The Discipline of Prayer

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My wife told me that a couple weeks ago at Ladies Coffee on Thursday that they have in here each week, she had mentioned to some of you ladies that she and I have never been to a movie theater together, and that y’all were shocked by that. By the way, she does not tell me everything that goes on in Ladies Coffee. She did mention that.

So most of your secrets are safe, as far as I know. But she did tell me that she had said that just as an offhanded comment, that we’ve never been to a movie theater together, and people were shocked by that. But the reason for that is that she and I are too talkative with each other.

And that just has always been the case since our first date. On our first date, we went to dinner out of town and talked the whole way there and talked the whole way back eight hours, and it just never has stopped since.

so we can’t go to movie theaters because people would want to shush us we uh we went to the philharmonic once and loved that but it was too much temptation to sit there and talk so imagine what she would think if all of a sudden I just didn’t talk to her or what I would think if she quit talking to me the last couple of weeks were a little bit trying for us while I was away at the convention and then at camp at falls creek you know when all these companies advertise nationwide coverage falls creek is apparently not part of america there is no reception or I’m sorry there is but you have to go out of the cabin walk up a hill find this particular pole like green acres and the I mean you don’t climb the pole but standing there by the pole you can you can make a phone call It was very challenging to talk to her that week and then the week before being in Indianapolis I could call her anytime But between my meeting schedule and her schedule of doing things for the kids You wouldn’t think a one-hour time difference would make that would be that big of a deal but when I was When I was getting myself and the older two kids ready and getting them to the convention center She was still asleep and trying to keep the little kids asleep And then when she’s free, she’s up and free to talk to me, we’re already in the meeting.

That one hour just threw everything off. And so we had lots of things stored up to say when we got home. It was a challenge to be out of communication in that way.

I know some of you have been off deployed somewhere in the service and it’s been way harder. This for us was about all we could manage. It was a challenge to be out of communication.

That’s how much she and I talk to each other. And so if she just all of a sudden quit talking to me, she don’t even quit talking to me when she’s mad. Draw your own conclusions.

But if she just stopped talking to me, something would be very wrong with our relationship. And folks, that’s how it’s supposed to be with us and the Lord. That’s how our communication is supposed to be with the Lord.

We are given the opportunity to communicate with the God who made us. And the relationship works best when we communicate with each other. Last week, I introduced you to the idea of spiritual disciplines.

Now, for some of you, that was not a new thing. For some of you, it may have been. But this idea that there are practices taught in Scripture that we engage in, that the Holy Spirit uses in our lives to grow us and to help us to mature and to become more like Jesus.

And as far as I understand it and describe it, not everything that people call spiritual disciplines are spiritual disciplines. Again, not according to the definition I would use. There may be things that are taught that are a good idea.

I think I mentioned to you that one of the lists I found online said journaling. Journaling may be a good idea, it may be helpful, but in and of itself I wouldn’t call it a spiritual discipline. We’re talking about things that are taught and commanded in Scripture.

We’re talking about things that put our focus on Jesus, not on some kind of subjective experience, oh, I got a feeling, that kind of thing, but things that actually help us to grow and mature in Jesus Christ. And we talked about the importance of Bible engagement, and then if you came back on Sunday night and Wednesday night, we walked through how can we go deeper in our study of the Bible. If we can do that, if we will be disciplined in our engagement with the Scriptures, if we will be faithful to read them not for what we feel like they mean, what we feel like they should mean, but what they actually say and what they actually teach, if we’ll be faithful to engage with that, God will change us and He will grow us and He will mature us. The second spiritual discipline that I want to look at this morning is prayer.

I realize that there was very little tension for you as, what is He about to bring up when it’s up here on the screen for you? But I want to talk about the discipline of prayer this morning. And so we’re going to be in Psalm 116.

This is one of many places in Scripture where we could have gone this morning to look at what it teaches about this conversation we have with God. But this is as good a starting place as any. So Psalm 116, and we’re going to look at the first five verses.

