What Is Prayer?
Hey all...
So I preached for the first time ever in our church this morning... and was actually pretty happy with how things went... so I figured I'd post my sermon on the blog here, for you guys to read. Also, check out www.thewellkelowna.com to listen to a recording of it (don't know when it'll be up, but keep your eyes peeled!) I've interspersed my PowerPoint slides so you get a bit more of the effect =P
Since we’re in the middle of our 30-days-of-prayer right now, I thought it might be an appropriate time to ask the question…
What is prayer?
Now, I’m not just looking for the obvious answer, i.e. “talking with God”… I want to know, beyond that, what is prayer to you?
I think it’s pretty safe to say that prayer can mean many different things to different people. The concept of prayer, even though it all eventually boils down to “talking with God”, really takes on a lot of different roles in our lives, when we sit down and think about it.
Now, I don’t have a video, or anything super high-tech like that to go with the message here, but I think this is almost as good. =) I brought a little comedy sketch with me this morning, unwittingly written by some very young people who had a pretty good understanding of the fact that prayer can be used for many things…
We use prayer…
To Talk with God…
To Thank God…
To Praise God…
To Understand Things Better…
When We’re Unsure…
To Figure Things Out…
For The Important Issues In Life…
To Cut Deals With God…
For Our Wishes & Dreams…
For Clarification...
For Blessings In Our Lives...
Maybe Even To Brag A Little…
Or Suggest Things To God…
Or, if we’re REALLY on top of things, even to Pray For Our Enemies…
It can be tempting, though, to tend towards a particular aspect of prayer-to never broaden our horizons beyond the same things day in and day out, never stopping to actually do what it is we all so quickly characterize prayer as: talking with God.
Or maybe it happens without us really realizing it.
I mean, sure, we do plenty of talking TO God, but I know if I’m honest, far too often there isn’t a whole lot of room or time in my prayers for God to do any talking…and far too often,
I like it that way.
I like it that way because it means I’m in control of the conversation, if you can even call a monologue a conversation.
I like it because it allows me to leave when I feel like I’m done.
I like it because it fits my busy schedule and my neat, organized life.
I like it because it means I don’t have to face up to the things that God wants to say to me.
When I do all the talking, I am in control, and I don’t have to change.
Now, last I checked, monologues aren’t the basis of a good relationship. If anyone you know were to come up to you and just start talking for a few minutes, ask some questions, challenge you on a few things, complain about something that went wrong, and then walk off before you even had a chance to get a word in edgewise, it’d be a little irritating. But don’t we far too often do exactly that with God?
And yet, somehow, we also expect him to be okay with it…to just take it in stride, and someday, if he’s lucky, we’ll find some time to sit and listen to what he’s had to say to us all along…
I think too often we tend to think, even subconsciously, of prayer as a Christmas list or an order being placed over the phone-a chance to ask God for anything we want, and then hang up and wait for it to be shipped.
Sure, we’ve got 1-800-DIAL-A-GEEK for our tech support needs, but last I checked,
1-800-DIAL-A-PRAYER wasn’t in the phone book anywhere. God isn’t some vending machine, where we pop in a prayer and pull out a prize, nor is he a giant slot machine, where if we happen to be lucky enough to put in the right amount of prayers, we might get lucky and hit the jackpot.
Prayer just simply isn’t like that.
God isn’t like that.
So why do we think we can be like that?
It’s funny that we get this idea of prayer, because, while asking God to provide the things we’re in need of, and praying for his blessing in our lives is one aspect of prayer, as we’ve already seen, there really is SO much more to it.
So we’ve looked for a while at how we see prayer…
Because of how we’ve been taught…
Because of our experience…
Because of the culture around us…
And because of our understanding of, and relationship with, God
But how does God see prayer? What kind of examples does he give us that can keep us on the right track when it comes to this essential method of communication with him?
To start with, it’s obvious prayer is something that God finds important. Out of the whole Bible (I’m looking in the New International Version here), there are 365 verses in scripture where the word Pray, Prayer, or Praying shows up. That’s a reason to pray every day of the year!
Now try and tell me God doesn’t have this all planned out =P.
