Praying to Make Our Requests

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Transcript:

Glad y’all are here tonight. We’re going to be in Luke chapter 11 tonight. Luke chapter 11, as you’re turning there.

We’ve been looking some on Sunday nights at reasons the Bible gives us for prayer. And not from the standpoint for most of you, I’m sure that you need to be convinced why prayer is important. I think most Christians believe it’s important, even if we don’t always act like it’s important.

We at least know in our minds it’s important. We know we should do it more often. We know we should be more committed.

We should be more consistent in it. And so I’m not bringing these things to your attention to try to convince you that prayer is important and here are the reasons why you should do it. But maybe to talk about prayer and the reasons for prayer to give us some ideas of things to pray about.

And I’ve given you the example week after week of John Wesley. It still amazes me that the man would get up and pray for four hours every day before he’d start his work. I can’t even imagine finding four quiet hours in the total in the course of the day, let alone four hours at once, and how he said toward the end of his life that he felt like he had grown lazy because he would stay in bed past 5 30 instead of getting up and praying, and I think that’s just crazy.

Even when I go and sort of pour my heart out to God, I feel like I run out of things to say after about 30 minutes at the longest usually, and I think a lot of us are in the same boat. We know prayer is important. We wish we were more consistent in it, but we get to a point where we just think, okay, what do I pray now?

And so we’ve talked about some of the reasons to pray. Praying to bring glory to God. I mean, we rarely think about prayer just as an exercise of praise.

We think of praise and worship as something that we do at the beginning of a church service when we sing. Worship is how we live our lives, ladies and gentlemen, and praise is any time that we go to God and telling how great he is and that includes in times of prayer as well. If we spend time in prayer telling God, hey, I love you and these are the reasons why, these are the reasons I’m impressed and amazed by you, that’s a good place to start our prayer.

There’s prayer to confess our sins. Instead of dancing around it and pretending it’s something it’s not or sugarcoating terms and saying, well, it’s just a bad choice, right? I had an oops.

Let’s just call it sin. God knows what it is. God knows what’s in our hearts.

Let’s just be honest with him. Our relationships with each other work best when we’re honest, I maintain, and so does our relationship with God when we’re honest. Then there is praying to give thanks. Praying to give thanks.

To not just ask God for things all the time, but to thank him for the things that he’s done. We forget that a lot of times. We’ll pray and pray and pray and say, God, can you please do this?

Would you please, God, I’ll be so thankful if you’ll just do this, if you’ll just do X, Y, and Z. And then when he does it, I go, well, that was good. That was nice.

And we just go on. And I do this as well. And I sometimes remember days later, oh, you know, I asked God for that and it happened.

Maybe I have to go back and say thank you. So we’ve got several reasons, and this is not the last of them, but several reasons to pray and several things that we can go to God about as we pray. Tonight, I want to talk to you about praying, praying to make our requests known, praying to make our requests known.

In each of these messages so far, I’ve talked to you about how it is not desirable that we, that our prayer life revolve around taking our grocery list to God, that there ought to be more to our prayer life than just going to God and saying, I want this, I want this, I want this, can you do this for me? I need this. And we can get to the point, we can get to the point where we look so much at, and how we do that wrong and we sort of do that in excess.

And that’s all our prayer life is, that we can get to the point where we feel bad about going to God in prayer to make our requests known. But if in the last three weeks or however long we’ve been looking at prayer, if I’ve made you feel sufficiently guilty now about going to God with your requests, now we bring the pendulum back the other way and say that there is room still for making our requests known to God. Should not be 100% of our prayer life.

Shouldn’t be 90% or whatever it is of our prayer life. But there is room for making our request known to God. Because he tells us to.

I mean, how many times in the Bible does it say, you have not because you ask not. Or some variation on that theme. God wants us to make our wishes and desires known to him.

Now, he will not necessarily grant us everything we wish or desire. He says that if we will follow him, he will give us the desires of our heart. And that doesn’t mean that if I desire a new pickup, that God is immediately going to furnish a new pickup.

When my desires are in line with Him, though, and I pray for the things that I desire, and my heart is in line with the things He desires, He delights to answer those requests. And some might say, well, that sounds very selfish. God isn’t going to give us what we want unless we want what He wants.

But you know what? What God wants is best for us anyway. We’re better off getting what God wants.

