Principles of Prayer
Transcript
We’re moving from the focus on manhood and prayer to principles of Christian prayer. It’s setting us up then to talk more about some practicals. Some key principles here…
Number one, we already said this, but let's make it clear: God speaks first.
1) God speaks first
He's the first speaker. We hear first, he speaks first. He speaks in his Word. His word is the chief or the soul of his means of grace. It starts with him. He's the initiator. Prayer is a conversation we didn't start. There's this asymmetry in prayer. It is conversational, it is talking to God, but it's talking back to him with holy reverence.
So to give a glimpse into some practicals that we'll talk about later — in terms of personal prayer, I move through this kind of order in my private prayer: I begin with hearing from him and his Word. I usually start in the morning with some brief prayer like “Father in heaven satisfy my soul this morning in your word” or something like “Show me Jesus,” or “open my eyes to see the glory of Christ here in your Word this morning.” So I pray a short prayer for help.
And then first and foremost, I want to begin by hearing from God. So I read the Word, reread the Word, and meditate on the words. I try to begin with Bible, move into meditation. Meditation is this middle space between reading God's Word and praying to Him where we take it in and take it deep into the soul, linger over it, slow down, have a chance to try to feel the impact of it, not just have it run through our mind, like run in one ear right out the other, have it move down to the heart and linger over it, meditate on God's Word and then turn that to prayer.
So begin with Bible, move to meditation, polish with prayer.
Respond to God in light of what He says. In the years of my life, I guess years of my life, I would go through the Bible reading plan, check the boxes, and then do this hard pivot to like praying through my prayer lists. I don't think that was ideal, that didn't feel very relational to me and I felt like I was mainly doing. I was coming to check the boxes on my reading, then I was coming to check off my prayer list before God instead of the more relational sense of …
“God here I am to hear from you, I want to hear what you have to say. I want to ponder it. I want to contemplate it. I want to take it in deep and not just rush off to the next thing. I want your word to leave an impression on my soul this morning so that 30 minutes from now, I might be able to remember what I was meditating on. And then I want to talk back to you in light of what you've said.”
So I want to begin with what God's saying in His word and have that turn into prayer, it’s a much more relational sense. That's communion in a relationship with a living holy God rather than me just doing my first to-do’s of the day.
And we'll talk about A.C.T.S. — the A.C.T.S. of prayer. I find this really helpful. Adore him — adoration, confess sin — confession, thank him — thanksgiving, ask him — supplication. I move through the sequence over and over. So prayer to God is the proper issue in what comes the fitting outflow, what comes out of the proper issue of the process of receiving and meditating on his words. You hear from him in Scripture, take it deep into your soul in meditation, and then speak back to him in prayer. And move from the glories of what he's saying into the various concerns you have on a daily basis, specific to that day, or that week.
Second principle here: God not only speaks, but he listens.
2) God not only speaks, but he listens
This really is an amazing thing.
It's remarkable in that first and foremost our God is a talking God, that he reveals himself. Like we need to appreciate the spectacular nature of God being talkative, that he speaks, He reveals himself. And then the second marvel is that the talking God wants to hear from us, that he stops as it were, and stoops, and he wants to hear the heart and soul response of his people to his word. The father wants to hear from his children.
So this is fresh. When I was asking the question a few months ago, maybe somebody asked me about it or I don't know where it came from, but I was thinking through why this this language of having God’s ear in prayer. This has become one of the main ways to talk about prayer, having his ear. I like it because it's personal, it's relational, but it doesn't just accent a concept that’s helpful. This is just how the Bible reads. So as I've been going through the Psalms, like oh, the ear of God, the language of God's ear is very biblical.
So let me run through these texts quick. I'm not going to spend long explaining them. I want the effect of them, kind of the cascading effect, to be: Brothers, we have a God who hears, a God who listens, like how often is our lack of prayer because we don't really believe that deep down?
If we really believed that we had a great high priest on the throne of the universe and that our God really listens and wants to hear from us — he's not distracted to something else, he's not annoyed by us, His ear is open to your prayers to hear and act with omnipotent power — How might we pray differently?
So here's God's ear, and I want to strengthen your confidence with text after text that our God is a God who listens to His people.
Psalm 5,
“Give ear to my words, O God, consider my groaning. Give attention to the sound of my cry…”
This is the world's most valuable commodity — attention. Right? The companies that harvest human attention now make more money than the companies that do oil. And that's human attention. This is God's attention. That is unspeakably valuable.
“…Give attention to the sound of my cry, my king and my God. For to you I pray. [in this the connection between prayer and the ear…] O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice. In the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and you watch.”
