Extreme Makeover
March 12th, 2006
This morning we’re going to continue our look at Extreme Makeovers. Not the stuff we see on TV. Not the makeovers that cater to the society that we live in that tells us what makes a person beautiful and desirable is the outer package that they’re born with or that they spend thousands of dollars to fix up. Those are the makeovers that may make us look different but they don’t change who we are nor do they really give us happiness and security. No, we’re looking at something different, we’re looking at the changes that God wants to make, we’re looking at what God wants us to look like on the inside. We read last week that comments that Jesus had for the Pharisees and the Teachers of the Law, men who went to great lengths to look good on the outside. He compared them to cups that looked clean on the outside, but on the inside they were filthy and useless. Outer change alone is worthless but when we allow God to do a work on the inside, it will transform us and change us and move us towards being a reflection of Christ in this world both inside and out!
Last week we looked at where this makeover begins. The heart, the center of who we are, the center of our emotions, and as the Bible calls it, the wellspring of life. God’s makeover begins with a broken heart. A heart that is broken over the sin in our lives and over those areas that we fall so short of the Glory of God. Once that work has begun in our hearts, once God has taken that hard, calloused heart and replaced it as He promises in Ezekiel with a heart of flesh, a heart that beats for Him and for His Truth and His ways, then we can turn our attention to the other areas that need to see change happen. God wants us to have a broken heart, he also wants us to have calloused knees.
Now for most of us, calluses are something that we try to avoid. They form when there is repetitive friction on the skin, usually on the hands or feet or on the elbows and knees. They have lotions and creams and even files to smooth out the skin to avoid these calluses. My wife uses this thing, it looks like a cheese grater, to smooth out the skin on her feet, I suggested an orbital sander, but she wouldn’t go for it.
For some, who work with their hands, calluses are a testament to their profession. I’ve just begun to learn the guitar and for the first few weeks, I could only play for a few minutes at a time because the strings would bite into my finger tips. I have pretty wimpy, sensitive hands. After a little while, calluses formed on my fingertips and I was able to play for a longer time without experiencing any pain. For a guitar player, calluses are a necessity, they protect your fingers and keep them from getting sore from having to press down those little strings but they only come from repetition and practice and dedication. The same is true for what we are going to be looking at this morning. God wants us to have knees that are calloused from the repetitive action of a life spent on our knees in prayer. Once we have experienced a broken heart, the next step for us is to open up a constant line of communication with God and that comes through the prayer life of a Christian. What we look at in the coming weeks will feed off of this, off of the idea of prayer in our lives, because for God to address the changes that need to take place in our lives, communication has to happen, we have to be consistently coming before His throne and falling to our knees and talking with our God.
Prayer can be a touchy subject. When Catherine was three, just last year, we were having dinner at the home of some friends from our old church. We had just sat down to eat and the father looked at Catherine and asked if she would like to pray for the meal. She looked up at him with those beautiful brown eyes and a very serious expression on her face and replied, “No, we don’t do that at our house!” Of course they all thought that was hilarious and Erin and I are just mortified.
Prayer can be an embarrassing subject for many of us. The vast majority of Christians are dissatisfied with their prayer lives and feel that they don’t pray enough or about the right things or in the right way and it keeps them from effectively communicating with God. For some Christians prayer is a chore, for others it’s a mystery that they don’t quite get, for some prayer can become a cliché, “Oh, I’ll pray for you!” and then we go about our day and forget all about it. Whatever prayer is to us, the reality is that for a Christian, it is to be a way of life. It is to be as much a part of us as breathing. A Christian who doesn’t pray is a contradiction.
So, this morning I want to look at this idea of prayer and why God wants us to pray and I want to challenge you to grow in this area of your life in the same way that God has been challenging me in this area of my life.
I think we need to begin with the way that we view prayer, the way we look at prayer. A proper understanding of prayer allows us to see prayer in two ways, the first is that prayer is a privilege.
1) Prayer is a Privilege
It never ceases to amaze me, to blow my mind that the God of the universe would have time to listen to me. Go try to get an appointment with the president. IF you ever get in it will be after many layers of security and would probably take you weeks or months to pull off. That’s just the president, but with God, the one who was and is and always will be, the Great I Am, the Alpha and Omega, omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent God, we have instant and immediate access to his throne and to his ear. Knowing this gives us the confidence to take advantage of the opportunity.
Heb 4:16 Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
Wow! Not only can we approach, but we can talk with God and receive what we need from him in our lives! So many people fail to recognize the privilege of prayer. There are many Christians who feel that somehow God owes them something and that He should be standing ready to give them anything their heart desires. Prayer should never come from a sense of entitlement, God owes us nothing, but prayer should come with a sense of gratitude that recognizes just how unworthy we are to be in God’s presence and understand s what a privilege we have.
