Prayer

Good evening to all of you and we welcome you all in the Lord's name on behalf of the believers here And thank you for coming to this most important meeting of the conference the prayer meeting I'd like to spend a few minutes with you, please in 1st Timothy chapter 2 1st Timothy chapter 2 and I want to talk to you about the greatest privilege of the Christian life Indeed the greatest privilege that a mortal person can be involved with and that is prayer Communication with God, we've just had a prayer meeting we've just prayed to our Heavenly Father as a corporate group of Christians and I want to talk a little bit about what that means and How we can make ourselves more devoted to this most important and privileged activity of Christian life to pray to God I Think you're all familiar with 1st Timothy 2, but let's just read the first few verses together Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications prayers Intercession and giving of thanks be made for all men for kings and all who are in authority that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and Honesty or perhaps reverence is a better rendering of the word For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior Who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth? For there is one God and one mediator between God and men the man Christ Jesus who gave himself a ransom for all to be testified In due time for which I was appointed a preacher and an apostle I am speaking the truth in Christ and not lying a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth It's possible that the Ephesian believers as a group the church in which Timothy was a member Had stopped praying for unbelievers Why would they do that well perhaps because under the influence of what we call the Judaizers people who felt that Salvation was really just for Jewish people or people who came to Judaism or came through the proper ritual It was for them and not for Gentiles in general and certainly not for Gentile kings and for people who were outside of the pale of Israel and Paul's telling Timothy. No, I want you to go to them and I want you to exhort them that they need to pray for all men and perhaps especially For kings and those who were in authority and who was the emperor by the way at the time when this was written it was Nero a wicked man and yet there is something good and respectable and and something that we should admire about government as opposed to anarchy and Although we do not admire the person who is always occupying The seat of government as much as we might have wished for others or we might admire others historically yet. We are to respect Authority and respect the person whom God has placed over us whether it's our mayor or our local council people all the way up to the President of the United States and Law and order in the Roman Empire would allow the gospel to spread much better than had there not been the Pax Romana at the time that the gospel came into the civilized world of the time of the Apostles He says we are to do this in order that we may live a quiet and peaceable life again Not a life of fear and anarchy but one in which law and order Prevail and he says I want you to live it in godliness and reverence One of the key words of the pastoral epistles is this word godliness and Even though our English word has the word God in it The original word doesn't have the word God in it, but it's still I think a pretty good translation because godliness Is not so much like trying to be like God that is admirable and that's something to pursue certainly But I think this word really means something like God Godwardness in other words if you put God in the middle as he belongs in the middle Then you and your life will revolve around him You'll rotate around him and everything you do will be done with God in the center That's godwardness and there's no better place to get godward in your thinking and activities than in prayer so Paul divides here prayer into four categories and we're just going to look at this briefly because I'm actually Wishing to be quite practical and rather homespun and what I say here.

I think this is something that I have been convicted about and if you want to make another believer guilty Just go up to him or her and say how is your prayer life? You see prayer is the first thing that goes If you're cold at heart if you're not reading the scriptures if you're away from the Lord the very first thing that goes is prayer Now if you're a brother in the assembly It could be that you still stand up and do your duty in the prayer meeting and you pray before the gospel meeting and maybe you Worship the Lord on Sunday morning, but that's about it when you leave. There's no communication for the rest of the week Because really you're just doing something externally but in your heart, you're not right and therefore, you know what I'm talking about the first thing that goes is prayer and therefore we need to understand that this needs to be a Constant discipline and exercise in our lives and if we would only put it in the central important place that the scriptures put it Then all of the other issues of life would fall into place and I'll try to Defend that from Scripture as we go along He talks about supplication the word prayer, which seems like a general word intercession and giving of thanks. I Just want to offer a couple of Suggestions about what these words might emphasize.

