A Prayer Guide

Silicon Valley Reformed Baptist Church

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in your praying, and there's nothing wrong with bringing your petitions to God, and as you read through the

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Bible, you'll realize that God really does encourage you over and over again to come to Him as a good

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Heavenly Father. He's not going to shame you for being a person who is fallible, who has needs.

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So certainly God is not looking upon you with disapproval when you bring requests to Him.

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You're invited to bring those requests to Him, but certainly there is more to prayer than simply just asking

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God for things. So we can sometimes treat God as a magic genie who we approach only when we have something that we need, and then when we fall into that temptation, we are dishonoring the

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Lord in a pretty fundamental and profound way. So when we think about how we should be praying, our biblical prayers should begin with adoration and praise, and as you read through the

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Psalms, one of the things you'll realize is that so much of the Psalms are devoted to praising God. So it's not just presenting requests as people who need certain things from God and are only using

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God as a means to an end. Our prayers to God should be filled with adoration and praise because God is worthy of all worship and He's worthy of all praise.

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You can imagine that on a human level. If you're a parent, you've ever had kids, you realize that kids have a great capacity to do this very thing that I'm talking about, where they'll come to you when they want something and then they'll largely ignore you during the rest of the time that you have with them.

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That is a natural temptation that people have. You see this, as I said, over and over and over again, to where you can view a person as a means to an end, and certainly there's nothing wrong with a kid coming, there's certainly nothing wrong with a child coming to their parent and presenting their request to them, but being a good child means there's more to prayer than that.

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There's more to a relationship with their parents than simply asking them for things and treating them as a means to an end.

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Certainly our prayers should be filled with adoration, certainly they should be filled with praise, and this is part of how the

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Lord's Prayer is meant to start. So we acknowledge who God is. We say, God is our

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Father. So in this biblical prescription for prayer, biblical framework of prayer, it starts out with acknowledgement that God is our

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Father. He's the source of our life. He's the source of everything that we have. He is a good

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Heavenly Father who has provided us everything that we need for life and godliness.

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He's the reason why we exist. We owe everything to Him. So just as a child owes their existence to their parents, so also we owe our existence to God, and when we approach

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God in prayer, it's proper to acknowledge our relationship to Him. So we acknowledge who

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He is. So not only are we acknowledging who He is, He's our Father, we're also acknowledging

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His location, as it were. Now God is obviously, He's everywhere, He's omnipresent,

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God is everywhere, but then acknowledging that our Father is in Heaven is a way of acknowledging His power and His authority and His rule over all the universe.

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So looking at God in that way, we're simply acknowledging something in phenomenological language about the nature of Him and His power and His authority.

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So when we approach God in prayer, we should be thinking in the first instance of giving

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Him praise, acknowledging who He is, and praising Him. So our Father in Heaven, hallowed be

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Your name. When we pray this way, we're essentially saying, God, You are worthy of all worship.

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You are worthy of all praise. And there's plenty of things that can fit in this general category that you might describe in the language of adoration and praise.

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Thanksgiving for who God is, for what He's done, for His attributes, His character,

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His purposes in the world. As you read through the Bible, what you're going to find is very often, biblical prayers are going to be centered around God's mighty acts in history,

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His purposes in the world. So you read through the Old Testament, you'll realize that many of their prayers, even very late in the

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Old Testament, they're looking back to the exodus and God's mighty act of deliverance with the exodus and giving

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Him praise for who He is and for what He has done. So our prayers should include this foundational element.

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We're not just approaching God as users, like in the way that a user would, like I only come around, do you want to have something

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I want from you? We're not just simply approaching Him that way, we're approaching Him in terms of our relationship with Him and praising

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Him in the process. So Romans 1 says that man is condemned because they did not glorify

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God, neither did they give thanks, but they became foolish in their thinking, their foolish hearts were darkened, professing to be wise, they became fools.

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Much of biblical prayer should be centered on glorifying God, giving thanks, praising Him for who

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He is and for what He has done. Man is fundamentally condemned because he rejects that responsibility to praise his

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Maker. I'm not trying to say that man enters into the world, obviously, in a non -condemned state and then he becomes condemned because he refuses to praise

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God, but that is confirming and adding to his condemnation, the fact that he refuses to give adoration and praise to God.