But when we ask things according to God’s will, He tells us that he will hear and answer. And so we’re going to look tonight at this concept of praying to make our requests known to God. We’re going to move through it fairly quickly.

I hope, I hope. But the more times I say that, the less likely it is. So let’s just get into it.

Luke chapter 11, verse 5. And he said unto them, this is Jesus speaking, Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go to 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.

This would be a major problem, as I’ve said before, in the culture of the Middle East, then as today, hospitality is one of the highest virtues, and one of the worst things you can do is be a bad host. It is such to the extent that even in the Arab countries today, if you go into some, I’m told, if you go into someone’s house as a guest and you admire something, they’re supposed to give it to you. Now, as they become more westernized, they may lose some of that. But I’m told, though, that you’re expected to do that as well.

Hospitality is very important in their culture, in the Middle Eastern culture. And when somebody would come to you, you would put out a big spread. I mean, it would be the greatest insult to you if somebody were to be able to leave your home hungry because you had not supplied sufficiently.

And so Jesus points out here and says, who of you would have a friend and go to him at midnight and say, can you lend me some bread because I have somebody at my house and have nothing to share with them? That would be a real crisis. We think, so what?

We can run down to Walmart. It’s open 24 hours. Maybe not here.

I don’t know. No? They need to get with the program.

Tell you what, that is so handy having a 24-hour grocery store. We can just run down to the grocery store. Or they’ll eat in the morning.

What’s the big deal? No, when somebody got to your house, it was a matter of highest importance that you had something to put out before them. So what he’s saying here is somebody’s in a real crisis and going to their neighbor.

And going at midnight, I might add. Now, I’ve watched recently a documentary on why they think human beings are afraid of the dark these days. Not these days, but just by nature, we’re afraid of the dark.

And one of the explanations they gave was for the dangers that tend to come out at night. And they explained that back before we had all the gadgets and TV and could stay up later, people would go to bed so much earlier and sleep with the sun. And because of that, they would get up in the middle of the night.

They’d sort of break the sleep up. They’d get up around midnight, and they’d cook. They’d do house cleaning.

They’d do all sorts of things like that. And yet they would do this thing called shutting in, where they’d bolt the door. closed the shutters.

Nobody was getting in or out unless it was a life or death situation. And some of us still do that. To go to somebody at midnight, they’re shut in because there are thieves, there are robbers, there are all sorts of things, there are killers.

You just never know what’s on the prowl at that time of night, especially in the days before they had the streetlights like we might now. And so you go to this friend’s house and not only was it a major deal for you not to have the bread to give to the guest, But it’s a major deal for him. I mean, you’ve really got to know somebody well for him to open that door for you.

And so he says, who of you would go to a friend and say, 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. Verse 7, 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. So the door’s bolted. I’m sorry, we are all shut down for the night.

The kids are here in bed. We’re going to wake up the kids. Plus, you know, you just don’t open the door at this time.

I say unto you, 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. So what he’s saying here in verse 8 is if the friend won’t open the door and give you the bread just because of your friendship, if you knock loud enough and long enough, he’s going to open the door and give you the bread just to get you off of his porch. And that’s true in a lot of cases.

Sometimes people will give us what we want just to shut us up. And he draws a comparison here in verse 9 and says, And 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 findeth, and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.

And in another place in the Gospels, he gives the example of the widow woman, I believe, who goes to the judge and seeking justice for some wrong that’s been done to her, and he won’t listen to her, he doesn’t have time, she’s not important enough, whatever, whatever reason. And yet she asks and asks and asks and asks and asks until the judge just can’t take it anymore, get this woman away from me, so I’ll do whatever she’s asking me to do. And he draws the parallel here and says, if even the unrighteous judge would grant a request because of the persistence of the petitioner, How much more will the righteous judge, how much more will our Father in heaven grant the requests of the petitioner?

So he says here in verses 9 and 10, Ask and it shall be given to you. Seek and ye shall find. Knock and it shall be opened unto you.

For everyone that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth, and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. Now this is not a blanket promise by God to give us everything we ever desire. But again, when we are praying for the things that we need, God will not forsake us in our needs.

Now, our needs can very easily be confused with our wants. Sometimes our wants can even look like needs. And God says, no, that’s not absolutely vital. But God does not forsake us in our needs.

He tells us that he will supply every need by his riches and glory in Christ Jesus. Can’t tell you how many times my bills have been paid by that verse. But God always supplies our needs.

