DEVOTIONS: The Prayers

How Should We Understand Prayer?

What Does it Mean to be Devoted to “The Prayers”

Devotions:

Each devotion we have looked at so far are devotions that need to become a habit.

We must be devoted the Apostles Teaching, and make a habit out of reading and studying God’s word.

We must be devoted to the fellowship, and make a habit out of fellowshipping with the body of Christ, the church.

We must be devoted to the Breaking of Bread, and making it habit to come to worship each week to worship God and meet God around the communion table.

Each of these devotions are massively important, yet also challenging.

Its not easy to get into the habit of reading and studying Gods word.

Its not easy to be truly devoted to fellowship with our brothers and sisters in Christ when we have other friends, or a busy schedule to keep.

Sunday morning always present an opportunity to not come to church, and we live in a culture where weekly worship is not valued .

However, perhaps the greatest habit to form is the habit of prayer.

How often do we go to pray and immediately get distracted?

Struggling to pray

So often the moment I sit down to pray I feel as though ten thousand bumble bees are flying through the atmosphere of my brain. So much interference. So much static. Things I haven’t thought about in years suddenly bubble to the surface of my consciousness. The to-do list for today that I’ve been ignoring for hours suddenly becomes a high priority. What is one to do?

And not only is it a struggle to cultivate a good prayer life, but it is massively important for our everyday lives.

We always live the way we pray.

If we don’t pray at all, we live without a thought to God or His will.

Prayer is an admission of need, and if we don’t think we need anything we’ll avoid prayer.

If we pray timidly, feebly, fearfully, pessimistically – then we’ll live that way.

If we pray in faith that we pray to our good heavenly Father who gives nothing but good gifts, then we’ll live confidently, thankfully, joyfully, boldly.

We always live the way we pray. If we don’t pray at all, we live without a thought to God or His will. Prayer is an admission of need, and if we don’t think we need anything we’ll avoid prayer. If we pray timidly, feebly, fearfully, pessimistically – then we’ll live that way. Life will give us exactly what we expect of it, which is not much. If we pray in faith that we pray to our good heavenly Father who gives nothing but good gifts, then we’ll live confidently, thankfully, joyfully, boldly.

So this morning we are going to explore what it means to be devoted to the prayers, so that we by God’s grace we will be a church that lives confidently, thankfully, joyfully, and boldly.

There is so much that could be said about prayer, our time this morning will certainly limit us, yet even if we spend every Sunday for the rest of our lives studying prayer we will still not fully grasp how glorious this privilege truly is.

So we are going to look at two questions this morning concerning prayer.

How Should We Understand Prayer?

What Does it Mean to be Devoted to “The Prayers”

Ok, first....

How Should We Understand Prayer?

How Should We Understand Prayer?

Prayer, according to Scripture, is when the people of God are invited into the presence of God to communicate with God and hear from God.

Prayer often comes as an expression of:

desire or appeal

sorrow or apology

love or admiration

gratitude or appreciation

dissatisfaction or frustration—

or of hopes and joys, fears and doubts, questions and curiosities.

When we pray we enter into the holy of holies, we come before the throne of God and make our requests known to God.

entreaty (or request)

So when we think about how to understand prayer, we first should see prayer as a discourse with God

esteem (or worship)

fellowship (or communion).

Prayer is Discourse with God

Does Prayer Change Things? A Discourse with God

in the act and dynamic of praying, I bring my whole life under His gaze. Yes, He knows what is in my mind, but I still have the privilege of articulating to Him what is there. He says: “Come. Speak to me. Make your requests known to me.” So we come in order to know Him and to be known by Him.

Acts 2:42 ESV

42 And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

When we pray we bring our whole life under His gaze.

Of course He knows what is in our hearts and mind, yet we still have the privilege of articulating to Him what is there.

He says: “Come. Speak to me. Make your requests known to me.”

So we come in order to know Him and to be known by Him.

We come to God and we share our thoughts on the world, we ask him for wisdom and direction

We bring loved ones to his attention and ask for healing or blessing, we ask for salvation and redemption.

We bring our weaknesses, our pain, our struggle and ask for healing and perseverance.

We bring our city and our government and ask him to work in ways that will be for our good and his glory.

What a privilege it is for us to be able to pray.

So often we think or feel like God is so far away, as if he is not concerned with the little things in our lives.

