Sermon Tone Analysis

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

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.

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.

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.