Praying to Make Our Requests

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Transcript:

Turn with me to Luke chapter 11. Luke chapter 11. As we’ve been in this series on prayer, as part of the broader series on prayer, we’ve started the last couple of weeks looking at ten reasons why we pray.

I know that says part 7, we’re really only up to part 4, why we pray. I was going to say, because there were three lessons before that. We’ve talked about praying to honor God.

Because until I started specifically looking at the scriptures and some of the reasons people prayed, I never really thought about praying for the express purpose of honoring God. We talked about praying to confess our sins, which quite honestly is something we need to spend more time doing than probably what we do. Because I don’t know about you, but I tend to fall into the habit, and I suspect most people do, tend to fall into the habit of talking to God.

And if we do bring up our sins at all, we try to justify them and say, Lord, I’m sorry for my sin, but, you know, she made me yell at her. Or, he made me take something that, you know, the whole thing the devil made me do, they used to say on television. Or, we try to call it anything but sin.

We try to play the word game with God. It’s a bad choice. It’s a mistake.

It’s, you know, it’s a habit. I can’t help it. Anyway, we need to pray and get serious with God about our sins and get on the same page with God.

But be honest with God about what He already knows. And we talked also last week, I think on Sunday night, about praying to give thanks. There should be a whole lot more thanksgiving involved in prayer than what there is.

Matter of fact, I think it wouldn’t be a bad idea. And I don’t say this because anybody else needs to do anything except tell me about it. Because I’m the one responsible for putting the prayer mess together on Wednesday nights.

But I think it would be a great idea if we had a section on there of praises. Places where God has answered prayer. Things to publicly give thanks to God for.

Maybe I’ll try to do that. There should be a whole lot more Thanksgiving involved in prayer than there is. And so far, the point has been each week that we need to stop looking at prayer as just an opportunity to go to God and take Him our grocery list to get filled and then walk away.

And now that hopefully I have you feeling sufficiently bad about going to God with requests, We come and look at it from the other side and say, it is all right, though, to make our request to God. Now, the problem is when we get that out of balance, and that’s all we do, that’s why I started with the others. But folks, there’s nothing wrong with making our request to God.

As a matter of fact, I believe it demonstrates our trust in Him. When we go to Him and say, Lord, I have this need. Now, folks, it’s not as though God doesn’t already know.

We know that He does. But sometimes God’s waiting for us to ask. And I can’t tell you exactly why that is.

But the Bible tells us we have not because we ask God. And folks, it is okay to make our request to God, otherwise he wouldn’t tell us to. And so we look today at Luke chapter 11, starting in verse 5, and it says, And he said unto them, Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at midnight, and say unto him, Friend, lend me three loaves.

For a friend of mine in his journey has come to me, and I have nothing to set before him. And he from within shall answer and say, Trouble me not, the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot rise and give thee.

But I say unto you, though he will not rise and give him, because he is his friend, though he will not rise and give him because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity, he will rise and give him as many as he needeth. And what he’s talking about here is that we all think there should be friends. We should be able to call on day and night.

We tell people, call me any time, day or night. And I would love to see some kind of statistic on what percentage of the time that that’s said to people actually mean call me any time day or night. But he says here, if you have a friend who you think you can call on in the middle of the night, you go to him in the middle of the night and say, I need three loaves of bread because I have another friend coming in and I have nothing to give him.

Well, folks, that would have been a big deal. We think, what’s the big deal? They’re coming in, they can get something in the morning. In Middle Eastern culture, then as now, bad hospitality is just about the worst crime.

just about the worst social transgression you could make. You may be a liar, you may be a thief, but don’t you dare be a bad host. As a matter of fact, I’ve been told that in some Arab cultures today, if you even admire somebody when you’re, if you admire something when you’re a guest in someone’s home, that they’re supposed to give it to you. So next time you go to your Arab friend’s house and admire their big screen TV or something.

