Please Don’ Ask Me To Pray
9/4/2005 Psalms 51:1-13 Hebrews 3:10-15
How many of you have ever been at a meeting and it came time to open in prayer or close in prayer and you were saying on the inside “Please don’t ask me to pray.” One of our members who lived to be about 105 was Mr. Jones. One of the pastors before us had asked him to pray, to which Mr. Jones replied, “Rev. I believe that’s your job.”
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What is it about prayer, that leads us to praying, “oh God please don’t let her ask me to pray.” Well part of the problem is that we took prayer and made it something religious. Prayer is suppose to be a conversation with God in which we talk to God and God speaks back to us. Now God does not necessarily speak in an audible voice, but God clearly will communicate with us by His Spirit, by God’s Word, by circumstances and by other people.
Many of us intuitively knew how to pray before we got religious. We expected God to be close and personal even though we may have only wanted it to be the case for a short period of time. For instance, when you got a test and you had no idea in school what the answer was, what did you do? You said, “God please help me pass this test.” Or when you had a crush on some guy or girl, you prayed “Oh God let so and so see me and like me. And you earnestly expected God to hear you and to answer your prayer. You checked to see if you passed that test. You did your best to find out if Charles or Barbara really did like you. You simply talked to God.
But then you came into the church and you discovered that praying was supposed to be holy. Talking to God had to be taken seriously. We as pastors and church leaders we were given the job of praying, and we wanted to make a good impression, so we changed prayer from being a simple conversation directly to God and made it sound truly religious. It seemed more spiritual. We dropped Oh God, and discovered such prayers as Oh Eternal, Omnipotent, Omnipresent, Most Magnificent God Almighty, Creator and Sustainer of the Universe do bless these delightful morsels that we are about to take for the health and nourishment of our bodies.
After you’re in the church long enough, you feel compelled to start using these grand titles for God if you are to pray publicly and another person is around. You get afraid that you might not use the right list of names, or not say enough of them, or say the thing in the wrong order, so you start praying, “God please don’t let them call on me to pray.” Even worse yet, when the pastor asks, will someone lead us in prayer, there is complete silence for 60 seconds while half the group is praying that somebody would lead in prayer, before their name gets call to do it.
Now I’m not knocking people who pray using the most eloquent of words, but they intimidate others who think their prayers are not holy or religiously sounding enough. They also move God from being close and personal, to be distant and far. Now we are here to become more like Jesus. Jesus never had a problem praying in public. When the disciples ask Jesus to teach them how to pray, Jesus said begin with a simple, Our Father. Who is in Heaven, Holy is your name.
Jesus chose a simple and personal term for us to talk with God, because Jesus wanted us to know that God is close, personal, and interested in our request When prayer becomes a matter of talking to God, and stop being a religious function, we will discover we can spend a lot longer time in prayer. We will also be more real with God.
There is still another reason we say, “Please don’t ask me to pray.” Imagine for a moment that you have your own business selling designer jeans. You notice though that your jeans are disappearing, but you don’t see the increase in sales in your cash receipts. Then one day you come back to the store after hours, and you notice your employee taking jeans out of the store and selling them to someone on the streets. You see them taking money from this other person in exchange for your jeans. You keep your cool. You drive by slow enough so that your employee could see that you saw what he had done.
Now the next morning, the employee comes to work just as he always did. But this morning he comes to your office and knocks on the door and says, Boss may I talk with you for a moment. You say, “yes I had a feeling you’d want to talk.” And then your employee says, “Look, I need to leave work early on Friday to go away for the weekend to Las Vegas with my family, and I was wondering if you could let me have my check early on Thursday and maybe get a $100 advance on next week check.
Now what are you thinking? Now a few of you are ready to kill the guy, but some of you are still keeping your cool. So you ask the guy, “did you see me last night when I drove by the store and saw you my selling jeans?” What would you do if the guy said, “yeah you didn’t see me wave back. I’m sorry I should have waved harder. But before I get back to work, are you going to let me off early on Friday.” Now some of you know what you want to do to this guy.