Psalm 17,
“I call upon you for you will answer me, O God, incline your ear to me. Hear my words.”
And you might say… well, that's David, like King David — he's special. God made a special covenant with him. He's the King of Israel, of God's people. Of course he’s going to listen to David. I don't think he’d listen to me?
The biblical answer to that is: if David, then all the more you who are in Christ! He listens to you more than he listens to David, you have better confidence that God's going to hear you because of Jesus. David's greater son has come, you are in him by faith. God listens all the more attentively, as it were, to us who are in Christ than to King David. So Psalmist asks for God's ear.
Psalm 28,
“Hear the voice of my pleas for mercy when I cry to you for help, when I lift up my hands [see there's this hands posture that's going with prayer] toward your most holy sacrifice.”
Psalm 54,
“O God, hear my prayer. Give ear to the words of my mouth.”
So we give ear to his words, and then he gives ear to our words in prayer.
“O Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy. I say to the Lord, you are my God. Give ear to the voice, of my pleas for mercy.”
So they ask for his ear and the Psalmists declare that they've got his ear,
“The Lord hears when I call to him. O Lord, you hear the desire of the afflicted. You will strengthen their heart. You will incline your ear. I call upon you for you will answer me, O God.”
We can have that confidence and every bit as that and more.
The Psalmists celebrate having his ear.
Psalm 18,
“In my distress, I called upon the Lord. To my God I cried for help. From his temple, He heard my voice and my cry to him reached his ears. Blessed be the Lord, for he has heard the voice of my pleas for mercy. You heard the voice of my pleas for mercy when I cried to you for help.”
“Come here, all you who fear God and I will tell you what He's done for my soul. I cried to him with my mouth and high praises on my tongue. If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened. [So here we go, that's back up to 1 Peter 3:7, in that he hears the upright but those who cherish iniquity in their heart — that harms the prayer relationship.] But truly God has listened. He has attended to the voice of my prayer.”
Third, principle here: The great purpose of prayer is that God himself would be our joy.
3) The great purpose of prayer is that God himself would be our joy
The very word prayer comes from our asking, our requesting, our petitioning God for things — so that's prominent in prayer. And yet that's not the greatest thing. It's not the greatest purpose in prayer. Here’s Psalm 43, it’s a taste,
“Send out your light in your truth. Let them lead me. Let them bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling. Then I will go to the altar of God, to God, my exceeding joy and I will praise you with the lyre O God, my God.”
This language of exceeding joy here is literally the joy of my gladness. In whatever gladness you would have in other things, in his answers to prayer, in his provisions, in his blessings — that he would be the joy in the gladness. He's the chief enjoyment. He's the best joy in the joys that he provides in his generosity, his goodness, his bountifulness, his blessing to us.
So C.S. Lewis said,
“Prayer in the sense of petition [that's asking for things] is a small part of prayer.”
I mean, brothers, like what a challenge. That is a challenge.
Asking for things is a small part of prayer.
Is that true for you?
Confession and penitence are its threshold, the door in which we approach adoration — it's sanctuary. The presence and vision and enjoyment of God. It's bread and wine.
That's the communion. That's the deepest part. That's the purpose, presence, vision and enjoying God in our prayers.
Fourth principle here: our having the Father's ear is as sure as our having his Son.
4) Our having the Father’s ear is as sure as our having his Son
This is why we can be all the more certain of him hearing us then even David, because we have the Son. And so we come with confidence. We come manfully to the throne. We already looked at the Hebrews 4 text, We have a great High Priest — Jesus. So we hold fast our confession in Him and draw near with confidence.
All right, last principle here. I think this is the last principle before we do another discussion. Yes. All right. This is pretty fresh for me right now, this fifth one. There’s the typical pattern of prayer, typical pattern of Christian prayer: to the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit.
Now, a couple disclaimers here. You can pray to the Son. He is God. He's on the throne of the universe. He can hear you. You can pray to Jesus. You can pray to the Spirit. He is God. There are certain contexts where it's appropriate to pray, Holy Spirit come, Holy Spirit help. So prayer to the Son and Spirit is not outlawed, but there is a biblical pattern. There's a healthy proportion. And the typical pattern is to the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit.
So Ephesians 3 talks about Christ, our Lord [Son], in whom we have boldness [there's our manfulness] and access with confidence, through our faith in Him. So Jesus is the through-man here in the Ephesians 3 text.
And here's Ephesians 2:18, this is programmatic for Christian prayers, “Through him” — here’s that through language of the Son — “…we both” — it’s talking about Jew and Gentile, that what Christ has done is so significant, so epic changing, that this line of ethnicity has melted away and the line that divides the world now is how you deal with Jesus. Jew or Gentile, far secondary. How you deal with Jesus, faith or unbelief, that's the dividing line in the world.
