INTRO.- There is a difference between prayer and meditation.
ILL.- Two good old friends were meeting. "How are you and your family?" asks the one. "Oh we’re all fine". The other one answers, "We’re all healthy and are working. But how ’bout your son?? Is he still not working??" "Not at all", the first one answers, "He’s doing meditation now." "Meditation? What’s this? What is he doing?" "I don’t know it exactly," the first one answers again, "But I’m sure it’s better than just sitting down and doing nothing!" For some, meditating may be doing nothing.
ILL.- The story goes that Henry Ford once hired an efficiency expert to evaluate his company. After a few weeks, the expert made his report, which was highly favorable except for one thing. "It’s that man down the hall," said the expert. "Every time I go by his office he’s just sitting there with his feet on his deck. He’s wasting your money." "That man," replied Mr. Ford, "once had an idea that saved us millions of dollars. At the time, I believe his feet were planted right where they are now."
I don’t know what that man was meditating on, but it must have been something good according to Henry Ford since it was saving him money.
That’s not bad meditation. I think it pays to think before you spend money, yours and anybody else’s money!
Meditation can be a good thing, but it depends on the object of your meditation. If you are meditating on nothing, what good is that? Or even if you are meditating on say the blue sky, what good will that do a person? The sky does not influence the human spirit. We might appreciate a pretty blue sky but it can’t affect our inner being spiritually. It may only remind us that God created it. But the sky is not the same as the Spirit of God.
The other side of the coin is that if we meditate on something that is godly, it can make a big difference in our lives.
ILL.- For example, some of my best times (other than prayer or when I’m ministering to people) is when I am studying scripture and working on sermons. Why? BECAUSE I AM MEDITATING ON THE MESSAGE OF GOD FROM SCRIPTURE. And that’s a good thing! It’s a very good thing. It does you some good but it does me a world of good! It does my heart and my inner being much good. The person who teaches or preaches always gets more than his audience.
Any time we meditate on the things of God or the will of God or the scripture, it will affect our spirit in a positive way.
Prayer, of course, is different than meditation. Prayer is talking to God. And this is something that we desperately need even though it seems to be a one-sided conversation. I guarantee you, however, that God is listening very closely to every word you speak to Him!
Matthew 7:11 “If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”
If God is willing to give to you then He is definitely willing to listen to you!
PROP.- There are many things we should pray about but Paul zeros in on some important spiritual matters.
1- Pray that you will be more loving
2- Pray that you will be more discerning
3- Pray that you will be more righteous
I. PRAY THAT YOU WILL BE MORE LOVING
9 And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight.
Our love needs to abound.
ILL.- The newlywed wife said to her husband when he returned from work, "I have great news for you. Pretty soon, we’re going to be three in this house instead of two." Her husband ran to her with a smile on his face and delight in his eyes.
He was glowing with happiness and kissing his wife when she said, "I’m glad that you feel this way since tomorrow morning, my mother is moving in with us."
A husband’s love would certainly need to abound if he found out his mother-in-law was moving in! More people means more love is needed.
ILL.- Someone wrote: "There is nothing that makes us love a man so much as prayer for him.”
I don’t not how much or how often I’ve prayed for my love to grow for others, but it’s something that should be done. And it’s true that the more we pray for others, the more we will love others.
Generally, if you don’t like someone you won’t pray for them. But if you do start praying for them your attitude toward them will change. Prayer must grow for our love for others to grow.
Matthew 5:43-45 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.”
ILL.- Preacher Wayne Smith served the Southland Christian Church for forty years. He said in a sermon one time, “Lord, I know it’s wrong to hate anyone, but if it ever becomes right I’ve got the guy picked out.”
Do you the guy or gal picked out? Is there someone in life that you consider to be your enemy, your opponent, the one who doesn’t like it and has given you nothing but trouble in life?
What should we do? According to Jesus we should pray for that person or persons. But that’s not easy to do, is it? But it’s the right thing to do! After all, how did Jesus pray on the cross? “Father, forgive them for they know now what they do.” WHAT LOVE HE POSSESED! He didn’t possess love, HE WAS LOVE IN THE FLESH!
We need to pray for our love to grow. And we need to pray for people (all people; the good, the bad and the ugly) so that our love will grow for them.
Praying that our love for others will grow is an aspect of prayer that we often overlook. We often pray about many things but not love. If God is love and we know He is, then we, too, should love others. Let’s pray we will!
II. PRAY THAT YOU WILL BE MORE DISCERNING
9 And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, 10 so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ,
ILL.- A young man was walking through a supermarket to pick up a few things when he noticed an old lady following him around. Thinking nothing of it, he ignored her and continued on. Finally he went to the checkout line, but she got in front of him.