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Any questions about that one, first, adoration and praise? Alright, second, so the biblical framework of prayer, we say adoration and praise is the first element of the

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Lord's Prayer. Second, the advancement of God's Kingdom, so notice the

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Lord's Prayer here, it says, Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

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And as we think about this in general, as I've heard people talk through the

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Lord's Prayer, they often present this as an isolated element when

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I would think that a lot of the other stuff needs to be put into this kind of framework, meaning what you shouldn't be doing is thinking about these things as completely isolated kind of components, even though there's some utility in doing that, if you understand what

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I mean. So I've given you a framework of prayer, I said, number one, you have adoration and praise, two, the advancement of God's Kingdom, three, physical needs, four, confession of sin, five, spiritual aid.

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There's a temptation when you're looking at something like this to consider all of these things as being distinct categories, if that makes sense, like distinct categories that are completely unrelated, are you following what

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I mean? So if you were to, maybe an analogy would be helpful here,

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I don't know if this is the best analogy, but if you were to imagine a sandwich, you can imagine one of these things is a piece of bread, and then you have a piece of cheese is another thing, and a piece of meat is another thing, and then another piece of bread kind of thing.

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Now if you have all those things laying on the counter as distinct elements, a lot of times we're tempted to treat this framework in that way, as if they're all just distinct things, so the first one is just a piece of bread, and the second one is a piece of cheese, and then that third one is a piece of meat, and then maybe the fourth one is a piece of lettuce, or whatever, some vegetables, and so you see all those things laying on the counter, and then you treat them as separate things, but then the issue is you need to kind of put them all together and realize that they're all connected.

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If you put them all together, you realize there's a relationship between them all, like a sandwich is not just individual components, if that makes sense.

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So when you think about the advancements of God's kingdom, that's the priority that should govern all of the rest, does that make sense?

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Do you understand the difference between viewing the advancement of God's kingdom as one distinct element, and then viewing it as the priority that governs all the rest?

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So for instance, when you're praying for number three, when you're praying for physical needs, you're not just praying for physical needs, period, the end.

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Why? Can someone tell me why? I'm going to quiz you.

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Ask the question one more time. I'm trying to say, why is it important to consider the advancement of God's kingdom as the category which governs all the rest?

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So what would be the difference between doing that, and then praying for physical needs, period, the end, in an abstract way?

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Right. So is it God's, for instance, let's think about the relationship of these two things together for a second.

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Is it God's purpose for us to live to be 150? Okay, but you could pray for physical needs like that, if you understand what

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I mean. You could be praying for physical needs as if it's just God's purpose and plan for you to be infinitely old.

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But then if you read through the Bible, one of the things you'll realize is that obviously it's a point that a man wants to die, and after that, judgment, to live as Christ and to die as Cain.

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Death is a certainty. There's two certainties, death and taxes, and I suppose they even tax you for dying now, so those two are connected too.

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But no, the point there is just to say that we're not promised just a long, healthy life, period, the end.

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You can adopt a mindset that basically says, like that is coming to God in prayer for your physical needs to where your expectation is that He almost extends your life out indefinitely because in your heart and in your mind, you're really afraid of dying, and you're trying to just put it off because you're afraid of dying.

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But just because the point here that I'm trying to say is just because the Lord's prayer includes prayers for our daily needs, this isn't meant to say that you just pray for your physical needs any way you want to pray for them.

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My point is to say that you should be praying for your physical needs in view of the advancement of God's kingdom.

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That's what I'm trying to say. So you shouldn't just be praying for physical needs, period, the end. So for instance, just to give you an example of the kind of thing that I'm talking about,

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I can imagine that you have a 95 -year -old woman who has

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Alzheimer's who is your loved one, who has just gotten sick, and there's a possibility that her sickness could lead to death.

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How should Christians pray for her in that moment? Well, there's any number of ways in which you could pray for her in that moment, but then sometimes what

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Christians think is the Christian way to pray for her, because we're told, give us this day our daily bread, is just to pray that she keep on living indefinitely forever, that God will just heal all the sickness and take it all away, and you can pray for that in such a way that you're denying

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God's purposes in the world. Do you see what I mean? For instance,

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I hope when I'm 95, everyone's not praying for me to just stick around for another 20 years, okay?

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I hope at that point you just pray that we've had enough of him, okay? Just let him go to heaven, you know?

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I'm happy with that. I hope at that point everyone is ready for me to go see Jesus, who is the object of my hope.

