Grace-Centered Prayer: Praying as Beloved Children to a Caring Father

Amen.

Well, happy new year.

Good to see you.

Has anybody already broken their resolutions?

You're already done?

You're done for the year?

Well, welcome if you are.

Glad you're here also.

Has anybody been a Christian for longer than two years?

Put your hands up.

Longer than two years.

Okay, great.

Has anybody been a Christian longer than 10 years?

Hands up?

Okay.

I'm still with you?

Longer than 20 years?

I'm a 20-year.

Longer than 30 years?

Not me.

Longer than 40 years?

Longer than 50 years?

Okay, couple?

Y'all can meet afterwards, share stories.

Okay, so whether you're a new Christian or old Christian, how many of you, when it comes to prayer, have struggled?

Isn't that interesting?

Isn't it interesting that something that's so core and part of Christian life?

Whether you've been a Christian for two years or I've been a Christian for over 20 years, I guess close to 30 years.

And uh man, prayer is prayer's hard.

Like it's it's hard to be a person of prayer.

Um so we're gonna talk about prayer for the next few weeks.

It's possible you've heard a great sermon on prayer at some point and you became a person of prayer for like two weeks, and then the third, and then the third week, not so much, and then the fourth week, you were back on Instagram and you felt incredibly guilty about this reality in your life.

Um, it's also possible you actually were a person of prayer, like you really were one of those people, and you prayed a lot, and then something horrible happened, and you prayed for that thing, and the thing you were praying for did not go the way you were asking God, and so you're like, I'm out.

So that's very, very, very possible.

So next week we are going to talk about why you would pray if God is sovereign?

Like, why pray at all?

Now, this week, what I want to address, I want to address the reality that our prayer lives are often secretly driven by performance and guilt.

Therefore, our prayer lives are in need of Jesus' grace and freedom.

So Colossians 4, 2 does say, continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.

So, point number one is this prayer is not a transactional relationship, prayer is a communal relationship with the Heavenly Father.

Prayer is about getting to know God and in that remembering who you are in Jesus and being reminded of your secured identity in Jesus alone, fully forgiven in Jesus alone, fully righteous in Jesus alone.

That Colossians 4 2, the phrasing continue steadfastly in prayer.

The original Greek phrase emphasizes the prayer devoted.

If you remember when we studied this last year, what we learned is that Paul's phrasing is not really about praying all day long.

It's more about the prayer, prayer being integrated into all aspects of your life.

So it's not a coke machine of transactions all day, but a communal relationship with God as a child is to a father, connection, intentionality of time and energy.

We could say prayer is communion.

Years ago on the podcast This American Life, I heard about a man in Japan just after the 2011 tsunami.

If you remember that tsunami, that tsunami devastated the coastline, it killed tons of people.

This man owned land right on the water.

And he had a beautiful garden on the water, and he put a phone booth.

Here's a picture of it.

He put this phone booth there in his garden.

And in the phone booth, he put a phone that was not connected, it was disconnected, it wasn't connected to anything, just an old phone and an old phone booth.

And he welcomed people to come to talk on this phone, to say things to the people, the loved ones that they lost.

In three years, over 10,000 people showed up to talk in this phone booth.

And to many people's surprise, healing actually happened in their lives.

They just needed to say, they just needed to say the thing that they were holding inside to themselves.

Now, I suppose some of these people did believe in God, and I suppose for some of them they actually were praying, and I suppose some of these people didn't believe in God, and they're just releasing a burden and saying something they needed to.

But what it reminded me is it reminded me of what Peter tells us Christians, what we get to do when we're praying.

1 Peter 5, 6, and 7.

Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.

An incredible gift that we get when it comes to prayer.

And there's no qualifier, big anxieties, small anxieties, you know, really important ones, not as important, just if it's an anxiety to you.

You get to pray that, you get to share that with the Father.

Listen to how Jesus begins his teaching on prayer in Matthew 6, Matthew 6, 5, and 6.

And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and the street corners, that they may be seen by others.

Truly I say to you, they've received their reward.

But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your father who is in secret.

And your father who sees in secret will reward you.

So Jesus is saying prayer is incredibly personal.

It's not performative.

And while we do pray in public, it's not for public applause.

It's not to build a resume.

It's very personal, it's intimate.

