Doing Prayer

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we worship you as the creator and sustainer of the universe.

Lord Jesus, we worship you, Savior and Lord of the world.

Holy Spirit, we worship you as the convictor of sin and the sanctifier of the people of God.

So we give you glory to you, Father, to you, Jesus, and to you, Holy Spirit.

Heavenly Father, we pray that we might live today in your presence and please you more and more.

Lord Jesus, we pray that we will take up our cross and we will follow you.

And Holy Spirit, we pray that today you will fill us with yourself and cause your fruit to ripen in our lives.

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

So have mercy on us now, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

And be our teacher as we open your word for your praise and glory.

Amen.

And so we finish our series on prayer today looking at three basic kinds of prayer to God.

And you've hopefully got a sermon outline in front of you.

If you haven't, stick your hand up and our welcomers will gladly get one to you to give you an idea of where we're going today.

Very briefly, there is upward awe prayer.

Praise and thanksgiving that focuses on God himself.

Then there is inward intimacy prayer.

It's self-examination and confession that brings a deeper sense of sin and in return, a higher experience of grace and assurance of love.

And finally, there is outward prayer, which is petitions that focuses on our need, the needs of others in the world.

And this prayer requires perseverance and often involves struggle, as our Luke 11 passage indicates.

So firstly, upward awe, praising God's glory.

Now, praise of God is where prayer starts.

It is, in fact, the motivation for the other two forms of prayer.

The more we grasp God's perfect holiness and his justice, the more that we will see our own flaws and we will confess them.

And the more we sense his majesty and the more we realize our dependence on him, the more readily we will go to him for every one of our needs.

In our overall prayer life, praise and adoration of God has the prime place.

It's the starting point and it has the prime place.

It seems, however, if you dig into it a little bit deeper, that a little egocentric that God would call us to praise him.

Like it's like God is there saying, right, guys, the way you pray is tell me how great I am.

You know, that's a starting point.

You just tell me how great I am.

It seems a little egocentric.

So is praise of God just simply about God or is there, biblically speaking, a gift enough for us?

Is praise for us as much as it is for God?

Well, what I want to declare is that praise and adoration of God, in fact, changes us.

Praise of God is the only form of prayer that directly develops love for God.

Directly develops love for God.

It changes us.

St. Augustine was a fifth century Christian theologian and philosopher.

And he taught that what we love is basically what we are.

What we love is what we are.

Our most fundamental identity and life behavior is a function of what we love.

All people seek happiness, even in the fifth century, and they attach themselves to things that they believe will make them happy.

However, when you throw sin into that mix, into that equation, what we do is we misidentify what will make us happy.

That's our biggest problem.

Our biggest problem in life is that we have disordered loves.

We either love what we ought not to love or we fail to love what we ought to love.

Or we love more what we should love less or love less what we should love more.

For instance, if a person loves making money more than doing justice,

So if money is more important to them than justice, then they will exploit their employees.

If they love their career more than they love family, then their children, their family relationships will ultimately feel neglected and will break down.

The ultimate reason for our misery, according to the Bible, is that we do not love God supremely.

As Augustine so famously put it in a prayer,

You have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.

So that means quite simply, if you love anything at all in this world more than your creator, God,

Whatever you love more than God will ultimately crush you under the weight of expectations and it will eventually break your heart.

Augustine wrote,

Wherever the soul of man turns, unless towards God, it cleaves to sorrow,

Even though the things outside God and outside itself to which it cleaves may be things of beauty themselves.

To change in the deepest sense, we must change what we worship.

We must love God supremely and that can be cultivated only through praise and adoration of God.

Now, thanksgiving is a subcategory of praise.

Thanksgiving is praising God for what he's done,

While praise is adoring God for who he is in and of himself.

So Psalm 135 just read out to us.

Psalm 135 calls us to praise God.

Psalm 136 gives thanks to God for specific things that make him praiseworthy.

So Psalm 135 praises God for having delivered Israel from slavery in Egypt.

And Psalm 136 praises God for being loving and good.

And those things, praise and thanksgiving, are intimately connected.

Thanksgiving for a blessing automatically draws our mind towards the attributes

and the loving purposes of the God to whom the blessing has come,

from whom the blessing has come.