Once you find it, if you’d stand with me as we read together from God’s Word, Psalm 116, 1 through 5. If you don’t have your Bibles or can’t find Psalm 116, that’s all right. It’ll be here on the screen for you.

But here’s what King David says. He said, I love the Lord because He hears my voice and my supplications, because He has inclined His ear to me. Therefore, I shall call upon Him as long as I live.

The cords of death encompassed me, and the terrors of Sheol came upon me. I found distress and sorrow. Then I called upon the name of the Lord.

And he quotes what he said to the Lord. O Lord, I beseech you, save my life. Gracious is the Lord and righteous.

Yes, our God is compassionate. And you may be seated. I want to start in the middle of this section that we just read this morning.

Because as we read through this, I think it gives us a proper understanding of what prayer is. You know, a lot of times we are nervous, we’re scared to death to pray in front of people. Even sometimes when you ask somebody to pray silently, they’ll say, I don’t know how.

and this is wrong on my part but as somebody who’s been a Christian over 30 years I just think it’s not that hard come on, just pray for example, you’ve shared the gospel with somebody I try to not do the repeat after me thing not that it’s wrong but I just feel like if you’re asking for forgiveness ask, I want you to understand it’s not that hard just talk to the Lord and ask for forgiveness and so I’ll encourage somebody just pray and talk to him and many times I’ve gotten the answer, I don’t know how to pray. It’s just talking to the Lord. If you want forgiveness, ask Him.

Oh no, I don’t know how to do that. I think we make it too hard. Even sometimes as Christians, we may get called on to pray in front of a Sunday school class or pray a blessing over the food or heaven forbid, get asked to pray in the service and we panic because what if I don’t say the right words?

What if I mess up? What if I mess up up here all the time? You just fix it and go on.

say what you meant to say and go on. But we, for some reason, and if you’re in this boat, I’m not trying to make you feel bad because I have done the same thing. For some reason, we make it way more complicated than it has to be.

Prayer is simple. Prayer is simple. It’s a conversation with God.

There is a sense in which prayer is very, very simple. And we see this in David’s description of his prayer life. It’s consistent throughout this passage.

David presents himself as a weak person. He presents himself as a humble man who’s talking to God about his struggles. I think sometimes we go to God and we think we have to speak King James English, Shakespearean English.

Jojo, for whatever reason, has started the last few weeks pronouncing the E-D at the end of every word. Sometimes even when they don’t need to be there. I sleep it.

You think of a word in the past tense that ends in E. D. And she’ll say the E.

D. even where we just say. And I told Charla, I said, every time she speaks, she sounds like she’s in a Shakespearean drama.

I don’t understand what’s happening here. We almost get the impression that when we pray, that’s what we’re supposed to do. Oh, Lord God, thou art, you know.

And most of us don’t do the these and thous in everyday speech. If you do, I want to talk to you because that sounds interesting how you got there. But we think we’ve got to have exactly the right words, and we’ve got to come to God so incredibly polished.

I was telling Benjamin the other day about a man that I heard get up and give reports at a meeting, and he was the new guy leading this ministry. And I remember from the first time he got up and gave this report, it sounded like the entire thing was memorized and meticulously rehearsed, almost like it was recorded. There were no ums, there were no uhs.

in this 20-minute presentation. He’s going over numbers and figures, and there wasn’t a stumble. There wasn’t a hesitation.

I mean, it was, aside from the fact that the subject matter was a little boring talking about finances, the presentation was beautiful. And I was telling Benjamin last week about that guy, and I said, we can’t all be that guy. Sometimes we think that’s what we’ve got to do when we pray, that it’s got to sound like the most rehearsed, eloquent thing we’ve ever done in our lives.

Like we’ve got to put on a show when we come to the Lord. Like we have to come to the Lord acting as though and looking as though we’ve got everything in our lives put together. And we’ve got all of our words ready to just pour out in this beautiful, almost play.

