Pray It Like You Mean It
Series: Learning to Pray (prt. 3)
Wildwind Community Church
February 6, 2005
David Flowers
Some of the things I am talking about during this series on prayer come from one of the most popular books ever written on prayer. It’s a book called With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Rev. Andrew Murray. Two weeks ago I suggested that it’s not very valuable to listen to sermons about prayer if you have not made a commitment to actually pray. Well today I want to up the ante a little bit.
If you have been saying your desire is to learn about prayer, then I’d like to see you buy this book. You can get it at Christianbook.com for $5.49. What if for $5.49 you could revolutionize the way you communicate with God? My friends, you can pay $5.49 and turn your prayer life completely inside out. Conversely, you could pay $549.00 for a book like this and it wouldn’t make a dime of difference if you weren’t actually praying. So is the book valuable? Incredibly. I’m so glad I have been reading it and I will be sharing with you some things I have learned and some amazing experiences I have had. But what is really valuable is PRAYER. So buy the book if you are serious about learning to pray. It contains 31 lessons on prayer, which you can do one per day. I’m doing one every day except Sunday – on Sunday I’m trying to get some rest and think about what I have learned through the week. You can do it however you want. Don’t worry that the 19th century language is too confusing – you honestly get used to it pretty quickly.
Before I get into the message today I want to just speak briefly to anyone here this morning who does not consider themself a Christian – any skeptics or seekers among us. First of all, welcome to Wildwind. I’m very pleased you are here. Second, I just want to let you know that about 85% of all our sermons have a great deal of content that is addressed to skeptics and seekers. We are in the middle of this series on prayer right now because as a portable church we have one shot a week at this and I need to teach some important things to those who are trying to follow Jesus. But I hope you will not write off the message today, because in it you will get a picture of the kind of life that awaits you should you make a decision at some point to commit your life to Christ and let him be the leader of your life. I hope you will sit and think, and observe, and look closely at the picture as it begins to emerge.
Okay, now I want to tell you a story about something that happened to me this past week. I come to you this week, yes as your pastor as always – but also, perhaps more than ever before, as a fellow traveler with you – journeying with you to a place where I myself have really never been. My words this morning will be one part pastoral – words from the Bible teaching you spiritual lessons – and one part friendly testimony – just another person standing up here this week – like several have in recent weeks past – telling you about something I am excited about and inviting you to come along with me.
Before I tell you this story I want to give you a kind of disclaimer. What I’m telling you was my experience. I am not standing here promising you that every single one of you will have an experience identical to the experience I had this past week. In fact I myself did not manage to have more experiences like it throughout the rest of the week. But I think you’ll agree when I tell you this story that something amazing happened and that it was because of prayer. Though I cannot guarantee you that my experience will be your experience exactly, the whole point of today’s message is that you can see specific answers to specific things you pray for. So today’s message is called Pray It Like You Mean It.
Last Monday I was talking to someone from this church and noticed the person just seemed weighed down – just depressed or discouraged or something. I asked what was up and the person told me, “You know Dave, I don’t really know what’s up. I’ve just been in a funk the last few months and I can’t put my finger on it, but I’m kind of getting sick of myself, to be honest.” We made arrangements to get together to talk about it later in the week.
Now I have to stop here and inject something really important. Even before I began this sermon series, before I began reading about prayer and studying it and committed to really learn how to pray, I would still have prayed for this person. I would definitely have prayed for him. I would have prayed a prayer that sounded like this:
“God please be with so and so. You know this situation, God, and I don’t. You know what’s troubling this person and I don’t, but I know you can fix what’s going on. Give this person strength and patience to get through this difficult time in Jesus name, Amen.” Really – that would have pretty much been my prayer.
Now my question is how many are sitting there right now thinking, “That sounds good to me.” If you are thinking that prayer sounds just fine and there’s nothing missing, then I’m excited for you because, like me, you have a lot to learn about prayer, and we can learn it together!
Because of what I am coming to understand about prayer, when I actually prayed for this person Monday night it was a totally different kind of prayer than I had ever prayed before. It felt different, the words were different, it involved my whole person and went way past the words. I’ll tell you about that in a minute, but first I want to take you to the Bible, to the words of Jesus, to put this in perspective.
Matthew 7:7-8 (NIV)
7 "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.
