I Found The Answer… I Learned To Pray

• Sermons on living by faith

• Sermons on daily witnessing to the lost

• Sermons on using your talents for the Lord

• Sermons on daily studying God’s Word

• Sermons on being a good steward of our time and our money

These are good things for any pastor to preach to his congregation because these are the things the Bible teaches.

Today, we hear a lot of sermons on:

• How to feel good about yourself

• How to live healthy and wealthy

• Planting seeds to get wealthy

• Power of positive thinking

• Possibility thinking

• Name it and Claim it

• Blab it and Grab it

These are the kind of sermons many preachers are preaching.

But in this sermon I want to preach:

• Something the Bible teaches from cover to cover

• Something that you can’t grow in the Lord without it being part of your Christian life

• Something that you can’t live a victorious life without it being part of your life.

• I want to preach on something that Bible preachers through the ages have preached on

I want to preach on the subject of PRAYER!

Before I preach on the subject of prayer, I want to make two personal confessions:

(1) I must confess that I do not pray as much as I should. So that you will understand what I am saying, I did not say I do not pray, I said, I do not pray as much as I should.

Sometimes I find myself worrying, and humanly trying to work out problems without the help of the Lord.

(2) I also must confess that I do not preach on the subject of prayer as much as I should, and I ask the Lord to forgive me. Again, I did not say I do not preach on prayer, I said I do not preach on the subject of prayer as much as I should.

Let’s look at some things we see about the Christian life in Psalm 64 that deal with prayer.

We see . . .

I. HIS REQUEST

Being a child of God is the greatest blessing an individual can have in THIS LIFE. Does that mean that after we accept the Lord we live happily ever after? No! When we get to heaven we will enjoy the PERFECT LIFE, BUT NOT UNTIL THEN!

The Christian life is the best life a person can have here on earth, but both SAINTS and SINNERS have personal problems in this life.

Illus: Did you hear about the young couple that decided to get married? As the big day approached, they grew apprehensive. Each had personal problems they had never before shared with anyone, not even each other.

• The Groom-to-be, overcoming his fear, decided to ask his father for advice. "Father," he said, "I am deeply concerned about the

success of my marriage."

• His father replied, "Don't you love this girl?" "Oh yes, very much," he said, “But you see, I have very smelly feet, and I'm afraid that my wife to be will be put off by them."

• "No problem," said dad, "All you have to do is wash your feet as often as possible, and always wear socks, even to bed." Well, to him this seemed a workable solution.

• The bride-to-be, overcoming her fear, decided to take her problem up with her mom. “Mom," she said, "When I wake up in the morning my breath is truly awful."

• "Honey," her mother consoled, "Everyone has bad breath in the morning." "No, you don't understand, my morning breath is so bad, I'm afraid that my fiancé will not want to sleep in the same room with me."

• Her mother said simply, "Try this. In the morning, get straight out of bed, and head for the kitchen and make breakfast. While the family is busy eating, move on to the bathroom and brush your teeth. The key is, not to say a word until you've brushed your teeth." "I shouldn't say good morning or anything?" the daughter asked. "Not a word," her mother affirmed. "Well, it's certainly worth a try," she thought.

• The loving couple was finally married. Not forgetting the advice each had received, he with his perpetual socks and she with her morning silence, they managed quite well. That is, until about six months later. Shortly before dawn one morning, the husband wakes to find that one of his socks had come off. Fearful of the consequences, he frantically searches the bed. This, of course, wakes his wife and without thinking, she looks him in the face and says with her bad breath, "What on earth are you doing?" After she breathed in his face he said, "Oh no! You've swallowed my sock!"