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He's had a nice, long life, hopefully people at that point will be thanking

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God for whatever God has done through my life, and ready for me to go to my reward, do you see what

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I mean? So I hope that people aren't, if I'm 95 years old, just praying, take all the boo -boos away still for me, take all the sickness away.

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Just make everything easy and comfortable and safe for me, and just keep me around indefinitely forever.

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I mean, I hope that we've all read Ecclesiastes and seen that, yeah, this fallen world has effects on us, and old age, desire fails, the grasshopper is bent, because man is going to his eternal maker.

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In other words, I hope that when I'm that age, people aren't still trying to hold on forever, and have a perspective of my life, that to live is

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Christ, and to die is gain. And hopefully they look at my life and say, hey, he's ran his race well, and we're excited about the fact that he's going to his maker, we're not just trying to keep him here forever, kind of thing.

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Does that make sense? So you can pray, but what I'm trying to say is you need to, as you're looking at all of these categories, you need to not just be viewing them as distinct categories that bear no relation to each other, you should realize that they're all connected.

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So the advancement of God's kingdom should be the priority that we should be praying towards, which informs all of the other categories.

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So, what would that look like, yeah, what would that look like with praying for physical needs, for instance?

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Yeah, I mean, what I'm trying to say is, if you're praying for things in light of God's kingdom, then

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God's kingdom advancing is the priority, if that makes sense.

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And so everything that you're praying for should be informed by that kind of category. So if you have someone who's been working, this is their life work for the kingdom that they've been working on their whole life, praying, help them to finish it, would be a prayer that would be informed by the advancement of God's kingdom.

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It wouldn't be a prayer that would be informed just simply like, keep us here as long as possible because we'll miss them when they go kind of prayer, right?

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So it is directed towards the advancement of God's kingdom. In the first instance, because,

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I mean, that's what Paul says, to live is Christ and to die is gain. It would be better for me to depart, right, but I desire to remain, to be needful with you, for you, right, but then

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I'm hard pressed between these two priorities. A lot of times we can pray in such a way that there is no, it would be better for my sake that I depart portion of that at all, right?

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It's only just, help me to stick around and be as healthy as possible for as long as possible, peer the end with no thought about how that would relate to the advancement of God's kingdom at all, really.

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Yes? Would you say that that would be selfish, basically?

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There could be a very real element of self -centeredness that James is addressing and James kind of in James 4, so James 4, we're gonna talk about that with questions to ask before praying, but that's number two on your list, am

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I asking with right motives, but there is a kind of self -centeredness that could be present there.

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I'm languaging, I'm wording this in a very qualified way, but James 4 1 says, what causes quarrels and what causes fights among you?

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Is it not this, that your passions are at war with you, within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder, you covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel.

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Do not have because you do not ask, and you ask and you do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions, that you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions.

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Many of our prayers for physical needs can be, if you view them through that lens, they could be prayers that we're putting forward where we're asking wrongly just to spend it on our passions kind of prayers.

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If you hear me to be saying that every time you pray for a physical need, you're asking wrongly to spend it on your passions, that would be a mishearing, right, of what

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I'm saying. I'm not saying that. I'm simply saying that you can be praying for physical needs like that and you should be aware of that temptation.

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The way that you try to fix that temptation is realize that the advancement of God's kingdom is the agenda that should be informing all of the rest of these things.

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You should, in your mind, be thinking, the thing I want most is to advance

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God's kingdom, whether by life or death, by health, by sickness, by wealth, by poverty.

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I want to advance God's kingdom. That's what I want. That's what it means to say to live as Christ and to die as gain.

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I want to advance God's kingdom. That's what I'm here for. That's my whole purpose for existence.

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That's what I want. So then, when you're praying, what I'm trying to say is when you're praying for physical needs, you can pray for them in that light.

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If it would honor you, right, if it would honor you, God, and help to advance your kingdom more by keeping me around, then

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I would ask you to keep me around. If it would advance your kingdom more and honor you more to take me home, well, that's gain for me, right?

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But that's a very different perspective of praying for physical needs than just simply, I'm in a scary situation, fix it, you know, kind of thing.

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And we shouldn't be surprised that if that's our perspective at times, I'm in a scary situation, just fix it, why

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God would just not answer those prayers because he says those are the kind of prayers that he doesn't answer, if that makes sense.

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So, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That is the priority that should govern all of the rest.

