Prayer

I want to invite you to turn with me in your Bible to Matthew 6, going to read Matthew 6 verses 5 through 13 this morning as we continue our spiritual habits sermon series. As you are turning there, I would also like you to turn to the front here and notice that Chris Russell is here. He has been overseas, yes. For those of you who don't know who Chris is, he is the member of our church and for the last year, how long? 11 months. He has been overseas serving in the military, risking his life for our freedoms and for that we are thank you brother. Here now God's holy, true and life-giving word, Matthew 6 verses 5 through 13. And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you they have received their reward, but when you pray go into your room and shut the door and pray to your father who is in secret and your father who sees in secret will reward you. And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do for they think they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them for your father knows what you need before you ask him. 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. This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray. Father in heaven, thank you so much that you have revealed yourself to us in your word and by your spirit and most of all in your son. We thank you that we are able to know you and enter your presence because of the finished work of Jesus Christ. And we know that we are saved by grace through faith and we want to know you and your grace more and more. And as prayer plays a critical role in our coming to know you more deeply and fully, we do pray that you would bless us each one of us now. As we look to your word to see why we ought to pray and think of some ways we can improve our prayer lives. So would you please bless us, spirit, would you help us to see the glory of Jesus as we talk about prayer and shape us and mold us that we might be even more excited. We pray to continue to know you, Lord, but to make you known to our neighbors and the nations and we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. If you have a habit of exercising maybe at a gym, there are times where things might be sort of awkward and that's okay. I had one of those moments not too long ago where I was running on the treadmill and I was trying to run pretty fast. And so I was running pretty hard and this sweet elderly lady came into the treadmill next to me and she turned on the treadmill and she began to walk and I think about half mile an hour. I kind of nodded at her and she nodded at me and I just kept on trucking and then I saw my friend over here in my peripheral vision and he was walking this way and then I could tell he was walking behind me and I'm kind of timing it in my mind. I know he's going to be right about here right about now so I figured this will be the time now that I turn while I'm running and wave. So I turn and attempt to wave at my friend and that is when my left foot did not make it to the tread but it made it to the side of the treadmill and my body was hurled to the side forcing me to kind of do some sort of awkward dance and see if I could stay alive and survive this ordeal. This sweet lady next to me was terrified thinking she's about to watch a man die and I by the grace of God was able to kind of grab hold of the treadmill and steady myself and continue running and I realized that the entire YMCA was looking at me. So not sure why but what came out of my mouth unfortunately quite loudly to the sweet lady was that's why you have to pay attention to what you're doing and she kind of gave me a little nod like please get away and we went on with our lives. Now so it's worth it right it's worth it for a few awkward moments to go to the gym on a regular basis because we know here's something we know we can all resonate with this if we're going to be physically healthy we know that there's certain things we have to do right you have to your diet matters and your exercise patterns matter and so we just we understand that so physically to be healthy there's things that we do. Well in the same way if we want to be spiritually healthy if we want to grow spiritually if we want to flourish spiritually there are things that we have to do there are habits that we need now to be sure we are all about grace we love the grace of God we believe that our relationship with God is by grace through faith. It's 100% hinged on what Christ has done his finished work and that we receive salvation by grace through faith alone nothing that we do so when we talk about these spiritual habits that we're talking about in this series we're not talking about any earning anything but we are talking about enjoying God we're talking about the habits that God's people have employed throughout the generations to to know him more to experience more of his grace to understand his glory more deeply and so we want to remember what Dallas Willard says grace is opposed to earning but it's not opposed to effort meaning that we want to put grace driven spirit-powered effort into certain habits that help us know God more and therefore grow spiritually and flourish spiritually last week we talked about the importance of having a habit of being in the word of reading, studying, hearing God's word and this week we're talking about prayer if we want to grow and flourish spiritually prayer will play needs to play a very important part of that journey. Martin Luther says to be a Christian and by that he doesn't mean to be saved he means to live the Christian life so to be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing and he's right. As we seek to follow Jesus and seek to know him more prayer is a pivotal thing so our point this morning our main focus is this a healthy habit of prayer is essential for Christian spiritual growth and flourishing so what we're going to do is I'm going to talk about four reasons from the Bible that we pray why do we