Prayer: Why We Must
Prayer: why we must
Keep one finger in the Luke passage, and I will get you to turn to Colossians 4.
2 Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.
It is not always easy to know what we should do as a Christian in particular situation is it?
So often we ask the question, what is God’s will in this area of my life?
Should I marry this person or not?
Should I take this job or another?
Should I support this cause or not?
We wish God would write in the clouds of the sky … marry Esther …. or take the job closest to the beach.
Or something like that.
What is God’s will for me?
Now obviously I am being silly.
I can tell you one thing you can be absolutely sure of because it is so very clear from this passage. It is God's will that we pray to him because he tell us to.
2 Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.
It couldn’t be clearer could it?
There is part of the answer to the question, what is God’s will for your life?
- Not just that you would pray when you are in trouble.
- Not just that you would pray when heartache comes.
- Not just that you would pray before dinner
There is such a pattern in your life of prayer that if someone was to look on they would say, “ … you are a person who continues steadfastly in prayer.”
If you asked the question this morning, why must we pray? Which is the title of this sermon, then I guess first and foremost the answer is that God tells us to continue steadfastly in prayer. There is a sense in which that is enough.
In which case the sermon could end there. Perhaps you wish that it would. Praying that it would.
There are some more things God lets us know which are a great encouragement to pray. It is well worth considering them as well this morning.
The first one is important isn’t it? Why must we prayer? It is because God tells us to.
Before we continue with the question, why we must, let’s ask another question. What does God mean when he says pray?
What is prayer?
You might say, that is easy, but it is not immediately easy.
For the Muslim it is reciting certain texts five times a day. For the Buddhist it is making a wheel with your prayer on it that spins in the wind.
What does God mean when he tells us we are to be people who continue steadfastly in prayer?
How would you define prayer in one sentence?
What would you say, if I told you that prayer in the Bible is asking God for things? The word the Bible most often uses for pray is the word to ask, or request.
Now maybe it doesn’t sound holy or godly enough to say that, but at its simplest, prayer is asking God for things. Anything that you need, and you long for. That is prayer.
Of course the main thing that you need is Jesus. More of him, seeing him and trusting him and obeying him, that is the main thing. All that you need, all that you long for, Jesus says ask.
Go to your heavenly Father and ask, that is prayer.
Now I know that we will want to say that prayer includes confession and it includes thanksgiving and it includes praise.
Vs 2 … in thanksgiving
The prayer Jesus teaches, includes praise.
At the heart of prayer, what the Greek word actually means, is to ask, to request.
Yes, we should always be thanking God when we pray, and we should always be confessing our sins when we pray, yes we should always praise the Lord as we pray.
The heart and the essence of the word pray in the Bible is to ask God for things. Ask, petition, plead, request.
I got this story from John Piper. That D.J. Moody was a great evangelist from 1800’s and he was doing an evangelistic outreach in Britain and he went to Scotland, and they asked him to speak at a school. There were hundreds of young students.
Moody thought, what am I going to talk to children about?He decided he would talk about prayer. That is basic, and will lead to the gospel fairly easily.
He began with a rhetorical question to the children. He said, “ What is prayer?”
To his amazement, hundreds of hands went up.
He was stunned, and so he calls on one of the students and said, “What is prayer, what is your answer?”
The boy 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."
Then he sat down.
This is the answer to question #178 in the Westminster Catechism, which was taught throughout Scotland.
Parents, don’t despise teaching your kids the Catechism.
Now, while that sounds better, don’t miss the main point.
"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" which goes along with these expressed desires. The essence of prayer is the expression of our dependence on God through requests.
Now why am I telling you this? It is because it leads into the second point Why must we pray.
Pray Because we can
I want you to pause and consider what an incredible privilege it is that we can ask the Lord for things.
Jesus put it this way.
9 And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 10 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.
Now we can spend so much time putting in all the caveats to that statement because we are so nervous that people will get the wrong idea.
Well you can’t ask for a Ferrari, neither for 1 million, trillion dollars.
We spend so long telling each other what Jesus can’t possibly mean by this statement that we don’t stop and be amazed that we are actually told to ask God for things.
Ask him to make you trust him more.
Ask him to give you words to speak to your angry spouse?
Ask his to save your daughter’s soul.
Ask him to make you faithful in your work.
Ask him to strengthen you in your anxiety.
Ask him to renew your passion..
Ask … ask … ask says Jesus
11 What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; 12 or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? 13 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
It works the other way, if you ask for something foolish, or bad for you, he is too wise a father to give it to you.
Friends consider the privilege.
Phillip Jenson illustrates it like this.
You park your car outside the front of a large residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, Washington D.C.
There are armed guards at the gate but you walk straight past them without pausing. You then stroll towards the front door, nodding and smiling at the staff at all the security check points you pass on the way.