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Any thoughts or questions about that? Yep. Was he worse off to stick around?

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Was he worse off to stick around? Explain the thought process about why he would, just because of the thing.

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I mean, I think, yeah, I don't know that I would say he's worse off, but certainly you could use those years in a way that honors the

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Lord or you can use those years in a way that doesn't. And I don't know that everyone uses them perfectly for sure.

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A lot of times people, when they are praying for things like that, they can get real serious when there's an imminent threat and then when the threat is lifted, then they go back to complacency.

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So, I mean, that's a common temptation that many people have when they're praying along these lines.

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But, yeah. So, biblical framework of prayer, you have adoration and praise, you have the advancement of God's kingdom, you have prayer for physical needs, so give us this day our daily bread.

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This could be viewed in a hyper -Calvinistic kind of way, to where you think that because God is sovereign, you shouldn't pray at all, right?

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So because God is sovereign, everything that He declares to happen is going to happen.

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Because if you view the world in a fatalistic kind of way, you can think to yourself, well, everything that God wants to happen will happen.

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If He wanted it to happen, He would have made it happen. He's going to do whatever

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He's going to do. There's nothing that I'm going to do that's going to change His mind. I can't twist His arm. I can't make

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Him do anything that He doesn't want to do, so therefore, why pray? So in a hyper -Calvinistic way, there are many people who have that temptation to view prayer like that, to say, well, because God's determined the ends from the beginning, why bother?

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In the opposite extreme, in a hyper -Arminian kind of framework, and I don't even know if it's hyper, I think it's more the logical entailments of Arminianism, in the logical entailments of Arminianism, it almost doesn't make sense to pray at all anyways.

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This is how I used to think when I was growing up. I used to think that, you know, related to prayer, that because my will was sovereign,

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I saw my will as sovereign, and God had decided to limit

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Himself by refusing to interact with my will, because that's the way I viewed God, then prayer stopped making sense for me.

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Because, you know, why would it make sense? So for example, if you have a loved one who is not saved, you have a natural inclination to bring that request before God and say, will you save my loved one?

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The problem is, if you're embraced like an Arminian view of free will at that point, then it becomes very difficult to even know how to bring that request to God, okay?

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Because, imagine how it works, it's like, well Lord, will you please save him? Well, I guess you can't, you've given him free will, you can't change his will, so,

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I guess that doesn't make sense to say, Lord, will you please save him? I guess, well Lord, help him of his own free will, to choose to, well, how would

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God help him of his own free will? What way could he possibly help him?

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Because he has to decide to do, to choose God, so, well, I guess that doesn't make sense either.

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But Lord, can you please send someone to talk, well, I guess if you sent someone, that means you would violate their will too, so that doesn't make sense either.

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Well, never mind, I give up, you know, and that's kind of how I thought growing up. And I just stopped praying because I, I stopped praying because I realized that God, if he has given everyone free will, then he can't violate their free will in any way, then

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I don't know what the point of doing all this is, and, you know, so then it just, like, why bother? So, what

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I'm trying to say is, in a hyper -Calvinistic way, you can say, well, everything is determined, so why pray for it? In an

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Arminian way, you can say, well, God is limited, like, he can't do anything anyway, so why bother praying for it?

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But yet, the Bible tells us right here, in our biblical framework of prayer, in the Lord's prayer, give us this day our daily bread,

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God tells us to pray for things. James 4, I've read James 4, what does James 4 say?

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It says, you desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel, and it says, you do not have because you do not ask,

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James 4, 2, you do not have because you do not ask. So God, obviously, plans the end from the beginning, but he also plans the means to his ends, and one of the means that he's planned to give you what you need is by you coming to ask him for that need.

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Do you understand? So basically, we are encouraged to come to our

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Heavenly Father as a good Heavenly Father, and come with persistence, even, at times.

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So you remember the parable of the persistent, I suppose she was a widow coming to the judge for justice,

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I think, but you understand what I mean, like, we're told to come to God with persistence and to bring our requests before him, and in doing so, we're not trying to change his plan from before the foundation of the world, we don't know what his plan is before the foundation of the world, but whatever his plan before the foundation of the world is, is going to involve good works that we're gonna walk in, and one of those good works is gonna be us presenting our requests to him in time, and him responding to those requests in time, and answering our prayers.

