Deepening our Prayer Life
21 Days of Prayer and Fasting 2021 • Sermon • Submitted
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Good morning, thank you for being with us today. We are at the end of week two of our 21 days of Prayer and Fasting. This past week I heard from a few of you the ways that God is using this time of focused and intentional seeking in your lives. I hope many more of you are experiencing times of deeper fellowship with God and an increased sense of His presence and love for you. Just like I did last week, I encourage any of you who have not yet chosen to participate in this emphasis to consider joining us for the final week of prayer and fasting. I believe that God honors even the baby steps we take in our relationship with Him, and that He is pleased by our efforts to know Him and follow Him better.
Over the past few weeks we’ve talked about the desire of God for His children to draw close to Him and know Him better. We’ve also talked about the amazing truth that because of Christ’s sacrifice we are not just servants of God, we are friends of Christ and adopted sons and daughters of God when we put our faith in Jesus. All that is great news, and today I want to focus on some practical and concrete steps we can each take to deepen our prayer life. In churches we are often good at telling people what they should do, but not always good at helping you know HOW to do it. So hopefully today will be helpful for everyone, both those who are new to prayer and those who can be considered experienced prayer people. If you have your Bible with you, please turn with me to the Gospel of Luke, chapter 11. We are going to read about a time when Jesus’s disciples asked Him to teach them how to pray.
1 One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.”
2 He said to them, “When you pray, say: “ ‘Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come.
3 Give us each day our daily bread.
4 Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation.’ ”
5 Then Jesus said to them, “Suppose you have a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread;
6 a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have no food to offer him.’
7 And suppose the one inside answers, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything.’
8 I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.
9 “So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.
10 For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
11 “Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead?
12 Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?
13 If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
Let’s pray...
This passage speaks about the importance of prayer, and about God’s attitude towards us when we approach Him in prayer. In a little bit we are going to dig a little deeper into the Lord’s Prayer, although we could probably spend a few sermons dissecting each part of the prayer and studying it. But for now, I want to look at a broader picture of some of the things we can do to deepen our prayer lives. We’re going to look at verses throughout the Bible that talk about prayer to help us understand how we can grow, and we’re going to look at some principles that some of the great minds of Christianity have distilled from their study of Scripture. I mentioned last week that I’ve been reading Pastor Tim Keller’s book on Prayer, and in it he looked at three of the great leaders of Christianity and what they wrote about prayer. Today’s sermon is basically a summary of his presentation on what St. Augustine, Martin Luther, and John Calvin had to say about prayer. So, let’s look at the first principle to deepening our prayer lives.
1. A healthy prayer life starts with the right perspective.
1. A healthy prayer life starts with the right perspective.
Spending time in prayer is like going on a journey with God. The thing about going on a journey is that if you want to get to the right destination, you have to start at the right starting point. If you were to go up to someone in downtown Raleigh and ask them to describe Union Station you would get a very different description versus if you were to go to up to someone in downtown Washington D.C. and ask them to describe Union Station. Both Raleigh and D.C. have a place called Union Station, and they are both train stations, but they are not the same place, and they look VERY different from each other. There are many different cultures with different ideas about god, but even Christians sometimes have different ideas about God. Some people have allowed their idea of God to influenced by culture or personal preference, but we need to check these with what God says about Himself.
A. We must have a correct view of God. We must love Him and desire Him above all.
A. We must have a correct view of God. We must love Him and desire Him above all.
The great thing about the Bible is that God has told us who He is. We don’t have to guess or make things up. And the more we know God as He has revealed Himself to us, the more we grow in awe of Him, and in love of Him as we respond to His mercy, grace and love towards us. I’ll be honest, when I was younger and did not know God as well as I do now, I had a hard time connecting with what David wrote in Psalm 27
4 I have asked one thing from the Lord; it is what I desire: to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, gazing on the beauty of the Lord and seeking him in his temple.
Bu the longer I live, and the more I have been able to not just read the Bible and see what God says about Himself, but to experience His activity in my life, I understand David much more than I used to. I love God more than I used to, and I want to be with Him more than I used to. I appreciate Him and His majesty, perfection, and awesomeness more when I compare it to the people and mess that is a part of our fallen world. So we want to know God better, and part of that is understanding what God desires, what He loves, and what His plans are.
