Spiritual Disciplines - Prayer
May 2, 2021
Prayer
There’s a story about a small town that had been historically “dry,” it was alcohol free. A bar was going to open on Main Street and upon hearing the news, the only church in town organized an all-night prayer meeting, asking God to intervene. The congregation told people in the community about their plans and while they were praying - - - lightning struck the bar and it burned to the ground.
The owner of the bar sued the church, claiming the prayers of the congregation were responsible for burning down the bar. The church hired a lawyer, claiming they were not responsible.
After hearing both sides, the judge said, “no matter how I decide this case, one thing is clear -- the tavern owner believes in prayer, while the church doesn’t.”
Friends, are we a church that believes in prayer? If the same thing happened to our church, would we take responsibility for the answer received or would we think it was something. . . like a coincidence?
In order for a tree to be full, healthy, and growing it must send its roots deep into the earth. For you and I, our roots must be firmly planted in Jesus. He is the vine and we are the branches. Our behavior (what we say and do) and our character (integrity), who we are on the inside - - are directly related to the invisible part, our roots, our spiritual life, our relationship with Jesus.
If we’re going to experience the abundant life God desires to bless us with, then we need to grow spiritually. As our roots go down in Christ, our behavior and character begins to change as we grow more and more like Christ.
If we are not changing to be more like Christ, we are not growing spiritually. We have stagnated, we are root bound. A plant that is root bound may look good, but it will not grow, and eventually it will start to suffer and die. Fortunately, God wants us to have an abundant fruitful life so to help nudge us along God has given us practices, or disciplines, to help us grow spiritually, these are the same practices Jesus did practiced when He walked this earth.
By themselves, Spiritual Disciplines will not change anything in your life, instead they make us available to God to be changed by Him. This is what we’re talking about in this series on spiritual disciplines. My hope is that we develop these disciplines or habits which help us grow more Christlike, as we move closer to Him. And today we are looking at prayer.
Richard Foster wrote, “Prayer catapults us onto the frontier of the spiritual life. Of all the Spiritual Disciplines, prayer is the most central because it ushers us into perpetual communion with the Father. Real prayer is life creating and life changing.”
Foster’s telling us that prayer launches us into the spiritual world as we seek to have a conversation with God, as we communicate with God. When we pray, we’re engaging God in one of the deepest conversations we will ever have.
Prayer opens the door to our learning and understanding what God wants for us in our lives, the lives of our family and friends, the lives of people in our community. And ultimately when we engage in prayer, we have the opportunity to call upon the most powerful person in our lives, God. We have the opportunity to change the world, along with ourselves, if we are willing to open ourselves to God.
The disciples could have asked Jesus for just about anything in the world. They walked with Him for 3 years, they saw Him in action, yet, in Luke 11, we read ---
1 Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him,
“Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.”
2 And He said to them, “When you pray, say: - Luke 11
Isn’t it interesting that out of anything, Jesus would be asked - - “teach us to pray.” They had seen miracle after miracle, healing after healing – the blind could see, the lame could walk, the deaf could hear, the dead could breathe again; the hungry were fed. They could have said, “Lord help us feed the 5,000 like you did” or “Lord, give us the wisdom to say the right things at the right time.”
These men grew up in the Temple, they knew all about prayer, the times of prayer, the Sabbath prayers and all the rituals that went along with it. They weren’t just looking for an easy answer. They noticed something different about Jesus and His prayer life. They saw Him pray at different times of the day and in different situations.
Listen to these various scriptures about Jesus and His time of prayer - -
21 Now when all the people were baptized, Jesus was also baptized, and while He was praying, heaven was opened, - Luke 3:21
23 After Jesus had sent the crowds away, He went up on the mountain by Himself to pray; and when it was evening, He was there alone. - Matthew 14:23
46 After bidding them farewell, He left for the mountain to pray. - Mark 6:46
12 It was at this time that He went off to the mountain to pray, and He spent the whole night in prayer to God. - Luke 6:12
35 In the early morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went away to a secluded place, and was praying there. - Mark 1:35
35 But Jesus Himself would often slip away to the wilderness and pray. - Luke 5:16
If you notice Jesus went to pray at all hours of the day and night. Morning, noon, night, it didn’t matter. It was about connecting to the Father. And Jesus often went off by Himself to pray. Now, there’s nothing wrong with group prayer. Yet, often times our deepest and most heartfelt prayers come in those times when we are alone with God. When we know, it’s just the two of us . . . me and God . . . together. That’s cool . . . those are special times.
The disciples saw Him pray during crises, when He experienced need, when He was tired, when He wanted reconnection and wisdom from His Father - - the response from Jesus was to pray. It wasn’t let me take the first shot at this, and then I’ll go to my Father. It was “Daddy, Father . . .” It was personal. Because prayer is personal, it’s intimate.
And I think that is one of the difficulties with prayer as well. It’s intimate, it’s vulnerable. We come before God and we tell God what’s going on in our lives. We tell God and confess things nobody else knows. We think we’re being risk takers baring our soul to God, yet He already knows and loves us anyways.