Let me ask you this, do you know that this church is full of people who act just like this employee when it comes to God. Genuine prayer is going to involve repentance. That means sometimes before talking to God, there are some things we need to straighten out before God before moving on. We have this notion that when we got saved, that’s when we repented and that was the last time we needed to do it. Repentance is more than feeling bad about what we have done. It means openly admitting exactly what we did, asking for forgiveness, and stopping our behavior and replacing it with something us. Repentance should be a daily part of our Christian lives.
Let me show you how a lack of repentance kills our ability and desire to pray. David was considered a man who loved God and had God’s blessings all around his life. But knowing God, loving God and serving God, still does not remove temptation and the need for repentance from our lives. One early evening, David did something so insignificant at the time, but it would change his life, his ministry, and his children for the rest of his and their lives.
David got up and decided to walk on the roof of his palace. Now David’s palace was higher than the other homes, and so he could look down on what others were doing. Well what do other people usually do, when it’s evening? They get naked, they take baths and they go to bed. When David is walking around, he’s looking from house to house.
In reality if David were in today’s time we would say David was clicking the tv channels trying to see what images he could find or even more so David was simply surfing the internet to see what new and exciting things might be out there. Have you ever did that. Clicking the channels to see what pleasing thing might come to your eye. Surfing the net just to see what’s out there that might give you a little pleasure.
Well if you go looking for sin, it will find you. But remember this, it will not let you go once it has a grip on you. I’ve been praying with a brother for a year and half who is trying to walk with God and wants to get rid of his addiction to pornography on the internet. He has a wife, but he believed the lie that a few peeks at pornography would not matter. Right now, we are in a race against time to get a break through for him, because this passion for pornography is either going to destroy his marriage, land him in prison, or both.
David, the man of God, never dreamed his peeping Tom behavior could ruin him. All he wanted was to just look. Temptation always begins with the idea it’s only going to be for this one time. One look is not going to satisfy you. For our young people who are virgins, I want you to know it is easier to keep saying no to sex before you start it, than it is to say no after you’ve given in. We think we are in control and we are, until we choose to give the devil authority in our lives by saying yes to sin.
David saw a beautiful woman by the name of Bathsheba bathing. Bathsheba’s husband was away in battle. She was a religious woman. Do you think she knew her house was below the king’s? Do you think she ever looked up and saw the palace from her window or patio? Do you think she might have known that she was tempting somebody higher up in the palace with her actions.
Women, God has gifted you with some magnificent and beautiful bodies. Those bodies give you and incredible power over men. Some of you like to dress in such ways to turn our heads. Yes we notice, the way the dress clings to every curve in your body, we notice the way the pants stick to you like glue, and we notice when you put all of your breast right before our eyes. Are you doing the same thing as Bathsheba, claiming an innocence and yet throwing out all kinds of signals?
When David saw Bathsheba, it didn’t matter he had other wives to satisfy his lust. He wanted her. When she got the message the king wanted her to come to the palace at night right after she had finished bathing, what do you think she was thinking was going to happen. These two religious people sinned with their eyes wide open. They were going to keep it their little secret and go on with their lives. What do you think it did to their prayer lives? Do you think either were eager to pray the next morning?
Well 3 months later, David gets a note from Bathsheba saying she’s pregnant. Do they now repent and come clean? No David has a plan to bring her husband home from the war so that he can have sex with his wife and thinks he’s going to be the father of the unborn child. Her husband Uriah comes home and David asks him about the battle and then tells him what a fine soldier he is, and how he should go home and enjoy his wife one more time before going back to battle.
David finds out Uriah didn’t go home that night and asks him why. Uriah says, “all your men are risking their lives in battle sleeping in the cold. My conscience won’t allow me to enjoy sex with my wife and sleep in a bed, when I should be out there with them fighting for you.
