Prayer

Prayer Prayer Pat Damiani / General Rhythms of Grace / Luke 11:1–13   NOTE: This is a manuscript, and not a transcript of this message. The actual presentation of the message differed from the manuscript through the leading of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it is possible, and even likely that there is material in this manuscript that was not included in the live presentation and that there was additional material in the live presentation that is not included in this manuscript. How many of you here this morning are completely satisfied with your prayer life? Anyone? I know I’m not. In fact, I feel a bit unworthy to even preach this message this morning, because I have such a long way to go when it comes to incorporating the rhythm of prayer into my life. I think most of us have a pretty good handle on the basics of prayer. And yet, we tend to feel inadequate when it comes to this rhythm of grace and most of us probably feel like we don’t really pray like we ought to. But if you struggle with prayer, you’re in good company. Jesus’ disciples also fell short when it came to their prayer life, even though they had Jesus as their model. In working on the message this week, I’ve come to the realization that as important as it is to know how to pray, it is even more important to know why we pray. In fact, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say the reason that most of us struggle so much when it comes to prayer is that we don’t have a proper understanding of the “why”. So while I am going to spend some time today talking about some practical steps we can all take when it come to the “how” of prayer, I’m not going to do that until we first spend a pretty significant amount of time on the “why”. Today we are in week two of our current sermon series - Rhythms of Grace. In this series we are talking about 8 different spiritual rhythms that we all need to build into our lives if we want to become mature disciples of Jesus and grow in our relationship with Him. Last week we began with the first, and in my opinion, the most important rhythm - that of meditating on the Word of God. And I hope that this week, you have taken some time to apply what we learned about Biblical meditation and that you’re starting to build that rhythm into your daily routine. Today, we’re obviously going to talk about prayer. And that is such a huge topic that in the 30 minutes or so that we have this morning, we’re only going to scratch the surface. But I do think that in that limited time, we can learn enough to begin to incorporate that rhythm into our lives more effectively and consistently. Go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Luke chapter 11 and follow along as I read beginning in verse 1. Luke 11:1–13 ESV The first thing we see here is that Jesus was praying. That was an important rhythm in His life and we see that in Luke’s gospel more than in any of the other gospel accounts. Luke’s gospel is often referred to as the “Gospel of prayer” because of its emphasis on Jesus’ prayer life. When He is finished praying, one of the disciples asks Jesus to teach them to pray. It’s interesting that throughout His earthly ministry, this is the only time that any of the disciples asked Jesus to teach them anything. They never asked Him to teach them to preach, or heal, or do miracles, or evangelize or even worship. But they do ask Him to teach them to pray. So that ought to tell us a lot about the priority that prayer ought to have in our lives. It’s not that disciples didn’t already pray. Prayer was an important element in the practice of their Jewish faith. But they sensed that their prayer life did not connect them with God the way Jesus connected with His heavenly Father when He prayed. They understood that in order to connect with God like that, there were some things they needed to learn about prayer. I looked at a lot of definitions of prayer this week in my preparation for this message. And many of them were really helpful. But this morning I’m going to use the words of Paul E. Miller in his book, The Praying Life, as the basis for our definition of prayer and our main idea. Just as a quick aside, over the years I’ve read a number of helpful books on prayer, but I’ve found Miller’s book to be the most practical and helpful for me personally so I’d highly recommend it. Here is how we’re going to define prayer today: Prayer is bringing my helplessness to God That is certainly the pattern we see in Jesus’ life. In His humanity, He lacked the resources to accomplish the mission that had been entrusted to Him by God the Father. So at every important point in His life, He prayed: • If He had a busy day before Him, He got up early and prayed. • Before He performed many of His miracles, He prayed. • Before He selected the apostles, He prayed. • Before He went to the cross, He prayed. I am convinced that our lack of prayer is not primarily due to our busyness or even our lack of discipline, as important as that is. We fail to pray