And it doesn’t have to be that way. David said in verse 3, he’s talking to the Lord, he said, the cords of death encompassed me and the terrors of Sheol came upon me. I found distress and sorrow.

This is not a man whose entire life is put together. This is not a man coming to God as though he’s got everything figured out. This is a man who’s coming to God in the realness and the brokenness of his everyday life.

And for David, there were seasons when that was everyday life, that he was threatened with death. The cords of death encompassed me. There were numerous times that David’s life was threatened.

He says that the terrors of Sheol came upon me. Sheol is a Hebrew word for the grave. He’s talking about fear of death and fear of the grave.

You want to talk about coming to God and being real. He’s talking here about being afraid of death. Well, as believers, we’re not supposed to be afraid of death. I get that.

As believers, we’re not supposed to admit to fear of death. I get that. But no matter how much we trust God, somewhere in the back of our minds is usually a fear, even a little bit of fear, about what that looks like or what the experience is going to be like before we open our eyes and see Jesus.

There’s some fear there. David is coming to the Lord and being real about his struggles, his practical struggles that, hey, there are people trying to kill me. My life is a mess.

And his inward struggles of this terror that he faces at the prospect of his own death. He says at the end of verse 3, I found distress and sorrow. We’re taught to keep everything positive and upbeat.

Put on a face and come into the Lord’s house and come to the Lord like you have no problems at all. David here is being honest and saying, I look around me and all I see is distress and sorrow. Have you ever been in that place in your life?

I have. I’m sure you have. So what did he do?

He says in verse four, then I called upon the name of the Lord. David didn’t try to get his life together first and then cry out to the Lord. He didn’t try to get himself together, put together to organize his thoughts, rehearse his words, and then cry out to the Lord.

David in the midst of his struggles and in the midst of the mess that his life was and the mess that he was, David said, then I cried out to the Lord. And folks, that’s what prayer is. Prayer is an honest conversation with God.

Prayer is an honest conversation with God from where we really are, from who we really are. And we have to fight the idea that we have to come and put on some kind of show with the Lord. I can think of times of praying to the Lord about situations I was worried about and praying about it and saying, Lord, it’s not that I don’t trust you.

It’s just that I, and you start trying to justify things to the Lord and you start trying to explain why you’re fine and what you’re doing. You know what? Come to the Lord and admit who you really are and what’s really going on.

Lord, I want to trust you, but I’m finding it incredibly difficult in this situation. Take off the mask, have a conversation with the Lord. I think part of our aversion to prayer is because we make it more work than it ought to be when we think we have to put on that show.

Instead, we come to the Lord and have an honest conversation. The best examples we find of prayer and scripture are the places where somebody’s being humble, and they’re being genuine, and they’re expressing their dependence on God. I think of the situation that Jesus talked about where there was a tax collector and a Pharisee that had gone into the temple.

And the Pharisee looks around and sees all the little people and says, thank you, Lord, that I’m not like them. He’s going to the Lord trying to show his goodness. Maybe trying to convince the Lord of his goodness.

Maybe even trying to convince himself of his goodness. Meanwhile, the tax collector, in all his wickedness, Jesus said he could not even bring himself to look up to the heavens, but he knelt there in the temple and he cried and he beat his chest and said, Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner. He’s being honest with the Lord about where he stood and what he needed.

He was having, the Pharisee was putting on a show for the Lord. The tax collector was having a conversation. We see this with Jesus.

Jesus is God in human flesh, and yet even he pours out his heart to the Father. Prayer is an honest conversation, not a show. That’s important to note in church life because of the, and I’m not telling you this this morning so that I have more people to call on when it comes time for corporate prayer.

I’m telling you this because it’s true. It does apply to that situation, but it also applies to our own personal prayer lives. Sometimes we will shy away from prayer because we don’t have the energy to put on the show.

