PoP - week 1 - Talking to God
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Talking to God
Talking to God
Johnny, a very bright 5 year old, told his daddy he'd like to have a baby brother and, along with his request, offered to do whatever he could to help. His dad, a very bright 35 year old, paused for a moment and then replied, " I'll tell you what, Johnny, if you pray every day for two months for a baby brother, I guarantee that God will give you one!"
Johnny responded eagerly to his dad's challenge and went to his bedroom early that night to start praying for a baby brother.
He prayed every night for a whole month, but after that time, he began to get skeptical. He checked around the neighborhood and found out that what he thought was going to happen, had never occurred in the history of the neighborhood. You just don't pray for two months and then, whammo- a new baby brother. So, Johnny quit praying. After another month, Johnny's mother went to the hospital. When she came back home, Johnny's parents called him into the bedroom. He cautiously walked into the room, not expecting to find anything, and there was a little bundle lying right next to his mother. His dad pulled back the blanket and there was -- not one baby brother, but two!! His mother had twins!
Johnny's dad looked down at him and said, "Now aren't you glad you prayed?"
Johnny hesitated a little and then looked up at his dad and said, "Yes, but aren't you glad I quit when I did?"
That is some powerful prayer. Raise your hand if you know someone who people tend to think of as a “prayer warrior”. When someone needs some serious prayer they call this person. When something happens in their life they pray about it and over night that situation changes. Now raise your hand if you would say, “That’s definitely not me. In fact, my prayer life could use a little help.”
I have never seen myself as a “prayer warrior”. In fact, for the majority of my life I have felt like my prayer life was mostly inadequate or not good enough. Some of you may have even felt that way in the past. You may even feel that way today. One reason I think we feel that way is because we tend to look at God’s laws of nature through the lens of Newton’s laws. In other words, when we exert force on something we expect an equal and opposite reaction. When we don’t see those results from prayer we naturally think, “I didn’t do it right. I messed something up. It just doesn’t work for me.”
Today we are starting a new series about prayer that we are calling “Power of Prayer.” Let me tell you real quick what we will be talking about for the next 4 weeks, God willing. Today we are going to talk about prayer at its most basic level, how to talk to God.
Next week we will discuss the other half of communicating with God, listening. How can we hear God when He responds? How do we recognize God’s voice? Listening to God.
Week 3 we will ask the question, “Does God listen to me? Does he even hear me?” We’ll talk about unanswered prayer. “Why does it seem like when someone prays God does everything, but when I pray He doesn’t seem to do what I ask Him to do?”
The last week we will look at Jesus’ response to the disciples when they said, “Lord, teach us to pray.” Commonly referred to as “The Lord’s Prayer.”
The overly observant of you may be thinking, “Power of Prayer? This is all about defining prayer and how to pray.” You are exactly right. When I think of “Prayer” and “Power” in the bible there is one verse that immediately stands out...
24 I tell you, you can pray for anything, and if you believe that you’ve received it, it will be yours.
As humans we read this verse and our eyeballs turn into dollar signs. As David would say, “The Old Man” or the old self sees opportunity. A new car. A better bathroom in my house. No “rush hour” traffic on the way home from work. In Western Oklahoma that just means not getting stuck behind a farmer checking his cattle.
So was Jesus trying to trick us? I don’t think so, but He often spoke in a way that would cause His listeners to stop and think. Think about the rest of the bible. If I could summarize it in my own words, I would say that “all of scripture testifies about Jesus Christ and God’s love for us and calls us to be self-less.”
At first glance this verse appears to be saying that the power of prayer is in the receiving, but I think what Jesus wants us to realize is that the power is in the praying. In other words, Pray for anything! Whatever you want. Then God will respond by either giving you that thing, or He will change your heart. Because faith isn’t a measure of how much I believe in something, rather it is a state of being aligned with God’s desires. God’s will. Does God want me to have this car? Avoid traffic? Move this mountain? Or is He trying to teach me something else.
I believe that God wants to change the way we think about Power of Prayer. Move “Power” from the external part of prayer (the results of our prayers) to the internal part of prayer (what God is doing in us through prayer, who you are becoming.) I like to think of it this way… If you want to be rich, pray for God to make you rich! And I promise that if you keep praying for God to make you rich you will be rich. Only, it may not be the rich you originally hoped for. After a week, a month, a year, a decade of praying for riches you will suddenly realize that you are wealthy beyond measure. Rich in friendships, family, relationships, love of the Father, and on and on the list will go.
My prayer for us is that through this series God will change the way we think about the power of prayer. Specifically, my prayer during this series is Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians...
16 I have not stopped thanking God for you. I pray for you constantly, 17 asking God, the glorious Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, to give you spiritual wisdom and insight so that you might grow in your knowledge of God. 18 I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the confident hope he has given to those he called—his holy people who are his rich and glorious inheritance.
