Prayer

Good morning. Blessings to you. It does feel like we're a smaller group today.

It's good. Maybe it feels like when it's just a family. Family is at home.

Yeah. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we come before you.

Lord, again, I ask that you would speak to us this morning. Lord, speak to each one of us. Lord, we know that you are the only all knowing God.

There are no other gods. Lord, we know that this life only has one purpose, and that is to live for you. Lord, I pray that you would bless each one here this morning.

And in some way, Lord, I pray that you would, through your spirit and your gentle hand, teach each one of us, bless each one of us. Help us, Lord, to learn more of you. Help us, Lord, that the flame of faith would be stronger in us.

Thank you, Lord, for this blessing. Thank you, Lord, for your blessing you've given to us, this blessing of prayer. I pray, Lord, that you would speak to us this morning.

In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Okay.

I was pondering more of what would be a blessing to us in light of this topic of prayer. I will repeat a few things I said last Sunday. I think it's just good.

It's a blessing. It's healthy. And as I was thinking about you, and maybe you listening, and maybe me not sharing enough, or as much as I should, yeah, I was kind of pondering how much we receive from the preaching and the teaching.

I don't know how many of you appreciate when you study a topic, if you're able to find, yeah, if you're able to kind of dissect the topic that you're looking at, and as you understand a build of why it's an important topic, it makes a lot more sense, it becomes a lot more valuable. And for me, when I think about it, it all of a sudden becomes more alive. More alive and not so much just, yeah, not so much of a discussion, but that it becomes alive.

If you think of the topic of love, and you were to try to, and there's a lot of areas where we could go into that topic and try to dissect it and see why it's important and why God ordained it so, you know, coming from where we need to love our neighbors all the way to God is love, what does all that mean? And the more we understand that topic, the more all of a sudden it becomes a real blessing. I'm sure you have read many a story of the Dark Ages and even following those years. Throughout the Dark Ages and the 1500s, 1600s, something that stood out to me of that time frame is there were a lot of people praying, and I want us to picture that a little bit.

Here you have a church, you have a church that's in control of the country, and you may be whether it was one church, we'll call it the Catholic Church, but there was churches all over, but they were in charge of the country. They made laws, you had to follow laws, and so here you have a religion that dictates to all people, and they are basically the law. During that time, there was thousands, hundreds of thousands, and possibly millions of people praying, and some of the stories that I've read, as they are praying, they are crying out in anguish, they cry out in anger, bitterness, sometimes screaming, yelling, a lot of suicides.

There was a very, very heavy depression among the people. And again, I want to highlight that due to their culture and the way they were taught, many of them were praying. Were their prayers answered, or was there something wrong with their prayers? We see it in the Muslim groups today, and possibly other religions, we see it in the Muslim groups, there's something about the Muslim group that's attractive to the world, and one of the reasons is, it's something they can get a hold of.

If we look at the story of Pilgrim's Progress, I've said it before, when we think about Pilgrim's Progress, and there's a giant that we have to fight, and it's a giant of pride, it almost gets us excited, and we think of getting out the sword, and we're ready. We're going to fight this exterior, this outside giant, and we can have an inner will and excitement that we're going to fight this giant. So it's an external giant, and that's how it is for the Muslim group as well.

They are serving a god as they would feel, but this god is also an external god. It's not a god that changes their hearts, it's not a god that's from within, it's from without. And they have rules that you have to pray, is it three times? Three times a day? When we went to pick up my mother-in-law from the airport, and to see under this very busy, heavy traffic, I think it was somewhat under a bridge, they actually have it laid out for the Muslims, the taxi drivers, and whatever they all are.

And they have this place where they go out and pray. So as we're driving through, there are men there with their prayer mats and going to pray. Is their god going to answer their prayers? So prayer is not a new thing to us or to humanity, but like I said last Sunday, most of these prayers, whether it's from other religions and the Muslim settings, and the prayers I referred to that were in the dark ages and many years to follow, those were prayers.

They were words that were said, it was anguished thoughts that were maybe thought and prayed, and most of that was dead. Most of those prayers were dead, because they did not have faith in God, they did not know who God was, so they could not commune with God, the prayers were dead. Can you picture yourself being extremely desperate, you're in a very dangerous situation, or you're somewhere where you really need help.

And imagine trying to cry out, crying out for help, and all you can do is hope that some sort of... There's no surety, there is no God for many of these prayers, that God would hear them and help them. I do believe though, for those souls that were trying to pray to God and did not know God, I believe God is merciful, I believe God tried to show them and direct them, so that they could come to God. And I'm sure God desired to answer their prayer, but for many of them their prayers fell dead.

