This is the third part of my teaching series on the topic of prayer.
When I was preparing this lesson, I came across an interesting Bible trivia fact, which is that in the New Testament the Greek word for “pray” is used 90 times – so if I haven't yet convinced you of the importance of prayer, maybe that will!
I want to start off this session by looking at is some practical prayer tips, or you might want to call this the “frequently asked questions session”.
Tip number one or question number one that people ask about prayer is: “what is the difference between personal prayer and corporate prayer, and which of these is more important”?
Personal prayer, or private prayer, is how we pray most of the time. It's when it's just me and the Father, talking, and listening, and being quiet in each other's presence. Personal prayer is the way that we pray most of the time, and the Lord modeled personal prayer for us in his ministry on earth. In Luke 5: 16, for example we read, “So He Himself often withdrew into the wilderness and prayed.”
Corporate prayer, on the other hand, sounds like something quite fancy – or maybe to you it sounds like praying for businesses … But what it actually means is “praying together with other people”.
To answer the second part of the question, both are equally important in the life of the believer, and in the life of the church. As I said last week, personal prayer and Bible reading are essential in growing, and developing, and strengthening our relationship with Father God. Our personal prayer time is where we have one-on-one time, one-on-one conversation with the Lord, and we need this to develop an intimate and strong personal relationship with the Lord. Corporate prayer, or praying together in prayer meetings such as a church or a family or a Bible study group, is a vital part of growing our fellowship and our unity as a church. We are designed to function in community as Christ-followers, and we need to share in the common vision for our local church. But it's impossible to do that well without spending time together, seeking the Lord's direction and blessing. Praying together is also a gift to us, as we are able to share our burdens with one another and minister to one another. In corporate prayer times we are also likely to hear prayer needs and pray about issues in our community that we might not even have thought about praying about when it's us on our own.
As Believers we need to develop a personal relationship with the Father, but then our faith also needs to be lived out in community and fellowship with other Believers. So again I see this as one of the balance issues in our spiritual lives, where we need to be doing both in order to follow the Lord well.
Tip number two, or the second practical thing that people ask about prayer is: “when and where is the right time and place to pray?”
In John 4, Jesus meets a woman at the well and she asks Him where the correct place is to pray. Jesus answers her that, “the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.” What Jesus is saying is that, under the new covenant, there is no specific time or place for prayer, because we have the Holy Spirit with us all the time and everywhere. So the simple answer is that we can pray all the time and anywhere. The problem with this, as John Piper says, “is the freedom to pray anywhere often leads to praying nowhere.”
My mom and dad have this rule about the fuel tanks in their cars never going below a quarter. I on the other hand have literally run out of petrol in my driveway, because I am always sure that I have two extra k’s worth of fuel in my tank, and I can get to the Engen on my way to work, no problem! How does this relate to prayer? Without being legalistic about it, we can and we should pray anytime and anywhere, but I believe that we should also have a consistent and regular prayer time, just like my parents are consistent about filling their cars every Sunday afternoon. I believe that this is important because otherwise it's easy to neglect or even forget to pray, and then we only think about it when our lives are running on empty.
From practical experience, I’ve found that praying at a regular time each morning before the day, and the people, and the noise of life kicks in actually helps me to pray more frequently and more consistently throughout the day. For me it's as if that morning prayer time makes me more “in tune” with prayer for the whole day. So we can pray anytime and anywhere, and we should. We have the freedom to, but I believe that we should also be consistent in our prayer time.
Tip number three is one that might not be for everyone, but it has really helped me to go deeper in my prayer relationship and my prayer life, and so I’m going to share it with you. For a long time I was guilty of what I’m going to call “butterfly prayers”. Now again, hear me clearly, please: these are not bad prayers! We know that God hears every single prayer that we pray … but I found that my prayer life had no substance to it when this was the only way I prayed.
An example of butterfly prayers is if I would pray, “Dear Lord, thank You for this new day, thank You for everything that You've given to me. Please help Bjorn in his decisions that he needs to make it work, and please help my friends who are going through a hard time in their relationship. Amen.”
Like a butterfly, my prayers hop around, but they never really settle anywhere. Now you're probably tired of me saying this, but I want you to hear me carefully: This is not a wrong way to pray, and it doesn't mean that your prayers won't be answered. But what I also know is that if this is the only way that you pray, with short little prayer bursts like that, you're probably finding that you're hearing very little from the Lord in response …
What helped me to dig deeper into my prayer time was actually starting to write my prayers down. As I said, this might not be for everyone, but for me, putting my prayers down on paper has taught me to take my time, and to go deeper and think more about the things that I’m praying. As I write, I take more time over each praise, each petition, each thank you, and each intercession that I’m praying, and thinking about the words as I write them causes me to slow down and wait to hear a response from the Lord, before I move on to the next topic.
