Beyond The Basics 7: Prayer (part 3)

Our Father, we gather this morning, first of all, just to rejoice in your consistent compassion and loving -kindness toward us.

Lord, we praise you for that. We thank you for your grace, for your mercy. Lord, we thank you that every morning you are faithful.

Lord, would you guide this time together, that we have together, as we look to your word to see what you have said about prayer, just a portion of what you've said about prayer.

Lord, I pray that our time this morning would be of benefit to those here. Lord, that it would be glorifying to you.

In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Well, we've been talking about prayer for the last few weeks.

If you don't have a copy of the notes, shame on you. No. See, I don't have any extras this morning, so please see me after class and we'll make some copies.

We've talked about several aspects of prayer, how we should pray, hindrances to prayer, including, of course, my favorite, husbands, if you're not treating your wives correctly, then you're going to have issues.

Now, there's something. You know, it's kind of like when I used to, I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but my favorite kind of situation to handle when

I was a police officer, and you're going to think this is crazy, was not domestic disputes because those were a nightmare, but it was custody disputes, because it was easy.

I'd show up at the door. I remember one time I knocked on this lady's door and her husband was outside, had a copy of the quarter, ex -husband, said, you know,

I get the child from thus and such a time to thus and such a time, and it was that time.

So I went and knocked on the door and the lady said, well, you know, I'm mad at him. He hasn't done this, or he said he'd do that, and, you know,

I don't want little Johnny to go with him this weekend. I said, oh, that's fine. I said, do you have any things in the house that you would like to straighten out or, you know, any things that you'd like to do before I take you to jail?

And she'd say, what? And I'd go, yeah. I said, it's a felony to not comply with this court order.

Johnny will be right out. You know, and it was because they were the easiest calls in the world to handle.

I never had one where it failed, you know, because it was the same thing. I'd go, well, do you have anything you'd like to do? And they'd go, what?

What do you? So, easy. And I don't know what got me off thinking about that, but, oh,

I was thinking about hindrances to prayer and wrong spousal relationships. You know, when I counsel people,

I mean, I kind of take a page from Al Mohler. I've probably told you this one before, but Al Mohler has a counseling technique that is not quite typical.

He gets people in and they say, okay, here's his approach. What's your problem?

They tell him whatever the problem is. He says, what does the Bible say about your problem? And they recite it and then he says, then what are we doing here?

It's pretty basic, but when you get people together, husbands and wives, and you say, what is your problem?

You know, let them talk for a little while. You say, what does the Bible say about it? Well, sometimes we forget things like, you know, not having a right relationship with your wife can actually hinder your prayers.

We don't think about things like that. And, of course, unbelief hinders your prayer. Why? Because God's under no obligation.

You are not his child in the most technical sense.

We talked about when to pray. Is there ever a time that is wrong to pray? No. I mean, even if you're, you know, in a sinful mindset, the right thing to do would be to pray for repentance.

God, remove these thoughts from me. Take these things from me. I repent. I don't want to think like this. I want to think like you think.

Okay, so now we're down to why do we pray? And we asked this question a few weeks ago and we had several good answers.

And, in fact, I think somebody mentioned, you know, to the second one I have here, which is to align yourself with the will of God.

But let's go in order here. First of all, to glorify God. And if I move kind of funny this morning, it's because I threw out my back and I say that not to gather your, you know, sorrows or compassion or sympathy.

Although those things are nice. But just to let you know that if it looks like Steve is walking around a little stiff,

I just talked about myself in the third person. That's why I just feel kind of stiff.

Yeah, you understand. All right, first of all, to glorify God, let's look at John 14, verse 3.

I mean, there are some other more generic scriptures we could use. You know, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all the glory of God.

Well, why would we not want to pray to the glory of God? John 14, 3, who has that?

And I don't really know why this is this. Okay, I'm going to just take this as...

Oh, I was reading the wrong verse. All right. I have absolutely no idea what that has to do with it.

Once again, I fire myself as my own secretary. I know I have a verse here. Maybe it's 3 .14. I don't know.

Oh, 13. See, there you go. It's the typing thing again. Would you read that,

Bruce? There you have it.

There is... Well, I mean, another way to look at it is God glorifies himself through answered prayer.