***A common game people play is “what would you say if you had three minutes with…your hero, your president. If you had three minutes to talk with the president of the United States what wold you say?

you would think of the most important question to ask, the most important message to give, and you would not even consider asking him about things that in comparison dont matter.

So often we view prayer that way, we think that when we pray we should not waste God’s time, so we only talk to him when we absolutely have too.

However, this is not the biblical model of prayer.

Paul says the we should pray to God as his children, which gives us access to God at all times.

Romans 8:14–16 ESV

14 For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. 15 For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” 16 The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God,

We are children of God, which means, we go to him in prayer with the boldness and openness of a child, and we go to him knowing that nothing is more important than his child talking to him.

What a great privilege it is to pray, we enter into the presence of the creator God, the sovereign king, and we talk to him as children talk to their fathers. - and this is how Jesus taught us to pray, “our Father”

And we see as Jesus continues his prayer that prayer not only discourse with God, children speaking with their father, But that prayer is also worship.

Our Father, who is in heaven, hallowed be your name.

To say hallowed be your name is to give God adoration, to worship him for who he is. For he is holy, he is good, he is mighty, he is perfect. So prayer is also worship.

Prayer is Worship

It might be somewhat surprising to us that when the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, that he didn’t just say, “You want to learn to pray, read the Psalms”

The psalms are all prayers to God that are packed full of worship and adoration.

Jesus answer was not to read the psalms, but he did answer in accordance to the psalms. When we pray to God we are to praise him for his wonderful works.

The book of psalms teach us how to worship in prayer.

When we pray we are to thank God for his awesome power,

we to to praise him for his steadfast love

We are to worship him for his undying faithfulness

We are to thank him for his blessings,

We are to worship God for all that he is and all that he has done, and we do this through prayer.

The book of Psalms has not only been the prayerbook for the church for the last 3000 years, but it was the song book.

The psalms are designed to be sung, they are prayers that are sung as worship to our God.

So when we pray, we must never forget to bring our adoration to God, our praise and worship for he is worthy of all our praise.

Not only is prayer discourse with God and worship of God, but it is also warfare.

Prayer is warfare

When we pray we are going to war.

When Elijah wars against the prophets of Baal, he does so through prayer.

Through prayer God kept it from raining for three years

And through prayer he sent fire down from heaven to consume the sacrifice on the alter.

When we pray we go to battle

We pray for victory over temptation, we pray for the conviction of sin, we pray to protect our families and our church.

We pray for strength to fight the battle, we pray that God would fight for us.

We pray that the schemes of the Devil will fail, and we pray that the body of Christ will be victorious.

We fight for our loved ones when we pray against anxiety, depression, discouragement, temptation, and sickness.

Husbands, the best way to fight for your wife is to pray for her.

Satan wants to bring down godly families, and wives and mothers are his first target. This is the strategy he employed in the garden.

Wives, pray for your husbands, pray that God will give him strength and victory as he is on the front lines of Spiritual warfare.

When we are faced with temptations and attacks from the evil one, we are to pray

Prayer is also:

thanksgiving, confession, supplication,

Prayer is like the air we breath, we cannot live the Christian life without it.

And this is why we are called to Devote ourselves to prayer.

The early church understood the power of prayer, they understood how important it was, and this is why the devoted themserlves to the Prayers.

has been our launching pad as we have explored what followers of Christ are to be devoted too.

Acts 2:42 ESV

42 And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

So now that we have seen how we are to understand prayer, now we have to ask…

What Does it Mean to be Devoted to “The Prayers”

Devote yourself to the prayers. What are these prayers?

The early church prayed in many of the same ways we pray today. The devoted themselves to routine prayers; giving thanks before meals, prayers in the morning or prayers before bed.

They would also pray spontaneously throughout the day. God often brings someone or some situation to mind that needs prayer, and they would pray for that person in the middle of whatever they were doing.

But they also had dedicated times of prayer, where it wasn’t just spontaneous or routine like before a meal. But it was a devoted time that they would go before God in prayer.

Acts 3:1 ESV

1 Now Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour.

The early Christians were so devoted to prayer that they would meet one another at the temple to pray at the hour of prayer (3:00pm).

If they couldn’t make it to the temple the early Christians would still set aside that hour for dedicated prayer.

Acts 10:30 ESV

30 And Cornelius said, “Four days ago, about this hour, I was praying in my house at the ninth hour, and behold, a man stood before me in bright clothing

This man was an angel of God who told him to go meet Peter.