Praise for God for being loving and good.

Praise for God for being loving and good.

Praise for God's love and his goodness transforms effortlessly into thanksgiving for all the examples of his goodness in our life.

And yet, neither praise nor thanksgiving comes easily.

Go to any prayer meeting.

Go to any prayer meeting.

And praise and thanksgiving is often the shortest little bit,

the bit with the most amount of silence,

whereas the petition stuff is where it all flows.

Confession and repentance are driven by our circumstances too often.

We fail and we are burdened with guilt and shame and so we pray, driven by circumstances.

Petitions, supplications, asking God for stuff is driven by circumstances.

A friend or a family member gets a diagnosis of cancer or their career looks like it's about to turn really bad

and so we pray.

That is, it's driven by circumstances.

When good things happen to us, you would expect that it too would be driven by circumstances

and that good things happening to us would naturally provoke us to thanks and praise

in the same way that when bad things happen to us, we are naturally driven towards confession and petition.

But it doesn't.

Why do we not automatically flow over in thanksgiving and praise?

In Romans 1 verses 8 to 21, Paul is describing the character of human sin.

Romans 1:8–21

And he writes this,

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God, nor gave thanks to him.

Ingratitude to God is the essence of sin.

Cosmic ingratitude is the illusion that we are spiritually self-sufficient.

Cosmic ingratitude is taking credit for something that was in fact a gift.

It's the belief that we know best how to live.

And it's a dangerous delusion.

We do not create ourselves.

We cannot keep our lives going for even one second without his upholding power.

And we, by nature, hate the idea that we are utterly and completely dependent upon God.

Because when we do, when we admit that we are,

we are obligated to him,

and we are not able to live as we wish.

We would, in fact, have to defer to the one who gives us everything.

And so the sin in our heart makes us desperate to keep control of our lives

and to live the way we want to.

And so we cannot acknowledge the magnitude and the scope of what we owe him.

When good things come to us,

we do everything possible to tell ourselves that we accomplished it

or that we deserve it.

When our lives are simply going along pretty smoothly,

we don't live in quiet, amazed, thankful consciousness of God's blessing.

We have a problem with gratitude and praise.

We do it in all of our life.

We are way more critical than we are thankful.

We are way more critical of our kids than we are affirming and giving them thanks.

We are way more critical of governments for the mistakes they make

and rather than affirming them for the good things that they do do.

We have a problem with gratitude and praise,

and yet praise is the one kind of prayer

that properly motivates, energizes, and shapes all of our prayer life.

You've got a problem with praise and thanksgiving.

You've got a problem with your entire prayer life.

So how do we turn it around?

Multiple ways, but broadly speaking,

it's developing the habit to turn every gift of God into praise of God.

I would encourage you, if you've got a problem in this area,

which virtually all of us do,

is to stop petitions and start praise.

Get your shopping list of petitions.

Put it to one side and write a list of everything that you are thankful to God for

and pray over it and over it and over it

and keep adding to it and keep adding to it

and keep adding to it until you start to feel the emotions well up

of thanksgiving and gratitude to God.

Gratitude says,

this is a little bit more than just even a shopping list of thanksgiving,

a little bit more of a shopping list of things you're thankful for.

Gratitude says,

God, you are so good to give me this.

Praise says,

what kind of God would give me this?

See the difference?

Gratitude says,

thank you God for that.

Praise says,

who are you that you would give me this?

The Westminster Catechism says,

a person's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

And many suggest that they are in fact exactly the same thing.

To fully enjoy is in fact to praise.

In commanding us to glorify him,

God is inviting us to enjoy him.

And enjoying him,

it's the only love that won't crush us.

The only one.

Secondly,

intimacy,

finding God's grace.

Us modern people,

we often have a one dimensional view of God as a spirit of love.

Therefore,

the free forgiveness of God through Jesus on the cross doesn't seem that remarkable at all,

because,

well,

in fact,

that's God's business.

You know,

he's in the business of loving,

he's in the business of forgiving.

That's what he's meant to do.

And so we struggle with passages like Exodus 34,

six and seven,

which makes two startling assertions about God.

