GPS
Back to the Basics • Sermon • Submitted
0 ratings
· 7 viewsNotes
Transcript
How GPS Works
Sailors used the stars, moon, sun and planets to navigate.
Sextant
Land Navigation (Compas and a Map)
GPS
TWO WAY COMMUNICATION
Prayer is two way communication between you and the creator of the universe.
BUT IT FEELS SOMETIMES LIKE ONE WAY COMMUNICATION
Phone Call:
Feel like your talking to yourself. How do you know the difference between God answering your prayer and you answering it in your own head?
Today, we are going to look at what God says about prayer in his word, but we are also going to talk about prayer in a very real and honest sense from our perspective.
Confessions of a bad prayer life.
I use to hear people talk about their prayer life and I would feel like an utter failure. They talked about how enriched their lives, how they really felt the presence of God, and how God answered their prayers all the time.
I would then commit that I was going to have a better prayer life. I was going pray more and I was going to pray better. I was going to do this and I was going to do that.
And I set a time to pray and I would get ready to pray, and get alone and start praying and BOOM, I would fall asleep; or start day dreaming.
Jesus calls God our heavenly Father and that we should pray to Him as such, but I didn’t have a relationship with my father as a point of reference.
“Man, I just talk to God like he is right there with me. He knows I’m a screw up and I’m just like, Dad, I did it again, and could use your help.”
There was a simplicity of him just being himself that struck a chord with me.
Visitors vs family
Company - clean up, hide dirty laundry under the bed, shove stuff hear and there to make it look like your house is perfect.
Family and close friends - They know the real me. You’re more interested in spending time with them, than in trying to impress them.
God know you. He know you have dirty laundry, so instead of hiding it, ask Him to make it clean. While you’re at it, see if He can help you fold that fitted sheet.
Like the Gospel
You brought nothing to it. It was all that Christ did for you.
It is only through what Christ did on the cross that God gives us prayer.
14 Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.
15 For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.
16 Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
No Magic Prayer
The Prayer of Jabez by Burce Wilkinson
Sold more than 9 million copies in 2000.
It was centered around 1 Chronicles 4 10
10 Now Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, “Oh that You would bless me indeed and enlarge my border, and that Your hand might be with me, and that You would keep me from harm that it may not pain me!” And God granted him what he requested.
It takes the verse our of context. This was a historical statement, no an instruction on how to pray. V. 9 Jabez was more honorable than his brothers…Maybe God blessed him, because He was could use him more than his brothers.
The author claims: “I want to teach you how to pray a daring prayer that God always answers.”
Boarders on a name it and claim it prosperity gospel that puts us in charge of God.
God cares about your needs.
When I was a kid, our pastor announced that he was going to preach a Wednesday night message on how to get exactly what you pray for.
I was excited. I wanted a dirt-bike, and my mom was surely not going to get me one, so I came ready!
The pastor went to James 4:2-3
2 You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask.
3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.
What I heard was this: that if you align your wants to be exactly what God wants, then when you pray for what you want, because it is exactly what God wants, he will answer your prayer.
Oh great, so what I really want, doesn’t matter to God.
That’s not right either.
So what is the right way to approach prayer?
1 It happened that while Jesus was praying in a certain place, after He had finished, one of His disciples said to Him, “Lord, teach us to pray just as John also taught his disciples.”
2 And He said to them, “When you pray, say:
‘Father, hallowed be Your name.
Your kingdom come.
3 ‘Give us each day our daily bread.
4 ‘And forgive us our sins,
For we ourselves also forgive everyone who is indebted to us.
And lead us not into temptation.’ ”
Recognize: God as sovereign Lord
Request: What you want and need
Repent: of your sins
Remain: focused on God’s leadership
5 Then He said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend, and goes to him at midnight and says to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves;
6 for a friend of mine has come to me from a journey, and I have nothing to set before him’;
7 and from inside he answers and says, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been shut and my children and I are in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.’
8 “I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence he will get up and give him as much as he needs.
Motive: Share God’s love.
Persistance: Don’t give up.
God will either grant your request, or change it.
9 “So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.
10 “For everyone who asks, receives; and he who seeks, finds; and to him who knocks, it will be opened.
Don’t blame God for giving you what you want.
11 “Now suppose one of you fathers is asked by his son for a fish; he will not give him a snake instead of a fish, will he?
12 “Or if he is asked for an egg, he will not give him a scorpion, will he?
13 “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?”
You have the greatest preacher there is. The Holy Spirit of God living inside you.
Prayer should include giving God your worries.
6 Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time,
7 casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.
Conclude:
Six prayers God always answers
Ask for God to glorify Himself through you.
14 “For the earth will be filled
With the knowledge of the glory of the Lord,
As the waters cover the sea.
2. Ask for forgiveness
9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
3. Ask God to reveal more of himself to you.
33 “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.
34 “They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the Lord, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”
4. Ask for wisdom.
5 But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him.
5. Ask to be strengthened in your ability to obey Him.
12 So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling;
13 for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.
6. Ask to spread the Gospel to the lost.
14 “This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come.
Are you the lost?