It's like a child in front of a father.

It's not us getting the right words.

It's not us being religious enough.

It's relational.

Verses 7 and 8.

And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words.

Do not be like them, for your father knows what you need before you ask him.

Now you would think that that might discourage us from praying.

Oh, God already knows.

He already knows what I need.

But that would only be if prayer is just about us asking for things and getting things, which doesn't really work.

I don't know if y'all picked up on that.

Like, sometimes you pray for things and you get the answer you want.

Sometimes you pray for things and you don't get the answer.

Sometimes you pray for things, something else happens.

Sometimes you pray for things, and over time the prayer you're praying changes.

But just the idea of a transaction, that doesn't work.

And if that's your belief on prayer, eventually you'll be disillusioned and you just won't pray.

And Jesus is saying, no, no, no, the Father already knows.

This actually should encourage us to pray.

This actually should embolden us to share our anxieties.

Because the Heavenly Father that we get to pray to actually knows what's best for me.

So I don't have to tight grip everything and think I have to know the outcome and it's got to happen just this way.

That prayer can actually have surrender to it.

What a freedom that we don't have to show up into prayer pretending.

It should be real.

It should be like a child.

Just voicing what's inside of you.

Matthew 6, 9, pray then like this.

This is the beginning of the Lord's Prayer.

Our Father in heaven.

Now, later in the series on prayer, we're going to work our way all the way through that prayer.

But for now, just the beginning of how Jesus teaches prayer is positioning us as children in front of a loving, caring Father.

Point number two is that prayer is the freedom for the real you to speak to your loving Heavenly Father.

For years, prayer for me was quite mechanical, and it was me, you know, sitting, praying, and you can sit and pray, but for me, it was about if I convince God enough about the concern I have and the outcome I want, and if I pray hard enough with enough faith, if I can do that, then I can get him to do the thing that I want.

Which is pretty much a complete refusal of the entire relationship that I'm a child in front of a father.

Do you know how many times I as a father say to my children, you don't know anything.

You know nothing.

I'm saying this all the time.

You know nothing about this area of life.

You are you're acting so confident and certain.

You know nothing.

You've never done this.

Right?

I mean, you say this all the time.

The child position, it assumes that we're limited.

There's no way we could know all the outcomes, there's no way we could understand all the influences and the impacts.

There's no way we even know what might be good for us down the road.

What I'm learning is that prayer is primarily communing with this sovereign God of grace.

And we get to voice our needs, we even get to voice our wants, and we get to voice our anxieties.

And in it, God is working.

And my heart's being changed, which usually needs to happen because most of the time I'm just trying to force an outcome of what I think is best with my limited childlike view.

Over the Christmas season, when we get all of our Christmas decorations down, one thing we do is in front of our kitchen sink there's a window.

And at that window, uh we have like a little Christmas string, it has little, you know, little Christmas things.

And then we clip all of our Christmas cards for the past 20 years, like the ones we send out, we clip them right there, and we can kind of see how our families develop over the years.

And so you're doing the dishes, and you look back, and you remember when my body felt better and the hit my hip didn't hurt.

I remember that.

Like you can remember all these.

Here's our card from the year we started or the church.

So this is 12 years ago.

And first off, that's my old dog, Thomas, Big T.

We called him Big T.

And I adored that dog.

And I wept like a baby for a week solid when he passed of cancer just after this picture, a few months after this.

And when I look at this picture, what I primarily see is two incredibly tired parents who dress themselves up in forced smiles, just so tired.

Is anybody in this life stage?

Can you raise your can you get your arm up?

Are you probably too tired?

You can't, you can barely get your arms up.

It was Mount Everest to get here this morning.

There's a reason why you're tired.

You're doing something incredibly difficult.

You're raising little, wonderful, cute, irritating sinners and saints in Jesus.

My children, my three little girls, when they were that age, they were constantly needing something.

I would sometimes get my phone and go into the bathroom and pretend like I needed a poop just to be alone.

I'm constipated.

So be a little while, I'll be a while.

Because it's just it's constant.

Always something that they cannot handle.

My children were constantly unable to handle something or to do something.

They are yelling out, mom or dad, primarily mom, every 1.7 seconds.

They called out constantly.

We could say they called out steadfastly without pretense or hesitation.