This is where our understanding of prayer needs to begin. We need to grasp the incredible privilege that we have to approach the throne of God. This is a privilege that is unlike any others in our life. Privileges are usually something that we earn. As a youth pastor I got a great look at the way that different parents used privileges as a discipline and reward tool. You don’t get the grades, you don’t drive the car. You prove you are trustworthy; you get a later curfew on weekends. Privileges are usually earned by who we are or what we’ve done. Prayer is different. Prayer is a privilege that we did nothing to earn. It was earned for us by the death and resurrection of Jesus. He earned our Salvation. He earned our freedom. But we can’t forget that the work He did on the cross was about access. It was about bringing man into a relationship again with the Father and giving us access to Him.
Mark gives an account of Christ’s death and listen to the first thing that he tells us happened when Christ took his last breath.
MK 15:37 With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last. MK 15:38 The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. 39 And when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, heard his cry and saw how he died, he said, "Surely this man was the Son of God!"
It’s easy to read over that. It’s easy to miss the significance of this sentence. The curtain had stood for ages as the dividing line between God’s holiness and man’s sinfulness, only the chosen priest could enter but now it has been forever torn away through the sacrifice of Christ and access to the father is ours! Praise God, what a privilege we have in prayer.
2) Prayer is a Command
Because of the cost of the privilege that Christ willingly paid for us, prayer is not just a nice perk to our Christianity, it’s commanded of us.
Eph 6:18 And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.
1TH 5:16 Be joyful always; 17 pray continually; 18 give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.
COL 4:2 Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful.
Nowhere in Scripture do we find prayer as a suggestion. It is never prefaced with: If you have time, if you really have no other option, if you’d like to… No, it is an imperative, it is commanded of us. When Jesus instructed His disciples on how to pray, He didn’t say “if you pray.” He said “when you pray.” It was a given, it was expected. Paul tells believers in 1 Corinthians 11:1 to: Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.
What example did Christ set as far as prayer was concerned?
LK 6:12 One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God
Time after time in the gospels we are told that he went off and prayed. Before he taught, after he taught, early in the morning, late at night, Jesus knew the importance of prayer and that’s the example he set for us and it the example we are commanded to follow. Now technically, we could end here. We should pray because God says so, end of story, however, I’m gonna keep going for just a little while longer.
So, we need to look at prayer in this way, as a privilege and as a command. But why is it a command? We know that God knows everything. Our requests are not a surprise to Him, in fact Matthew 6:8 tells us that:
Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
So, what does God want to accomplish through the practice of prayer in the life of a Christian? Well, we need to understand that prayer is not about what God can do for us. It’s not about manipulating God to work on our behalf and to our benefit so that we can prosper in life. The practice of prayer is not to focus on us, instead, it takes our focus and places it in the proper place, on Him and in the process, God is able to accomplish some things in our lives and help us to learn what it means to have a relationship with Him. The first reason why we are commanded to pray is that:
1) God Wants our Trust
God wants us to pray for the primary reason that it shows our dependence and trust in Him and it helps that trust to develop and to deepen. Over and over we are told to pray with faith, with the belief that god can accomplish anything that we ask. A healthy prayer life indicates that we are truly convinced that God is who He claims to be and we are sure of His wisdom and love, and goodness, and power.
I want to have the kind of relationship with my children where they feel that we can talk about anything. I want to be the first one that they share their joys with, I want to be the one to hold them when they hurt, and I want them to come to me when they need help and wisdom and guidance. God, the Father is the same way. He wants us to turn to Him, he wants us to trust Him with every aspect of our lives and to present our requests to Him. So many times we turn to many other things under the circumstances we find ourselves in when God is saying turn to me! Trust me enough to pray and believe that my promises are true.
Matthew 21:22 If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer."
When we trust God it comes from knowing God and as we know God more, we will know how it is that we should pray and God promises to do great things through the prayers of the righteous. He wants our trust.
2) God Wants our Fellowship
From the earliest time in the Garden of Eden we see that God has desired to fellowship with man. Everything in history, everything that led up to the cross screams of a personable God that has a deep desire for people to know Him and to have a relationship with Him. He makes his desires clear in Leviticus 26:12:
I will walk among you; I will be your God, and you will be my people.
