Praying to Obey God

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Transcript:

Turn with me, if you would, today to Philippians chapter 4. Philippians chapter 4. This is the next to last message on reasons why we pray.

Next week we will talk about what may be the most important reason for prayer, and that’s praying to be like Jesus. Because in everything we do as believers, we should desire to be like Jesus. That’s sort of the culmination of everything else we’ve talked about.

Tonight, I want to talk about praying to obey God. Now we pray because it’s a good idea or because we feel like we should or we feel guilty if we don’t or because we want something. But we don’t stop to think about a lot of times that God has actually commanded us to pray.

God has actually told us to pray. And I know we don’t think about it in terms of a commandment because if you ask people, well, what are the commandments of God? We get into the Ten Commandments.

Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. Well, he has commanded.

Anytime, you know, I don’t know if you’ve read in the, it used to be called the Gleaner, I can’t keep up with all the name changes, is it Mission World now? And you might have read in there where they’ve talked about Disciple Guide, not Disciple Guide, they have talked about Disciple Guide, but Disciple Way, the discipleship training curriculum that they have produced. And they’ve mentioned it, I think, probably some in the Oklahoma Baptist. We were doing that disciple way training at my church in Arkansas.

And I was leading, started out three different groups. And they tell you, oh, you only want to do groups of two or three people at a time. Well, I found out that didn’t work where I was.

Nobody would talk. But you get them in a group of 20, which is a no-no, according to the people at Disciple Guide. You get them in a group of 20, everybody wants to talk and interact, and it just worked better.

So I told them, I said, we’re doing it, and it’s going great, but we’re not doing it the way you told us to. we were one of the things that were discussed and was drilled into us during this first section of disciple way which was about learning how to study the bible for yourself not not just coming together and having bible studies there’s nothing wrong with that but actually coming together and learning how to study the bible for yourself we we were asked a series of questions and learned to ask ourselves a series of questions as we’re reading through the bible as we’re studying through and one of those questions was, is there a command to obey? In the particular passage, whatever it is that we’re looking at, is there a command to obey?

And you start to notice that there are certain words, and not to get too much into grammar tonight, but in English we call them imperatives, imperative statements. And it’s anything you could raise your voice and point at your children and use that word. If you were to say, go, that’s an imperative statement.

If you were to say, Stop. That’s an imperative. If you were to say, listen, and it’s not just one word things, but anytime you see those, those imperatives in the Bible, and it’s God speaking, it’s a command from God.

And so there are commands and things that we’re expected to do all through the Bible. One of the things, one verse that came to mind as I was thinking about this subject was in Psalm chapter 62. If you want to turn there, you can, but it’s just one verse.

Psalm chapter 62, verse 8 says, Trust in him at all times. Ye people, pour out your heart before him. God is a refuge for us.

Selah. Now there are two, two imperatives, two commands in that verse alone. One is trust. We are commanded to trust God and then pour.

The word pour, P-O-U-R. Pour out your heart before him. Trust him at all times and pour out your heart before God.

We are commanded to pour out our hearts to God. God desires that we pray to him. God desires that we have that conversation with him.

And so God has told us it’s not just a good idea. It’s something I’m telling you to do. And so we’re going to talk about this concept of praying to obey God tonight from Philippians chapter 4.

Just a few verses here. But starting in verse 4, it says, Rejoice in the Lord always. And again, I say rejoice.

Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand. Be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God.

And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. And that’s it. That’s what we’re going to look at tonight.

A few things already, just since we’re on the subject of commands of God, just a few things in there that are imperatives, that He is telling us to do something. One is rejoice. Rejoice in the Lord always.

Now this kind of goes hand in hand with 1 Thessalonians chapter 5. I want to say verse 12, but don’t quote me on that. But I’m pretty sure it’s 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, where it says that we are to in everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.

It’s really bad when you set up something and you name the verse where it’s found, and then you think, what was I going to quote here? What was the verse? Thankfully it came back to me.

in everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. And I have explained time after time, and may have done it here, that verse is not telling us to give thanks for everything. There are some things that I just, being a human being, I cannot give thanks for.

Thanks for the cancer doesn’t just roll off the tip of the tongue, does it? Thanks for the tornado just doesn’t seem natural. And yet in those things, we can find things to give thanks to God for. Because God loves us, God cares for us, God preserves us.

We don’t even realize what God preserves and protects us from, where things could have been so much worse than they were, and we will never know what it was that God protected and preserved us from. But that verse tells us give thanks in everything, in every trial. Not necessarily for every trial, but in every trial. Well, this one says rejoice in the Lord always. Wait a minute.

Rejoice for everything always? No. No, no, no, no. It says rejoice in the Lord always.