And Jesus says, You're a child.

I know you're 45 years old.

You are a child in front of the Father.

It can be very relieving if you humble yourself enough.

It can be very relieving to know that there's just no possible way you could know everything.

And that when we come to prayer, there's got to be a lot of surrender, a lot of child in front of a father casting your anxieties.

Anne Lamont, in her prayer book, Help Thanks, While, she writes this there's freedom in hitting bottom and seeing that you won't be able to save or rescue your daughter, her spouse, his parents, or your career.

Relief in admitting you've reached the place of great unknowing.

This is where restoration can begin.

Because when you're still in the state of trying to fix the unfixable, everything bad is engaged.

The chatter of your mind, the tension of your physiology, all the chunks and wheel-ons you carry from the past.

It's exhausting.

Crazy making.

Help.

Help us walk through this.

Help us come through.

It's the first great prayer.

Jesus is teaching that prayer begins with a remembering, an acknowledgement.

Help.

Help with this thing, this anxiety, this issue.

Todd Brewer, the editor of Mockingbird, he writes this if you believe that God is demanding, like your boss at work, you will inevitably fail to speak honestly to this God, or for that matter, to yourself.

The same is true if you believe God to be powerless, distant, uncaring, or even controlling.

The list goes on.

So Jesus' instructions on how to pray begin with the person of God and his relation to us.

Point number three is this: we try to fix ourselves up.

But Jesus wants us to pray as little children.

Do you remember the invitation of Jesus?

Matthew 11, 28 through 30, come to me, all who labor and heavy laden, I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

This means, listen, this is such good news.

This means the criteria for coming to Jesus with your anxieties and your concerns is your weakness and your weariness.

Performance-based-based faith tries to cover up the very thing we need to bring into prayer.

Our weariness, our mess, our distraction, our weakness, our inability, our overwhelm.

You can bring your overwhelm with life, your busyness, your franticness, all of it.

Jesus actually assumes you will be that way.

Paul Miller, author of A Praying Life, he wrote this.

Great book on prayer, by the way, A Praying Life.

He wrote this the only way to come to God is by taking off any spiritual mask.

The real you has to meet the real God.

So, what should you do?

What should you do?

Well, first, we praise beloved sons and daughters of God.

Healthy children are supremely confident of their parents' love and their parents' power.

And because of that, they trust, they voice.

Healthy children, as they grow up, they lessen the expectations that they're going to be able to make their parents do exactly what they want.

But the relationship grows.

The conversation continues.

Because of Jesus, we get to pray unashamed of our weakness and weariness.

Second, we pray through our distractions as a child playfully moves through their distractions.

Have you spoken to a child recently?

It's wild.

Right?

You start talking about a car, and then you're talking about frogs, and then you're talking about how Susie called me a frog on the playground, and you're so upset, and then you're talking about Christmas trees, and then you're talking about squirrels, and then you're back to a car.

I mean, it is a wild journey to talk to a child.

We're children in front of the Father.

Of course, we're distracted when we pray.

I'm just giving you a little grace here.

Like Jesus and God, He already knows.

He already knows you will be distracted.

Bring your distraction.

Pray your distractions.

Pray through your distractions and then come back to the thing you're praying for.

It's okay.

It doesn't mean you're weak.

It doesn't mean you lack faith.

It doesn't mean you're not a good Christian.

It just means you're a child.

It means we're children.

And we get to pray our distractions.

Pray through them.

Let them run.

Take a note.

Write it down.

You know, clean the kitchen.

Write it down.

Clean the kitchen.

Okay, back to praying.

Like it's it's okay.

It's fine.

It's fine.

We're children in front of the Father.

Pastor Matt Chandler gives a few practical applications for prayer.

I think these can be helpful.

The first is solve the question of time.

Of course, we can pray throughout the day.

It's nice to already have an idea of a couple places of time during the day that you're gonna pray.

You're gonna slow down.

Maybe it's in the morning.

My cup of coffee.

Maybe it's in the car, first ten minutes of the drive to work.

Maybe it's lunch break.

Five minutes here, three minutes there, ten minutes here.

But to have an idea, solve the question of time.

Number two, solve the question of place.

Of course, we can pray anywhere.

Isn't it amazing how free we are as Christians that this place is no more sacred than the car on the way here?