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Meaning, I'm simply saying that from our perspective, looking at the order of events,

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God has sovereignly planned before the foundation of the world that we would come to him with requests, and then see the fulfillment of those prayers answered in time and history.

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So we're told to come to God, and then we are also told that if we don't have something that we need, it may be because we're not asking him and bringing our requests before him, so biblical prayer, framework of prayer is adoration and praise, the advancement of God's kingdom, and then physical needs, so any thoughts about this topic of bringing physical needs to God?

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Questions about that? I'm gonna have to look it up.

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I don't know if I can look it up this quick, but maybe the answer is, I don't know.

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We're ever dependent on God. Yeah, so I think if you look at your job, a lot of people are looking to their job to be a source of provision in that way, to where instead of seeing that God is sovereign behind all those things, if you have a job, then you may not think to pray, give me this day my daily bread, because you have a job, and you have a paycheck, and that paycheck has come again, and you're looking to your bank account to do that, but one of the things you're told as a

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Christian is that, yes, in all your ways acknowledge him, so everywhere you go, you acknowledge him, so praying give us this day our daily bread is not a person who doesn't have a job, like it doesn't only apply to a person who doesn't have daily bread, or who doesn't have a job to provide them daily bread, so this isn't just directed towards the person with an uncertain existence, it's directed towards everyone.

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We're supposed to acknowledge God in our prayers, because you know that, hey, we don't know what today may bring, you don't know what tomorrow is going to bring, you don't even know that you're not going to get in a wreck in that, or stock market crash, and everything's gone, and whatever else, so this is a prayer that everyone should be praying, and when you're praying that prayer, give us this day our daily bread, you're basically acknowledging that God is the source of life, he's the source of health, he's the source of everything that we need, and so we come to him basically acknowledging his sovereignty over all of our affairs, over our day, and basically saying give us what we need today to accomplish your purposes, and that's the way you should think about these prayers for physical needs, you're praying give us this day everything that we need in order to accomplish your purposes, whether that's life, or health, or strength, or sustenance, so everything, you know, a lot of your prayers for physical needs really do need to take that form, give us what we need today in order to advance your purposes in the world, and I mean that's, even when there's like specific pressing things that you think you need in order to keep on existing in the world, they should be put in that larger category of pray that you resolve this problem so that we can be useful for your kingdom, with an acknowledgement that that may not be his plan, but it is an amazing thought to think that we really are invincible until God wants to take us home, so in books you describe this phenomenon as plot armor, right, you look confused, so plot armor, like the concept of plot armor is the concept of, like if you imagine there's a story that you already know exists, so say that there's a movie, and then you write the prequel next, right, well you know that whatever dangers the person faces in the prequel are not going to be dangers that are going to kill them, because they have to get to the main movie, does that make sense?

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So you can put them in dangerous situation after dangerous situation, but they have plot armor, like meaning you know that whatever they go through is not going to take them out, even though it feels like it's like this may take them out, you know, in the story, well the issue is like we as Christians, we know that we have plot armor too, like God has numbered our days, there's nothing that can happen to us that is going to take us out prematurely, there's a general,

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I can't, I think it was a general in the Civil War, but I can't remember who it was, but he basically said that he had learned to feel as safe on the battlefield as he did in church, because he knew that nothing could happen to him apart from God's will, and that when it was his time to go, it was his time to go, but we should look at life like that, that we have plot armor, so to speak, right,

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God has appointed our end, and there's nothing that's going to stop us from getting to that end, and so when we're praying for physical needs, you should pray confidently in that kind of light, knowing that you have plot armor, you know, you're going to live, the moment you die is planned by God, and there's nothing that anyone can do to stop that from happening, yourself included, right, so we should be thinking about those things that way, so our

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Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, give us this day our daily bread, then forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors, you know, a major part of biblical prayer involves confession of sin, and we should be realizing that our most, the most important challenges that we face in life are not category number three challenges, so God, you know, he clothes the grass of the field, feeds the birds of the air, our biggest challenges in life are really not that, we know that God is going to take care of those things, we know that we serve a heavenly

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Father who delights to give us good gifts, if you look back on God's provision for you in the past, you know, you should be able to realize today that you're here, you existed,

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God has sustained you, he's going to do whatever it takes to get you from where you're at right now to your final destination, there's no way that you're going to be able to stop that, but he does invite you to come and to confess your sins to him, like your biggest needs in life are spiritual needs, and confession of sin is a big part of that prayer, so first John says, if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to cleanse us our sins and forgive us from all unrighteousness, when we confess our sins before God, every time we confess our sins, that's not a moment of justification, so meaning like there is a prayer that we pray to God, where we ask

