Understanding Prayer

Good morning, everyone. Great to be in church with you this morning. If you haven't met before,

I'm Stephen, senior pastor here at St. Paul's, and I haven't preached in a while, so I'm looking

forward to getting back into it today. And if you are new here, if you just missed us in the last

couple of weeks, we're on five weeks of prayer. And today, our job is to try and understand

something of the nature of prayer. One of the things that I've loved about being a father is

seeing my own children develop in their prayer life and how children pray with a great deal of

simplicity and ease. You just tell them it's just talking to God. And so they talk to God as if

they're talking to anyone else. One of my girls consistently prays to this day, ends her prayers

with, Dear Jesus, I hope you have a lovely day tomorrow. Now, I kind of work on the assumption

because he exists in eternal bliss that he will. But she's kind of committed to the idea of Jesus

having a lovely day each day. Sometimes, however, when your kids pray, some of the prayers you don't

kind of want to answer, you know, Dear Jesus, help my sister to stop being a rat bag or stop picking

on me or stop, you know, at that point, you kind of go, well, maybe it's more of an announcement,

you know, than an actual prayer. But kids pray with such simplicity. Here's a few other samples from

the lips of children. Dear God, my mum tells me that you have a reason for everything on earth.

I guess broccoli is one of your great mysteries. Dear God, please make my parents understand that if I

don't eat salad, I do better at school. Dear God, please forgive me for hiding my sister's favourite

doll and please don't tell her where it is. Dear God, I need you to make my mum not allergic to cats.

I really want a cat and I really don't want to ask my mum to move out. Dear God, can you get me a

iPhone? It turns out Santa forgot. Dear God, when will my sister stop being annoying? I'm down to my

very last patience. Dear God, please don't let it rain on Saturday. The first ball I hit will be for you.

Dear God, I hope my dog is in heaven with you. Please take care of him and sorry if he chews your sandals.

It's just so easy for kids to pray. Much harder as an adult to say I'm meant to sometimes,

but so easy to pray. But prayer is an almost universal activity. It's part of every culture,

every generation and people group. Muslims pray five times a day while Jews have traditionally prayed

three times a day. And each branch of the Christian church is saturated with various traditions of

common prayer and private prayer and pastoral prayers. Buddhists use a prayer wheel which flings

prayers for compassion into the atmosphere in order to knit the spiritual and the natural to relieve

suffering and to release kindness. Hindus pray for help or peace in the world to any of several

gods. And the ultimate goal of their praying is the union with their supreme being, Brahmin,

and escape from the cycles of reincarnation. People in other cultures, like the Beaver Indians in

southwestern Canada and the Papago Indians of the US southwest, pray through their singing.

Their poetry and their music serve their prayers that unite the spiritual and the physical

realms together. Prayer is one of the most common phenomena of human life.

Even deliberately non-Christian people pray at times. One study from 2004 found that nearly 30% of

atheists admit that they prayed at least sometimes. And another found that 70% of non-believers in God

prayed in fact regularly. Now though prayer is not literally a universal phenomenon in the fact that every single

person prays, it is a global one. And it inhabits all cultures and involving the overwhelming majority

of people at some point in their lives. In fact, there has not been a single culture yet discovered that does not pray in some form or another.

To say prayer is global is not, however, to say that all prayer is the same.

You look at the same. You look at the same. You look at the same. You look at the religious trances of the Native American

shamanists, the chanting of the Benedictine monasteries, the hour-long pastoral pairs of the 17th century Puritan

ministers, the speaking in tongues in Pentecostal churches, Muslims with their forehead and their hands and their knees on the

ground towards Mecca, the strict Orthodox Jew swaying and bowing in prayer, and the Anglican priests reading from the Book of

Common Prayer. So what is prayer? That's really what we're seeking to do today, to try and understand

something of prayer from a biblical perspective. And this is going to be a brief, no, this is going to be a summary,

if you like, of it all, at least to try and capture an idea of it. I've got three main things that I want to try and

understand this morning about prayer. So if you're someone who writes stuff down, this might be helpful

for you. First of all, I'm going to ask the question, what is prayer? Followed by two kind of connecting

answers that sort of, they do flow from one another. That is, it's conversing with God and it's encountering

