Submitted by Pastor Milton Bost
Slide 1 Learning How To Pray
Luke 11:1-13
Slide 2
Two men were talking together. The first guy challenged the other, "If you are so religious, let's hear you quote the Lord's Prayer. I’ll bet you $10 you can't pray it.” The second responded confidently, "You’re on!” Then he began, “Now I lay my down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. And If I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take." The first guy pulled out his wallet and fished out a ten dollar bill, muttering, "I honestly didn't think you could do it!"
Slide 3
Obviously the greatest expert regarding Christian prayer is Christ Himself. He knows what God desires in prayer because He is God. He knows how to approach God in prayer because He is the Son of God. He knows how to approach God in prayer as a human being because He is the Son of Man. Prayer was central to everything that Jesus did. Though He was God, though He was the Son of God, though He was the Son of Man, He demonstrated a life absolutely dependent upon His Father…which meant the absolute necessity of regular prayer. So, it’s not like we don’t have an expert on prayer easily accessible so we can learn how to pray.
Slide 4
Discipline in prayer is an absolute. The discipline I am speaking of is not a repetitive regimen of exhausting exercises in prayer. Rather, it is the discipline of faith and practice in approaching God who interacts and responds as we exercise that discipline. It is so easy for us to develop a long list of excuses (that we prefer to call reasons) as to why prayer in not the primary activity in our Christian walk.
Slide 5
Luke 11:1-13 (NKJV)
1 Now it came to pass, as He was praying in a certain place, when He ceased, that one of His disciples said to Him, "Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples."
2 So He said to them, "When you pray, say: Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done On earth as it is in heaven.
3 Give us day by day our daily bread.
4 And forgive us our sins, For we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And do not lead us into temptation, But deliver us from the evil one."
5 And He said to them, "Which of you shall have a friend, and go to him at midnight and say to him, 'Friend, lend me three loaves;
6 for a friend of mine has come to me on his journey, and I have nothing to set before him';
7 and he will answer from within and say, 'Do not trouble me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give to you'?
Slide 6
8 I say to you, though he will not rise and give to him because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence he will rise and give him as many as he needs.
9 "So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.
10 For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.
11 If a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish?
12 Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?
13 If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!"
Slide 7
Some have the mistaken idea that prayer involves some stringent discipline or skill and therefore it limits or prohibits their own ability. In reality, prayer is not difficult, nor should it be. In many ways it is simple in that it is simply talking to God. Probably the most difficult aspect of it is incorporating it as a necessary part of one’s life. In fact, it is possible to complicate prayer so much that one loses sight of its purpose and its joy.
Slide 8
Charles Haddon Spurgeon spoke about this very thing when he said, “I have found, in my own spiritual life, that the more rules I lay down for myself, the more sins I commit. The habit of regular morning and evening prayer is one which is indispensable to a believer's life, but the prescribing of the length of prayer, and the constrained remembrance of so many persons and subjects, may gender unto bondage, and strangle prayer rather than assist it.”
Based upon Jesus’ teaching about prayer to His disciples, I would like us this morning to adapt those lessons so that we can learn how to pray.
Slide 9
I. OUR PRAYER LIFE MUST GROW OUT OF OUR NEED (Vss. 5-6)
Click
5 And He said to them, "Which of you shall have a friend, and go to him at midnight and say to him, 'Friend, lend me three loaves;
6 for a friend of mine has come to me on his journey, and I have nothing to set before him';
Slide 10
When we come to God in prayer with a need, we should be specific about our need. Specificity obviously is not for God’s clarification. Rather, it is for our clarification.
Click
Click
Click
Slide 10
The Norwegian theologian Ole Hallesby gave one of the best definitions of prayer. He said, "To pray is nothing more involved that to let Jesus into our needs. To pray is to give Jesus permission to employ His powers in the alleviation of our distress."
Many have questioned (usually when then are not in distress) why we need to be specific in regard to our need. After all, if God is all-knowing (and He is), if God knows what is best for us (and He does), and if God seeks to provide what is best for us (and He will), what good is it to be so specific in our prayer?
Slide 11
George MacDonald answered this quite well. “Why pray, if God loves us and knows all we need before we pray? What if He knows prayer to be the thing that we need first and foremost? What if the main object in God's idea of prayer is the supplying of both our need AND the need of Himself? What if the good of all our having all of our needs lies in this: they help drive us to God? Communion with God is the one need of the soul beyond all other needs and prayer is the beginning of that communion.
When you pray and aim at nothing, you are sure to hit it.
Slide 12
II. OUR PRAYER LIFE MUST BE PERSISTENT.
Click
8 I say to you, though he will not rise and give to him because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence he will rise and give him as many as he needs.
9 "So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.
Slide 13
Persistent prayer is the test to determine whether or not we are really serious about our requests.
Click
Most Christians are quickly stirred to guilt whenever the topic of prayer is raised. We all know we need to pray more often. And so we should. But as we increase our time in prayer, we need also remember to apply the words of Christ when He told us that we “ought always to pray and not lose heart” (Lk.18:1). As Jesus goes on to explain in His parable of “the tenacious widow,” this is not an exhortation to simply log more hours in prayer per week. This is a command from Christ to persist in praying for the specific request we know is good and right.