The point is, though, that Cornelius made a habit of praying at the 9th hour.

Its not a coincidence that Jesus’ last prayer on the cross was also at the 9th hour.

Matthew 27:46 ESV

46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Matthew

Jesus prayer on the cross at the 9th hour is a perfect example of what these dedicated prayers are to be. Here Jesus prays, in the midsts of the greatest horror the world has ever seen, he prays .

Psalm 22:1 ESV

1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?

The prayers the church devoted themselves too was in large part the prayers of the churches prayer book - the Psalms.

To faithfully follow God we must be a people who devote ourselves to the prayers.

When we see that the early Christians devoted themselves to “the Prayers” The prayers they devoted themselves were the psalms.

We must devote ourselves to praying the Psalms.

Praying the Psalms

When we learn to pray the Psalms, make the words of the Psalms our own, make the heartbeat of the psalms our own, make the world of the Psalms our own, our lives will become more aligned with reality.

When we learn to pray the Psalms, make the words of the Psalms our own, make the heartbeat of the psalms our own, make the world of the Psalms our own, our lives will become more aligned with reality.

The Psalms teach us how to think, how to feel, how to grieve, how to be angry, how to love and sing and rejoice.

When the Psalms become infused into our lives the whole world begins to make sense.

When you sing, pray and ponder the Psalms, you will find yourself drawn into a world in which certain things make sense that would not otherwise make sense.

When we are devoted to praying the Psalms:

Joy makes sense, grief makes sense

victory and loss make sense

Comfort and pain make sense

It is only when the life of the Psalms are coursing through our veins that we begin to understand who God is and his purposes in the world.

Praying the Psalms is an absolutely basic component of Christian living, which is why tells us that the earliest Christians devoted themselves to the Prayers, to the psalms.

NT Wright says, “The Psalms are the steady, sustained sub-current of healthy Christian living.”

The Psalms shaped the prayer and vocation even of Jesus himself. They can and will do the same for us.”

If we are to be devoted to Christ, devoted followers of God, we must be devoted to prayer, and particularly praying the psalms.

Not only does devoted prayer form us to live faithfully before him, not only does it allow us to make sense of the world we live in, but it also gives us hope for the future.

What Does Prayer Do?

What Does Prayer Do?

So we often ask the question, what does prayer do?

in fact, we can get really discouraged in our prayer life because

I may ask for something, and God seems to say no, or he just doesn’t answer.

We may get to the point where prayer really is not that big of a deal in our lives because it doesn’t really seem to DO anything.

However, this could not be further from the truth.

When we pray we are coming into the presence of God, accepted and given boldness because of the blood of Christ, And we pour out our hearts before him… We cannot leave there left unaffected.

James tells us that the prayer of a righteous man accomplishes much,

Prayer Gives Us Hope For the Future

When we devote ourselves to praying the Psalms, and our hearts and minds are formed by the rich beauty of the ancient prayers, we will begin to have a great hope for the future.

When we think about hope for the future we often think about going to heaven when we die. Our great hope is that we will be with him again, we will be with our loved ones, that we will be away from all the pain, suffering, and horrors of this world.

There is a great hope that we have when all creation is redeemed and every tear is wiped away.

But the psalms not only give us hope for the eternal state, the Psalms give us hope for tomorrow.

Yet, when we read the scriptures, our hope is not so much about going to some far off place when we die, but rather that heaven would be brought to earth even while we live.

In the Lords Payer Jesus says

Our Father -

We pray to him as his children

Who is in heaven, hallowed be your name

We pray with adoration and worship

Then he says…

“Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”

And the awesome thing about this prayer is that God is and will continue to answer this prayer.

you see, when we pray we pray as God’s Heaven and earth people

We pray as men and women who long to see the earth look more like heaven.

We pray prayers like

Psalm 47:8–9 ESV

8 God reigns over the nations; God sits on his holy throne. 9 The princes of the peoples gather as the people of the God of Abraham. For the shields of the earth belong to God; he is highly exalted!

or

Psalm 72:11 ESV

11 May all kings fall down before him, all nations serve him!

Psalm 47:9 ESV

9 The princes of the peoples gather as the people of the God of Abraham. For the shields of the earth belong to God; he is highly exalted!

or

Psalm 97:9 ESV

9 For you, O Lord, are most high over all the earth; you are exalted far above all gods.

You see, when we devote ourselves to praying the Psalms we begin to see the future as God sees it, not as one of defeat, but as one of victory!

pray with confidence that God is at work, God is moving. The kingdom of God is advancing and the gates of hell are unable to stand against it.