pray four reasons from the Bible it's not exhaustive we could have an entire sermon series just on prayer but we're going to talk about at least four reasons from the Bible that we pray and then we'll talk about four ways that help us form or reform our habit of prayer okay so let's start with the why and then we'll get to the how so why do we pray number one obedience okay and we should be able to stop there right if God tells us to pray we should pray but there's more to it so we'll talk about all that but we want to start with the fact that that the God of the universe our Savior does call us to pray there are commands to pray in the Scriptures for example Colossians 4 verse 2 you possible Paul says devote yourselves to prayer it's a command in 1st Thessalonians 5 17 you possible Paul says pray without ceasing now to be sure we don't believe he means pray 24 hours a day that is impossible since we sleep but what he means is don't don't let a day go by definitely not a season go by without being in prayer and so we have these these these commands in the Scriptures that we would be people who pray and we want to remember that when God commands his people to do something it's not to earn something from him but again to enjoy him more it is when every time God commands us to do something it's ultimately for his glory and for our joy and flourishing so we'll leave it there obedience is the number one reason why we ought to pray as God commands us to do so number two the second reason biblically we would say that we want to be a praying people that we want a habit of prayer is change and by that I mean that prayer changes things when we pray things change and I would submit you that every single time we pray some things going to change let me explain what I mean we have a number of these pictures or places in the Bible where we see God's people pray for something and God doesn't one example would be acts 12 versus five through 11 which is where Peter's in prison and the church is huddled elsewhere praying and then boom miraculously Peter is released from prison and so we see an answer to prayer another example would be in Isaiah 38 1 through 6 in the Old Testament in that case what happened was the King at the time has a kaya finds out that he's sick and he's going to die and so he prays he begins to pray and he asks the Lord to heal him and then Isaiah the prophet comes to has a kaya and says God has heard your prayer and he's giving you a longer life he's going to give you 15 more years of life so we've seen in the scriptures then there are many many places where we see that when we pray God responds God is doing something there's going to be some sort of change and sometimes we're like well but if God is sovereign how can our prayers matter well we don't have the infinite wisdom to figure out how those things work out but we have proof in the scriptures that when God's people pray things change now you might be saying well I prayed for things and they didn't happen I prayed for things and they didn't change well hear me now I'm not saying that every time we pray for something we get it I'm saying every time we pray something changes either God answers that prayer and the situation is changed or the person praying is changed as long as we keep our faith in Jesus because think about this every time that we pray and follow the King of Kings in his laying down his will and saying not my will but yours something is happening in us we are being transformed from one degree of glory to the next we're being made more like our King so when we pray and something happens God is glorified and that's amazing and we're grateful when we pray and something doesn't happen regardless of that situation we can still know that we are being changed God is at work in us teaching us to trust him when he says no and like a good parent who doesn't say yes to every request from their children he does sometimes say no for his glory and for our joy so we want to pray because it changes things that's actually reading about a pretty amazing story in 2010 there was a group of eight people from two different churches who began to pray for a very very dangerous neighborhood in Sacramento called the Detroit Boulevard neighborhood it was known as one of the most crime-ridden neighborhoods in the whole city every single house in the neighborhood was a place of real danger and nonetheless this group of eight decided that they would walk through the neighborhood praying in front of each home praying that the presence of Christ would reign over the violence and addiction and satanic oppression and they prayed and they prayed and one of the eight former Sacramento police officer and gang detective Michael Zhang would later report quote each time we prayed over the houses we felt the weight of oppression become lighter and at one point a woman saw them out there and she ran out to confront them and then they told her that they were there to pray and she shared with them that she had some sort of physical illness and they prayed for her and a few days later she was healed so this group actually not only continued to pray but eventually they moved into this neighborhood and started a church called Detroit Life Church now here's what's amazing that's all started in 2010 just a few years later the newspaper there the Sacramento Bee reported that there were no homicides, robberies or sex crimes and only one assault in the neighborhood between 2013 and 2014 and there's no explanation for how one of the most dangerous neighborhoods of a city becomes ostensibly one of the safest other than the fact that God hears our prayers and mysteriously uses them in the unfolding of his plan so we want to pray to obey but we also want to pray because we know things change when we pray either the situation or us ourselves number three we want to pray for the sake of our relationship we want to pray to develop our relationship with God one of