David here gives us a good example. Leave the show behind, take the mask off, and just have a conversation with the Lord. Prayer is simple.

On the other hand, though, even in that simplicity, prayer is profound. We go back to the first part of this psalm that we looked at. Prayer is profound.

It’s an incredible privilege we’ve been given. Just because it’s something that’s simple doesn’t mean that it’s something we ought to neglect or ignore or treat like it’s a simple thing. David, you go back to the beginning of this passage, and David, he viewed it as a remarkable thing that we would be able to have this conversation with God.

Yes, prayer is just that. It’s a conversation with God. but don’t forget it’s a conversation with God.

The simplicity is in the fact that it’s just a conversation. The profoundness is in who it’s a conversation with. It’s a conversation with God.

Verses one and two, I love the Lord because he hears my voice. You know, it’s not a remarkable thing to me that my wife hears me and listens to me. She might say it’s a remarkable thing when I listen to her when it happens.

But folks, we don’t look at each other and say, as humans, we don’t say, Oh, thank you for hearing me. We’re basically on the same level playing field, or we ought to be. It shouldn’t be that remarkable that somebody is willing to listen to your situation.

But the fact that God would listen to our prayers when He doesn’t have to, it inspired love and it inspired loyalty in David. He said, I love the Lord because He hears my voice and my supplications. Those supplications are pleadings.

He said, why would I love the Lord? I love the Lord because He hears me. Because when I come to Him with this desperate need that I have, He’s willing to listen.

And verse 2 says, because He has inclined His ear to me. Now this idea of inclining the ear tells us that God is actually eager to listen to what we have to say. God is eager for us to talk to Him.

And again, that may not sound that remarkable. I’m eager to talk to Charla. I’m eager to talk to my kids most of the time.

The only reason I say that is because my kids can talk a lot, especially when there’s five of them coming at you. I’m eager to listen to my kids. I’m eager to listen to my wife.

But God being eager to listen to us is an entirely different situation because God doesn’t owe us that. That’s what David’s talking about here. David is amazed.

When you think about who God is, it’s amazing that He wants anything to do with us. When you think of His power, when you think of His mind, look out, look beyond this blue dot we live on into the enormity of the universe and look at the power that created that, the power that designed all of that, the power that holds all of that together. Look at the power that spoke all of that into existence.

Look at the one who has shaped all of human history. The power who says he moves kings around and moves nations and empires. The one who says he holds them all in the palm of his hand.

Think about all that he has to do. Think of everything that’s at his disposal. Think of everything that he could think of to occupy his time otherwise. And then realize that that God wants to talk to you.

That’s amazing. I don’t deserve that. And then, but wait, there’s more, you know, the infomercial thing.

Add on top of that, that despite the fact that that God loved us enough to create us and want to have a relationship with us, consider the fact that we as a species rebelled against Him and still do so on a daily basis. And realize that God, if He had looked at us and said, you know what, y’all are too much trouble, y’all enjoy hell, we’re done here. If He had said that, He would have been completely justified.

He wouldn’t be doing anything other than what we deserve. And yet that God loved us enough to make a way to restore the relationship and still want to have fellowship with us. That is amazing.

It’s an incredible privilege we have that that God would incline his ear to us. That picture there that David gives us is of one actually leaning over to get closer so he can hear. Now, God doesn’t have to physically lean over and get closer to us.

It’s a picture so we understand that God is eager to talk to you, not because He needs to, but because He wants to, because He loves us, because He has inclined His ear to me. And David recognized that prayer being that kind of privilege is not something we should take lightly. That’s why he says at the end of verse 2, Therefore I shall call upon Him as long as I live.

I found somebody like that who I shouldn’t even have access to, on paper, is so distant from me, both in terms of his might and power, but also in terms of his holiness. And here I am in my weakness and my frailty and my sinfulness. And yet that God wants to hear from me anyway.