So now if you get a copy of that, you'll want to change that to 14 .13 so that years from now when you look at it, you will go, what in the world does that have to do with...

You know, there's spell check, but there's not number check or scripture check in word processors.

What a drag. Someday. Okay. Secondly, to align yourself with the will of God.

When we pray, when we... And actually, we'll get to kind of a hands -on how to pray sort of thing.

But if you're praying rightly, your objective ought not to be to change the mind of God per se.

In other words, can you change God's mind? Does God go, well, this is what I want to do, but Steve wants to go this way, so let's go

Steve's way. He's immutable.

He doesn't have a huge flow chart. He is immutable. MacArthur says there, true prayer centers on God's glory, not on man's needs.

God's glory should be the focus of our prayer. I don't think we do that enough.

We tend to focus on what we need instead of just focusing on the transcendent nature of God.

Thirdly, to sanctify yourself. John Stott says, the purpose of prayer is not to inform or persuade

God. Can we tell him anything that he doesn't know? No. Can we persuade him?

As Peggy rightly says, no, he's immutable. But to come before him sincerely, purposely, consciously, and devotedly.

We have, you know, of course, Karen Uloh struggling. Not struggling, but,

I mean, she's got cancer. I remember years ago, one of my professors in seminary, his wife had cancer.

And people would pray that she would be healed from the cancer. And he said, the professor said kindly, he said, please, don't pray for my wife to be healed.

Pray that God would be glorified in how we respond to this. Pray that we would have open doors for the proclamation of the gospel.

But it's not a matter of whether God chooses to heal her or not. That's not the issue. The issue is, do we think about it rightly?

Are we willing to be conformed to the image of Christ, or do we want our own way?

Okay, components of prayer. And by the way, this will mean nothing to you guys until I tell you.

But there was a book called, how many of you have ever read The Hour That Changes the World? Book by Dick Eastman on prayer.

Anybody ever read this? It is one of the worst books I've ever read, and it was a required book in seminary.

And I spent the whole, in fact, I'll tell you how bad it was. After I was done with the class, I put it in the student lounge, please take for free, so that, you know, the next guy wouldn't have to buy the book.

The prof who gave this, or required this book, spends the whole semester and the whole syllabus telling us why the book is wrong, but he took some of the ideas out of it, so I did the same thing.

Okay, components of prayer taken from Dick Eastman, from his horrible book that you should never read.

But these are good principles, it's just how he applies the principles that are just horrendous.

First, praise. Praise should be part of our prayer. Let's look at Psalm 63 .3.

You know, if you make a list, and here's why I suggest this to you, if you make a list like this, and you go, this is how

I'm going to pray, and just go right through this, your prayer life will change radically.

Let's look at Psalm 63 .3. And who has that?

No one dares get there before me. 63 .3, okay. Because your loving kindness is better than life, my lips will praise you.

And I'm here to say, I cannot think of a praise that we can utter about God that is not a form of prayer.

Whenever we say it, however we say it, whether we're standing in a room filled with people, we are praising

God, and I think that is a form of prayer. Why should we praise Him during our prayer?

Why should we do that? Brian, okay?

He's worthy of it. That's a good enough reason right there. And if, think about it, if this is true, if what we are trying to do in prayer is to conform ourselves to God's will, then how better to think the thoughts about God that He has given us

Himself. To read a psalm, to read some great truths in Scripture about Him, and then to just pray about those things.

Yes, that's right.

Daniel said it puts us in the right mindset. It gives us the right view of God, even as we start our prayer.

If we think of Him as the sovereign of the universe, really if we think of it almost, and this is true in and of ourselves, do we have the right to approach the throne of God?

In and of ourselves, the answer is no. We are only granted that through Christ. Again, if we establish in our own minds, in our own prayer, the creator -creature relationship, and we think about how far removed we are from Him in many ways, it's a blessing.

And always remember to turn off your BlackBerry before you teach Sunday school. I should have some kind of instruction right across the top of the page.

Turn off BlackBerry. Some ways that we can praise

Him. First of all, we can praise His name. Psalm 115 .1.

