and opened the door to my house, she greeted me with the tender address, “Hi Daddy.  What did you bring me?”  She would search my pockets and suitcase looking for the gift she knew was hidden somewhere in my belongings.

After one particularly long and exhausting trip, I arrived home only to be greeted by the same predictable welcome.  But for some reason this time, I just wasn’t in the mood for giving gifts.  So instead I gave my little girl a short but strong lecture.

I knew she wouldn’t be able to relate entirely, but I explained how hard it was to be apart from her and how tired I was when I came home.  Just once, I said, it would mean so much to me if I knew she were simply glad to have Daddy home – not just glad to have a gift.

A few months later, I had just returned from another long class.  When I got to the door, Sarah Beth leaped into my arms, gave me a big hug, and said in the sweetest voice, “I love you, Daddy.  I’m so glad you’re home.”

Ahhhh.  My heart melted within me.

With her next breath of course, she asked, “Now … what did you bring me?”

My daughter’s question made me realize that my own prayers to my heavenly Father often began like that – with little more than requests, requests, requests.  I’m sure my words often sounded just like my girl’s refrain: “What did you bring me?”

When I finally comprehended the fact that prayer permitted me to come into the presence of my Father, to express my love for Him, to thank Him for His constant provision, and give Him the honor He is due, I discovered a new passion for prayer.

Communicating with Him is reward enough.  And if that is our purpose, there is no such thing as an unanswered prayer.

There is, however, such a thing as mistaken prayer – prayer that gets a different kind of reward.

Let’s look at Jesus’ description of three common problems we often introduce into our prayer habits.

They are misguided motives that ensure we’ll become empty, discouraged, and spiritually out of sorts with God.  And apparently these three conditions are universal across the generations because they are just as prevalent now as in the days when Jesus first spoke these words.

The Phantom Prayer:

“When you pray …” (Matt. 6:5a)

The first reason prayer doesn’t seem to connect people with God is so obvious, I almost hesitate to mention it.  In fact, I wouldn’t have brought it up except that it is so pervasive and widespread.

The first problem we encounter with our prayers is we just don’t pray. Now this is despite the fact that Jesus speaks repeatedly in these verses with the understood assumption that “when you pray” means there is no question that the follower of Christ will invest himself in prayer.  “When you pray” says a lot more than “if you pray” or “whenever you feel like praying.”  But unfortunately, “when you pray” begins at a basic starting point that too many people rarely achieve.

A recent national survey conducted by a mainline Christian denomination indicated the 25 percent of its members admit that they never pray.  Never!  Add this to the number of people who’d be honest enough to tell you that their prayer life is sporadic at best, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that one glaring reason people are so dissatisfied with their prayer life is simple: They don’t pray.

Think of the ridiculous analogies: a football team that never practices, an orchestra that never tunes its instruments, or a farmer that never plants any crops.  To never do something is the worst way to get better at it.

Have you ever thought about there is only one play in professional football with a religious theme?  Starting with Doug Flutie’s last minute touchdown pass against Miami in 1984 – its used by Protestants, Catholics, and atheists alike: the hail Mary pass.  The idea is that a pass thrown under such desperate circumstances could only be completed with the help of divine intervention.  I’ve even heard some people say a quarterback in that situation “threw up a prayer.”

Why is it that there is only one play named after prayer?  I mean there are no “hail Mary kick-off returns,” to start games, or “Lord, I just wanted to ask you…draw plays in the first quarter.

I believe prayer is brought in for the last play of the game because it is something we generally associate with desperation.  The idea is that for the majority of the game I can rely on my own resources.  I will depend on my game plan and my personnel.  However, at a moment of crisis and desperation when I’ve run out of time and opportunity, when human cleverness and mortal strength have failed, that’s the time to throw up a prayer.

This pattern points to what we really believe regarding prayer.  In most ordinary moments we can convince ourselves that prayer really may not change anything.  Many people believe that their prayers won’t change God’s actions, so they don’t pray.

But we’re too busy, we say.  Our schedules stay overlapped with nonstop activities.  And yet we still expect prayer to work on demand when the wheels come off or the kids get sick, we resort to pleading with God, whom we largely ignore during the normal routine of life.

Listen, NOT PRAYING makes absolutely no sense, yet just about all of us have been guilty of it – and of foolishly putting the blame on God for not answering prayers we never pray.

The Phony Prayer

“When you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full.”  (Matt. 6:5)

Soon after I dedicated my life to the ministry, I was sitting in church with my wife.  During the service, the pastor called on me to pray.  Suddenly feeling myself the focus of attention, I took a deep breath, intoned my best preacher’s voice, and wowed the crowd with all the spiritual jargons and theological rhetoric I knew.  After I finally reached the “amen” and took my seat, my wife elbowed me in the side and whispered six sobering words in my ear: “Who were you trying to impress?” I got the message.