But you’re expected to show great hospitality. And so for him to say, a friend is coming to my house after a long journey, and I have nothing, I have no food to set up for him, this was a big deal. This was an emergency. I just want you to understand why it’s such a big deal that he would say, I need loaves of bread.

Because we would look at that and say, your friend wants three loaves of bread. That’s more just a want to be able to have that much bread to set up. I’d love to have a million dollars to share with all my friends, but that’s more of a want than a need at this point.

And for them, this was a big deal. This was an emergency. And he says, how many of you would go to your friend and say, I need three loaves of bread to share with this one who’s coming on a long journey and knock on the door and have him say, I’m not going to get up. The house is locked down.

Again, that would have been a bigger thing in their culture because now we have electric lights, now we have police. The night is not quite as scary as it was for them. You know, you have all kinds of threats.

prowling animals, marauders, and the nighttime was a very scary place. And to have this friend say, I’m not getting out of bed, I’m not unlocking my door, I’m not disturbing my children, I’m not doing all that just to take care of you, your little breadcrumbs, and I’m not going to do it even though I am your friend. If just for the simple act of friendship, just for the simple fact that they are friends, he would not meet this request, the Bible said the friend would do it because the man was persistent.

So the friendship wasn’t enough to get the man out of bed to give him bread, but the fact that he kept knocking and kept begging and kept asking, pleading at the man’s door was enough to get him to get out of bed and get the loaves of bread to give to him so that he could have something prepared for his friend. And verse 9 says, And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you. Seek, and ye shall hide.

Knock, and it shall be opened unto you. Excuse me. And he gives another example here, one that’s a little more, probably a little more clear to us in our culture today.

If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent? Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?

So the question is asked here, what kind of father, if his son asks for bread, would give him a stone? No, if you can give your child bread, you’re going to give him bread. is what any good parent would do.

If he asks for a fish, you’re not going to give him a serpent. And I know that sounds strange, but I’ve been told there’s a kind of fish in that area that bears a resemblance to a serpent. I don’t know if they’re talking about an eel or what.

But if your son asks you for a fish, would you give him a snake? In my case, no, because I’d have to have the snake in order to give it to him, and that’s not happening. You all know that.

But if he asks me for a fish, would I give him a frog instead? No, I wouldn’t do that. If he asks for an egg, evidently there’s a scorpion over there that can roll itself up in a shape that looks like an egg.

But if you were to ask for an egg, would you give him a scorpion? Folks, there’s no father in here. There’s no father I know anywhere who would in his right mind do those things.

Now notice I said in his right mind. Of course not. That’s not what a father does.

And that doesn’t mean fathers are perfect. That doesn’t mean fathers are of sinless motives. and sometimes you give your kids what they need or what they ask just because they won’t leave you alone until you do.

But he says there in verse 13, If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him? He says, If you, being evil, give good gifts to your children, how much better, essentially, is the Father? And now he’s not saying that we are all just criminals, animals, But what he’s saying is that in comparison to God, in contrast to God, we are evil.

Because we have sinned. The Bible says that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Not one of us is as good as God.

Not one of us is good enough for God. Because God’s standard is absolute, 100%, complete, sinless, moral perfection. And even one sin is enough to make us fall short of that standard.

And I submit to you, there’s not even one of us who has only one sin. We’d probably be doing well if it was one sin an hour. Most of us can’t even manage to get the numbers that well.

If we as fallen sinful men who don’t have the perfect love that God has, and don’t have the perfect generosity that God has, and don’t have the perfect grace that God has, if we as fallen sinful people can manage to give good gifts to our children, how much better is God at it than we are? And this verse really hits home for me when I’m thinking about denying something to my kids for no reason. Not just for meanness, but you know, a lot of times the instinct is just to tell them no. Sometimes I’ll tell my son no, and then think there’s no reason for me to tell him no. He can have that.

And for right now, his favorite thing in the world, favorite place, favorite thing, is Chick-fil-A. And we get in the car, and he always wants to go to Chick-fil-A. And most of the time, I say no. because I don’t want to spend the money.