We mentioned weeks ago Exodus 3 .14. God says to Moses, Moses says,

Who shall I tell them sent me? What's your name? Kind of question. And God says, Tell them

I am sent you. And just that alone, if you just think,

I praise you as the great I am, as the self -existent one, as the one who can never lose any power.

If you just contemplate that thought alone, that should carry you on for a few minutes.

I mean, we think, it's just amazing to think how the Puritans would pray and how we could pray if we were devoted to it.

The ideas of Scripture, the concept of self -existence or of immutability or all these things are really mind -boggling and things that we could spend a lot of time praising

God about. But we're talking about His name. Psalm 115 .1. Not to us.

This sounds like the words of a song. Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory.

Because of your loving -kindness, because of your truth. His name deserves glory.

Why? The psalmist says here, because of your loving -kindness. And by the way, sometimes in our song sheets, and I know why this happens.

Anybody know why loving -kindness in our song sheets is sometimes split into two words? In fact, all the time split into two words.

Because the English dictionary doesn't recognize it as one word. But it is, at least in the word thing.

But it is one word. In fact, kind of every time I look at it, I'm going, it needs to be one word. You know, mental note to self.

Tell the people. Of course, I don't remember. My mental notes just don't work.

I don't know why that is. Because of your loving -kindness.

His mercy. I mean, it's kind of an Old Testament word for mercy and grace and everything altogether.

The goodness of God. His abundant goodness. We praise

Him for that. Secondly, for His righteousness. I mean, there are so many aspects of Him that we can just praise.

That we can just reflect on and think of. And you know, I mean, I could add, I still like the bumper sticker, and I'm thinking about trying to figure out how to put it in my truck window there.

You know, God is wrath. I figure it will start a few conversations anyway. But you know, we can thank

Him for all of His attributes. Praise Him for all of His attributes. His righteousness.

Let's look at Psalm 35, 28. When we start,

I think it's a great place to start prayer. There is no formula for praying. It wouldn't be right to pray the prayer of Jabez or the prayer of Steve or the prayer of anyone else and expect to get anything out of it.

But there are certain things, certain components of prayer that can be just a great encouragement to our own prayer life.

And when we just consider and contemplate the attributes of God, I think we are encouraged and we are reminded of who we are and how great

God is. Psalm 35, 28, anybody have that? Okay, all day long, speaking of His righteousness.

It's a long time. His creation. Should we praise Him for His creation?

Why wouldn't we want to praise Him for His creation? Because without His creation, we wouldn't exist.

I mean, that's a great thing to praise Him for. And just to think about the power inherent in that.

Psalm 150, verse 2. Who has that? Somebody does.

Caitlin. Again, boy, those sound like lyrics from a song or something.

Praise Him for His mighty deeds, for His excellent greatness. What has He done? Well, He's created everything.

And we would see that if we looked at verse 1. Praise God in His sanctuary. Praise Him in His mighty expanse. We praise

Him wherever He is. And for all that He has done.

His Word. We should praise Him for His Word. Psalm 56, verse 10.

In God, whose Word I praise. In the Lord, whose Word I praise. Why would we praise the

Word of God and not praise the God of the Word? Of course we do that. We love the

Word, and we love the God of the Word. Secondly, waiting on the

Lord. Waiting on the Lord. Components of praise, or of prayer. Now, some people,

I think there's kind of a, you know, what is waiting on the

Lord? Okay?

Be still and know that I am God. Okay? Understanding that He has a plan.

Now, what is not waiting on the Lord? Because here's what

I typically, I think, is kind of the neo -evangelical view of waiting on the

Lord. It's kind of, okay, I'm just going to pray, and then I'm just going to wait, and I'm going to listen and see what

God has to say to me. I think that's what a lot of people think. I was talking to somebody the other day, charismatic, and he goes to a charismatic church, and I said, well, do they ever get in the pulpit and say,

God told me? He said, yes. And I said, how do you, you know, how do you view that?

He was like, I'm not really too comfortable with that. He goes, probably the worst is when the pastor spent all week studying a passage, and then gets up on Sunday morning and says,

God told me not to preach what I've prepared and to preach something else. That would be pretty bad.

I'm glad God's never told me that, because I would be deeply concerned. Waiting on the

Lord, I think it was Peggy who started reading this, 4610,

Psalm 4610. Cease striving and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations.