the things that we tend to think is that God just wants us to know a litany of facts about Him but He actually wants us to know Him to have a real relationship with Him, a friendship, a real communion with Him and I think we all know that if you have a friend there's no way that you're really able to be friends with somebody if there's not some communication going back and forth like we talk that's what we do that's we interact that's how we develop any relationship and we talk last week about how God speaks to us he speaks to us through his word and spirit and prayer is where we talk back prayer is where we share our desires with God as the Catechism answer says prayer is where we're honest with Him prayer is where we make our requests to Him prayer is where we confess our sins it's where we remember our forgiveness prayer is where we speak back to the one who has spoken to us and so when there's that back and forth of God speaking to us in his word and us speaking back in our prayers a real relationship is forged you know it's interesting Dr. Jeffrey Hall a communications professor at the University of Kansas recently published some research about the relationship between time invested in a friendship and friendship closeness okay so he's looking at the relationship between the amount of time people invest in a friendship and then the closeness of that friendship it's pretty interesting what he found in general he found that it takes 40 to 60 hours to form a what we might call a casual friendship 40 to 60 hours of interaction if you want to move that friendship from a casual friendship to an ongoing more committed friendship it takes between 80 and 100 hours and then if you want the friendship to go to a good or best friend type situation it takes between 160 and 200 hours of interaction and another thing that they found out that indicates closeness is the so first the amount of time spent together is an indicator of how close friends will be but also the activity mattered and the more honest the people were with one another the deeper the friendship the more meaningful the friendship now if it takes 200 hours to become best friends with somebody on earth then we might imagine that it probably takes many many hours of God speaking to us in his word a speaking back in prayer to arrive at the point where we feel a deep sense of communion and friendship with God through our honesty to him and his perfect word to us so we want to spend that time that's another reason why we want to have it of prayer to build that relationship and think about this you know Jesus when he's about to introduce the Lord's prayer in Matthew's Gospel you know he takes a couple shots at the Pharisees and you can tell that they prayed because they thought praying was the right thing to do and they wanted to look holy so they would pray where people could see them but Jesus shows us that prayer is not about looking holy it's about having a relationship with the father and he says this in Matthew 6 verse 6 but when you pray go into your room and shut the door and pray to your father who is in secret and your father who sees in secret will reward you so once again we see Jesus is teaching us that prayer is designed to build that relationship we could look at Luke 11 9 through 13 it's another place we see the Lord's prayer and Jesus is talking about asking and seeking and knocking and familiar with those words but then right after that he brings in the analogy of a relationship he says in verse 11 what father among you if his son asks for a fish will instead give him a serpent and so on and so forth and so we see that prayer is meant to be a way in which we develop that relationship where we really know him and we see more and more that he really knows us and if it takes that many hours to develop a friendship or a relationship then if prayer is something we only do every once in a while is going to take a long long time of every once in a while before we feel that real closeness if we even can and this is where Corey Tenboom has a pretty shocking question is prayer your steering wheel or your spare tire you see God wants prayer to be our steering wheel something that we're engaging with regularly he already knows everything about us as we pray we know more and more about him through his answers to our prayer and through the way we see scriptures guiding our prayer it develops that relationship we feel that communion more and more so we want to pray for the sake of our relationship so obedience and and because it changes things and because it builds our relationship fourth piece we all know that we live in a world where there's just endless challenges right we face all sorts of different struggles and challenges and God knows that and he's designed us to find all of our joy and all of our peace in him and prayer is one of the ways in which God gives us the peace that our hearts are longing for I can't tell you how many times I've had some sort of crisis situation maybe in my family maybe it's at work maybe it's both at the same time and I've been sort of at that moment where you're like I have no idea what I'm going to do and then spending time with God in prayer does this amazing thing it just provides a tremendous amount of peace it's what Paul says in Philippians 4 6 and 7 listen to this do not be anxious about anything but in everything by prayer and supplication with Thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus now somebody with a habit of prayer knows that that's true not only because we believe God's word is true but also because experientially we have experience that peace that comes from laying something at the father's feet after an extended time of prayer because what prayer is is just that final recognition sometimes it's that final recognition that I can't do something or I can't figure it out and so I want to give it to the creator and sustainer of all things John Piper says prayer