What’s interesting to me about most of these passages, though, is where they are focused.
In the Old Testament, the majority of verses that mention prayer seem to focus on prayer which was offered on behalf of others-intercession. The only major exception to this is in the Psalms, where David often prayed for himself-but if you pay attention, it’s not “God, give me this and that and the other thing…”… it’s:
“My God, help me!”,
“When I call, give me answers…God, take my side!”,
“God, please pay attention!”,
“God, I’m running to you for dear life…”,
“I’m thanking You, Lord…”,
“God, are you avoiding me?”…
“Why, God?”…
…And the list goes on and on and on.
…David’s praying for safety, provision, wisdom, understanding…He’s challenging God, questioning God, searching for God’s heart in everything that he faced-David’s holding a real, authentic conversation with God; not simply reading off a wish list and signing off. He’s taking the time to engage with God authentically-to let him know what’s on his mind and heart, and to really unload where he’s at with God.
He’s brutally honest!
And if you spend any time reading more of David’s story, you find out that God was honest with David too. God spoke to David in prayer, through prophets, and in many other ways throughout his life.
And it changed David. That’s what prayer does. You can’t have a real encounter or an authentic conversation with God and leave exactly the way you came. Prayer should change us because it is an encounter with the living God.
Moving on to the New Testament, we’ve got the example of Jesus to look to. If you read through the story of Christ’s life in any of the gospels, you find that Jesus often took time alone to go and pray, to spend that time in conversation with his Father, God.
As Ron mentioned last week, his disciples picked up on this, and other bits and pieces of prayer from his life, and asked Christ to teach them how to pray.
Why? They wanted to learn to pray through their teacher. They sensed that Jesus had a grip on what it meant to pray.
Now, we don’t have Christ physically with us to teach us about prayer today, but we still have the chance, through his word, to do what Ron spoke about last week, and become covered by the dust of our Rabbi, Jesus Christ, and learn what it means to pray-to be in living, breathing, relational conversation with God.
After Christ, we can see that all throughout the book of Acts, prayer was the guide of the church. They did NOTHING without prayer and the guiding of the Holy Spirit. Prayer was their spiritual compass-the filter through which they ran every move they made. The disciples had been taught by Jesus about prayer through the Lord’s prayer and through watching Christ pray on various occasions. Now that Jesus was gone, it was their only line of communication with Him. So prayer was the way the Early Church handled everything.
The Apostle Paul, who wrote 13 of the 27 books in the New Testament, CONSTANTLY prayed for his “neighbours”-the churches-in his letters to them. Listen to one of his prayers: (This is from the book of Ephesians 3:14-19…a letter Paul wrote to a church he had helped start in the city of Ephesus)
Now, this is just one of many examples of Paul’s prayers for the churches. But, I mean, Paul’s praying deeper prayers here for these people than I often pray for myself. Paul’s desire here, and in his other prayers for his friends in these churches, was to see these people become all that they were created to be in Christ Jesus.
We here at The Well have, as our mission statement,
We claim as our vision the very thing that Paul prayed repeatedly for in the early church-that people would become everything that God had created them to be. That they would understand what that meant, and that they would live it out for the rest of the world to see.
So Paul is setting an example here, by PRAYING this, rather than just saying it. I think Paul knew that he could talk all day about being who God created you to be, or anything like that. But it would only do so much. So he takes it a step further. He PRAYS these things into the lives of the people he’s in contact with. There is something different and powerful about prayer-something that goes beyond the words we’re saying and into the heart of God’s work in our lives and the lives of those we’re praying for.
Maybe this is why the people we read about in scripture set the example time and time again of praying for others…I mean, Jesus even commanded us to pray for our enemies in Matthew 5:43-44. I don’t think that was just a flippant statement. Jesus is God, after all, right?? I think he knew what he was talking about.
Ironically enough, all of Paul’s beautiful prayers for the early church were prayers for the very people he had initially been out to kill! Before Christ got hold of Paul’s heart on the road to Damascus, he had set out to kill members of the Early Church. As soon as Christ stepped in, Paul starts praying fervently for his former enemies! Talk about a life change!
