TWO EARS AND ONE MOUTH
Text: Matthew 6:1-15
"It is hard sometimes in prison to sit and to pray, and to read of those who were in prison, and to read of their prayer, and to how the prison door or roof cracked open, the chains were released and they walked out.
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It’s hard when one has been for four years praying everyday and the door remains firmly locked and the chain remains firmly padlocked around one’s feet."
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Those were the words of Terry Waite spoken at a Christian Booksellers Convention held at Bournemouth in March 1993, when he spoke a little about his ordeal as a hostage in Beirut.
After six months, his captors had allowed him a Bible to read, and you would have thought that this would have given him some comfort during those years of solitary confinement. And yet he found it harder to read in black and white of examples where prisoners were released through prayer, and yet his were seemingly not being answered.
I suppose everyone can recall a period, or periods where prayer has become particularly fruitless, tiresome, tedious and boring.
Often it is difficult to know how to begin praying let alone spending considerable time in communion with God.
There are times when we pray and it seems like God isn’t listening. Bishop Mervyn Stockwood in a letter to David Watson wrote that:
"The greatest test of a Christian life is to live with the silence of God."
It has been said that ’Silence is Golden’, but in a prayerful sense it can be very painful. No longer is there that intimacy between you and God.
It’s as if, using the analogy of the telephone, that you pick up the receiver and dial but there is total nothingness on the end of the line.
At one time, as an economy drive, we had our BT telephone modified so that we could only receive incoming calls. This was fine unless we needed to make an urgent call and then found that the local call box was invariably out of order, or had been vandalised and you are left frustrated, and maybe even panic stricken.
Before mobile phones were common place. There were times when there would be three or more people waiting outside the call box, and the one inside had a pile of coins ready to be pumped into the slot!!
If it was urgent that a call be made you would consider ‘how else can I make this call?’ - Ah, I can nip around to a friends house - they’ll let me use their phone, so long as I pay for the call. If they were in, they were usually more than glad to help - if it is an urgent call.
Of course these days mobile phones are all the rage, but even now there are times when the battery is dead, or you just can’t find it, and once again you have to borrow someone else’s phone to make a connection.
This situation can be very much like our prayer-life to God. We are quite happy to receive God’s many blessings and perhaps make the occasional call from time to time when necessary, or when we think about it, but when we require his urgent attention it is invariably then that communication breaks down and no matter how hard we try it feels impossible to get back in touch with Him.
Mind you there is nothing wrong with God’s end of the line. He is receiving calls all the time, but it is at our end that communication has broken down.
Just as an aside, have you ever noticed that it is at times like this that we no longer call him Father, but God. He seems to have lost His intimate title through our separation from Him.
Unfortunately I suffer from M.E., which is also known as Post Viral Syndrome or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. At times the M.E. has been really bad and I found during one period that no matter how hard I tried, I could not get through to God in Prayer. It seemed as if I was stood underneath a brick wall that interfered with the transmission and blocked the prayer waves from getting through. It was at this time that I needed the prayers of others to make the connection for me.
The preacher David Pawson tells of how he needed his wife to say his prayers for him following a breakdown he suffered through overwork.
I’m glad that there are friends around me who I can turn to whenever I need to use the telephone, but more importantly I am extremely grateful that I have caring friends who will pray for me when I am in need.
When people say that you don’t need to go to church to have a relationship with God, I wonder how they get on during those spiritual hang-ups?!
Having mentioned some of the difficulties we experience in prayer, I would like us to consider just how we can improve our prayer-life by learning from what Jesus taught his Disciples.
Obviously in the short time we have available today it is impossible to cover prayer to any great depth, but I hope to bring a few points to your attention inorder to wet your appetite!
I would like us to consider How to pray, When to pray and What to pray.
Firstly, I would in no way consider that I am an expert in prayer, in fact, far from it, but I do feel that if you had to be an expert before you could talk about prayer then the subject would never get a hearing, and it is the most useful weapon a Christian can use to thwart Satan’s efforts.
Satan has no defence to stop our prayers. He may try to dissuade us from saying our prayers, but once said they can not be stopped.
You can pray for anyone in the world and know that your Father in Heaven can action those prayers despite the physical distances or barriers that might otherwise form a hindrance.
HOW TO PRAY
Jesus taught his Disciples how to pray and he was concerned that they didn’t make a grand show of their prayer life as many of the religious people of his day were doing.
He told them to go into their room, close the door and pray to their Father who is unseen.
This very much goes along with the way Jesus had prayed - in private, away from public view, even away from His own Disciples.
It is recorded that Jesus:
a) slipped away into the hills to pray;
b) prayed at night in privacy;
c) slipped away during the day;
d) took Himself off to Mount Tabor;
e) at Gethsemane He withdrew a stones throw from his Disciples.
We as Christ’s Disciples should do likewise. We should find a room in private and pray to the Lord.
Well I’m sure some of you will be saying - ’How do I find time to do this in the busy life that I lead, especially when there are young children to look after?’
Our prayers need not be long ones. Any spare moment can be used in prayer:
I often find that when I’m soaking myself in the bath that it gives me the perfect opportunity to be truly alone with the Lord.
You can pray when doing the washing-up, or whilst standing in the queue at the supermarket or wherever you shop.
You can pray whilst travelling by train or bus, but do be careful when driving, especially if you have a habit of shutting your eyes when you pray!!!
When we come to church it is not practical for us all go into a separate room to pray, but we do have one room which is private - and that is the room within our hearts. I believe that unless we pray from that room then our prayers are wasted and have no meaning whatsoever.
