Sermon Illustrations

Several months back as I was traveling along one of the interstate routes I noticed a sign that was kind of a play off of an older advertisement scheme of the dairy industry. It was nothing more than a solid black background with a two word question in bold white lettering: “Got Prayer?”

This threw me back to the time of recalling the former advertisements of differing celebrities faces being shown on billboards and each wearing a bold white mustache of milk. Then somewhere on the background would be the words, “Got Milk?” I can remember thinking to my self each time that I would see one of these ads that I always get my daily allotment of milk. Now I may not always drink two glasses of milk but I do love the taste of chocolate ice cream and chocolate cake with creamy chocolate icing. And I do know it to be a fact that each of those are made with the ingredient of milk. So when it says “Got milk?” it has to be legal for me to say a profound “Yes!” to that question. Now that’s my attitude about getting my daily requirement of milk. And I know that if I get my daily intake of milk that I can build strong healthy bones and teeth.

But getting back to this more current ad, I’m not sure how to quite answer that one. How about you? Do we have a similar attitude about prayer as I do about milk?

When it comes to having prayer when we sit down to eat a meal we have no problem doing that at all, do we? Having a few words of prayer at night before falling asleep is also easy for us to do, isn’t it? And we can’t forget about Sunday morning service can we? I mean after all the preacher prays for all of us at the same time. Our attitude of being consistent with our prayer life is questionable because we think these three times of prayer are all that is necessary in our walk with God.

But let me tell you, that if that is your and my attitude, it stinks! Prayer isn’t only necessary at every meal, at bedtime and in the morning and at a church service. Prayer is an integral part of having a consistent faith experience with Jesus, the Christ and God the Father. All I can say is if that is our feeling about prayer, then we can expect our faith walk to be stagnant and we might as well sit ourselves on a corner shelf and let everyone else see us for what we really are: a fake.

If we are going to be like the psalmist then we have to be willing to constantly be prepared to lift up the Lord’s name in praise and adoration on a daily basis; to pray consistently at various times of need throughout our day-to-day activities.

We can pray anywhere at anytime. To pray one doesn’t always have to close his or her eyes, bow the head and fold the hands. Men can pray on their way to work while driving the truck, van, SUV or car. Women can pray as they houseclean, prepare a meal or wash dishes. Students of any age can breathe a prayer in the middle of an exam, quiz or test. We can pray in the woods, under the hood of a car or out on the riding lawnmower. We can pray on the way to picking up kids from school, soccer practice or dance class. We can pray at school silently in class, at the big game or any other scholastic event for that matter.

Consistency in prayer will definitely bring you and me closer to Jesus and will also assist us in our walk toward victorious living. Besides, should we want to have more consistency in our lives, particularly when it comes to our spiritual lives? After all, spiritual consistency is an important part of our spiritual metamorphosis as we attempt to build our lives upon the teachings of Jesus and the Apostles.

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