primarily because we trust in our own sufficiency and competence. We think that all we need is a little boost from God here and there when we can’t handle things on our own. Paul E. Miller expresses that idea like this: If we think we can do life on our own, we will not take prayer seriously. Our failure to pray will always feel like something else - a lack of discipline or too many obligations, But when something is important to us, we make room for it. Prayer is simply not important to many Christians because Jesus is already an add-on. Ouch! I don’t know about you, but for me that hits really close to home because I realize just how true that is at times in my life. I am going to provide you with what I hope will be some practical guidance on how to incorporate the rhythm of prayer into our lives in the remainder of this message, but until we adopt this mindset that prayer is the act of bringing my helplessness to God, I doubt very much if those steps alone are going to be very effective. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the five aspects of prayer that we find in this passage: Five Aspects of Prayer: • The priority of prayer (v. 2) • A pattern for prayer (vs. 2-4) • The purpose of prayer (v. 2) • Persistence in prayer (vs. 5-10) • Provision of prayer (vs. 11-13) Let’s begin with... The Priority of Prayer (v. 2) We’ve already talked about this some, so I’ll just point out that Jesus said “When you pray...” and not “If you pray...” So in Jesus’ mind, prayer is a rhythm that is not optional in our lives. It is just as important for our spiritual life as breathing is for our physical life. A pattern for prayer (vs. 2-4) The disciple asked Jesus to teach them to pray, not to teach them a prayer. Most of the time, we refer to this and the similar prayer in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6 as “The Lord’s Prayer”. But it would probably be better if we referred to it as the “model prayer”. Jesus is not giving the disciples a prayer that they could memorize and repeat word-for-word. If He had wanted to do that, the wording here would be exactly the same as in Matthew 6 and there would be some evidence elsewhere in the Scriptures of the disciples repeating those words. But we just don’t see that in the Bible. And in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus had warned his followers against “heaping up empty phrases” when they prayed. While there is nothing particularly wrong with repeating these words, Jesus never intended for the prayer to be used as just a rote prayer to be repeated word for word. Instead, He is giving His disciples a pattern to guide their praying. We could easily spend the rest of our time focusing on that pattern and a little later in the message I’m going to give you an easy way to incorporate this pattern into your praying. But for now, let’s just notice these aspects of that pattern: • It begins with a focus on God - who He is and on His kingdom. • It is not self-centered. Notice that the pronouns here are plural - “us” and “we”. That doesn’t mean that we don’t pray for our own needs. It just means that as we pray we recognize that we don’t live in isolation and that our prayers, even the prayers about our own needs, impact others. • It includes both spiritual and physical needs, but the emphasis is on the spiritual. There are 6 lines in this prayer and only 1 deals with physical needs. The purpose of prayer (v. 2) Far too often we tend to think that the purpose of prayer is to get something from God. But we see clearly here that the purpose of prayer is to bring glory to God Himself and to His kingdom. That is why our prayers are to begin with a focus on God and His kingdom and not on self. Even when we pray for our needs, it is not just to make us happy, but so that God’s name will be hallowed and His kingdom brought near to others. The secondary purpose of prayer is to change us and to conform us to God’s will. When we pray like Jesus taught here, with a focus on God and on spiritual needs, God uses prayer to help develop us into the people He wants us to become. Persistence in prayer (vs. 5-10) Beginning in verse 5, Jesus tells a humorous parable about the importance of persisting in prayer. If we’re not careful, we can easily miss the point of the parable. Jesus is not in any way trying to say that God is like a grouchy neighbor who will answer our prayers just to get rid of us. The point He is making here is that if a selfish neighbor will meet the needs of a bothersome friend, how much more will a loving heavenly Father meet the needs of His children. The verbs ask, seek and knock in verse 9 are all present tense verbs. That means that they are a continuous action. We could accurately translate them “keep on asking”, “keep on seeking” and “keep on knocking”. So that means it is important to persist in our praying - but not for the reason we might think. We don’t persist prayer is in order to change God’s mind or persuade Him to act. We persist because in the process of persistent