I will be exalted in the earth. Cease striving.

Like what MacArthur says here, these twin commands to not panic and to recognize his sovereignty are probably directed to both his nation for comfort and all other nations for warning.

I mean, if we think about that personally, stop worrying. Don't panic.

Why? Because the God you worship wasn't caught off guard by your circumstances.

He's not surprised by what's going on. He's not surprised that you lost your job. He's not surprised that you're struggling in your marriage.

He's not surprised by the illness in your family, whatever the situation is.

Panic is worry. What are those things? They're sin. Why? Because they're basically an admission.

God, I'm just not trusting you right now. I'm going to take this on myself. I'm going to worry.

I'm going to fret. I'm going to struggle. Cease striving and know that I am

God. Your situation may be bad, but God hasn't left the throne.

I mean, when you consider that whatever your current circumstances are, the God of the universe, the

God who formed you, the God who spoke, and all of the universe leapt into existence,

He's on your side. He wants not what's best for you right now, but what is best for you.

He is conforming you into the image of His Son, and you're worried. Number three, confession.

Confession. We should praise God. We should wait on Him. We should acknowledge that He's in control.

We should trust Him. We should confess. Thirdly, we should confess.

Confess what? You often hear confession. You know,

I wonder what good does it do to go to a man and confess your sins besides solely the mind of that man.

You know, someone says, Pastor, I'd like to come in for a confession. I'm like, please don't.

You know, I don't. I don't want to know the details. I have enough issues in my own life.

I don't want to, you know, take in all that stuff. I mean, there may be times where I do have to get involved on that level, but I don't want to.

Who would want to? What is confession? True confession is going and telling somebody else what you've done.

No. What is it, Brian? Okay? It's agreeing with God.

And, you know, not just verbally. I know that's not what Brian's saying. It's not just, you know,

God, I agree with you that I've done this wrong and I've done that wrong. It is a real brokenheartedness.

It is a Psalm 51 cry. It's a crushing kind of acknowledgement against thee and thee only have

I sinned. Someday I'll stop saying thee, but I don't know when that'll be. But it is a heartfelt acknowledgement and agreement with God that your sin is against Him and Him alone.

Let's look at Psalm 51 .10 as I turn my head and go off the microphone.

Psalm 51, verse 10. Who has that?

Dan. Why is

David crying for a clean heart? What does that just imply right there?

Creating me a clean heart, so therefore my heart is not clean. It's sinful.

It needs cleansing. I know that there are things within me that do not please

You. Remove them from me. That's confession.

I mean, the worst example... You see movies. It seems like everyone in the world must be Roman Catholic because everybody's going into a confession booth.

Father, forgive me. It's been 15 years since my last confession. What have you done? Well, you know...

And they just rattle off all these sins, but there's no heartfelt pain.

There's no agreeing with God that it's a sin against Him.

It's just a matter of unburdening oneself. I just want to rattle off everything I've done. That's not confession.

Fourthly, Scripture praying. Scripture praying. Let's look at Jeremiah 23 -29.

How many were here? I think I was here. I can think of his face.

What was the conference we had? Yes, I see that hand. Don Whitney. How many were here for Don Whitney's session on prayer and through the

Scriptures? It was very, very good. I would encourage you, if you weren't here, to download that for free at bbcchurch .org.

Thank you. Very nice plug. Jeremiah 23 -29.

And who has that? Yes, Barbara.

You say, what does that have to do with prayer? Well, I'm going to tell you what it has to do with prayer. I mean, this is an application. What happens when we apply the

Word of God to ourselves? I mean,

I guess we could go to Hebrews for this, too. But what happens when the Word of God is applied to our own hearts, when it's applied to our own minds,

Bruce? It breaks us.

It shatters us. And so what we do is, you know, people say, well, how can you pray for longer than three minutes?

I mean, I run out of things to say. My mind wanders. Well, we'll talk more about this.

But one of the things you can do is you can actually pray through Scripture. For example, as attributes of God come up, and you're reading through Scripture, you praise

Him for those things. As you recognize, as you're going through the text, as you see sins that you've committed, you confess those things.

You go, Lord, forgive me for these. But we're going to talk a little bit more about that in a minute here.

