Why Intentional Prayers?

I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me now to two passages. We are going to look at John chapter 4 verse 24. And we are going to be then moving over to Acts chapter 2 and verse 42.

Corporate Worship, the Regulative Principle, and the Place of Prayer

We have been in a series now. It started, our series started in the Gospel of John, preaching verse by verse through the Gospel of John. And I have taken a break in chapter 4 at verse 24 to do a mini-series on the subject of corporate worship.

Now corporate worship is the worship that we do when we gather together as a church body as opposed to individual worship which we should all be doing and family worship which is good for us all to do along with our families.

There is something special and unique about what we call corporate worship. The time where we gather together as the people of God, as the church to worship God and we do this according to Scripture not just because we think we should but because the Bible commands that we do.

The Bible commands that we forsake not the assembling of ourselves together. It commands us to come together to read the Word of God publicly, to sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, to offer up prayers and to participate in the Lord's Supper.

These are the things God calls us to do. These are the things that we are commanded to do. And over the last four weeks, not including last week because I was out and thank Brother Andy again for leading the message as I was gone.

But over the last four weeks this is what we have looked at in this series. The first Sunday we looked at the elements of worship. What are the things that God's Word commands us to do? We talked about the regulative principle.

The regulative principle is a principle that came out of the Reformation and it basically says that we are only to do in worship what God commands us to do in worship. We are not to add our own ideas.

We are not to seek to be creative. We are to seek to be submissive. We are not to seek to try to invent ways of worship, but we are to seek to submit to God's ways in worship. When people say, I want to worship God my way, I respond by saying, no, we should want to worship God His way.

We don't get to invent how we worship God. So that's the regulative principle that God governs our worship. The second thing we looked at is the order of worship. We read 1 Corinthians 14 40, which says that all things are to be done decently and in order.

And the order of worship is called the liturgy. Some churches have a very specific order of worship. It's very structured and you follow along. You stand up, you sit down, you bow, you do different things during the service.

That's all part of a very structured liturgy. Often that's called high church liturgy. You'll see that in the Anglican church, the Lutheran church, and even some Presbyterian churches. Other churches are more considered, and I don't like this term, but it's considered low church.

Low, I think, sometimes means bad in some people's mind, like they're better, we're worse, or whatever. A low church would be a less structured liturgy, but the liturgy is still there. It's just less structured.

But any time we do things in worship, the elements put together and they create the liturgy. I say our church is sort of in the middle. I don't think we're high church, but I also don't think we're low church.

I think we're somewhere trying to find that balance of having all of the elements of worship, but not being so structured that there's no sense of any liberty at all. And so, I don't know, what do you call that?

Middle church, is that what you said? Yeah. So, the third week we looked at the role of praise, the role of music, the role of singing. Why do we sing? What do we sing? How do we sing? And that was two weeks ago.

Well, today we're going to address the question about prayer. Specifically this question, why do we pray the prayers that we pray? Why do we pray intentionally? And my hope, my goal for today's message is not only would we recognize why we pray the prayers we do in worship, but that you would take today's sermon and apply this to your own prayer life.

Because as our prayers become more intentional, we will become better prayers. I fear that often what we do in our prayers is we often simply follow a script in our mind. And I know this because I hear it even in myself sometimes.

I'll hear the repetition and I'll hear it in my children. They'll come home from school and I'll ask them to pray or something and they'll pray and I'll say, where'd you hear that? Well, they heard it at school and they're hearing that repetition.

That's not always bad because you're learning things. But the point of the matter is we should be intentional in our prayers. And today we're going to talk about the seven different prayers we do in our worship service and why each one of them is focused and intentional and specific to what we're doing in worship and how we can apply that to our own lives even outside of the worship service.

What's worship? What did I say a few weeks ago? Worship is basic training for the Christian. We come here and we get order and structure for what? So that we go out into the chaos of the world ready to stand against the wiles of the devil.

We come here like basic training. And so that is our focus of today. And again, we're going to look at two passages. With your Bibles open, I invite you to stand for us to read. The first one is the passage that started this series, John 4, 24.