19 I also pray that you will understand the incredible greatness of God’s power for us who believe him. This is the same mighty power 20 that raised Christ from the dead and seated him in the place of honor at God’s right hand in the heavenly realms.
“The incredible greatness of God’s power for us who believe him.” His love, mercy and salvation that lives in us. Not a magic wand that we can wield, but a life changing, heart penetrating, hope fulfilling, immeasurable love that starts with prayer. As Christ followers, if you want to change your life the most effective and powerful thing you can do is pray. So, if prayer is that powerful, why don’t people pray more?
Throughout my life there have been several things that have pushed me away from prayer for one reason or another. Here are 4 things that keep people from praying, maybe you can relate to one or more of these...
NOT SURE YOU KNOW HOW TO PRAY.
I want to pray more, but I’m not sure how. Am I doing it right? Did I say the right thing? Did I use enough “Thou’s” and “Thy’s”?
2. GET BORED OR DISTRACTED WHILE TRYING TO PRAY.
I lose focus. You start to pray, but then your thoughts trail off or you fall asleep. “God watch over us today and guide our… did I lock the doors? Anyway, guide our… I didn’t feed the dog!”
3. THINK YOUR REQUESTS ARE TOO SMALL FOR GOD.
God is this amazing being who created the universe and He’s got all this stuff going on right now, why would He be concerned about this little thing that’s bothering me?
4. NOT SURE YOUR PRAYERS WILL MAKE A DIFFERENCE.
If God already knows what I’m going through and He already knows what is going to happen, why would I pray about it anyway? How could my little prayer make a difference?
A lot of us go through life letting doubts just like these guide our prayer life and we never really develop a strong and meaningful prayer life. So today we are going to start as simple as we can with a basic understanding of prayer and work our way up from there. If you are taking notes, let’s start with the definition of prayer. Prayer is simply “communication with God.”
PRAYER IS COMMUNICATING WITH GOD.
It is so simple, yet at the same time it’s hard to believe that we can talk to God. And we’ve not just been granted audience with him like someone would be allowed to talk to the president. Scripture says that we can draw near to the throne of grace with confidence! That we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. It is so simple and at the same time it is amazing and hard to believe.
Let’s look at one of David’s prayers in the book of Psalms. As we read this, notice how David communicates with God. How personal and intimate it is… Psalm 5:1-3…
1 O Lord, hear me as I pray;
pay attention to my groaning.
Think about that for just a second. Think about the people you are closest to and how you communicate with each other. Everyday I walk up to Amy and say, “Hey baby!” Then do the eyebrow thing. And I can tell by her groaning that I need to just keep walking. Some translations use the word “Sighing” here. When I hear Amy sigh I can tell if it’s a good sigh or bad one. I can tell by her sighing if she has had a long day, or a good day, or if she is frustrated, or disappointed, or just tired. Like David, our communication with God should be so intimate that we are confident that He understands us just by our groaning and sighing.
In Romans 8:26, Paul tells us that that is how the Spirit communicates with God...
26 And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words.
Sometimes words aren’t enough. God loves you enough to pay attention to your groaning. He cares enough to understand your groaning.
2 Listen to my cry for help, my King and my God,
for I pray to no one but you.
He isn’t just praying to the ruler of the universe hoping to be heard, He is praying to HIS God. “Help me MY king and MY God.” Reflecting on that intimate relationship. Now, listen to what he says next...
3 Listen to my voice in the morning, Lord.
Each morning I bring my requests to you and wait expectantly.
I’m waiting in expectation. I’m not just throwing spaghetti against the wall. This isn’t just a roll of the dice. I am waiting to see how you will respond. I can’t wait to see what You are going to do. You may do what I ask. You may do something better. You may do something unexpected.
Prayer is simply communicating with God. The challenge for us today is to recognize that our communication with God may look radically different than someone else’s. Think outside of the box a little today. Don’t think about prayer as just kneeling down beside your bed with your hands clasped. Think about the ways you communicate with the people who are closest to you. With Amy, sometimes she just likes to talk and I have to stop whatever I am doing and “participate” in her conversation. My mom is like Amy, she likes to talk. But not everyone has intimate conversations. My brother likes to tell jokes. He will call me up, tell me something funny, then immediately hang up and go about his day.
Macayla likes pranks. Some of our best bonding time was being goofy and teasing each other. In fact, one of the times she was the most heart broken I have ever seen her was when I responded negatively to one of her pranks.
How do you communicate? When I was younger I preferred to write to other people. Occasionally I would write down my communication with God. I didn’t do it that way very often, but I really enjoyed it. It felt more personal to me. We close each Sunday with prayer and sometimes I will even write my prayer at the end of my notes.
