Prayer (Teaching – Part 1)
In Isaiah 59 there's a passage where the Lord looks over the whole earth and he is sad and dismayed to see that there are no intercessors there is nobody praying for the people and for their Redemption from their sins and I wonder if the Lord is looking over the world today and thinking the same thing that his people are not praying the way that he intended or desires for them to pray.
In Luke 11, the disciples approach Jesus, and ask Him: “Lord, teach us to pray …”
What I want to do for us in this session is to see what can learn from Scripture about prayer, to understand why the disciples valued it, and why we should too.
To start with, let’s look at what prayer actually is. If you ask people: “What is prayer?”, many of them would answer, “Asking God for things,” – or at least, that’s how many people treat prayer, even if they wouldn’t say it that bluntly!
For other people, prayer is “something you do in an emergency.” They go along on their merry way, minding their own business (and quite happy for God to do the same), until they get sick, or their child gets sick, or their company downsizes, and then they know exactly Who to call on.
But (thankfully for us), there is so much more to prayer than treating God like a cosmic errand-boy, or an emergency life-jacket!
So, what is prayer? In Psalm 25, David describes prayer as: “lifting up our souls to the living God.” And in 1 Samuel 1: 15 describes Hannah’s prayer as, “pouring out her heart to the Lord” – and in response we see how the Lord replies to her through the prophet Eli.
Rather than being a way to persuade God to give us things, or fix things for us, when we pray the way Scripture describes it, we put ourselves at God’s disposal, and give Him an opportunity to do what He wants in us and with us.
A book called “The Kneeling Christian” describes prayer as “communion with God” – talking with Him, and not only to Him.
Just like in the natural world, the best way to get to know someone is to spend time with them and talking to them, so the greatest result we can gain from our prayers is getting to know God better.
In John 17: 3, Jesus is praying to the Father, and He says: “And this is the way to eternal life – to know You, the only true God …”
He’s saying that the key to the life and joy and strength and hope we all long for, and that He came to the Earth to give us, lies in truly knowing who God the Father is, and who Jesus the Son is – and we can’t get to know Who they really are unless we spend quality and quantity time in their presence!
Just as the more we spend time with a person whose company we enjoy, we will want to spend even more time with them, the same is true in prayer – the more time we spend praying, the more our thirst for more of God will grow.
The second question we can ask about prayer is: Should we pray?
In Matthew 6, when Jesus teaches His disciples about prayer, the answer to this question is assumed, because Jesus starts every paragraph with the words, “And when you pray” … in other words, if you are a follower of Jesus, praying is an expected part of your life.
Throughout Scripture we are instructed or invited to pray, and we see countless examples of prayer. Here are a few:
· 1 Thessalonians 5: 17 urges us to “pray without ceasing”
· In Acts 12: 5 we see that the church prayed ceaselessly for Peter
· Acts 2: 42 describes the believers as being “devoted to prayer”
· Psalm 145: 18 says that “the Lord is close to all who call on Him”
· And if we needed any further convincing, throughout the Gospels we see how important prayer was to Jesus; for example in Mark 1: 35 we read that Jesus got up early in the morning to spend time in prayer
The next question I want to take a look at is: “How do we pray?” I’m not talking about the “specifics” of an actual prayer yet (I’ll be covering that later) – what I mean here is the attitude and motivation for our prayers.
Firstly, Hebrews 4: 16 encourages us to “keep on coming boldly to the throne of grace, so that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”
I love this verse, because to me, it perfectly captures the balance we need to maintain not only in our prayer-lives, but in all of our lives as children of God …
The balance is this: on the one side, approach the Father boldly, with free and fearless confidence; through Christ’s atoning sacrifice on the cross we have direct access to the Father, and He grants us full access as legitimate heirs through His Son’s righteousness.
So Charles Spurgeon says, “We do not come in prayer only seeking, God’s alms dispensed to the poor; nor do we come to the back-door of the house of mercy to receive broken scarps. To eat the crumbs that fall from the Master’s table is more than we could claim – but when we pray we are standing in the palace, on the glittering floor of the King’s own reception room, and thus we are placed on a vantage ground. And shall we come there with a narrow and contracted faith? Nay, it becomes not a King to be giving away pence and groats – He distributes pieces of broad gold; He makes a feats of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined.”