Okay, so I'd like to read a little bit here of what I shared last Sunday. Prayer is the characteristic activity of the Christian life. Before I read actually further, as I was meditating on this topic of prayer, there is an underlying important part of the foundation that I found unique.

Have you ever connected the thought that our prayer life, how can I say this properly? Our prayer life is connected to our relationship with God. Now that might sound obvious, but what I mean to say here, can you imagine, let's look at it not from our lens, but from God's lens. Can you imagine a proud man coming to God to pray? Can you imagine a rebellious man coming to God to pray? What about a selfish man? What about a man who would want more and he says, God, I want more.

So I guess what I want to highlight here, a connection that I found a beautiful thing, is for us to be in a good place to pray, and I know this is something we learn and we grow in, but for us to be in a good place to pray, we need to be sanctified. We need to be sanctified, and second to that, I believe as we strive to live for God and we want to pray to Him truthfully, honestly, prayer is actually a form of sanctification. If you think about wanting to come to God in prayer, and you know that you have something in your life that you need to take care of, then there's conviction.

We know that to pray that we want God's will, when we're refusing to obey Him, then there's conviction. So I guess what I'm saying is, it's either a tremendous blessing when we're right with God and we can come to Him in prayer, or we could have very simple but very strong walls that will not allow us, where we can't reach God, you might say. So it's a blessing to us that we cannot, we can't pray, we can't reach God when there are things in our lives that we need to repair with God.

So God would have for you and for me, that as we think about prayer, that we are actually also concerned about and striving to serve God in obedience and humility. I'll read here again, a little portion here. So I'll just highlight that again here.

So as we think about prayer, and I want us to separate two parts, but think about these two parts. One of these parts is, we think about prayer and we know we need to pray. Myron was giving the children's lesson here, and if you ask them, should we pray to God? Very quickly, the answer is, yeah, we should.

It's readily accepted by the children, we should pray to God, and so that's good. But what I've thought about and what I've noticed in my life, and this is what I want to share with you as a caution, how often is prayer just something that we do? Now, last Sunday I talked about the phone lines being cut off, and maybe I should reference that. How often, if prayer was the cell phone to connect to God, how often do we grab the cell phone, though it has no connection, and we still want to talk to God? And the important part that I want to highlight here is, just being able to process mentally, that we process the importance of this connection.

So one, we have prayer, but can you have prayer without devotion? So can you have prayer to God? Does it make sense to pray to God if your heart has no devotion to God? Another word we could use is sincerity. So, in order for us to pray, this is the mechanicals of prayer, taking apart the different parts. It is not healthy for us to look at prayer as a light matter, and I do this, I'm guilty.

Often where, oh, I should quickly pray. And I would treat prayer as some act that I need to do to please God. That does not please God.

Praying because I need to pray because I'm a Christian does not please God. Or maybe we could look at the example, you're out in public, and you're going to participate in the food that God provides for you. You're in a restaurant, and I know again, this is something that I will admit for myself, but just to give examples for us.

We go into a restaurant, and we're afraid to pray. We're kind of embarrassed. And sometimes we pray, and as a young Christian, I struggled with it more.

As a young Christian, I would want to somehow discreetly say this prayer because I felt I had to pray. I mean, I had to thank God for the food. But I must say, I don't think I thanked God for that food.

I think I spoke words, you know, yeah, I spoke these words because I felt I had a duty to them, not because I was thankful from the genuine heart that God had provided food for me. So there again, just discerning between the two. Sometimes we can be in public, and I hope that our hearts grow towards being very realistic about what prayer is.

So last Sunday, when I said, you know, turn to someone and say, I'm praying for you, which I would have done the same thing. So we had that little bit where people are not sure, and maybe it makes us feel a little funny. That's okay.

There's nothing wrong with feeling that way. And hopefully it wasn't a pressure to you. But it reminds us again, if prayer is such a major part of the Christian life, if it's so important, I just want to highlight that I think in our day, prayer has become something of almost no value.

And so should I find myself in a restaurant, and we're going to participate in food, can I with a healthy, strong heart, say I'm giving thanks to God for my food. Again, perfect example of Daniel, who all he had to do is close the windows, he could still pray and have no consequence. But in order to show others that he was not subject to their gods, or the God of what they had built there, he wasn't subject to praying to the king.