He wants a relationship and prayer is what deepens that relationship and our fellowship with God. It’s very simple, you cannot have a relationship with someone in which there is no communication. Why do you know your spouse as well as you do? You have spent hours and hours over the years in fellowship together and it has resulted in a deeper relationship. There is no substitute for fellowship with God. You cannot draw near to Him, you cannot deepen your faith or your walk with Him without the investment of time spent together. God has provided for us a way to communicate with Him and it comes through prayer and He deeply desires those times of fellowship together. And finally,
3) God wants our Involvement
God has chosen to involve us in the work of building His kingdom here on Earth. Prayer gives us the opportunity to be involved in something that is eternally significant. When we pray, the work of the kingdom is advanced. We are told that our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Prayer is what will defeat those forces, prayer is what will advance the cause of Faith and the gospel and that’s where we come in. That’s where we are involved. We should be praying for our missionaries, we should be praying for our leaders, I hope that you are praying for your pastor and for each other. We should be praying for God’s kingdom to advance through this ministry and through other ministries like us. This is front line involvement, prayer. That old group Petra had a song I used to love called get on your knees and fight like a man. The growth of the kingdom is a war and prayer is where all of us need to be involved and be open to receiving our orders from God for the battle. God wants our involvement and He wants our fellowship, and He wants our Trust and because of that He calls us to pray knowing that these things are accomplished through prayer.
Every once in a while I go grocery shopping for my wife. I don’t mind going with her but I’m not a big fan of going by myself. I don’t enjoy it, I do it because I know I have to. I take the list that Erin gives me and I check off the items one by one as quickly as I can so I can be done with it!
Some of us have that kind of mentality when it comes to prayer. Our prayer life is no more than an obligation and we approach God’s throne with our grocery list of requests and check them off one by one until we’re done and we can say Amen and wrap it up. For some of us, that’s all we know how to do, that’s how we learned to pray. Prayer is so much more than that. It’s our opportunity to share our hearts with God and to simply enjoy being in His presence. I often hear people say that they don’t know how to pray. Well, in the Lord’s Prayer,(Matthew 6) Christ gives us a model and teaches us what our prayers should look like. Prayer should include:
1) Adoration:
We need to spend time marveling at the greatness and majesty of God. When I was young, I used to write to my favorite baseball players to try and get their autographs. In those letters I would fill a page with why I thought they were great and what I appreciated about them. These were just men and yet how often when I approach and address God do I fail to recognize his greatness as I launch into what I would like for Him to do for me. Prayer is a great time to focus on the splendor of God and sit at his feet in adoration.
2) Confession:
We talked last week about the fact that our sins break our fellowship with God, it’s part of what should break our hearts. So, it follows logically that our prayers should be a time of confession and forgiveness. He knows what we’ve done, but he still wants us to bring it to him and confess and receive the forgiveness that he promises.
3) Thanksgiving
Jer 33:11 "Give thanks to the LORD Almighty, for the LORD is good; his love endures forever." Prayer is a time to express our thanks and gratitude, like adoration, this helps us to focus on God and His goodness towards us and gives us the right perspective when we pray.
Phil 4:6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.
4) Requests
God wants us to bring our requests, He commands it, but it is a part of praying, a part of the whole. We need to make sure that it doesn’t become our only focus in prayer.
This is how we should pray. There’s no great mystery to it. If you can talk, if you can hold a conversation, you can pray. And when we begin to incorporate all of these aspects into our prayer life, and realize what God wants to accomplish in us through prayer, we’re going to see some changes. Prayer is going to become a vital part of our lives instead of the dry dull practice it has become for so many. Our attitudes towards prayer will change. We’ll be able to see that prayer is not about the words we use or how long we can go, it’s about the attitude of our hearts and our posture before God. Prayer is not about length or flowery words, prayer is a conversation between you and a loving, relational, Holy God.
MT 6:5 "And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. 6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. 7 And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words.
He’s not interested in a show, he’s not interested in your education or your vocabulary. He simply wants to talk with you and he expects your obedience. When we obey, and when we commit to prayer, Scripture promises over and over again that God will hear and answer. Prayer moves the hand of God.
John MacArthur says that: “Prayer is the slender nerve that moves the mighty muscle of God’s Omnipotence.” Prayer moves the heart and hand of a God who can do anything.
We saw it in the OT with Moses and with Abraham as they plead with God to change his mind and withhold his wrath. Each man talked with God and each one saw change happen. We saw it when Elijah prayed for rain and God ended a drought. We’ve seen it in this church as God has answered the prayers of many, healing physical needs and causing this ministry to grow. God answers prayers. Some He answers in different ways than others. Some see healing, some don’t. Some carry heavy burdens while others see blessing at every turn. I can’t pretend to know why He answers as He does; I only know that He answers. And I know that He is moving and working and His will is being done throughout the Earth and we have a part to play in that through prayer.
God wants you to have calloused knees. Any changes that He works in your life are going to be tied to your prayer life and the way you talk and listen to God. The time has come to move from a people who talk about prayer to a people who pray. The blessings and lessons that God has in store for you, the blessings and direction that He has for this ministry will be unlocked and unleashed when we, as individuals, and we as a church drop to our knees before the throne of God and learn to pray.
