Luke 9:28-36
Why Should We Pray?
Some time
ago, a friend called me up and told me about his new computer. He said, “Man, you’ve got to see it. It is a screaming machine. It has the new Anthlon 64 processor. It’s got a monster hard drive, with a super
fast graphic card. It’s got a 32” High
Definition monitor. It’s got the Bose
speakers. I mean, it’s got everything
you can dream of! It’s a beast!” Now,
does that sound like a guy thing, or what?
As I was
listening to him talk about it, I said, “Wow, that sounds really cool. What a machine. Now tell me, what are you going to do with it?”
After a slight pause, he said, “Well, you know I do a lot of email correspondence and my wife likes to keep the check book on it.” Okay. So, we’ve got this unbelievable machine that can basically run the entire United States and your going to send an email or two every once in a while.
You know,
as I thought about that this week, it reminded me of “prayer” and the prayer
life of most Christians. Because, we have
this unbelievable resource in prayer. We
have the opportunity for a personal relationship with Christ that transforms
our lives. We have the opportunity for
peace, and health, and joy, and strength … and the unbelievable experience of
walking daily with God. And yet, what we
do with this great resource, is we send a letter every once in a while to
God. And we miss out on all the power of
prayer.
That’s
why we’re offering this series of sermons on prayer, because we want to learn
how prayer can transform our lives, and what prayer is really all about. And
we begin with a series of
questions. Today – “Why Should We Pray?” Next week – “How Should We Pray?” The
week after that – “What Should We
Pray?” The week after that – “How can we pray for others, especially our
enemies?” And then, “Why are our prayers sometimes not
answered?” And I hope that during
this series, together we can grow in our walk with Christ as we learn to pray.
Now,
nearly everybody prays. Even business
consultants, like Steven Covey and Peter Drucker, think prayer is a great idea,
encouraging executives to pray and employees to pray. Folks in the psychiatric world, who used to
look at religious issues as sort of the enemy, are now coming to see that many
of the wounds in people’s lives have to do with spiritual issues. And so they, too, are encouraging prayer. If you read the medical journals today,
you will see how the Medical Community is noting how prayer plays a key role in
health and healing.
Across
the board, everybody is on the bandwagon of prayer! In a recent Gallop poll, 98% of all Americans
say they pray, at least once in a while.
Now, that’s pretty fascinating, considering that only 95% of Americans
say that they believe in God. 54% of
Americans say that they pray every single day.
Prayer
… it’s the in thing right
now. But what is it really all about? The truth is, most of us have a
misunderstanding of prayer and we fail to understand the depth of what prayer
can be.
It’s like
the fellow who was watching his house being flooded by the raging river. He was in the 2nd floor of his house
watching the river’s water rush through the bottom floor of his home. And as he’s watching this, for the first time
in 15 years he finds religion. People often
become religious in times of trouble, don’t they? And so, this man turns his eyes to the
heavens and begins to pray, “Hey God,
it’s me, Joe. You remember me? I haven’t bothered you in 15 years, but I
really need your help now. And if you’ll
help me out of this, I promise I won’t bother you again for another 15 years.”
Now, that’s
probably not what God had in mind when he gave us the gift of prayer. But, there are several reasons that people
tend to pray. Just like ole Joe, most
people pray at times of “Desperation.” When things are really bad, we turn to God. We may not pray at all during the week. We come to church and our mind wanders when
the pastor is praying. We say the Lord’s
Prayer, but we’re really wondering about what’s going to be for lunch. But at those times of desperation, we get
real religious and we want to have a serious talk with God.
When the
world is spinning out of control, we cry out to God, “Please God, help me.” When we find out
that someone we love is seriously ill, we begin to plead and crawl on our knees
to God … begging God to help us. And you
know, the amazing thing is that even when we don’t talk to God at any other
time, God still hears those prayers and God listens to us.
There are
other people who only pray out of a “sense of guilt.”
I have many times counseled with people who never pray. But then, they do something that is so awful
that they are overwhelmed with a sense of guilt. Sobbing, they will say, “This is just too heavy for me bear. I cannot carry this anymore.” And then, we begin to talk about prayer, because the only thing that
can relieve them of that guilt is to turn that thing over to God and receive
God’s grace and mercy in their lives.
And though they never pray any other time, God still listens to that prayer.
Most times we
pray when “we want to get things”, don’t we? We’re
all familiar with these kinds of prayers.
You remember, how in school after taking that test. You know that you weren’t really prepared for
it and you know it was a slam-dunk “F”. You lay it on the teacher’s desk and you go
back to your seat and you get religious real fast. “O God,
please change the answers on that test.