Jesus is speaking. And he says, Now turning our Bibles over to Acts 2. I'll give you a moment to do that. Over to Acts chapter 2 and verse 42. This is the early apostles living out the life of the church in its infancy.

And this is the first words that tell us what they did when they came together. Here in Acts 2, 42 it says, Father in heaven, I thank you for your word. I pray that now as we seek to understand your word, that you would keep me from error.

For Lord, I am a fallible man. And as I pray every time I stand behind the pulpit, Lord, keep me from error. And I pray that today's message would be instructive. That it would be encouraging. That it would be exhortative.

But most of all, Lord, that it would be accurate to what your word tells us. I pray, O God, for the hearts of the people listening. For the believers, I pray that they would be encouraged in their prayer life.

And that we would recognize that prayer is a gift. It's an awesome opportunity to go boldly before the throne of God. When we shouldn't even have that privilege, O God. But you have given it to us through your son, Jesus Christ.

And I pray, O God, for the unbelievers in the room. For those who have not bowed the knee to the Lord Jesus Christ. May it be that today, that they would hear the gospel and be saved. But Lord, we know that that is not something we can manufacture.

But something that only you can do. For only you, God, can change a heart. So we pray this all, Lord. With full reliance upon you. In Jesus' precious name.

Amen.

When we talked about the elements of worship a few weeks ago. We addressed the various parts of the worship service. We said there's singing. There is reading of scripture. There's participation in communion.

And I said there are prayers. Well, an element which is becoming conspicuously absent in modern worship services. Is the practice of intentional corporate prayer. And the prayers that do exist in many modern worship services.

Tend to be extemporaneous. With little to no thought put into them beforehand. Someone just gets up and let it rip. Many in the last generation were convinced that the only way to show true spirituality. Was to do things extemporaneously.

If you plan something, you lack the spirit. If you plan something, it's not coming from God. It's coming from your own intentional devices. And what happened is we ended up with worship services. With prayers that become extended word salads.

Which are essentially just over and over filled with sentimentalism. Colloquialism. And sometimes things that aren't even correct. Because we're doing it off the cuff. And we say well we're just relying on the spirit.

We're just trusting in the spirit. We don't want to plan our prayers ahead of time. We don't want to think about our prayers ahead of time. Because if we think about our prayers ahead of time. Then what we're doing is we're squelching the spirit.

Or we're quenching the spirit. Do you think that about the sermon? What would happen if I stopped preparing sermons? If I stopped studying? If I stopped reading prior to this? If I just came and opened my Bible and started preaching?

Now I might could get away with that for a few weeks. I might have enough in the tank that I could make that work. I mean I might be able to get away with it for six months. But eventually if I don't think about what I'm doing.

If I don't study. If I don't plan. If I don't do those things. My sermons are going to become what? Just a series of repetition. Just a series of same stories. Same things over and over and over. In fact I mean the reality is.

That's what a lot of sermons are isn't it? You listen to a lot of folks. And it's just unplanned mess. Not a lot of thought goes into it. I'm not trying to be too judgmental here. I'm just saying the reality is that this is 20 years doing this.

And I still have to study every week to bring the word. Are we giving intentional time to think about what we're going to pray? Are we giving the intentional time to how we're going to come before the Lord with our prayers?

I think this is an important question to ask. Because what has happened is there is a shallowness in many of our prayers. They're filled with cliches. They have no resemblance to the prayers of scripture.

I want you to think for just a moment. I want you to think of some of the wonderful prayers of scripture. The prayer of Hannah. Mother of Samuel. The prayer of Mary. Mother of Jesus. The prayers of Moses.

Think of these things and compare them to the modern worship service and the prayers that go on there. Filled with recitations of who God is and what God is. Filled with wonderful recountings of what God has done are the prayers of scripture.

But often the prayers in modern worship are anemic and weak and thoughtless. And yet we think well it's we're doing it extemporaneously that makes it great.

Not always. Not always.

As I was thinking about this sermon and I know this series has been different and those of you who are new or guests with us today. This has been a weird series. I've talked about singing and why we sing and how we sing.

I've talked about why we do liturgy and how we do liturgy. And it's an odd series but my point is this. How many of you have been in church 10, 15, 20, 30 years and you've never thought about why we do what we do when we come here.