prayer God changes us and develops in us a heart and passion that is consistent with who he is and what He wants for us. Provision of prayer (vs. 11-13) In verses 11-13 Jesus provides an illustration that all of is who are parents can relate to. If our children ask us for something that we know is not good for them, we aren’t going to give that to them no matter how much they might keep pestering us. We do that because we love them and want to protect them from things that might be harmful to them. God does the same for us. When we don’t receive something we ask for in prayer it isn’t because God grudgingly refuses to give it to us, but rather because He wants to give us something better. God’s “no” is always a manifestation of His wisdom and His love for us. In fact, every time we ask for a gift, God promises to give us something better - the Giver of the gift. Given the context here, I don’t think Jesus is instructing His disciples to pray for the Holy Spirit, although since He has not yet returned to the Father, they do not yet have the Holy Spirit I suppose that is possible. What Jesus seems to be saying here is that no matter what you ask for, if we yield to the leading of the Holy Spirit in our lives, He will guide us to what is best for us, even though that is not what we ask for up front. All five of these aspects of prayer reinforce our main idea: Prayer is bringing my helplessness to God How do we get to the point where we begin to view prayer like that? One thing is for sure, incorporating prayer into our lives as a rhythm of grace doesn’t come naturally. Like the disciples, we need to do more than just desire to pray. We need Jesus to teach us to pray. But He won’t do that unless we give Him something to work with. So let’s look at three steps we can take in order to cooperate with Jesus as He teaches us to pray. HOW TO LET JESUS TEACH ME TO PRAY Pray If you look closely, you see that the disciple didn’t ask Jesus to teach them “how to pray”. He asked Jesus to teach them “to pray”. And when Jesus replied, His answer was very simple, “When you pray, say...” In other words, just start talking to God. Although we can benefit from reading good books on prayer or doing further study on prayer, or going to a seminar about prayer, the best way to learn to pray is to pray. Begin with the Bible Much of the time, we just begin our prayer time by asking God for things that we want. But if prayer is bringing my helpless ness to God, then I need to begin my conversation by letting God speak to me before I start speaking to Him. And while God is certainly capable of speaking to us any way He wants, He has chosen to do that primarily through His Word. Starting with the Bible does two important things: • First, it get the focus off myself and on to God and the things of God. Richard Foster, the author of Celebration of Discipline, wrote these relevant words: Prayer involves transformed passions. In prayer, real prayer, we begin to think God’s thoughts after Him: to desire the things He desires, to love the things He loves, to will the things He wills. The best way to get focused on the things of God like that is to begin by spending time in His Word • Second, it helps me see my own life from God’s perspective. And that leads me to understand how helpless I am without God. And as we’ve seen this morning, being helpless before God ought to be our primary motivation for praying. So before I begin to pray, I develop a proper mindset by spending time in the Bible. Develop a regular habit Our lives are all different so how we incorporate prayer into our lives is going to be at least a bit different for each of us. What is important is that each of us develop a plan that works for us. Like we talked about last week with meditating on the Word of God, establishing a regular habit of prayer is not going to be easy. But if it was important for Jesus to incorporate the rhythm of prayer into His life, just think of how much more important it is for us to do that. It may very well be that we have to give up some other things in our lives, even good things, in order to make prayer a regular rhythm in our lives. But I guarantee it will be worth it. In 1 Thessalonians 5, Paul wrote these words about prayer: 1 Thessalonians 5:17 ESV pray without ceasing, The idea there is that we ought to have a prayerful attitude all the time As we face decisions and obstacles throughout the day, we need to lift those things before God as an acknowledgment of our helplessness. But from what we observe in Jesus’ life, we need to also build a consistent time of prayer into the rhythms of our life. And in order to do that, we must address three important aspects of that prayer time: When Each of us needs to find a time that works well for us. For most of us, that probably ought to be near the beginning of our day. But that might not work for you, maybe because of work or family obligations. And obviously we all have interruptions to our “normal” schedules from time to time, so we need to have some