If we collectively do that, when we come together at church or house groups etc, then our prayers can be strengthened like putting sound through an amplifier.
One of the aspects which we need to bear in mind when we are thinking about ’how to pray’ is that we ought to keep our prayers simple, not full of fancy flannel and liturgical niceties. If the time we have available for prayer is limited then why waste that time with excessively laborious prayers.
Despite the fact that God knows our needs, he still expects us to pray for them, but keep them simple.
Jesus taught His disciples a method of prayer which we know to be the ’Lord’s Prayer’. Unfortunately we tend to recite this prayer in liturgical fashion and it loses it’s impact.
I haven’t time to cover this prayer in the depth that it deserves but I would just emphasise one point, and that is that the prayer is in the plural. It doesn’t talk about my needs, but rather OUR needs.
Our Father in Heaven....
Give us today our daily bread,
Forgive us our trespasses etc.
All self has to be eliminated if we are to be a Disciple of Jesus Christ. We must put others first before ourselves and therefore when we pray the needs of others should come before those of our own.
That doesn’t mean that we can’t ever pray for our own cares and concerns, but they should be put into the right perspective.
WHEN TO PRAY
As a child I was brought up to say my prayers just before going to bed at night, and so did the little girl called Susan, whose parents were not regular church goers but encouraged her to say her prayers each night.
Eventually little Susan went to church for a wedding in the family and Susan turned to her mother and said,
"What are all those people doing?"
"Ssh dear", replied her mother, "They’re praying".
To which Susan replied, "What - with all their clothes on!!"
It is a good practice to have discipline in praying but sometimes we find it difficult to know ’when to pray’ for a particular situation. I guess it is very hard for us to understand why, when we pray for the healing of someone we love who is dying, that our prayers seem to be ignored by God.
Doubts start to creep in, and it is very easy to give up praying altogether.
I don’t know about you, but I can understand how difficult it must have been for Terry Waite to continue praying and praying and praying whilst seeing no answer to prayer.
John Wimber experienced this over the prayers that he said for David Watson when it was found that David was dying of Hodgkins Disease.
Here again if ever a person deserved to be healed it was David Watson who had spent a tireless life devoted to spreading the good news about Jesus Christ.
John Wimber likens the saying of prayers to the throwing of a ball from one person to another. If you throw a ball to a friend - you throw it so that they can catch it.
If you throw the ball and the friend chooses not to catch it, or for some reason is unable to catch it, then there can be no guilt placed on you as you have tried your best to pass the ball.
If, however, you don’t throw the ball then there is no chance of that person ever catching it.
[SLOWLY] Our responsibility is to throw the ball.
When we say our prayers there is at least an opportunity that God will action those prayers, but if we don’t - how can He fulfil them.
[SLOWLY] Our responsibility is to say the prayers.
It is very important for us to be persistent in prayer. Jesus told the Disciples two parables based on this theme:
The parable of the friend at midnight; and
The parable of the persistent widow.
Jesus only told two parables on prayer and both highlighted the need for persistence - perhaps there is a message in that for us.
But how long must we keep praying?
Well, we should pray and keep praying until one of three things occurs:
1) Until we receive the answer we are praying for.
2) Until God assures us that he has dealt with our prayer.
3) Until God says NO -
Sometimes we pray either the wrong prayer or for the wrong reason. Let us remember that God is supreme and His plan for our lives may differ from what we would want.
We must learn to understand when God is telling us that we are going the wrong way.
WHAT TO PRAY
Having tackled How and When to pray we will now consider ’What to Pray’.
In the Lord’s Prayer we see that it begins with ’Our Father, who art in hallowed be thy name.’
How many of us really begin our prayers by giving God the glory that He deserves?
Too often we ask God for what we need in life without ever considering that our Father has needs.
As a parent, I know just how much I value the love of my children, and being separated from the children it becomes doubly important that whenever we see each other that we re-establish a loving relationship as soon as we can because time together is so short.
It is very tempting for me to spoil the children during our times together. It is equally very easy for the children to see me as a soft touch. As young children they would pester me for sweets and biscuits but nowadays it is money. Oh Dad can pay, he’s at work, he can afford it. They take without ever giving back that comfort of love and respect. It is at these times that they give the impression that all they want is whatever they can get out of me.
At times like these I feel caught between spoiling them, because our time together is short, and keeping a reasonable discipline so that they will come to appreciate the true value of any gifts given them. When the children show genuine affection and love then my heart melts for them and they receive far more in return.
I guess God must face this same quandary. When we return to Him after a time away He must long to shower many gifts upon us and yet there is an element of discipline in the gifts that He is prepared to give us so that we don’t become spiritually spoilt.
We as God’s children should consider the needs of our Heavenly Father and show Him our love and gratitude through our prayers.
I like the comment made by the little girl who at the end of her prayers one night was heard to finish with the remark:
’Please God take care of yourself, because if owt ’appens to you we’re all sunk’
Not only should we give our Father the praise and honour that He is due, but we should hear what He has to say to us.
Some years back Frances Hogan came to Newark and she preached on the Lord’s Prayer at the Holy Trinity, and she asked the question:
Is what God says more important than what I say?
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So why do we spend so much time talking and such little time listening?
Some time ago I was reading Michael Green’s book -’Evangelism in the Local Church’, and one phrase he used has really struck home with me. He said that
’We have two ears and only one mouth - so why don’t we get our prayers into the same ratio - twice as much listening to speaking’.
The more we listen, the more we will know what to pray about.
Amen.
