The Great Prayer Request

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Transcript:

I really don’t feel like y’all are awake this morning, so I’m going to ask you to stand up. Don’t worry, I’m not going to make you do jumping jacks like I told Rose I was going to. Take out your Bible, if you haven’t already, and turn it to Luke chapter 11.

I think sometimes we just get a little too comfortable sitting and need to stand up for a second. Luke chapter 11, starting in verse 1, it says, And it came to pass, that as he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, one of his disciples said unto him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples. And he said unto them, when ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, as in heaven so in earth.

Give us day by day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone that is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Let’s pray.

Heavenly Father, please bless the reading and teaching and study of your word. I pray that as we read through this passage today and look at what it says and what it means and what we can learn from it. I pray that each of us would take something from it today that we’ve never seen before.

Lord, that you’d give us a fresh perspective on this passage. Help us to understand what it is you want us to learn from it, and God, give us the ability and the desire to apply it to our lives as we try to serve you. Lord, we love you, and we ask all these things in Jesus Christ’s name.

Amen. You may be seated. All right.

Well, on the subject of this passage. By the way, if that model prayer in verses 2 through 4 sounded strange to you, it sounded strange to me too. It’s because we are more familiar, if you’re like me anyway, you’re more familiar with the Lord’s Prayer as it’s portrayed in Matthew.

And we will eventually talk about that in this series on prayer. But today I wanted to start here because it really was this passage that inspired me, and I don’t say that as though when we talk about the men who wrote the scriptures were inspired. I mean, it was this passage that gave me the glimmer of an idea to begin a series of studies on prayer.

I don’t know if any of you, the rest of you, have ever gone through this the way I have, but my least favorite part of any job interview I’ve ever been in was when they ask you, what do you consider to be your greatest weakness? Anybody else ever been asked that? Okay, just me.

I’ve been on more job interviews than I could count, and it seems like most of them would ask, what do you consider to be your greatest weakness? And Chick-fil-A never seemed to be the right answer. I would have to think really hard and come up with something, because you want to give them an answer that makes it sound like you’re self-aware and realize you have limitations and not an ego the size of Kansas.

But at the same time, you don’t want to go into so much detail and give them a huge weakness that shoots you in the foot as far as trying to get the job. And so it was always the hardest question to answer. And from time to time, I think about what my greatest weakness is, both as a Christian and as a pastor.

And if I’m brutally honest with myself, and unfortunately, here I am being brutally honest with you as well this morning, if I had to identify a greatest weakness in my Christian life and in my life as a pastor, it’s prayer. Now, that’s not y no a lot of us are in that same boat. And prayer just does not seem to come naturally, at least the way the Bible portrays prayer.

For most people, it does not seem to come naturally. That’s why most people, when they are under conviction and they’re ready to get saved, most people I’ve led to Christ, I’ve said, do you want to pray now? And they’ll say, yes, yes, I want to pray, and I want to trust Christ. I want to ask forgiveness.

Are you comfortable praying out loud? Oh, no, I wouldn’t know what to say. And of course, the pat answer is just say, tell God what you’re feeling.

Tell God what’s on your heart. And yet it seems a little more difficult than that. There have been times in my Christian life where my prayer life has been wonderful.

And I feel like I’m really communicating with God and he’s really communicating with me. And there are other times where, folks, it’s not that I doubt God’s existence. I believe with everything within me that the God of the Bible is real, that Jesus Christ is his son.

I believe all the things that we’re supposed to believe I know God is real and I know he hears my prayers and yet I sit there feeling like I’m not doing this right. Something’s supposed to be happening here that’s not happening. And folks, maybe I’m the only one this series is for but I don’t think so because I think by and large things would be very different in our church and in churches all across this country if we were praying the way God intended us to pray.

I read this week an article and I was looking for something else and just ran across it. I read an article about a man named Daniel Nash, who is not at all a famous person. I’d never heard of him before I ran across this article.

But he used to travel around with the evangelist Charles Finney. And I’m not a huge, I mean, got nothing personal against the guy. He died before I was born.

But in terms of his theology, I’m not in complete agreement with Charles Finney. But it would not be an understatement to say he was one of the greatest evangelists that this country has ever seen. He would tour the United States and go to various cities during the second great awakening and would put up tents and they would hold revival meetings and people would come to Christ. And it said that during his ministry, now folks, Billy Graham doesn’t even have these kind of numbers.