God. So what is prayer? First of all, I'm using a whole range of different Bible verses. You might want

to just jot them down as we go through. The Christian faith isn't surprised by the global phenomenon

of prayer. That's because at the beginning of the Bible, we are told that all human beings are made

in the image of God, Genesis 1, 26, 27. Bearing God's image means that we are designed by God to reflect

and relate to him. And that's why the 16th century of former John Calvin wrote of the, what he said is

the sense of the deity that, that all human beings have. He wrote this, he said, there is within the

human mind and indeed by natural instinct and awareness of divinity. Other theologians have also understood

this sense of the divine as the reason prayer is so pervasive in the human race. Romans 1, 19 to 20 says

that we look at the world and we conclude that some great power created and sustains it. An experience

of powerlessness in our world is often the thing that triggers this general knowledge into a prayerful

cry for help. We see it in the media all the time, tragedy strikes and people are feeling powerless

and they don't know what to say and how to close it off. And so they just would, you'd often hear them

say our thoughts and our prayers are with all involved. I've heard that come out even in the,

from the mouth of declared atheists, our thoughts and our prayers are with all that are involved.

So in a very basic way, you can define prayer as a personal communicative response to the knowledge of God.

All human beings have some knowledge of God available to them.

And prayer is seeking to respond and connect to that being, to that reality,

even if it's no more than calling out into the air randomly for help.

However, because prayer is a response to our knowledge of God, it means that prayer is profoundly

altered by the amount and the accuracy of that knowledge. Our prayer is shaped, it is defined by the being to whom we pray.

So the Buddhist spinning their prayer wheel, the Hindu sitting in mystic silence, the Muslim with his face

facing Mecca five times a day, are all reflecting something of the character of the God or the gods to whom they're praying to

and what they think their relationship with this being is.

Again, John Calvin observed that we are all, that all of us refashion that sense of deity that we have

to fit our own interests and our own desires.

He says, unless that is, God clearly communicates to us about who he is, what he's like,

that is, unless our view of God is corrected by God himself, we will refashion God into our own image.

So what that means for the Christian is that prayer is not just an instinct that we have common to all people,

it is in fact a unique gift from God.

Christians believe that through the Bible and the work of God's spirit in our lives,

our understanding of God becomes unclouded because he makes it clear.

He clears the cloud.

True knowledge of God is a gift from God.

It's not because Christians are more clever or anything like that.

It's because God has revealed himself clearly.

He has spoken and he has spoken clearly in the person of the Lord Jesus.

In the fullest sense then, prayer for the Christian is really quite simply continuing the conversation

that God has already started with us through his word and his grace,

which eventually becomes a full encounter with him.

So let's have a look at the second point here, conversing with God.

You see, what Christians know about God comes to them through the words of the Bible

and its main message, the gospel.

What we discover in the Bible is that God is a personal God.

We discover that he is a triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The Christian doctrine of the Trinity teaches that there is one God in three persons

who have known and who have loved each other before the dawn of time.

If God is triune, then words and language are seen in a very new light.

In fact, in John 14 to 17, we're going to be launching into that after we finish with prayer.

Jesus refers to his life within the Godhead before he even created the world.

He says, speaking of the glory I had with the Father before the world began.

John 17, 5.

And he also speaks of the words that he received from the Father in John 17, 18.

Sorry, John 17, 8.

So within the Trinity itself, within the Godhead, there has been communication with words.

The Father speaks to the Son.

The Son speaks to the Father.

The Father and Son speak to the Spirit.

And since the Godhead contains a community of persons,

and because language is intrinsic to personal relationship,

there is every reason to expect that God communicates through word.

This is the nature of reality.

And this is the gift and the wonder of prayer for the Christian.

What it means is we're not plunging ourselves into the abyss of the unknown when the Christian prays.

Christian prayer is fellowship with the personal God who reveals himself and his plans and his purposes

and befriends us through speech.

And we exist in a world of words.

Apparently our information is doubling every six, seven years or something like that,

which is just mind-boggling and helps you understand why we need things like Google.

We exist in a world of words, lots of different words.

Men apparently speak a minimum of 7,000 words a day,

and women around 20,000 words a day.

I think it's mainly because women have to keep repeating themselves

because we're not listening.

We're not listening.

And so we are inundated with information each day,

and we are losing the ability to listen.

We skim and we flick articles on our iPads and phones.

We skim reading.

We are losing the ability to follow a train of thought,

to engage with a train of thought.

So why would we want to listen to God speaking?

Why would we want to listen to the God who speaks?

Why would we listen to his words?

The reason we need to listen to God's words and know them and reflect on them and apply them

is God's words have power infinitely beyond any other word.

More powerful than our words.

See, God conversing with us is not a take it or leave it transaction.

It is, in fact, a matter of life and death.

In Genesis 1-3, right at the beginning of the Bible,

God says,

Let there be light.

And the very next statement is,

And there was light.

The verse does not say,

First of all, God said,

Let there be light.