So therefore, he kept it open to show I am true to Jehovah God. So can you relate to me when I say, can we relate to each other maybe together, where we realize that prayer is often, maybe at best can I say prayer is often really lacking value. We treat prayer, sometimes maybe like a dirty rag, where you just use it to clean up a bit of mess, and then we move on.

I don't think we do that, and we certainly don't mean to do that. But just this gives us examples and highlights. My prayer is that we are able to, as some of you do, and I've seen it from other brothers, who are so quick to be able to look at someone and say, can I pray for you? That's a real blessing.

That's not me by character, I would not do that. I would like to learn more of doing that. Some do.

But that we can be bold and value prayer because of who we are praying to. Okay, so can we pray or, and this is just a self-check of being honest with ourselves, can we pray when we're not sincere? Can we pray when we're not devoted? Now we can say the words, yes, but does God hear us? Does God feel honored? Are we actually praying, or are we just saying something? I believe much of our history, when we think about when a Christian group, like the Anabaptist movement, when they come to a place where they leave the religious form, which was the Catholic churches, and they come and they give their hearts to the Lord, and time goes by, and they live in this new culture, and all of a sudden they lose value of their relationship with God. And our own background shows us that how it doesn't take long, maybe a few hundred years, but it doesn't take long where we go from a generation that loves God and dies, they die for God, they get burnt, they get drowned for God, and maybe 150 years later we're back at square one, where prayer is just a form of religion.

Prayer is a unique word, and it's a unique gift, because it's almost like, again, referring to that cell phone, it's almost like, well, prayer can be very, very powerful, and when it's in truth and in spirit, we're connecting with God. How beautiful. Now let's look at an example.

It is like the many forefathers who knew that they were going to give their life, they're going to die, they're going to be burned at the stake, they're going to be drowned in the river, and our human body cannot handle that. Many a person has went insane, because they couldn't handle the pressure of persecution. But here you have believers who believe in God, who can pray to God, endure the flames.

Though they were in the flame, tied to a tree, somehow they were strong, and they came across the victors. Not just by, yes, they're going to heaven now, but also by, they could go singing and go to the stake. There's something there that the human cannot understand.

How is that possible that we have those that believe in Jesus Christ, and they can go to the cross, or they can go to the river, and they can sing? And I want to highlight here, it is because they have a true connection with God. And much of the world today has a lot of focus, and I'm going to reference something here, with the situation that happened last week. It was neat to me to see how there's a lot of claim for revival, and I'm not going to say yes or no to it.

It's not here or there for me. But there is highlight on the amount of people praying. Now, I would to God that they're praying from their hearts, that it's true, that they want to seek God.

That would be good. It would be good for the whole population. But my worry in observing that is exactly as I've said.

Is this now a form of something they do? You go to a cross, you lay on your face before the cross, and you start mumbling words, or you start saying words. But what if even though they're saying those words, there's no obedience to God? There's no faith in God. There's no devotion to God.

Are they praying? And I'm going to leave it at that. But just to bring a highlight to us that, can you imagine? I'm going to talk to Brother Joshua. And Joshua is, well, it would be humorous for me to think, if I were to turn around, or the example I want to give is Joshua's not here.

Say Joshua wasn't here. Or what if Joshua tried to talk to his wife, Sharon? She's not here. And he starts talking to her.

We would look at him and say, Joshua, there's something wrong. Right? Because he's disconnected. She's not here.

Why do so many of us Christians, and this is a struggle, though. I want to respect it as a struggle. I remember as a young teenager, wanting to, yeah, I wanted to serve God, and God had saved me.

But the aspect of prayer was, it was a trial. Because I did not understand what this connection should look like. And so the idea being, would it be a blessing to me that I would memorize lots of prayers and just repeat them? Well, that doesn't mean that I have a relationship with God.

That means I'm, yeah, I could be repeating prayers, but it doesn't mean I have a relationship with God. And so if I was turning, or if I was in a room, and I said to you, oh, I'm talking to Joshua, and Joshua's not there. You would say there's something wrong.

I guess my heart would be for the Christian realm, that they would learn what is missing. Or are we in a similar setting, like in the 1500s, where religion is in control. Many, many people in desperation, and having needs, and they're anxious.

They're praying, and yet not to God. I don't think it's that they didn't want to pray to God. But due to where religion was at, and they weren't teaching the gospel clearly to them, they could not understand and pray to God.

This morning for us, we can understand. Are we praying to God? Highlighting, we want to be devoted to God. So prayer offered in faith is man's most powerful resource.

