#15 Prayer

Mentor church of Christ

"A place to believe, belong, and become"

Home

Minister

Bulletin

Grandsons

North Coast Bible Institute

Batsell Moore art

Great web sites

Mentor history

One writer said: "Today many Christians spend a great deal of time and effort vainly looking for blessings already available to them.

· They pray for God's light, although He has already supplied light in abundance through His Word. Their need is to follow the light they already have.

· "They pray for strength, although His Word tells them they can do all things through Christ who strengthens them (Phil. 4:13).

· "They pray for more love, although Paul says that God's own love is already poured out within their hearts through the Holy Spirit (Rom. 5:5).

· "They pray for more grace, although the Lord says the grace He has already given is sufficient (2 Cor. 12:9).

· "They pray for peace, although the Lord has given them His own peace.” "which surpasses all comprehension" (Phil. 4:7).

"It is expected that we pray for such blessings if the tone of the prayer is one of seeking the grace to appropriate what is already given, rather than one of pleading for something we think is scarcely available or is reluctantly shared by God."

"God is still on His throne and man is still on his footstool. There's only a knee's distance in between."

Church at Rome
Most of us know what it is to feel overwhelmed in our efforts to pray, either from having too many people to pray for or because of not knowing how to pray for a specific situation or simply from being too upset to
pray.

In all of these circumstances knowing the Holy Spirit is helping us can give us courage to go ahead and pray in whatever way we are able, trusting God in all things.

Have you ever felt like the believers in Rome might have felt, not really knowing how you ought to pray?

Romans 8:26-27: "In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. {27} And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will."

Rom. 15:30-31: "I urge you, brothers, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to join me in my struggle by praying to God for me. {31} Pray that I may be rescued from the unbelievers in Judea and that my service in Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints there…"

Church at Corinth
2 Cor. 13:7, 9: "Now we pray to God that you will not do anything wrong. Not that people will see that we have stood the test but that you will do what is right even though we may seem to have failed….(9) "We are glad whenever we are weak but you are strong; and our prayer is for your perfection."

To the church at Corinth which was languishing in spiritual immaturity, he thanked them for assisting him through a life-threatening situation by their prayers (2 Cor. 1:11) and later prayed that they would do nothing wrong and continue on to maturity (2 Cor.13:7,9).

Can you identify with the Corinthians, frustrated in your efforts to become more spiritually mature?
· Prayer helps to discover and overcome sin in our lives
· It helps to put our feelings into words which then we can better present before God
· It solicits God's power to assist us in maturing our feelings and actions
· It moves us to study the Scriptures more diligently to answer questions created in prayer
· It reminds us of our need to rely upon God and of His great power available to us

Church at Philippi
In the opening verses of Philippians 4, Paul mentions a series of things all of us want:
· We all want to stand firm in our faith (vs. 1)
· We all want to have a joyful attitude through the day (vs. 4)
· We all want to have minds that dwell on beneficial things (vs. 8)
· We all want to apply God’s principles that we are flooded with His peace (vs. 9)
· We all want contentment and satisfaction (vs. 9)

And what is the answer….in many circumstances we grow anxious and we worry and we’re irritated that we don’t have this kind of life and we grow to be resentful and confused.

Paul told the Philippians (4:6-7) that they should "not be anxious about anything, but in everything.., present their requests to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, shall guard your hearts
and your minds in Christ Jesus."

Prayer results in peace…it alleviates anxiety.

Another set of lessons:
· ANYTHING is appropriate for prayer, no matter how insignificant it may seem to others.
· God is able and willing to attend to both great and small requests.
· None of our cares are too trivial for God to care about.

Church at Colossae
Col. 4:12 "Epaphras, who is one of you and a servant of Christ Jesus, sends greetings. He is always wrestling in prayer for you, that you may stand firm in all the will of God, mature and fully assured.

Epaphras "wrestled in prayer" for the Colossians. What do you think is meant by that?
· His words were not magical
· nor did he possess a supernatural ability to spiritually wrestle with Satan
· Literally, he was "agonizing" or 'fighting in prayer" on behalf of the Colossian believers
· All Christians are encouraged to fight in the spiritual warfare of which we are a part.
· Maybe Epaphras was being continually diligent, day after day, in praying specifically and intensely for the believers there.