And then he went and built a power station.

When he speaks,

It happens.

His word itself brought the light about.

Now, I can say,

In this room,

Let there be light.

And then I've got to walk over to the corner and go,

Flick everything up.

That is, my word in itself does not switch the lights on in this room.

Because my words do not have power.

They need actions to back them up.

Or they fail to achieve their purposes.

We can make a promise to do something,

but in fact lack the power to fulfill what we promise.

We may have every intention of fulfilling the promise.

I might say to my kids,

I'll pick you up at 3 o'clock this afternoon.

And because of bad traffic or for some other reason,

I get there at 3 o'clock.

It's something totally out of my power.

I cannot fulfill my promise.

Because my words do not have power.

They need actions to make them powerful.

God's words, however,

cannot fail their purposes,

because for God,

speaking and acting are exactly the same thing.

The God of the Bible is a God who by his very nature acts through speaking.

God's word creates.

Jesus commands very specifically,

Lazarus being dead in the tomb for four days,

Lazarus come out.

He didn't just say to the tomb,

come out.

Everyone in the tomb would have walked out at that moment.

Just you, Lazarus.

Come out.

He tells the waves to stop,

and they do.

No further action.

When the Bible talks of God's word,

it is talking about God's active presence in his world.

To say that God's word goes out to do something

is the same as saying that God has gone out to do something.

To break one of God's commands or his words

is to break relationship with him.

So how are we to receive God's words?

They come to us,

and I'm going to shorten everything here,

they come to us in the Bible.

The Bible says that God

will put his words in the mouth of prophets.

Deuteronomy 18, 15 to 20,

Jeremiah 1, 9 to 10.

And once a prophet receives God's word,

they can be written down

and can effectively be read

as God's speech

when the prophet is not present

or even after he's long dead,

according to Jeremiah 36, 1 to 32.

The Bible then is God's written word,

and it remains God's word

when it's read today.

And the conclusion is clear.

God acts through his word,

and his word is alive and active,

according to Hebrews 4.

And therefore,

the way to have God

active,

let's just say active,

in your world,

in your life,

is through the Bible.

You see,

to understand the Bible

is not simply

to get information about God.

When you attend to it

with trust and faith,

the Bible is the way

God continues

his conversation

with us.

It's hearing God speak.

We know who we are praying to

only if we first learn it

in the Bible.

And we know

how we should be praying

only by getting

our vocabulary

from the Bible.

which means

that our prayers

should arise

out of immersion

in the Scriptures,

in the Bible.

We should plunge ourselves

into the sea

of God's language.

And what we discover

in the Bible

about this God,

and as we just read

from Psalm 145,

this God is simple

and he's complex,

complex,

he's majestic

and he's tender,

he's holy

and he's forgiving,

he's loving,

he's personable

and he's mysterious.

Therefore,

as we listen

and as we study

and we think

and reflect

and we've pondered

this God

in the Bible,

our response

to him in prayer

in our hearts

and our minds

is going to be

multifaceted.

It's going to be varied.

It may be one of shame.

It may be one of joy

or of confusion

or of appeal.

Our prayer

can never be

primarily

just confession

or just praise

or just appeals.

It in fact

can't be

primarily

any one type

of expression.

Some prayers

in the Bible

are like

an intimate conversation

with a friend.

Others are like

appeal to a great monarch.

others are the wrestling match.

In every case,

the nature of prayer

is determined

by the God

who's revealed himself,

by the character

of this God

who is at once

our friend.

He is our father,

our lover,

our shepherd

and our king.

We pray

in response

to God himself

and only

if we respond

to his word

will our own

prayer life

be as rich

and as varied.

Edmund Clowney,

a theologian,

wrote this

for all of you

who want to

get a book on

or love to

just get to the

cut of the chase

on how I should pray.

He wrote,

the Bible

does not present

an art of prayer.

It presents

the God

of prayer.

It doesn't present

the art of prayer.

It presents

the God

of prayer.

The more clearly

we grasp

who God

is,

the one who

has spoken

to us,

the more

our prayer

is shaped

and determined

accordingly.

But be patient,

my friends.

This journey

may be just

as slow

as a child

learning to speak.

So who is the

God that we

encounter

in the Bible?

If prayer

is continuing

a conversation

that God

has started

through his

word and his

grace to us,

which eventually

becomes a full

encounter with

him,

prayer is

continuing

a conversation

that God

has started

with us

through his

word and his

grace,

what is this

God?

Now for the

Christian,

as I've said,

prayer is a gift

where God

comes to us

by his

spirit and

illuminates the

darkness in our

lives so that

we might see

him,

the God who

has revealed

himself to

us.