In the entrance foyer, you are greeted personally and ushered through more security barriers into the interior of the house. Secret service agents in black suits open doors for you as you wander down the various corridors, until you finally arrive at the room you’re looking for. You open the door and walk into an oval-shaped office. You smile at the man sitting behind the large desk and say, “Morning, Dad, you said I could come in any time and speak to you.
Now, whatever you think of the President of the United States of America. Imagine having that sort of access. Being allowed to pop in whenever it suited you to see the most powerful man in the world – to talk to him as a child to a father, and to know that he will not just be available to see you, but be happy and willing.
Now God is the King of Kings and the president of presidents. He is the supreme creator of the whole world. He made the president of the United States from dust. The White House is like a piece on his chess board. His security detail is made up of uncountable angels with flaming swords.
Yet … this mighty all powerful God, who by rights should destroy us as his enemies has instead reached out to us in love, wiped away our sins and adopted us as his own children. He has become your father, and he has allowed you to approach him and pour out our heart to him at any time, promising that he will hear us and give us every good gift as a good father.
Pray because God tells us to.
Pray because we can.
Lastly this morning
Pray because God loves to be asked
Now think about this for a moment.
God’s will is that we, his creatures, ask him for things.
It is not just his will, it is his delight.
God is always a giver and he delights to be a heavenly father.
Come back to the passage with me, for there is a funny story in this passage that Jesus tells.
The story is that of a person who goes at midnight to the home of his friend. He wakes him up and says,
‘Friend, lend me three loaves, 6 for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him’;
Vs 5b-6
Initially the man inside the house says no. He and his family are already in bed, and they do not want to be disturbed.
Jesus knowing the community’s commitment to hospitality that characterised first century Palestine, comments, vs. 8.
I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet …
and I need to make a change from the ESV at this point
because of his desire to be without shame he will get up and give him whatever he needs.”
The word means shame and the ESV pushes it to mean impudence.
I think it is referring to the man inside the house not the man who is knocking at the door. It wants to tell us something about God, not us.
In other words, for this man not to be hospitable to the man knocking at the door, would bring shame upon himself and his family. He may not want to help the man at the door, and he may resent the prospect of getting out of bed, but it is simply unthinkable in that culture that he would finally refuse.
So Jesus tells us the moral of the story vs 9-10
9And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 10 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.
The point is not that God has to be shamed into answering prayer. Rather it is a “How much more” argument.
If even a lazy and inconsiderate neighbour finally does the right thing for no other reason that he does not want to bring shame upon his name and house, how much more will God answer the prayers of his children? When he is a God who loves to give.
After all he has his own name to keep up! He has pledged himself in covenant grace to meet the needs of his people, to show his utterly reliable and trustworthy-ness, and goodness and greatness. He cannot be less that trustworthy or he would bring shame on his own name.
You see, you are infinity needy, but God is infinitely sufficient and the giver gets the glory.
So God ordains 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 honour Me."
You see, you are infinity needy, but God is infinitely sufficient.
The giver gets the glory.
Now you must notice that all this is in the context of God being our heavenly father, not a genie. This passage is not saying that God will give you anything you ask of him. God forbid that to be the case for we often ask for stupid things. I know I do, so I think I am safe in thinking that I am not the only one.
No this passage holds a much better promise than that!
God promises to give us whatever we ask, in the same way a good father would.
God is just like that. God is our heavenly Father and he acts like a father.
Isn’t that a relief? For if he did otherwise he would not love us.
Won’t you pray to a God like that? Who loves us like that? Like a good Father.
God already knows what you need, but it is interesting that he still says ask, seek, knock.
Why?
Because he wants us to act like a son, a daughter and him to be our Father.
Could God give us a great big pile of all our needs for the rest of our life, and just plonk it there today? All our emotional needs all our physical needs all our spiritual needs there in a pile, a pile of forgiveness and so forth. Of course he could, but he doesn’t.
Why not?
He wants us to come to him and ask.
Over and over and over again we remember that we are infinity needy and God is infinitely sufficient.
Do you remember the story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath? She had a child but no food because of the drought. They were starving to death. Elijah turned up needing a place to stay and she took him in. Elijah said that God would keep her and her son alive.
There was no bags of flour given or great big barrels of oil. Rather every day God provided a handful of flour and a bit of oil, a little jug. Enough to make bread for that day.
She was as poor in Zaraephath as she had been before, but her poverty was also her wealth.
Every day God showed her that he could be depended upon.
I think that is why it says in the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples, give us t day our daily bread. In other words give us today, what we need for today. Don’t give us today what we need for tomorrow. Not yet, give us that tomorrow when we come to you and ask.
Pray because God tell us to.
Pray because we can.
Pray because God loves to be asked