[Skit: Say that you’re going to demonstrate the way that we often pray. Say, “Dear God. . .” and have someone respond over the sound system, “911. What’s your emergency?”]
EVERYONE BELIEVES IN PRAYER SOMETIMES: Everyone prays in an emergency.
- Jonah 1:5.
- I think it’s safe to presume that his ship of sailors was not normally having any chapel services. You’ve got to figure that this ship, like most, was full of cussing and rum and gambling. Yet when the storm rose and their lives were threatened, the Bible says that they all cried out to their gods. That phrase doesn’t mean that they were all seriously religious people – there’s almost no chance of that. It means that each had some mental formation of who they believed god was – even if they weren’t actively following Him – and they cried out to him/her/they/it in desperation.
- Everyone prays in an emergency.
- It doesn’t matter how hardened or how far from God someone is – if you’re in the ER and their loved one is hanging by a thread, they all welcome the preacher saying a prayer.
- That’s a good thing, right? It’s good that they’re calling out to God, right?
- Well, many of us do that as the way that we pray in our lives – we only call out to Him in emergencies.
- What’s wrong with that?
WHAT'S WRONG WITH THAT? God wants to be loved, not used.
- Imagine two phone calls.
- One phone call is to 911. You’re only calling to report an emergency and get help.
- The second phone call is to your best friend. You find out what’s been going on, talk about each other’s lives, and enjoy just being with that person over the phone.
- Many of us pray like the first of those two. We only pray when there’s an emergency and we only pray to get help.
- We’re using God to fix our problems.
- That kind of 911 praying is essentially using God. We just want Him for what He can do for us.
- God doesn’t want to be used, He wants to be loved.
- Imagine a college boyfriend and girlfriend. The girl only calls the boy when she needs something – dead battery, a ride home, someone to eat dinner with, someone to talk to when she’s lonely. The boy would justifiably be bothered by that relationship. The girl doesn’t love him – she’s merely using Him.
- You could do the same example with a father and son. The father doesn’t want to just hear from his son whenever he needs money or a ride. He’d like the son to want to talk to him sometimes.
- Too often we don’t want God – we just want what He can do.
- That’s why we wait until an emergency to pray. We only want to talk to Him if we’ve reached a point where there’s no one else who can fix our problem.
- Am I doing this in my prayer life?
- It’s easy to think about non-Christians and how they’re inclined to call out to God only in a moment of crisis, but there are way too many Christians who do the same thing. We say that prayer changes things but then we just don’t pray except for Sunday services and 911 situations.
- It’s much worse for a Christian to do this than for a non-Christian. It’s not entirely surprising that a non-Christian would do this – after all, their lack of commitment to God is evidence that they don’t want too much of God in their lives. The Christian, though, has said they do want God in their lives, that they do believe that God is loving and gracious, that they believe in the power of prayer. To essentially claim all that by your belief in Jesus and then not pray is worse.
DOING BETTER AT THIS:
1. Start a daily prayer time.
- Emergency prayer involves forgetting about God for extended periods of time and then just calling out to Him in the moment of crisis.
- A key step beyond that 911 prayer is to have a daily prayer time. Of course, it’s even better than we move to “praying without ceasing” where we’re constantly thinking and speaking to God throughout the day, but this is a place to start.
- You can pick whenever you want, but I would recommend having a consistent time each day. If you don’t, it’s too easy to get to the end of your day and realize that you’ve forgotten to do it.
- My preference is for first thing in the morning, but you can find a time that works for you: first thing, lunch, after dinner, before bed, whenever.
2. Include more than requests in your prayers.
- Prayer should be regular, not just in emergencies. And when we’re praying regularly, it should include more than just requests.
[Include in outline:]
- Some options:
a. Praise.
- Luke 17:11-19.
- Adoration (praising God for who He is) or thanksgiving (thanking Him for what He’s done).
- Of the two, obviously adoration is the higher one because it honors God for who He is and not merely what He’s done for us. It’s easier to praise God when He’s been good to us or has poured out blessing on us. It’s nobler when we simply praise Him for who He is – His character – even when perhaps everything is not going as well in our lives as we want.
- Even when God does answer our prayer, often we barely say thank you.
- I’m reminded of the story in Luke 17:11-19. Ten lepers are healed but only one returns to Jesus to say, “Thank you.”
- In our lives, even when we are praying 911 prayers, we may get an answer and then barely say, “Thank you.” We appreciate the answer, but we don’t always appreciate the Giver.
- It’s a good question: how often do you say, “Thank you” in your prayer time?
b. Confession.
- 1 John 1:9.
- We need to be regularly confessing our sin to Him.
- Many Christians seem to think that repenting at the moment of salvation is the only confession they need to do. It’s not. As we struggle against sin and work toward having more of God and less sin in our lives, we need to regularly confess our sins.
- It’s not enough to make a general, generic confession: “Lord, forgive me of my sins.” That misses the point. Almost always when we say something like that, we’re not actually thinking of any actual sins in our lives. We’re just kind of saying that as a blanket just-in-case kind of statement.
- The point of confession is identifying specific sins, acknowledging that they’re wrong, calling them out to God for forgiveness, and then making efforts to not repeat them. Calling out specific sins demands that we think through where we’ve fallen short over the last 24 hours and then name it.
- A big part of the Christian life is the slow but steady move from sin to Christlikeness. To get there, we have to confess our sins and talk with God about them. Thankfully, we know from 1 John 1:9 that God is willing to forgive, but that requires confession.
c. Listening.
- 1 Kings 19:11-12.
- Not just in 911 prayer but in prayer generally we can make prayer into a monologue, with us doing all the talking. Prayer is meant to be a dialogue, not a monologue.
- That requires that we listen to God.
- I believe that God still speaks today. Sometimes He speaks through sermons. Sometimes He speaks through the Bible. Sometimes He speaks through those around us. Sometimes He speaks through prayer.
- When we are quiet before the Lord, He will sometimes speak to us. There’s a great scene in 1 Kings 19:11-12 where it basically says that God wasn’t in all the loud stuff, but He came in a still, small voice. Some of us never get quiet enough to hear the voice. Some of us never even try to hear the voice at all.
- One of the things that’s been helpful to me in listening better to God is what I call “next step” questions. Instead of just saying, “God, speak to me” this narrows it down to a specific area. “Father, what’s the next step in my walk with You?” “Father, what’s the next step with my family?” “Father, what’s the next step at work?” “Father, what’s the next step for my church?” Obviously, you can make up “next step” for whatever situation you might be facing. What’s helpful about them is that they narrow your attention to one issue. That makes it much easier to hear God speak to you. You’re focused on one thing rather than just expecting something to drop out of the clear, blue sky.
d. Life change.
- John 3:30.
- Pursuing spiritual growth is another thing that we need to be talking to God about. This could include a number of elements, but let’s focus on one: praying through what you’re learning from the Bible.
- As you read the Bible, it can be useful to take what you learn from your reading – that verse or two that jumped out to you – and talk to God about it. It helps to talk through it with your Father. He may open it up more to you. It’s also just helpful to think through and work through what’s next for your spiritual maturity.