Or, you know, we need to eat at home. Or, I just want to go home. Or, it’s not lunchtime.

Or, it’s Sunday. Or, whatever reason, and I tell it, no, we can’t go. And sometimes I think, you know, we were planning to go home and eat.

We had stuff laid out to fall. Yeah, I want to go home. I’m tired.

It’s been a long day. But, you know what, let’s go eat there. It will make you happy.

I’m not saying I do that all the time. Because you also don’t want to spoil your kids. But every once in a while we do things that we don’t feel like doing, that we don’t want to do just to make our kids happy.

Or might be one way. Y’all do that? Folks, if we, who are not perfect, I do not have the perfect fatherly love.

I’m selfish and I really admit it. I hate that about me. But I really admit it.

I’m selfish and I’m sinful. I’m not a perfect father the way God is. But if even I can manage to give my children good gifts, if even I can manage to give them what they need, sometimes even what they want, then how much more generous is our Father here again?

And it says here, and he’s speaking not only about material needs, but speaking about spiritual needs as well, he says, how much more shall your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them? And if I have made you afraid of seeming unspiritual, if you take God on a list of needs, well, part of that was to give us to understand there’s more to prayer than that. But we also need to go back and correct that.

because even though that’s not our primary focus, this passage of our letters makes it clear that it is not only acceptable to take our request to God, but that it’s actually encouraged. God encourages us to take our request to Him. And sometimes we pray to make our request known to God.

So first of all, this morning we pray, we bring our request to God because He’s listening. Folks, we know God is listening because He encourages us to bring our petitions to hear. It says here that he’s willing to hear.

And I know God here, it looks like a comparison where it says God is like this lazy friend, or God is like this imperfect father. But what it is, it’s actually a contrast saying God is even more generous. God is even more willing to hear.

God is even more inclined to grant our petitions than the imperfect father or the lazy friend. I don’t know if lazy is the right way to characterize it, but the friend who doesn’t want to get out of bed in the middle of the night. God is even better.

And God encourages us to ask, and by implication there, meaning is God wants us to ask because God is listening. I know we talked about this song last week when we talked about giving thanks. That one of the reasons we have to give thanks to God is because He hears us.

And as we go through this series on prayer, there’s going to be a lot of overlap in some of these areas. And that’s okay because, I don’t know about you, but sometimes it takes me hearing things more than once to really for it to sink in. But if you’ll recall back to last Sunday night, we talked about what a privilege it is that God hears us.

And that God is listening. When we look back all the way to Genesis, and we think to how the human race has treated God ever since the Garden of Eden. That God created us not because he needed us, not because something was lacking from him, but because he desired our fellowship and our worship.

And so God created us to walk in this relationship of perfect love and perfect fellowship with him and gave us the one rule. Gave Adam and Eve the one rule not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And folks, they couldn’t even manage that.

And understand, the problem was not, the problem didn’t begin, I should say, with the physical act of eating the fruit. The problem for the human race began with the internal rebellion against God. He said, I’m going to do what I want no matter what you say.

That led to them eating that apple. We don’t close an apple. That led to them eating that fruit.

And folks, for 6,000 years now, the human race has been in rebellion against God. God’s law has been broken in every conceivable way. And is broken in every conceivable way throughout this world every day.

God has been maligned and attacked. And if you don’t believe me, a lot of times you need to go no further than opening the editorial page of the paper. Because I’ve shared some of those letters with you.

God is maligned. Even in pulpits across this country, I still can’t believe it. I preached about it two years ago when I came here at View of a Call.

I’m still as shocked by it now as I was then. That in pulpits across this country, God is still maligned. He’s called a trauma queen.

He’s called a cosmic child abuser. That is not the God of the Bible. Amen.

All right, got a little mad there for a second. God’s law is broken. God’s law is maligned.