For by it, we induce Almighty God to grant that which we desire. But prayer offered in faith is at the same time a request that He induce us to desire that which He wills to grant. That we may earnestly say, Thy will be done.

I said that phrase. Can you imagine what Adam and Eve's prayer life was like with God? A very common thought today, and as we already understand, when we think about prayer, the most common weight on the human soul when we think of prayer is most often my needs. I don't really pray.

I don't really think about praying until my needs are in front of me. Then I say, oh, I'm going to pray. It's like just before something fails.

Then we're desperate for it not to fail. And so what's the motive behind the prayer? So I don't want it to fail. So I quickly go to God and I pray.

So I use God as a tool trying to help Him help me in a selfish way. So the human heart is quick. When it thinks about prayer, it thinks about when I'm in need or I'm in trouble, I can pray.

What kind of view would that, if we were to define what my view is of God, if my heart is like that? If my heart is in a place that I only go to God when I'm in need, what's my view of God? And you'll see as you meditate on it that that heart set does not allow God to be God at all. That makes me God and using God for my needs. Maybe very similar like my bank account.

When I need to pay for something, I pull up my bank card. When I need something, I go to God and say, OK, God, here's your chance. I need some.

I need a new house. God is not pleased with a selfish prayer. So communicate a prayer.

Communicating with God often involves expressing gratitude, asking for guidance or help or seeking spiritual connection and solace. And can make many forms and can take many forms, including recitation of traditional texts, silent contemplation and communal worship. Now, we don't have time to go through these things, but Psalm 87 is a very unique psalm.

And I'll turn there a little bit here. And I just want to reference it. There's many songs that are this way and that will show us how David prays.

So what I would love for us to do and it would it would take a study. But what I would love for us to do that might be, as we call it, too intellectual or something for for a message in a Sunday morning. But what would be a wonderful thing to do is study prayer and then study it with a lens of what God would what God's will is that my view should be when I think about prayer.

I feel even this morning, I feel like there's too much I cannot say or I got to save some things after something else, which caused me trouble to to be able to explain it well enough. If I were to use this phrase. Prayer.

Someone that is effective in prayer. Understands has come to a place that they understand. It's nothing about them and everything about God.

Do you follow what I'm saying? The most effectual prayer warrior is someone who has, as Paul says, less of me, more of Christ. If the view is the other way, more of me, more of my need, more of however, more of me and a use for God. The prayers are not effective at all.

So as I meditated on this and studied it, that is something I would love to be. I would love to have that. That as a teaching and spread that among Christianity.

That Christians would understand that one of the powerful points of prayer. If I were to say, you know, we look at Jesus and he says, if you have faith as a small mustard seed, you can pray that this mountain be removed. And he says it will be removed.

What does he mean? And I could look at others and say, oh, I would love to be a prayer warrior. Or I might say, my, if I had the faith of so and so, that I could be such a faith prayer warrior. What does that mean? And I think a defining definition of that would be, not me, but God.

And that can spread out in many ways. That can spread out in many different directions. That when I come to God, and I believe Adam and Eve's prayer life, the overall experience of their prayer life before they sinned was exactly that.

We could talk about, we could bring together a lot of different things here to prove that. For example, one of the biggest needs humanity has is love. God is love.

So a needy human communes with God, he receives love. And then you have God desires that we are honest. So then this is a compound interest conversation.

So then you have where God wants me to be honest. So in me being honest, then I'm letting God be God. I'm acknowledging my need.

As I pray, I glorify God, and I ask him to help me want what he wants me to want, so that I can be perfect in what he gives. And then you have a perfect relationship. Now Adam and Eve didn't have that fallen state.

So Adam and Eve would have been, by creation, they would have longed for God and his ways. They would have communed with God, praised him, and so on. And God in return gave them more of himself, you might say.

So you have a perfect cycle of need and giving, back and forth, back and forth. And which creates a relationship that God wanted from us. So God's heart for man, and man communing with God, it was a, I believe it was a perfect cycle of back and forth.

Where man would receive, man would give, God would receive, and God would give. And it would go back and forth to bless man, and just to have that relationship. So, I want to highlight again, what I want to say here then is, so this aspect of prayer, there's nothing wrong with us looking at prayer as we generally always do.

Where prayer is prayer, hey would you pray, would you give thanks. I'm going to call that, I'm going to call it the basic view on prayer. Just that basic view on prayer, hey I'm going to pray for you, hey I hope things go well for you, we'll pray for your health, and so on.

