Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro

It is God’s intention that we pray.

Think about this for a moment.

God’s will is that we, his creatures, ask him for things.

It is not just His will, but He truly takes delight in it.

God is eager to hear prayers and respond to them, so eager that in

God wants to be pestered, He wants to be badgered with our prayers.

Give him no rest, remind the Lord, and never keep silent.

To keep this in mind is very encouraging to our faith and to our hope.

God, the creator of the universe, holds our life in his hands, rules over the world, wants us to ask Him for things.

Rev 5:8 gives us the picture of golden bowls in the throne room full of heaven, which are the prayers of the saints.

Our prayers are like a sweet smelling aroma to God.

Me personally, my sniffer can be a little weak a lot of the time.

But have you been walking through Walmart and get close to the smelly section?

It grabs your attention.

God delights in always being the giver.

It is far more glorious to be a giver, than a getter.

The getter appears needy, while the giver appears self-sufficient.

God wants us to pray, ask, seek him because He wants us to see him as gloriously self sufficient and recognize that we are totally needy.

We ask for things in Jesus name that the father may be glorified.

If we look to Jesus as our example, we see that prayer was an integral part of His life and ministry.

Jesus often withdrew to pray, he taught his followers to pray, and we see his prayer culminated in the high priestly prayer in Jn 17.

Awana verse - Jn 17:17 Sanctify them by your truth, your word is truth.

We also see the agony in Jesus prayer in Gethsemane and his prayer from the cross.

Prayers is not to inform God of matters that He might otherwise be ignorant, and the validity of prayer is not affected by length or repetitiveness.

As Christians we are called to Pray! Be intentional in our prayer.

Devoted to prayer.

I want to start out in our text this morning by exploring what it means to continue steadfastly in prayer.

For starters, the Greek verb here is again an imperative.

It is a command, or a very intense appeal for the action to be done.

The idea is to persist in prayer, be diligent, hold fast to, be busily engaged, literally attach yourself to the act of praying.

An example from scripture that comes to mind is that of the disciples after Jesus resurrection.

After Jesus resurrection the disciples gathered together in a room

Following Peter’s preaching Pentecost there were about 3000 souls added that day.

They received the word and were baptized and in 2:42 it says

Prayer was an important part of Jesus ministry and this transfers into the church.

To further our understanding a bit I think we must also ask though what it was exactly they were devoting themselves to.

What does it mean to pray?

Most often when we pray, we are asking God for things, not normally objects or stuff but generally whatever it is that our hearts desire or need.

Of course, what our hearts need most is God, to know our heavenly father, to trust him, to love him, and to obey him.

We ought to come to God with more than just asking though.

We should come to God confessing sins and giving thanks and praise for all that He does and all that He is.

But prayer, in the strict sense, means requesting.

So we can define prayer as asking God for things.

There is a story about D. L. Moody making a visit to Scotland in the 1800's and opening one of his talks at a local grade school with the rhetorical question, What is prayer?

To his amazement, hundreds of children's hands went up.

So he decided to call on a lad near the front, who promptly stood up and said, "Prayer is an offering up of our desires unto God, in the name of Christ, by the help of his Spirit, with confession of our sins, and thankful acknowledgment of his mercies."

This is the answer to a question in the Westminster Catechism.

To this Moody responded by saying, "Be thankful, son, that you were born in Scotland."

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Be sure to notice the main thing: "Prayer is an offering up of our desires unto God."

That is the main meaning of prayer.

"With confession of sins" and "with . . .

thankful acknowledgment of his mercies" go along with these expressed desires.

But the essence of prayer is the expression of our dependence on God through requests.

Christian prayer is the end product of a long process of change and development in God’s relation to men.

If prayer is so great and central to God's purpose for the universe and for your life, it is not surprising that God would tell us, "Devote yourselves to prayer."

What does this mean?

Pray often and you pray regularly.

Prayer should not be infrequent

Prayer cannot be hit and miss.

Being "devoted to" prayer means that you are not haphazard and you are not forgetful.

It means you take steps to see that it is part of your regular life, the same way eating and sleeping are.

Do we view prayer as being that important?

As important as our food and as our rest?

As Christians we are to pray!

And be intentional in our prayer.

Be we watchful.

Our text gives us an example of a step we take to make prayer a part of our regular life.

Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful.

Being watchful means that you work against distractions and hindrances.

You do what you have to do to stay awake and to stay at the task.

Who has ever set out to intentionally pray and woken up in a pool of drool.

Even the disciples were guilty of it.

Jesus came back to them in the garden to wake them more than once to pray with him.

For myself personally, I have to spend time walking as I pray.

Do what you have to do to stay awake and alert in praying, it also implies: do what you have to do to see that you pray period.

Our instructions in scripture are clear.

So what are some practical points on how to be devoted to prayer?

Where, When, and How.

Taking Steps - When and Where?

As we begin to move forward in our walks with the Lord we must ask ourselves important questions about how we will accomplish the things He asks us to do.

In this case when are you going to pray?

We may respond with something along the lines of “Oh I don’t want schedule out my prayer time because that seems too religious.

I want an integrated prayer life, saturating all I do with prayer.”

That is great, but how is it really working out for you.

I know in my life my prayer throughout the day comes and goes like a breeze of the wind more often than not.

It doesn’t work to choose between a season of intentional prayer and prayerfully going about your day for the rest of your life as if they are alternatives.

If we want to walk in prayer throughout our day, we need to also have some times of quiet communion with God.

Why?

Because you can't get deep with God on the run, fitting him into the cracks of your day.

We should make it our aim to have our whole day be a walking conversation with God, having His word memorized, our desires being offered up to Him hour by hour, moment by moment.

But we also need to make some time to go deep with God in the stillness of uninterrupted prayer.

To give God some of our undivided attention.

We need to decide on a time and place for this meeting.

I can tell you, it won’t be easy.

Things will come up that will try to take our attention away.

Just as with spending some specific time in God’s word is important, and we must make the time for that, prayer

So decide on a place and a time for this meeting with God in prayer.

Pray and be intentional about it.

Taking Steps - How Long?