6 - Lesson 2: Prayer, Part 2

Well, welcome to the Striving for Eternity Academy's School of Discipleship. We are right now studying in our lessons on an introduction to discipling, an introduction to discipling. We're glad that you are with us.

We are glad to have you here. We welcome all the new students that are following along, those of you who are watching live and chatting in the chat room and not paying attention to the teacher, but that's okay because I know that you'll watch with the rest of the folks on YouTube later when you want to really pay attention and take notes.

I understand. You know, this is the one advantage that you have actually of the new technology is you actually get encouraged to pass notes around in class. Crazy, right? When I was in school, you used to get punished and in trouble for passing notes.

Now we have chat rooms open, so you cannot pay attention to the teacher and instead just talk to one another. Hmm. Yeah, I'm sure the technology has helped us somehow. No, technology has helped us because I can come into wherever you are and whenever it's convenient for you and we can teach these lessons.

And so we are glad to have the technology that we have. If you do not watch us live, I would encourage you to think about it. One of the advantages of watching live, especially if you tune in right at eight o 'clock, you get to see, well, the students in the chat room try to stump me.

That's right. Because every time when we start the live class, before the class, about 10 minutes before class actually starts, before we start recording that is, we interact with those in the chat room and they give me something that I am supposed to transition to the gospel.

Today it was a moonwalk, the Michael Jackson dance. Could you transition to the gospel? Now, if you're wondering how I did it, well, you should have been watching live. So if you have your book, we are going through the book, Growing in Grace.

Growing in Grace. And we're going through this book while we're looking at using this really as a way of discipling. And so we have the Growing in Grace book. Did that thing just move? It looked like it just, okay.

It looked like, folks, did it just slide up or is it just my, are they just playing with me? Okay. I think it did. I'm being told it didn't. So what we're doing is going through this book as really as a way to facilitate how to teach you to disciple people.

Now, if you've been paying attention, you know that we are saying this is not the only way to do it. Oh, someone told me it did move. Ha! It danced. It danced around. I like that one. It danced around.

See, I peeked into the real chat room for a moment to see because some folks here aren't telling me the full truth, I don't think. Anyway, but I get that it danced around. It did the moon walk. That's what it did.

The book did the moon walk. It walked backwards. So we're using this book as a way to facilitate discipling. We want to use that just as a way of, it's something that we produce here. You can always go to the store and purchase it.

And if you want to just get several copies, use it at your church, at your homeschool, whatever, but it's available. We use it as just a way to get kind of grounded in teaching people the basics of Christianity.

And what we've discovered is, you know, many people who've been in church for a long, long time, they don't know the basics. This is a book that was developed by our church leadership at Gospel Light Baptist Church, which no longer exists, unfortunately.

But it was something that the leadership developed. And I always encourage you to get your church to develop their own book that everyone should go through as a church. So that when new believers come in, hey, this is what we teach you through.

And this is something you can study. If you don't have something like that and want something like that, you can contact us and purchase some copies from us. I can say that freely because basically at the rate we charge, we don't make any money off it.

When to Pray and Why a Prayer List Helps

So where are we? We are going through the book. We will put up, let's put up the chapter lessons. There are the lessons that we're going to go through through these. You can see they're basic things, things that most Christians should know as they come into a church.

And we are going through, we are looking right now at the lesson number two on prayer, our access to God. Now, if you were with us last week, when we should pray? When we should pray? And we saw that we should really pray whenever we can.

There's no set time. Someone had asked actually after class, had contacted me and said, you know, is there a problem if, you know, some people argue you should pray first thing in the morning. Others say, you know, that there's no set time.

Do I really have to? Am I somehow not giving God my best if I'm not praying first thing in the morning? I would say no. I think it's important to pray. Now, one of the things I hope to do this class, which means we probably won't get through this lesson again if I do this, but what I'm probably going to do is give you guys a little taste of my prayer list, which is why I have my phone right here, because this is actually where I have my prayer list.

And one of the dilemmas that I had is that my prayer list, because I use an iPhone and I have software that I've been using since 2010, really great app, but they stopped doing any work on it after 2012, and so it's like two years old now, and it doesn't work with some of the new software, and so I can't back it up.

So, I was talking with an individual who I have the privilege of kind of discipling and working with last night, and we're talking about prayer and talking about prayer apps, and I saw there's a whole bunch of new ones, so I'm trying some new apps.

I just don't know if I can get the old information off. But why would I encourage you to have it on, if you have a smartphone, an iPhone, get your prayer list on here, even if it's just in the notes app.

Some way of just keeping notes so you have it with you, so you can pray throughout the day. Don't waste any time. You'll find actually when we talk about when to pray, there's a lot of times you can pray.