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God to forgive us our sins, so how do we respond to the message of good news, I'm not suggesting there's a formula or something along those lines, but how do you respond to the good news, you respond to the good news and faith and repentance, have mercy on me a sinner, you know, there's plenty of biblical prayers along those lines to where you have the tax collector who is praying his bombastic prayers, but the kind of prayers that God answers are the prayers where a contrite sinner comes before God and basically acknowledges their need of him and faith and repentance, so that is like a man is justified by faith alone as a free gift, where God's Christ's righteousness is imputed to him, so we are justified on the basis of faith alone and that faith, if it's a biblical faith, it will cause us to confess our sins, right, so Romans 10 9 says, if you confess with your mouth

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Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God is raising from the dead, you will be saved, this is certainly part of justification as we come to God, but then this is a pattern that the

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Christian should have throughout the whole scope of their life as they continually acknowledge their sinfulness before God and receive his forgiveness, not in the judicial sense of justification, but then in the sense of restoring a familial relationship, so part of the way to think about this need for continual confession of sin is you're not praying for God to justify you over and over and over again every time you sin, you're not just praying, justify me again, justify, it's not like your salvation is lost every time you sin, but you know when a person is saved, they are regenerated by the

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Holy Spirit before that, they're given saving faith, they are justified, they are adopted into God's family, when you're adopted into God's family though, there are ways in which you can violate

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God's will and you should come to him confessing your sin and asking for forgiveness, but then you're confessing your sin and asking forgiveness as a person who is secure in that family, so it's not as if every time you sin as a

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Christian, you're being taken outside of God's family, so my kids, they entered into my family by virtue of their birth, my brother has adopted two kids, he's thinking about adopting two more, they entered into his family by adoption, but there's nothing that they did in order to warrant or earn their adoption into that family, but when they sin against their parents or their brothers and sisters as members of that family, they need to deal with that sin as a family member, so it shouldn't be held over their heads that every time you sin, we may unadopt you, right, that kind of thing, so God is not doing that to us every time we sin,

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God's not threatening to unadopt us at the same time we need to deal with our sin and because we're sinners and because we have the old man that we're waging war against, a big part of our sin should be simple confession of sin where we say forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors, and so notice we're coming to the father as adopted members in his family, confessing our sin, asking forgiveness for our sin as family members with the knowledge that we should be doing the same to our brothers and sisters who sin against us because if God has forgiven us a massive debt that we could never repay, if he's forgiven us an astronomical debt that we can never repay, we don't want to be like the wicked servant who is grabbing our fellow servant and choking him over a relatively small trifle.

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God would describe that kind of person as a wicked and evil person who refuses to forgive his brother their debts and if we're that kind of person it really does call into question whether or not we've received the forgiveness that we think we've received there.

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So biblical framework of prayer is adoration and praise, advancement of God's kingdom, prayers for physical needs, confession of sin, any thoughts related to that confession of sin?

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All right number five, number five lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.

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Finally you have what you might describe as prayers for spiritual aid. Now it's interesting as you read through the

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New Testament and see the things that Paul prays about. This is a good study, I don't know if you've done this before,

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I've done this at different churches I've been at where we kind of walked through Paul's prayers and tried to draw some application from those prayers.

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There's a good book on that by D .A. Carson called Praying with Paul that I would definitely recommend you consider.

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This is a good study in general but it is somewhat striking to think about the nature of Paul's prayers and think about the ratios of them.

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So one danger of looking at this biblical framework of prayer in the way that I've divided it up is the danger of thinking about each one of these things as distinct kind of, well separate units that are distinct, disconnected, and of equal priority.

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Does that make sense? I mean that's a real danger in thinking about this. Now I would say most of the churches

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I've been at my whole life, if you have a prayer list what's going to find its way on that prayer list is all number three kind of things.

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So then what prayer time is is mostly just rehashing the sick list, that's what it is.

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That hasn't been my experience here but that's been my experience in other places. But what

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I'm trying to say here is that you shouldn't think about this prayer framework as if these things all in biblical prayer should be devoted equal time, if that makes sense.