Why we do everything that we do. Including the prayers. This to me is so valuable because we should not do things just because.

We should know why we do them.

We should know how we should do them. That's what this whole series has been about. The text that we read this morning. Jesus says we are to worship two ways.

What?

In spirit and in truth. And as I said and I've said this over the weeks but I'll say it again today. Many people take that phrase worship in spirit to mean to worship according to our spirit. In the sense of some kind of free libertarian just do what you want.

Worship spirit filled. But notice it's also tied to another word. And the word is truth. When Jesus said we are to worship in spirit in the context of this passage. He's referring to the inner man and he's talking in context regarding what the woman at the well had asked.

She said are we supposed to worship in Jerusalem or are we supposed to worship on Mount Gerizim? And Jesus said there's coming a day when you're not going to worship here or there. But you're going to worship in spirit.

Meaning according to the inner man. But you're also going to be worshiping what? According to truth. And so there is a bifold point to be made. If you're worshiping in spirit but not in truth you're not worshiping as God commands.

And if you're worshiping in truth but not in spirit you're not worshiping as God commands. And so there is a twofold truth. We are to worship in spirit and in truth. Therefore we should consider how we worship.

What we say.

What we do.

Every aspect of our worship service should be considered from beginning to end. Nothing should be haphazard. Nothing should be without thought. This is what I think people think worship is supposed to be.

It's just supposed to be full freedom without thinking about what we're doing. Just let the spirit take over. Now I am not seeking to drive a nail in our foot and keep us from tapping our toe or clapping our hand.

I mean you heard us sing earlier. But worship is not to be chaotic. That's been part of this whole series is preaching against the chaos of modern worship. And I've given you example after example of things that I've seen.

Many of you know through our online ministry I have the opportunity to talk to, speak to, and even interact with people from many different cultures of church life. And there is a lot that goes on today that is just filled with chaos.

And it's called worship. It's a strange fire offered up to the Lord. And it's dangerous. We need to be intentional with how we worship. We need to come into this place intentional with what we do. And one of the things that we do is we be intentional about our prayers.

In Acts 2 .42, which is our second text for this morning, we have the fourfold liturgy of the early church. In fact, I would say this. I would say a church that is not doing these four things is the bare minimum.

If a church is not doing these four things is the bare minimum, a church is not worshiping. Church is not doing what they're called to do. And as I said, there are other things. Singing is not in this list.

I do think singing is a part of worship. Paul calls us to psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. But these four things are the bare minimum to call it worship. Because this is what the apostles were doing in the early church.

This is the fourfold liturgy of the infant church. The fourfold liturgy of the infant church. Notice what the text says. It says they devoted themselves to these four things. Number one was the apostles' doctrine.

That's my sermon for next week. Because next week I'm going to preach on preaching. Which I know is a weird thing. But I'm going to preach on why we preach. Why do we read the word publicly, explain the word publicly, and apply and exhort from the word publicly.

Why do we do that?

Because the Bible commands us to. Paul actually says to young Timothy, Preach the word, in season and out of season. He's commanding him what to do in the corporate worship service. And that's part of what we do.

As we preach. And what do we preach? We preach the apostles' doctrine. What does the word doctrine mean? It means teaching. What were the apostles teaching? They were teaching about Jesus. They were teaching how the Old Testament pointed to Jesus.

That's our job. That's part of worship. If we don't do that, we haven't really done all the things that we're called to do in worship. So the first is the apostles' doctrine. The second is fellowship.

Now this one may seem odd because you may not think about fellowship as a part of worship. But fellowship, the Greek word koinonia, it means participation in sharing and partnering in our lives together.

It's not just gathering socially. But it's gathering for the purpose of living our Christian lives together and worshiping Christ together.

Koinonia.

It's the idea of having this in common. We gather together to worship in common. It involves mutual care, accountability, material generosity. All of those are part of our worship. In fact, we simulate.

I don't even want to say simulate because that's not the right word. We signify this moment in the worship service when I say, turn and greet your neighbors. I know a lot of people, and I've talked about this before, but we always have new people so I just want to remind you.