It says that God maintains love to thousands and gives,

forgives wickedness,

rebellion and sin.

And yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished.

That is,

we struggle with this concept that God,

as it says there,

is loving,

but he's also holy,

and he cannot let injustice and wickedness go unpunished.

How do you hold those together?

That is,

God's forgiveness in the Bible is neither simple to the modern mind or expected.

So the conundrum of Exodus 34,

verses six and seven is actually the tension that drives the entire plot of the Old Testament.

The history recorded in the Bible is an account of individuals and communities continually breaking their promises and obligations to God.

And you would just expect that this God would do as we would do is,

frankly,

I've had enough of this,

cut you off.

And yet there are numerous statements throughout the Old Testament,

like Jeremiah 31,

Ezekiel 36,

that somehow,

God will nevertheless remain faithful and that he will forgive and he will restore the rebellious.

And then you get to the New Testament and Romans 3,

25 and 26 point out the answer to the riddle.

God presented Jesus as a sacrifice of atonement through the shedding of his blood.

And he did this so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith,

those who have faith in Jesus.

You see,

when Jesus died on the cross,

he took our curse for our unfaithfulness so that we could receive the blessing that he earned through his perfect faithfulness.

In Jesus,

God can be both just towards sin and yet merciful in justifying the sinner.

It means that because of Jesus' atoning sacrifice,

no sin,

according to Romans 8,

can be brought up and condemn those who have faith in Jesus.

And so God's free forgiveness is the foundation of all inward intimacy and confession and repentance.

But when we forget the free grace of God in Christ,

when we aren't totally convinced that God loves us in Jesus,

then confession and repentance becomes just another way of trying to keep God on our side.

It's a self-righteous attempt to atone for my own sin.

Jesus has suffered for our sin.

We do not need to make ourselves suffer to merit God's forgiveness.

We simply receive the forgiveness earned by God.

How confident can we be that God's love will exist in such a way that my sins are continually going to be dealt with?

Well,

God forgives us not just because he's merciful,

which he is,

but because he is just.

It's because of his justice that we can be confident of his mercy and his love.

The apostle John writes,

and we'll read this a little bit later,

that if we confess our sins,

it says,

God is faithful and just

and will forgive us our sins.

John 1, 1, 9.

It doesn't say God is loving and will forgive us our sins.

It says he is just and will forgive us our sins.

Our confidence in that verse is that he is just.

That is,

it would be unjust of God to deny us forgiveness

because Jesus has already earned our acceptance.

All those who are in Christ must and will be forgiven

because Jesus has taken the punishment.

He has paid the debt for our sins.

It would be unjust of God to receive two payments for the same debt.

And this profound assurance and security

transforms repentance

from being a means of atoning for our sin

into the means of honoring God

and realigning our lives with him.

Without a firm, firm grasp of free justification,

we will admit wrongdoing only under great duress.

We will focus on our behavior and itself

and be blinded to just the deeper issues

of our attitudes and our self-centeredness.

We will also take as little blame as possible

for anything that we've done.

We will recite every possible mitigating circumstances

to ourselves and to others.

And we will never ever experience

the release and the relief of resting in Jesus' forgiveness.

The more that we know that we are forgiven,

the more that we repent.

The faster we will grow,

the quicker we will change,

the deeper our humility and the deeper our joy

and greater will be our praise and our thanksgiving.

But that doesn't mean we take our sin lightly.

We must not make the mistake

of taking forgiveness lightly because it is free.

Our great debt and sin against God

required the ultimate infinite payment.

And the only way God could forgive us

was to bear it himself.

God the Father sent God the Son to take our punishment,

who with the Father sent God the Spirit into our hearts,

both to show us and to help us receive that costly forgiveness.

If we forget the costliness of sin,

our prayers for confession,

our prayers of repentance will simply be shallow and trivial.

They will neither honor God nor will they change our life.

So praise changes our life.

Confession changes our life.

Repentance changes our life.

You see,

confessing our sin

implies the forsaking of those sins.

So can I just ask you,

I'm not asking for a show of hands here at all.

How many are still doing and confessing the same sins

year after year after year after year?

How many know that experience deep in your heart?

It's because there's a problem with our confession and repentance.

We must be inwardly grieved and appalled enough by a sin

to the point that it loses its hold over us.

There's a kind of false repentance

where we may admit our sin,

but we're not really sorry for the sin itself.

We're sorry about the painful consequences of the sin.

We're sorry about the guilt that we feel.

We want the pain to stop.

And so we end the behavior momentarily.

There hasn't been any real change to our wrong beliefs,

to our wrong hopes,

to our disordered loves

or mistaken self-perceptions that cause the sin.

The only way to get real and genuine change in our lives,

to actually defeat the sin,

to, as English theologian John Owen said,

to mortify our sin,

the mortification of our sin,

to kill it,

is to keep looking to the cross

and asking yourself,

how can I treat Jesus like this?

The one who died so I would never be punished?

Is this how I treat the one who has brought me into this unconditional loved state?

Is this how I treat him after all that he's done for me?

If I failed to forgive when he died to forgive me?

Will I be anxious over the loss of my money when he gave himself to be my security and my eternal wealth?

Will I nurse my pride when he emptied himself of his own glory to save me?

The gospel truth,

Jesus' dying love,

his unconditional commitment to us,

his costly sacrifice,

our adoption into his family,

is the powerful instrument of change.

Beating yourself up,

doing good works,

can't eradicate the sin or bring change.

Only Jesus can do it.

Only the gospel can do it.

We must stop trying to cleanse ourselves through self-punishment

or to get a sense of cleanliness

by living in denial about our sin.

Instead, we must go to him in prayer,

looking to his work on the cross

and both admit and forsake our sin.

Thirdly, outward struggle,

asking God's help.

Third form of prayer is asking God for things,

for yourself, for others and for the world.

Now, compared to the other two forms of prayer,

this kind of prayer looks rather simple and straightforward.

Most of us would tick the box and go,

well, I know how to do the petition thing

because frankly,

my whole prayer life is consisting of a shopping list,

asking God to do stuff.

And yet, if you look at James chapter 4,

James 4:2

verses 2 and 3,

he says this,

You do not have because you do not ask God.

And when you ask God,

you do not receive because you ask with wrong motives

that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

You ask with wrong motives.

It's about you.

It's like a story I heard,

a young lad who mounted a campaign

to get himself a skateboard for Christmas.

He went to his mother

and his mother suggested to him,

she confused Santa with Jesus,

but suggested that he writes a letter to Jesus

and tell Jesus how good he's been

and that in fact he deserves

to get this skateboard for Christmas.

And so the boy grabs a piece of paper and a pen

and sits down at his desk,

Dear Jesus, I've been good all year.

He's realized,

well actually that's a bit of an overstatement.

So he stops and screws up the piece of paper

and throws it on the floor

and grabs another piece and starts again.

Dear Jesus,

I've been good for the whole month.

Realizes there was that incident or two

with his sister

and at very least the poor lad's a realist

and so he screws up that piece of paper

and throws it down

and he says,

Dear Jesus,

I've been good all week.

And again he realizes,

ah, that's just not true.

It's so frustrating.

He throws the piece of paper down

and he goes downstairs,

storms downstairs,

walks up to the mantelpiece,

goes to the nativity scene

and grabs Mary out of the nativity scene,

walks back upstairs,

sits down at his desk,

plonks Mary down on the desk,

grabs his piece of paper,

Dear Jesus,

if you ever want to see your mother again,

Now,

James 4

suggests that

petitionary prayer

can be just another way

of us saying,

my will be done.

My will be done.

We are prone to telling God

in no uncertain terms

how he should run the universe.

And what he should do for us.

And it is quite easy

in asking God

for his help

in the wrong way.

It's also possible

to be too timid

in asking God.

Prayer is not just upward

and inward,

it's also outward.

And prayer is a way

to participate with God

and his work

in the world.

Prayer has been referred to,

in fact,

as rebellion

against the world's

evil status quo.

I love that.

Prayer is a rebellion

against the world's

evil status quo.

And the Bible

is filled with promises

about the power

of prayer

in the affairs

of history.

James 5.16

says that Elijah

was a man

just like us.