The human race has done everything we can to thumb our noses and stick our tongues out at a holy God. And you know what? If he had never sent Jesus Christ to die on the cross for us, and if he had let us die and go to an eternity in hell separate from him, he would have been completely justified in doing so.

Given the third of the evil, he had turned his back on the human race and said, you’re not going to hear anything more from me. You all just kill each other off. Folks, he would have been completely justified.

God was under no obligation to restore the relationship. We think God owes us something. God was under no obligation to restore the relationship that was broken between him and me.

And yet out of his goodness and out of his mercy, he made it possible for us to have a relationship with him. Through Jesus Christ, that not only entails salvation and eternal life in heaven, but entails peace with God and a restored relationship with him while we’re here on earth. And we didn’t do a thing to earn that or to deserve that.

It is a privilege that God has bestowed on us. It’s a precious gift that God has bestowed on us through Jesus Christ. What an awesome privilege it is. Not something to be taken lightly.

Not something to be neglected or abused. But an awesome and precious privilege to be able to speak to the very God who made us. And to have his assurance that he’s listening.

No matter how we feel. Sometimes we feel like our prayers just hit the ceiling. But folks, it doesn’t matter how we feel.

It doesn’t matter what we think about it. It doesn’t matter what we perceive. What matters is the promise of God that He hears His children.

He tells us here in verses 9 and 10, I say unto you, ask and it shall be given to you. Seek and ye shall find. Knock and it shall be opened unto you.

Folks, He tells us to ask. He tells us to make a request. Because he purifies. Because he’s listening.

Second of all this morning, we bring our request to God because he promises to meet our needs. You realize that God promises to meet our needs. I shared with you last week and I’ve shared with you before, but God did it and I enjoy talking about it.

At one point we lived off an amount of money so small that I went in for a job interview and the man did a spit tape and I told him how much we were making up to that point. He said, how do you live on that? I said, I don’t know.

God just somehow works it out. And we’d worry. Where were we going to buy groceries?

How were we going to pay the electric bill? There was one time early in our marriage, my mother had to go to Walmart and buy soap and things like that because we couldn’t even afford that. But you know what?

God always provided. I don’t know how he did. I don’t know how the math worked out, but God always provided.

Now, God did not promise to take care of all of our wants, but God promises to meet our needs. You may be sitting out there and saying, well, I’ve got such and such need that hasn’t been met. Where’s God then?

Well, first of all, you’re assuming God meets your needs and your timing. Sometimes His timing and our timing are completely different. And we think, God, this need needs to be taken care of today.

Well, God’s will is to say, I’m going to take care of it, but it’s not going to be today. It’s going to be in my time. Because He’s working in us for not only our good, but for His glory.

And sometimes also we get our wires crossed. We get our wires crossed and we get a little confused about the difference between needs and wants. Sometimes we can want something so badly it can feel like a need.

And we say, well, God, why haven’t you given me that? I really need that. It’s just a want.

Because God promises to meet our needs. I believe that more firmly today than I ever have before in my life. God promises to meet our needs, and God has a perfect track record of keeping His promises.

I heard somebody this week talking about how can you trust God, and I overheard two in Sunday school this morning a similar question being asked, and I don’t know who asked it. But how can you trust a God, or how can you get others to trust a God that they can’t see when people who we can’t see are not trustworthy? And my answer to that is that God has a perfect 100% track record of keeping His promises.

you read straight you read from Genesis straight on through the maps and every promise God has either kept or will keep in the future but there’s nothing that God has said I will do such and such on this day and it has not come to pass folks God has an absolutely perfect track record of keeping his promises and we can bring our request to God because he promises to meet our needs he tells us I will supply all of your needs on our riches and glory in Christ Jesus and he tells us here in verses again 9 and 10 I say unto you ask and it shall be given you seek and ye shall find knock and it shall be opened unto you for everyone that asketh receiveth and he that seeketh bindeth and to him that knocketh it shall be opened and one other thing I want to caution you on here and we know from the context of verse 13 he’s not just talking about physical needs but spiritual needs as well and folks whatever the need is God can mean it.