I know a lot of people who don't like that part. Whether it's introversion because they don't want to greet their neighbor, they feel awkward, and some people say, oh, you're stopping worship. You're not stopping worship.

Because actually telling someone that you are glad to see them in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ is part of what we are called to do. This is part of the koinonia. This is part of worship. It doesn't stop worship.

It actually continues in an aspect of worship of recognizing that you're not here alone. And this is why as much as I appreciate introverts, and I am not one, so I have a hard time recognizing that feeling that you get, but I recognize that there are people who would rather sort of not be noticed and that introversion happens.

But my encouragement to you is simply to recognize this, is we are here together, not apart. This is not a hundred people in separate worship. This is a hundred people gathered as one body in worship.

And from the earliest moments of the church's existence, it did, and I've said this, they did what was called passing the peace. And that is where they would turn to their neighbor, they would extend their hand, or they would offer a holy kiss, and they would say, peace be unto you, and they would say, peace be unto you.

This was the passing of the peace. This goes back to the early church. So this isn't just some, hey, we want to have fun. Now we do get a little carried away. Brother Andy has to stop y 'all sometimes, because y 'all talk for an hour.

But it is part of worship.

Brother Andy always comes up here, he looks at me, I look at him,.

I'm like, I don't know.

Just tell him to stop. Because we've got to move on with the worship. But it's a part of worship. You know what else is part of koinonia? What's part of this?

It's giving.

Giving is part of the fellowship. Because as we gather together and we give to the church, we're giving for the needs of the church to be fulfilled, and we're doing that corporately. A lot of churches have removed the giving portion of the worship.

They put it at, you know, maybe have the boxes in the back or something, or maybe they do everything online. And that's fine. I'm not saying that that's necessarily wrong. But we want it to be part of the gathered worship service.

We want it to be part of what we do. That there be a moment in the worship service where we actually come together and we lay up our offerings in a common container, showing that we're in this together as the body of Christ.

Koinonia. We have partnered together in ministry. That's part of what we do when we give. So, again, they gather together for the apostles' doctrine. That's teaching, reading the word, explaining the word.

That's that. Koinonia, that's fellowship with one another, loving one another, asking each other for prayer requests, giving to the church. All of those things are part of the koinonia here. The third thing is what?

Breaking of bread. By the way, two weeks, that's my sermon. Because in two weeks I'm preaching on why we do the Lord's Supper the way we do it and why do we do it every week. Because we do it here every week.

And I do believe this is the breaking of bread. I believe Acts 2 .42 is not just talking about gathering together to eat together. That's what we normally think of fellowship, right? In fact, we used to call that area before we took the wall down, we used to call that area back there, what do we call it?

The fellowship hall. What does fellowship mean in that context? That's the grub hub, right? That's where we go eat. That's what we think of. But fellowship is being in common with one another, loving one another, gathering together.

And the breaking of the bread, it has the definite article. By the way, the definite article, the, indicates it's the breaking of bread, not just a breaking of bread or type of breaking of bread. It's the taking of the Lord's Supper.

You know how they did it in the early church? They would eat a meal together. They called it the agape or the agape feast, the feast of love. They would eat a meal together and at some point in the meal, they would take bread and they would break it and they would say, this bread is now sanctified unto the Lord as what represents the body.

And they would take the cup and say, this cup is now sanctified to the Lord as what represents his blood. They would pass it and they would have the Lord's Supper as part of a meal. Now we don't do a meal every week together.

It'd be great. It'd be logistically difficult, but we can have the Lord's Supper together every week without having to have a full meal. So we do. So the early church, they met together to be taught. They met together to love one another.

By the way, the one and others in scripture, that's the fellowship. The one and others love one another, share with one another, forgive one another, all those things. They took the Lord's Supper together.

And what's the last one on the list? The fourth one. Notice the prayers. Not just prayer. They didn't gather together just to pray in a general sense, but they gathered together for specific and intentional prayers.

Specific and intentional prayers. Now, I believe there are seven specific prayers that we pray in the worship service. Seven specific prayers that we pray in the worship service. And I'm going to outline those for you today as part of this sermon because I want you to know why we do what we do and what each prayer is supposed to be.

