Back to School Prayer Night
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
In the next week or two, millions of students around the nation will be returning to the classroom as the 2021-2022 school year begins. With the start of a school year there are many emotions: excitement, nervousness, fear, anxiety, stress, and happiness all come to mind and many students will feel several of these things on their first day. During a completely normal year, there would be a lot of nerves as the school years gets underway. As with most things, this year has not been normal, and it appears as though the upcoming school year will follow suit. Depending on the respective school/building/age, things will look different. Activities could change. Rules could fluctuate based on circumstances outside of anyone’s control. With all of these uncertainties, there will undoubtedly be some concern and fear. In fact, in looking around at our world right now, there is a lot of concern and fear. Just as we talk about on Sunday mornings often about how a lost world needs hope, there are kids who are concerned and fearful and what they desperately need in the coming weeks is hope. Not the hope of a plan or person, but the hope that Jesus can bring. As we pray this evening for students as they go back to school, I encourage you to pray for our students at Morgan Baptist Church to be bold ambassadors for Christ and to share the hope of Jesus with their classmates!
The great AW Tozer once said, “A scared world needs a fearless church.” I agree wholeheartedly with the great Tozer on many things and this is one quote that I cannot agree with more strongly. Our world needs a fearless church. Not an ignorant church or a arrogant church. But one that is fearless as we live in uncertain times. How can we be such a church? By remembering Jesus’ promise to never change and to always be with us as Hebrews 13 shares with us - that’s a good place to start! By fellowshipping with one another and worshiping corporately. By studying God’s Word and encouraging our brothers and sisters. All of these things are good and we should practice them - but one of the primary ways that we can be a fearless church is by spending intentional time as individuals and as a corporate body in prayer.
Prayer is important and we’ve all had experiences with this as God has answered our prayers in miraculous ways! Tonight, I want to give a couple of application points for us as individuals whenever we pray and then we will spend some time on our own in prayer before praying as a body.
Prayer is Expected
Donald Whitney wrote one of the most impactful books I’ve ever read entitled, “Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life.” It’s about 300 pages but split into 13 chapters and lists 10 different disciplines that every Christian should strive to live out consistently. In chapter 4, Whitney dives into why prayer matters so much in the life of a Christian. The first thing that Whitney brings out is that prayer is something that God expects of us. Sometimes we think that we pray in order to get something back from God. Sometimes this happens, but prayer isn’t so much about that as it is communing and spending time with our Lord. Paul implores the church in Colossae to pray
2 Devote yourselves to prayer; stay alert in it with thanksgiving.
To the church in Thessalonica he says
17 pray constantly,
Jesus talks about prayer often and one of the major sections of the Sermon on the Mount is devoted to prayer
5 “Whenever you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, because they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by people. Truly I tell you, they have their reward.
6 But when you pray, go into your private room, shut your door, and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
7 When you pray, don’t babble like the Gentiles, since they imagine they’ll be heard for their many words.
8 Don’t be like them, because your Father knows the things you need before you ask him.
9 “Therefore, you should pray like this: Our Father in heaven, your name be honored as holy.
To Jesus, prayer was not optional. If Jesus needed to pray, don’t you think that we need to pray too? He is telling his listeners (as Paul tells the early churches) to pray. This is a Christian expectation that we can sometimes put off or consider to not be important because there are times where we don’t see the results.
Whitney states that God promises to answer prayer but that doesn’t always look like how we expect. Prayer involves communication in the spiritual realm, and many prayers are answered in ways that cannot be seen in the material realm.
2. Prayer is Communication
As the saying goes, if you didn’t talk to your spouse for a month, would your relationship suffer? Absolutely it would. We know that we have a relationship with our heavenly Father, but there are times where we can be tempted to put it on the back burner. To let it slide. To not prioritize it. Whenever we do this, our relationship with the Lord suffers - not because He moves or changes, but because we are not seeking the right thing often times. As one pastor put it, “For the Christian, praying should be like breathing. Just as breathing is the response of physical life to the presence of air, so prayer should be the response of spiritual life to the presence of God.” Because we have a relationship with God, we must pray and commune with our Father. As we pray, our faith often grows stronger and our knowledge of God and His character deepens.
3. Prayer is about more than you or I
Whenever we pray, it can be easy to ask lots of things of God and there certainly is a time and place for that! But whenever we pray, what are some things that we should naturally do? Whenever we talk with the Creator of the Universe, how should we start? Spurgeon gives several things that we should always pray for: That God would be glorified. That the Church would be blessed. That the lost would be found. Those are 3 great things to pray for every time we pray.
I’ve heard this acronym many times, especially as a child, and it’s stuck with me:
P - Praise
R - Repent
A - Ask
Y - Yield
Whenever we first pray, we praise God for what He has done and for who He is. Second, we repent of our wrongdoings and sinfulness. We turn from them and ask for forgiveness. Third, we ask God to answer our requests and to help us in our time of need. Fourth, we trust Him as we wait. One pastor that I’ve recently heard of and grown in respect for, Robby Gallaty shared this a couple weeks ago, “I find myself listening to God the more I sit with Him in silence and solitude. I’ve learned that God has more important things to say to me than me to Him.” As we pray, it can be tempting to think that it’s all about us and our needs and desires, but friends it is so much deeper than that. God speaks to us through prayer. It’s communication and we have His Spirit inside of us. Does He use an audible voice? Often not, but we can sense His peace and comfort while we yield and wait in silence.
Tonight, as we pray for our kids going to school, for teachers to be strengthened, for administers to be given discernment and clarity, and for Jesus to be made known to the lost, I encourage all of us to consider our personal prayer lives. Is there room for us to grow? I think we’d all agree that there is. For the next few minutes, we are going to have some intentional, planned, prayer time. Maybe you’re a planner, maybe you’re not. One pastor shared that sometimes we think that the opposite of having a plan is being fun and spontaneous. This can be true with some things, but often in our prayer life, the opposite of having a plan is being stuck in a rut. We need to have intentional time where we pray. As we pray tonight, consider how can you and I set aside time each day to plan to pray and listen to our Heavenly Father?
Let’s pray.