What have we seen in this brief look?
Looking back over Paul's prayers, his words and themes help us see what prayer accomplishes and for what we can pray?
· Power - to rescue/protect others, to spread the gospel, for others to grow more like Christ through knowing His love and through becoming more obedient.
· Participating in the struggles of other believers.
· Praying continually, knowing God's peace

Paul's prayers are similar because we often pray for the same things as Paul prayed:
· such as the welfare and growth of other believers
· the spread of the gospel
· a more intimate knowing of God, etc.

They are different in that today:
· we often lack the conviction that God is really hearing and answering our prayers
· we often lack a sense of urgency and expectation
· we are often less bold
· we often become more self-centered in our prayers
· do not spend much time praying for believers in other places · or for those who are in need of salvation.

"Tell God all that is in your heart, as one unloads one's heart, its pleasures and its pains, to a dear friend. Tell Him your troubles, that He may comfort you; tell Him your joys, that He may sober them; tell Him
your longings, that He may purify them; tell Him your dislikes, that He may help you to conquer them; talk to Him of your temptations, that He may shield you from them; show Him the wounds of your heart, that He may heal them; lay bare your indifference to good, your depraved tastes for evil, your instability. Tell Him how self-love makes you unjust to others, how vanity tempts you to be insincere, how pride disguises you to
yourself and to others.

"If you thus pour out all your weaknesses, needs, troubles, there will be no lack of what to say. You will never exhaust the subject. It is continually being renewed. People who have no secrets from each other
never want for subjects of conversation. They do not weigh their words, for there is nothing to be held back; neither do they seek for something to say. They talk out of the abundance of the heart, without
consideration they say just what they think. Blessed are they who attain to such familiar, unreserved intercourse with God."

Prayer was never intended to make us feel guilty. It was never intended to be a verbal marathon for special people with good vocabularies. Real prayer—the kind of prayer Jesus mentioned and modeled—is realistic,
spontaneous, down-to-earth communication with a living Lord that results in a relief of personal anxiety and a calm assurance that our God is in full control of our circumstances.

That’s what God wants WITH us and FOR us!

"You want something but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures."

Do you think of yourself as a worldly person? I fear I am. I confess it to you with embarrassment. And I ask you to be God's agents in helping me deal with this ever- present temptation in my life.

Now before you leave with a totally wrong impression and the rumor begins circulating that Rubel confessed to a secret life of carousing, drunkenness, and immorality, let me both deny that emphatically and give you a correct definition of the adjective "worldly." The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language says the fundamental meaning of the term is this: "1. Of, pertaining to, or devoted to the temporal world; not spiritual or religious; secular."

With genuine regret and sorrow, I confess that I too often read the circumstances of my life and make important decisions with too much of this world and too little of that world in view, with too much dictated to me by my immediate culture and too little defined by my Christian commitments. Do you ever have that problem? Do you think it could invalidate or weaken your prayers?

The Book of James is my favorite New Testament epistle. Every line in it is practical counsel I need to hear over and over. The difficulty of James is not comprehension — as perhaps with Revelation, Hebrews, or Romans — but application. And one of the most significant parts of James for me is found at the end of the third chapter.

Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such "wisdom" does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.

But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness (James 3:13-18).

Two very different kinds of wisdom — perhaps we would say two very different world- views — offer themselves to us every day. One is ordained and championed by the world that is still alienated from God; it promotes success defined in terms of money and power, beauty demonstrated as sex appeal, and self-interest displayed as the willingness to do anything necessary to get what it wants.

The other comes from heaven to those who will receive it; it is more interested in purity than pleasure, puts peace above ambition, and is willing to forfeit its rights and turn the other cheek than push for having its way.

When I confessed my vulnerability to worldliness, it was this biblical definition I had in mind. I am human enough to be tempted to judge our success as a church by numbers, nickels, and nails; we are "successful" when we are single-minded about obeying and honoring our Lord Jesus Christ.