And these are led by different people. Sometimes they'll be led by an elder. Sometimes they'll be led by a deacon. Sometimes they might be led by a person who's not holding an office in the church. That might be rare, but it does happen.

But these seven specific prayers are a part of every one of our worship service. Here they are. And again, don't feel like you have to write everything down. If you want to copy my notes, just ask. I'll give you a copy.

But we're going to walk through these seven different prayers and ask why do we do these. Why do we do these intentional prayers? Let's look first at the prayer of invocation. What does invocation mean?

Invocation means to call upon, to invite, to ask, to participate. What do we do at the very beginning of worship? We have a call to worship, which is what? Reading of scripture, which is followed by what?

A prayer of invocation. Now, here's something I want to note. This is not the time in worship to be praying for Aunt Edna's bunions. This is not the time to be praying for the supper. This is the time to pray God be with us as we worship.

Do you understand what I'm saying about that? Because sometimes we just pray any old thing. Well, I need to pray for this or pray for that. No, at the invocation, what do we pray for?

God be among us.

God be with us. Hear our prayers. Be with us as we worship. Aunt Edna's bunions are important. And we're going to pray for them during the time of intercession. Don't think I don't love Aunt Edna. I love Aunt Edna.

And by the way, there is no Aunt Edna that I know of. And if I did mention anybody by name, I wasn't trying to insult anybody. I'm just saying this particular prayer is intentional and specific. And the intentionality of the call to worship is important.

In fact, just for a moment, think about what we do at the beginning of worship. We call upon God. Psalm 95 would be an example of call to worship. It says, O come, let us sing to the Lord. Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation.

Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving in our hearts. Let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise. For the Lord is a great God and a great king above all gods. This is a reciting of who God is.

And then we say, Now God be among us. And we invoke his presence. This is the prayer and the word working together. By the way, I said a few weeks ago, I said that our entire worship service is structured around the prayers, these seven prayers.

But every one of these prayers is also structured around the word. So our worship service is not just structured around prayer. It's structured around the word. Because what do we have? The call to worship and the invocation.

And they work together. The second prayer is the prayer of dedication. The prayer of dedication. Now I would ask you this. What prayer is that? That's the prayer that the deacon comes and prays during the time of offering.

He will pray what? God, use these offerings for your purpose. We dedicate them to you. This is actually, we could call this the prayer of stewardship. What is stewardship, church? Stewardship is managing what God has given to us.

When God gives you a job and he gives you money through your job, you are now a steward of that. You're responsible for that. And when God encourages you in your heart to give that money to the church, what is our job as the church?

To be good stewards of it. To not misuse God's people's money. To not misplace or mishandle God's people's money. So we pray, God, put it in our hearts to give, but also give our elders, our leaders, our finance people, give them the responsible mind to do right by this money.

We all know what it's like to have money mishandled, don't we? We all know what it's like to have money stolen, to have money misappropriated, to be mistreated in that way. I was talking to set free guys this week.

You know, every Thursday I go there and preach to the men there. These are men who've gone through all kinds of different issues in life. Some coming off of drugs and alcohol, some coming out of homelessness, some coming out of prison.

And I was there Thursday and we were talking about this same subject, the subject of prayers. And the question came up about ministry. And they were asking me about qualifications for ministry, like what qualifies a man.

And I said, well, the Bible is very clear. If you read 1 Timothy 3, Titus 1 and 2, it gives you those qualifications for ministry. I said, but the real simple answer, I said, if you don't have women and money figured out, you ain't ready for the pulpit.

If you deal with lust and greed, you don't need to do this job. And that's just straight facts. Because the two things that destroy men most in ministry is lust and greed, women and money. You ain't got that figured out, you better back up.

What's the first requirement? That he be above reproach, the husband of one wife. That's the women part. And then it goes on to say the greedy part, that he not be a lover of money. But it also says some other things, not to be pugnacious, meaning a man who is violent, behavior, outbursts of anger.

There's other qualifications, but those two, first of all, better be taken care of. That was off the subject. I'll say that was a freebie. But it's important. So getting back to the prayer of dedication, we're dedicating this to God so that the church would use it well.