During his ministry, those that came to Christ, those that professed Christ, during his ministry, 80% of them followed through and showed evidence of repentance. Now, how they arrived at those numbers, I don’t know unless they did some serious follow-up. Nowadays, an evangelist is lucky if 20% of the people who professed Christ under his ministry really give evidence of being born again.

But it was said that Charles Finney, when he preached Christ, despite his problems in theology, when he preached Christ, 80 plus percent of those who professed Christ under his ministry really gave evidence of having been born again. And Charles Finney attributed the difference in his ministry, Charles Finney said what made the difference in his ministry was a man named Daniel Nash, who had been fired quite unfairly by his church. He’d been a pastor and ended up going on staff and touring with Charles Finney, and his entire ministry was to go into an area two to three weeks ahead of time before Finney would come in and preach, and he would rent a room somewhere, and he would stay there, and he would pray.

And sometimes he would pray by himself, and sometimes he would get two or three others who were like-minded and have them go with him. And they would pray for the souls of the people that Finney was going to be preaching the gospel to. They would pray for the people of that village or that community, and they would pour their hearts out to God day and night that God would do something incredible.

And you know what? God always answered their prayers. And so fervent was their praying that they would go days without coming out for food.

And one story was given of a landlady who had rented her cellar out to these men who were praying. And she heard from the cellar, she heard groans and screams and cries. And she was terrified.

And finally, she worked up the courage to go down and see what was going on, thought maybe they were dying down there. And they were on their faces before God, pouring out their hearts and praying, begging God to do something incredible, begging God to reach the hearts of the people in that city. And as I read this article, as I read this account of Daniel Nash, I thought, if I have ever prayed with such fervency, it has been a long time.

If any of us have ever prayed with such fervency, it’s probably been a long time. And what I hope in the next few weeks, maybe several weeks, what I hope is that we will go through the places where the Bible talks about prayer, and we may not have time to reach every passage, Because there are so many, as I was working on even getting this series started, I told my wife, I said, why I’m having so much trouble is there are so many places in the Bible that talk about prayer, I’m having trouble figuring out where to start. But I would like for us to go through the various places that the Bible talks about prayer and give serious study and serious consideration to what the Bible says about prayer, and then ask God.

And yes, I believe we can pray and ask God to make us better prayers. I believe we can ask God for that, and I believe God will answer, because in this passage we’ve just started looking at, they asked God to make them better prayers. I think one of the greatest prayer requests ever made was when these disciples looked at Jesus Christ, looked at God in the flesh, and said, Lord, teach us to pray.

Tonight, we’ll just give an overview of verses 2 through 4, the prayer that Jesus shared with them. Now, later on, we’ll go through a more in-depth study of what Jesus, of what it records in Matthew, which is not a contradiction, just a more detailed view of what he said. But tonight we’ll go through an overview of his response to them.

But this morning I want us to focus in on verse 1 and really take a look at these five words, Lord, teach us to pray. And what we see here in this passage that we’ve already read this morning, he says it came to pass that as he was praying in a certain place. Now it’s hard to know from context where exactly they were, when exactly this happened.

One of the harmonies of the gospels that I looked at that tries to put everything in order says that right before this was John chapter 10, where he’s talking about being the good shepherd. How they got that, I have no idea. What we see here is in chapter 11 is a definite break from whatever it shows us in Luke chapter 10, where he’d been in Bethany to see Mary and Martha.

And most of you are familiar with the story of Martha working hard in the kitchen while Mary sat at Jesus’ feet being taught and Martha being mad at her and Jesus straightening that problem out. What we see here is a definite break. They have gone off somewhere else and it says they were in a certain place and Jesus was praying.

And folks, it has always been incredible to me once I realized what was going on in all these stories that I was taught in Sunday school from the New Testament that Jesus spent a lot of time praying. Now spend too much time thinking about that and it’s going to blow your mind that God was praying to God. God the Son prayed to God the Father.

That’s an incredible thought, that even God the Son, in His human form, would submit Himself to God the Father. Doesn’t make Him any less God, but folks, if Jesus Christ, if the unique Son of God, the only begotten Son of God, God in human flesh, if Jesus Christ, with all His divine attributes, needed to spend that much time in prayer with God the Father, what is it that makes you and me think that we can go the entire day without prayer? What makes us think that we can go a week without prayer if we do?

What makes it so that so many Christians feel we are not at all dependent on the power of prayer in our relationship with God, that we can just coast when even Jesus Christ, as powerful as he was, as divine as he was, needed to spend that much time in prayer? And so he’s in prayer once again, and the disciples see him. And when he stopped praying, and I find it interesting too that the disciples waited until he had stopped praying, until he had ceased.

