Recently, my 7-year-old grandson Alonso told me that his daddy, my son, carries around a lot of money in his pocket. I asked him how much and he told me: $1,200! He turned to me, “Papa, how much do you carry in your pocket?” I said, “$20” and he replied, “That is so sad.”
Sometimes we act like we have nothing, when we are the children of God. We have a heavenly Father who loves us with an everlasting love! We mope like we’ve got nothing. (Of course, most of the time, I don’t carry any cash at all. Some of you are thinking, “I wish I had $20 in MY pocket.”) Yet, we are the beloved children of an Almighty God who is ready to hear us when we pray. Respond to us when we ask. We have the greatest wealth in the universe AND prayer connects us to the Creator of the Universe, who owns everything, and His Son who holds the universe together, is at our beck and call whenever we speak to Him.
Prayer a neglected discipline
Yet, prayer is one of the most neglected Christian disciplines. I’ve thought hard about this. Why do we not pray more? For most of us we are distracted. We are like Mary and Martha. The Son of God is teaching and her sister Martha is so busy in the kitchen and caring for their guests that she has little time to spend at the feet of Jesus. Yet, Mary is there, content to listen, to converse with Christ. Martha became upset that Mary was leaving her to do all the work and Jesus said, “Martha, you’re troubled about a great many things but there is really only one thing that is vitally important and Mary has found it.” (My paraphrase of Luke 10:41,42)
Sometimes we like we’ve got nothing when we are the children of God. We have a heavenly Father who loves us with an everlasting love! We mope like we’ve got nothing. (Of course, most of the time, I don’t carry any cash at all. Some of you are thinking, “I wish I had $20 in MY pocket.”) Yet, we are the beloved children of an Almighty God who is ready to hear us when we pray. Respond to us when we ask. We have the greatest wealth in the universe AND prayer connects us to the Creator of the Universe, who owns everything, and His Son who holds the universe together, is at our beck and call whenever we speak to Him.
Prayer a neglected discipline
Yet, prayer is one of the most neglected Christian disciplines. Why do we not pray more? For most of us we are distracted. We are like Mary and Martha. The Son of God is teaching and her sister Martha is so busy in the kitchen and caring for their guests that she has little time to spend at the feet of Jesus. Yet, Mary is there, content to listen, to converse with Christ. Martha became upset that Mary was leaving her to do all the work and Jesus said, “Martha, you’re troubled about a great many things but there is really only one thing that is vitally important and Mary has found it.” (My paraphrase of Luke 10:41,42)
Why distracted?
Why are we distracted? I have a theory about one reason we don’t pray. Deep down in the recesses of our hearts, we wonder if our prayers make any difference. Am I speaking to anybody this morning? Sometimes you feel like your prayers reach the ceiling and no further. And part of the reason is not that you don’t believe in God or that God cares, it is that God has already pretty much decided everything in advance and we don’t really need to pray. Have you ever felt that way?
Passive prayers
In fact, when we pray publicly quite often we pepper our requests with “if You will.” Nothing wrong with that, actually, but it does seem that if we are going to ask God for something we would do so with boldness, trying to be persuasive, not passive in our requests. “Dear Lord, please heal sister Smith, if it be your will.” “Dear Father, please bring our family together, heal my father, help us to grow spiritually, if it be thy will.”
“If it be thy will.” Of course, it’s God’s will that we grow spiritually and that more people come to Christ, and that our families be united and our sick be healed. But there is this sense, I’ve experienced it, that our prayers have little effect on God because God has already made up His mind about things. He knows what’s best so why am I giving Him advice, asking Him for things, when I have finite knowledge and wisdom, and God knows everything and He knows the future and exactly why am I praying anyway? :-)
What Christ said about prayer
Listen to what Jesus says about prayer.
Matthew 6:5-6
Do not pray to be seen. If your prayers are to gain the admiration of people, you have your reward. It’s better to pray in secret, if you are tempted to pray for notice.
Matthew 6:7-8
Don’t fill your prayers with words that are repetitive. God already knows what you need before you ask Him. Hmmm. Again, why are we praying if God already knows what we need. Note well what the verse does NOT say. It does not say that our prayers have no impact on God. The verse simply says, “Don’t pray with flowery repetitive language designed to impress an audience. It does not say that God will automatically give you what you need, if you do not ask. Apparently, ‘asking’ remains important.
Then Christ gave us His prayer.
Matthew 6:9-13
Note a few things.
Pray to Your Heavenly Father.
Pray that God’s will be done on earth like it’s done in heaven, where His will is acted upon perfectly.
Pray for bread/food.
Forgive our sins/debts.
This obligates us to forgive others of their sins against us.
Pray for guidance away from evil influence.
We pray that God will help us, forgive us, guide us, strengthen us, and provide food for us. If God already knows what we need, if God forgives sin continually, if God already guides us, then why do we pray for these things? Most of the time we reason like this, “Well, it’s good for us to pray. It helps us to ask.” That’s a fairly good answer and it’s true to a point but is this the only reason we pray, to feel better? God was already going to do everything we need to have done for us, so………
That last statement is a big assumption if you look at scripture. Let’s review some things that are extremely important as we think about prayer today.
Facts about prayer
We should never assume that we are going to receive something because God already knows that we need it. Sometimes God will bless us with something we haven’t asked for or bless us more abundantly than we think.
Ephesians 3:20
Isn’t that a wonderful promise! He is able to bless us more abundantly than what we ask for. However, the first rule of prayer is this.
We must ask the Father. It matters.
Matthew 7:7
We must ask. We must seek. We must knock. Then the door will be opened.
God gives good gifts to those who ask.