"Pardon me," she said, "I’m sorry if my staring at you has made you feel uncomfortable. It’s just that you look just like my son, who just died recently." "I’m very sorry," replied the young man, "is there anything I can do for you?"
"Yes," she said, "As I’m leaving, can you say, ’Good bye, Mother!’? It would make me feel so much better." "Sure," answered the young man. As the old woman was leaving, he called out, "Goodbye, Mother!" As he stepped up to the checkout counter, he saw that his total was $127.50.
"How can that be?" he asked, "I only purchased a few things!" "Your mother said that you would pay for her," said the clerk.
Brothers and sisters, we need to be discerning in life, especially when someone wants to take us to the cleaners materially or spiritually! There are people in our world who are doing big business with the devil and they don’t even know it! He using them to dupe or deceive us!
I Thessalonians 3:5 “For this reason, when I could stand it no longer, I sent to find out about your faith. I was afraid that in some way the tempter might have tempted you and our efforts might have been useless.”
I Peter 5:8-9 “Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings.
The devil is a trickster. He’s a clever deceiver. He’s a liar. He’s a murderer. He’s a destroyer of men’s souls and he’s out to get you and me! We must be alert to his scheming ways. One way to be alert by reading God’s Word. Another way is by being constant in prayer!
ILL.- Joseph Stowell who served as the President of Moody Bible Institute wrote: “Discernment in Scripture is the skill that enables us to differentiate. It is the ability to see issues clearly. We desperately need to cultivate this spiritual skill that will enable us to know right from wrong. We must be prepared to distinguish light from darkness, truth from error, best from better, righteousness from unrighteousness, purity from defilement, and principles from pragmatics.”
Is this similar to James 1:5 which reads: 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.
Discern what is best. Far too often we have chosen less than the best in life. How so? We have often chosen the way of the world over the things of Christ. We have chosen the material over the spiritual.
And we need to be more discerning that we might choose what is best in life and be pure and blameless until the day of Christ. In other words, we need to continue working at our faith, not the least but the best we can! Pray for discernment and then the power to choose the best.
III. PRAY THAT YOU WILL BE MORE RIGHTEOUS
11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.
ILL.- It was said that 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."
I’m not so sure about that last prayer. We should pray to be better than we are. “Lord, help me to be what you want me to be. Not my will but thy will be done in my life and on earth.”
ILL.- Martin Luther wrote: “If I should neglect prayer but a single day, I should lose a great deal of the fire of faith.”
How can a Christian be what they should be in God’s eyes if they don’t pray? We need both scripture and prayer. We need to read scripture in order to discern God’s will and then we need to pray, asking Him to help us do His will in life.
Righteous comes from our righteous God. We can’t get it anywhere else. Consequently, we need a constant connection to Him in order to grow in righteousness.
11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.
Righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ. True righteousness can only come through the Lord Jesus. We must be connected to Him as much as possible.
Galatians 5:22-23 “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.”
Why is this called the “fruit of the Spirit”? Because this kind of fruit comes from the Spirit of God. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, etc. comes from the Holy Spirit. He is the one can produce this fruit in our lives. This must mean we have to look to Him. The more we pray and the more we seek the Lord, the more the Holy Spirit can produce His fruit in us. He makes us into better people!
ILL.- J. Gordon Henry wrote: “It is easier to be a preacher, elder, deacon, Sunday school teacher, visitor, youth worker than to pray. Maintaining a daily, consistent prayer life is HARD WORK. The reason is that Satan does not want us to pray, since the only time that we are a threat to him and his work is when we pray. Therefore, he puts a high priority on destroying our prayer lives.
“Without a daily quiet time, it is easy for the cutting edge of the spiritual life to grow blunt and dull. The result is complacency. A believer should plan an encounter with God every day. Regular daily contact with our Source of spiritual life, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, is absolutely necessary.” AMEN.
CONCLUSION------------------
Mark 1:35 “Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.”
I met God in the morning
When my day was at its best,
And His presence came like sunrise,
Like the Glory in my breast.
All day long the Presence lingered,
All day long He stayed with me,
And we sailed in perfect calmness
O’er a very troubled sea.
Other ships were blown and battered,
Other ships were sore distressed;
But the wind that seemed to drive them
Brought us Peace and Rest.
Then I thought of other mornings,
With a keen remorse of mind,
When I, too, had loosed the moorings,
With the Savior left behind.
So I think I know the secret,
Learned from many a troubled way;
You must seek him in the morning
If you want him through the day.
Steve Shepherd, Jonesboro Christian Church, AR
jonesborochristianchurch@suddenlink.net