Wouldn’t you like to be a fly on the wall? And in a sense we are because some of Jesus’ prayers are recorded for us in the Gospels and we can see those. But wouldn’t you love to observe Jesus praying, see what it looked like, see what he said, see the spirit that he had about him as he prayed?

and I have this is just speculation but I have to imagine the disciples stood there in awe watching Jesus Christ pray to the Father and when he ceased they were so compelled that that kind of prayer is what they needed that kind of connection to God was what they needed that when he ceased one of his disciples said unto him Lord teach us to pray as John also taught his disciples Lord we need to learn to pray and I’ve always misquoted this verse as Lord teach us how to pray they’re not merely asking, Lord, teach us how to pray. They’re saying, Lord, teach us to pray. Now, if Jesus is teaching us how to pray, then how to pray is involved in that.

But they’re not just asking, Lord, teach us the right words, teach us the right things to say. Lord, teach us where we need to be. They’re saying, Lord, teach us to pray.

Teach us the importance of prayer. Teach us the need for prayer. And folks, as we go through this series, that’s what I very desperately want myself to learn.

That’s what I want our church to learn is the absolute necessity and power that there is in prayer. Lord, teach us to pray. Teach us to pray.

They could have very easily said, Lord, pray for us. Lord, pray to the Father and ask him things on our behalf, but they saw the connection he had to God in prayer and they wanted that as well. Said, Lord, teach us to pray.

And as we see in verses two through four, Jesus was obliging, and it even goes further than that in the coming verses, when he talks about perseverance in prayer, but we’ll not get into that today. Today, just these five words, Lord, teach us to pray. And first of all, what I see in this passage, and sort of going in reverse order through these five words, they said, Lord, teach us to pray.

Those words to pray. A strong prayer life requires a desire to connect with God. A strong prayer life requires a desire to connect with God.

If we are praying out of obligation, if we’re praying out of a sense that, well, I’m a Christian, it’s what I’m supposed to do, I have to, or I feel guilty if I don’t, if we’re praying so that other people can see us and think we’re spiritual, if we’re praying because we think it will get us things, folks, if we are praying for any other reason than to pray and connect with God, then it’s not biblical prayer. Now, I believe sometimes even in our shortcomings, Even when we fall short, I believe God can and does still honor our prayers, even when we’re not completely pure of heart. But folks, for our prayer life to be effective, for us really to feel like we’re praying and our prayers are doing more than just hitting the ceiling, folks, there’s got to be a desire to connect with God.

I believe that was the driving force behind their entire request, Lord, teach us to pray, because they saw what John had taught his disciples and the connection that those people had with God, and they saw what Jesus Christ was just doing in his prayer, and they said, we want to do that too. There’s nothing wrong, as we’ll see in the coming weeks, there’s nothing wrong sometimes in praying for things. When you have a need, folks, God delights to answer our request for our needs, as any father would.

But first and foremost, for our prayer life to be strong the way it needs to be, it’s got to be driven by a desire to connect with God. Folks, when we pray, we’re not just filling out a request or a comment form. We are literally going to the God of the universe.

And sometimes I think we forget what an awesome privilege it is. It’s not ours by right that God looks at us and says, there, you’re so wonderful, you deserve it. But it’s a privilege that’s been granted to us on the basis of what Jesus Christ did for us that we now are able to, as the Bible says, go boldly before the throne of grace.

It’s an incredible privilege. And God the Father never had to grant us that privilege. He was never obligated to grant us that privilege.

And yet we’ve been granted it because he’s good and because he’s kind and because of what Jesus Christ did for us. We have access now to God the Father. And we have the ability and we have the opportunity to stand before our creator, the one who controls even the next heartbeat we have, even the next breath we take, and to stand before him and talk with him.

Now, when I say stand before him, I don’t mean in a physical sense that we go stand before God. But folks, we have the opportunity to connect with God the Father. That’s an incredible thing.

I can’t even begin to describe the importance of the privilege God has granted us here. But we’ve got to have a desire on our end to actually make use of that opportunity he’s given us. If all we’re ever praying for are, Lord, bless Aunt so-and-so who broke her hip.

Lord, could I have a better car? Lord, and we’re just taking him a list, even of good things sometimes, but all we’re ever doing is trying to get our grocery list filled. We’re missing out on what prayer really is.

