Five Necessary Prayers for the New Year
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Introduction
Introduction
Anybody make any new years resolutions?
Prayer is a great one!
So today we are going to talk about five necessary prayers for the New Year. Let me tell you, I needed some prayer the past week. Let me tell you what happened.
Explain story of espresso machine and UPS
So there are different kinds of prayers.
In 1 Timothy 2:1 we see the basic types of prayers mentioned.
I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men;
I would categorize prayer into basically three different categories. The first is praises to God, this one gets over looked often because we usually just jump straight to the needs of ourselves and others. The second is prayers for other people, which is known as intercessory prayer, meaning you intercede on their behalf, or intervene on their behalf. And then there are the prayers for your self, which is supplications. This is the main kind of prayer that we are used to. It is literally just requesting something from God or requesting God to do something.
I prefer to pray in this particular order, I praise God for who He is and what He has done, then I pray for others and their prayer requests, and then I pray for me and my own personal prayer requests.
So today we are going to talk about 5 necessary prayers for ourselves, or prayers of supplication.
Praying for yourself can seem a little strange if you are not used to it, it can almost seem a little bit selfish. I worked with an old cowboy who was a Christian and he talked about how he never prayed for himself, he just couldn’t do it because there were people out there with a lot bigger problems than him. This sounds humble and selfless on the surface but it isn’t what God desires for us. Your heavenly Father loves you so much and cares about you so much that He wants you to ask him for help, He wants to know that He is needed in your life. And i think these 5 prayers will help us to do that.
Were gonna jump around from Scripture to Scripture a little bit but the first one we are going to look at is Psalm 139 and David’s prayer.
1. David: Search me (Psalm 139:23)
1. David: Search me (Psalm 139:23)
Search me, O God, and know my heart:
Try me, and know my thoughts:
And see if there be any wicked way in me,
And lead me in the way everlasting.
My brother in law, when he went to college he was driving from Texas to Missouri. He had his whole car loaded down with stuff from clothes, to books, to all the things you take to college. And he got pulled over by a cop in the middle of the night, and they wanted to search his car. Of course they didn’t have any reason to, other than they saw all of this stuff just packed into his car. So they took every single thing out of his car, opened every suit case, back pack, everything and looked at it all.
So imagine, getting pulled over, and asking the cop to search the car and see if theres anything against the law.
That would be a crazy thing, yet that is what David does here. Asking God to search your heart and show you your own sin shows a true desire to be more like Christ. It is accepting the fact that you are imperfect, but you have the desire to be perfect like Christ was.
This is a great place to start, with the man after God’s own heart. I think one of the reasons that the Bible says that David was a man after Gods own heart, is because David wanted God to know his heart. He wanted to be completely transparent with His heavenly Father. He knew there was nothing he could hide from Him.
Asking God, DAILY, is an essential prayer that every Christian needs to be engaged in.
If I regard iniquity in my heart,
The Lord will not hear me:
But your iniquities have separated between you and your God,
And your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.
If there is sin in my life that I have not repented from, it builds a wall between me and my God to the point that he can’t even hear my prayers anymore.
**Wall illustration, each brick is a sin, you can’t move the bricks, but God does when we repent.
So we need to be repentant of our sins, and there’s no way for us to repent of a sin if we have forgotten about a certain sin.
Why do we need to repent of our sins if we are already saved? Because the Bible still tells us to.
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
John here is talking to Christians, so Christians need to repent of their sins to keep a right relationship with their heavenly Father.
Whenever you pray this prayer, God will bring certain things back to your memory that you may have forgotten about. And that will give you the opportunity to repent from them.
So what does repent mean? It means confessing you were wrong, asking for forgiveness, and turning away from that sin. The word repent literally means a change of mind or a change of direction. Of course we should try to not sin, but when we do, we need to repent, by confessing that sin, ask for forgiveness, and turn away from that sin.
So the first necessary prayer for the new year, is search me. Search me so that I can know my sin and repent from it.
The next prayer we will look at is Moses, in Exodus 33 and verse 18; I’ll give you a second to turn there.
2. Moses: Show me (Exodus 33:18)
2. Moses: Show me (Exodus 33:18)
And he said, I beseech thee, shew me thy glory.
So in the previous chapter, Moses was on the mountain, receiving the 10 commandments from God. He gets the commandments, comes down from the mountain, and the Jews are dancing around a golden calf statue worshiping it. He gets so angry that he throws the commandments down, breaks them. He then takes the calf, burns it down to a powder, mixes it in some water and made the people drink it. Sounds like Moses had a little bit of a mental breakdown.
So Moses goes back to the mountain, gets the new 10 commandments and gives them to the Jews.
Now God tells them to go into the land that was promised to Abraham and his descendants, which is the jewish nation. So before they go they set up camp for a couple days, and moses places the tabernacle outside of the camp. The tabernacle is the dwelling place of God right.
And so Moses is talking with the Lord in this tabernacle, and he says to God, show me your glory.
And the Lord says this
And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy.
Sometimes we get to the point in our Christian lives that it feels like God just isn’t there anymore. I don’t get anything from reading the Bible, it doesn’t seem like my prayers are being answered, I just feel like I’m stuck. And whenever we get to that place, this is the prayer we need to pray. Ask God to make Himself evident to you. Ask Him to see His glory, and He’ll show you His goodness, His grace, and His mercy.
