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Prayer – HELP!!
Romans 8:26-27
January 7, 2007
*Opening*
I need help.
When it comes to figuring out things on my computer and keeping all the programs in it running, I need help.
It's just too complicated for me.
I don't really under-stand how it works.
It's beyond my capabilities.
Unless I get help, there are times when I get really frustrated.
Can you relate to that?
When it comes to prayer, I also need help and I am exactly where Paul suggests I am with prayer when he says, "We do not know what we ought to pray for."
That expresses part of what it means to be human and live in a fallen world.
But the help we need with prayer is available just like technical help is available to computer buffs..
In the same paragraph where Paul tells us.
"We do not know what we ought to pray for," he also says, "The Spirit helps us in our weakness."
*Scripture*
Let's read what Romans 8:26-27 says about the help the Holy Spirit gives us in prayer: “/The Spirit helps us in our weakness.
We do not know what we ought to pray for.
but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.
And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will.”/
*Topic Sentence*
The Holy Spirit teaches us how to pray and what to pray by planting within us the "yearnings" of God, which, when prayed.
are brought back to the Father by Jesus Christ.
If that is so, then why Is Prayer So Difficult?
Let me suggest three reasons.
First, Prayer is conversation with an unseen person.
It's natural and easy for most of us to talk to a person we can see.
It's not even hard to talk to a person we can't see so long as we can hear an audible voice, as in a telephone conversation.
But we can't see God.
We can't hear his audible voice.
When it comes to communication, God can seem so silent and distant and God's apparent silence and distance become obstacles to our prayer.
It's hard to know some-times if our words are really getting through.
The second reason our prayer can be difficult is our secularity.
It’s is an obstacle/ Secular /means "worldly" as distinguished from church or religion.
In our world, where science and technology often dominate, it's easy and natural to make our plans, go about our daily activities, and pursue our recreational interests with no thought of God.
He doesn't seem to be necessary, except in a crisis when human efforts and human solutions fail us.
In such a world prayer gets used mostly as an emergency measure.
It's there when we need it, like 911, but it may not be something we think about much when everything is going well.
There is a saying, “God is not in crisis management; He’s in Christ-management.”
Although I’m not too sure if the Bible would support this saying.
And the third reason prayer is difficult is because it's hard to understand how prayer works.
Trying to understand how prayer works seems to give rise to more questions than answers.
How, for instance, can God hear a couple of billion prayers at the same time and respond to them all?
How does God deal with prayers of two opposing armies, or two opposing teams, both asking for his help to win?
If he is both al-mighty and loving, why do so many sincere prayers seem to go unanswered?
And what about the prayers of people from different religions?
Is there one true God who responds to all of them?
Further, why should a sovereign and all-wise God even listen to our prayers if he already knows what's best?
All these questions can prevent us from praying – if we question God’s omniscient, omnipotent, omni-present character.
Fir that is what we do when we question the validity of prayer, we are questioning the character of God.
When you pray knowing the prayer-answering God, your faith will increase.
Here’s an example of what I’m talking about.
It comes from Henry Blackaby’s “Experiencing God” study, an account that illustrates what happens when a church prays and walks by faith:
“When the world’s fair was coming to Vancouver.
Our association of churches was convinced that God wanted us to try to reach the 22 million people that would come to the fair.
We had about 2,000 members in our association’s churches in greater Vancouver.
How in the world could 2,000 people make a great impact on such a mass of tourist from all over the world?
Two years before the fair we began to set our plans in motion The total income for our whole association was $9,000.
The following year our income was about $16,000.
The year of the World’s fair we set a budget of $202,000.
We had commitments that would probably provide 35 percent of that budget.
Sixty five percent of that budget was dependent on prayer.
Can you operate a budget on prayer?
Yes.
But when you do that you are attempting something only God can do.
What do most of us do?
We set the practical budget, which is the total of what *we* can do.
Then we set a hope or faith budget.
The budget we really trust and use, however, is the one we can reach by ourselves.
We do not really trust God to do anything.
As an association of churches, we decided that God had definitely led us to the work that would cost $202,000.
That became our operating budget.
All of our people began praying for God to provide and do everything we believed He had led us to do during the World’s Fair.
At the end of the year, I asked our treasurer how much money we had received.
From Canada, the United States, and other parts of the world we had received $264,000.
People from all over came to assist us.
During the course of the fair, we became a catalyst to see almost 20 thousand people come to know Jesus Christ.
You cannot explain that except in terms of God’s intervention.
Only God could have done that.
God did it with a people who had determined to be servants moldable and available for the Master’s use.
*Do you want to be moldable and available for the Master’s use?
Then know He is calling you to pray!*
Yes, understanding how prayer works can be difficult, so how does prayer work?
First, the Father initiates prayer.
When we pray, we pray /to /the Father, /through /the Son, and /by /the Holy Spirit.
Of course, we can actually pray to any of the persons of the Trinity.
Jesus taught us to pray to the Father in the Lord's Prayer when he said, "This ... is how you should pray: /`Our Father in heaven ..."/ (Matt.
6:9).
Jesus also invited us to pray to him.
He said to his disciples, /"You may ask me for anything in my name ..."/ (John 14:14).
The Holy Spirit also receives our prayer when we sing a song like "Spirit of the Living God" or "Dwell in Me, 0 Blessed Spirit."
Each of us will have a preference to whom we pray.
But did you know God initiates our prayers.
Paul says the help that the Holy Spirit gives us in prayer is "in accordance with God's will."
In other words, the Father initiates prayer just as he initiated the plan of creation and the plan of redemption.
Prayer is the Father's idea.
He knows what he wants to accomplish in our lives and in our world, and he provides for us the help we need to pray in accord with his will.
When you were a child you may have prayed for a chocolate bar to magically appear in your hand.
Now, you know that’s not God’s will.
God’s will is made apparent in His Word.
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