And he prayed

away the rain

in Israel

and then prayed

it back

as a way

to confront

a corrupt ruler.

And James concludes

that prayer

can have great power

and produce

wonderful results.

John Calvin,

the famous theologian,

famous especially

for his views

of predestination

and God's sovereignty,

makes some

remarkable statements

about prayer

based on James

James 5:16

chapter 5

verse 16.

He wrote this,

It was a notable

event for God

to put heaven

in some sense

under the control

of Elijah's prayers

to be obedient

to Elijah's requests.

By his prayers,

Elijah kept heaven

shut for two years

and a half.

Then he opened it

and made it

suddenly pour

with great rain

from which we may see

the miraculous power

of prayer.

So Calvin there

is both bold

and careful.

He says that prayer

is in some sense,

that Elijah's prayer

in some sense

affected the weather

conditions in Israel

for two and a half years.

In the ultimate sense,

God is in charge

of everything

that occurs.

Our prayers

could not possibly

take control

of any part

of the universe

away from God.

However,

it is part

of God's goodness

that he allows

the world

to be

susceptible

to the prayers

of the faithful.

How he maintains

control of history

and yet still

makes human prayer

and action

responsible

within history

is one of the

most practical

mysteries of the Bible.

our prayers

matter

and yet

God's wise plan

is sovereign

and infallible.

These facts,

two facts,

are true

at once,

however that

is possible

is a mystery

to us

but not to God.

It's easy.

But just think

for a moment

of how wonderful

and practical

this is.

You see,

if we believe

that God

was in charge

of our actions

and that our actions

meant nothing,

if we believe

that God

was totally

sovereign

and our actions

meant nothing,

it would lead

to a discouraged

passivity

in our world.

If,

on the other hand,

we really believe

that our actions

and our prayers

change God's plan,

God's plan

like,

in that he

vacated his sovereignty

and his purposes

and changed his mind

based on our prayers,

it would lead

to paralyzed

fear

because we cannot

see the full picture

and what course

of action

we might be putting

in motion

through history

because we

simply do not

know best.

But if both

are true,

we have the

greatest incentive

for diligent effort

and yet,

we can always

sense that God's

everlasting arms

are around us.

In the end,

we cannot frustrate

God's good plans

for us.

It's a tremendous

truth.

God

bends his ear

and delights

to hear our prayers.

He allows

the world

to be,

in some sense,

under the control

of the power

of prayer.

That's why

James declares

that prayer

is powerful

and effective.

So it's possible

to ask wrongly,

selfish motive,

my will be done,

and it's also

possible

to be too

timid

in asking

of God.

So how do we

proceed?

To put it

simply,

we are to

lift our

desires to

God

with a view

to his

wisdom.

The Westminster

Shorter Catechism

puts it like

this,

prayer

is an

offering up

of our

desires

unto God

for things

agreeable

to his

will.

In the

name of

Christ,

with confession

of our

sins

and thankful

acknowledgement

of his

mercies.

We are

to ask

God to

fulfill

the desires

of our

hearts.

However,

as a

guard

against

both

selfish

motives,

as well

as our

short-sightedness,

will be

to ask

God to

fulfill

our

request

with

things

agreeable

to

his

will.

Instead

of a

shopping list

of things

we want,

we should

reflect

on what

we want

in light

of all

that we

know

from the

Bible

about the

things that

delight and

grieve God,

in light

of what

we know

about how

his salvation

works and

what his

plan is

for the

universe.

So if we

find,

if we ever

find in our

prayers that

we cannot say

something along

those lines,

in terms of

being agreeable

to God's

will,

if we find

our prayers

are not

prayers that

are shaped

by the

scriptures,

God's

eternal

plan,

then it's

possible that

we are

dealing in

that moment,

in that

prayer,

with one of

the disordered

loves of

our life,

a heart

idol,

a rival

for God

himself in

our innermost

being.

I remember

sitting in a

prayer meeting

once,

where I

was making

a bunch of

changes and

things,

and someone

in the

prayer meeting,

their simple

prayer was

this,

dear God,

I don't

like what

Steve is

doing,

please change

his mind,

amen.

As it turns

out, God

didn't.