That's good, that's very good. But I do want us to ponder prayer to a deeper level this morning. Where the healthiest point in prayer life for us is, whenever or however, we are at our healthiest point in our relationship with God.

And that is where there is a greater, yeah, that is where there is power in prayer. We'll go into a few topics here, a few points here in prayer. When we think about praise, again after the fall, the needs seem to have taken, you might call it petition.

The petition prayer became the most common, the most frequent. And, but there is to be more than just the petition prayer. I'd like to highlight one more thing here in prayer.

The most blessed state for a person to be when thinking about prayer is the more accurate his view of God, the more fulfilling the aspect of prayer. So the more accurate view we have of God, the more fulfilling experience we have in prayer. So, the less we allow God to be in his place, the more we will have a perverted or a wrong view, a wrong experience of God.

I would say one of the saddest experiences in prayer is an empty prayer, like we would have seen in our history, crying out to God, not knowing who you're praying to. Having a view of the church and its tyranny, having a view of the consequence given to the layman for not praying, and even the priest. Having a ritual of prayer and not connecting with God is a very sad prayer.

We don't want to be there, we want to have a relationship with God. So, the clearer our view of God and the more we learn to acknowledge who we are, where we are, what our needs are, and the more we acknowledge God, the better our experience in prayer is. So, one of the things that glorifies God is when we come to God in prayer with a heart that acknowledges that we are dependent on God and he is the giver of what we need.

It's a very interesting thought. One of the healthiest heartsets for us to have as we think about praying, and it's good for us even to practice, I want to take time to pray. Therefore, I'm going to prep my mind and my heart, Lord, I am dependent on you.

That's who God is, and believe it or not, that's how God created us. God created us being dependent on him. And if we want to find our perfect place in Christ, it will be the acknowledgement, the acceptance of God's creation work.

Where, Lord, I'm always going to be dependent on you. And as we come to him that way in prayer, we bring him glory by acknowledging who he is. And he is the opposite side of our dependence.

He is the one that, I'm missing the words here, I don't want to say he is the one that fulfills our needs because that's only a part of our dependency on him. We are created to be dependent on him and he does meet our needs, which then we would reference our physical things. But it's also the spiritual things that he meets our human need as we were created.

So we're going to look at Psalms 87 a little, and I appreciate this. I don't know that did the Lord inspire this to be written this way? Did God do a work in David's heart that it was written this way? But you find it here and you'll also find it in Matthew chapter 6. I'm going to read a few verses here. So Psalm 87, it says, His foundation is in the holy mountains.

Now he's giving praise to God. The Lord loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob. Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God, Zila.

I will make mention of Rahab and Babylon to them that know me. Behold, Philistia and Tyre in Ethiopia, this man was born there. Oh, you know what, I think I actually have the wrong Psalm.

It started out the right way. I'm just going to double check another Psalm here. Well, for time's sake, I'll just paraphrase it.

I would have taken down the wrong number. David has a way, he writes that Psalm where he praises God, then he acknowledges God as provider, and then he acknowledges his need. And I think he does it three times in that same Psalm.

That's an interesting part in worshipping God. I wouldn't want to say that we need to learn to have a proper structure in worship. But, interesting to me though, as you would find it in Scripture, there is a structure in worship.

So, you have King David, where he will acknowledge God, acknowledge how God can meet his need, and then he says, then he prays for himself. Now, if you look at Matthew chapter 6, which is the prayer, the Lord's prayer is in Matthew chapter 6, you'll find something similar. And here's where we can take the lesson from how God cares about our heart set and what we pray.

Why do you think when Jesus gave the example of how to pray in Matthew chapter 6, have you pondered and processed that he gave that for a specific reason? Was it just the nicest way to please God? So, if you want to make God happy, pray like this. Or, the actual words that he says we should pray, do they make a difference? And is there a reason why we have those words? So, he builds on that he doesn't want us to pray in vanity. He doesn't want us to pray as hypocrites.

He doesn't want us to pray with many words, repetition. Then he says, verse 9. So, verse 9, Matthew chapter 6, I'll start reading verse 9. Here Jesus says, After this manner, therefore, pray ye, Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Acknowledging God.

And now here is acknowledging our submission to God. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven. God, I want what you want.

Then our need, verse 11. Give us this day our daily bread. And then another need.

And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And another thing that you'll see, which I might not touch on a lot this morning. Is, in this prayer life, God has a strong will that we pray for each other.

So, it is unique. The best way I could give an example. The example would be like this.