Help me get an A on this one.” And it’s as though
we really expect God to erase our answers and fill in the blanks for us. Or maybe, it was when there was that certain
someone who you hoped would fall in love with you. Or maybe that job you hoped that you would
get. Suddenly, in the midst of such
times, we begin to pray and ask God to help us get these things.
And
finally, people pray just “to feel better.”
In a past issue of the Esquire Magazine, Rick Moody writes a wonderful
article about prayer from the perspective of a non-religious person. Here’s someone who does not attend
church. He would not consider himself a
committed Christian by any stretch of the imagination. But he described how he had hit rock bottom in
his life and in the midst of that, he began to pray. And as he began to pray, he found himself
beginning to feel better.
And so now,
he says that he prays on his knees several times every week, because it always
makes him feel better. He says, “I don’t know who I am praying to. Sometimes I cry out and say, ‘I don’t know
what your name is. I don’t know who you
are, but…’” And then he begins to pray. And he says, “Whether
I’m talking to myself or to somebody up there, I always feel better.”
Well,
prayer does make you feel better. But you
know, all of those reasons really miss the primary purpose of prayer. They miss the power of prayer and what prayer
is really designed to be. So, let’s talk
about that for a moment. What are the
primary purposes of prayer? And why
should we pray? I’m going to lift up 3
reasons for you today. There are a
hundred that could be mentioned.
But prayer is first and foremost, “Fellowship with God.” Prayer is developing a relationship or a friendship with God. Do you understand that this is why you and I were created? God created the entire universe. God has a name for every one of those stars, the scriptures say. His power and his majesty are absolutely overwhelming; we can’t even begin to comprehend the reaches of God. And yet, God has opened the door for us as human beings to be able to converse and fellowship with him.
When God
created this world, God chose to create human beings, “in His image,” the scriptures say. Human
beings, who are capable of loving, and feeling, and thinking, and transcending
themselves … who are able to reach out to God and receive God’s love. Do you understand that we were created so
that we might have fellowship with God?
We were put here on this planet, in large part, because God loves us and
wants a relationship with us.
Can you
imagine being God, giving birth to a child … planting in that child a soul with
certain gifts and abilities and watching them speak their first words, and yet,
never hearing from them at all? Having
that child, at no point, except when they are really in trouble cry out to you?
On
occasion, I will have one of my children come to me and say, “Daddy, you’re the best daddy in the world.”
Now, that would be great, except for what follows after that. It’s usually a request for something. So, when I hear that, I just say, “Okay, what do you want?” We do that with God,
don’t we? And just as we do, God yearns
for us to cry out, “I love you, Lord … thank
you … I praise you …” without
knowing that we are going to beg him for something afterwards. Now,
it’s okay to come to God with our requests.
We’re going to talk about that in the coming weeks. But what God loves more than anything else,
is just your fellowship … just our desire to communion with God.
Very often in the church, we have done a good
job at getting people involved in serving God.
We can get people involved in a committee or a program. There are infinite opportunities to serve God
in ministry. But sometimes we have not
done so well at helping people to experience the presence of God in their lives
and to have a personal relationship with Christ that transforms us. And more than anything else, this is what God
yearns for.
Now, of
course, God is pleased when we serve him.
But if you are serving God and you’re not experiencing God’s presence in
your life, you’re going to get burned out along the way. And there are many casualties in our churches,
of people who gave their lives in Christian service, but failed to experience the
presence of God in their lives. They
failed to cultivate a relationship with God, and so they’re dried up and burned
out.
There was a
lady in one of my former churches who was like this. Over the years she had held every office in
the church, served on every committee and board. She had been President of the UMW and even
into her 70’s, she was trying to head up the flower ministry. But her health began to fail and she moved
into an elder care center.
I went to
see her one day and had prayer with her and as I did, she turned to me and
said, “Pastor, I have to tell you
something. Being in this place, I’ve
been doing some reflection. My entire
life, I have never felt God’s presence in my life. I’ve heard preachers talk about it, but I’ve
never experienced it. God seems so
distant from me.”
And then I
asked her, “Do you pray?”
And as I looked in her eyes, I could tell what the answer was before she
spoke. She prayed, like most of us do,
that little one-line prayer at the end of the daily devotional we read in the
Upper Room. Or the “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to
keep” kind of prayers. But she had never experienced “fellowship” and
conversation with God in prayer.
You know,
as your pastor, this is one of the things that is most important to me. That you actually come to know God in a
deeply personal way … and not just as a philosophical belief that you hold, but
that you trust in him and experience his presence in your life. Because that changes everything.
The 2nd
thing that prayer is primarily about, is it allows God’s will to bend our will
to his will … it is “Submitting to
God’s Will.” Many people think that prayer is just the
opposite. We pray to God in order to get
God to do what I want, right? So, if I
pray long enough, and hard enough, and if I say the right magic words, then God
will do what I want. So, the goal of
prayer is to bend God’s will to meet my will.