Preachers may be the worst at this, using public prayer from everything from reinforcing the points of the sermon to communicating the announcements from the church bulletin.

I hate to think about being complimented for praying and taking it as a personal accomplishment, or how many times I was more concerned with the way I framed my words rather than whether or not I was honestly communicating with my Father.

Have you ever done it – changing both your tone and your vocabulary – so that others could get a fell for your superior spirituality. 

Things were no different in Jesus’ day.  Whatever the case, the driving desire of these people was not to connect with God but to be seen and heard, admired and appreciated.  They delighted in the sound of their own voice.

But Jesus had a quick response to such showboating.  He said they have their reward.

Notice the difference between this reward and the reward for those who prefer the inner room to the public square.  The precious reward of being in the glorious presence of the Father.  In the case of the hypocrites, their full reward comes from the crowd and from themselves.  For the humble, the reward of prayer comes from God Himself and his reward is always enough.

Does this mean we should never pray in public?  Of course not.  Jesus Himself prayed publicly when he blessed the five loaves and two fish.  The problem is not public prayer but praying for effect.  Whether in public or in private, we should pray with the singular desire of communicating with our Father.

The Frivolous Prayer

“And when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words.” (Matt. 6:7)

To the first-century Greeks and Romans, prayer had both its formal and its magical sides. Since the pagan gods of their religious mythology each controlled some aspect of nature – but couldn’t control their own behavior – prayer was the butter that greased the palms of the pantheon.  And just in case the gods didn’t hear or remember it the first time, these pagan worshipers would often pray the same prayer over and over to make sure they had gotten some heavenly attention, to convince whichever god they wanted that this petition was worth rewarding.

This is different from the idea of perseverance in prayer, which Jesus later encourages.  For these turn-of-the-millennium Gentiles, prayers had their own magical power.  Therefore it was not merely an issue of repetition but one of repeating a precise formula.  They though the more fervently they repeated just exactly a certain phrase, the more powerful and effective their prayer became.

Jesus called it “meaningless repetition.”  The actual Greek word for this is battalogeo.  If you try to pronounce it, you’ll notice its similarity to the English term babbling.  He may have used this term to underline the foolishness of praying in such a manner.

In First Kings 18, we see the spiritual showdown between Elijah, the prophet of God, and 450 pagan prophets of Baal.  The contest involved two altars – one piled high with dry wood and sacrifice, the other with twelve huge tubs of water until the runoff puddle up in a trench around the base.  The question?  Whose god would hear the prayers of the people and send down fire to lick up the waiting sacrifice?

The Baal worshipers went first, crying from morning till noon, pleading, begging, running around, and imploring their god to send even a spark to ignite this famine-dried tinderbox.

Elijah couldn’t resist, “Keep it up!” he shouted above the noise. (v 27) “Either he is occupied or gone aside, or is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and needs to be awakened.”

Such coaching and encouragement from the other side simply heightened their frenzied passion, so they carried on till nearly dark.

Finally, their songs and chants dissolved into silence.  Flies buzzed around the now rotting carcass on the altar.

Slowly Elijah approached the waterlogged altar he had made and lifted a thirty-second prayer to the one true God.  In a flash, fire fell from the sky and not only consumed the dripping ox and firewood but even the rocks, the dirt, and every drop of water that had pooled beneath.

Why would God put a story like this in the Bible?  One reason is to show us that long prayers, desperate pleading, and mechanical rantings are not required to request help from our Father.  This One, who treasures our intimate conversations with Him and knows what we need before we ask, is not testing our faith with word counts and endurance records.  Yes, there is a certain kind of shallow reward inherent in that, but (again) it’s one that we give ourselves.

God’s reward is reserved for those who seek His heart, not His attention.

Prayer is a privilege that allows us to connect with the Father.  We can never approach it with casual indifference and expect to get the reward He graciously offers.

The writers of scripture took prayer seriously. In the eighth chapter of Revelation, John describes a scene in heaven after the seals have been broken on the scrolls that tell the story of human sin and violence and God’s judgment.

Then a remarkable thing happens.  John writes in verse one that “there was silence in heaven for about half and hour.”  During this time an angel with a golden censer comes to the altar and offers much incense, which is a representation of prayers arising from earth: (Verse 4) “The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of the saints, went up before God from the angel’s hand.”

Following this comes great acts of judgment on the earth.  But what is most striking is that these acts come in response to the prayers of the saints.

INVITATION

·        NOT PRAYING, PRAYING IN VAIN, PRAYING FOR EFFECT

·        ACCEPT, BELIEVE, COMMIT