Even at the darkest times of our lives, even in the greatest trials, some of the things that we talked about this morning, we can still rejoice in the Lord. Kind of like the attitude that Hanani, Mishael, and Azariah had. You think they were rejoicing for being thrown into the fiery pit?

Probably not. I’m sure that was terrifying. And yet they’re in there in the midst of the fiery furnace, and they’re walking around, and they can rejoice in the Lord that he has not left them alone in the fiery furnace.

There is always something to rejoice in the Lord about. Even before that, when things are even more uncertain, because by the time they’re in there and the fourth man is walking with them, they pretty much know how this thing’s going to go. But before that, when they’re standing before the king and having to give their answer and say, no, we are not going to bow to your statue, I’m sure there was the fear of, how is this going to work out?

And I’m really not feeling particularly thankful for being in this situation. And yet we see them saying, we know that God can deliver us from the fiery furnace. we know that he will deliver us from you we know that one way or another he’s going to take care of us whether it’s getting us out of the fiery furnace whether it’s walking with us through the fiery furnace whether it’s taking us through the fiery furnace taking us to be with him out of your hand one way or another we know God has got this and God is in control of this and they were able to rejoice in that folks there’s always in in any situation we can rejoice not necessarily for the circumstances, but we can rejoice in the Lord always.

And so he tells us that’s an imperative there. Rejoice in the Lord always. And again, I say rejoice.

He says it twice just so we know, you know, it wasn’t a rash statement. It wasn’t poorly thought out. He knows what he’s saying and says rejoice in everything.

He says, let your moderation be known unto all men. That’s a, that’s a commandment too. Let, let all men see your, let all men see your moderation.

You know, we as Christians are supposed to live differently, behave differently, think differently. And he says, let that be apparent to all people. What I want to focus in on here is verse six, be careful for nothing.

That is a command, that is an imperative. But in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God. And that’s another imperative or command.

In everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, pray. Let your request be made known to God. He says the result of this is that the peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

We come to points, and I’ve talked about this some of the last few months, and y’all are probably familiar with the way this works. There are times when we can be going through a tremendous struggle, a tremendous trial. We can be worried, and yet we cry out to God. Sometimes we cry out to God rightly as the first thing we do and say, God, would you take care of this?

And sometimes we’re a little more stubborn. I’m bad about this. I sort of pray to God as the last resort.

God, I haven’t been able to fix this myself. I’ve tried everything. Can you do something?

That should be the first place I go. And yet I’m anxious. I am a nervous person by nature.

I don’t know if y’all noticed that about me. I’m a worrier by nature. If everything is going too good, that makes me nervous and I start worrying about what’s going to happen next.

And I should not be that way. I don’t like conflict. Somebody can be upset with me or I can be worried about a situation.

I will get physically ill. And so I have had to learn, you’ve got to go to God with this stuff. Because this worrying isn’t going to help you at all.

The Bible says who can add another day to his life by worrying about it. Who can add another cubit to his stature. There’s nothing I can do about things ultimately.

And it’s going to kill me. All this worry will kill me. And so I won’t say I’m there yet, but I’m in the process of learning, just give it to God, not that God worries, but let him concern himself with it, because God knows how all this is going to work out, and just pray to God.

And there is something strange that happens that the Bible describes very well here, that we can be worried and frazzled and stressed out and physically ill over things that are going on, over circumstances in our lives. And folks, I’m not just talking big things. I can be stressed out over something tiny.

And yet I pray to God and you pray to God and we give it over to him and suddenly it doesn’t matter anymore. We’re not worried about it. There is a peace that passes understanding.

I can’t explain it. I don’t know if you’ve seen the commercials. I’m kind of a fan of the Muppets.

I don’t know if you’ve seen the Lipton T commercials where all the Muppet animals are running around wreaking havoc on whatever city they’re in. Kermit the Frog is sitting there with his feet up in a mug of tea and just sipping on it and says, I just wish everybody could be more tea. And suddenly everybody, all the Muppets have a cup of tea and everything’s sunshine and everybody’s well behaved.

And that’s sort of how I feel after I give things over to God. Like everything’s out of control and then I give it to God and I pray to him and suddenly the situation hasn’t changed at all, but I’m a little more tea. My feelings toward the situation have changed completely.

There’s no way to explain that from a human standpoint because the situation’s still there. The circumstances are still out of control from my standpoint, never out of control from God’s standpoint. And yet my feelings about the situation have totally changed.

God has given a peace that very rightly says passes understanding. There’s no explaining from a human standpoint why I can talk to God. Suddenly my feelings about everything have changed.