“Through him, we both have access [that same access] in one Spirit, to the Father.”
See, so through Jesus, in the Spirit, to the Father. It is appropriate to pray to the Father often and pray in the name of Jesus, pray through him. And we do so, amazingly, as those who are indwelt by the Holy Spirit. I mean the language in New Testament is you have the Holy Spirit. How amazing this is. This what's been to fresh me recently just reflecting on: what does it mean to have the Spirit and to be grateful for that and to have appropriate confidence when I read the Bible, when I pray, when I go about my job, when I do what I'm called to do in the world, that the Holy Spirit is a part of inspiring this, guiding this, helping with this?
So about prayers in the Spirit, this language of praying in the Spirit, in the Spirit is not unique to Ephesians 2. A couple of examples of prayer in the Spirit. And one thing here, the biblical language often switches back and forth. I think there's double entendre, double meaning, in places where there is such a enigmatic, mysterious coming together of a Spirit indwelt Christian that where our own spirit is — lowercase ‘s’ — and where the capital ‘S’ Holy Spirit is, is not easy to discern.
The Holy Spirit dwells beneath our consciousness, like beneath our ability to discern His influence in specific ways. There's this coming together of our spirit, in his Spirit.
So Ephesians 6,
“Take the Sword of the Spirit, the Word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit.”
Jude 20,
“You beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.”
So as those who are in Jesus, as those who have been born again, those who have faith in Him, when you pray you are praying in the Spirit. That doesn't mean that’s supposed to be first and foremost in your consciousness. But it's good to have in your consciousness sometimes, like right now, and to know that you're being helped in your prayers. When you feel prompted to pray, that's a good prompt to go with if you're indwelt by the Holy Spirit. And then even as you enter into prayer, that you would go with that kind of confidence knowing the Spirit's in me. He wants to inspire prayer, help in prayer. I move forward in prayer, I take the step of saying with fellow believers, Hey, why don't we pray for that person we were just talking about? She's in the hospital. She's not doing well. Why don’t we pray for her? That's a good Holy Spirit prompting prayer and then take the initiative — let's have the prayer. Let's pray together with the Spirit leading us.
Last one here, Romans 8, and then a quote from Fred Sanders and more discussion.
“The spirit helps us in our weakness…”
Here’s that language of weakness again. We saw that in Hebrews 4. He sympathizes, Jesus, with our weaknesses. So holy masculinity doesn't pretend to have weaknesses. It is honest about weaknesses and turns to the Son and the Spirit for strengthening.
“The Spirit us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groaning too deep for words [too deep] And he who search his heart knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”
Here’s an explanation of Romans 8 from Fred Sanders, his his new book on the Holy Spirit came out last year, man, one of the one of the best books I've read in a long time. I don't want to overstate it, but I would highly commended. It’s so good, this extended meditation on the Holy Spirit. Here's his comment about the double depth of the Spirit in Romans 8.
“The above text, Romans 8, is not about the Holy Spirit being a creature who groans and prays to us alongside God [that's not the case]. Instead, it is about God drawing so close to us that He supports and empowers our prayers at a deeper level than we can even articulate.”
This has really been encouraging to me recently and I pray that have the same effect, to think that the Holy Spirit's been poured out, that He's been given to us and we're being helped like this in our life of prayer, weak and fragile as we feel and need for improvement in it.
“Indeed, the Holy Spirit is closer to us than we are to ourselves because while parts of our inner lives may be inaccessible even to our own minds, none of them are closed off to the Holy Spirit. He is both deep within God [as God] and also deep within creatures as the one who indwells believers. He indwells the Father and the children because he is simultaneously in the heart of God and in the heart of believers. Scripture routinely transfers to him certain attributes that are either properly human or in some way arise at the very point where the human encounter with the divine happens.”
This is work. This is divine work at depth in nearness to us, in the inner man that is appropriated to the Holy Spirit but this is the nature of his particular work.
Being in us, He's in our heart and the very heart of God and Scripture attributes to him this kind of nearness of work at the very point of impact between our spirit and the Spirit of God.
All Right. Discussion two…
Discussion
1) What in your own inner man keeps you from the life of prayer that you want? In light these principles what truths, what lies, what deceptions, what wrong ways of thinking at that principle level or even at the practical obstacle level — search your heart — what prevents you from having the life of prayer you want?
2) What principles about prayer do you most need to learn or be reminded of?
We'll do about 5 minutes here and then come back for our last session with some more practicals and on fasting.