I’m never going to stop talking to him, is what David’s saying. And folks, that’s true of us too. That’s not just true of King David.

You say, oh, you don’t know what I’ve done. You don’t know what sins I’ve committed. Maybe not, but I know what sins David committed.

I know David had an affair and murdered a man to cover it up. I know David made a mess out of his whole family in ways that lasted for generations. David did a lot of messed up stuff.

Now, you might have a past that’s as bad as King David, I don’t know. But you don’t have a past that’s worse than King David. And if God was willing to incline His ear toward King David, that same God has inclined His ear toward you.

Because of that, we should maintain an open line of communication with God. Because it is so simple that we can do it anywhere we are. I laugh because on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, there’s a rule because it’s owned by a Muslim group and it now houses the Dome of the Rock, one of the holiest mosques in Islam.

There’s a rule on that mountain, and I think there are signs up to this effect, that non-Muslims are not allowed to pray on that mountain because they’re trying to avoid World War III breaking out. and people have thrown a fit about this. We can’t go up there and do our prayers.

And here’s why I say I laugh, because the realization that I as a Christian can walk through there and pray, and they never know. Well, now somebody’s going to pull up this video, and if I ever get to Jerusalem, they’re not going to let me on the Temple Mount. But you don’t have to take a particular posture.

It doesn’t have to be. It can be hands folded, head bowed on your knees. But just as you’re walking around, just as you’re driving down the street, just as you’re doing anything, as you’re washing dishes.

I have some of my best prayer times when I’m out mowing the yard. You can pray anytime, anywhere. It’s that simple, but it’s that profound that the God of the universe wants to hear from you.

And so we should maintain that open line of communication because we can. God has given us prayer to use. He wants us to use it.

We look at it, I think, too many times as an obligation. We look at it as a burden. Oh, I haven’t prayed today.

I guess I better pray. I’ve probably been guilty of that myself. It’s our fleshly human nature.

But folks, the reality is we get to pray. We get to have that open line of communication. It’s a tremendous gift that God has given us to use, and it actually benefits us.

Look at what he says in verse 4 here. He said, Then I called upon the name of the Lord. O Lord, I beseech you, save my life.

David’s writing about this after it happened. So guess what that tells us? God did what he asked.

If David was still alive to write that, then when he prayed, God spare my life, God did. And we don’t know if this is one of the situations where David was under threat of death because he was in the right early on in his dealings with Saul, or if this is one of the situations where David was under threat of death because he’d messed up like later when his own son tried to kill him. We don’t know exactly what he’s right now about here.

But he prayed to God, spare my life, save my life, and God did. Here’s the thing, verse 4 teaches us, prayer can change your circumstances. God has given us prayer as a tool to use to cry out to Him when we need something.

That’s what we typically think of prayer as being. And sometimes that pendulum swings too far one way or the other, where we’re just constantly, we’re looking at it like God is our wish list. Like I’m constantly telling Alexa, add such and such to the grocery list, and then it just magically appears in the kitchen. No, Charla orders it, and it gets picked up.

But hey, we look at God as Alexa. Hey, I add it to the list, and there it is. And sometimes the pendulum swings too far the other way, and we say, in reaction to that, oh, we shouldn’t be asking God for stuff all the time.

God told us to. Now, we need to be careful the kinds of things we ask God for. It’s not a blanket promise He’s going to give us everything we want, and that shouldn’t be what the whole relationship is.

But God wants us to depend on Him, and He wants us to ask Him for what we need. That’s perfectly okay to do, as long as we recognize that it all has to be in accordance with His will. I think we understand that we can pray for our circumstances to change, and prayer sometimes can change our circumstances.

But look at verse 5. He says, Gracious is the Lord, and righteous. Yes, our God is compassionate.

See, some of David’s times with prayer gave him a different perspective on God and his work. So verse 4 tells us that prayer can change our circumstances, but verse 5 tells us that prayer will change us. I think that’s more important.