Matthew 7:8
Do you see how important it is that we ask? It appears that a great deal of what God does in the world is based on what WE ask for. If this is true, and it certainly appears to be, then prayer takes on more urgency; it moves us to a more comprehensive approach to prayer, more regular prayer, and a greater fervency in prayer.
Wait a minute? Are you telling me that my prayers could move the heart of God to do something he might not do, unless I ask. Look at what we just read. Ask and you will receive. Asking is hugely important!
Let me give you a couple of examples.
2 Kings 20:1
God speaks through the prophet Isaiah and Hezekiah is told that there is no cure for his illness and he is going to die and not recover. Sounds final, doesn’t it? No “plan B.” No alternate conclusion it would appear. God says, “Hezekiah, you’re a walking dead man. You are ill and you will die.”
Boom! End of story, right? Nope!
2 Kings 20:2-6
So, what’s the answer to this? God doesn’t lie. God is unchangeable, correct? He is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and yet, here is God saying to the King that he is going to die and then, after King Hezekiah tearfully asks for healing, God heals him. Gives him 15 more years and will deliver Judah from the Assyrian empire. Does that make God a liar?
No. It makes Him merciful. He was persuaded by the words and tears of King Hezekiah and healed him. Would he have been healed if he hadn’t asked? We can’t know for sure, but we can know this: he asked for healing and God, in his mercy, healed him.
Another example…
Abraham is told by angels that the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were going to be destroyed by fire and brimstone because of their wickedness. Violence, immorality, and other grievous sins offended the God of heaven and he sent three men, presumed to be angels to Abraham in his tent, that these two cities and the rest of the cities in the Dead Sea Valley were going to be destroyed. Period. Full stop.
Abraham then did something that some would consider to be presumptuous. He spoke to the LORD.
Genesis 18:22-33
I read the entire text because I want to draw out a few things about prayer and about God’s nature that will inform and I hope inspire your prayer life.
First, Abraham reverently reasoned with God.
If God is all-powerful and all knowing, all-wise and all-good, why would God listen to a mere man? I do not know the answer to that question, except to say that God has a great deal of respect in His creation. He made human beings in His Own Image, right? Male and female, in His image. Somehow, some way we are made like God and God sees that, experiences that when He speaks with the people He has created.
Abraham was praying to God, interceding with God, for the city of Sodom, where his nephew Lot lived. He wanted Sodom to be spared, or at least, Lot and his family. So he bargained with God over Sodom’s survival.
Second, God modified His action because Abraham asked Him to.
Why did God show mercy? Why would God lower the bar for the destruction of Sodom? Because Abraham asked. Because Abraham prayed.
Third, the future is not set in stone.
God Himself said He would destroy a certain people, yet, he showed mercy. God told the prophet Jonah to go to Nineveh, the capital city of the Assyrian empire, who had been a ruthless killer of their brothers in the northern Kingdom Israel. God told Jonah this…
Jonah 1:1-2
Jonah goes the other way. He doesn’t want Nineveh’s people to hear this message. He just wanted all of them to die and go to hell. He’s swallowed by a fish and then after 3 days and nights in that fish, he is vomited out on a beach and he goes to Nineveh with the commission from God, go tell this people what I want you to tell them. So this is the message…you got 40 days!
Jonah 3:3-6
The king issues a fast of repentance for their violence and wicked ways. Guess what God does?
Jonah 3:10
God relented. He saw their repentance and he changed his mind.
The reason that prayer is so vitally important is because God has appointed certain things about the future that are open to change. He’s told us He’s sending Jesus Christ to destroy and purge this evil world and create a new heavens and new earth that will be wonderful with no death and no sickness.
Yet, there is much about the future that is not fixed in stone. And our prayers have a great deal to do with how God will move in our own lives and the lives of our cities and our nation.
What happens when we do not pray
The Hebrew prophet Ezekiel wrote and preached condemnation upon Jerusalem. The holy city was spinning downward into corruption, vice, violence, idols, and hypocrisy. The Lord spoke to the prophet about his assignment.
Ezekiel 22:1-5
Ezekiel preaches against all their immorality and violence, extortion, greed, stealing from the poor. Then he concludes that the city of Jerusalem, the jewel of Mt. Zion was so bad that there wasn’t a way to redeem it. He likened the city to the slag, the dross, the waste of silver and combining it all in a fiery blast to destroy it with His wrath. Then he added this sad note…
Ezekiel 22:30-31
If there was one, just one soul to stand in the gap, like Moses, like Abraham, like Jonah, who would cry out for the people of Judah. Whose life and prayers might save the nation from the judgment of God. But there was no one. No one prayed. No one lived right. No one.
Your righteous life matters in heaven. Your prayers matter in heaven. You matter. Now, pray like your life depends on it. It’s possible that somebody’s life does. God’s heart can be moved by a humble and fervent heart. The reason is evident by God’s action. He loves us. His Son loves us.
Therefore, your prayers, your life, your intercessions, and your requests matter to the future. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus knew his time was short and the suffering would be unimaginable, bearing the sin of all time on himself. He would be stripped naked, humiliated, beaten, whipped, and spit on, spiked to a crude cross. He saw it all and he asked his disciples to pray with him for a few hours. But instead of praying, they slept, partly because of sorrow and partly because of fear. In the moment of testing, they folded meekly. Ran for safety and hid out until the coast was clear. What would have happened if they had prayed?
Different outcome? Almost certainly. But we’ll never know, because they didn’t pray that night. It is not my intent to frighten you into praying. It is my aim to inspire you to pray because your prayers matter to God and to your family, and to this church, and to nations, and to YOU.