Watching, a watchfulness. Let's look first at what MacArthur says here about watching during prayer.

In its most general sense, this means to stay awake while praying. You know,

Mike talks sometimes about preach praying, where you're praying, and actually it's a sermon directed towards somebody.

Well, what about sleep praying? Can you do that, you know? I get eight hours of solid praying in every night.

No, no. Again to MacArthur, he says, but Paul has in mind, in Colossians 4, 2, the broader implication of staying alert for specific needs about which to pray, rather than being vague and unfocused.

Just as a silly example, you know, I'd pray for world peace.

Well, it's only silly in the sense that we won't have it until the Lord returns. But could you pray specifically if you thought, you know, conflict is really on my mind, and I want to be praying for peace.

Well, I have a better idea than praying for world peace, which you know will not happen until the second coming. What about praying for peace in families?

Peace in marriages? You know, how often do we pray for the marriages of the people here that we know?

You know, well, hey, they come to church every Sunday, everything must be okay. I think there are a lot of people struggling in those sorts of relationships, and we should be praying for them.

Let's look at Matthew 26. Matthew 26, 41.

Near the end of the ministry. At the end.

The ministry of the Lord. 26, 41. I'm going to back up just a little bit.

I'll read it. Verse 40.

And he came to the disciples and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, So you men could not keep watch with me for one hour.

By the way, that's where the one hour prayer came from. Verse 41. Keep watching and praying that you may not enter into temptation.

The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. Well, certainly, is it easy to wander while you're praying?

The flesh is weak. You know, how often do you start praying, and the next thing you know, you're like, wait a minute,

I haven't paid the electricity bill yet. You know, and then the electricity bill leads to something else, and the next thing you know, you're wondering what you're going to have for dinner tonight, and then you go, oh yeah,

I was praying. And my suggestion on these components of prayer is, if you have a list, if you are prepared to pray, it is a lot easier to stay on task, to do what you originally designed to do.

You know, you're like, you know, I can never pray for more than two minutes. Well, the reason is because you haven't trained yourself to pray for more than two minutes.

You haven't set up a plan for it. Let's look at number six, intercession.

By interceding, what do we mean? It's not interception, by the way. You don't intercept somebody's prayer, or intercept someone else in prayer.

What is intercession? It's on behalf of someone else.

You're praying on behalf of someone else. You're praying for the benefit of someone else.

You're thinking of others. Let's look at 1 Timothy 2, verses 1 and 2. Our pastor taught on this a few weeks ago.

Anybody have verses 1 and 2 of 1 Timothy 2? Steve. Certainly we want to be praying for our leaders, but we also want to be praying for everybody.

I mentioned the idea before of praying for the marriages of other people in the church, praying for the salvation of other children.

It's amazing when you start thinking about the people you'd like to see saved just in your own life, and then you start associating other people in this exact same situation as you.

They have children who don't love the Lord. They have brothers who are homosexual.

They have whatever, and you just start thinking about that. And you know what? If you're thinking rightly about it, your heart breaks just as theirs does.

You want to intercede. You want to pray for others. Why? Because you want to bear their burdens. You want to share them, and you want the

God of the universe to answer prayer. You want Him to come to these specific situations and to intervene.

I don't know. I haven't done a survey on this. I haven't done a study on this, but I suspect that if we were to look at the prayer life of most evangelicals, we would find out that they pray before every meal, and that they pray for themselves and their own concerns, and that there may be something else there they'd like to see somebody get saved.

But I think we have a pretty limited, and I say we guardedly, I think we have a pretty small sphere for what we pray for.

Are we praying for the saints being persecuted in India? Are we praying for the fruitfulness of missionaries in Africa?

Are we even concerned about people outside of our own household?

We need to be. We need to be. Number seven, petition.

Petition. Now, this isn't something that you sign and then give to God. Petition, Matthew 7.

What is a petition? In its most generic use, what is a petition?

Asking a request, right? Who has verse 7 of Matthew 7?

Carl. What's Jesus saying here?

It's such an amazing concept, right? He, Jesus will also say that if your earthly father knows how to give good gifts, how much more so your heavenly father now, or actually he talks about evil men know that, then how much more your heavenly father will do that which is good.