And so if that’s the way you’ve been praying, if that’s the way I’ve been praying, and we feel like our prayers are just hitting the ceiling, I believe God’s there. I believe he can hear me, and yet it just doesn’t feel like what’s supposed to be happening here is happening. Folks, our prayer life, to be strong has got to be driven by a desire to connect with God.

Second of all, a strong prayer life requires humility before God. Now, the Bible does say we can go boldly to the throne of grace, but that doesn’t mean we march into God’s throne room as though we own the place. And these men, when they came to Jesus, they said, they didn’t look back at Jesus.

I like to draw contrast sometimes when I read the Bible between what it says and what could have happened and what we can learn by what didn’t happen. I don’t know if that makes sense outside of my mind or not. But these men did not come to Jesus and say, hey, we can do that too.

Watch how it’s done. That would be incredibly foolish to look at Jesus after he’d finished praying and say, we can do that. Look, watch how this is done.

And then go to praying. No, they came to Jesus in humility. They came to Jesus in humility and said, Lord, teach us to pray.

Lord, teach us to pray correctly. Folks, we’ve got to realize that we don’t have all of this figured out. These men didn’t come the way the Pharisees did and portray themselves as super spiritual. If you remember from the Gospels the way the Pharisees prayed, they would stand out on the street corners and they would ring bells to get everybody’s attention.

I know that thought is foreign to some of you. I know some of the ladies in here would just die if I ever called on you to pray out loud. Folks, they would ring bells so that everybody would turn and look at them.

And then they would stand there on the street corners and pray in all this flowery language, O thou, Lord, thou, you know, thinking that the more they talked and the bigger words they used and the more profuse praise they could pour out, that people would look at them and think, you’re incredibly spiritual, how wonderful a person you must be. And yet Jesus says specifically that that kind of prayer was not acceptable. God did not delight in that kind of prayer.

As a matter of fact, one of the examples of prayer that he speaks well of is the person who just knelt down in absolute humility and said, Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner. And these men came to Jesus not as though they had everything figured out. We’ll use all of our big words and our flowery language and lots of whatever the Pharisees used.

Lord, teach us. We realize we need to learn better how to pray. We realize there’s something lacking in our own prayer lives.

Folks, I realize, and I hope I’m not being so honest with you this morning that you’re thinking, we don’t want him for a pastor. He doesn’t pray right. I desperately want to learn to pray better.

But folks, there’s something lacking in my prayer life. And probably for the vast majority of people in this room and for the vast majority of Christians, there’s something lacking in our prayer life. And I know it’s been thrown out so many times.

It’s cliche. I heard my friends say all the time growing up, the first step to fixing a problem, or what was it? The first step is admitting you’ve got a problem.

I don’t know if they got that from AA or how teenagers knew so much about AA, I’ll never know. But the first step to fixing a problem, solving a problem is to admit that you’ve got one. That sounds about right.

Well, folks, it’s true here. The first step in fixing what’s lacking in our prayer life is admitting that there is something lacking in our prayer life. These men could have just gone on wondering and standing there watching and saying, look how he prays.

Man, I wish I could pray like that. No, they came to Jesus in humility and and admitted when they said, teach us, there’s something lacking in our prayer life. Sometimes I think we try to pretend when we pray to God.

Now the foolishness of that, if you really think about it, is striking. We try to pretend when we pray to God. Try to pretend that everything is all right with us spiritually.

When we’re talking directly to the God of the universe who knows us better than we know ourselves and knows exactly what’s in the depths of our hearts. And we try sometimes to hide between long prayer lists and flowery language and lots of words when we know and God knows there’s something lacking in our prayer lives. And I think sometimes we need to come to God even in prayer about our prayer lives in humility and say, Lord, teach us.

So I think one of the keys to a strong prayer life is humility before God that helps us realize our prayer life, no matter how strong it is, is lacking because there’s always a way to pray better. And we don’t have it all figured out. And folks, I think we need to to God what we know and what he knows and what we know he knows.

And what he knows we know. Anyway, folks, we need to be humble and admit we’ve not got it all figured out and ask God to teach us to pray. And third of all this morning, a strong prayer life requires a relationship with God.

A strong prayer life requires a relationship with God. We cannot pray effectively if we’re not in a right relationship with God. We can’t.

There’s a verse, I want to say Peter wrote it, first or second Peter, that talks about living at peace with your spouse so your prayers are not hindered. Folks, our prayers can be hindered by a wrong relationship with one another. Why could our prayers not be hindered by a relationship with God that’s out of sync?