This brings us to the scripture I picked for today…it’s from the book of Matthew, which is the first book in the New Testament…chapter 22:34-40. I want this to be a challenge to us to try something we maybe don’t always focus on in our prayers-to take this aspect of our prayer life and maybe work it a bit, develop it, grow it more in the direction it needs to be. As we leave here this morning, let’s make this our project together as a congregation in the coming month.
Jesus reminds us of the command God gave to the Israelites on their way out of Egypt, hundreds of years earlier, to “love your neighbour as yourself”.
So how does that apply to prayer? Does it even apply at all?
While Jesus may not have been specifically speaking about prayer in this verse, and while God may not have specifically been talking about prayer when he first passed this command down to Israel, I think the application to our prayer lives is pretty clear.
I tend to be wary of using verses like this, because there is always the risk of “proof-texting”-using a passage of scripture in a way it wasn’t intended just to support a point-of-view or idea that you have.
But I’ve done a lot of praying about this verse in the past few weeks, and it’s just something that God wouldn’t let me go on. He kept bringing it up again and again. So I trust that he has something to say to us through this.
To love your neighbour as yourself… it means to love them the same way you love yourself, right? To treat them the way you would want to be treated. Simple enough.
…So… could it also be that it means to pray for them as you would pray for yourself? To intercede-to stand in the gap for them, on their behalf, as you would hope others are also doing for you? Let’s just mull that over in our heads this week…
I don’t think that it’s a command to pray in as much fine detail for everyone you know as you do for yourself…you’d never stop praying (although Paul does tell us to pray continually!), but I think it can easily be said that we should be praying for
--Our neighbours
-the people we come in contact with
-our co-workers;
With the same commitment, regularity, and sincerity as we would pray for ourselves.
When we’re praying, especially as we focus on praying for our community here in Rutland this month, let’s try to remember to focus on praying for others as we would pray for ourselves. Let’s lift our neighbours up before God’s throne and speak words of life into them. Let’s pray that they would come to a realization of who they are in Christ and that they (and we) would begin to understand and become all that he created us to be.
Blessings,
Hobbes
So I preached for the first time ever in our church this morning... and was actually pretty happy with how things went... so I figured I'd post my sermon on the blog here, for you guys to read. Also, check out www.thewellkelowna.com to listen to a recording of it (don't know when it'll be up, but keep your eyes peeled!) I've interspersed my PowerPoint slides so you get a bit more of the effect =P
Since we’re in the middle of our 30-days-of-prayer right now, I thought it might be an appropriate time to ask the question…
What is prayer?
Now, I’m not just looking for the obvious answer, i.e. “talking with God”… I want to know, beyond that, what is prayer to you?
I think it’s pretty safe to say that prayer can mean many different things to different people. The concept of prayer, even though it all eventually boils down to “talking with God”, really takes on a lot of different roles in our lives, when we sit down and think about it.
Now, I don’t have a video, or anything super high-tech like that to go with the message here, but I think this is almost as good. =) I brought a little comedy sketch with me this morning, unwittingly written by some very young people who had a pretty good understanding of the fact that prayer can be used for many things…
We use prayer…
To Talk with God…
To Thank God…
To Praise God…
To Understand Things Better…
When We’re Unsure…
To Figure Things Out…
For The Important Issues In Life…
To Cut Deals With God…
For Our Wishes & Dreams…
For Clarification...
For Blessings In Our Lives...
Maybe Even To Brag A Little…
Or Suggest Things To God…
Or, if we’re REALLY on top of things, even to Pray For Our Enemies…
It can be tempting, though, to tend towards a particular aspect of prayer-to never broaden our horizons beyond the same things day in and day out, never stopping to actually do what it is we all so quickly characterize prayer as: talking with God.
Or maybe it happens without us really realizing it.
I mean, sure, we do plenty of talking TO God, but I know if I’m honest, far too often there isn’t a whole lot of room or time in my prayers for God to do any talking…and far too often,
I like it that way.
I like it that way because it means I’m in control of the conversation, if you can even call a monologue a conversation.
I like it because it allows me to leave when I feel like I’m done.