But that is not what the goal of prayer is. Prayer, in its purest form, is allowing God’s
will to invade my life and for my will to bend to God’s will. And this is what happens when we spend
quality time with God in prayer. Our
will becomes aligned with God’s will.
You know
how this works. With my children, I try
to be very careful about who their friends are, because who they hang around
with has a great influence upon them.
And I don’t want them to get involved with friends who are going to lead
them down a wrong path.
We’ve all
experienced this … being with people who have different values than we
have. Hanging around them, we begin to
adopt some of their values along the way.
That’s why Church is so important.
We come together as Christians to try to share and grow in the same
ideals. Whoever you spend time with
begins to leave an impression on your life.
And so, when we spend quality time with God, we begin to become like
God. God molds us and shapes us into his
image. And this is why we pray.
And then,
finally, prayer is about “listening to God.” You know, communication only takes place when
the conversation is two-way. But many of
our conversations are not that way. We’ve
all experienced conversation with someone who does all the talking and won’t
listen. Even if you do get a chance to
say something, you can tell that they are not really listening to you. They’re
thinking about what they’re going to say next.
And we all know how that feels.
Well, don’t you know that God sometimes feels that way when we
pray? Because we tend to do all the
talking and rarely listen. But prayer is
about listening. It is about sharing
with God and fellowshipping with God, but it is also about getting quiet and
allowing God to share with us.
This is how
it works in my life. It doesn’t happen
every time, but when I pray, I begin by praising God and thanking God for his
blessings in my life, just sharing my thoughts with God. But in the midst of that, there may be some
issue that I’m concerned about. And
after sharing that concern with God, I just stop for a moment and I get real
quiet.
It’s
amazing what happens when you get quiet in prayer. Now, I have never heard the audible voice of
God. But I’ve heard the small still
voice many times. Sometimes when I’ve
been praying, suddenly I’ll have this thought come to my mind. Sometimes it’s an urging to call somebody. This last week, as I was praying over the
prayer cards that had been submitted for prayer, this happened. Right in the middle of that prayer, I picked
up the phone and called. And I can’t
tell you the number of times that, when I’ve dialed a number in the midst of
prayer, the other person has said, “I am so
glad you called. I so desperately needed
to talk to someone right now.” That’s how God speaks to us in prayer some
times.
Or maybe,
I’ll be in the middle of prayer and a scripture will come to mind. I’ll open up the Bible and I’ll ask God to
speak to me through his Word. And as I
read, suddenly insights come into my mind that I haven’t thought of before.
You
remember Elijah the prophet … we read about him in our scripture lesson
today. In I Kings 19, Elijah was in a
cave and he was all alone. He was
feeling afraid, and like many of us, he was crying out, “Give me a sign God.
Help me to know your will. Help
me to know what you want me to do.” In moments like that, we want
God to paint a sign in the sky, making it clear to us. That’s what Elijah wanted.
And it says
that he tried to hear God in the midst of the storm, thinking that God would
speak then. But God didn’t speak in the
storm. Then in the midst of the flames,
he listened for the voice of God, but God didn’t speak in them either. Then in the midst of the whirlwind, he thought
that God would speak to him, but God didn’t speak then either. And he’s beginning to think that God is not
going to talk to him at all. But then
the Scripture says that he heard “the still
small voice of God whispering in his heart.” God speaks to us in “a
whisper” most times. But our lives are
filled with so much noise and activity that we can’t hear. Prayer is about listening.
Now, when
you’ve spent time in prayer, like what I’ve just described, and that may be 15
or 20 minutes a day or it may be an hour a day.
But when you spend quality time with God in prayer, which takes more
than 5 minutes, and you do that consistently and daily, you will discover that
things begin to change in your life.
There are powerful and profound benefits to praying.
The first,
is that it takes our eyes off of ourselves and we become “less self-centered.” A good counselor will tell you that when
you’re feeling depressed or overwhelmed by your circumstances, one of the best
things that you can do is to help someone else.
Because in the process of helping someone else, you take your eyes off
of yourself.
You
remember the story of Peter, when he was walking on water with Jesus. The storm around him was raging and as long
as he looked at Jesus he wasn’t afraid.
But the moment he focused on the storm, his situation seemed to
overwhelm him. Some of us spend our time
focusing on the storms in our lives. But
when we focus on God in prayer, the storms don’t seem so scary anymore.
And through
prayer, we begin to experience God’s “peace”. You remember the Apostle Paul says, “The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will
guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” And Jesus says, “I am come that you might have peace. Not as the world gives, but I give you a
different kind of peace.” Well, how do we access that peace? How do we make God’s peace our own? We make it our own through prayer. When we begin to commune with God, we begin
to feel His peace coming over us.
How many
times I have felt overwhelmed and anxious about something. And after spending time with God in prayer, I
feel that peace. I realize that I don’t
have to carry that burden alone and I am reminded of who’s in control.
The benefit
of prayer is not only peace, it’s also “joy.” You remember the Apostle Paul says, “Be joyful always.” And I used to
wonder, “How can you be joyful always?” Well,
it’s not the same as being happy always, it’s about having a joy deep inside no
matter what the circumstances are. How
can we have this joy? Well, Paul gives
the answer in the next phrase when he says, “Pray
without ceasing.” When we pray without ceasing, we will find “joy always.”
And it’s not just these benefits; there
are even “physical benefits”
to prayer. In Time Magazine I found an
article that says, “A study of 4000 elderly
There’s an
interesting side note to this article that I have to share with you. It has nothing to do with my sermon, but it
says, “Greater exposure to religious radio or
television evangelists, however, resulted in an increase in blood pressure.” I
thought that was kind of interesting.
When it
comes to anxiety and dealing with things like depression, prayer makes a big
difference. The Journal of the American
Medical Association reports a study that was done with Senior Adults facing
chronic disabilities … things that typically lead to depression in senior
adults. It found that those who pray
regularly were significantly less likely to become depressed. And that corresponded directly to the amount
of time they spent in prayer.
There are
several other benefits to prayer that we don’t have time to go into this
morning. You can see them listed in your
Sermon Notes: Benefits to prayer
include, “Strength … Improved Relationships …
Spiritual and Emotional Renewal.” But there’s one that I do want
to mention, and that is, when I look at people who pray a lot, I see that they
have “a depth of soul”
that I don’t see in most people.
Most of us tend
to live on a very superficial plane. We
live in the shallowness of life. We’re concerned about appearances and what
other people might think about us. But
when I look at people who pray, they seem to have “a depth of soul” that is amazing.
They have a perspective on life that I want. Prayer has a way of deepening your soul.
And that
leads me to the last point I want to make today … “The Ocean or Puddle Metaphor”. Very often, my spiritual
life feels like “a puddle”, yet, I know that God offers us “an ocean.” Many of us live in the puddles of
life, while what God offers
us the ocean … the depth of his presence in our lives. The depth of his mercy, grace, and
guidance. The depth of a life that is
filled with joy even in the face of adversity.
God doesn’t
promise that he’s going to make the road easy for us or that we’re going to
live to be 100 and die in our sleep. He
doesn’t promise that bad things are never going to happen to us. That’s a part of life. What God does promise us is the depth of an
ocean to carry us through all of that. We
can have God’s power, His peace, joy, and strength in the midst of life … if
only we’re willing to jump into the ocean.
Part of
what made Jesus an amazing man is that he lived in the ocean. I mean, Jesus lived in that constant fellowship
with God. We see that, as we read about
it in the Gospels. At every critical
point in Jesus’ life, we find that prior to and in the midst of those moments,
Jesus spent time in prayer.
In our scripture for today, as Jesus goes
up on the mountain to pray, while he’s up on the mountain praying, did you
notice what happened? While he was
praying, his countenance was transformed … it was transfigured. You know, when people spend time in prayer,
they even look differently to other people.
And as Jesus prayed, he experienced the presence of Moses and Elijah, who
were speaking with him. And then the
glory of God descended upon that mountain.
It was an awesome experience! And
folks, what happened in Jesus’ life when he prayed, God makes available to you
and to me.
Okay … true
confession. I hear of some preachers who
spend two hours a day in uninterrupted prayer.
I am not one of them. I wish I
was. Sometimes I look at those guys and
wonder, “How do you do that?” I’ve heard
of people who’ve worn out their pant’s knees from praying. I’ll tell you that I don’t have pair of pants
that are worn out at the knees. I wish I
did. My prayer life, at times, is like
many of your’s … like a puddle.
I pray 5 or 6 times a day. In the morning I pray as I wake up. I pray as I’m driving to the church. If, I’m lucky, I’ll have time during my
devotional reading before the office gets busy.
Mid-morning I pray again. I pray
at meal times. I pray with my children
at night. I might pray 20 or 30 minutes
a day. Sometimes longer …sometimes not
even that much.
About once
a month, though, I experience the ocean.
It may be when I go outside for a walk or jog. Sometimes I’ll take a day as a retreat, but
more often, it’s just a couple of hours of time alone with God … perhaps in the
car. But after those two hours, I feel
such strength, such power, and peace, that it’s renewing. While I started out tired, worn out, empty, frustrated,
and exhausted, when I’m done … all I
feel is the love of Christ just pulsating through me.
It’s an
awesome experience to swim in the ocean!
So, part of this sermon was for me and not just for you … to challenge
all of us to move from the “puddle” to the “ocean.”