Conversations,

however,

can be

mere

exchanges

of information

that do

not always

lead to

true

personal

encounter

or

relationship.

Have a

think about

that in

terms of

the

relationships

that you

have and

if you're

married or

in a

relationship

with someone,

have a

think about

that.

Your

conversations,

are they

just mere

transfer of

information

or is

there a

desire to

seek the

person?

You see,

we do not

want to

just know

about God,

but to

know God,

to seek

his face

and his

presence.

Truth

is crucial

for knowing.

But what

we really

need is

to experience

the truth.

We need

an encounter

with God.

And one

crucial thing

that the

Bible reveals

about God

is that he

is supremely

powerful and

can achieve

anything that

he wants.

Jeremiah 32,

17,

our sovereign

Lord,

you have

made the

heavens and

the earth

by your

great power

and your

outstretched

arm.

nothing is

too hard

for you.

We've

just sung

that as

a church.

But we

also read

in Psalm

145 that

this is the

God who

sustains and

uphold all

things,

all things

that says

look to

you for

their food.

Now it's

often this

instinct about

God that

causes many

to pray.

I'm feeling

powerless and

I need

something that's

more powerful

and so

God,

you solved

this problem.

We have

this instinct

of the

divine who

is supremely

powerful in

some way.

But another

crucial thing

that God

tells us

about himself

in the

Bible,

as I've

already said,

is that he

is a

triune

God.

He is a

personal,

relational

God.

And in

the New

Testament,

the triune

nature of

God becomes

explicit,

but few

places are

as compressed

and as

direct as

Matthew 28

19.

And this

is where

Jesus sends

his disciples

out into

the world

to baptize

in the name

of the

Father,

the Son,

and the

Holy Spirit.

It does

not say

in the

names of

the Father,

the Son,

and the

Holy Spirit,

but the

name.

They have

a single

name.

Now for

us,

the term

name may

be just

a label

or a

brand

that can

be discarded,

it can

be changed

at will.

But in

biblical

times,

first century

Palestine,

it denotes

the very

nature and

the being

of the

person.

This

means the

Father,

Son,

and the

Holy Spirit

all share

one divine

nature.

They are

one being.

There is

only one

God,

not three.

The

Father,

the Son,

and the

Holy Spirit

are all

equal.

They are

three persons

within the

unity of

God's

being who

are all

equally

divine,

who know

and love

one another,

and who

from all

eternity

have been

working

together

for the

salvation

of humanity.

And the

implications

of the

Trinity

of God

for prayer

are just

never-ending.

for starters,

it means

that God

has always

had within

himself

perfect

relationship.

The

Father,

Son,

and the

Holy Spirit

are adoring

one another,

giving glory

and love

to one

another,

and delighting

in one

another.

God,

therefore,

in and of

himself,

is infinitely,

profoundly happy,

filled with

perfect joy.

Not some

abstract

tranquility,

but the

fierce happiness

of dynamic,

loving relationships.

And knowing

this God

is filled

with glorious

love and joy

because that

is what he

has in

himself.

which means

the only

reason

that this

God would

have had

for creating

us

was not

in order

to abstract

some sort

of cosmic

love and joy

from having

relationship

with us

because he's

already got

that,

but to

share his

cosmic love

and joy

with us.

And this

is why

this God

of this

Bible

calls us

to converse

with him,

to know

him,

to relate

to him.

Christianity

is the

only

religion

in the

world

of all

time

that declares

that God

is not just

all-powerful,

but that he's

all-personable,

all-merciful

and all-loving.

this God

wants to

share the

joy he

has.

Prayer is

our way

of continuing

the conversation

that God

has started

with us

by his

grace

and

entering

into

the happiness

of God

himself.

what we

also discover

is that

when the

Trinity

becomes

explicit

in the

New

Testament,

the

character

of God's

fatherhood

also

becomes

prominent

and clear.

It's mentioned

a couple of

times in the

Old Testament.

It becomes

explicit in the

New Testament.

In Ephesians 1 verses 3 to 10,

Ephesians 1:3–10

the Father sends the Son to save us from our sin

that we might become God's adopted sons and daughters.

In John 1, 12 and 13,

we see that when we are born again through faith in Christ,

we receive the right to be called God's children

and we have the right to call him Father.

In first century Palestine,

when Jesus taught his disciples to pray and said,

you can call him Father,

that was offensive.

It was offensive to the Jew and it was offensive to the pagan.

No religion would ever declare such intimacy

with the universal everlasting God.

Galatians 4 verses 4 to 6 puts it succinctly.

