Powerful Prayers Series

POWERFUL PRAYERS

PSALM 119:145-152

INTRODUCTION

A. There are some powerful prayers recorded in biblical history:

1. Elijah prayed that it would not rain, and it did not rain for three years (Jam 5:17).

2. The early church prayed for boldness to proclaim the word despite persecution, and the place where they were was shaken (Acts 4:29-31).

B. God’s response to our prayers may not be as obvious and dramatic, but David will teach us the kind of prayer James described: “The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results” (Jam 5:16, NLT).

I. TWO THINGS POWERFUL PRAYERS ARE NOT

A. Prayers are not made powerful by empty, flowery speeches. The ability to turn a phrase—say something memorable—may be of value when making a political speech, accepting an award, or writing a doctoral dissertation, but is of no value when praying to God.

B. Two quotations from two well-known writers will suffice to make the point:

1. Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule. (Stephen King).

2. Many Spirit-filled authors have exhausted the thesaurus in order to describe God with the glory He deserves. His perfect holiness, by definition, assures us that our words can't contain Him. Isn't it a comfort to worship a God we cannot exaggerate? (Francis Chan).

C. There is a difference between searching for the right word to make a point in the fewest possible words and searching for synonyms, piling one on top of another.

1. The Pharisee gave a resume of his righteousness and called it prayer (Lk 18:10-12).

a. He asked for nothing.

b. He got nothing.

D. Alexander Campbell objected to such prayers:

1. Next to the monotonous uniformity of expression, we rank a verbose redundancy in the use of epithets and phrases which swell the period without increasing the sentiment, or exalting the devotion of the soul. Of this sort are all those pompous high-sounding addresses to Deity in which the speaker seems to exhaust the whole resources of his vocabulary, and puts his inventive faculties to torture to find out words wherewith to astound the audience, and display his elocution (“The Best of Alexander Campbell’s Millennial Harbinger,” pp. 94-95).

2. As you can see, Campbell could certainly turn a phrase. There are seventy-two words in the quotation. Grammarly highlighted large parts of it as “wordy” twice. It also said twice that a knowledgeable audience might find the passage hard to read. Perhaps the ordinary person of Alexander’s day didn’t need a dictionary to know what he said, but many today would.

3. Campbell may have been speaking with tongue in cheek, as did I one time when I wrote the following: “Contemporary exegetes have a propensity for speaking in sesquipedalian derivatives to corroborate their erudition,” which, being interpreted, means, “Modern preachers like to use foot-and-a-half long words to show how smart they are.”

E. Powerful prayers, whether spoken extemporaneously or with prior deliberation, are not flowery speeches nor monologues in which we offer God our resume of righteousness.

II. POWERFUL PRAYERS ARE PASSIONATE PRAYERS (V. 145)

A. When we read this verse, we recall the Son of David on the cross: “And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabach-thani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt 27:46).

1. The following words from his mouth were his last words: “‘It is finished,’ and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit” (John 19:3).

2. We can include Jesus’ fervent prayer on the night of his betrayal in the Garden when his sweat was like great drops of blood. He prayed the same passionate prayer three times (Matt 27:36-46).

3. We will never pray as passionately as Jesus did because we will never carry the weight of the world’s sin, as he did. However, there may be times in our lives when the burden of our own sins will challenge our faith, and we passionately cry out to God—or we should.

B. Our natural inclination when confronted with our sins and our sinfulness is to run and hide, as did mother Eve and father Adam.

1. We must learn with David the futility of fleeing from God (Psa 139:7-12).

2. When confronted with the fangs and claws of the marauding lion, Satan, we should flee to God, not from him (Heb 4:15-16).

III. POWERFUL PRAYERS ARE FROM THE HEART (VV. 145-146)

A. A family asked me to preach their loved one’s funeral. They asked another preacher to lead a prayer. He prayed almost as long as I preached, but the words I remember were his closing line: “Lord, help these people know that I have spoken from the heart without notes.” Sometimes we mistake shooting from the hip for speaking from the heart.