I think the word supplication is Really a very earnest a very intense word a very emotionally laden word It's the word of some when coming to God not just to generally converse with him with with a very specific and searing burden in his or her heart Coming before the Lord with a very specific problem Knowing that the Lord as the intimate Father in heaven can meet the need and can give me help to face Whatever trial this might be I? Think of the time when Hezekiah was given this letter by Sennacherib That pretty much said that Jerusalem was going to be toast at this point and you might as well, you know resign you might as well run away because you're going to be overrun and Of course Sennacherib with his huge army seemed like someone's Hezekiah simply couldn't face on his own And so we did what every good believer should do He took the letter that Sennacherib had sent to him and he went into the presence of the Lord and he spread it out before The Lord and he supplicated He said Oh Lord Save us from the this evil man, and you know the story don't you that of course the Lord delivered? Them with a mighty victory and the army was defeated Sennacherib went home and was assassinated by his sons So that was the end of him and the end of the letter But we see how that this was spread out before the Lord in a very very specific way by a man who was overwhelmed another Better example even than that would be the Garden of Gethsemane With strong crying and tears the Lord Jesus faced the cross and he supplicated God Emotionally laden Intense in his prayers his sweat as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground This is a man who learned what supplication was. He knew what supplication was and we need to learn what it is, too. I Think prayers is a word of the next word is a word of devotion Independence on God.

I think it's a word of closeness to God I think it's a word that you would find perhaps through the Psalms in general many of them are prayers In the sense that they show real devotion to the Lord. I love the Lord because he has heard my cry that's a prayer in the Old Testament and Many of us of course a delight to tell God what we think of him and how much we love him for first loving us And so we pray to God The next word is I think a different aspect of priesthood and after all prayers are priestly activities One of the things priests do is they offer Sacrifices they offer they offer Thanksgiving to God. They give him offerings And so when we give God a prayer of Thanksgiving, we're giving him an offering the fruit of our lips giving.

Thanks to his name but there's another role of priesthood and that's the role of mediation between two parties God and someone else in some sort of need with me in the middle and That's intercession Intercession and this is where prayer can be a real service to other people because There's a God who can meet their need and they have a need and maybe they're not even praying for it themselves Maybe they're not saved and they don't pray for their souls, but we can pray for them Or maybe they're praying and doing their best but we can add to what is being done we can bring the solution about through our contribution we can pray for them just as the Disciples in the early acts got together in the room and prayed that Peter might be delivered from prison I'm sure Peter was praying for that, too but it was great to know that all the believers came together and were in unison with him as they Interceded between God and a party in need And clearly in this context the Kings and those in authority need to be saved That's really the main reason for their for the prayers here And so Paul's saying you know what you're an interceder you you intercede on behalf of them before the throne of grace and God will reach down in mercy and deliver them The last one he throws in is giving of thanks giving of thanks I think we should always begin and maybe end our prayers with giving of thanks That's what the Lord taught his disciples in the so-called model disciples prayer, which we might touch upon later But I want you to just think for a minute about what prayer really is Prayer is the most spiritual exercise that we can do as believers the prayer meeting which is of course the least popular of all the meetings of the assembly is least popular because it is the most spiritual and Even though we're believers and if we're truly believers There's something in us that wants to talk to God and communicate with our Father I think one of the signs of life is the desire to pray to God and Yet even if that is the case, it's still not the natural inclination of our of our beings we're still soulish and we're very we're very physical beings and we're very much tied to the earth and In this very visual culture that we live in prayer is exactly the opposite of what people are interested in you say we go to a meeting and we're going to sit down and we're going to close our eyes for the whole meeting and Then before a gospel meeting we're going to get down on our knees and we're going to Close our eyes again, and if we open them all we're gonna see is the back of a chair and maybe we'll study the back of that chair as we've got our eyes open and we're going along with the prayer meeting and Pretty soon we you know Never recognize all of the grain in the wood there because and then we say no No, we're not supposed to be looking at the wood. So we close our eyes What we're doing is we're shutting out the physical shutting out this world and we're entering into heaven itself The most privileged place a person can be in our spirits That's an amazing thing It takes eight minutes for light to get from the Sun to the earth, right? How many years how many light years does it take for this for light to get from Alpha Centauri Proxima Centauri to the earth? Which is the closest star about four point two seven light-years The closest galaxy is the Sagittarius elliptical galaxy closest to our Milky Way well that takes about 80,000 light-years for light to come from there to here and Yet when I close my eyes and pray I zoom past all of those things in an instant. I Come before the throne of grace.