David comes us with another plan. He tells the servant to get Uriah drunk and send him home to his wife. Uriah got drunk, but even as drunk as he was, he still would not go home. He was more committed to God drunk, than David is completely sober. The next day David sends Uriah back to the battle with a note to give the commander of the army. The note says, “put Uriah in the thickest part of the battle, and then silently withdraw from around him so that he will be killed in the battle. A few days later David gets a message, that Uriah had been killed by the enemy. He calls Bathsheba to the palace and takes her as his wife.
How does a person go from being a man of God, to a pornography surfer, to an adulterer, to a liar and schemer, to a murder and on to a coverup specialist in less than 3 months. The British pastor F B Myers wrote, “No man suddenly becomes base, just as no marriage suddenly fractures, just as no tree suddenly rots, just as no church suddenly splits, just as no person suddenly falls. There is a weakening taking place on a regular basis. Where is the weakening in your life today? In the moment David first saw Bathsheba, how many of you think the Spirit said to him “stop, don’t go there.” How man of you think the Spirit spoke again, as he was waiting for to arrive saying “you still can stop before you mess up your life.”
The amazing thing is that after doing all of this, David thought he could go on with his life and his prayer life as before. He was approaching God in the same way, your employee was facing you. He wanted to talk about everything except what needed to be talked about. How many of us rush into prayer asking God for things, for stuff, for favors, and we know we have unconfessed sin in our lives that we have not repented from. We say “please don’t ask me to pray, because God may want to talk about the very sin we are involved with and have not repented.
In our New Testament reading, we saw the words again and again, “today if you hear his voice, do not harden your heart.” Some of us are hardening our hearts and thinking we can go on with prayer as usual. I don’t know what you’re doing today, but its no secret to God. If you don’t stop, its not going to be a secret to a whole lot of the rest of us.
David did not come clean, until God exposed him through the prophet Nathan. God says because of what you did in secret with all the blessings I have given you, the consequences of your sin will be devastating. Read of his later life and you will see, the true price he paid for just looking in a window, or staying on the wrong channel a little too long, or just getting a peak on the computer. All Bathsheba wanted to do was just get a little more attention, but the price she paid was far greater than what she had imagined it would be.
Prayer has to involve a clean heart in the presence of God. Many times the price of a clean heart is confession. Think again of your employee. What was it that you wanted to hear from him when he came and knocked on your door. Would you have been pleased with him if he said, “now boss I ask you to forgive me for any wrong I might have done today.” What do you mean might have done. Are you going to be pleased if he said, “please forgive me for all the wrong I’ve ever done since I worked here.” No. You want him to say, “ I was wrong for stealing those jeans and selling them on the street. Here is the money that I owe you for them. I ask you to forgive me. I pledge I will not steal anything else again.”
We lose out when we try to have pray and yet hold on to our sin by making adjustments to get use to its presence. About a year ago, I realized that even though I liked pork chops and steak, I could no longer chew them on the left side of my mouth because it hurt my gums. I learned to chew on the right side of my mouth. Prior to this I had faithfully flossed by teeth with dental floss. But then I just got tired of flossing and stopped it altogether. I knew it wasn’t a good decision, but I was busy.
My wife kept buying dental floss and all these little gadgets to make flossing easier. One day I decided to start flossing again. I was amazed at how much food was still in between my teeth after flossing. That little food left behind was causing my gums to become infected and that was why I couldn’t chew rough meat on the left side of my mouth. I could have prayed, Lord heal my gums, but it was my actions that kept them sore. I need it to get rid of the food caught under my gums between my teeth.
When we adjust our lives to accept some small sin, that sin is infecting us spiritually and keeping us from enjoying the presence of God in our lives. It keeps us from wanting to pray. It truly keeps us from specific prayers. We’d rather pray Lord help me have a better marriage rather than confess, Lord I was wrong when I said such and such to my spouse last night. We’d rather pray God help me to get good grades, than confess, Lord it was wrong of me to have lied about doing my homework. We’d rather pray help me get along with my parents than confess, God my attitude stunk up the whole house and it was nothing but sinful.