Tip number four: this was another tip that really helped me in my growth as a pray-er, and that is, don't just say you'll pray for someone – pray!
If you were here last week, you might remember my sharing the story of Hudson Taylor’s conversion to Christianity, and my encouragement to us all to intercede for others in prayer, but I didn't always take this part of my prayer life as seriously as I do now. Again, this might only be for me, but I used to be guilty of hearing other people's prayer needs, and not praying! People would ask me to pray for something and I would say, “I’ll be praying for you,” and then I would forget to! Not on purpose, but just because I would get busy, and I would get distracted, and then before you know it I would see that person again next Sunday at church, and my first thought would be, “What was I supposed to be praying for, for this person?!”
If this ever happens to you, here's what helped me to do better – and again I am not showing off or trying to tell you that I’m better at this than anybody else; I am just very open to sharing from my mistakes, so that I can hopefully help somebody else not to make the same mistakes – so two things help me not to forget to pray. The first one might get you some very strange looks or reactions, but what I found is that if an opportunity presents itself while I’m talking to somebody and they share a need or something that they're struggling with – and this isn't only a church, it's if I’m waiting in line at the municipality, or I’m in the queue at the post office, or wherever it might be – is if it's at all possible, I don't just say to the person, “I’ll pray for you”, I actually pray for them right then and there. And I found that when I do that, two things happen: a) they're immediately blessed, because they realize that it's not just words when you say you're going to pray for them, but you actually mean it, and you care enough about them to pray for them immediately; and then b) I find that I will then remember to pray for that person on the next few days or throughout the week, because there's almost like a physical memory of praying for them that prompts me to pray more often.
Then the second thing that I do is similar to this, but if the prayer request comes to me in the form of a text message for example or on an email is I also try to respond to it immediately and again not with, “I’ll pray for you”, but actually write out or type out on my phone a prayer in text, and send it back to that person.
To quote Lysa TerKeurst again, she says, “A great intention doesn't make for a great prayer.”
Proverbs 25: 11 says that, “A word aptly spoken is like apples of gold, in settings of silver.” Our words and our prayers can be gifts to the people around us, so let's not speak them without following through with them.
My last tip about prayer is a response to a question that a lot of people ask when they're starting on, or trying to do better in their prayer journey which is: “what does prayer look like, actually?” In other words, do I sit, do I stand, do I kneel, do I pray silently, do I pray out loud, do I need fancy words, or can I just talk in normal English? The simple answer is: “Yes, to all of the above!”
In other words, none of that really matters. Just as God told Samuel not to look at the physical appearance of the sons of Jesse when he was anointing a new king, but to look at the content and the substance of their hearts, the Father is saying the same thing to us now. If your heart is selfish or hardened by unforgiveness, you can kneel on an ice-cold floor and pray in the Queen’s English, and it's not going to make your prayer better, until you deal with the issues that are in your heart. And in the same way, if your heart is sincere and open to the Father, you can pray walking across a parking lot with your eyes wide open, and the Father is listening to and moved by your prayer.
So if we're going to be really practical about prayer, you can sit, or stand, or kneel, or even lie down when you pray – it doesn't matter. My only suggestion is, where possible, don't have your main, regular prayer time while you're in bed – for me the temptation to nod off means that I’m not giving God my best if I pray when I’m lying down.
The second very practical thing is that praying with our eyes closed is a good idea, simply because it helps us not to be distracted by the things that are going on around us. My only tip here is: don't pray with your eyes closed if you're driving!
Then, you can pray silently or out loud – it doesn't matter either. My caution here is that you don't pray out loud in such a way that you do it just to draw attention to yourself, or that you disturb other people unnecessarily with your prayers. What might seem “super holy” to you can just be a nuisance or showing off to other people, and that is not going to bless anybody.
Then the next practical thing is that, if you are not in the habit of speaking as though you were educated at Oxford University, then by all means pray using your normal words and your normal voice! You're not fooling God by using big words with extra syllables. But please be aware, as I said in session 1, that when we pray we are entering the throne room of the King of Heaven, and so we do need to approach Him with respect and honor in our words.
For the second half of this session, I’d like us to take a look at what Jesus teaches about prayer in Matthew 6, the portion of Scripture that we refer to as “the Lord's Prayer”.
Let's read Matthew 6 verses 9 to 13: “Pray then like this: our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your Kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”
Jesus gives His disciples this prayer as a template or a framework for our prayers. The original Greek for “how you should” doesn't instruct us to recite this prayer word-for-word, and particularly given what we've learned about the importance of our heart attitudes in prayer, I don't believe that it should be a prayer that we rattle off without thinking, or just say automatically.
In verse 9, Jesus starts the prayer with the words, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name.” “Hallowed” comes from the Greek word “hagiyadzo”, meaning “holy, purified, consecrated, and sanctified.” Listen to this description of the Lord in Exodus 34: 5- 8: “The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. The Lord passed before him and proclaimed: ‘the Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children to the third and the fourth generation. And Moses quickly bowed his head towards the earth and worshiped.”