I'm in God's presence and you know what? God gives me his undivided attention You say well, what about if I'm praying in the room next to you? How can he give you his undivided attention if he's giving me his undivided attention because that's how big God is that's how big our God is if you want to stagger at how at the magnitude of who God is in his power and The and the awesomeness of his being just contemplate the fact that he will Not only take the words, but even the thoughts of a believer and he will give them his undivided attention Because he cares for you. He loves you. He wants to hear you He wants to hear your prayers your Thanksgiving your ideas.

He wants to hear your intercessions He wants to know what you care about. He wants to know whom you are Seeking to serve in prayer by bringing them before him. He wants to do those things and he wants to hear those things from you So that's an amazing thing I Believe in the Garden of Eden.

It was a very natural thing for Adam to pray He walked with God in the cool of the day and they just chatted with each other. It was the most natural thing but after the fall prayer as I mentioned became the most unnatural thing a person could do We read at the end of Genesis 4 that Seth had a son named Enosh Enosh means man in his frailty his feebleness and I think Seth realized The frailty and feebleness of man and there's when we get that great expression then Men began to call upon the name of the Lord the Cainites weren't interested in the name of the Lord or praying to God They were building cities and they were exalting themselves and trying to be big shots on the earth but the line of Seth Those who had kept God's truth delivered from Adam and Eve themselves Well, they realized their frailty and their dependence upon a God and they recognized there was a spiritual world Beyond the physical and beyond the obvious and they were going to call upon God not just call upon God But call upon the name of God and what does that mean? It means God as he has manifested himself to us It's the real God not our God that we make up. It's God as he is not as we think he ought to be It's the real deal.

It's God as he is his name. We call upon that All who call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved we did that when we were saved didn't we we continue to call upon the name of the Lord Well, why would we want to pray besides the fact that God tells us to pray and Christ models prayer for us and The Apostles are praying and they tell us to pray for them brethren pray for us first Thessalonians 5, right? So we ought to do it because we're told to do it. But why else might we want to do it? Because prayer draws us closer to God first of all How is it that we do not converse with the person who is the most important to us? you know in human relationships when communication breaks down pretty much the relationship breaks down and If you want to get a relationship back together again, you need to get the people talking to each other, right? And same with us in God the more we're talking with him and communing with him the closer we will become to him It's a cliche, but it's true.

He speaks to us through his word and we speak back to him through prayer And one of the things that I think is a great exercise for believers whether privately or as a couple or even as a small group I'm not promoting small groups in the way that word is used out there. But you know what I mean? You read a verse maybe you go to the Psalms You hear God speak to you and you just talk right back to him You tell him what you appreciate about it. You thank him for what you're reading you ask him to clarify it you ask him to show it how it will work in life and Then you read the next verse and then you talk back to him.

That's a great exercise if you've never done it. I have to admit the first time I ever did that when I was when I was a Student in college meeting with some friends who were not, you know from assemblies and they but they were very devoted people And we used to meet to talk about the scriptures and pray and they taught me to do that and that was an invaluable time And I recommend it highly you want to get to know God by communicating with him Prayer will keep you from sin Many of us have trouble struggling with sin and we forget that really the best way to deal with that Is to be in constant conversation with God See, we're not going to take God with us to places. We shouldn't go We're not going to talk in certain ways in front of God.

Are we if he's next to us? We're not going to do things He wouldn't approve of if he was standing by us would we if we were actually talking with him Then these things would be so far from our thinking and would be so Repulsive to us that we would almost think of them like the way God does But the problem is that we forget That God is with us and in us and we've stopped talking to him and Therefore these things start to entice us So get back to God in prayer. This brings up a point prayer does not have to be the formal disciplined Two times three times a day whatever it is for you When you pray to God you do not always have to say Our Father in heaven We come to thee in the worthy and precious name of thy beloved son our Lord Jesus Christ And I'm not belittling it or mocking that sort of thing. All those things are very Precious things and they're all very appropriate perhaps in a more formal prayer meeting setting But you don't need to say all that You do what the Lord Jesus did and when he was on earth, you lift up your eyes and start talking.