But he’s very good at changing our feelings about everything. And he’s very good about handling the situations that we prayed for. And you can come past something that you prayed to God about, and you’ve stressed about beforehand, and it looks like the most violent, brutal storm in your life, and get to the other side of it where God has handled it and say, why was I even worried about that?

But as I’ve told you before, the storm looks huge when you’re on the inside of it. And I think what God does is takes us and shows things a little bit from his perspective where we see the storm looking down, and suddenly it doesn’t look so big or so daunting anymore. And so for our own good, being one reason, God has commanded us.

God has ordered us to pray, to pray regularly, to pray without ceasing. That’s another place where the Bible says pray without ceasing. That is an imperative.

That’s a command. Pray all the time. And people have, you’ve probably heard this taught on.

I’ve heard it taught on since I was a little boy. Does that mean that we’re supposed to always be praying? How do you talk to anybody else?

How do you sleep at night? That’s not what it means, that we always have to be on our knees. But there’s an attitude of prayerfulness that the conversation with God never really ends.

And I’m not always the, I will admit to you, I’m not always the best in the world at setting aside a particular time during the day, that’s just my time that I go and spend quiet time with God. It’s very hard to do when you have toddlers because they see you not do it to them, not doing anything, and they think you need to be doing something for them. and yet the conversation never really ends.

I talk to God numerous times throughout the day and you know what? I like it that way. I like it that way.

I like that the conversation goes on but he commands us to pray without ceasing. There should be an attitude of prayerfulness where it doesn’t matter what we’re doing we’re always ready always ready to talk to him at a moment’s notice if need be. He says here be careful for nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your request be made known unto God.

And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds. So there’s an element here where we are commanded by God to pray because it’s good for us. But he says that our hearts and minds will be kept through Christ Jesus.

There’s also an element here where it glorifies him. Then it brings honor and glory to him when we pray to him. And we’ve talked about that some in this series, so I won’t belabor the point, but the fact is God has commanded us to pray to him.

And one of the best reasons we have for praying, why should I pray on a daily basis? We should pray simply because it’s obedient to God to pray. We are obeying his command when we pray.

So three things that I want to look at very briefly here, share with you about this idea of praying to obey God is first of all, our obedience in prayer demonstrates our faith in God. We are obeying him when we go to him in prayer and demonstrate our faith. If we don’t believe that God is going to do anything for us, and I’m not talking about giving us everything we want, but when we’re talking about prayer to help with our troubles and trials, when we’re talking about prayer to meet our needs, when we’re talking about prayers to calm the fears that overwhelm us, if we don’t think God is able to do anything about those, then we wouldn’t pray.

It would be to us a waste of time. The reason we pray is because we have faith that God will we’ll live up to his promises and do something about those things. So when we obey God, because God has commanded us to pray, when we pray and are obedient in that way, we are demonstrating that we believe that he is a God who keeps his promises.

We are demonstrating faith in him. And that’s why he’s able to say in verse six, be careful for nothing, but I’m careful about everything. That doesn’t mean don’t be careful.

That doesn’t, the way we would think about it. That doesn’t mean be reckless in life. You know, we’re taught in other places in the scriptures, we’re taught to work hard, we’re taught to take care of what he’s blessed us with, we’re taught to be, I believe, to be responsible people.

We’re not taught to be just reckless. I think almost every day of the story of the grasshopper and the ant. And how many of you know that story, the grasshopper and the ant?

Okay, I hope most of you. Because I thought everybody knew the story until I started talking about the grasshopper and the ant explains what’s wrong with America. And people say, what is the grasshopper and ant thing you’re talking about?

Basically, the ant was gathering food all summer, all fall, foraging, gathering, harvesting, doing all these things. And the grasshopper’s playing and making music and dancing all the time, which is nothing wrong with playfulness and having fun. But the ant would say, don’t you want to help me?

Don’t you want to help me gather up some food? The grasshopper says, oh, no, the winter’s a long ways away yet. I’m just giving you the condensed version of the story.

And then it comes time for the winter, and the grasshopper starves to death because he fiddled around all summer, and the ant is safe in his hill or colony, whatever you call it, with plenty of food for the winter. And the reason I tell people the grasshopper and the ant explains what’s wrong with America, well with the world really, is you’ve got one group of people who thinks ahead to the future, plans ahead, even works for the future and takes care of themselves. And then you’ve got another group of people, and I’m not talking politics here, I’m talking society, that says, oh, it’ll be okay.

I live in today and somebody else will take care of me. Now, in a totally unpolitical situation, somebody asked me the other day, what is wrong with so-and-so in my family? I said, he’s a grasshopper.

I had to explain the story all over again. You know what? We are not taught by scripture to be grasshoppers.

