A Prayer Of Praise

SERMON OUTLINE:

(1). These Blessings Are from God.

(2). These Blessings Are Spiritual.

(3). These Blessings Are Conditional.

SERMON BODY:

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ”

Ill:

• A mum had been teaching their three-year old daughter the Lord's Prayer,

• The mother would say a line of the prayer and then the daughter would repeat it after her,

• After a few days, the little girl said, she wanted to go solo.

• The mum listened with pride as she carefully articulated each word,

• But then as she got to the end of the prayer she concluded with the words,

• "Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from E-mail."

• TRANSITION: We often recite or hear sermons on the Lord's Prayer,

• And we know Jesus often prayed!

• We don’t often think of the apostle Paul as an outstanding man of prayer.

• We don’t often think about the prayers of the apostle Paul.

• We would put him at the top of the list as a great missionary or evangelist,

• Or Bible teacher or Church planter, leader etc.

• But don’t forget that the apostle Paul was also a great man of prayer,

• That is revealed to us in the New Testament letters that he penned.

• We have many of his prayers recorded (one scholar says, “over 20”).

• And we have chosen to focus in, to look at five of them.

• This mini-series is designed to pull out a five key themes,

• That we find in the prayers of the apostle Paul.

• And for this first talk I have chosen a short and simple prayer,

• A prayer of praise from Ephesians chapter 1 verse 3.

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ”

Note:

• In the past we have studied the whole book of Ephesians,

• And those talks are on the website if you want to listen to any of them.

• This mini-series is designed to pull out a few key themes,

• That will help us during our time of adjustment,

• As some of us go back to the building after the Covid-19 lockdown.

Today the theme is praise.

• If you ask any midwife,

• They will tell you it's a bad sign when a new-born babe fails to cry.

• Equally, it's a bad sign,

• When a child of God cannot praise there is something wrong.

Ill:

• You might be surprised to know that our English word 'praise'

• Has a French origin, 'preisier',

• And 'preisier' means 'to prize'

• TRANSITION: That gives us an insight as to what the word 'praise' really means.

• To praise God means to prize God.

• The word 'prize', of course, means.

• 'To value', 'to esteem', 'to cherish' something or someone,

• But it also means to estimate of worth.

• So, when we praise God, we are valuing him,

• We are esteeming him; we are estimating his worth.

• In other words, in praise what we actually do,

• Whether you realise it or not,

• Is that mentally we gather together all the facts that we know about God,

• And we put these into words, and they become prayers or songs of praise.

• Now it follows that the less you know about God,

• The less you'll be able to praise Him - that's where the Bible comes in.

• So, if you want to praise God more,

• You need to have a knowledge of God,

• And the best way we get that knowledge is through his word.

Question: Does anyone here have a problem?

(Tongue-in-cheek: “oh, just a few people!”) Ask again, until every hand is raised.

• Now it might surprise you to know, that I came across a group of people this week,

• And not a single one of them had a problem!

• I know what you are thinking, ‘surely not!’ but it’s true!

• In fact, if you want to you can go see them and check it out for yourselves.

• You go down to St Johns Road. And there you will find St Johns Cemetery.

• It is full of people who don’t have any problems.

TRANSITION: The point I want to make is this,

• If you are alive, then in a fallen world we will have problems.

• Those problems can vary from the size of a mole hill to the size of a mountain.

• But we will all have them, that is the price of being alive!