flexibility. But for most of us, trying to stick to a regular schedule the best we can is the most effective way to incorporate prayer as a rhythm in or life. Where To the extent possible, we need to find a place that is quiet and free from distractions. Notice that I said “to the extent possible” because I know for some of us that might be very hard. If you have children in the home, this is where the husband and wife can really help each other out, by making it possible for your spouse to have that quiet place and time. Praying in the car on your way to work in the morning is probably not the best way to get free from distractions, but I know that there have been seasons in my life when that was the best I could do. So that is certainly better than not making time to pray at all. How We need to develop a method that will allow us to pray according to the pattern that Jesus laid out for us here in Luke 11 and also a way to keep track of the things we are praying for. Many of you are familiar with the A.C.T.S. structure for praying. There are certainly others, but I’ve found this one is easy to remember and also does a good job of following the pattern that Jesus gave us: Adoration Confession Thanksgiving Supplication This is a great way to start my prayer time with a God focus. I begin with adoration - often something about God that I have just read about in the Bible. Then I ask God to let me see my life from His perspective and reveal any sin in my life so that I can confess that to Him. Then I spend some time to thank God for all the blessings that he has poured into my life. By the time I do that I am very God focused and only then do I begin to lift my requests to God. And I find that by focusing on God first like that, my prayer requests tend to be a lot more in line with God’s will than they would be if I just started asking God for stuff. I also need a method to organize and keep track of the things I’m praying for. There are a number of ways that you could do this: • Some people keep a prayer list or prayer journal where they can write down prayer requests and keep track of God’s answers. • In his book, A Praying Life, Paul Miller explains a card system he uses. • I use something similar to his card system in an electronic form with an app for my phone called Prayer Mate. If you’re like me, you have far too many things you are praying for to pray for all of them every day. So for ongoing prayer requests, this app gives me a certain number of prayer requests to pray for each day and it rotates through those requests regularly. One of the categories in my app is for our church and I have a card for every family here at TFC in my app and that way I make sure to pray for every one of your families on a regular, consistent basis. By the way, if you have specific requests you’d like me to be praying for on an ongoing basis, just let me know. You can fill out one of the red “Pray for Me” cards you’ll find in the seat backs, email me, or message me in Faithlife. As I said earlier, this is an area of my life where I’m still learning and growing. I don’t have this all figured out and I certainly don’t pray like I ought to or need to all the time. But if you’d like some more help developing a regular habit of prayer I’d be happy to help. Once again this week, I want to help all of us begin to incorporate this rhythm into our lives. So I have a homework assignment for you this week. You’ll find the details on the back side of your sermon outline. It’s really pretty simple. Just use the pattern we talked about a few minutes ago to guide you as you pray for 10 minutes a day for at least 5 days this week. And once you’ve done that, use what you’ve learned about how you pray best to develop your own plan to incorporate the rhythm of prayer into your life. Can you do that? Prayer is bringing my helplessness to God I will close with the insightful words of Paul Miller: I am starting to see there is a difference between “saying prayers” and honest praying. Both can sound the same on the outside, but the former is too often motivated by a sense of obligation and guilt; whereas the latter is motivated by the conviction that I am completely helpless to “do life” on my own. Or in the case of praying for others, that I am completely helpless to help others without the grace and power of God. Discussion Questions for Bible Roundtable 1. What do you think is the real reason that we don’t pray more? 2. How do we know that the “Lord’s Prayer” was never meant to be a rote prayer that we are to repeat word for word? 3. Why do you think Jesus used plural pronouns - “we” and “us” in His model prayer? 4. Why do you think Jesus taught that it is important to persist in prayer? How do we know when it is time to quit praying about some request? 5. Jesus puts a lot more focus on spiritual needs than physical needs in His model prayer. Why do you think we have a hard time following that example? What practical steps can we take to bring our prayers more in line with that example?