A Lifestyle of Prayer (3)
Notes
Transcript
“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
“So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.
Scripture: Matthew 6:5-15, Matthew 7:7-12
Heidelberg Catechism: Lord’s Day 45, Questions and Answers 116-118
Sermon Title: A Lifestyle of Prayer
Brothers and sisters in Christ, what is prayer? I am guessing what pops into our minds is what we tend to do when we begin and end our days, around meal times, and throughout our worship services. I am hoping that for many of us prayer is a daily practice in our lives as believers. This form of prayer is typically the word-based communication between us and God. When I took a Communication course at Dordt College, we learned a little deeper what communication involves. First, a person or a party forms a message. Second, they deliver that message over a medium, by using their voice or writing it down or displaying an image. Third, the message is received by another party—all of it, part of it, or none of it. Fourth, the receiver processes it. Finally, the recipients give a response—they return their own communicated message.
When we think about communication in a more academic way like this, there are at least two key things that can inform how we think about prayer. First, there are a variety of mediums that one can use to communicate with. When we say a prayer out loud or in our heads, we use words. But if prayer is only that which can be spoken or written, then prayer is limited to those who have a certain level of intelligence and for whom vocabulary or language is accessible. If that is all prayer is and can ever be, then prayer is not something everyone can participate in, especially those with disabilities. I think we can broaden what constitutes as prayer beyond simply words.
The second important piece we can take away from what communication involves is that there is always a receiver, and an active receiver at that. Our prayers are to God. They are not just messages or wishes put out to the unknown, but we can be confident that Someone hears, processes, and responds to our requests. As communication, prayer will include God’s response to us. If prayer is truly a dialogue between God and us, then we must be willing to listen for his response when he speaks or directs us.
Tonight, I invite us to hold on to this concept of prayer as communication, but then also to expand it to what I would call living communication with God. Our readings of Jesus’ words from Matthew’s gospel provide the foundation that prayer is done by each believer out of their relationship with God. No matter how young or old we are, everyone can pray and everyone should pray because it is something we do out of our neediness as creatures. Prayer, as we read in Matthew 7, is an opportunity to ask, seek, and knock, and Jesus promises, “For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened…If [we who are evil], know how to give good gifts to [our] children, how much more will our Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”
This means that prayer naturally includes our petitions before God with thanks and praises, with joys and confessions, with struggles and our desire for wisdom. Prayer is something we actively do for ourselves, but also for and with others near and far. As we answered question 118, our prayers include everything, whether spiritual or physical, because we trust God to be faithful to the promises that he has made throughout history. The main idea that we find in these passages and in the Catechism is that prayer is the primary act of faith that we practice and the most theological act we can be involved in.
Let’s dig in to what that means. To ask, as question 116 does, “Why do Christians need to pray,” assumes that we cannot go through life on our own without communication and relationship with God. When it comes to the Christian life, prayer is not something to be done flippantly; the authors of the catechism propose that it is actually “the most important part of thankfulness God requires of us.” When was the last time most of us thought of prayer like that? Acknowledging our sin and accepting the undeserved grace given to us by Christ, we are to live in thanks and the most important thing we should be doing in our lives is praying.
Why we pray, the motivation behind any act of communicating with God, is where faith is rooted; what do really believe God is able to do. Prayer exists first because God acts and God gives his grace and Holy Spirit. As adopted sons and daughters of the living God, his grace comes in full, and it cannot be lost. As broken people, his grace continues to abound, working to set us apart for himself. Our motivation to pray then is not only a desire to have his grace, but also that we want to see his grace evident in our lives. We pray because we want to see the Spirit bear fruit in our development as well as in healing all things around us\
The question of why we pray addresses our motivations, but to get at the action of prayer means we have to look at the question of how do we pray. The how aspect gets at what I mean by this being the “most theological act” that many of us are involved in. Understanding how we pray shows our understanding of God, his commitment to us, and our commitment to him. The Catechism offers us three points in answer 117 regarding how to pray: we should pray from the heart to God, pray acknowledging our need and misery fully and humbly, and pray knowing God’s promise that he will listen and care.
Prayer is an action initiated by God to be in relationship with real people. He has created each of us unique, and he wants you to be you when you come to him. When we pray with words, God desires for us to use language that we understand, words that are genuine and authentic to us, words that are appropriate to our level of understanding. When we come to him, we come with a knowledge of who he is. We know who God is because Scripture presents him to us in all of his glory and majesty. Praying from the heart though, recognizes that we do not understand him completely right from day 1; there is a maturing that happens in believers, and our prayers can reflect that.