Click
It is unfortunate how quickly we abandon a particular prayer concern because God does not immediately respond. That parable certainly grants us permission to pray so tenaciously and persistently, that if we were on the receiving end of the petition, we’d feel like we were being pestered, bothered, or in Christ’s words, “beaten down by the continual” request (v.5). In this regard, our everyday polite manners don’t serve as a reliable guide for our praying.
Click
Usually it takes us only a few “asks” for a particular thing, for us to back down and settle for a “no.” But that should not be the case in our prayer life. God tells us to ask and keep asking. He calls us to knock and keep knocking. As long as we know our request is right and good, he orders us to “always pray and not lose heart.”
Slide 14
Think about the privilege we have been given in prayer. And if you want to really get the attention of heaven, keep praying and don't give up. God already knows how serious He is about answering our prayers. Now He wants to see how seriously we believe Him not only for our eternal life in heaven, but also for the concerns of this life here on earth
Slide 15
Early African converts to Christianity were earnest and regular in private devotions. Each one reportedly had a separate spot in the thicket where he would pour out his heart to God. Over time the paths to these places became well worn. As a result, if one of these believers began to neglect prayer, it was soon apparent to the others. They would kindly remind the negligent one, "Brother, the grass grows on your path."
Slide 16
III. OUR PRAYER LIFE MUST BE BASED IN FAITH.
Click
9 "So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.
Slide 17
Faithful prayer brings results. The prayer of faith is not praying for something and believing it will happen. It is seeking God’s response to the need or the situation, believing He will give an answer and determining to live by that answer He gives.
Click
Matthew 21:22 (NKJV)
22 And whatever things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive.
Click
Hebrews 11:6 (NKJV)
6 But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.
Slide 18
Many people have struggled with this question: How can I pray in faith if I’m not absolutely certain that what I’m asking for is in accordance to the will of God? The reason we struggle is that our faith is misplaced. We think that we somehow have to work our faith up to the place where God will answer a particular prayer.
Slide 19
But that is not the case. The object of our faith is the person of God Himself; not our faith. When I do not have faith, I’m saying one of two things: either God cannot answer this prayer or God will not answer this prayer. If I say He cannot, I’m questioning His sovereignty and His power. If I say He will not, I’m questioning His goodness.
Slide 20
Some Christians have become confused and perplexed over how to use these promises. For example:
A loved one is diagnosed with a serious illness, so the family and friends of this person begin to pray. Over time the sickness gets worse, and someone says, “If only we had enough faith, we could move the hand of God, and the answer would be given.” There’s an increasing sense that life and death lay in the hands of those who pray. Faith is no longer a matter of trusting God. It’s about convincing ourselves that the outcome we’re asking for is going to happen.
And if the outcome doesn’t go our way, we blame ourselves: “If I had greater faith, he would still be alive.” That’s a crushing burden. Or we resent God: “If God really cared, if he ever listened, my loved one would still be here.” This too is a crushing burden.
Slide 21
Either way we have put ourselves in the place of God, and whenever we try to take the place of God, we take on a burden that not one of us are able to bear. The prayer of faith is a prayer of trusting God. To pray in faith means that I believe God can and I believe God will insofar as it’s consistent with His glory, because God is good. What you do receive from God is the best gift of all…His presence…His Spirit within you.
Slide 22
J. I. Packer in his book Your Father Loves You wrote “Each Christian's prayer life, like every good marriage, has in it common factors about which one can generalize and also uniquenesses which no other Christian's prayer life will quite match. You are you, and I am I, and we must each find our own way to God; and there is no recipe for prayer that can work for us like a handyman's do-it-yourself manual or a cookery book, where the claim is that if you follow the instructions you can't go wrong.
Praying is not like carpentry or cookery; it is the active exercise of a personal relationship: a kind of friendship with the living God and his Son Jesus Christ, and the way it goes is more under divine control than under ours. Books on praying, like marriage manuals, are not to be treated with slavish superstition, as if the perfection of technique is the answer to all difficulties; their purpose, rather, is to suggest things to try. But as in other close relationships, in prayer you have to find out by trial and error what is right for you, and you learn to pray by praying.
Some of us talk more, others less; some are constantly vocal, others prefer silence before God as their way of adoration; some slip into methods; yet we may all be praying as God means us to do. The only rule is: Stay within the biblical guidelines, and within those guidelines, as John Chapman put it, "Pray as you can, and don't try to pray as you can't."
Slide 23
Dr. Lewis Sperry Chafer told a story on the subject of prayer. It seems that a certain minister was in the habit of giving profound prayers, oftentimes resorting to words beyond the comprehension of his simple flock. This went on week after week, to the dismay and frustration of the congregation. At last, a wee Scottish woman in the choir ventured to take the matter in hand. On a given Sunday, as the minister was waxing eloquent on one of his prayers, the little woman reached across the curtain separating the choir from the pulpit. Taking a firm grasp on the coat tail of the minister, she gave it a yank, and was heard to whisper, Jes’ call Him Father and ask ‘im for somethin.”
Slide 24
Productive prayer requires earnestness, not eloquence.
Click
“The one concern of the devil is to keep Christians from praying. He fears nothing from prayerlessstudies, prayerless work and prayerless religion. He laughs at our toil, mocks at our wisdom, but he trembles when we pray." (Samuel Chadwick)
Click
Learning how to pray is done by praying. The greatest teaching is done on the job.
>>>KEEP SCROLLING for RELATED CONTENT & COMMENTARY, RESOURCES & REPLIES