And when we ask things according to his will, he delights to answer and to grant those things. And he says in verse 11, going on with this same theme, 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? Now that sounds like a terrible father to me. The son comes and says, I’m hungry, will you give me some bread?

Here’s a rock instead. Really? What kind of father does that?

I mean, it’s one thing to say, no, get away from me, but to taunt him and say, here you go, only for him to find out I can’t bite into this, or if I do, I’m going to break all my teeth. That’s terrible. Or if he asks for a fish, I’m told that in this part of the world, in their part of the world, in the Middle East, there’s some kind of fish that looks like a snake.

Now, I’ve not looked it up because I don’t want to see the pictures. I only see things like that in my nightmares. I don’t do well with snakes, if you haven’t figured that out.

I can’t imagine a father being asked for a fish and saying, here you go. Surprise, it’s really a snake. Oh my goodness, what kind of person does that?

Or if he asks for an egg, we’ll offer him a scorpion. And again, I’m told there’s a scorpion that’s sort of egg-shaped. Again, can’t even imagine.

These are those things that appear only in my nightmares. And yet what Jesus is saying here is that even though fathers are imperfect, bad fathers are imperfect, good fathers are imperfect too. I try very hard to be a good father, but I realize I’m imperfect too, and I’m going to let that little person down from time to time.

But he says, what father would do these things? Even a fallen short father, even an imperfect father, a flawed father, what kind of father would do those things? And he says in verse 12, if ye then being evil, And again, that doesn’t mean that we’re all as sinfully wicked as we possibly could be.

But in contrast to God, we’ve fallen short. We have sinned and we are evil in comparison. If ye then being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?

How much more is your Father in heaven who is perfect in the business of giving good gifts to those who ask of him? And the best gift here being the Holy Spirit. So he says, if we know how to not do these things, then we should have confidence in the Father that when we ask him for something good, he’s not going to turn around and give us something bad.

I submit to you, sometimes the answers to his prayers, or his answers to our prayers, will sometimes look to us in the moment like a bad thing. God, how could this happen? I have prayed about something in particular for a few months now.

And just this week, I have told my parents, the harder I pray for this to happen, the more determined it seems that this is going to happen. That the complete opposite. And it just, you know, I trust God, but it makes me wonder, okay, God, what is the thought process here?

But at the same time, I have enough trust in Him to know that He’s working things out for good. I have enough trust in Him to know that. And we have the promise from Him that if we know how to give good gifts to our children, how much more is He in the business of giving good gifts to His.

And so throughout this passage and throughout so many other passages of Scripture, we are encouraged to go to God with our requests and make them known to Him in prayer. Don’t let me scare you away from that because, oh, I feel unspiritual now. I’m supposed to be just giving thanks or just confessing.

It is okay. It is okay to make our request known to God. Otherwise, He wouldn’t tell us to do it.

So three things very quickly to share with you about making our requests. First of all, we bring our requests to God because He’s listening. And as I’ve said before, we have the privilege of serving a God who is listening to us.

There are so many deities, false deities that are worshipped around this world, who do not hear because they’re false deities. You remember the story, I know I’ve spoken on it recently, of Elijah on Mount Carmel and the people were crying out to Baal. They’re jumping up and down on the altar. They’re screaming and they’re cutting themselves, trying to get Baal to hear them.

And Elijah’s standing there. Maybe he’s asleep. Maybe he’s on a trip.

Maybe he’s out shopping, stuff like that. He can’t hear you. Because people all over the world are worshipping things made of wood and stone and gold.

People are worshipping wealth. People are worshipping jobs. People are worshiping relationships.

Those things can’t hear you and answer prayers. In other religions, even, well, in all the religions of the world, they are worshiping something that is false, that is either, even in their mind, inanimate, or they are worshiping deities who by their own admission, they believe they’re real, but they believe they’re not personal deities that wish to have a relationship with them. The God of the Bible says, you can call out to me and I will hear you.

I think we lose sight of how incredible that is that he’s listening to us. He tells us in verses 9 and 10, ask, seek, knock, because he’s there listening. He’s there with his ear inclined to us, ready to hear our petitions.

I’m not saying he waits on us hand and foot that he’s at our beck and call, but he’s there listening to us because he is loving and he is relational. And we bring our requests to God, first of all, because he’s listening. He’s ready to hear those. Second of all, we bring our requests to God because He promises to meet our needs.