Do we actually approach God believing that he will do what we ask him to do?

Do we go to him saying, you know, faithful, knowing, filled with faith, knowing that he is able to do things, and do we just kind of throw them up there and go, you know what, if you want to go ahead and take a swing at that, or really focused on the idea that God can do these things.

I know you can do these things, Lord. I pray that it would be your will. Specifically in regards to salvation, you know, is anything too difficult for God?

I don't think so. But in all things, whether it's money, whether it's relationships, all the things that our lives are concerned and focused on, he is able to resolve them.

We need to ask. We need to ask. So often our lives revolve around complaining, calling other people, telling them all our problems, instead of, you know, it's what

Pastor Mike calls, going to the phone before we go to the throne, and it needs to be the opposite. We need to go to the throne room of God, not to the phone to tell everybody what we need or complain about things.

Eighth, thanksgiving. Thanksgiving. Who can recite 1

Thessalonians 5 .18? In all things, give thanks.

That was pretty tough. In all things, give thanks.

I could, you know, if I was a good Puritan, I could probably wax eloquent for the next two hours on what all things would consist of.

Suffice it to say, we have a lot to be thankful for, and that should be part of our prayer life.

What is the number one thing that is just mind -blowing that we should be thankful for? Salvation.

What an amazing thing that God would condescend to die for me. Number nine, singing.

How many of you have ever sung during prayer? Raise your hand. How many of you have ever wished that you hadn't sung during your prayer?

Can't stand your own singing. Psalm... There I was in the middle of prayer, and I just really hit a bad note.

Psalm 100, verse 2. Serve the

Lord with gladness. Come before Him with joyful singing. We often think, well, this is only, you know, we can only do this when we go to church.

That's the only time we can sing. I think, you know, we miss a great opportunity. Again, you know, this seminary class, we had to do all these things, had to do all these things.

There is nothing, again, along with Scripture, when you're reading Scripture, when you're praying through Scripture, singing a song that is praiseworthy of God keeps your mind focused on what?

On God. I mean, it's a shocking concept. You want to pray, you want not to wander? Well, first of all, may

I suggest a couple of things to you? It is harder for your mind to wander when you pray aloud than it is when you pray silently.

It takes a little more effort, a little more focus to actually speak. I mean, if you speak a lot, you might find it easy to multitask.

You know, talk about one thing mindlessly while your mind is actually doing something else. But for most of us, if we are speaking, that occupies most of our capacity.

You know, you don't balance your checkbook and speak at the same time. Typically, I don't. Does anybody do that?

I don't want to know. All right. But this is talked about in additional, if you're wondering what the 41X is, that's 41 more times in the

Psalms. The idea of seeing the praises of God. This is a good thing to do in prayer.

Good thing to do in prayer. Let's look at Joshua 1 .8 for meditation. Now, meditation is not holding your thumb and forefinger together, you know, out here on the side, burning incense and, you know, chanting something.

Contra to Eastern mystical religions, Christianity is a cognitive religion.

It is a religion of the mind. You are to engage your brain. And when we say meditate, we don't mean empty your mind.

What do we mean? Well, we're going to look at Joshua 1 .8 and we'll see what we mean.

Who has Joshua 1 .8? Brian. We are to meditate on the

Word of God. We're to meditate on Him, on the truths contained therein.

Now, I just want to kind of, because we're going to be doing something else for the next couple of weeks, so I want to kind of wrap this up.

But when we meditate, if we look at page 29 here, we want to meditate on God, on God's Word, on His works, on His past victories.

The Old Testament is filled with remember the God who delivered you from Egypt. Remember the...

Why? Because it just shows how great and powerful

He is. So if we remember the God of our salvation, the God who transformed us, who transferred us from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light, that's a very positive thing to bring to mind while we're praying.

Why? Because it gives us confidence. If God could take me and save me and change the entire direction of my life, can

He not also do this? Focus on... We meditate on the good stuff in God's creation.

We meditate on listening. Now, some comments here about listening. Prayer is serious business.

This is Wiersbe saying this. Like marriage, it must not be entered into lightly or carelessly, but soberly and in the fear of God.

If you and I were privileged to bring our needs and requests to the White House or to Buckingham Palace, that's where the

Queen of England lives, we would prepare our words carefully and exhibit proper behavior, right?