We are taught by scripture. We’re taught in the scripture to take ourselves, take care of our families, to be industrious and all these things, all the while trusting God. When he says be careful for nothing, he’s not saying be reckless and be a grasshopper and just do whatever you want and it’s all going to work out in the end.

That word there means something else when they translated this. It means to be anxious, to be worried, to be stressed out. And he says be anxious then over nothing.

Don’t worry. I’m not always a big fan of St. Augustine Augustine, I’d rather just say.

I’m not always a big fan of everything that Augustine said and wrote because a lot of his theology was wrong. He’s sort of where Catholic theology started, but I do like one quote of his that I just happened across today, that we are to work as though everything depended on us and pray as though everything depended on God. I think that’s biblical. Yeah, he may have gotten a lot of other things wrong from my standpoint, but I think that’s biblical. There’s an instance where God tells us you’re to work and you’re to take care of yourself, And yet he also tells us, take no thought for tomorrow.

Now there’s a balance to be found there. Work and take care of yourself and be a good steward of what God’s given you. But don’t worry about it because it’s all in God’s hands.

Now we’ve got to strike the balance between that. But when he says be careful for nothing, don’t worry, don’t be anxious. We can only not be anxious if we’re either not thinking, which God doesn’t condone here, or because we’re trusting in God.

We either don’t care about tomorrow or we know who holds tomorrow are the only two reasons why we would not be worried. And when we pray to God, we’re demonstrating that we have faith that he’s the one who controls tomorrow. We’re demonstrating our faith in him and his care.

There’s a lot of overlap between these here. Second of all, not only does our obedience in prayer demonstrate our faith in God, but our obedience in prayer demonstrates our reliance on God. Right after he says, be careful for nothing, he says, but instead of worrying, instead of the care in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your request be made known unto God.

Again, we are not going to go to God in prayer if we don’t think he can and will do something for us. If we think that it’s just going to be a waste of time, we’re not going to pray to God. And so by the very fact, and I’m not saying that’s the right attitude either, by the way, the very act of going to God in prayer, the very act of obeying his command to pray for these things demonstrates that we do rely on God.

You know what? I don’t, I’m going to leave that illustration alone. You know what?

We pray and we ask God, would you heal so-and-so? because a lot of times we realize we’ve come to the point where doctors really can’t do anything for that person anymore. Now, a lot of times we’ll pray for them before then and pray for the doctors.

But we come to a point where there’s nothing left to do but rely on God. We come to points where we say, God, I don’t know how I’m going to pay this bill or put food on the table. Would you help me?

And we’re relying on God because we get to points in life where there’s nothing we can do. And really, if we think about it, even when we think we have options and, oh, I can work for this or I can sell that or I can get so-and-so the medicine. Really, we’re ultimately reliant on God anyway.

People think they’re self-made men because, well, I worked for all of that. Well, who gave you the legs and the back and the arms to work with? Whether you realize it or not, you’re dependent on God.

And so when we pray, we’re demonstrating that we realize we’re reliant on Him. I may have, and I don’t, by the way, I may have a million dollars in the bank and think I’m self-sufficient, I can take care of myself, I don’t need anything. It’s only by God’s grace that that’s there in the first place.

But for God’s grace, that could be gone tomorrow. That could be gone tomorrow. We’re reliant on God for everything.

And when we obey Him and spend time in prayer, we’re demonstrating that we realize that fact. And third and finally tonight, our obedience in prayer demonstrates our rest in God. Now that’s deeply tied to the faith and the reliance.

Because I trust that God is faithful to His promises, because I am dependent on God to do what only He can do, there comes a point where I’m able to just rest in God. Where I’m able, in the circumstances, the situation hadn’t changed, and yet my response to the circumstances has changed. Because I’m able to say, there’s nothing I’m able to do here anyway.

Why worry about it? I’m just going to trust God, and I’m just going to rest in His care. When He says, the peace of God which passeth all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

We get to this point where the world is still spinning out of control around us, and yet we have a peace, a peace that passes all understanding, a peace that can’t be explained because we’re resting in God and knowing that he is at work taking care of us and our circumstances. And when we obey God and pray to him, instead of running around frantically trying to fix everything ourselves and pray to God instead, we’re demonstrating that we are able to rest in him. I know I mentioned it earlier, but again, I love those commercials for the tea, because now every time I see Kermit the Frog, it’s a reminder to pray.

I don’t think that’s what anybody had in mind when they made the Muppets or made the commercial, but it’s a reminder to me that, you know, the tea can’t bring that kind of rest, but God can change my feelings about the circumstances where I can relax from the worries and stress that have consumed me.

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