We Value Prayer

Sermon: We Value Prayer -August 2, 2015

Series: Kingdom Values

Key Passages: Colossians 4:2-4 and Nehemiah 1:1-11

Andrew Huntress

"Prayer itself is an art which only the Holy Ghost can teach us. He is the giver of all prayer. Pray for prayer - pray till you can pray."

-CH Spurgeon.

We Value Prayer

From the Church Values Statement

We Value Prayer: We believe that a truly believing people will always be a praying people. That it is each believer’s privilege and responsibility to pursue a healthy consistent prayer life with their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Colossians 4:2-4

Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving; praying at the same time for us as well, that God will open up to us a door for the word, so that we may speak forth the mystery of Christ, for which I have also been imprisoned; that I may make it clear in the way I ought to speak.

Introduction

Sometimes we struggle with biblical wording and phrasing and it isn’t always clear what the Will of God is for our lives. However, it’s crystal clear from this passage that it is God’s Will that we pray. The text says,

“Devote yourselves to prayer.”

Before you start to ponder the meaning of “devote” or “keeping alert” or “attitude of thanksgiving” or “the mystery of Christ,” since we are absolutely certain that God’s Will is for us to pray, we should focus on what pray means first!

What is Prayer?

If prayer is something that we value so greatly, we need to know what the word means. Mainly it means asking God for things. By "things" I don't mean objects or stuff. I mean, generally, whatever your heart desires or needs. And, of course, what your heart needs most is God—to know him and trust him and love him and obey him. I know that we should come to God with more than just asking. We should come confessing sins and giving thanks and praise and listening. In a broad sense, prayer includes all those things too, but we are asking Him for all of those things... so prayer is 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 elementary school with the rhetorical question, What is prayer? To his amazement, hundreds of children's hands shot up! So he decided to call on a kid 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 question #98 in the Westminster Catechism.” And to this Moody responded by saying, "Be thankful, son, that you were born in Scotland."

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... asking God for things.

Prayer is all communication with God.

But the heart of prayer really… is requesting, asking. That's why in Colossians 4:2 it says, "Devote yourselves to prayer . . . with (or in) thanksgiving." Thanking God should always be part of what we do in prayer. But prayer, in the strict sense, means requesting. So I define it as asking God for things.

We Value Prayer.

I am a father to three young boys, and a girl, ages 9, 7, 3, and 0 so I think about my relationship and my communication with them a lot. I try to understand my relationship to God the Father in terms of their relationship to me. Does that make sense?

Do I want my children to ask for things? to tell me the desires of their heart? to communicate with me? to ask questions? to ask forgiveness? to remind me of what I said? to listen for what I say to them in return with patience and admiration?

Then God the Father wants all these communications from me. He wants me to ask for things even if he is going to say no. Now think about this for a moment. God's will is that we, his sons and daughters, ask him for things. And it is not just His will, it is His delight. He loves to be asked for things. Proverbs 15:8 says,

"The prayer of the upright is His delight."

He is so eager to hear prayers and respond to them that he says in Isaiah 65:24,

"It will also come to pass that before they call, I will answer; and while they are still speaking, I will hear."

In fact, he takes special steps to see to it that he is constantly badgered. I say that reverently and, I think, truly on the basis of Isaiah 62:6–7,

"On your walls, O Jerusalem, I have appointed watchmen; all day and all night they will never keep silent. You who remind the LORD, take no rest for yourselves; and give Him no rest until He establishes and makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth."

So God loves being asked for things so much that he appoints people to "give him no rest" but to "remind the Lord" and "never [to] keep silent."

Meditating on this is very encouraging to our faith and hope. This means that God, the Creator of the Universe, who holds our life in his hands and rules the world, is the kind of God who loves to be asked for things. He wants me to tell him the desires of my heart even if he already knows them. He wants me to ask questions, to ask forgiveness, to remind me of His promises in His word. [not because He forgets but because it shows that I have been listening]

We Value Prayer because He Values Prayer

I find it also tremendously strengthening to my faith to meditate further on why this is. Why does God not only will that we ask him for things, but delight in it and love it like incense (Revelation 5:8) and take steps to see that it happens? What's behind this delight in our asking him for things? You might say, "Well, it's because God is love. It's his very nature to be a Giver." That is absolutely right. As Paul said in Romans 11:35–36,

"Who has given a gift to him that he should be repaid? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory for ever."

God is always the Giver (see Acts 17:25). That is what he loves to be. And the last phrase of Romans 11:36 says why, "To him be glory for ever." It is more glorious to be a Giver than a getter. Getters look needy. Givers look self-sufficient. So God desires prayer because he wants us to see him as gloriously self-sufficient and ourselves as totally needy. So he says in Psalm 50:15,

"Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I shall rescue you, and you will honor Me."

God answers our call for help so that we get the rescue and he gets the honor. "I will rescue you and you will honor me." Similarly in John 14:13 Jesus says,

"Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son."

Ask for things in my name! Why? So that the Father may be glorified. So he may look as glorious as he really is.

How special is a child’s first word?

How special was your first prayer to God?

We Value Prayer because He values prayer.

Communication in the World - shows the value of Prayer.

We teach or children to read and write - to - communicate.

God teaches us how to pray - to communicate with Him.

We live in a communication age where being connected to other people is made easier with each new device, each new app. Human civilization is striving to invent new ways to communicate with one another.

It seems to be the driving desire of humanity to communicate with one another. We place our talent and our treasure as nations in developing ways to communicate better, faster, more often.

When people are deaf, blind, or mute we focus on finding some way for them to communicate with us like communicating with us was the most important thing in the world.

Isn’t it interesting that during this communication age the most important communication…

with our Heavenly Father, is where we find the World deaf and mute and blind?

God invented communication.

He made light… so we can see other people, pictures, video, the sunset, the outer reaches of the observable universe. Of the entire electromagnetic spectrum of light we only see 0.0035% of all the light that God made. Honey bees can see a little Ultraviolet light, leeches can see a little infrared light. God sees it all. Every X-Ray, every gamma ray, every microwave, and every radio wave… He can SEE!

He made sound. Humans can only hear 20% of the sounds that an elephant can hear[humans -20,000hz -elephants100,000hz]… because they have really large ears. However, the spectrum of possible frequencies of sound is basically infinite and again God can hear ALL of them.

In the same way He made prayer. Isn't it interesting that praying in the spirit follows this same pattern. The Word says in 1 Corinthians 13:12

“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.”

There is prayer that is above our understanding and is so intertwined with God’s Perfect Will that we are blessed by that prayer even though our understanding is not involved.

Praying in the Spirit is good… get over it.

Comments

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