You wouldn't go into the White House and say, Hey, what's up, Mr. President? And flop down on the couch and say,

Hey, could you bring me some nachos and maybe a Diet Coke or something? We would be very...

We'd be kind of almost, if I could use this word, reverent. Be very cautious and careful.

And he says here, How much more important is it when we come to the throne of Almighty God?

Yet there is so much flippant praying done by people who seem to know nothing about the fear of the

Lord. We also want to focus on praising

Him. I mean, if you get stuck, you just praise God. And not just... We were talking about this last night.

We had a little get -together at our house and some of these false teachers, whenever they get stuck, instead of saying, uh, or um, or hmm, they just go,

Glory to God. I mean, they throw it out there. Like it's absolutely... If you watch them long enough, you realize it's absolutely meaningless to them.

They're just throwing... This is just a catchphrase. Let's talk quickly about dangerous approaches to prayer.

First, the idea that God is some kind of cosmic vending machine. That you just can, you know, pull whatever lever and get whatever you want.

That God is obligated to do something. The sovereign of the universe is never obligated.

Secondly, the prayer of Jabez. What's wrong with the prayer of Jabez? There's a little book called,

All I Wanted Was More Land, you know. It's kind of mocking this whole idea of the prayer of Jabez.

I mean, I could make multiple criticisms of the book, but the bottom line is, we are not ever told in the

New Testament to repeat an Old Testament prayer ad nauseum, and that God is somehow going to bless that Old Testament prayer.

So there's nothing in the prayer of Jabez that serves as a model for Christians. Certainly, if Jesus wanted us to pray that way, he would have said,

When you pray, pray in the manner of Jabez. One of my favorites, in fact,

I passed a church here not too long ago that had this out front. 2 Chronicles 7 .14. You know, if my people will...

What is it? What is it? Call upon my name, then

I will heal their land or whatever, which is great. But hermeneutically, there's a little problem there.

He's talking about Israel, not about the United States. As far as I know, and nobody's ever proved to me otherwise, the

American people are not God's chosen people. Don't confuse those two. Israel, United States, different.

A blasé attitude, meaning, you know, I could take it or leave it, or I'm just going to pray to just kind of go through it.

It's kind of a rote thing I do. You know, three times a day, whether I mean it or not, I pray. I like how, you know, the word processor does get a little praise here, because it did throw the accent mark on blasé for me.

So I like that. The solution to all these problems with prayer, remember that you have access to the very throne of God.

That should be a humbling and exciting thing, as you consider prayer.

Now, dealing with distractions, I mentioned that we are prone to wander. First, I suggest here, having a plan.

Prepare with a psalm or theologically sound music. You can listen to it, but I prefer, if you're going to listen to something, if you're going to put it on a

CD or an iPod, you know, people are like, I mean, it's like my kids don't know what an album is.

You know, someday the day will come where nobody knows what a CD is, because you just don't buy them anymore.

But turn on some theologically sound music and sing along with it.

Secondly, have a purpose. Make a list, follow it, deviating as other needs come to mind.

If you, you know, it's kind of like the old adage, if you, you know, fail to plan, you plan to fail.

Same kind of thing, you know, you want to know why your prayer life never gets anywhere, it's because you never take any time to think about it. Third, have a place.

If possible, isolate yourself. I mean, this is, we live in an age where it's so easy to get distracted.

And if you have the opportunity to have a place where you can be alone, there is no phone in the room, no

TV, no radio, you know, just you and your MP3 player, those are positive, positive things.

Some books I recommend, Spiritual Reformation by D .A. Carson, excellent book.

Lord Teach Me How to Pray by John MacArthur, also The Valley of Vision by the Puritans. How many of you have that?

Everybody should have it. Just a series of really good prayers categorized different ways, but very, very helpful.

Let's go ahead and close in prayer. Our Father, would you indeed teach us to pray?

Would you lead us, shepherd us, give us an impetus to focus our minds even on preparation of prayer, that our lives might be transformed as we seek you, as we come before you, praising you, and contemplating your loving kindness, meditating on your word, singing your praises, uttering your praises, interceding for others.

Lord, so many issues that ought to be driving us to pray.