But one thing I want to caution you on is the teaching that has become prominent in our world today. The word of faith movement, this idea of name it and claim it, whatever you see is yours. And the idea behind the word of faith movement is that faith is a force and words are containers of that force.

And so whatever you speak, you can make happen. Or others will say, if you visualize it, if you visualize it, you can make it happen. And I’ve heard Even reputable evangelical preachers say in the latter.

Now, they wouldn’t say, if you speak it, it can happen. We reserve that for the charismatics. But I hear even evangelical preachers say, you know, just visualize what it is you’re asking God for and it becomes reality.

Folks, I spent all day yesterday, I’m surprised I can think straight today. I spent all day yesterday writing a paper on the Christian response to pantheism. And pantheism is the idea that God is all and all is God.

That there’s only one thing in the universe, only one being, one entity, one reality, and that that’s God, and we’re all extensions of that. If that sounds bizarre to you, it sounds bizarre to me too. But a lot of Eastern religions are based off that idea, and it’s growing in scope and popularity here in the West. And the idea that if you just speak it, it happens, or you visualize it, and it happens, is based on the idea that we are all part of God, that we’re all cut from the same cloth as God.

And that is completely foreign to what the Bible teaches. That is not Christianity. That is pantheism.

And it has no more business being taught in Christian pulpits and Christian churches than any other part of pantheism. Folks, the God of the Bible in his word does not say, speak it and it happens. Now we’re taught that words do have power.

Words have power to build people up, to destroy the tongue. It’s like a fire that gets out of control. We’re told that words have power, certainly.

And the idea that you can speak it and make it a reality, or that you can visualize it and make a reality, is not Christianity, it’s pantheism, and it’s unbiblical. The Bible tells us to speak to a personal God who is separate from us because He’s holy, and He’s righteous, and He’s completely different from us, but loves us and hears us and answers. And the third point this morning, He delights to answer. would bring our request to God because he delights to answer.

All through this, it would be very easy to look at these two pictures, the lazy friend and the imperfect father, and say, well, let’s draw on a comparison there, and God is like those, and he gives grudgingly. Sometimes if I have to pay for something, I take that cash out, and I just don’t want to quite let go of it. I give the money grudgingly, pay for it grudgingly, even with the debit card.

Hand it off slowly with cashier. don’t quite want to let go of it. Folks, God doesn’t give to us grudgingly.

God doesn’t give to his people spiritually when he meets our needs. God is not fighting against himself and his own nature. Because it tells us in verses 11 through 13, if a son asked for bread and you wouldn’t give him a stone, if he asked for fish and you wouldn’t give him a serpent, if he asked for an egg and you wouldn’t give him a scorpion, it says in verse 13, if he then being evil, if we being evil in contrast to God, know how to give good gifts unto your children.

How much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them and ask? Folks, what sometimes I give to my children grudgingly, say, okay, fine, let’s go to Chick-fil-A if it’ll make you happy. Or what sometimes I give or do, even though I really just don’t want to be bothered at that moment.

Or because I have other things to do. Folks, our God, is not like us in the way that He gives gifts to His children. Folks, He delights to.

Again, we go back to the fact that we don’t deserve anything from God. He’s under no obligation to give us any of the things that He does. God was also under no obligation to say, if you’ll ask me, I’ll give it to you.

Folks, God delights to answer His children’s prayers. It brings Him glory. I suspect it brings Him joy in the way that it brings us joy.

but maybe infinitely more joy since he’s perfect. Similar to the way it brings us joy when we see our children enjoying the new speaking. Folks, we are not told anywhere in the Bible that he’ll meet every want and he’ll meet every desire.

But we are told to bring our requests, bring our needs to him. And certainly, if we’re asking things according to his will, there’s the other test. If we’re asking things according to his will, he will meet our needs. He doesn’t do so grudgingly.

out of sense of obligation it’s because he’s good and he desires to.