As much as a parent loves a child. I love my little child. So, I could say I love Nolan.

I love to fellowship with Nolan. But I have a heart. In my love for Nolan, I have a love that Nolan will love Elton.

And I have a love for Elton. And in my love for Elton, I desire that Elton will have a love for Nolan. And there is a lot that we could study.

That would bring out the foundation of this relationship. Where God says, I'm here. I'm the provider.

And God has, as for me. Elton's my son. Nolan's my son.

Akai's my son. And on with my other children, Rosie and Twyla. God says, I am burdened.

I desire. And I have created you. That you will, individually.

That we will pray to him. And that we are devoted. We are surrendered.

We acknowledge who he is. And after the fallen state, we acknowledge who we are. The one in need.

And God is pleased when brother Peter comes to God and prays. And when brother Peter prays for brother James. It is a very, there is much to be learned about God's love.

In this view, or in this topic of prayer. God is pleased when Peter prays to God and prays for James. And what else we would see is how God is perfect in his ways.

Let me say it like this. God says, Peter, I'm pleased when you pray. When you come to me in prayer.

God says, here's how I want you to pray, Peter. I want you to acknowledge who I am. I want you to, and I want to go to these verses here.

I want you to acknowledge who I am. I want you to be submitted to my will. And yes, Peter, bring me your need.

And then the Lord says, in humility. This is where it's sanctifying. This is where prayer is sanctifying.

Peter goes to God and says, Lord. And then Peter can praise God, submit to God. Bring God his need.

And then Peter has a burden. And that burden is, Lord, I have a brother who's in need. My brother James.

Lord, I know you're God over James. Lord, I submit my will to you. And I submit my will to your will regarding James.

So Peter, referencing to God. God, I come before you wanting your will for my brother James. And so Peter prays for James.

And the Lord is pleased that Peter would pray that prayer. Here's what I want to highlight. And I'm not sure if you're following me.

I hope you are. Here's what I want to highlight. This is actually sanctifying for the body.

So a church's prayer life, a group, a congregation's prayer life is actually sanctifying as we pray for each other. It makes a difference for us and to God what my heart is and why I pray. So another way of saying it is, let us be careful that we have purpose in why we pray.

That I would pray for a brother. I would pray for a sister. Because, not for a selfish reason, though it's not always wrong.

I can pray for a brother who is sick and my desire is that he feels well. That's not wrong. But my desire isn't built on.

I want him to have his best life. I don't want him to pray selfishly and I don't want to pray selfishly on his behalf. So we pray as a brotherhood and the burden is, God, I want your will for my life.

God, I want your will for my brother's life. And there's something about that that is really, really beautiful. I hope I just opened a can here for all of us to think about.

Then you can take it home and build on that. So what is our heart and motive? What's our view when we come to God to pray? It is good, it should be right and healthy. As I've already stated, one of our views is, Lord, I am dependent.

And always will be. And as those of us that have given our life to God, we've accepted Christ. We now understand that the Lord has given me life.

He has met that need. But there will be a continual need after that, that I will dwell with God and His ways. So what is my view? My view is that God's will would be done.

That God would be glorified. That God would have His way. We know and understand that the healthiest point for our personal health is when we... I was going to use the word praise God and we worship God.

And it is correct, but it's not enough definition for me. Our healthiest place to come before God is when we allow God to be God. And we accept ourselves as man.

So is it a shame for us? And I don't think it is. Is it a shame for us to understand and agree that I will always have needs on this side of heaven? Or better, thinking about we have this life. We want to live this life for God.

And we think about when I go meet Jesus, I will be with Him eternally. That's good. What's your view? What would be your motive for wanting to be with Him eternally? So what I'm trying to point out here is the fact that we have a created need.

And God has a perfect plan for that created need. You see, I can say I can't wait to be with the Lord. That's good.

And the reality will be, it won't be because I'll be happy. I'll never get sick. And all of those things.

It won't be the physical list. Though, that will be, it will be a blessing. It is true that there are no tears in heaven.

There is no pain. There is no death. That is wonderful.

But the core reason for me wanting to go to be with Jesus Christ in heaven, the result will be, I will then have what I was created to have. This relationship with God. So for me to say today that I have a need.

As a Christian, I have a need. And you'll notice that need. And here's what it is.

I have a need for God and His ways. I have a need. Maybe a simple way to say it is, my need is to live for God.

Because what happens if you don't live for Him? Then you're back into destruction. You follow? So we are created with a need. And as I acknowledge my need for God, and I enter this topic of prayer, we have this beautiful place.