As we learn this and our relationship with Him grows, our prayer life deepens and our prayers become more and more about what honors and pleases Him and less and less about what we want, although God still wants us to express our desires to Him as part of our prayers. Probably one of the biggest areas that people struggle with when it comes to having a right perspective and understanding of God is the idea that we are to fear God.
What does it mean to “Fear God?”
What does it mean to “Fear God?”
This is one of the ideas that people have the biggest misunderstandings about, even among Christian leaders. I have heard people teach, “Oh, the Bible doesn’t really mean “fear,” it means that we are supposed to respect God.” I think those who express this opinion have taken the verse where it says that “God is love,” and have looked at God as a one-dimensional being who would never want to be feared if He is love. But God is not only love, He is holy, and perfect, and all-powerful, and good, and just, and many other things, among them Awesome and to be feared. Practically every time there is an encounter with God or with an angel in the Bible, the first response is fear, and the person has to be told to not fear. Fear is a natural response for a sinful and imperfect being in the presence of a holy and almighty God. People ought to be afraid of a holy and almighty God because He is the one who will sit in judgment over all of humanity. At the same time, we have verses like what John wrote in his first letter to believers.
18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
And Paul wrote to the believers in Rome...
1 Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus, 2 because the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death.
In other words, if you are a believer and follower of Christ, we don’t have to be afraid of condemnation or of hell. We don’t have to fear that God is going to punish on the day of judgment, and God’s attitude towards us is primarily the same attitude that He has for His Son, Jesus, He loves us. I remember at one of the churches I pastored at before coming here there was a church member that worried all the time that she had done something that might have caused God to turn His back on her, so she was always in fear of losing her salvation. One day I finally sat down with her and explained to her that God is an all-knowing God. He knows everything that has ever happened in the history of the universe, everything that is happening right now, and everything that will ever happen in the future. So on the day that she repented of her sins and asked for God’s forgiveness, and put her faith in Jesus Christ and His sacrifice on the cross for her salvation, on that day God knew all the sins she had committed in her past and all the sins she would commit in her future. When God extended forgiveness to her that day, and saved her, he was forgiving her with full knowledge of all her sins for all her life, and that forgiveness covered it all. Now, just like Paul warned the Romans, this doesn’t give us permission to sin more since it’s all forgiven - if we really love God we wouldn’t want to disappoint Him and take advantage of him like that - but it does give us confidence that our salvation is safe in Christ.
So if we aren’t afraid of losing our salvation, what does it mean to fear God? The closest thing I can compare that to is my relationship with Shannon, my wife. I love her deeply and she is my best friend. Still, there have been times in our relationship when I’ve done something that hurt her, disappointed her, and caused damage to our relationship. Each one of those times, my stomach was in knots, my heart felt crushed about how the effects of my sin had hurt our relationship and closeness. I was amazed early on in our relationship when some of these difficult times came, that through those trials, Shannon stuck by me and loved me and we worked to restore and heal and grow our relationship. Still, the memories of those trials make me cringe a little, and they are a huge motivation for me now to be a better friend and husband to her. The fear of disappointing her and of hurting her is a great motivator. I think that for the Christian, the fear of God is something similar to that.
Christians should be intensely concerned not to grieve or dishonor the One who is so glorious and who did so much for us.
Christians should be intensely concerned not to grieve or dishonor the One who is so glorious and who did so much for us.
God loves us and remains faithful to us even when we are not. We don’t have to fear losing our salvation, but the Bible still speaks of God as a Good Father who sometimes has to correct and discipline His children because He loves us. There is a fear of the righteous anger and discipline that comes when we sin. Not a fear of losing God’s love, but a fear of the correction itself and a fear of the disapproval and harm done to the relationship.
In addition to a right view of God...
B. We must have a correct view/understanding of ourselves as we encounter God.
B. We must have a correct view/understanding of ourselves as we encounter God.
Having a correct view of God is necessary, but we also have to have a correct view of ourselves. When we view God more as He really is, it often helps us to see ourselves in a more honest light too, but sometimes it takes the Bible to help us understand just how much we need God.