The older I get, the more I see that that’s more important. I can’t tell how many times I’ve prayed to God about something and said, I don’t know specifically what to ask here, but I don’t like what’s going on. I don’t like what I’m dealing with.

So Lord, either change these circumstances or change me. And I tell you what, sometimes He’ll change the circumstances a whole lot more often He changes me. And that change is to help me see things from His perspective.

Is to help bring my heart in line with His will. And folks, that’s always a win. Even if our circumstances don’t change.

If you’re getting closer to God and seeing things from His perspective, if you’re able to be changed to where you walk more like Jesus, that’s a win. And David’s looking at his circumstances and whether God did everything he asked or not. He said, God is gracious and righteous.

Notice that, God’s righteous. What God does is always right, even when it doesn’t feel right to us. God is gracious and He’s righteous and He’s compassionate.

God cares. Sometimes we just need to understand, and our prayer life helps us do this, that even when we’re going through difficult circumstances, that we don’t understand why we’re still in them and why He’s not changing them and why He’s not doing what we want Him to do. Sometimes just that remembrance that God is compassionate and that even when we don’t understand what we’re walking through, we understand who He is.

And we can trust Him to have our best interest at heart. Sometimes our prayer life has to change us to that point of just recognizing who God is. And I can’t tell you in how many of those prayers I’ve been praying selfishly and whining to God and gotten convicted in that prayer time and just stopped and said, Lord, you know, you’re right, and I shouldn’t be feeling this way.

And God begins to do a work in my heart. As we keep that open line of communication with God, as we go to Him in prayer and we keep that conversation going, God will sometimes change our circumstances. But more importantly, more importantly to your spiritual walk, more importantly to His plans for you, God will change you.

God will change you to be in line with His plan for you. And then I want to end up here this morning with just the reminder that the reason this is possible, the reason we have this direct access is because of Jesus Christ. We have direct prayer access to the Father because of Jesus Christ. Even in David’s day, really, he had to go through a priest. He had to go through sacrifices. He had to go through the temple.

Folks, Jesus Christ is our high priest. Jesus Christ is the sacrifice. Because of Jesus Christ, we’re the temple now. The Apostle Paul wrote about that a few times in 1 Corinthians that we just recently studied.

And it’s for that reason that Ephesians 3, 11, and 12 tell us this was in accordance with the eternal purpose which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and confident access through faith in Him. The reason that you and I can draw near to the Father, the reason why you and I can come to Him in prayer, that we can come confidently with the understanding that He’s going to hear us, is because of Jesus Christ. Even in David’s day, he was looking forward to the Messiah who was going to come. There are going to be times that you feel like, well, God wouldn’t care what little old me has to say.

Or you might think, I’m just unworthy to even come to the Father. You’re right. We all are.

But our access to the Father is not based on anything we’ve earned or deserved. It’s not based on anything we’ve done. It’s based on the access that Jesus Christ paid for.

And now he tells us that we can come directly to the Father because of Him. If you’re a believer in Jesus Christ, if you’ve trusted in Him as your Savior, you have that access to the Father. Not just when you feel it, not just when you’re at church, you can talk to the Lord, you can pray to Him at any time of day or night, and He hears you.

But if you’ve never trusted in Christ as your Savior, that’s where it starts. That first prayer you need to utter, and that first prayer He’s going to hear is, Lord, forgive me and save me because of what Jesus Christ did. See, our sin separates us from a holy God.

Jesus Christ came and took responsibility for your sin. Everything you’ve ever thought, said, done, or not done that displeased God, Jesus Christ took responsibility for and paid for on the cross when He shed His blood and died for you. Now that slate is wiped clean and the door is wide open for you to come to the Father.

If you simply believe that Jesus died for your sins and rose again to prove it and you ask forgiveness because of what Jesus Christ has done. You’ll have it, and that line of communication will be open where you can come to the Father anytime.