We stand in a beautiful place before God to say, Lord, I acknowledge again, I have a need. And my need is You. And then to submit ourselves to God's will.

The opposite side of that, a hard set of submission to God would be this. Even as Christians, we can be guilty of this. And the unbeliever is guilty of this as well.

If you were to take the time and meditate on, what is the purpose of my life? And if I were to say, well, I'm okay with being a Christian. But my goal, my goal, my heart is to be successful. I have a physical goal in life.

And if that would be my concentration, that would be my highlight. Why do I want to bring that up in this topic of prayer? Because that is what's in the way of humanity. Being able to relate to God.

Humans struggle to submit to God because there's one thing that's more important to them than God. And that is themselves. So what I want to say here is, it's good for us to think about and to make an honest decision.

What I'm trying to weave out is that middle lukewarm state of trying to do both, have the world and be a Christian. What I want to do is, I want to separate that where there's a clear view of a decision that says, my need is God's will. And so I come to God to get my need fulfilled.

That's the clear view on God's side. The clear view on the human side would be, I don't care much about how life goes. I'm okay to be a Christian, but here's what I want out of life.

And the sad part for that is, maybe you have 70, maybe you have 80 years. And then that's over. And we just want to make that clear decision, knowing much of humanity struggles to come to God, to submit to God.

Much of humanity comes before God only when they are in need. Lord, I want to start a new business. God, I pray you give me wisdom on how to run my business.

That's not where we want to be found. We want to be found, submitted to God. I treasure the thought when I think about, I'm going to read to you five parts, six parts in prayer.

They can be defined in different ways. I'm not going to take the time to do that this morning. But what I do want us to notice or take note of is the importance of my heart in each state.

One is praise. God wants us to praise him. Number two is confession.

God wants us to confess our need to God. Three is prayer. Now the word prayer can be used in general terms.

I can use the word prayer when I'm doing, well, I'll come back to that. Petition. Petition.

So the idea of praying a petition, having a need, a specific need, whether it's for me or for my brother or sister. Supplications is another word. There's much said in the New Testament that we should be in prayer and supplications.

And another word for prayer. And then we have intercession, which is another word for praying. So there's all these different words about prayer.

And I just want to highlight again, and I might not say enough words here for it, I want to highlight that we process the state of our hearts as we think about this. What do I mean? Number one, it's difficult to praise God if we're not devoted to God. It's difficult for me to say, you know what? I'm going to sing.

I'm going to praise the Lord. But my heart is not to live for God. You can't praise God.

So highlighting the motive. And just picture with me, if we were to spread this message among Christians as a whole, one of the wonderful things that is required of a Christian as he wants to serve God is a full, honest commitment to God. God isn't interested in a partial commitment.

God is not interested in people going to a building, calling it church, singing songs, pretending they're praising Him, living sinful lives throughout the week. I'm not saying sinful because they choose to be sinful. What I mean is sinful is simply living without God.

Living without God's will and God's heart and mind. And then going Sunday morning and saying, I'm going to praise God today. That does not praise God.

That's an abomination to God. The idea of confession. The importance of having a right heart set with confession.

Whether it's our needs. We could refer sins as confession. But we could also use this word when we talk about our needs.

I confess I'm struggling with this. Hey, I'm struggling with my anger. I'm struggling with whatever it would be.

Confession. So we are to confess one to another. We confess to God and we just want to be honest.

And the beauty of confession is when there is a true confession to God, that's when we, that's our best place of being able to acknowledge or see who we are. An example of that is I'm not a bad person. I just struggle with anger, but I'm not a bad person.

And God would have us to be clear that I am in need of Christ. Okay. So we acknowledge our needs, our failures, but then we accept God as the answer to our needs.

So confession, a beautiful thing. The idea of petition. Can you imagine taking time to pray on someone else's behalf, but selfishly? Again, we could use many different examples.

Do you think about that? Or have you thought about that? And I know we do. And definitely when there is a situation, thinking about what the Penner family went through, we were all praying. Were we praying selfishly? No.

Our heart was to pray that God's will will be done. So that's a blessing. But the idea of petition, I pray for you, and here's my heart when I pray for you, that God would have his way in your life.

Not just that God would prosper you, God would make you feel better, God would all, anything that could be selfish, but rather I pray for you that God would have his way in your life. Maybe that's why in France and different parts of the UK there, where now if you're standing outside an abortion clinic, this is at least what I've been told, if you're standing outside an abortion clinic and you give off the vibe that you're praying, just in your mind, that's illegal. I don't know if you've heard about that.