I Thank you father that you've always heard me you have heard me because I've been talking to you He comes to the grave of Lazarus. He didn't say I he doesn't approach God about it there for the first time He says we've been discussing this all the way along. I Thank you.

You have been hearing me and so we had to be the same way constant You see this in Nehemiah. I may talk a little bit about Nehemiah tomorrow Nehemiah is always praying these sudden prayers says then I pray to the God of heaven, you know right in the middle of the action And that's the kind of thing we ought to be doing as well. So Constant conversation with God in prayer We ought to pray because it changes things You say well I don't know if it really changes things because everything's ordained and God is sovereign and he's already determined whatsoever shall come to pass Well, that may be true, but God not only has ordained what shall come to pass But he has ordained the means by which it will come to pass and one of those means may be your prayer Let me give you an example The Prophet Daniel's reading the Prophet Jeremiah pretty much one of his contemporaries comes a little before him and Jeremiah says the captivity is going to be 70 years What does Daniel do? Does he start jumping up and down saying? Yay 70 years has come.

It will happen automatically No, he gets down on his knees and prays that God will bring it about and why would he do that? Because he understands prayer He understands that God brings his will to pass through means and those means may well be the prayers of his people So we need to pray to change things when the disciples are in the boat and in distress We read the Lord would have passed them by But they cried out to him so he turns course and he comes to them in the boat That's an amazing statement. He would have passed them by But no, they cry out to him and he answers and comes to their aid We ought to pray because it is service to other people here we are sitting in Iowa tonight and If we're praying for something that's going on in Zambia or North Korea We are participating in the work of God in those places. We're helping God's people there We're giving aid and succor and help and comfort in a way that God will supply through our prayers We can be all over the planet In our little closet And we should be Prayer is one of the best ways you can serve other people prayer is service Prayer allows us to participate in the will of God You see it is true that God's orchestra is playing on this beautiful tune that God has devised for the ages And he's given us our violin and we're sitting there at home And we have a couple of options or maybe three we can say I'm not going to play Well God's tune goes on but we're not a part of it We say I've got a different number.

I want to play. I don't want to play that number So we saw a way at some Other tune and you know, it's just not in concert with what God is doing and it's of no use or we can pick up the tune and we can play along and add to God's purposes for what is being accomplished and be a part of it and Prayer is being a part of it Really prayer is not only coming to our Heavenly Father, but it's a very Trinitarian operation We don't always know according to Romans 8 what we ought to pray for and even when we Have feelings that we know we need to bring to God. We can't always put them in words But the Holy Spirit understands He'll turn them into words He can groan for us groanings that cannot be uttered our groans become his groans The Spirit aids us in our prayers.

He intercedes for us, but he's not the only one who intercedes for us The Lord Jesus intercedes for us in heaven He takes the imperfections of our prayers and he offers them to God as beautiful bouquets to all our prayers and praises Christ adds his sweet perfume and Love the sensor raises their odors to consume that is hymnology, but it's a wonderful truth You've got the Holy Spirit and the Son of God himself Working with you in all of your prayers with the God the Father receiving them. It's a Trinitarian operation What a privilege So why are we afraid of it? Why do we dislike it? Why do we let this go first of all? Why do we feel that if time is pressing this is the first thing that goes? Overboard we got more important things to do. We don't have time to pray We need to have time to pray We must make time to pray.

It's the most important part of our lives There are two types of prayers in the Bible that the Lord Jesus taught one is the private prayers You enter into thy closet singular you shut the thyde or Singular and you pray to thy father in heaven singular So that's a very precious thing. We're praying to God I think there needs to be a discipline time Where we go through a discipline list of things that are important to us that might be once a day It might be twice a day. It might be private.