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And that's not really what comes from a study of the

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Bible. Like if you study biblical prayers what you're going to find is, Paul's prayers for instance are imbalanced in certain ways.

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So you shouldn't think about these things as a thing of balance. So I mean I think as I said,

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I mean our natural temptation as we go out into the world is we live our life from day to day without, if you try to pray without any intentionality

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I imagine there's going to be a lot of three, maybe a lot of four too.

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And I think every time you sin you should take that as an opportunity to do number four because that should be there, right?

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But what's amazing is I think this number five kind of prayers in our own experience as Christian often are not being prayed as much as they should.

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And so we're like Peter and the disciples in the garden who are basically saying if all men deny you

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I wouldn't deny you. And then we fall asleep and we don't pray, say awake and pray with Jesus.

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And then big shock you know we fall into sin after sin after sin. So I think of all of these things number five is the one that we're most tempted to neglect

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I would say in our own experience. And then we fall into sin as a result of that just like Peter.

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We're just we're playing that scenario out every day and multiple times in multiple ways. And then we're kind of surprised as to why we don't have as much victory over sin as we should.

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When you think about Paul's prayers I mean they sound very different than our prayers at times, okay?

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I want to just give you an example of what I'm talking about so that you'll understand what

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I mean. Here's one example of this kind of thing.

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Let's read Ephesians 3 .14. So Ephesians 3 .14.

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For this reason I bow my knees before the Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.

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That sounds like the our father who is in heaven hallowed be your name part, right? So for this reason

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I bow my knees before the Father from whom every family in heaven and earth is named. That according to the riches of his glory, we're still in you know adoration and praise, right?

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He may grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit that in your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith that you being rooted and grounded in love may have strength to comprehend with the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

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Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think according to the power at work within us to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever.

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Amen. So you think about that prayer that that's the way that most of the prayers in the new testament sound.

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So you walk through this Lord's prayer guide and what you'll see is equal attention is often not given to every one of these elements.

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Does that make sense what I'm saying? So you think about biblical prayer prayers that are actually prayed.

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This framework is not meant to be like a straitjacket that you pray every time.

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I think there's some utility in covering all the basics and covering all the categories in the corporate way through the church but all

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I'm trying to say is you think about that prayer that just happened right there and there's certainly it's bracketed on both sides by you know our father in heaven hallowed be your name.

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It's filled with this the advancement of God's kingdom everything seems to center on that now so notice in chapter 3 verse 20 now to him is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think according to the power that's at work within us to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever that's like a kingdom like the statement about the kingdom advancing

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God's glory advancing over all the earth throughout all generations so you see adoration and praise that's filled within it it's not just in distinct categories right you see advancement of God's kingdom all throughout there you see a lot of prayers for spiritual aid in the midst of that that they may know and understand the love that God has for them in Christ so what you shouldn't my point is just to say when you're thinking about this biblical framework and prayer you're talking about different elements that go into different prayers but you're not trying to say that every one of these elements has to go in every single prayer and you're not trying to it that doesn't mean that each one of these elements only takes up one little spot they could be dispersed throughout all but then if you think about the bulk of your prayers in general if you want to pray like Paul you want to pray like the

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New Testament writers the bulk of your prayer should be centered on God's priorities in the world and prayers for true needs and there are some acknowledgement of we are embodied souls who need food and clothing to keep on going there's there you need to have some acknowledgement of that but those really they don't take up the bulk of biblical prayer so most of you think about the things that Paul prays for on a regular basis he's praying for boldness that he'll be able to open his mouth to speak the truth about God there are some times where he requests help for actual physical tangible needs but most of his prayers are prayers for spiritual strength in that way it you know lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil that sounds very much like what's happening in the garden with Peter and the disciples and everything else so any thoughts about any of these things that we've talked about so far any category yep engine right right yeah so certainly you are not justified before the

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Lord because you are a forgiving person but you know just like just like the the parable of the unforgiving servant if you are the kind of person who thinks you could be self -deceived in your your status as a

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Christian so those should be warnings to you they're that are designed to help open your eyes so just like the unforgiving servant at the end of that he's called a wicked servant and basically in the parable sent to hell to pay off his debt forever so basically he wasn't a true servant in that way so we should think about these things in this way like if you're not a forgiving person that should call into question whether or not you've received

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God's forgiveness and it's stated pretty strongly there in the context of the