He promises to meet our needs. He doesn’t just tell us, ask and seek and knock. There’s a promise in there for those who will do those things.

Because He says in verse 10, for everyone that asketh, receiveth. When we ask, we receive. And he that seeketh, findeth.

When we go looking for it, we find it. And to him that knocketh, it shall be opened. When we knock on the door that God wants us to knock on, He throws open the door.

There’s a promise here that God will not only hear our requests, but that he will meet our needs. He will meet our needs. Again, not all of our wants.

I wish it worked that way. I’ve got a long list of things. Okay, God, if I can just be honest here, this is what I’d prefer to happen.

I pray that way a lot. Because you know what? I want God’s will to be done.

And I’ll pray, your will be done. And say, but if it’s all the same to you, you do know what my preference is. I just feel like I’ve got to get that out.

But when we have a genuine need, God promises to meet that need. God promises to meet that need. There was, and I may have told you this once before, but I was in insurance at one point when I first started in ministry, still had an insurance license.

I was a bivocational pastor and said, okay, I’m going to go get another job, go back into insurance and try to make a little extra money to pay some bills and things. and went in to interview with an insurance agent, and he said, well, what are your salary needs? I said, I honestly have no idea.

I’ll make do with, never tell somebody that on an interview, because then they’re going to go as low as they can. I said, I have no idea. I’ll just make do with whatever I have.

And he said, well, what are you living on now? And when I told him, he spit out his drink. And laughed, and he said, no, seriously.

I said, I am being serious. He said, are you on food stamps? No, should I be?

And that’s how the conversation went. He couldn’t believe. How are you living on this amount of money?

And all I could tell him is, I don’t know, somehow God makes it work. I’ve never had an unmet need. I sit there and rack my brain over the checkbook and think, how is this going to work?

And yet somehow it’s like that common core math. I don’t know how it all adds up, but somehow God just works it out. We can bring our request to God because he promises to meet our needs.

And I am the world’s worst warrior. I am the chiefest among warriors. And yet, all it takes is for me to look back.

I have to do this on a daily basis, but all it takes is for me to look back when I’m worrying and realize that God has never left a need unmet in my life. Third of all, this evening, we bring our request to God because he delights to answer. God is not just willing to meet our needs and hear our request. God delights to do those things.

Do you realize that? He compares himself to this father who would give the stone and the serpent and the scorpion, this awful man, and says, but God is not like that. He said, God gives good gifts.

And everything I know about God from the New Testament and the Old tells me that God delights to take care of his children. You know what? God doesn’t owe us anything.

Nobody’s twisting God’s arm and making him bless us. God blesses when he blesses because he desires to do so. because God delights to take care of his children.

He’s not the kind who’s going to give us the stone for bread or the serpent for the fish or the scorpion for the egg unless we just pray hard enough that we convince him otherwise. God is ready to supply our needs. God delights in meeting the needs of his children.

I love, even though it’s not always needs, at his age they don’t always recognize, hey, you’ve met my needs. It’s just I want breakfast. Here, I’m keeping you alive for a few more hours. They don’t see that.

Oh, good, I got breakfast. What else are you going to do for me? But I love giving stuff to my children. Now, I don’t go and give them extravagant things because I go spend a great deal of money on toys and they’re just going to play with sticks and rocks anyway.

But the look on his face when I give him a snow cone or when I give my daughter a piece of candy. The look on their face when you give them something good. You know, regardless of how they feel about it, I delight to be able to give my children things that make them happy.

And I’m not saying that I’m not drawing a one-to-one comparison between myself and God, but I think he calls himself a father for a reason. I think it’s so we can understand how he feels about us. And I think if his feelings toward us are just even slightly similar to my feelings toward my own children, that tells me everything I need to know about how God feels about meeting our requests, about meeting our needs.

God delights to answer our needs. God delights to fulfill those needs to answer our prayers. And so we can pray to God.

We can go to God. We should not feel guilty about praying and taking our request to Him because He asks us to. Or to feel like we’re unspiritual for doing so because I should be doing all these other things.

We should be praying for other reasons than just taking our request to God. But at the same time, we rob ourselves of a blessing when we fail to take our request to God. And we also take something away from what He intends to do for us.

And I submit to you tonight that that is an entirely valid and important reason to go to God in prayer, is to tell Him the things that we genuinely need so that He can meet our requests and demonstrate His power in that way.

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