is the open admission that without Christ we can do nothing and prayer is the turning away from ourselves to God in the confidence that he will provide the help we need prayer humbles us as needy and exalts God as wealthy and in that sense one of the things that's so great about prayer is it's a rehearsal of the gospel itself because the good news of the gospel is that when we finally come to the end of ourselves when we finally realize I can't obey God perfectly I haven't I can't pay for my sins I can't get rid of my guilt and my shame I can't save myself when we come to the end of ourselves and humble ourselves and exalt God is wealthy saying I can't save myself I need you to do it the good news of the gospel is that God's response is his son I have sent my son to die for your sins on the cross to be buried to rise again from the dead to prove that what he did for you is effective and that we've been reconciled by grace through faith so when we believe the gospel we are acknowledging we can't do something God must do it and that's the same thing that we experienced through prayer as well it humbles us as needy and exalts God as wealthy it's a rehearsal of the gospel and it really does lead to peace sometimes people say I pray but I don't have peace but my questions have you prayed long about something if you put extended prayer in on these challenges because God meets you there I was reading about Harriet Tubman you know she is amazing human being Harriet Tubman was an American abolitionist who was known for the fact that even in the midst of incredible danger and challenges she was always very calm and courageous she was known for her calm courage Tubman was born into slavery in the 1820s and she actually in a biography it talks about how she was nearly killed at one point while she was still a slave her slave master through some large metal object at her it hit her and just about killed her she staged a daring escape in 1849 and then she spent many many years after that helping dozens and dozens of people escape from slavery and what you may not know is she also eventually became a secret agent for the union army working behind enemy lines and despite the fact that she had a bounty on her head everywhere she went she was in danger of being killed she remained very very calm you also might not know that she was a follower of Jesus in fact a big reason why she was so emphatic about helping people escape from slavery was the verse Isaiah 16-3 which says hide the fugitives do not betray the refugees now in this biography on Harriet Tubman there's an explanation of how she was able to always be so calm how she was able to have peace even though her life was always in jeopardy and here's what she told a biographer quote I prayed all the time I was always talking to the Lord and that's just one more example how was she able to do all those tremendous things how was she able to remain calm in the face of such tremendous danger she had a relationship with God she had a prayer life and that gave lots of peace to her so why do we want to pray biblically we would say we want to pray because it's obedience because it changes things because of our relationship with God and because of the peace that comes from prayer so how then let's turn to how how do we form or reform a habit of prayer I'm gonna give four things number one we want to pray with the right purpose when we pray we don't want the goal to be to get something because God is not a genie we want the purpose of our prayer to know him more to know his will more to grow in our trust for him and the thing is when our purpose in prayer is to know God more than whether he answers our prayer like we want him to or differently we still accomplish the goal we can know him more our relationship grows so we want to have the right purpose second make plans this is probably one of the reasons a lot of a struggle to praise because if we only ever pray when we feel like it we tend not to pray too often but when we plan it out when we look at our schedule and decide when we're going to spend time in prayer of course we can still pray prayers throughout the day here and there as things come to mind but to schedule a time of prayer daily is absolutely huge it's so helpful I have a good friend who used to say don't prioritize your schedule schedule your priorities and so schedule it make a plan make a plan for your personal prayers make a plan for husbands when when when you're going to pray with your wife families when you're going to pray together groups of friends students plan out when you will gather to pray or when you will be praying at the same time if you so choose but make a plan number three use a pattern you know one of the things the catechism tells us is that the the Lord's prayer is not just a prayer for us to pray but it's also a prayer that teaches us a pattern for prayer in fact another friend or actually the same friend used to say that the Lord's prayer is the Lord's pattern prayer now one of the reasons that we say the Lord's prayer every week is so that we memorize it and once it's memorized you have a pattern so whenever you want to pray you can write things down or pray things according to the pattern so for example we start the Lord's prayer our father who is in heaven hallowed be your name so now you can take that you can start praying about God's name being hallowed and glorified and honored at your school at your work in your city your kingdom come your will be done on earth as it is in heaven now you can make a list of things you can think of areas in which you want to see God's will done in a certain person or in your own life or in an institution give us this day our daily bread how wonderful that Jesus teaches us to pray for even the smallest things that we might need that day forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors so healthy to remember that God forgives us and you can always make a list of people