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Lord's Prayer like if you don't forgive your brothers neither will your Heavenly Father forgive you that should be a check to help you to know not just well one it's an obligation for Christians to be forgiving it's an obligation but it should be a check to help you to discern the nature of your condition so I mean if God has forgiven you he has justified you he has adopted you into his family he has regenerated you he has changed your heart if he has done all those things then the necessary fruit of that will be that you will be forgiven or you will be forget like a forgiving person because if you understand the forgiveness that God has shown to you you will want to extend that to others if you don't it really does yeah it does call into question whether or not you have been forgiven in the first place and it does so in a pretty strong way so whenever I for example whenever I hear people say like I will never forgive you

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I think oh they're lost right they're not a Christian because no

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Christian would ever say that now I'm not I'm not trying to say that I'm not trying to say that that is true with 99 % or I'm not trying to say that's true with 100 % certainty

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I'm trying to say as a generality if someone says that your natural assumption should be they're they're not a

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Christian because Christians don't think that way Christians don't talk that way that's what you should think then you should warn them like that you should warn them what the passage the bible says if you don't forgive others their trespasses neither will your heavenly father forgive you so you are the unforgiving servant in this analogy and that is like you say you've received forgiveness from God but you are a wicked servant and like this isn't justified people think well if the sin against them was really big then maybe that's more justified than if the sin against them was smaller but the issue is compared to their sin against God it's nothing no matter how big it is so yeah

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I think anytime you when anytime I've ever heard someone like step into that posture is yeah whatever confidence

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I have that they're a Christian is totally gone now maybe they're just speaking an emotional moment and God will get them out of it and they'll come to see what the bible says about that and repudiate what they said before and then we can have confidence in them again but yeah if someone is speaking that way that should be a time for warning them about the danger that they're in for sure sure sure sure sure well

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I don't know that it's necessary that it takes anyone a while to work through it but I certainly think there could be scenarios like that where it could take a person a little bit to work through some of those things but we should be the issue though is as we're praying the lord's prayer we should be training ourself every day to think about those things so if you're if you're you know this is a prayer designed to train you in life so if every day you're thinking about your prayer in this category forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors if something awful like that were to happen you should have trained yourself in small ways every single day to handle that in a way that's right

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I'm not trying to say that I'm not saying that to beat up on someone who who doesn't respond right particularly as someone who hasn't been in that situation

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I'm simply saying you should be thinking about your life along those lines that you are preparing for trials you should be every day preparing for the trials that may come and the more that you are praying like this it does train you to think about how to handle more significant trials that you may go through so I mean right now

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I mean I'm I'm relatively healthy um my kids are relatively healthy we're all fine but you know

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I should be thinking about my life every day like through the lens of this prayer and thinking you know what

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I'm not promised tomorrow I'm not promised a long safe life

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I'm not promised that I'll never have to bury one of my kids I'm not promised that they're gonna outlive me

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I'm not promised that I'm gonna live to old age I could I mean

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I had I had some pretty scary I had a pretty scary wreck about a year ago that was pretty disturbing um that really wasn't my fault um but that was something that taught me a little bit about the fragility of life in general but yeah no

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I I think we should be praying like lead me not into temptation but deliver me from evil like count it all joy when you fall into various trials the testing of your faith reduces steadfastness let steadfastness have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete lacking and nothing the more that you're thinking about your life like that like every day every trial every temptation that I face right now is training me to be able to handle trials right and I'm promised trials in life and it's not like if I'm going to have trials but it's when

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I'm going to have trials and like right now I have um whatever trials I go through but that's a training ground like for bigger trials and God could send bigger trials my way and he hasn't promised to not send me bigger trials my way but when you learn to think that way in your life in small ways then when big trials come you're not shaken in that way and so yeah

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I mean it doesn't have to be this big like moment where you go through a big trial and that's the first time you've ever thought about what to do with trials before in your life you know kind of thing and I'm not suggesting that is

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I don't know what situation you're talking about or how that person is thinking about those things but you should be right now thinking

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God could send a huge trial my way and I want to be ready to honor him in the midst of that trial and the way that you're going to honor him in the midst of that trial is by learning right now to honor him in the midst of whatever small trials that he sends you

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I mean but for some people like the small trials that they they fail all those tests right so like if you're irritated and bothered by everything that happens your way by all the inconveniences that are around you by you know

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I mean if you're constantly irritated and bothered and annoyed and frustrated by all these minor inconveniences