Some of you may really like to sing! You may want to sing your prayers to God. (Some of you may be like me and can’t sing. The only time I have ever heard the audible voice of God was when He asked me to stop singing.)
You may be going through a tough time and you want to just pour out your emotions to God and cry with Him.
Maybe you like to sit out on the porch in the evening or the morning and celebrate how awesome He is as the sun touches the horizon.
Maybe you like to send God tweets throughout the day. Just short blurbs about this and that as the day goes on.
You might even be like my brother and hit him up to tell him a joke every now and then.
However you prefer to communicate with God, you will find yourself doing life with Him through prayer IF you break away from preconceived ideas of what prayer is. Prayer is communicating with God.
One bible dictionary has a very detailed definition of prayer where the author describes prayer in it’s ancient context as well as how prayer differs between Israel and their surrounding cultures. If anyone is interested in reading it I will make copies to give you. It is about 6 pages long. Here is a short summary of this part of their definition...
The biblical examples of prayer portray Yahweh as a God who listens, not a deity who is distant or must be cajoled into attending the affairs of humanity… Several significant differences distinguish early biblical prayers from those of [surrounding cultures. Most significantly, Hebrew prayers were monotheistic—addressed to Yahweh alone. Another notable difference…is that while Israel’s neighbors praised their gods for their attributes and character, the Israelites praised Yahweh for His involvement in human history. Another difference is that…the Gods [of Israel’s neighbors] did not speak and offered little in response to prayers offered to them. Prayer with Yahweh, however is conversational. God appears in the garden speaking to His creation: “Adam, where are you?” (Gen 3:9). The first recorded prayer in Genesis is a two-way argument between Abraham and God about Abraham’s childlessness (Gen 13:2–6). Yahweh answers David’s cry of lament, “Why do the nations rage?” with the words, “You are my son; today I have become your father” (Psa 2:1–7). Yahweh communicates directly with His people, answering their prayers through spoken and written words. The prayers of early biblical literature reflect a spontaneous and conversational tone, bearing no mark of formality.
That was the long introduction to this series. For the rest of our time this morning, I want to look at 4 ways to communicate and talk to God. These are very simple concepts that we start with and then build from as we develop our personal and intimate ways of communicating with God. If you are taking notes, the first thing we want to do when we talk to God is talk to Him with...
TALK TO GOD
WITH GUT-LEVEL HONESTY
I have been around people who will come up and say something like, “Bro! I haven’t seen you in forever dude! How’s it goin? Where you at now?” Then when you hear them pray it’s like they become a completely different person, “Dear Heavenly Father, creator and sustainer of life. Earnestly, bowing before thy throne, we beseech thee...”
What? What just happened? Do you even know what beseech means? I don’t. (Actually, I looked it up just to make sure it meant what I thought it did and I learned something. Did you know the past tense of beseech is besought?)
Why do we do this? I used to do it. Talking to God in a way that we don’t talk to anybody else. Almost like we are trying to impress God or put a show on. Imagine if one of your kids walked up to you and said, “Great and mighty father, destroyer of pecan pie, we beseech thee...”
There are times in scripture when people are so honest with God you start to be afraid for them. At one point in Exodus, Moses got pretty upset with God and so he starts griping to God about it. God sent Moses to confront Pharoah about setting His people free, but it was having the opposite effect so this is what he says in his prayer...
22 Then Moses went back to the Lord and protested, “Why have you brought all this trouble on your own people, Lord? Why did you send me? 23 Ever since I came to Pharaoh as your spokesman, he has been even more brutal to your people. And you have done nothing to rescue them!”
You can be honest with God. You always want to be reverent and submissive to Him, but you can tell God, “I don’t understand! I thought I was supposed to do this, but this happened. Now everything seems worse. I don’t know what to do. I’m nervous about this.” Pray with a gut-level honesty to God. In fact, Jesus only criticized 2 types of prayer. 1: When they are for show and 2: when they are not authentic… Matthew 6:5 & 7...
5 “When you pray, don’t be like the hypocrites who love to pray publicly on street corners and in the synagogues where everyone can see them. I tell you the truth, that is all the reward they will ever get. 6 But when you pray, go away by yourself, shut the door behind you, and pray to your Father in private. Then your Father, who sees everything, will reward you.
7 “When you pray, don’t babble on and on as the Gentiles do. They think their prayers are answered merely by repeating their words again and again.
God wants our communication with Him to be honest and authentic. Just talk to God like you would talk to your closest friend. Second...
TALK TO GOD
2. ABOUT EVERYTHING THAT MATTERS TO YOU.
What matters to you? There is a story of a guy who wanted to be a better person so one day he prayed this prayer...