So if you are a Christian, they have a number of how far you have to be away from the abortion clinics. And if they see you, they think that you're praying, that's illegal. You can get fined.

So the world says there is no God, but yet they want to fine you for praying. I'm not sure how that comes together, but I think it's because they know there's a God. True prayer and true heartfelt, a person coming to God in submission to God and then praying is as Jesus said, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you can move this mountain and it would be removed.

Prayer is powerful. So we have petition and then we had supplications and intercessions. All three of these could be supplications being, I could pray for my brother and my sister's needs.

I'm praying on someone's behalf. And then intercession would be similar. Praying.

Okay. I think I want to close with, in this topic of prayer, I want to close with just a reminder to us. I realize I'm talking about a lot of mechanicals in this topic of prayer.

Maybe it would actually take a lot more discussions and how that looks in a practical way. Hopefully I said enough to cause us to think about the importance of why we pray and also that we're not praying to someone with no power. But a reminder to us, let us strive, let us strive to come before God where God would want us to be in our heart and then that we pray to Him.

One man once said, he was an older lady praying for her son, a son who was not converted. And she spent time praying because of how much trouble her son was in. And there was a minister who had told her that the advice that the minister gave to her was do not pray for your son because of whether it's the pain he experiences or this prayer of, I want my son, the good that she wanted for her son.

So then the encouragement was, if you're going to pray, if you're going to pray, and even as a group, you're going to pray for the lost soul, your motive for that prayer is that God will be glorified. And so you could think of, I don't know what would have happened if someone had prayed for Nebuchadnezzar. When Nebuchadnezzar was proud and working against God, if the Christians had prayed that God's will be done, would that have resulted in him having to go out and eat like an animal? I'm not saying that they should have prayed that.

But what I do want to acknowledge here though is when we pray and God can work His will into our heart, our life, it will come together with His will. And our prayer and His will come together. So we've discussed more the mechanicals of prayer and we want to process that as we pray.

The highlight of that being, always before we pray, let's give God His place, as it's said here in verse 9, our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Sometimes we struggle in praying, maybe some of the young souls, young Christians struggle with prayer, where you feel like you have to pray a polished prayer. I don't know what to pray.

I'm going to be embarrassed to pray. No, none of us pray before man. If our prayers are to impress man, then our prayers aren't prayers.

We need to pray to God. So just to encourage you young people, when you pray, don't worry about being embarrassed. You're not praying to us.

You're praying to God. And we want to remember that. We pray to God.

So we give God His place, we submit ourselves to His will, and we bring before Him our needs. Lastly here, I would encourage us, in light of this message, I would encourage you to meditate on this and let us come before God and be prayer warriors. Have purpose in praying and wanting God's will in prayer that His kingdom come in earth as it is in heaven.

We will close there. Let's pray again and then we'll close. Heavenly Father, we come to You now as we enclose of this sharing.

Lord, I pray that You would do a work in our hearts in a greater way. Lord, as my heart for this message here this morning, Lord, I pray that You would work this in our lives. Lord, we know that we can grow in this aspect of prayer.

Lord, help us to be purposeful when we pray. Lord, this life is easy for us to live life. It's easy for us to live life being well-fed, having all our needs met, and that we hardly think of our need of prayer.

So Lord, as we've heard two messages here on prayer, God, I pray that all of us would have a greater desire in learning what Your purpose was when You ordained prayer. Lord, as we think of You fellowshipping with Adam and Eve before they fell, Lord, how would You have us fellowship with You? Yes, Lord, we have many needs, and we come to You with our needs. But further from there, Lord, I pray that You would teach us, help us, help us that we would praise You, that we would acknowledge who You are.

And Lord, may You do a work through us, and we know that Your will is that we would be vessels to reach the lost world. Lord, also as we know the enemy, he doesn't mind when we pray. He doesn't mind that we call ourselves Christians.

But he would just have us to be faithless, powerless. Lord, he would have us be distracted when we pray to You. And Lord, then making us useless.

So, Lord, for Your glory's sake and for our needs' sake, I pray, Lord, that You would help us to grow in this aspect of prayer, that we can be true, strong warriors, wanting Your will in this life, that You would be glorified, and that we would find our perfect peace, peaceful place in You. Thank You, Lord. I pray that You'd further bless us and bless our fellowship.

In Jesus' name we pray, amen.