Wow! We can approach the Father in full confidence, knowing that we are loved and accepted, and knowing that He is able to do “exceedingly abundantly” above what we ask or even think!
But the balance to this, which I fear many Christians today have forgotten, is that we are approaching a throne.
We should never forget that our Father in heaven is also our King, worthy of all honour, all respect, all reverence; He is sovereign over the entire universe, and He has all power and authority.
To quote Spurgeon again, “My heart, be sure that thou prostrate thyself in such a presence, for He is the most powerful of all kings; His throne hath sway in all worlds; heaven obeys Him cheerfully, hell trembles at His frown, and earth is constrained to yield Him homage.”
So the first heart-attitude I believe we should have in prayer is the freedom to approach the Father joyfully, but not flippantly or pridefully.
Moses shows us the right way to approach the Lord in this – he was called a friend of God, but when he came near the presence of God, he had to take off his shoes and hide his face from the fullness of God’s glory.
The second attitude that I believe we ought to have in our prayers is the attitude that wove like a golden thread through every word Jesus spoke and every action He performed during His ministry on earth …
Jesus came to earth from Heaven, the Son of God, the Messiah, the Lamb of God and the Lion of Judah, and yet He says over and over again, “I do not seek My own glory; if you see Me, you’re seeing My Father; Father, glorify Your Son so that the Son may glorify You.”
It’s so easy for our prayers to become a jumbled assortment of requests and requirements and complaints (and we’re allowed to pray about those things) – and to completely forget to focus on, or even recognise what really matters … we can be so focused on what God can do and does do and should do and promised to do, that we fail to bring Him the glory due to Him for who He is.
Giving God glory is seeing Him in His rightful place in our lives, worshiping Him as the High King of Heaven and bringing Him our praise and our adoration.
If we have this heart attitude to prayer, then when we do bring our requests to the throne we'll bring them in a manner that is worthy of the King. We won't say, “Please give me XYZ,” but we'll say, “Father, You know that I need XYZ. In Your perfect timing, I trust that You will provide them for me.”
Instead of saying, “Lord, please bless me as I do ABC,” we'll pray, “Lord, I need to do ABC today. Won't You please guide me so that the way that I do it brings honor to You and shows Your glory to others.”
Then there's a third heart attitude that I believe we need to have in our prayer lives – something that should underpin every prayer – and that is an attitude of thanksgiving.
Philippians 4: 6 tells us to be “anxious for nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.”
Again I see one of those balances that we need to get right when we pray: bring the Lord your requests for new blessings, but be sure to thank Him for the blessings that we have already received!
One of the saddest stories in the New Testament, for me, is the passage in Luke 17 where Jesus heals the ten lepers. Reading from verse 15 we see this: “One of them, when he saw that he was healed, came back to Jesus, shouting praise God. He fell to the ground at Jesus' feet, thanking Him for what He had done. This man was a Samaritan.
Jesus asked, ‘Didn't I heal ten men? Where are the other nine? Has no one returned to give glory to God, except this foreigner?’”
It can be easy to read the Bible simply as a text, without much drama or expression, but when I read those last two verses, I can't help but feel the emotion that Jesus must have had in His voice …
I think about how much time we spend training our young children to be thankful: we give them a Marie biscuit and as we pass it to them we say, “Say thank you.” They're offered a cup of water and as they take it we say, “Say thank you,” and we'll repeat this for years until they start saying it automatically.
I think about how specific and detailed we can be in our prayer requests: “Lord I need this, and I would like it to look like this, and if I could please have it by this time that would be really super” … and yet in our thankfulness to the Lord we can be very indefinite and general and say, “Thank you for all the blessings, Lord.”
Again, it's a balance that I think we often get wrong – don't think that God isn't pained or saddened by our thanklessness.