So in verse 9 of the Matthew passage, God is described as both “our Father”, a personal loving Father with a deep personal bond with every one of His children – but this is balanced with a description of a hallowed God, so pure, and holy, and perfect that He is fully deserving of our honor and our respect. This balance point is, or should be, the starting point for all of our prayers, and we shouldn't start with our wish list or our “shopping list”.
Then in verse 10, Jesus says, “Your Kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.” The Greek word Jesus uses for kingdom is “basilica”, meaning not a physical place but a state of being. The kingdom He refers to is God's rule and reign – His royal ownership, not just over the earth, but in and over the people of His household.
This verse, more than any other in the Lord's Prayer, is why I caution us against saying it casually or automatically – because if you paraphrase this verse, it says: “Father God, come and have all rule, all authority, all dominion over my life.”
Jesus says that our lives on earth should be like the lives of those who live in heaven, which sounds nice until we read psalm 103: 20: “Praise the Lord, you His angels, you mighty ones who do His bidding, who obey His Word.”
In Heaven, God's Word is obeyed completely, and Jesus modeled this way of submitted obedience during his ministry on earth. This verse, verse 10, calls us to invite the Father to have complete rule in our lives, and we offer to simply obey when He calls us to act, and to trust Him completely with the outcome of our prayers. As I shared last week, this is the heart attitude that we need to have fixed in place before we make our requests to God and before He answers us.
Next, in verse 11 Jesus teaches us to pray, “Give us today our daily bread.” This verse reminds us to rely completely on God for our needs. That's why we ask Him to give us. The phrase, “daily bread” reminds us of God's instructions to the Hebrews when Moses led them through the desert. They were only to collect the manna that they needed for each day. God was so serious about their obeying Him and relying on Him, that anything they collected in excess would rot before they could eat it!
There's a balance here again: the Hebrews were responsible to collect their bread but God was responsible to provide it for them. In the same way, there are things that we need to do to meet our needs at times. For example, if you're looking for work, you have a responsibility to print out your CV and take it to every company in town, but then God is “responsible” and we are to rely on Him to open the right door at the right time. So we call on Him, but we do our part.
Let's look at verse 12: “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” “Debts” here is referring to “sins”, and what a wonderful Father we have, who in His great compassion desires to wipe away our sins, if we call on Him in repentance. 1 John 4: 9 - 10 puts it this way: “This is how God showed His love among us: He sent us His one and only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him. This is love – not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”
But the second half of verse 12 is much harder to read. We ask Father God to forgive us of our sins even as or in the manner that we forgive anyone who has sinned against us, or hurt us, or offended us, or wronged us. There's a book called “10 Things I wish Jesus Never Said.” I haven't read it but I would put this verse in it because, as thankful as I am for God's forgiveness of my sins, I’m often not in such a hurry to forgive other people … because, what if I forgive them too quickly and they don't actually learn the lesson that they were supposed to learn? Or what if I forgive them, and they don't say sorry for the thing that they did?
Colossians 3: 13 tells us to, “Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” When I feel like I’ve been wronged, or like the other person doesn't “deserve” my forgiveness just yet, I need to remember that Jesus has already paid the price for their debt, for the debt that I think that person owes me, just as He settled all of my debts on the cross.
Then lastly, in verse 13, we read, “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.” Because of our sinful nature and the fallen world we live in, temptation will continue to come our way. God doesn't cause us to be tempted, but He is able to use the temptations that we face to test and refine our faith in Him. That's why 1 Corinthians 10: 13 tells us: “God is faithful. He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear, but when you are tempted, He will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.”
So the prayer here in verse 13 is not that we will not face temptation, but that we will not yield or give in when we are tempted to sin. The prayer is rather that we will take the way out that Father God has provided for us.
To sum up, the Lord's Prayer gives us a template, or guide outline for our prayers. Jesus teaches us to pray over five aspects when we pray: honoring the Father; seeking his will; relying on His provision; seeking forgiveness; and seeking His protection and sanctification.
I'd like to finish off this series of messages on prayer with one more quote, from R. A. Torrey this time: “Our whole life should be a life of prayer. We should walk in constant communion with God. There should be a constant upward looking of the soul to God.”
What a great description of prayer!
I hope that these three sessions have been an encouragement to you to live more fully in the presence of Father God, by tapping more deeply into the amazing gift and resource that He has given us in prayer.
I pray for all of us here that we will be a community of pray-ers – a people who are as anxious for the presence and power of Father God to fill us, as He is for us to have them. I pray that we will give our hearts to the Lord in our prayers, and let Him remake and reshape us so that we will no longer seek to find our delight in anything but Him. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
Thanks again for joining me for this series.