That's amazing.

But to have an idea of some places that you like to pray can be very helpful.

I like to go for walks.

My wife sits in a chair by the fireplace.

I don't know where your place will be, but to solve that question can be very helpful for you to build the practice of prayer.

Third, use concentric circles.

Meaning this, what are you going to pray about?

Well, you can pray about whatever's concerning you.

That's the point.

Cast your anxieties on him.

You can begin with yourself.

You can begin with your heart, your concerns, your fears, your anxiety.

And you can move outward to your loved ones, to your family, to your friends, to your neighbors, to your church, to the world.

And Lamont in that book, Help Thanks.

Wow, that's her framework.

Prayers of help, prayers of thanks, prayers of, wow, God, you're doing this, you did that.

I'd add a fourth thing to Chandler's list.

The fourth is this feel free to use a prayer book.

There's just a lot of days I'm just too tired, man.

I'd just be honest.

I'm just tired.

Like I'm tired of like generating.

Like I'm just tired of generating.

And I don't want to generate words.

Like I just need a little, I need help, is what I need.

And a prayer book can be very helpful on those days.

You can use the Anglican book of prayer.

It's wonderful.

I use the book of Puritan prayers called the Valley of Vision.

I don't go anywhere without the Valley of Vision because I know at any point I can pray one of these prayers, and it's going to remind me who God is, who I am, is going to help me pray through things.

I would also say you could use worship songs.

You know, Sam Heilig's been doing something to y'all for 12 years, and you may not realize it.

He's been teaching you.

Like when he picks songs, the things we sing, he's actually teaching you about God.

And if you start to pay attention to what you're singing, like it's just prayers.

Like worship is prayer.

And you can use worship songs.

I mean, all of us aren't going to be incredibly good at just bowing and praying for long periods of time.

Use worship songs.

I have a song list.

I have a three three-song list that I have on my phone.

I use it all the time during the week.

The first song is Give Me Jesus.

The second song is Be Thou My Vision.

And the third song is More Love to Thee.

I work my way through those three songs.

I'm good.

Like that's a that's a three-song prayer.

I don't know what yours is, but you can do that.

Like use these resources to help your relationship in prayer.

Now, maybe all of that, having said all that, still feels overwhelming.

It's also possible all of that still makes you feel very condemned because you actually don't pray at all.

Or maybe you act like you pray a lot, but really you don't.

And you can feel quite condemned.

Well, there's still good news.

Point number four.

Even in our lack of prayer, Jesus is enough for us.

If you remember when we studied Colossians, before we got to Colossians 4, 2, to pray steadfastly, what Colossians hammers out over and over again is who we are in Jesus securely by Jesus' work alone.

Nothing of our work, and we are that fully and freely.

And that's why we kept saying throughout that series, we are beloved sons and daughters of the Heavenly Father before we are our roles and our practices.

How we should live is fueled by what is already true about us.

Now perhaps you're and you have a question about that, or something about prayer, or something else.

There'll be a pastor down front afterward who'd love to speak to you.

Let me close by reading the message translation of Mark 10, 13 through 16.

The people brought children to Jesus.

That's us.

Me and you.

Hoping he might touch them.

The disciples shooed them off, but Jesus was irate and let them know it.

Don't push these children away.

Don't ever get between them and me.

These children are the very center of life in the kingdom.

Mark this unless you accept God's kingdom in the simplicity of a child, you'll never get in.

Then, gathering the children up in his arms, he laid his hands of blessing on them.

Beloved children, let's pray to the Heavenly Father.

Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are so gracious and patient with us while we pray our agendas.

You are patient as you are working out your plan in our lives.

God, there are prayers we have prayed, and you have done the exact opposite, and it hurt.

Help us to be renewed in our trust in you as good.

Help us to see amidst the pain and let down a disappointment that you are still at work.

Would you renew our faith that prayer matters?

That we get to pray first desires of healing, to get the job, to get the raise, to have the relationship work out, while we have open hands to say there's no way we can know everything.

Humble us before your throne, before your knowledge and your power and your goodness.

Humble us as children before a loving Father.

That we might pray all the more, not to get our way, but to grow a relationship with you.

And to know the peace that comes as we abide and walk with Jesus.

In his name we pray.

Amen.