I recently started reading all the way through the entire Bible again, not skipping over any of the dryer passages that I used to skip when I thought it was boring or that it didn’t apply anymore. This isn’t the first time I’ve done this, and even this time around I’m understanding things and realizing things that I hadn’t noticed before. For example, as I was reading through some of the Old Testament laws about the different kinds of sacrifices for sin, and things like that, I realized that God was telling Moses that the Israelites were supposed to sacrifice in order to be forgiven for the sins they had committed WITHOUT KNOWING IT. Many of the instances listed in the Law of Moses assumed the Israelites had sinned by accident, and still they were required to make a sacrifice to atone for their sin. If sacrifice is required for “ACCIDENTAL” sin, what does that say about when we sin on purpose? I think our culture has made a habit of saying, “I didn’t know,” or, “that’s not what I meant,” and somehow thinking that lets us off the hook, but the Bible assumes that many of our sins will be things we do that we aren’t aware of until later. Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans that the purpose for the Law was to show us just how hopeless it is for us to try to live a righteous life. None of us “just barely misses” the standard God requires, we all missed it by a million miles. Understanding just how sinful our natures are, and how far from perfect we really are (instead of thinking we’re okay because we’re better than someone else), helps us have a right understanding of ourselves as we approach God in prayer. I think that was the attitude of Agur son of Jakeh when he wrote Proverbs 30. He understood his own tendency to be selfish and sinful when he wrote these words:
7 O God, I beg two favors from you; let me have them before I die.
8 First, help me never to tell a lie. Second, give me neither poverty nor riches! Give me just enough to satisfy my needs.
9 For if I grow rich, I may deny you and say, “Who is the Lord?” And if I am too poor, I may steal and thus insult God’s holy name.
The purpose of knowing ourselves and understanding who we are as we approach God in prayer is to
Understand your need for God’s mercy and grace, and your need for repentance.
Understand your need for God’s mercy and grace, and your need for repentance.
So now that we’ve got the right starting point, let’s move on to how to figure out what to pray about and the direction that our prayers should take.
2. A deep prayer life engages with Scripture.
2. A deep prayer life engages with Scripture.
What does that mean? It means that as we read the Bible, we look for ways that what we read can show us things we should pray for.
A. Read Scripture and look for what the passage calls you to believe or do.
A. Read Scripture and look for what the passage calls you to believe or do.
You might be reading one of the classic stories that kids hear as kids: Adam and Eve, Noah and the ark, Abraham and his wife Sarah, David and Goliath. Every story has something we can learn from it. It may be about who God is, or maybe an example to follow or avoid, or a description that makes us think about how people relate to God or each other. It may be a beautiful poem or praise, or one of lament. It may be a story about the history of God’s people either in rebellion or in worship of God. It may be an account of Jesus and what He taught or how He interacted with people. It may be a letter by one of the early church leaders about living for God, or some deep theological truth. It may be a list of names that sound strange and makes you wonder why it even matters that we know these people existed. In almost every passage of Scripture, if you look deep enough you will find something that can be incorporated into your prayer, and often something you are called to believe or do in response.
B. How does the Scripture lead you to praise and thank God, repent and confess sin, or prompt you to appeal to God in petition or supplication?
B. How does the Scripture lead you to praise and thank God, repent and confess sin, or prompt you to appeal to God in petition or supplication?
Again, different passages might lead you to different responses. Sometimes you will thank God for a promise in the Bible, or for something that teaches you more about Him that makes you grateful. Sometimes you might read something and find that your sin is similar in some ways with the sin you just read about, and you need to confess and repent. You might read something that reminds you of someone or of a need that you know that you need to pray for. Let the Bible prompt you in your prayer. You don’t have to wait until you’re done reading and get to your designated prayer time, sometimes you just pray along as you are reading, almost like you’re inserting prayers between the lines of what the Bible is saying.
3. Use the Lord’s Prayer as a model.
3. Use the Lord’s Prayer as a model.
Use the Lord’s Prayer as a model of the different ways to pray (adoration, petition, thanksgiving, confession), and pray your own prayer with these elements in it.
9 “This, then, is how you should pray: “ ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,
10 your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us today our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’
14 For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.
15 But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
Father in Heaven, hallowed be your name… - Spend time worshiping God. Picture Him up in heaven on His throne, or imagine the vastness of the universe and think of how God fills the whole universe. Let your prayer turn to praising God. Think about what you know about God, how he is Love, and good, and just, and perfect, and the different things He is, and praise Him for that.
Your Kingdom Come, your will be done… - What does that look like in my life? In my community? In my family? In my job?
Give us this day - What are my needs? What are OUR needs (this is a communal OUR daily bread)? What are the needs of those around me?
Forgive us as we forgive - What do I need forgiveness for? Have I forgiven others for how they offended me? What do I need to forgive others for?
Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil - what are areas I need to be mindful for that might tempt me today? How can I be proactive to avoid that temptation? What will I do if the temptation comes, that I can help run away from it. Ask God to protect you from evil and from the plans of the devil to make you fall.
Pray some form of this prayer on a regular basis, or use the more general topics here to pray
A doration
P etition
T hanksgiving
C onfession
As you use this model or something similar to engage in deeper prayer, remember that God wants us to engage Him with our hearts. A loving relationship that is growing is one where you are able to express yourself honestly with one another.
A. Pour out your heart’s desire.
A. Pour out your heart’s desire.
The more we grow close to God the more our desires will align with His. This doesn’t mean that we never have desires that are just ours and aren’t selfish anymore, we are still human and sometimes our desires might still not be selfless. However, our desires should not be just about what WE WANT. If we are walking with God and growing deeper in our relationship with Him, we will also desire the things HE WANTS. We can pray for His will in our lives or in our world just as passionately as we would for something that is personal. Just because we are in a deep relationship with God and we feel like we are praying for things that God wants, it doesn’t mean that He will always give us what we want. Sometimes God knows things and understands reality better than we ever will, and even though our requests may not be bad, God might just have different plans for us. I always feel free to ask for my hearts desire, but I also remember to submit myself to God so that He will answer my request with what He knows is best for me, and not just give me what I want because I’m being stubborn.
But prayer isn’t just about us talking to God in a one-way conversation…
4. Expect to hear God speak to you through the Holy Spirit.
4. Expect to hear God speak to you through the Holy Spirit.
Prayer is just one side of the conversation. Yes, God uses Scripture as we read and let it guide our prayers to speak to us, but God also uses times of silence and waiting to allow His Spirit to speak to us. Sometimes God speaks by putting in our minds that is so strong we can’t ignore it, or a burden to do something so strong we can’t resist (these will NEVER contradict what the Bible teaches). Sometimes it’s a more quiet voice that just brings a sense of peace or of being drawn in a certain direction in more subtle ways. Other times God uses other believers to bring things to our attention or nudge us toward what He wants for us. If we have our eyes and ears open to perceive what God might say to us, we are more likely to hear Him than if we aren’t looking for it.
9 But as it is written, What no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no human heart has conceived— God has prepared these things for those who love him. 10 Now God has revealed these things to us by the Spirit, since the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. 11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except his spirit within him? In the same way, no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 Now we have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who comes from God, so that we may understand what has been freely given to us by God. 13 We also speak these things, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual things to spiritual people.
Finally, through this whole process, we need to practice...
5. The Rule of Grace: None of us is perfect, and God knows that.
5. The Rule of Grace: None of us is perfect, and God knows that.
None of us is perfect, and God understands that. Sometimes we will pray for the wrong things and with the wrong motives. Nothing qualifies us for having access to God, His grace does it all. We don’t earn our salvation by doing good works, God extends His grace to us and saves us wholly by His grace. In the same way, God extends His grace to us when we pray. He gives us what He knows is best for us and what is in His will for us, even when we pray for the wrong things or with the wrong motives.
So let your relationship with God grow and deepen, and let your prayer life grow as well. You don’t have to be perfect or put on a show, or pretend. Just like a best friend knows when you are faking it, God knows, and He wants our relationship with him to be deep and real. His Spirit is at work transforming us and purifying us, but we still won’t reach perfection on this side of heaven. These rules and methods are meant to help us in our prayer life, but they are not laws to limit how we relate to God. Following them doesn’t earn you the right to be heard.
So, if all these rules and methods of praying don’t earn us an audience with God, and don’t make our prayers more worthy (we can’t earn access, remember?), then what is the purpose of having rules and methods of prayer? They align our prayers with who God is, and unite us to Him more and more.
Example of light switch. The switch doesn’t provide the power, it simply aids in the connection to the power. The power is the electricity. In the same way, prayer connects us to God and to His power in our lives. Prayer is simply a way to help our relationship with God grow. So I challenge you to use some of the principles and rules we talked about this coming week. I hope it is a tool that helps you, and not a pair of handcuffs that limit you. I think if you use them right, and extend yourself some grace, they will serve you well.
Let’s pray.
20 Now may the God of peace, who brought up from the dead our Lord Jesus—the great Shepherd of the sheep—through the blood of the everlasting covenant, 21 equip you with everything good to do his will, working in us what is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.