We are preparing for a weekend of fasting, prayer and revival. There will be three services. Some of us will make all three, some of us two, some of us one, and some of us none at all. And yet all of us will claim we want to grow in God. Some of us have already decided , “Please don’t ask me to come to a prayer meeting to pray.” Why not? Do you believe God no longer answers prayers? Are you afraid of what God might bring up in your life? Are you so spiritual that you do not need a spiritual revival in your life.
Suppose it had been a wall of water coming from Lake Erie into Cleveland, instead of the water into New Orleans, and you were swept away by the flood of it all, would you really be ready to meet God.? Would you be terrified that God was going to ask you about some secret sin? Would you have confidence of knowing, because of Jesus Christ and my willingness to pray honestly and openly to God, I know it is well with my soul.
God wants us to come to Him in prayer, but prayer without repentance is just an exercise in talking and deception. God is not deceived but our on consciences are. God is faithful and willing to give us a new heart, if we will admit the problems and the sins of the one we already have. We need you to be revived if revival is to come to our church.
Sermon Outline—Pastor Rick
“Please Don’t Ask Me To Pray”
GNLCC 9/4/2005
Psalm 51:1-13 Hebrews 3:10-15 2 Sam. 11
A. Looking For Somebody To Pray
1. 105 Year Old Mr. Jones
2. Praying That I Won’t Have To Pray
3. Conversation-Communication
4. God Speaks-Spirit, Word, Others
Circumstances
5. We Use To Know How To Pray
B. The Day That Praying Became Holy
1. Eternal, Omnipotent, Omnipresent
Most Magnificent God Almighty
Creator & Sustainer
2. What Should I Say And I What Order
3. Eloquent Words Have Their Place
4. Jesus Kept Prayer Personal, Simple
C. Actions That Keep Us From Praying
1. What’s Happening To Your Business
2. Disappearing Designer Jeans
3. An Employee Caught In The Act
4. Let’s Talk—I Want Something
5. How About An Advance
D. The Call To Repentance Before Praying
1. More Than Just Feeling Bad
2. Admitting, Identifying, Stopping
3. Choosing Another Path
E. When People Of God Are Tempted
1. It Usually Starts Small
2. Just A Walk Can Change A Destiny
3. David & The Remote Control
4. David Surfing The Internet
5. One Look Will Not Satisfy You
6. You’re In Control Until You Sin
F. Women Are Beautiful & Have Power
1. Yes We Men Have Noticed
2. Righteous Bathsheba With Mixed
Signals
3. People In Church Can Fall
4. Bad News & A Bad Plan
5. Uriah A Brave & Loyal Soldier
6. Murder & Cover Up
G. The Distance To Failure & Loss Is
Far Shorter Than We Think
1. Just 3 Months
2. FB Meyers—Nothing Happens
Suddenly
3. David Thought It Wouldn’t Matter
4. The Price Was Devastating
5. Watch The Hardening Heart
6. Your Secret Is Not Secure
7. You’re At God’s Mercy
H. Prayer Requires A Clean Heart
1. Confession Requires Specifics
2. Confession Requires Change
I. Don’t Let The Little Things Set You
Back.
1. The Parable Of The Dental Floss
2. Don’t Get Use To The
Adjustments—Change
3. Forget The General Confession
And The General Request
4. Better Marriage—My Words
5. Better Grades—My Lies
6. Better Relationship-My Attitude
J. The Prayer Revival Weekend
1. One, Two, Three Services
2. Why I Won’t Come
3. Who Needs A Revival
4. What If It Had Of Been Lake Erie
5. What is Your Confidence
H. I Will No Longer Be Deceived
1. Yes Lord, I Will Take The New
Heart.