This is just a side note, a cool thing about this passage is that after God told Moses that He would show him His goodness, grace, and mercy, He told him He couldn’t see His physical glory, because it is so glorious that you would literally die. He told him if any man sees my face, he’ll die. But I’m willing to show you my backside. So Moses sees God’s back and after spending time with the Lord it says that Moses’ face was literally shining so bright that the people were afraid of him.
Matthew 5:16 says
Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.
So if you spend quality time with the Lord, it just comes natural that your life is going to shine and that other people will notice it. Just a side note
So whenever you do get stuck in this rut in your spiritual life the other prayer you might need to pray is the first one we mentioned. If you remember the verses from Psalms and Isaiah we mentioned says that because of your sin the Lord will not hear you. It creates that wall, that barrier, and prevents Him from hearing your prayers.
So whenever you feel stuck in your walk with God, pray the prayer of David: Search me o God, and the prayer of Moses, Shew my the glory.
Next we’ll look at Samson, turn over to Judges chapter 16 and verse 28
3. Samson: Strengthen me (Judges 16:28)
3. Samson: Strengthen me (Judges 16:28)
And Samson called unto the Lord, and said, O Lord God, remember me, I pray thee, and strengthen me, I pray thee, only this once, O God, that I may be at once avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes.
So if you remember, Samson is the leader of the Jews at this time, and he took a Nazarite vow meaning he never cut his hair, cut his nails, never had wine, and things like that. And God promised Samson that he would have supernatural strength as long as he didn’t cut his hair. And so in this chapter, Samson meets a woman, and she seduces him. This woman, Delilah, is not a Jew like he is, she is a philistine. And Samson in the previous chapters has been giving the Philistines a lot of headache, he burned their crop fields, killed many of their men, destroyed their property and things like that. So the Philistines tell Delilah to figure out where Samson’s strength comes from, that way they can destroy him. So she seduces him and he eventually tells her his secret, that if his hair is cut then he will lose his strength. So he falls asleep with her and she cuts his hair, and the philistines come in and take him. They bind him up, cut out his eyes and took him to prison.
Samson was not following the Lord and obeying His commandments like he should’ve been, and this led to his downfall.
He was brought to the palace for the philistines to make fun of him and he was chained to the two main pillars of this palace. Scholars estimate that this palace could hold several thousand people on the lower level and another three thousand on the second level.
And so Samson begs for strength one more time to destroy the enemies of God, and God answers. So Samson breaks the pillars down and the whole building wrecks and kills thousands of thousands of people.
Whenever we are in that place, where we’ve basically been defeated by the enemy, this is the time to ask God for His strength. We understand that we have no strength and we cannot over come the devil and the world on our own, but because we are saved, we have the power of Christ in us, and by faith we can overcome our enemy. Listen to these verses
And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong.
There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.
Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.
For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?
Whenever you feel like you’re losing the spiritual battle, pray the prayer of Samson and ask God to strengthen you.
4. Isaiah: Send me (Isaiah 6:8)
4. Isaiah: Send me (Isaiah 6:8)
Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.
In this passage of Scripture, the prophet Isaiah is having a vision and he is in heaven at the throne of God and theres angels everywhere singing and theres smoke in the room and Isaiah starts freaking out out a little bit and basically says man I’m a sinner I’m not supposed to be here, and an angel basically says he has permission, and then the Lord speaks.
Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.
Listen, God has a perfect will for your life. There is something specific that the Lord wants you to do with your life, not just in the future but also in the present. You ought to be relying on the Lord day to day. But his future will for you is something that you ought to be praying for. You ought to be praying for whatever career the Lord wants for you. Not what you want to do necessarily, but what the Lord wants you to do. You ought to be praying about what college to go to after high school, or what trade God wants you to pursue. You ought to be praying for your future spouse and that it would be clear who the Lord would have you to be married to. Man I started praying for my future spouse in the seventh grade man. And i think thats why I got such a good one because i prayed so hard for her. Whatever the Lords will is, pray that he would send you down the right path, the perfect path that he has laid out for you. Maybe God wants you to be in some form of ministry, being a preacher or a christian school teacher, man ask God to send you.
When God answered Isaiah’s prayer, He simply said go. Go. When you pray this prayer, you will have to take steps of faith, and they may be scary and full of uncertainties, but if God says go, then go.
Finally we have the prayer of peter, turn to Matthew 14:30
5. Peter: Save me (Matthew 14:30)
5. Peter: Save me (Matthew 14:30)
But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me.
Of course we all know this story of when Jesus walked on the water, and Peter stepped out of the boat to walk with him, and Peter became frightened and started sinking, he said save me. In this passage, Peter is already saved he’s already a christian. But when Christian’s mess up or they begin to lose faith in God, they still need God’s sovereign and omnipotent power to step in on their behalf. We know Christians don’t lose their salvation, thats not what Im saying. All im saying is man we still need help, and Christ is the only one who can help us. Look at the next verse, verse 31
And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?
It says immediately, immediately, when Peter asked for help, Jesus saved him.
Maybe you’re not a christian, Maybe you’re just not sure. The same principle still applies, If you believe Christ died for your sins and rose again and simply ask him to save you, he will do so immediately.
Conclusion
Conclusion
I don’t know if you need to pray one of these prayers specifically or not right now, but I do know we all will need these prayers throughout the year.
Lord, Search me
Father, Show me
God, Strengthen me
God, send me
and Christ, save me
lets pray and then we have a few announcements.
SKI TRIP