Sermon Tone Analysis

I don’t know about all of you, but I really enjoyed traveling through the 2018 Christmas season doing our Advent Series.

Now with the advent season behind us, and a brand new year in front of us, we dive back into our series on the Spiritual Disciplines.

I believer this is as very key series for us and an excellent way to start 2019.

This morning we continue on the Spiritual Discipline of Prayer.

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Leonard Ravenhill said, "No man is greater than his prayer life.

The pastor who is not praying is playing; the people who are not praying are straying.

We have many organizers, but few agonizers; many players and payers, few prayers; many singers, few clingers; lots of pastors, few wrestlers; many fears, few tears; much fashion, little passion; many interferers, few intercessors; many writers, but few fighters.

Failing here, we fail everywhere.”

Simply put, if you look at his list, many of the items he listed are good items!

We need organizers in the church, we need singers, we need pastors & writers.

All of these are key roles, but if the individuals filling those roles ignore the importance of a devotion to prayer, they operate solely on their own power and greatly diminish, if not completely eliminate their ability to accomplish anything of eternal significance.

And isn’t it Next Slide a top priority of the church to make an eternal difference in the lives of those who are a part of the church?

The top priority of the church to make an eternal difference in the lives of those who are a part of the church.

So if our top priority is to make an eternally significant difference in the lives of people, and if we can’t do this without a devotion to prayer, why is it we struggle so much with that devotion?

I believe that a big part of it is, we don’t really know how to pray.

Our prayers are stagnant and stale with very little if any change from one day to the next.

Truth is, for many of us, we simply don’t know how to pray.

With that in mind, this morning we are going to look at Next Slides.

Spiritual Disciplines-Prayer-How to Pray

If you have been to the adult Sunday school class lead by Julie Spencer, you have probably noticed a prayer acronym she has on the white board with the letters for PRAISE.

The acronym gives us a good guideline on how to pray.

Praise

Repentance

Acknowledge God’s Lordship in yoiur life.

Intercession for others and their needs

Supplication for myself

Equip me for Christian service.

We are going to use this acronym this morning as a guideline on how to pray.

Before we do, one thing you may notice is there is no “T” for Thankfulness.

Yet we read in

Philippians 4:6

The reason for that is that thankfulness should be a part of each aspect of our prayer life.

As we spend time praising God, we can express thankfulness to Him for Who He is and what He accomplishes.

After a time of repentance, we can thank Him for His provision of forgiveness.

As you go through each of these aspects of prayer you can include thankfulness.

Now let’s take the time to look at each aspect of prayer.

The first one is: Next Slide

Praise & Adoration

For the most part, this is how we should start our prayer time, yet for many of us, a time of praise and adoration of God is largely missing from our time of prayer.

We quickly move to our to-do list for God, our expectations for what we want Him to accomplish for us.

Yet in Psalm 22:3 we read: Next Slide

Psalm 22:3

In Psalm 22:3 we see that God inhabits the praises of His people.

I love what Beth Moore writes in her book Whispers Of Hope.

She writes: “Sincere praise from your heart will invite God to pull up His chair and become your audience.”

While Steven and Brittany were with us, we invited Stan and Jan Whitehead over to watch the movie Hoosiers.

Now I have seen the movie at least 10 times, but neither of the kids had ever watched it.

What made this viewing more interesting for me was watching it with 2 people who were actually in the movie.

As we watched it, I kept the remote control in my hand and paused it on a regular basis, getting the inside scoop from people who had been there.

We even got to see where Liberty Chapel was in the movie.

Before the movie started, we slid our couch over so we were all sitting close to one another as we watched the movie.

If I am reading Beth Moore’s quote correctly, that is the picture she wants you to have here in reference to our praise and God’s presence.

When we sincerely spend time praising God, He pulls up His proverbial chair and sits down next to us.

Can you to picture that in your mind for a moment.

Use your imagination and picture the God of the universe pulling His chair up right next to you and spending some one on one time with you.

Now there are many different ways you can give God praise and adoration.

One of the ways may take some effort initially, but later this can be done while physically doing something else.

In fact for me, I did this while riding my bicycle to work in the mornings.

Part of the year I was riding to work an hour before the sun came up and I was always on the rode long before there was much traffic.

As I rode to work I began to praise God by going through some of the many names of God while I rode.

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Praise God while reviewing the Names of God.

I praised Him:

As Elohim, the Strong Creator.

As Jehovah, the Self-existent One.

As Jehovah Jireh, the Lord Who provides.

As Jehovah Shalom, the God Who gives peace.

As Jehovah Rophe, the Lord Who heals.

As Jehovah Tsidkenu, the Lord Who clothes me in His righteousness.

This is just a partial list, but I had little problem spending a considerable amount of time praising God as I reviewed the Names of God.

Another way we can spend time praising God is by: Next Slides

Praying through the Psalms.

For this, turn in your Bibles to Psalm 23.

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Psalm 23

That gives you a couple ideas on ways you can spend time in praise and adoration.

This brings us to the next aspect of prayer in the P.R.A.I.S.E.

acronym: Next Slide

Repentance

Matthew 6:9 & 12

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I added verse 9 to show you why we start with praise before we move to repentance.

When Jesus was teaching the Disciples to pray, He instructed them to begin with praise to God “hallowed be Your Name” before moving into repentance, we do the same.

I believe a huge part of why we spend time praising Him first is that it gives us a reminder of how truly incredible God is, and as a result a more accurate assessment of how deeply sinful we are.

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I’m really not going to spend a lot of time on repentance this morning.

I just want to point out 2 important keys.

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Repentance is more than confession, it is an about face.

Forgiveness from God is a by-product of our forgiveness of others.

Jesus, Himself makes this very clear in verses 14 & 15 of Matthew chapter 6, where we read: Next Slides

Matthew 6:14-15

Let’s now move to the next aspect of prayer, in our acronym this is the letter A for: Next Slide

Acknowledgment

There are 2 areas of acknowledgement taking place here:

1. Acknowledgement of God’s rightful place as the ruler of your life.

2. Acknowledgment of God’s goodness to you in the past.

When we acknowledge God’s rightful place as ruler of our lives, we are acknowledging His lordship over our life, it is a daily surrendering of ourselves to Him.

Beth Moore writes: