This blog post in NOT written by me, but a friend. This talk really made me listen and sit up so was grateful to him for sending it to me! I hope you all enjoy!
Luke Chapter 11 Verse 1-13
For those of you who were at Trinity last week you’ll know we’ve just started a sermon series on Christian Disciplines. Not the type that means you get detention if you don’t hand your homework in on time, but the actions we as Christians perform to transform ourselves. To become more Christlike, to be changed by God’s Grace and His work within us, not by ourselves.
Last week Mike talked about meditation so I just want to cover a little bit about this. For me, the purpose of meditating is to enable us to hear God’s voice more clearly, and obey His Word. Meditation is about listening and heeding Christ’s teaching. God speaks to us, and what pleases God is not a set of religious duties which we rigorously adhere to, it’s when we hear Him and obey. Meditation opens the door to this way of living. If you want to know more about meditation then visit the Trinity Website and listen to the Pod cast on Meditation.
Prayer changes lives…
Our Reading today tells us how Jesus taught the disciples about prayer. They had prayed all their lives yet somehow Jesus’ prayers were different and they asked Him to teach them.
In our reading the prayer is ordered. First Jesus praised God, and then He made His requests. Praising God puts us in the right frame of mind to tell Him about our needs. When I first started to pray my prayers were like a shopping list, rather than a conversation.
But prayer is about having a conversation with God, and the more we do it the better our relationship becomes. The better our relationship with God, the stronger it is, the better and stronger our other relationships become. Verse three reads “Give us our food day by day”. God provides for us daily, we can’t store it up for later use then say thanks a lot, see you later.
So often our prayers are steeped in cries of distress, suffering or remorse at what’s happened in our lives. There are times when we ask ourselves, "Is God really listening to our prayers?" "Things have turned out so wrong for me – where was God when I was pounding on the door of heaven with my prayers."
In 1997 a tragedy occurred in Thredbo in the Australian alps. There was a huge landslide that came down on ski huts burying 19 people. A chapel was set up and people prayed. They prayed in their homes and in churches around the world for the rescue of those trapped in the landslide.
But how useful were those prayers? Did they change what happened to any of those who were trapped? Prayers were offered for a miracle but did it make any difference. Well, one man was rescued. It must have seemed like a miracle that anyone could survive 60 hours in freezing conditions surrounded by concrete, rubble and water. The survivor acknowledged that God must have had a hand in deliverance.
But what about the other 18 people who lost their lives? What about all the prayers that were said for those people? They still died. Is it any wonder that people are sceptical about the use of prayer? If so many people were praying for the victims, why didn’t God respond and save them? That question has been asked over and over again throughout history when things turned out differently than they had prayed for. I wish I had an answer that would be clear cut, understandable and simple; an answer that would prove that prayer works.
God has the answer...We have put our trust, our Faith, in Him.
Perhaps that’s why the disciples asked Jesus to help them. Maybe they had a problem with prayer and wanted to know a way to ensure their prayers were answered. Was there something special in the way Jesus prayed? I doubt it. Jesus doesn’t teach the disciples any special skills. He doesn’t say “if you fold your hands or hold them palms up toward heaven, or rest them on the particular person you are praying for, or kneel or stand or sit, or use a special style of language, you are more likely to have your prayers answered”. If that were the case then the answer to our prayers would be a human achievement not something that comes from the gracious and loving hand of God.
Prayer is not about having special skills, saying the right words so we can reach God’s ear. When would we ever get it right? We would never be able to say the right things to move God to answer us. Prayer is not humans taking the initiative and trying to reach up to God attempting to speak in his ear. For me the best analogy is one of a small child who wants to tell his dad something really important. What does dad do? He bends down, lovingly puts his arm around the child and lets the child whisper in his ear. In this sense then prayer is not so much us reaching up to God with special words or techniques, but God reaching down to us.
Jesus never asked if it was God’s will. His prayers were so positive they often took the form of a command. In Matthew 9 Jesus commands a lame man to get up and walk. How often as Christian’s do we pray, hoping and expecting an answer, yet never quite sure what will happen? Shouldn’t our attitude be one of affirmation? Should we not have confidence in God? When Moses prayed he believed his prayers could change things, even God’s mind. We see this in Exodus 32:14 and Jonah 3:10. In both passages God relented.
