Prayer

Introduction

Questions:

What comes to mind when you hear the word “prayer?”

What makes a person a good pray-er?

What challenges you most about prayer?

What reasons would people give for not engaging in prayer?

My purpose is not to increase or establish guilt about prayer. Let me be the first to say that there are things about prayer I do not understand; there are things about prayer that challenge me; there are times when I judge myself to be better at prayer than at other times; and there are times when I have felt the sting of disappointment when a prayer wasn’t answered the way I wanted; and there have been times when I gave up on prayer. I confess these things because I do not want to leave an impression that somehow I am a great spiritual mind when it comes to prayer. I pray. I pray more now than I ever have. It doesn’t make me more spiritual. It means that I have finally realized how dependent I am on the One who is completely beyond me.

I cannot answer all questions about prayer today but using Matthew 6, I want us to examine some elements about prayer. My purpose today is to call us to be prayerful people and to discover that prayer is mysterious, profound, beautiful, and life changing. ILL. “A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch.” Singing.

Challenge of Prayer

One of the things that really challenges us about prayer is that we have high expectations about what prayer looks like. First, the motive behind prayer matters. There are those whose motivation is to seek the approval of others. Obviously, this means that public prayers can have the wrong motivation but so can talking about one’s prayer life in a boastful way. I confess that I have trouble sitting for an extended time of prayer and by extended I mean longer than 5 minutes. I admire those who are capable of such. Truly I do. Those who are able to spend an hour in prayer amaze me. Like most men I control the remote control at home. Barbara gets frustrated by my quick change approach to TV watching. I am suggesting that different approaches to prayer are equally valid and before you say it has to do with letting myself off the hook I point to Jesus. There were times when Jesus prayed for an extended time (choosing his disciples, Gethsemane) and there were times when Jesus started his day with prayer. But when it came to teaching his disciples about prayer he stressed privacy and brevity. Our Lord’s teaching about prayer even when set to music is only 3 minutes long. Perhaps Jesus was offering an alternative that focused on the opposite of what was see in his day from the religious leaders.

Second, the focus of prayer matters. Jesus’ example of how to pray includes several items but the focus is on one overall thing — our dependency on God. The prayer begins focusing on God as the one who is in control and our desire to see his will carried on in this world. If we pray for God’s will to be done the underlying reality is that we want to be an instrument of his influence in this world. But then the requests focus on that which only God can provide. We do not take credit for food; we do not take credit for our own forgiveness; we do not take credit for being able to avoid temptation. In all ways we need God to provide and lead us. This is the point. Prayer is about dependency. And the expression of dependency doesn’t require many words or much time.

But there are times when prayer is born out of frustration, lack of understanding and uncertainty. You are not the first person who has prayed out of hurt and pain. Convinced that God wasn’t doing enough, Habakkuk cried out, “How long, O Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, ‘Violence!’ but you do not save? Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrong?” Job cried out that he wished he had never been born. God does not reject these prayers. But neither are these prayers the final prayer. Both Habakkuk and Job prayed other prayers. Prayers that grew out of a greater understanding of who God was and prayers that reflected a growth in faith. Listen to me carefully. I do not know how long it took for Habakkuk and Job to change their views but I do know that they never quit searching for understanding. Not an explanation but an understanding. In other words, the prayer of pain and frustration came out of faith and faith never stopped being twisted and turned in order to catch a clearer glimpse of the nature of God. Cry out to God in pain but do not stop crying out to God. Cry out to God in frustration but do not allow your frustration to have the final word. When we stop praying, we allow our finiteness to become our God.

Understanding God

Perhaps one of the more difficult things to consider about prayer is God’s failure to answer prayer the way we think he should. The question is “Does God answer prayer?” And with great confidence we answer “Yes. God answers every prayer. Sometimes it is yes; sometimes it is no and sometimes it is not now.” The answer is accurate. But it doesn’t answer the intent of the question — why does God answer prayer the way he does? Why are some prayers yes and others no? Is it possible to understand the inner workings of God sufficiently so that we can understand why some prayers are yes and others are no?

The question isn’t really about God. We know the answer already. If we can know the mind of God deeply enough to understand what he is thinking about life and all of its intricate facets then what is faith’s role? In our anger and rage we scream at God. We wonder why it is that certain things have happened and we beg for just a little insight. But none comes. And our anger becomes bitterness and bitterness turns to denial and denial turns to betrayal and betrayal turns to faithlessness. And we stop praying and our faith weakens. I know this is true because it has happened to me. From beginning to end prayer is about our faith. We pray because we believe that God is greater than we. And then it is our faith which allows us to accept answers to prayer that are insufficient or incomplete.

You recall Paul’s prayer from 2 Corinthians 12 in which he prayed for God to deliver him from the thorn in his side and God blatantly refused. In fact, God’s response was that his grace was sufficient. That’s not an answer; that doesn’t satisfy. So what did Paul do with God’s three time refusal to deliver him — “In my weakness then am I strong.

It was the great theologian Garth Brooks who sang about thanking God for unanswered prayer meaning that what he thought he needed was not what God gave him. Instead God gave him someone else (at least in the song). God answers every prayer. When the answer is no, then it is in our faith that we thank him for knowing what is best. We can be frustrated; we can be angry; we can express such. But the battle for our faith is too great to stop there. Cry out to God and keep searching and find a way to thank him for prayers answered in ways differently from what we want. Invitation.

Follow Jesus

If you’d like to respond to this message or learn more about following Jesus, please reach out.