Galatians 4:4–6

God sent his Son, born of a woman,

born under the law to redeem those under the law

that we might receive adoption to sonship.

Because you are his sons,

God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts,

the Spirit who calls out,

Abba, Father.

Daddy.

Daddy.

To be adopted is a legal event.

But of course it means more than that.

To be adopted into a new family means a revolution

of how you live your life day by day.

In Jesus,

believers are not only legally,

but personally established in God's fatherly love.

John 17, 23 is a remarkable verse

where Jesus prays to the Father for his followers.

And he prays,

the world will know that you sent me

and have loved them

even as you have loved me.

To be adopted

means that now God loves us

as if we had lived,

as if Jesus had lived,

in the way that he lived.

We can run to this father without fear.

We have the most intimate

and unbreakable relationship possible

with the God of the universe.

To be a child means free access.

And prayer for the Christian

is offered on the basis of God's

free, saving grace

and his steadfast,

endless,

fatherly love.

How is it possible

that we would have that access

and that freedom

the only time

in all of the Gospels,

the only time,

you hear me say only,

the only time

in all of the Gospels

that Jesus Christ,

the Son of God,

prays to his Father

but doesn't call him Father

is on the cross.

My God,

my God,

why have you forsaken me?

Why have you abandoned me?

Jesus lost his relationship

with the Father

so that we could have relationship

with God as Father.

Jesus was forgotten

so that we could be remembered forever

from everlasting to everlasting.

Jesus Christ

bore all

the eternal punishment

that our sins deserve.

That is the cost

of our prayer.

Jesus paid the price

so God

could be our Father

and we could have

free access to him

to continue

the cosmic conversation.

and the Christian

who understands

this good news

by the power

of the Holy Spirit,

it's a gift,

doesn't seek God

primarily

to gain reward

or to avoid punishment.

Instead,

Galatians 4

Galatians 4:6

verses 6 and 7

says,

the Spirit

leads us

to call out

passionately to God

as our heavenly Father,

our loving Father.

Paul refers to this experience

as knowing God.

God.

That's the ground motive

of Spirit-directed,

Christ-mediated prayer,

to simply know God,

to encounter God better,

to enjoy his presence.

Prayer is about

encountering the God

who has already

communicated to us.

friends,

just pause for a moment

and consider

how different

this is

from the way

we normally pray.

In our natural state,

we pray to God

to get things.

As I've said before,

he's like the

cosmic vending machine.

Drop the coins in

and get the product

you want.

We may believe in God

but our deepest hopes

and happiness

often reside

in other things,

in how successful

we are,

for instance,

or in our social

relationships.

And so,

we pray mainly

when our career

or our finances

are in trouble

or when some relationship

or social status

is in jeopardy

or some other things

need fixing.

See,

when life is going

smoothly,

our truest

heart treasure

feels safe.

It does not occur

to us

that we need to pray

except out of a sense

of duty to God.

It also means

that our prayers

are not varied.

They consist

usually of petitions

and occasionally

some confession,

particularly if we know

we've done something wrong

and God might slap us

on the wrist

by taking something

we want

or that we like

away from us.

Seldom,

never,

do we spend

sustained time

adoring

and praising

the God

who's revealed

himself to us.

That is,

we have no

positive

inner desire

to pray.

We do it

only

when circumstances

force us to.

why?

Have this sense

that God's there

but we

tend to see

him

as a means

through which

we get the things

that make us

really happy.

For too many,

he's not

our happiness.

He's not

our joy.

We haven't

truly encountered

the God

who exists

in supreme

happiness

and joy.

we therefore

pray to get

things

not to know

him.

All these

changes

when we

discover

that we

have been

bogged down

all of our

lives

in all kinds

of different

forms of

self-salvation

and we

turn to

Christ.

We surrender

to him.

When we

grasp his

astonishing

costly

sacrifice

for us,

we transfer

our trust

and our

hope

from other

things

to Jesus

and we

ask for

God's

acceptance

and his

grace.

We begin

to realize

the Spirit's

help,

the magnitude

of our

benefits and

the blessings

that we have

in Jesus

and then we

begin to

want almost

desperately

to know

and love

this God

more.

To know

him for

himself,

for who

he is.

his love

and regard

make popularity

and worldly

status look

just so pale

and thin.

Finally,

the God

who has

spoken,

the God

who has

conversed

with us,

we've

finally

encountered

him

and being

delighted

in him

and

delighting

in him

becomes

inherently

fulfilling

and

beautiful.

and

him

well

he

he

he

Jesus

and

he

he

he

Black

he

he

he