April 17, 2011
Morning Worship
Text: Luke 22:39-46
Subject: Prayer
Title: Praying Like Jesus
I want to share with you once again this week on the subject of prayer. Last week we saw the 1) the purpose of prayer… 2) the pattern for prayer… 3) persistence in prayer… 4) the power of prayer. This week we will focus on how we should pray. We want to pray like Jesus prayed.
When Robert Louis Stevenson was a boy he once remarked to his mother, "Momma, you can't be good without praying." "How do you know, Robert?" she asked. "Because I've tried!" he answered. This brings to mind a story about another little fellow -- one who had been sent to his room because he had been bad. A short time later he came out and said to his mother, "I've been thinking about what I did and I said a prayer." "That's fine," she said, "if you ask God to make you good, He will help you." "Oh, I didn't ask Him to help me be good," replied the boy. "I asked Him to help you put up with me."
Our Daily Bread, June 15.
Today is Palm Sunday. This is the day that the church celebrates as the triumphal entry into Jerusalem by King Jesus… The coming week would be a week of teaching, confrontation and ultimately of trial and suffering for Jesus. But probably the most important thing we can get from this last week of Jesus’ earthly life is that He ended it with prayer. In John Chapter 17, after Jesus has celebrated the Passover meal with His disciples we see the longest recorded prayer of Jesus in scripture. From there we see Jesus going once again to the Mount of Olives – particularly the Garden of Gethsemane – where He takes his inner circle of friends with Him for a final time of prayer. And this time of prayer is His preparation for the hours of trial and punishment that lie ahead. Jesus prayer was never reactive, but was always proactive. He took care of problems before they arose.
That is why the church needs to learn how to pray like Jesus prayed.
Read Luke 22:39-46
Lord, Open my eyes to see and my ears to hear what the Spirit is saying to the church.
I. YOU SHOULD MAKE PRAYER A HABIT (v 39) 39 Jesus went out as usual to the Mount of Olives, and his disciples followed him. Two things I want you to see here. First, Jesus went out as usual… Jesus had a habit of prayer. You know I read articles about prayer and I’ve read books about prayer. We have done a whole series of sermons and bible studies about prayer. Some say that you should give God the first part of your day – before you start anything else you need to pray. Others say that it is better to stop at the end of your day and give God thanks and praise for the things that happened that day and to ask Him to help you make corrections for the next day. The truth is that not everyone is a morning person and not everyone is able to focus after a day of work when the troubles of the day are on their minds. Does it really matter when you pray? What matters most is that you do pray. The truth is that you should begin your day with prayer. It doesn’t have to be a prolonged period of prayer. I start my day with my devotional, scripture reading and then a time of prayer. I don’t get up at 5:00 AM to do it. I am normally over at church from 8:00 to 9:00 each morning. That is why some of you try to call me during that time and I most often don’t answer my phone. Then each night as I lay down to go to sleep I pray – many times going to sleep while praying. Is that it then? Are we done with prayer? How often should we talk to God in prayer? 1 Thessalonians 5:17-18. "17 pray continually; 18 give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. God wants us to make praying to Him a regular habit. This doesn't mean we will pray without a pause all day every day. It simply means we must not cease making prayer a habit. This is the way it is with me. Many times at night I wake up and can’t get back to sleep. What do I do? Sometimes I get up and pray or read. Sometimes I lie in bed and pray in tongues. But I pray. Each week we draw a new Christmas card from our Christmas card stash and we pray for that family for a whole week at every meal. I pray before board meetings. I pray before church services. I pray for those who are on my prayer list and for those who the Lord will lay on my heart. I just pray – and I still consider myself to be lacking in my prayer life – I want to do better. We must develop the habit of prayer. Secondly, What Jesus was doing in His prayer life caused His disciples to want to emulate Him. Remember last week? “Lord, teach us to pray…” Jesus prayed at His baptism and heaven opened up… Jesus, on a continuing basis, prayed and saw results. 39 Jesus went out as usual to the Mount of Olives, and his disciples followed him. When you pray the way that Jesus prayed you will foster an attitude of prayer in those around you. How important is your prayer. Consider this, God will not do anything on earth concerning His will until it is set in motion by the prayer of a believing saint. The book of Revelation in chapter 8 compares your prayer to the smoke from the altar of incense rising up to God. 3 Another angel, who had a golden censer, came and stood at the altar. He was given much incense to offer, with the prayers of all the saints, on the golden altar before the throne. 4 The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of the saints, went up before God from the angel’s hand. Your prayer pleases Him. Make it a habit.