What about the larger arena of our lives at school, at work, and in our families? Is it more important to be "cool" or to be holy, to be popular or to be righteous? Is it more important to make money or to do what's right, to get ahead or to treat people fairly and with respect? Is it more important to make the right friends or to be the right kind of friend, to give your children everything they want or to give them what they really need? These choices sound overblown and crazy to many people. Anyone who takes God seriously in this culture knows that they represent very basic choices between competing world-views.

Christians are subversive to the world's cultural ideals. The prevailing norms in music and entertainment, personal and corporate morality, or family and social ideals run counter to the interests of the kingdom of God. Thus it follows that the only way for Christians to live is in deliberate opposition to the world-view that James labels "earthly, unspiritual, of the devil." If that language sounds too harsh to my ears, it is only because I am too influenced by the world. If it shocks me, it may be that I have compromised heavenly values for the sake of worldly conquests.

The single best way to stay focused on heavenly wisdom rather than to be deceived by this world is prayer. James has already affirmed as much back in the opening lines of his epistle: "If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him" (Jas. 1:5). Which type of wisdom do you think God would give in response to prayer?

The fact remains, though, that many of us aren't as prayerful as we should be. And we blame it on God! We say we don't pray because our prayers don't do anything. God doesn't hear us and give us the things we've asked for. If our prayers aren't getting us anywhere, there's just no point to praying.

I'm forced to be a bit suspicious of this all-too-common defense of prayerlessness among Christians. Someone wrote: "Heaven is full of answers to prayers for which no one ever bothered to ask." Ouch! Could it really be true?

When we do pray, are we praying for the wrong things or with a wrong spirit? Could it be the case that we are even worldly in our prayers — praying for things that would vindicate us within a system that is fundamentally hostile to God rather than praying within the divine world- view for things he would never refuse to grant? My own (spiritual) sense of the matter is that God will always give one of his children what he or she requests within his will — or something far better than we even thought to request.

The reason I am so confident in saying this is that it is nothing more than a paraphrase of what James, the half-brother of the Lord Jesus Christ, says in today's larger text.

You wouldn't think of just asking God for it, would you? And why not? Because you know you'd be asking for what you have no right to. You're spoiled children, each wanting your own way.

You're cheating on God. If all you want is your own way, flirting with the world every chance you get, you end up enemies of God and his way. And do you suppose God doesn't care? The proverb has it that "he's a fiercely jealous lover." And what he gives in love is far better than anything else you'll find. It's common knowledge that "God goes against the willful proud; God gives grace to the willing humble."

You may have as much of God's heart, favor, and blessing as you are willing to receive in this life. Christ has opened the way to his treasure-chamber by his own blood, and he invites us to take all we want. When we pray in his name, we are assured that we will be heard — and answered. Yet our spiritual poverty is often comparable to that of a man who has been invited into the vaults of Fort Knox and given permission to carry out as much bullion from our nation's gold reserves as he needs.

He would not be a thief to fill his hands, his pockets, a bag. He has been invited inside and given carte blanche to everything in the vault. So whose fault will it be if he walks out empty- handed or having picked up only a gum wrapper and cigarette butt somebody dropped on the vault floor?

In the same way, it is nobody's fault but mine if I live in spiritual poverty. If I choose to use (actually waste) my prayers asking for a successful career, huge amounts of money, fabulous notoriety, and good health, I'm asking for gum wrappers and cigarette butts when I could be asking for and getting valuable things.

Even to say such a thing shocks and offends us, for we think so much like the world. Those are the valuable things. Aren't they? What does Scripture say? Can you think of a single line in the Word of God that would support such a claim?

When someone thinks he is being neglected or overlooked, worldly wisdom tells him to invest his prayers in asking for a promotion, a raise, or a wife who will appreciate him. When someone fears that age or diminished beauty will let life pass her by, worldly wisdom tells her to act like a girl again and to prove she can still turn heads.