8 For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.
What we have here is Jesus teaching on what is perhaps the most fundamental teaching on prayer in all of the Bible – the assurance that prayer will be heard and answered.
Hebrews 11:6 (NLT)
6 So, you see, it is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that there is a God and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him.
It seems to be important to God that we understand that if we seek him we will find him. Jesus repeats that six times in our passage from Matthew. Ask and it will be given, for everyone who asks receives. Seek and you will find, for everyone who seeks finds. Knock and the door will be opened to you, for to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
So this is where we need to start today when we talk about praying like we mean it. What does that mean to pray like we mean it? I think it means, first of all, that we realize the absolute importance of this principle. Remember last week we talked about why it is Christ who can really teach us to pray? We have to trust that Christ is a good teacher, that he knows what he is talking about when he teaches us on prayer, and that we can and must rely on his words not as philosophy, not as literature in the pages of the Bible, but as truth that if applied will make a noticeable difference in our lives. Remember how we said that at Wildwind we aspire to take seriously the idea that Christ wants to teach us a new way to live our lives? This is what we’re talking about.
Jesus could not be any clearer in what he says here. Let’s read it one more time and allow it to settle in, not as a quote or a quip, but as a spiritual fact.
Matthew 7:7-8 (NIV)
7 "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.
8 For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.
Jesus’ words Ask, Seek, and Find mean almost the same thing in this context. And in each case he repeats the promise in the same way. Ask and it WILL be given; seek and you WILL find. Knock and the door WILL be opened. Now then – after giving us these promises, Jesus goes on to explain to us the spiritual reality behind how this works. We miss this because of how obvious it is, but we had better not miss it if we don’t want to miss the basis of prayer itself. Stay with me, this is huge.
Remember we’re in Matthew 7 here – the Sermon on the Mount – Christ’s most famous sermon, the entirety of which is devoted to what? To showing us what the Kingdom of God looks like. To pull back the curtain and reveal to us the principles of living in the Kingdom of God. So here is Christ talking about prayer and says, “Ask and you will receive. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened.” And what is the reason for this? How can we know beyond doubt that this is true? We know because what Jesus gives us next is a rule in the Kingdom of God. The rule is this: in the kingdom of God, askers are receivers. Seekers are finders. Door knockers are door-enterers. That is the rule of the Kingdom. And what is its converse? Those who do not ask do not receive. Those who do not seek do not find. Those who do not knock do not get the door opened to them.
It is that simple. It is that simple. I read scripture from James last week that reinforces that point when it says we do not have because we do not ask God (James 4:2).
Now let’s stop right here for a moment, shall we, because I can almost assure you that although we say we believe the Bible, the vast majority of us do not pray as if we really believe what Jesus says in the Bible about prayer. Most of us do not pray as if we really believe that God will provide specific answers to specific prayers. Let’s go back to the prayer I would have prayed for my friend up until recently. Let me repeat it for you . I’d have said something like: “God please be with so and so. You know this situation, God, and I don’t. You know what’s troubling this person and I don’t, but I know you can fix what’s going on. Give this person strength and patience to get through this difficult time in Jesus name, Amen.”
Now that’s not the prayer I prayed in this case, but it’s a good example of what I would have prayed in the recent past, so let’s look at everything that’s actually very lame about a prayer like that, pretending it’s what I really prayed – since I have prayed prayers like that a thousand times – and probably so have you.
3 Problems with the old way of praying
1. It was non-specific. I prayed for God to “fix” the problem, but I obviously had no clue what I really wanted God to do in fixing it, because right after praying God would “fix” it, I turned right around and prayed that instead of fixing it, God would just help my friend deal with it. In a prayer like that I wouldn’t even really understand what I was praying for. I asked God to “be with,” my friend, but again I didn’t specify how I wanted God to be with him. And I didn’t specify it because I really didn’t know what I wanted (or lacked the guts to ask), and I didn’t know what I wanted frankly because I didn’t realize that I have the right to come to God and tell him what I want and what I want him to do for my friend, because askers receive and seekers find.
2. It assumed God is weak. That prayer does not pray that God in his power will reveal to me what is troubling my friend. It does not pray that I will sense what the problem is and know how I need to pray. It does not pray for God’s supernatural wisdom to be mine. It never considers the possibility that God might be able to or interested in actually guiding me in how to pray for my friend. But listen:
Jeremiah 33:3 (NIV)
3 ’Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.’