So far today, God, I've done all right. I haven't gossiped, haven't lost my temper, haven't been greedy, grumpy, nasty, selfish, or over-indulgent. I'm really glad about that.
But in a few minutes, God, I'm going to get out of bed and from then on I'm probably going to need a lot more help.
Whether your worries are specific or the whole day, talk to God about it. Philippians 4:6 says this...
6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.
If it matters to you, talk to God about it. It doesn’t matter what it is, if it matters to you it matters to God. Prayer throughout scripture depicts Yahweh, our God, as a God who listens. He doesn’t have to be convinced to care about us or impressed enough to take notice. He is already watching you because he cares. Like a father who watches his children. That’s why Jesus said to “Pray to your Father.” He isn’t an “out there” God, chasing us with tornadoes. He adopted us as His children so that He would be our Father in an intimate relationship.
7 Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you.
Talk to God honestly, Talk to God about everything that matters to you, and 3rd...
TALK TO GOD
3. CONTINUALLY.
This will completely change your prayer life. In fact, if you raised your hand earlier because your prayer life could be better, I wholeheartedly believe that if you do this you will never go through a day feeling like your prayer life is dull or unproductive.
16 Always be joyful. 17 Never stop praying. 18 Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.
Never stop praying. Some translations say to pray without ceasing. I don’t know about you, but I can’t pray for long periods of time. I’m that guy that gets distracted. I joked in the beginning, but I have fallen asleep trying to pray before. More than once. On several occasions I have started praying, then realized 30 minutes later that I was praying 29 minutes ago. I hear of people who pray for 1 or 2 hours at a time and I am like, “Hoooooowwww???”
I have to pray in little bits at a time. So who do you pray continually if you have the attention span of a gnat? What I have found helpful is to pray often. It’s still a work in progress for me, but whenever something pops into my head I will pray for it right at that moment. If I ever put it on a list to pray for later I will forget. If you will pray right when something comes to your consciousness throughout the entire day it will change your prayer life.
You wake up and see your spouse, “God, strengthen our relationship.” You get to work and see your co-workers, “God bless their family today.” “Take care of their illness.” “Show this person you love them today.” “God I’ve got this decision to make, give me wisdom to choose the right things.” On and on throughout the day. It’s an ongoing, consistent conversation with God.
Many years ago, a British evangelist named Smith Wigglesworth said this...
“I don’t ever pray any longer than 20 minutes… But I never go 20 minutes without praying.” -Smith Wigglesworth
One person said, “Whatever I pray for I always PUSH.” P.U.S.H. It stands for Pray Until Something Happens.
Pray
Until
Something
Happens
Jesus was teaching his disciples to always pray and never give up, so He told them the parable of the persistent widow. This widow kept coming to the judge until he finally said, “This woman is driving me crazy. I’m going to see that she gets justice, because she is wearing me out with her constant requests!” Then Jesus said to the disciples...
7 And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off?
Pray until God does something. Pray until God changes the circumstances or until God changes ME. Pray until something happens.
Pray honestly, Pray about what matters, Pray continually, and finally...
TALK TO GOD
4. AND LISTEN FOR HIS RESPONSE.
We are going to talk about this one more next week, but I want to share a couple of verses with you today about it and then we will close. Listen for God’s response. God not only wants to hear us, but He wants US to hear HIM. One of my favorite stories in scripture is about Elijah. At one point Elijah was going through a tough time so God spoke to him. While Elijah stood on the mountain the Lord passed by.
There was a mighty windstorm that hit the mountain and tore rocks loose, but God wasn’t in the wind. Next there was an earthquake. Surely God was in the earthquake? Nope. God wasn’t in the earthquake. Then there was a blazing fire, but God wasn’t in the fire either. Then scripture says this...
12 And after the earthquake there was a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire there was the sound of a gentle whisper.
And that is how God spoke to Elijah. God may speak to you through a gentle whisper. He may speak to you through His word as you study and read scripture. He may speak to you through other people. God may speak to you through circumstances. God may speak to you through the voice of His spirit if you will listen. Jesus said this in John chapter 10...
27 My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.
Which one of these 4 things do you think can bring you into a more intimate communication relationship with God?
Honesty — realizing God cares about your troubles — praying continually — listening.
As we close in prayer I want to challenge you to say a quick, 1 sentence prayer in your own language about that thing. “God give me courage to be authentic.” “God give me confidence to dump my garbage on you.” “God remind me to talk to you throughout the day.” “God make me shut up so I can hear your gentle whisper.”
Let’s pray...
Father, thank you for caring about us in amazing ways. Help us to develop a deeper relationship with You through prayer. Give us unique ideas about how to communicate with you that are outside of the box and personal.