One way to pray from the heart is to connect with a characteristic of God that we find in his Word. As an example, part of my prayer life involves remembering that God is the Good Shepherd. I believe that God goes out and gathers in, he watches over and rescues, he is level-headed through trials. Like sheep that go astray, I can be dumb, really dumb at times, but the shepherd always wants the complete flock. This understanding of who God is and how he operates informs how I pray and how I tend to hear God; I am continually reminded that he is in control and watching over me and all his children. Maybe some of you resonate with that image, but for others maybe something else comes to mind with how God has presented himself through his person and his work. We are each called to pray from the heart.
Secondly, we also pray acknowledging our misery and need. As descendants of Adam and Eve, we are people living in sin and with sin. We are a people who need to confess that we do not live the way we ought. As we look around, we also recognize the great need of the world we are living in. This place that we call our home is affected by illness and addiction, by disease and disability, by the presence of death and murder. The misery of human sin is also present in the prejudices and imperfect systems we as Christians are not always exempt from. All of these detail just how much we, our communities, and our world are not aligned with how God intended for things to be. In prayer, God gives us the opportunity to come to him with these troubles.
We come not just to complain or mourn or speak out because there is no hope, but because we believe and root our lives in the promise of the third point, the promise that God hears us, and furthermore that he cares about what we bring to him. God is willing to work with the broken, because of Christ. Because he looks at us and sees the redeemed work that comes through what Jesus has done. The full question 117 is “How does God want us to pray so that he will listen to us?” On the surface, it might seem that this is saying there is a specific medium or method for God to hear us. But what the authors really intended was for us to recognize how unworthy we are to come into the presence of our majestic, almighty, and perfect God. Yet when we come to him with our whole hearts, recognizing our need, and believing he listens, not only are we welcomed to enter his presence, but he also gives us the opportunity to be heard.
Prayer involves no special code to get in, no secret formula to get heard. God does this, because of the saving actions of Christ. When he sees his creation, which he formed and breathed life into in his image, he sees that original goodness and responds to prayer because the purpose of all of history is to redeem what has been lost.
This brings us to the final point—that is to grasp what living in prayer and living in faith is all about. Prayer can easily appear or seem like we are just talking out loud in a room or bowing our head putting thoughts into a void, asking “give me this” or “give me that,” or saying “thanks for all this stuff.” If prayer becomes that, we have missed the great opportunity that God gives us.
In prayer, we have the opportunity to see that all parts of our lives connect to God and are dependent on him for their sustenance. A life of faith exercised in prayer places the label of “broken and in need of repair by God” on all things. The life of faith trusts that God can fix and that he can perform miracles small and grand. A life of faithful prayer believes that nothing is completely hopeless or impossible. God is at work to renew all things! So when we see issues, be it in our community or this world, we ought to cry out for mercy trusting God will respond.
As communication, prayer holds that expectation of his response. He knows exactly what we are coming to him with, and he will faithfully answer in his time and in his way. This means we can wait on the Lord, trusting his care, we must remember that this does not mean the response is always what we want. We as believers get to play a part; we are invited by Jesus himself to participate in bring our petitions. This can only happen in a relationship of faith and trust in him.
This is a wonderful gift for us to recognize what’s going on, great and small, joyful and painful around us, and we bring those things to God. We live into the work he is doing, but we also have to be able to listen. We do not do this blindly, and we cannot live expecting God to give us what we want every time; but we have a God who acts and speaks, a God who listens and will give his grace abundantly, providing for every spiritual and physical need we have. As we grow as believers, prayer should sink in as something we’re drawn to, even something we enjoy. With the help of the Spirit and God’s Word, we can grow in grasping the work he is doing.
Speaking directly to God and asking for his blessing on our day, on our meals, on the work we’re involved in by praying with words is a wonderful thing. But might we be able to do that as well with a tune, a painting, or an expression of joy? Couldn’t these all be prayers? May prayer not just be a break in our day, but may it be the dedication of our whole life in which we connect with God out of gratitude. We pray because we have been gifted with the opportunity to participate in his plan for a broken world. God has given us amazing grace, may we fittingly live in a relationship of faith and trust with him filled with prayer. Amen.