If we told our friends what we tell God, they might wonder about us, but not God. That’s part of the beauty and power of prayer. God knows us. He knows our needs, our wants, our hurts, our deepest longings! He knows our successes, our victories, our celebrations, our personalities. It’s all there . . . laid before God.
As I was writing this message, it occurred to me that this may be the most important thing I tell you this morning.
Prayer is personal, it’s intimate. Sometimes it’s messy and difficult, but it’s an opportunity for you and I to connect with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And that is always good . . . no matter how labored or awkward it may seem to you.
Back to Jesus for a moment. . . . It seemed that Jesus looked forward to prayer and hungered for it. The disciples saw that somehow prayer fed Jesus’ soul - - the way food nourished their stomachs. As a result, the disciples wanted what Jesus had, they wanted their heart, soul and mind to be nourished by prayer - - in the same way Jesus was nourished by prayer.
So, how do we get started in prayer? I believe many people struggle with the starting point of prayer; along with what to pray for, how long do I pray, and so on. This doesn’t even include the deeper issues of prayer, God’s response and presence to our prayers.
Many of us say we want to pray and believe it’s effective, but often times we feel defeated before we even start to pray; or we start and a few minutes later we find our minds wandering. Ever have that happen?
We find ourselves thinking about our grocery list, last nights ball game, the housework, will the meeting go well, the NFL draft, the hungry rumblings in our stomachs and a myriad of other thoughts and wanderings. John Ortberg calls our wandering minds, “Spiritual Attention Deficit Disorder.
I find myself doing this. I start praying and suddenly my prayer turned into my sermon, and I’m giving a sermon to God. Or I find my heart, spirit and mind begin to wander; or my body becomes tired. So, what do we do when we catch ourselves drifting in the midst of our prayers?
A number of years ago I read the book, The Gift of Peace by Chicago’s Cardinal Joseph Bernadin which helped me when I found my mind wandering. At one point in the book, Bernadin was talking about the time he was the Cardinal in the Cincinnati diocese. He and a group of priests committed to pray alone for the first hour of the day. Bernadin explained ‘one hour was a long time and his mind would wander during his time of prayer.’ The great thing I learned from Bernadin was to cut yourself some slack. If you get off topic, and you think about your groceries, or a message you need to give to someone, or whatever it might be, don’t berate yourself, just catch yourself and move back into your prayer.
It’s a good suggestion, too often we stifle ourselves, and don’t allow God to work through our shortcomings. We think our prayers need to have wonderful and flowery words, but if that isn’t you, don’t worry about it. God wants you to talk to Him just as you are, not as you think someone else would like you to be.
We think our prayers should be a certain number of minutes long, and if we don’t hit our time limit we feel like we’ve bombed on our prayer. The truth of the matter is that Christians were asked how long they pray, the average was 5 minutes per day. We might feel guilty that we have not been praying, so we set lofty goals.
Especially when hear of so many people who were great praying saints. Protestant reformer Martin Luther said, “I have so much business I cannot get on without spending three hours daily in prayer.” John Wesley spent two hours per day in prayer. Adoniram Judson, a Baptist missionary would pray 7 times per day. At dawn, 9, 12, 3, 6, 9, and midnight.”
We hear these stories and we begin to think we should be doing the same thing. On day one we say we will pray for one hour, and after 3 minutes, we’re prayed out. So, we feel like we fall short, we tend to beat ourselves up and just give up from praying. But that is not what we are to do.
Don’t give up. Start out slow. There’s nothing wrong with a slow start. Remember all goals should be attainable. So if you haven’t tried it, try to pray for 1 minute. That might not sound like a long time for some, and for others it’s an eternity. Start out with what’s realistic.
If you want more, then start with a goal of 3 to 5 minutes. In 2 weeks, I’m going to give you some real and practical ways to pray that will be really helpful. We may even practice them or I’ll demonstrate all of them.
But, you don’t just wake up one day and say next week ‘I’m going to run in a marathon.’ That wouldn’t work, instead you set that as a goal and you begin to train. Maybe you start by walking for one mile and work your way to the point when running a marathon is a possibility. When we begin thinking about our need to pray, we need to start with the fundamentals, the basics and begin to strengthen ourselves as we seek to draw closer to God in prayer.
I’m going to stop at this point, because there really is so much more to talk about. But I don’t want to get into all of the different ways to pray. Actually, there will be some type of handout about the different ways to pray in 2 weeks.
For now, the key is to start. Start talking to God, because that’s really what prayer is. Just start talking to God. I know it may seem strange for some if you have not done it, but prayer is a conversation between me and God. So, talk to Him, share what you need and don’t hold back. If you’re angry, tell God, if you’re hurting in whatever way, tell God. If it’s joy, praise God and tell Him. Whatever is going on in your life tell it to God and often times you reveal more about yourself to yourself and that’s an added benefit of prayer as well.
So, let me very simply encourage you to pray, talk to God, even a quick prayer is a start and is far better than no prayer at all!!