How cool is that? God tells us here that if we pray to him, if we ask him, he will tell us things we could not have known any other way except through him telling us. So I ask you: when was the last time you were praying and learned something through prayer that you didn’t already know? Is God telling you these things? If not, do you think it’s because he doesn’t want to or is a promise-breaker? Or do you think there’s a chance that you’re not really calling?
3. The third problem with that prayer I would have prayed is that it doesn’t really ask God to do anything. It really just says God help him get through this. But really, one way or another my friend would “get through” his problem, right, either with or without God’s help? After all, few in this world commit suicide, so most of us eventually get through most things. Is that where our sights are set in regard to what we are willing to ask of God? God help him “get through” it?
I can just imagine Jesus standing there in front of a man with a withered hand and praying, “Father in heaven, please make sure this man never has to lift anything heavy, Lord just help him get through this.” Or Jesus when asked to cast out a demon. “Father, you know his problem and I don’t. Reach into his life and – and – keep him from hitting his head on a rock or biting his tongue while he’s thrashing around on the ground like that.” Or Jesus as he has been called to the tomb of his friend Lazarus, “Father, I pray Lazarus is in heaven with you right now. Thank you that he was such a nice man while he was with us. Help Mary and Martha to get through this time, just give them the peace they need and calm their troubled hearts.”
Do you see it? Do you see how cowardly and weak and anemic our prayers usually are? I’m not saying it’s never okay to pray for peace for people, or for patience or endurance, but the first rule of prayer is that all prayer must be offered in faith, and I’m telling you most of us pray these prayers because we don’t have enough faith to pray real ones.
When a friend is struggling and you pray that he/she will have peace, but your prayer for peace is only because you do not have faith enough to pray that God will remove the thing in their life that is causing them to struggle, then your friend will not only continue to struggle, they will struggle without peace – even your prayer for peace will most likely not be granted because even that prayer was based not on your faith in God, but on your lack of faith. That’s why you prayed that God would give your friend peace instead of praying that God would remove the source of the struggle, whether that be an emotional problem, a physical illness, a financial situation, or whatever.
Now I remind you here that I am a fellow traveler. This stuff applies as much or more to me as to you. So I stand here not to criticize you or put you down, but to excitedly tell you there is something more – something better for us to reach to – and it is within reach.
Let me now get back to my story. Having just finished reading and learning much of what I’m telling you this morning, I went to pray for my friend (and other things). I thought hard about what I had learned and prayed that God would help me understand and apply it. Then, rather nervously, I began praying, and the prayer sounded something like this:
"Father, thank you that you delight in hearing and answering my prayers. I am overwhelmed with joy as I think about this, and so excited that maybe I can know you in a way I have never known you before. Thank you that you desire to grant my prayers as much as I desire to give good things to my own children – even more. I bring my friend to you now who is hurting. I do not know what is wrong with him, but I know you do, and I will sit and listen if you will tell me so that I can know how to pray for him."
And then I sat quietly for a while. And as I did I began seeing things in my mind. And I began to say them out loud.
"Father, I see the men in the gospel of Mark bringing their sick friend to you because they knew if they could just reach you, he would be healed. And I know that if I can get my friend to you in my prayer, you will heal him. I see me bringing him to you and placing him in front of you, and you looking at him with compassion. I hear you asking me what I would have you do for him, like you asked so many people when you were healing here on earth. And I tell you these words: He is angry, so take away his anger. He is fearful and anxious, so take away his fear and his anxiety. His mind is troubled with thoughts that are bothering him, so bring peace to his mind. Release him from the pain of past memories that haunt him and cause him to be confused, and take away his joy and his peace. I know it is not your will that any of your children would live as though they are in chains, and that you would have him be free of all of these things. And not only free, Lord, but free in a way that he would know was your work in his life. I pray that you would do all these things, and that you would do them right now at this moment – decisively and in great power as I thank you for your willingness to do this."
As I prayed these things I saw in my mind Jesus placing his hand on my friend’s head, on his chest, and saw Christ praying to God on behalf of my friend. And when Christ was done doing this, I saw my friend walk toward me in peace and I knew he was healed. At that moment I felt a release – a peace that is hard to explain, but it felt like I just didn’t need to pray about this anymore – like it was done. I wasn’t sure if that was what it was, but it seemed like it, so I went on and prayed about other things.