It might be with your spouse with another Christian but those are times I think that it's required we carve out time and Devote that time to the Lord and we turn off the phone and we turn off the distractions And we allow God and us to interact with just the spirit of the man and the spirit of God there's God who is spirit interacting in a spiritual way through words, which are spiritual entities and No aids are required everything will distract from that pure expression of devotion and communication and interfacing with God But I don't as I mentioned before between those discipline times. I think there should be Constant communication When you're driving in the car When you're kneading your bread when you're knitting at home in your chair, you say I don't need bread and I don't knit Well, that's one of the problems with modern life. We don't have any boredom anymore The worst thing we want is the worst thing you can do is to be bored, but I'm a big champion of boredom I want boredom Boredom is the most useful time in my life That's why I think of such great things in the shower because there's nothing to distract me my eyes are closed I can't even see without my glasses.

I can't tell the conditioner from the shampoo It's a time when I get great ideas. I get great ideas in bed I have to get out of bed and run off and write them down before I forget them in the morning I don't get these great insights when I'm busy it during the day because Satan has me preoccupied He's got me busy busy busy busy and I need to have some boredom So that I can commune with God Throughout the day. Yes at all down times.

I think it's great idea to talk with the Lord It's also very important that we participate with the assembly in public prayer See if one man can put this flight ten ten men can put the flight a thousand. That's a magnitude of ten That's a geometric progression You get people together and they can do things individuals can't and the assembly prayer meeting is a very important meeting What kinds of things ought we to do in public prayer One of the great privileges of public prayer is worship as we would do it on the Lord's Day morning at the breaking of bread Where we don't bring personal concerns we bring corporate concerns there God cares about our personal concerns They belong in our closet but the things that we are praying for in the prayer meeting are not private concerns because I'm not speaking as a private citizen when I'm praying out loud in a prayer meeting. I'm praying on behalf of everyone else in the audience That's why I don't say I I say we I don't say us.

I say we I don't say my I say our Now some people say oh, it's just a tradition. I want to be fresh when I pray in public So I'm gonna say I and me well, don't say I and me you do that in your closet Now a lot of people in their closets say we in our because they're so used to praying that way and we're saying okay Who's the other person here? It's me. Hi But when I'm praying in the prayer meeting, it's our and us Because we are coming together as a group so we come into the Lord's presence and we pray for corporate concerns and The greatest corporate concern is the public worship of God It's exalting God and the one whom God most delights in his beloved Son And one of the things that's so precious About being in an assembly Versus being with any other group of Christians that I have been with or associated with and this is not a disparaging remark It's just something I'm so thankful for Very few other Christians know what it is to bring the calves of their lips The bull calves of their lips as Hosea puts it or in Hebrews.

It's the fruit of their lips Giving thanks to his name where they formulate not just saying I want to praise you Lord much more than I do I want to praise you Lord. I want to pry like that tune actually, it's fine But then are we saying okay, well go ahead and do it then if you say you if you want to say you want to praise The Lord, let's let's start. How do you what are you gonna? You know, it's the sentiment is good But let's get the substance and what is the substance? It's explicit things that you have treasured in your heart about God as he has revealed them in his word you present them words What about repentance You say repentance is something that belongs in the closet not so And not you shouldn't necessarily air your dirty laundry in public.

That's what I'm saying. It's not this is not private concerns this is public concerns, but there is public sin and there's public shortcomings and There's a need for public repentance and even if you're not party to it or you don't think you've been involved with it You take it up as your own sin That's what Nehemiah does. That's what Daniel did They prayed as if they were very much part of the failures of the people and So standing for the people and in front of the people and interceding on behalf of the people they brought these sins to God and said Lord, please forgive us and In your in your private prayers You bring words Against thee the only have I sinned and done this great iniquity this great evil in thy sight Hosea 13 tells us for is a 14 Bring with you words You're going to repent bring with you words Tell God what all about it spell it out and he'll forgive you and you'll move on Andrew Bonar said the devil laughs at our prayerless preaching he laughs at our prayerless service he laughs at our prayerless activities But he trembles when we pray he knows the importance of prayer and that's why he tries to keep us from doing it May we not do it? It's the first thing to go when we're away from the Lord Let's make a commitment tonight as we have been praying for this conference now that we are going to make prayer a Priority of our lives and give it the place the Bible gives it and God will honor us and bless us for it May the Lord bless his word