We pray with confidence that God is victorious, and we are more than conquerors in him.

We pray as men and women who can say for me to live is Christ but to die is gain! - either way, in Christ, we are victorious.

We pray with hope that God has not left this world to go to hell in a hand-basket, but we pray knowing that through Christ he is redeeming, renewing and restoring all things.

When we devote ourselves to praying the Psalms, we begin to see the future as God sees it, not just the 'end of the world' future, but the future of the very next moment. We see there is hope in all things, for we are united to the God who holds all things in his hands.

We pray with optimism that

Heaven and earth people

Prayer Gives Us Perspective

This is why, Church, we must be devoted to the prayers

Apart from a robust prayer life we will drift away, we will suffocate, and we will lose focus on what God has called us to.

We must pray as children to our heavenly father.

we must bring to him all of our hopes and hurts, our pain and our praise, we confess before him and we cleansed by him.

If we are not in dialogue with our Father we will forget what his voice sounds like.

We must pray and wage war against the evil powers that would see our people useless for God’s kingdom.

Pray for your families, pray for you friends, pray for your leaders and your church.

Fight the powers of Satan by going to war in your prayers

We pray so we can think God’s thoughts after him. We pray so we can have his view of the past, present and future.

For the followers of God to devote themselves to the prayers was not to just pray random prayers throughout the day or a particular times. But rather, the prayers they devoted themselves to were prayers already written down, they devoted themselves to the church’s prayer book.

Psalm 66:18 ESV

18 If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.

These prayers

Again, the point is not what hour did they pray,

Jewish prayers

A praying life

Praying the psalms

Praying is Mysterious.

If we are going to devote ourselves to prayer we need to grow in our understanding of what Prayer is, and how to pray.

Position of Prayer: Children

Purpose of Prayer:

Prayers are the habits of God’s heaven and earth people.

Prayers are the habits of God’s heaven and earth people.

For us to pray as we ought, we must see that God’s plans are to join heaven and earth together.

It may come as an expression of desire or appeal, of sorrow or apology, of love or admiration, of gratitude or appreciation, of dissatisfaction or frustration—or of hopes and joys, fears and doubts, questions and curiosities.

All these forms of communication can be broadly grouped under three major conversational categories:

(1) entreaty (or request)

(2) esteem (or worship)

(3) fellowship (or communion).

In Scripture, prayer may take any or all of these forms.

Struggling to pray

And, my goodness, am I distracted. The moment I sit down to pray I feel as though ten thousand bumble bees are flying through the atmosphere of my brain. So much interference. So much static. Things I haven’t thought about in years suddenly bubble to the surface of my consciousness. The to-do list for today that I’ve been ignoring for hours suddenly becomes a high priority. What is one to do?

Worshiping with the Church Fathers Chapter Three: The Basics of Prayer

And, my goodness, am I distracted. The moment I sit down to pray I feel as though ten thousand bumble bees are flying through the atmosphere of my brain.

So much interference. So much static. Things I haven’t thought about in years suddenly bubble to the surface of my consciousness. The to-do list for today that I’ve been ignoring for hours suddenly becomes a high priority. What is one to do?

First, that our hearts may be fired with a zealous and burning desire ever to seek, love, and serve him, while we become accustomed in every need to flee to him as to a sacred anchor.

Secondly, that there may enter our hearts no desire and no wish at all of which we should be ashamed to make him a witness, while we learn to set all our wishes before his eyes, and even to pour out our whole hearts.

Thirdly, that we be prepared to receive his benefits with true gratitude of heart and thanksgiving, benefits that our prayer reminds us come from his hand

We always live the way we pray. If we don’t pray at all, we live without a thought to God or His will. Prayer is an admission of need, and if we don’t think we need anything we’ll avoid prayer. If we pray timidly, feebly, fearfully, pessimistically – then we’ll live that way. Life will give us exactly what we expect of it, which is not much. If we pray in faith that we pray to our good heavenly Father who gives nothing but good gifts, then we’ll live confidently, thankfully, joyfully, boldly.