Changed my

mind.

And in

moments like

that, what

should happen,

it should

trigger a

great deal

of self

examination.

prayer is

not just

hard work,

it is

heart work.

Prayer is

a struggle,

and for

too many

of us,

we just

simply give

up,

we just

slide into

despondency,

we slide

into mere

duty,

and just

get,

here's the

shopping list.

Our heart

is not

engaged,

it's just

our mind.

God's

need.

So, if

that is

you,

there's this

famous

prayer,

parable of

prayer in

Luke 18,

where Jesus

tells of an

oppressed

widow who

kept coming

to a judge

with a plea,

grant me

justice against

my adversary,

and Jesus

concludes,

and will

not God

bring about

justice for

his chosen

ones who

cry out to

him day

and night?

And the

point of

Jesus'

parable is

twofold,

we should

be confident

that God

will hear

us,

first of

all,

and secondly,

we should

also be

extremely

patient with

God's

timing.

We should

be willing

to pray

with boldness

and with

perseverance,

waiting months,

waiting years,

waiting a

lifetime for

God to

answer some

prayers,

because our

perspective on

timing and

wisdom is

compared to

Betty's with

a two-year-old.

They just

don't compare.

We know

God will

answer us

when we

call,

because one

terrible day

he did not

answer Jesus

when he

called.

Jesus prayed

in Gethsemane

that the cup

of suffering

on the cross

would be

taken away

for him,

but he says,

not my will,

but your will

be done,

and God

the Father

said,

it is my

will that

will be

done.

Your request

is turned

down.

And on

the cross

he cried

out in

Matthew

27,

46,

my God,

but he

received

silence for

the first

time in

his life.

How could

that be?

How could

it be?

Jesus was

the perfect

man.

He served

God with

all his

heart and

soul and

mind and

loved his

neighbors

himself,

according to

Mark 12,

God

and so

completely

fulfilled the

law of the

God.

How could it be

that God did not hear his prayer?

Psalm 66,

Psalms 66:18

verse 18 says,

if I had cherished sin in my heart,

the Lord would not have listened.

Sinners deserve to have their prayers go unanswered.

And Jesus was the only one in all of history who deserved to have every single one of his prayers answered because of his perfect righteousness and obedience to the law of the Lord.

And yet he was turned away as if he was turned away as if he was a sinner.

Why?

Why?

Well, the answer is at the heart of the Christian faith and the reason why we have prayer and why it's possible for us.

God treated Jesus as we deserve so that when we believe in him, God can treat us as Jesus deserved.

When Christians pray, they have the confidence that they will be heard by God and answered in the wisest way.

And so Jesus taught his disciples to pray.

In Luke 11,

he gave them this illustration.

Which of you fathers,

if your son asks for a fish,

will give him a snake instead?

Or if he asks for an egg,

you're going to give him a scorpion.

If you then,

though you are evil,

know how to give good gifts to your children,

how much more will your father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?

And Jesus' point here

is that there has never been a parent on the face of the earth

who wants joy for their children

as much as your father in heaven wants joy for you, his child.

There has never been a parent

who wanted to answer his child's petitions

as much as God wants to answer yours.

God is not only loving but holy and just.

Jesus got the scorpion.

Jesus got the snake

so that we could have food at the father's table.

He received the sting and the venom of death in our place.

We know that God will answer us when we call my God

because he did not answer Jesus when he called my God.

when he made that same petition on the cross.

So we should ask God for things with boldness.

We should ask him with specificity,

with ardor,

with honesty and diligence.

And yet with patient submission

to God's will and his wise love.

because prayer is all because of Jesus

and it's all in his name.

And so 1 John 2 verses 1 and 2 says

1 John 2:1

that if anyone sins,

we have an advocate with the Father,

Jesus Christ the righteous one.

He is the toning sacrifice for our sins.

At the heart of the Christian life

is an active trust in the Lord Jesus Christ

and his sacrificial death for us.

And to finish up in our time of prayer,

we're going to just take the Lord's Supper together

because this is an outward and a visible sign

of God's grace to us in Jesus.

It's a reminder that we have full access

to God the Father.

As we participate in this symbolic meal together,

we are confronted.