That's the prayer of dedication. When the guy comes up to pray for that, that's what we pray for. Adam came up this morning, he did a great job. He read from the scripture. Remember I said we tie our prayers to scripture?

And what did he read? That we would do this not under compulsion. For God loves a cheerful giver. So it's the word and prayer together, and we do that together.

All right.

I've got to move on quick because time goes faster than I think it does sometimes. Number three, prayer of intercession. Now I talked about this one earlier. The prayer of intercession is when we're praying for one another.

Generally, this will be an elder who comes forward. Either myself or Mike or Andy will come forward, and we will pray on behalf of the people. And I genuinely love this portion of the service. I do it less than the other two brothers.

They rotate me in every, I think it's every day. I just do it less just because of other things that I do in the worship service. But this part I love to pray for you guys because that's what it is. When Andy comes up, I know he loves to do it.

And when Mike comes up, I know he loves to do it. And we pray over the church. Mike always prays. Well, you all know what Mike prays. And by the way, repetition isn't bad, as I repeat myself too. Mike always prays for our young men, that they not be captured by lustful women.

And then for our young women, that they not be captured by young men who would take advantage of them. Like that's part of what the Proverbs say. That's what part of Scripture says, is that man be not carried away.

And so Mike gets up here and he prays for that because he's concerned about that. We've seen it happen. So we care. We pray for marriages. Because we know there are marriages that are hurting. We know there are relationships that are struggling.

We don't do that to call anyone out because no one knows who we're praying for, but we know we're praying for one another. And every marriage in this room needs prayer. Every relationship, fathers to their sons, mothers to their daughters, this is the intercessor prayer.

And we also pray confession. Now I know this is relatively recent in the life of our church, but we pray a prayer or we give a word of confession. And an assurance of forgiveness. And we do that because we believe that part of that corporate prayer is a time to offer up a confession to God that none of us are able in our lives outside.

None of us are able to live a perfect life and therefore when we come to the house of God, what's one of the things we do? We offer up a confession and a plea to God for His grace. Some people don't like to do that.

Some people don't want to address their own sin. But I think we should. We offer up petitions and confessions in our intercessions. Number four and five go together. And you may not have noticed these before, but number four and five are the prayers that go right before and right after the sermon.

What do we pray right before I preach? Lord, open the hearts of the people. Illuminate their minds. For the believer, may this be encouragement, instruction, and exhortation. And for the unbeliever, may it be what?

A day of reckoning for their soul. By the way, I forgot about Ananda's bunions. That was back at intercession. I should have mentioned that. But this wouldn't be for that. This would be for specifically for the people that will hear this word, may you illuminate their heart.

And then once the word is preached, what do we pray? A prayer of conviction. God, lay this message on our hearts and apply it. You could call it the prayer of application. But I like the prayer of conviction because that's what we're asking the Spirit to do.

Convict our hearts in the areas where we need. And then number six. This is one you might not think of. This is one you might not think comes out important. But it is the prayer of consecration. What does consecration mean?

It means to set something apart as holy. It comes from the Latin saccari, which means sacred. And consecrate means to set something apart as sacred or holy. We sing a song. It's been a while since we sang it.

But do you guys remember this hymn? Take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to Thee. We're asking God, make us holy. Set us apart. Make us holy. That's what consecrate means. When is the prayer of consecration?

At the table.

A deacon will come. And he prays, Lord, separate this bread. Separate this cup. Apart from all the other bread and cups that we will have this day and in this week, separate this bread and cup as holy unto you.

Because this represents your son's body and his blood. By the way, do you recognize what it means to set something apart as holy? It means literally making it unique. That's what holiness is. Holiness means to be unique, uncommon, separate, different.

This is why when people will say, why does it have to be bread and wine? Why do we have to do this this way? I remember R .C. Sproul was asked one time, he said, one of his students said, can we have peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and milk for communion?

And R .C. Sproul with that angry look he gives sometimes, he says, God has not consecrated peanut butter and jelly and milk. And we gather around this table with bread in the cup. We consecrate. We say, this is different.