I like it because it fits my busy schedule and my neat, organized life.
I like it because it means I don’t have to face up to the things that God wants to say to me.
When I do all the talking, I am in control, and I don’t have to change.
Now, last I checked, monologues aren’t the basis of a good relationship. If anyone you know were to come up to you and just start talking for a few minutes, ask some questions, challenge you on a few things, complain about something that went wrong, and then walk off before you even had a chance to get a word in edgewise, it’d be a little irritating. But don’t we far too often do exactly that with God?
And yet, somehow, we also expect him to be okay with it…to just take it in stride, and someday, if he’s lucky, we’ll find some time to sit and listen to what he’s had to say to us all along…
I think too often we tend to think, even subconsciously, of prayer as a Christmas list or an order being placed over the phone-a chance to ask God for anything we want, and then hang up and wait for it to be shipped.
Sure, we’ve got 1-800-DIAL-A-GEEK for our tech support needs, but last I checked,
1-800-DIAL-A-PRAYER wasn’t in the phone book anywhere. God isn’t some vending machine, where we pop in a prayer and pull out a prize, nor is he a giant slot machine, where if we happen to be lucky enough to put in the right amount of prayers, we might get lucky and hit the jackpot.
Prayer just simply isn’t like that.
God isn’t like that.
So why do we think we can be like that?
It’s funny that we get this idea of prayer, because, while asking God to provide the things we’re in need of, and praying for his blessing in our lives is one aspect of prayer, as we’ve already seen, there really is SO much more to it.
So we’ve looked for a while at how we see prayer…
Because of how we’ve been taught…
Because of our experience…
Because of the culture around us…
And because of our understanding of, and relationship with, God
But how does God see prayer? What kind of examples does he give us that can keep us on the right track when it comes to this essential method of communication with him?
To start with, it’s obvious prayer is something that God finds important. Out of the whole Bible (I’m looking in the New International Version here), there are 365 verses in scripture where the word Pray, Prayer, or Praying shows up. That’s a reason to pray every day of the year!
Now try and tell me God doesn’t have this all planned out =P.
What’s interesting to me about most of these passages, though, is where they are focused.
In the Old Testament, the majority of verses that mention prayer seem to focus on prayer which was offered on behalf of others-intercession. The only major exception to this is in the Psalms, where David often prayed for himself-but if you pay attention, it’s not “God, give me this and that and the other thing…”… it’s:
“My God, help me!”,
“When I call, give me answers…God, take my side!”,
“God, please pay attention!”,
“God, I’m running to you for dear life…”,
“I’m thanking You, Lord…”,
“God, are you avoiding me?”…
“Why, God?”…
…And the list goes on and on and on.
…David’s praying for safety, provision, wisdom, understanding…He’s challenging God, questioning God, searching for God’s heart in everything that he faced-David’s holding a real, authentic conversation with God; not simply reading off a wish list and signing off. He’s taking the time to engage with God authentically-to let him know what’s on his mind and heart, and to really unload where he’s at with God.
He’s brutally honest!
And if you spend any time reading more of David’s story, you find out that God was honest with David too. God spoke to David in prayer, through prophets, and in many other ways throughout his life.
And it changed David. That’s what prayer does. You can’t have a real encounter or an authentic conversation with God and leave exactly the way you came. Prayer should change us because it is an encounter with the living God.
Moving on to the New Testament, we’ve got the example of Jesus to look to. If you read through the story of Christ’s life in any of the gospels, you find that Jesus often took time alone to go and pray, to spend that time in conversation with his Father, God.
As Ron mentioned last week, his disciples picked up on this, and other bits and pieces of prayer from his life, and asked Christ to teach them how to pray.
Why? They wanted to learn to pray through their teacher. They sensed that Jesus had a grip on what it meant to pray.
Now, we don’t have Christ physically with us to teach us about prayer today, but we still have the chance, through his word, to do what Ron spoke about last week, and become covered by the dust of our Rabbi, Jesus Christ, and learn what it means to pray-to be in living, breathing, relational conversation with God.