Our salvation does not depend on the good things we do to impress God so he will let us into heaven. God comes to us in the form of his Son Jesus Christ, who gave us salvation through His death on the cross. So it is with prayer - no special techniques have to be applied to achieve success. Half the time we don’t know what to pray and when we do we pray selfishly, without faith or conviction. We don’t even know where to find God.
It is God who finds us. By the power of the Holy Spirit the good news about Jesus Christ hits home. Jesus comes into our lives through the Word of God and baptism, and makes himself known to us. God, the Father becomes our heavenly Father. Praying is being in the presence of God, who bends down and like the father makes his ear available. Even though the whispers of the child in his father’s ear might be soft and stammering the father hears the words of his child as the most precious things he has ever heard. He hears the incomplete sentences and funny words with the love of a father. He hears the soft requests with love when the child is hurting. In the same way, God hears our prayers.
Prayer is a gift. It’s only possible because of who God is and his love for us. The more helpless we feel, the more we learn this to be true. Prayer is for those who no longer rely on themselves, but want to be helped by God. A prayerful life changes us inwardly. William Carey once said “Prayer – secret, fervent, believing prayer – lies at the root of all personal godliness”. To pray is to change. It’s the central avenue God uses to transform us and if we are unwilling to change then we risk abandoning prayer as a noticeable characteristic of our lives.
But why is it that we find it so hard to pray? Why do we neglect this rich source of strength and power for our daily lives? I probably don’t need to tell you the reasons why because we are all guilty of failing to pray at times. I guess at the bottom of it all is that it takes effort to pray.
It takes effort to make time available every day to pray.
It takes effort to be quiet and still for just a short while.
It takes effort to stop during a busy day and to spend time talking with God.
It takes effort at the end of a long day to stay awake long enough to pray.
We readily and easily pray when there is a pressing need, when sickness or despair strike, but most of the time prayer is seen as a burden, an effort, though it takes far less effort than taking the wheelie bin out to the curb.
We may even doubt the value of prayer; we may lack the confidence that it really does anything. In fact, if we truly believed in the power of prayer we wouldn’t have any problems spending time in prayer. Prayer requires practice and perseverance if it is to become a gift from God that is well used. Yet we don’t need to use prosaic language when we pray. I was once told “Pray as you can, not as you can’t”.
Prayer is a gift from our God. It’s not a demanding gift. Sometimes we need the Spirit's discipline to drag us into the presence of God, but once there, it is not hard. Not many words are needed to respond to God's coming. The prayer Jesus teaches his disciples is very brief. Prayer does not demand a lot of wearisome words. In fact, a lot of words can be off-putting. Sometimes it is better to relax in God’s presence with very few words. Jesus says, "When you pray, don't babble on and on as people of other religions do. They think their prayers are answered only by repeating their words again and again. Don’t be like them, because your Father knows exactly what you need even before you ask Him" (Matthew 6:7,8). Jesus models a prayer that is brief and yet contains everything that is important.
I think there is a danger that we can rattle off the Lord’s Prayer without giving a thought about what we’re saying. When we do it’s no longer a prayer, just a bunch of words that we have learnt off by heart. When you pray the Lord’s Prayer, try breaking it down into individual verses and considering their meaning. What blessings have you received today? Have you forgiven those who did you wrong? And what temptations do you need to overcome?
A young woman started a new job at a textile mill, and was placed next to a sign which said, "When your thread becomes tangled, call the supervisor". Well, her thread became duly tangled and she thought, "I’ll just straighten this out myself." She tried, but the situation only got worse.
Finally, she called the supervisor. "I did the best I could," she said. "No you didn’t", was the reply. "To do the best, you should have called me."
The first and often most difficult step is setting time aside daily to speak with God. But you need to make the time, perhaps by setting your alarm clock 15 minutes earlier, or going to bed 15 minutes earlier, or even better doing both. What about during your lunch break. How often do we sit aimlessly after eating lunch, watching the clock tick away the minutes until we go back to our duties? A source very close to me assures me that when you’re having a bad day that 5 minute prayer during lunch can transform your afternoon. Thing is, God will hear your prayer whenever. He will answer your prayer. Even if the answer is not what we expected, be assured He will always have our best interests in mind, just like any other loving parent. I speak from experience.
God is waiting to hear from us. He’s our loving Father, waiting with outstretched arms for His children to call to Him, to be embraced by His love. That call, that embrace, is capable of transforming our character, of purifying our innermost thoughts and feelings and ultimately saving us through Grace.