Now, notice I’m not talking as though we can lose our relationship with God. I’m not talking as though once you’re a believer, once you’ve truly been born again that you can lose your salvation. But sometimes the relationship is not where it needs to be.

And it’s not because God is the one who wandered away from us. It’s because we wander away from God. Folks, we cannot pray effectively.

We cannot have a strong prayer life if we’re not in a right relationship with God. And you know what? We can’t pray effectively and have a strong prayer life if we don’t have a relationship with God.

They preface all of this by saying, by calling Jesus Lord. Lord, teach us to pray. Folks, these disciples were Jesus’ disciples.

They were in a relationship with him where they could say, Lord, teach us to pray. Now, to make it clear, Jesus even says, not everyone who calls me Lord, Lord is one of mine. Paraphrasing there a little bit, but not everybody who says he’s their Lord really has him as their Lord.

But so many people fail to see the power of prayer because we are praying all too often, Lord, bless so-and-so. Lord, would you help me with my health? Lord, take care of aunt so-and-so.

Lord, we’re praying all these things when what we really need to start with is, Lord, forgive me for where I’ve sinned against you. Lord, forgive me for where I’ve wandered. Lord, forgive me for the places where I have not been in a right relationship with you.

Folks, I don’t believe we stop being God’s child when we sin. But it was much like the problem I’ve had with my son lately. I’m more than happy to give him all the snacks his heart desires if he would do what he’s told and eat his meal. Because I love my son, and I want him to be happy.

But when he throws a fit at the table, and he won’t eat, and he won’t listen to his mama, and he mouths, and yes, even at two years old, they mouth back and tell mama, do it yourself. And he’s not in a right relationship with us and comes wanting gummy bears or donuts or something. You’ve got to be kidding.

I’m not inclined to answer that request where I would be otherwise. Folks, a strong prayer life. maybe if we feel like God is distant.

As I said earlier, it’s not God who wanders away from us, it’s we who wander away from God. And sometimes if our prayer life feels cold and distant, it may be because we’re not in the right relationship. And instead of coming to God with our grocery list, waiting for it to get filled, we need to come to God in humility and confess where he knows we’ve fallen short already.

It’s not going to surprise God if you come and say, I haven’t done what you’ve expected me to do. God’s not surprised, so we might as well admit it and get right with him. Excuse me.

And I’m always amazed, and those of you who are on Facebook may be amazed as well, I’m always amazed by when somebody talks about something going wrong in their life or has a prayer request and they put it out on Facebook, which is not a bad thing to do, they put it out there, and all the people who say, I’m praying for you, I’m praying for you, I’m praying for you, and some of these people I look at, and maybe your friends are all completely different from mine, but I look at some of these people and think, if I had to guess you are as lost as you could possibly be, and yet you’re talking about praying. Or, you know, you made a profession once, but you live like a lost person, and yet everybody rushes to prayer. And you know, when they take surveys of people, and I don’t know what the statistics are, a good number of Americans say they pray on a regular basis.

But I’m sure most people are probably dissatisfied with their prayer lives, and because most people pray bringing their grocery list to God and are not in a right relationship with him. So why is he going to give everything that they request? These men started out their request by saying, Lord.

And it’s not just by calling him Lord that made everything okay. These men were in a relationship with Jesus Christ. And John even writes, recording what another man said, now we know that God heareth not sinners, excuse me, but if any man be a worshiper of God and doeth his will, him he heareth. And this word sinner is in the Greek and in the English, the exact word we see there, sinner.

But in contrast, in contrast to talking about worshiping him and doing his will, what he’s not saying is that if we sin, God no longer will hear us. Because ladies and gentlemen, if you’re one of his children and you pray and ask for forgiveness, you pray and confess your sins, folks, he hears you. But what it’s talking about is putting sinners in contrast to being worshipers of God.

It’s talking about the heathen. It’s talking about the pagan. It’s talking about the people who have no relationship with God at all.

And I think one of the reasons, probably the biggest reason most people in this country don’t see their prayers answered and don’t see any power to prayer is because they’re trying to pray to God without a relationship to God. Folks, these men, excuse me, these men began their prayer in light of their relationship to God in the person of Jesus Christ. If we’re trying to pray and we’re dissatisfied with our prayer life, we would do well to check our relationship with God and see if it’s in good standing. Ask Him sometimes if if there are things in our own hearts that hinder our prayer lives, if there are places in our lives where we’ve wandered away from God, and ask Him to shine a light on those and reveal them to us so we can confess them and leave them behind.