What Is Dangerous Prayer? Series

NOTE:

This is a manuscript, and not a transcript of this message. The actual presentation of the message differed from the manuscript through the leading of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it is possible, and even likely that there is material in this manuscript that was not included in the live presentation and that there was additional material in the live presentation that is not included in this manuscript.

› Engagement

There was once a man who was very faithful in his prayer life. Every morning when he got up he would kneel by his bed and he would pray, ‘God bless me, God bless my family, God bless this day’. And before every meal he would say a prayer ‘God bless this food’. And every night when he went to bed he would pray, ‘God bless me, God bless my family, God bless this night’. And every time he prayed a prayer, he would take a walnut and place it in a glass jar. And over the years his house became full of glass jars, that were full of walnuts. They were on shelves and bookcases and windowsills and everywhere. Walnuts… 1000’s of them! And the man felt very pleased with himself – ‘just look at all these jars, just look at all these walnuts, just look at all these prayers that I have prayed’ he would say.

Then one night Jesus appeared to him in a dream. And Jesus took each of the glass jars, opened them, and one by one he took out the walnuts and broke them open. And inside each one it was empty, nothing but dryness and dust. And Jesus said to him, you know your prayers are like that, although there have been 1000s of them – they are empty, they are dry, they are meaningless.

› Tension

How many of you can relate to that story? I know I can. Perhaps, like me, you genuinely believe in the power of prayer, but honestly you know you could pray more consistently and with more depth. I read a blog post from Cathe Laurie, wife of Pastor Greg Laurie, this week that suggested three reasons people don’t pray more:

• We don’t think we have time.

• We don’t think it is important.

• We don’t believe that it makes any difference.

I think that is probably an accurate assessment, but based on my own prayer life and talking to others about their prayer lives, there are at least a couple other reasons that a lot of us don’t pray like we should:

• Some of us might feel like we’re not really good at prayer. We listen to others pray and think to ourselves, “I wish I could pray like that”.

• I think that some of us might actually be bored with prayer. We’re kind of in a prayer rut in which we find ourselves praying the same things over and over again.

In our new sermon series that starts today, we’re going to address this last barrier to more effective prayer. We’re calling this series “Dangerous Prayers”. We’ll begin today by answering the question: What is dangerous prayer? And then for the next three weeks, we’ll be looking at three specific dangerous prayers that I’m going to challenge all of us to pray. And the one thing I can promise is that if you’ll actually prayer these prayers from your heart, it is going to get you out of any kind of prayer rut that you’re in right now and it is going to radically transform not only your prayer life, but your walk with Jesus.

› Truth

We’ll begin this morning by going back to one of the first dangerous prayers found in the Bible. So go ahead and turn to Genesis 32 and in just a moment we’ll look at a passage that we’ve studied before. In fact, I preached on this same passage just about a year ago in our “Never Going Back” series.

The story of Jacob is one of the most interesting in the Bible. From birth his life is filled with conflict, especially with his brother Esau and later with his father-in-law Laban. Both of those relationships eventually come to a point where Esau and Laban seek to kill Jacob. So Jacob is understandably on the run much of his life.

In Genesis 31, God comes to Jacob and tells him to return to the land of his fathers and promises to be with him. So Jacob gathers his two wives, his two concubines and his children, who range in age from preschoolers to young teens and he flees from his father-in-law Laban. Laban pursues Jacob and his family and eventually catches up to them and confronts Jacob. Laban and Jacob come to an agreement not to cross into each other’s land in the future and set up a pillar of rocks as a witness to their agreement.