Pray
Pt. 2 - Prayer Patterns
I. Introduction
Last week we began to talk about prayer and how it is essential in our lives as Christians. It is the foundation of communication with God and with others. Your prayer life reveals your intimacy levels. Who you pray to, for and with reveals how "deep" you are in your walk with your Father and with His followers! In fact when someone tells you they prayed for you they have just given you the greatest gift they could ever give you.
My prayer is that over the course of the week you spent some intimate time talking to God. I also trust you prayed for and with someone else.
Today I want to go into a different passage that I believe shows us some things about prayer that would really help change our prayer life from "Thank you for this day, bless mom, bless dad, talk to you later" type of prayers.
The passage I want us to examine is found in Luke and is a very abbreviated form of what we call the Lord's prayer. Jesus gives us a pattern!
II. Text
Luke 11:1-4
One day he was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said, "Master, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples." So he said, "When you pray, say, Father, Reveal who you are. Set the world right. Keep us alive with three square meals. Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others. Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil."
III. Patterns
A. Prayer is a learning process.
It is interesting to me that the disciples realized that they really didn't know how to pray. They asked for training and instruction. They weren't satisfied or content with their present level and ability to communicate with the Father. This inquiry reveals to us the need to learn to pray. You don't get saved and suddenly have a master's degree in prayer. We are all in the learning process of prayer. Each of us have to learn to pray!
My concern is that many of us never try to learn or improve in prayer. We are still praying at the same level and depth that we did when we got saved 10 years ago. When your child is 2 you don't mind him/her communicating simplistically (give me, hold me, change me), but when they are 23 you expect them to be able to carry on a mature and multi-faceted conversation. Why should our prayer life be any different? Some of us need to examine our prayer life closely this morning. Has your prayer life matured? Is it deeper? Are you learning to more effectively communicate with the Father?
Is anyone trying to learn to pray like you? Something about Jesus' ability to pray intrigued the disciples to want to know what He knew. If you want to know if your prayer life has matured one way to know is if when others hear you pray they want to be around you to learn. I am not talking about being able to impress them with fancy language or your eloquence (all you have to do is hang around preachers to pick up this skill). I am talking about when someone hears you pray they recognize your connection to the Father and they want to learn that.
I can still remember as a boy going past my parent's room late at night and seeing my dad kneeled down at the side of the bed and hearing the depth of his prayer. I reflect on hearing Dr. Beacham pray in the office. They made me want to learn to pray!
So Jesus honors their hunger (as He will yours) and gives them instructions on how to pray.
B. Pray God be revealed.
Jesus could have started off by saying pray for world peace. Pray for economic stability. Pray for miracles. However, His first instruction was to pray that God would reveal Himself. Jesus knew that the many of the things that we spend significant time asking for and pleading for would be resolved if we would simply get a revelation of God!
Need provision - get a revelation of God as your provider.
Need healing - get a revelation of God as your healer.
Need peace - get a revelation of God as a peace speaker.
Need protection - get a revelation of God as the one who will never leave or forsake you.
I think our prayers often reveal a lack of revelation! Our lives, our outlook, our perspective, our priorities, our problems would dramatically change if we had revelation.
Lack of revelation leads to lack of preparation, separation, participation, and sanctification! Our narrow revelation of God leads to a shallow experience with God!
I challenge you during your next prayer time to ask God to reveal Himself in your life, in your kids, in your marriage, in your checkbook.
C. Pray the World Right
Jesus instructs us to pray for our world to be set right! He doesn't say sing, criticize, or rail the world right. We underestimate the ability of our prayers. Before we pray for our world . . . we are told to pray for our world! Our prayers must be "other" oriented. Our prayers are too confined to us. Our prayers must expand beyond us and ours to the world around us!
Our needs become smaller when we view them through the lens of world needs. Maybe that is why some of us never pray for others. Maybe we are so self centered that we want to remain the focus of our attention!
Let's determine in our prayer life to start with the needs of others! To put the pain of those around us before the needs of our own lives! Remember what you make happen for others God makes happen for you. As you pray for others it always seems that God then causes someone to pray for your need.
Prayer leads to action! When we begin to pray for the needs of others we will be prompted to take action! We may very well be the answer to the prayer we are praying! Praying for someone's need is one of the greatest gifts you can give someone.
D. Pray for our needs.
Most of us have a handle on this. We know how to pray for our needs. What we fail to master is the placement of that prayer. It comes after we have praised. It comes after we have prayed that God would reveal Himself which reveals our deep seated dependency on Him. It comes after we pray the broader prayer for others. For most of us our prayer over our needs dominates the time and scope of our prayers. We never get past our shopping list of requests. Jesus says simply state our basic needs (3 square meals) and then move on knowing that our Father will hear and respond.
Are your needs the prominent feature of your prayers?
E. Pray for forgiveness and protection.
There are several important things I want to draw your attention to here:
1. There should be a constant check to make sure that we are living forgiven with the Father and with others.
Johnny had been misbehaving and was sent to his room. After a while he emerged and informed his mother that he had thought it over and then said a prayer. "Fine," said the pleased mother. "If you ask God to help you not to misbehave, He will help you." "Oh, I didn't ask Him to help me not to misbehave," said Johnny. "I asked Him to help you put up with me."
Too many of us have been forgiven once, but fail to continue to live forgiven. We just want God and others to learn to put up with us! We need to check to make sure we aren't misbehaving in the eyes of God so that we won't misbehave in the eyes of others!
2. Living forgiven demands that we live forgiving!
It is absolutely essential that we pray our way into offering forgiveness at the level at which it has been offered to us!
I find way to many of us that demand forgiveness, but never extend the same forgiveness to others. I am finding that forgiven people seem to be the most offendable, angry, revenge oriented people on the planet! Jesus said forgiveness should be our calling card!
Some of you need to spend some time in this type of prayer! You desperately need the forgiveness quotient to go up in your life! Who do you need to forgive?
If we don't forgive we feel exposed and vulnerable and wonder why, not realizing that our own spirit of unforgiveness exposes us to gaps in protection!
3. Forgiveness positions us for protecting by keeping us safe from us!
Forgiveness stands in the path of protection. Notice the order! Forgive and then comes protection. I think we underestimate the power that forgiveness and unforgiveness has in our lives.
Jesus followed up His instruction to pray that we will be forgivers with instruction to pray that we would be kept safe from ourselves!
Jesus acknowledges that there is an enemy out there and that we need to protected from Him. However, He makes it clear that our #1 enemy is not out there it is in here! What we tend to blame on the enemy should be blamed on us. Due to unforgiveness, silly choices, sin, and our own hard headedness we can derail our walk with Christ faster than the devil ever could!
The Bible teaches us to give credit where credit is due. Many of us are giving the devil way too much credit! He doesn't do as much to us as we do to ourselves! Take the credit you deserve!
Some of you just need to ask God to protect you from you! You are self destructing. You are repeating patterns. You are falling in the same places. God help me! God fix me! God change me!