After Christ, we can see that all throughout the book of Acts, prayer was the guide of the church. They did NOTHING without prayer and the guiding of the Holy Spirit. Prayer was their spiritual compass-the filter through which they ran every move they made. The disciples had been taught by Jesus about prayer through the Lord’s prayer and through watching Christ pray on various occasions. Now that Jesus was gone, it was their only line of communication with Him. So prayer was the way the Early Church handled everything.
The Apostle Paul, who wrote 13 of the 27 books in the New Testament, CONSTANTLY prayed for his “neighbours”-the churches-in his letters to them. Listen to one of his prayers: (This is from the book of Ephesians 3:14-19…a letter Paul wrote to a church he had helped start in the city of Ephesus)
Now, this is just one of many examples of Paul’s prayers for the churches. But, I mean, Paul’s praying deeper prayers here for these people than I often pray for myself. Paul’s desire here, and in his other prayers for his friends in these churches, was to see these people become all that they were created to be in Christ Jesus.
We here at The Well have, as our mission statement,
We claim as our vision the very thing that Paul prayed repeatedly for in the early church-that people would become everything that God had created them to be. That they would understand what that meant, and that they would live it out for the rest of the world to see.
So Paul is setting an example here, by PRAYING this, rather than just saying it. I think Paul knew that he could talk all day about being who God created you to be, or anything like that. But it would only do so much. So he takes it a step further. He PRAYS these things into the lives of the people he’s in contact with. There is something different and powerful about prayer-something that goes beyond the words we’re saying and into the heart of God’s work in our lives and the lives of those we’re praying for.
Maybe this is why the people we read about in scripture set the example time and time again of praying for others…I mean, Jesus even commanded us to pray for our enemies in Matthew 5:43-44. I don’t think that was just a flippant statement. Jesus is God, after all, right?? I think he knew what he was talking about.
Ironically enough, all of Paul’s beautiful prayers for the early church were prayers for the very people he had initially been out to kill! Before Christ got hold of Paul’s heart on the road to Damascus, he had set out to kill members of the Early Church. As soon as Christ stepped in, Paul starts praying fervently for his former enemies! Talk about a life change!
This brings us to the scripture I picked for today…it’s from the book of Matthew, which is the first book in the New Testament…chapter 22:34-40. I want this to be a challenge to us to try something we maybe don’t always focus on in our prayers-to take this aspect of our prayer life and maybe work it a bit, develop it, grow it more in the direction it needs to be. As we leave here this morning, let’s make this our project together as a congregation in the coming month.
Jesus reminds us of the command God gave to the Israelites on their way out of Egypt, hundreds of years earlier, to “love your neighbour as yourself”.
So how does that apply to prayer? Does it even apply at all?
While Jesus may not have been specifically speaking about prayer in this verse, and while God may not have specifically been talking about prayer when he first passed this command down to Israel, I think the application to our prayer lives is pretty clear.
I tend to be wary of using verses like this, because there is always the risk of “proof-texting”-using a passage of scripture in a way it wasn’t intended just to support a point-of-view or idea that you have.
But I’ve done a lot of praying about this verse in the past few weeks, and it’s just something that God wouldn’t let me go on. He kept bringing it up again and again. So I trust that he has something to say to us through this.
To love your neighbour as yourself… it means to love them the same way you love yourself, right? To treat them the way you would want to be treated. Simple enough.
…So… could it also be that it means to pray for them as you would pray for yourself? To intercede-to stand in the gap for them, on their behalf, as you would hope others are also doing for you? Let’s just mull that over in our heads this week…
I don’t think that it’s a command to pray in as much fine detail for everyone you know as you do for yourself…you’d never stop praying (although Paul does tell us to pray continually!), but I think it can easily be said that we should be praying for
--Our neighbours
-the people we come in contact with
-our co-workers;
With the same commitment, regularity, and sincerity as we would pray for ourselves.
When we’re praying, especially as we focus on praying for our community here in Rutland this month, let’s try to remember to focus on praying for others as we would pray for ourselves. Let’s lift our neighbours up before God’s throne and speak words of life into them. Let’s pray that they would come to a realization of who they are in Christ and that they (and we) would begin to understand and become all that he created us to be.
Blessings,
Hobbes