When someone has been living above his means and saddled himself with unmanageable debts, worldly wisdom instructs him to pray for a lightning strike at the casino or to land a big account for the sake of the bonus it would bring. When someone is seriously ill, worldly wisdom tells her to pray to be healed and spared from suffering and death.

Heavenly wisdom might lead the overlooked soul to pray for an unselfish spirit and to be pleased with the certainty of God's love in Christ.

Don't misunderstand. Don't miss my point. Please don't misrepresent my meaning. Of course we may pray for the distressing aspects of this temporal life, but we must neither center nor exhaust our visits to heaven's treasure vault on such things. Otherwise, like the Prodigal Son, we have taken our access to the Father's wealth and squandered its power.

It is only people "of corrupt mind," maintains Spirit-guided Paul, "who think that godliness is a means to financial gain" (1 Tim. 6:5) — or perpetual health, youth, or press coverage.

At the end of his epistle, James will say that the prayer of a righteous person is "powerful and effective" both for the seeking of forgiveness at God's throne and for weather conditions! (Jas. 5:16-17). But which is more important: pardon for sin or compliant weather? And what made Elijah's prayers about withholding and sending rain effective: righteous submission in seeking God's will or selfish concern to have a bumper crop and pay off his note at the bank?

Most of the sermons I have heard and preached on unanswered prayer haven't been terribly helpful. They tended to focus on hidden or unconfessed sin. They have sometimes exhorted that more time or attention be given to form in prayer. I have even gotten the idea from a few lessons I've heard that "fervency of spirit" — understood as loud and exuberant praying — was somehow the key to power in prayer.

But I've come to believe that the primary hindrance to prayer is the confusion of world- views. Prayer is not a means for manipulating God to my ends. Prayer is not my free pass that exempts me from problems. Prayer is not the means to my end of selfish ambition — even if that selfish ambition is masked under appropriate religious language.

Yes, I pray from the world of my temporal experience and limited understanding. But I am aware of praying to the God of Heaven and Earth whose promise to hear my prayers takes into account more things than I will ever know. And I must trust him to do what he has promised — to hear, to answer, to do more than I would even know to request.

Jesus is our perfect example again on this point. As Philip Yancey put it: "When Jesus prayed to the one who could save him from death, he did not get that salvation; he got instead the salvation of the world."

Pray. Pray by the guidance of heavenly wisdom rather than earthly wisdom. And pray with the assurance that God's failure to respond to your prayers is only apparent rather than real, for even when you don't have answers you still have him.

Many a young mother and father have had to break a young child's habit of sleeping in their room or in their bed. They try to make it as painless as possible. They pick a night when things have been pleasant and end it with a favorite bedtime story. Then they take her to her own bed in her own room, say her prayers with her, and give her a goodnight kiss. With everything safe and secure, they turn out the light and go to their own room.

The little girl cries, and the crying turns to pitiful sobbing. She calls for her Mommy. And the mother and father are standing just outside the room shedding their own tears and fearing that their baby thinks they no longer hear her or love her. Their hearts are aching for her, and the easy thing for them to do is to rush in and take her back to the big bed in their room.

As much as Daddy would like to stop his child's tears, he knows he must not do so that night — and perhaps for several agonizing nights yet to come. He restrains himself for his baby's sake. She must learn to sleep in her own bed. She must begin to grow up emotionally. She must take one of the early steps to becoming an adult herself someday.

We may rest assured that God hears all our prayers. He is sympathetic and compassionate. His own heart aches beyond our ability to fathom. Yet he may appear to withdraw himself from us so that we might begin to grow up spiritually — by altering our world-view and beginning to see that the things that tend to concern us most are dictated by an earthly wisdom that must be shed for heaven's sake.

God's failure to answer all your questions, desires, and prayers is not his slamming the door of heaven in your face. You may not have all the desires of your heart as yet, but you do still have him. And he is always enough. More than enough.

(Plantation is a suburb of Fort Lauderdale...just 10 minutes from Miami-Dade County, in the middle of college and pro football country and 20 minutes from the Atlantic Ocean). Last modified: April 18, 2006 Hit Counter