II. YOUR PRAYER SHOULD BE PROACTIVE 40 On reaching the place, he said to them, “Pray that you will not fall into temptation.” Now look at verse 46. What does Jesus tell the disciples? 46 “Why are you sleeping?” he asked them. “Get up and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.” Be honest with me now, how many of you wait until the enemy begins his attacks to pray? In verses 40 and 46 Jesus knew that these very disciples were going to be put to the test. He encouraged them to pray about it before it came. But Jesus encourages the disciples to pray about it before it happened. Matthew 19:13, Then little children were brought to Jesus for him to place his hands on them and pray for them. It doesn’t tell us that the children had a specific need. Jesus just laid hands on them and prayed. Now, for the things that have already happened – the needs that people have right now – we can’t be proactive, only reactive. But there are so many areas where the church can be proactive in its prayer. 1. You can pray for the ministries in this church. Do any of you do that? Do you pray for your children’s church and its leaders? Do you pray for Sunday school teachers? Do you pray for the youth group, the women’s group or the worship team? How about the men’s ministry? Do you pray for your pastor? We need to make prayer an offensive weapon. 2 Corinthians 10:3-5, 3 For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. 4 The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 5 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. Is God really willing to answer your prayers, especially prayers for things that haven’t even happened yet? Mark 11:22-24, 22 “Have faith in God,” Jesus answered. 23 “I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. 24 Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. James 1:6-7, 6 But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. 7 That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; 1 John 5:14, 14 This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. 15 And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him. …according to his will… That leads us to the third point today.
III. YOU SHOULD PRAY FOR GOD’S WILL IN YOUR LIFE 41 He withdrew about a stone’s throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed, 42 “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” Let me ask you a question. Maybe you have never thought about this. We talk often about how Jesus had such close communion with the Father that He always knew what God’s will was. If that were the case then why did Jesus pray this way? Why did He pray, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me…? It was because of that constant communion with the Father that He prayed that way. He knew what was about to come. He was about to take upon himself the sins of all humanity for all time and that burden of sin was about to break the communion He always had with the Father. The cup that Jesus refers to is the cup of wrath that is about to be poured out on Him. Psalm 75:8, 8 In the hand of the LORD is a cup full of foaming wine mixed with spices; he pours it out, and all the wicked of the earth drink it down to its very dregs. Jeremiah 25:15, This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, said to me: “Take from my hand this cup filled with the wine of my wrath and make all the nations to whom I send you drink it. Look at this… Jesus, knowing that His will was to avoid the cup, also knew that it was God’s will that He take the cup of wrath for the sin of mankind. How did He know God’s will? Because He prayed! Jesus had a choice. He could have refused to go to the cross for you – but He didn’t. Now maybe you are thinking, “well yeah, but He was Jesus…” Yes He was. Fully God and fully man. Tempted in every way just as we are, and yet He remained sinless. Do you think it was an easy choice for Him to make, knowing that for three hours on that Friday afternoon He would hang on a cross and be separated from the communion that He had always experienced with the Father? But it was the Father’s will that HE had come to do and He did it. Are you able to pray that way? What if God’s will for your life is something that you really don’t want to do? How will you respond? What Jesus did was not something that He did without agonizing over it for a period of time. 43 An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him. 44 And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground. The clinical term is “hematohidrosis.” “Around the sweat glands, there are multiple blood vessels in a net-like form.” Under the pressure of great stress the vessels constrict. Then as the anxiety passes “the blood vessels dilate to the point of rupture. The blood goes into the sweat glands.” As the sweat glands are producing a lot of sweat, it pushes the blood to the surface - coming out as droplets of blood mixed with sweat. In spite of the agony Jesus still prayed, “Not my will but yours be done…” James 5:16, The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. How can you know God’s will so you can pray according to it? 1) You have to know what God’s word says about it… Everything that Jesus did in His ministry can be traced back to Luke 4. It was in accordance with the word of God. 16 He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read. 17 The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: 18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” 20 Then he rolled up the scroll gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, 21 and he began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” 2) You should listen to the inner voice of the Holy Spirit… We have probably all had that experience where we knew that we were supposed to pray for someone at a particular time. You don’t know why and sometimes don’t even know how, but you just knew that you had to pray only to find out later that the person you were praying for needed that prayer at that very time. Another way the Spirit leads you in prayer is through intercessory prayer. When you are in prayer just be aware of the Spirit’s prompting and then pray that way. That is what happened at the Jerusalem council in Acts 15, 28 It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us… 3) The third way to pray according to God’s will is to pray in tongues… Romans 8:26-27, 26 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.
Praying like Jesus. That should be our goal.
While crossing the Atlantic on an ocean liner, F.B. Meyer was asked to address the first class passengers. At the captain's request he spoke on "Answered Prayer." An agnostic who was present at the service was asked by his friends, "What did you think of Dr. Meyer's sermon?" He answered, "I didn't believe a word of it." That afternoon Meyer went to speak to the steerage passengers. Many of the listeners at his morning address went along, including the agnostic, who claimed he just wanted to hear "what the babbler had to say." Before starting for the service, the agnostic put two oranges in his pocket. On his way he passed an elderly woman sitting in her deck chair fast asleep. Her hands were open. In the spirit of fun, the agnostic put the two oranges in her outstretched palms. After the meeting, he saw the old lady happily eating one of the pieces of fruit. "You seem to be enjoying that orange," he remarked with a smile. "Yes, sir," she replied, "My Father is very good to me." "Your father? Surely your father can't be still alive!" "Praise God," she replied, "He is very much alive." "What do you mean?" pressed the agnostic. She explained, "I'll tell you, sir. I have been seasick for days. I was asking God somehow to send me an orange. I suppose I fell asleep while I was praying. When I awoke, I found He had not only sent me one orange but two!" The agnostic was speechless. Later he was converted to Christ. Yes, praying in God's will brings an answer.
Our Daily Bread.
1. Pray regularly
2. Pray proactively
3. Pray God’s will
Then watch God work.