I read a quote somewhere that said: “nothing so pleases God as our praises, and nothing so blesses the man who prays as the praises he offers!”
The fourth and final heart attitude of our prayers that I want to talk about tonight is what Jesus tells us about prayer.
In John 14: 13 - 14 He tells us: “And I will do whatever you ask in My name so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask Me for anything in My name and I will do it.”
These verses explain why most times when you hear someone pray, they end their pray with the words: “in Jesus’ name, Amen.”
Unfortunately the words “in Jesus’ name” aren't a magic spell! Tagging them onto the end of any prayer doesn't automatically convince God to grant your wish list. And although I'm not saying don't say it at the end of your prayers, the fact that you may not, or forget to add it onto the end of a prayer, doesn't automatically mean that your prayer is invalid.
Asking for something in Jesus' name means asking the Father for something as if you were Jesus coming before the throne and asking!
Do you see how that is about your heart attitude, and not about the words that you used to pray? And do you also see how all of these prayer attitudes or heart attitudes line up with each other?
Praying in Jesus' name means two things to me.
Firstly, Scripture refers to the believers as Christ's ambassadors. An ambassador is an official representative of one government, sent to another country with authority to speak on behalf of the leaders of his home nation.
So being an ambassador is a huge responsibility! Everywhere he goes he is seen as his home country. If his behavior is excellent, people will think well of his home nation – if he behaves poorly, that will be people's impression of his native land …
So if I pray “in Jesus name”, I'm declaring to the Father that my words and my desires are in line with what Jesus would pray … and do you know what Jesus is famous for praying? “Not My will, but Yours be done.” That's the heart attitude of praying “in Jesus' name”.
The other side of praying in Jesus’ name is found in 1 John 5: 14 – “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.”
There's that word “confidence” again …
Have you ever gone to the till at a shop and handed over your bank card to the cashier, and then held your breath while she swipes it, because you're not sure if you actually have enough money in your account to cover the cost of the bill? Well, that's what it would be like if we prayed to the Father in our own name! We saw in Hebrews that in ourselves we have no “right” to enter the throne room of the King based on our own efforts or because of our own goodness or our own holiness.
But if we go back to the bank account allegory, the confidence we have isn't in the bank card, but in the Person who signed it. You see, as a Believer, if you turn over your “prayer bank card”, you don't see your signature on the back, you see Christ's signature!
When we understand that we approach God on Christ's merit, it will change the way that we pray, and it will change the things that we pray for, because we don't want to dishonor the account holder who has given us the freedom to use His bank account.
Well, we've covered quite a lot in this session. I hope that some of it has been useful to you or encouraging to you, and if it has I hope that you'll join me again next week as I look at a few more facets of prayer, particularly more of the “how and what and when of prayer”.
To end off, I'd like to read one of David's Psalms. David wrote Psalm 57 when he was on the run from Saul, and forced to hide in a cave. As we read it, see if you can identify any of the prayer characteristics and heart attitudes that I've spoken about tonight in David's words …
Psalm 57:
Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me, for in You I take refuge.
I will take refuge in the shadow of Your wings until the disaster has passed.
I cry out to God Most High, to God who fulfils His purpose for me.
He sends from heaven and saves me, rebuking those who hotly pursue me –
God sends His love and faithfulness.
I am in the midst of lions, I lie among ravenous beasts –
men whose teeth are spears and arrows, whose tongues are sharp swords.
Be exalted, Oh God, above the heavens; let Your glory be over all the earth.
They spread a net for my feet – I was bowed down in distress.
They dug a pit in my path – but they have fallen into it themselves.
My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast; I will sing and make music.
Awake, my soul! Awake, harp and lyre! I will awaken the dawn.
I will praise You, O Lord, among the nations; I will sing of You among the peoples.
For great as Your love, reaching to the heavens; Your faithfulness reaches to the skies.
Be exalted, O God, above the heavens; let Your glory be over all the earth.
I pray for us all in Jesus name that we will have a growing desire to spend time with the Lord in prayer this week, and that we will be a people that honors the Father through our prayers and our praise. Amen