that maybe you ought to forgive lead us into temptation but deliver us from evil wow think about that think about staring your day by naming before God the ways in which you're probably going to be tempted not to trust him you're probably going to be tempted to sin against him and saying please help me with that for yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever so we have a pattern that Jesus gave us that we can use so that we don't run out of things to say or so that we know what to say not only that but our confession and our catechism has a lot of helpful teaching as well the Westminster shorter catechism questions 98 through 107 have a whole lot of things on how we can pray and what we can pray for if you don't have a copy of the standards there's some on the grow table the Westminster standards so use patterns fourth and finally prepare I think it was Mike Osborne you know him Mike Osborne used to say I think still does that Christians should read at least one book of prayer every year should read one book on prayer every year because it gives you that booster shot it reminds you about prayer teaches you things about prayer and it helps kind of recharge that prayer life and so I want to mention a few books on prayer many people have been very blessed by the book a praying life by Paul Miller some people have really appreciated pray with your eyes open by Richard Pratt Tim Keller has a good book on prayer entitled prayer I have not read this but Jarrett Hall one of our pastoral interns says it's really good so I'm sure that it is a way to pray by D.A. Carson and then the Valley of Vision is not a book on prayer it's actually a book of prayers but it can teach you how to pray the Valley of Vision is a book of prayers puritan prayers that are absolutely beautiful and absolutely Christ centered and so wonderful and I want to tell you something you all need to let the first service know that you're a little uncomfortable with something that's happened I had four copies of the Valley of Vision and I said first service you can take two I want two for the second service they took them all okay so now let's forgive that's what we do but here's what I'll say the Valley of Vision there's leatherbound copies there's or bonded leather and there is paperback copies if you want this if you will try to use this again I pray one of these every day in my devotions and they're phenomenal and if you will do this let me know and I'll get you a copy unless like 50 of you ask then we'll have to figure something out but nonetheless we want you to have resources resources so that families are praying together so that married couples are praying together so that individuals are praying together so that community groups are praying together because we want that prayer life we want a healthy prayer life let me close by saying this I want you to understand number one God is patient God understands it's hard for us to work through the difficulties of generating that healthy rhythm and that healthy prayer life he knows that it's difficult and I know that it's difficult and you know that it's difficult and I want to tell you though that if we'll keep pushing through that challenge of getting used to it and creating the rhythms it eventually becomes something so beautiful in life changing when we were in Minnesota just recently my family is in Minnesota oh talk about answered prayer when we got there there was no snow on the ground my kids were heartbroken so we prayed 24 hours later there was 13 inches of snow on the ground prayer works people telling you now what you do when there's 13 inches of snow not only you thank the Lord for answering that prayer but then you go make snowman now if you if you've ever made a snowman you may know that in the beginning it's very hard you start with something small and you keep trying to pack more snow onto it and kind of roll it and roll it and it gets heavier and heavier but then it gets to this size where it kind of it's own weight keeps it moving and you're kind of rolling this gigantic ball of snow and you start yelling to your friends I've got the base you know you're ready to put that that lower level of the snowman in place and then start making the next level something that starts small and it's kind of challenging in the beginning it grows and it grows and then it kind of almost moves on its own and then it's fun it's so much like pushing through the hard parts of developing a very healthy habit of prayer in fact J.I. Packer says that big important thing to understand about prayer is it's finding our way through duty to delight so I want you to know that if you if you don't have a regular prayer life it's not going to be easy to develop it but as you rely on the fact that you are united to Christ by faith and you have the power of the Holy Spirit and you seek to employ these simple methods to develop a prayer life it'll start small and it'll grow and it'll grow and eventually it'll carry its own weight will carry it and if I can say this reverently it'll be fun but best of all it will be beautiful in you experiencing the presence of God and the glory of God and the grace of God in even deeper ways which is exactly what God wants for us now and forever so let's pray. Father thank you for your grace and your mercy thank you for teaching us in your word not only that Jesus has paid our debt and secured our forgiveness in our eternal life and not only that we are in relationship with you now as we are united to Christ by faith but also that prayer that's speaking to you that's sharing our hearts with you that asking you for things that acknowledging ourselves as needy and you as wealthy is such a vital part would you help each of us as individuals as couples as families as community groups and as a church would you help us to grow in prayer and therefore grow also spiritually and flourish for your glory and for our joy in Jesus name we pray amen.