I woke up at 3:30 in the morning and couldn’t get back to sleep. So I got up and prayed some more. I prayed about a lot of things. A few minutes in I thought of my friend and began to pray for him again, and once again sensed that I simply did not need to pray for that situation anymore – that it was done.
So I prayed for two more things during that time. One was that Wildwind would get a trailer I had seen the day before on the Internet. We needed it. I prayed briefly for it and thanked God. Then I moved on to this prayer:
“Father, I’m sorry I have to pray this, but because my faith is weak I need to see some immediate and dramatic answers to some of these prayers this week so that I will be encouraged to continue on my prayer journey.” Suddenly I realized what a stupid prayer that was and said, “God I don’t mean that. I now know that this is the way you intend it to be. Your children praying and asking you for what we need, and you granting our requests as they are prayed in faith.” Do you see what I’m getting at? Look at this:
Matthew 7:11 (NLT)
11 If you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him.
Jesus is perfectly clear that God WANTS to answer our requests and do what we ask – we don’t have to grovel and be apologetic for asking. Children don’t do that when they ask loving parents for something they need. They just ask. No request is too big or too bold for a child. But even as we are learning about approaching our Father in Heaven as his children, we are tempted to apologize to Him for asking to actually see results when we pray, for praying that he will really DO something. I am so used to praying weak prayers that produce weak results that when I actually DO ask for results I feel like I should be sorry for asking. And I’m the pastor! I truly have not understood how clearly Jesus has taught us about prayer. Do you relate to what I’m saying?
The next morning I came into the office and emailed my friend and simply said, “How are you doing? I prayed for you last night.” I want to read to you exactly what he said. This is a quote from his note back to me, and I received his permission to share this with you:
"Dave -- Today I am better than I have been in weeks. I was in a great mood this morning. Still am actually. Pretty weird thing, a notion that everything is going to be ok came over me, and I haven’t been uptight or worried or angry or anything else since. Must have been your praying. I don’t feel anything like I did yesterday, and can’t really understand why I felt that way to begin with. Almost like a dream. Go figure."
And he has felt better ever since.
Now folks, this message is not in any way meant to be something that points to me and says, “Look at me – look how spiritual I am and how effective my prayer was.” What it is meant to do is to point to God and say, “Look how gracious and willing God is to give all of us – any of us – what we ask for.” And second of all to say to you, “YOU can experience new things in prayer – YOUR prayers can be answered in ways that would just blow you away.
Do you see what I’m saying? Christ has made it perfectly clear that God desires to answer our prayers. We can EXPECT prayer to be answered powerfully by God, but we need to learn to be askers and how to receive from God; to be seekers and how to find; people who knock and walk through that open door.
My prayer experience this week has set my sights on a world of prayer that I never understood before. As I said I cannot guarantee you that my exact experience will be yours, but I can guarantee you that if you are willing to learn to pray prayers of faith, God stands ready and willing to answer them with clarity that will leave you in awe of his power and his willingness to listen and respond.
And I want to finish with a question. Does it seem strange that a person who has been a pastor for 10 years should be just now beginning to learn how to really pray – how to really communicate with God? Doesn’t it seem strange that so many of you are going to go home deeply challenged by these thoughts today, because so many of you had no understanding of how to really communicate with God? For those of us who are followers of Jesus, who believe his teachings and want to live our lives according to what he said, it’s as if we have been trying to follow him all these years and never learned to talk to him – or to listen to him. If you are a follower of Christ and do not relate to any of this because you find that you have learned in your life to pray strong confident prayers of faith that stir the heart of God to action, then I hope you are in a small group where you are sharing those experiences with others, because I can tell you this – most of us need to learn from you.
Something is wrong when our churches are not teaching their people one of the most essential things needed in order to live the spiritual life. I’ve never really been taught about prayer. So I’m sorry I’m just now starting to teach you this stuff, folks, but I’m having to teach myself and pass on to you what I’m learning as I go. I hope you will buy With Christ In The School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray and go along with me on this journey, so that we can grow up together into spiritual maturity and live the lives of spiritual power that God has for all of us.