The reality is if you work at a site where I used to work at AT &T Bell Laboratories, I used to have my prayer time, you know, some of my prayer time was while I walked in the office. I had a 10-minute walk from my car to my desk.

That's 10 minutes I'm usually just wasting, because I'm just walking. I'm not thinking about anything specific, and the reality is I want to not waste my time, and so I end up trying to go and get my phone, and I just take it out, everyone thinks I'm texting or reading email, and I've just got my head in my phone.

What I'm actually doing is I'm praying. I'm praying as I walk. Do that with your eyes open though, please, but you can pray anywhere, anytime, and that's the thing that you could do, and I want to encourage you to keep your prayer list with you as often as you can, so you get in the habit of praying without ceasing, because that's really, you want to know when to pray without ceasing, all day long.

Now, if you can do that, cool, good on you. All right, so let us look at now the next one, which is how should we pray? That is Roman numeral number two in your syllabus. How should we pray? Well, if you look in your syllabus or your growing in grace book, and remember, I'm going to be going slower in this because I want to be teaching you how to teach this, how to instruct someone else through this, and that's why we're not in a rush.

This is about learning the lesson, learning the material, not so much the material of the book, but the material of how to disciple. What things do you want to point out with people? And so, because of that, we go a little bit slower, but the reality is you should be in no rush with the person that you're discipling.

And the more people you add to a group that you try to disciple, the less effective it's going to be and the more time it's going to take. And so, that's a thing that you want to take into note. Really, you want to try to do one-on-one.

That's the best, okay? So, if we look at what you have here, Christ's disciples had the same question, how should we pray? In their mind, when they asked Jesus and said to Him, Lord, teach us to pray.

That is in Luke 11 1. Christ responded by giving them a model prayer. Now, we had started in this last week and we started in this by saying that there's two passages where you see this model of prayer.

And I'm saying it's a model for a reason. One is in Luke 11, as I just quoted. The other is in Matthew 6. Now, this is different because this is on the Sermon on the Mount and we don't know that that was in response to the disciples asking a question.

It could be, but Jesus, just like you and I, often repeated Himself and He did that. But why do I say this is a model? Let me read from Matthew 6. What is it before He gives us the model? Well, He said this, When you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think they will be heard by their many words.

Do not be like them, for the Father knows what you need before you ask. Pray like this. First off, He says don't pray with vain repetition of words as New King James, King James, or empty phrases. In other words, don't just say things without thought.

Sometimes we have a prayer, maybe a prayer that we have before meal. My kids used to bust on me because I would always thank God before a meal for the food that we have and ask that the Lord would use it to give us energy and nutrition.

And my kids would laugh because I would say that all the time and actually I was out with a bunch of guys and we were at some fast food place and I prayed that way and they giggled and afterwards they said, you're praying that this was going to give our bodies nutrition?

Okay, maybe, you know, McDonald's and Burger King, things like that won't do that. But what is it that most people do? They recite what they call the Lord's Prayer without giving it any thought. It's just empty words.

They're just reciting it. And that is exactly what you should not be doing. And so here we have, we're going to look at Luke 11. It's very similar, but there are model prayers. That's why Jesus says pray like this.

He doesn't say say this. He says pray like this. So let us take a look at what we have here. The first point that we started to look at yesterday is to pray reverently. Pray reverently. We see this in Luke 11 too.

When we pray, we are to remember that God's name is hallowed. If you're taking notes, that's your blank there in your syllabus, hallowed. We are to pray and remember that God's name is hallowed. The word hallowed means to treat as holy.

Hallowed be your name. Holy is your name. In other words, we're lifting God up on high. We're lifting Him up and thinking and meditating upon Him. Now I know many people that pray, and when I talk to people and ask, what's your prayer life like?

What do you pray about? Most people spend a lot of time praying for the needs of themselves and others. And yet the first thing God says that we should be doing is lifting God up. And so we should not approach God in a flippant or disrespectful manner, even though we can come to Him in a most intimate and personal way.

Though you and I can enter into God's throne room at any time, He's still God. And we shouldn't be flippant. We shouldn't be quick about it. We shouldn't have vain repetitions of words, just saying things so that we have a long lengthy prayer.

Part of what I think also could get tied into that is people that always say Lord or Father or Holy Father or things like that repetitiously throughout their prayer. Oh Lord, I just want to thank you Lord for everything you've done Lord.

And we don't speak that way to others. And so the first thing we want to do is lift God up. Now how do we do that? Well this is where I want to go and show you, well I can't really show you, but I don't know, can you see that?

I doubt it. Yeah, that's not going to work. On my phone I'm going to read to you just some of my prayers. And actually if you are an enrolled student, an enrolled student is someone that has paid for the year or you got a scholarship for the year, so that you're enrolled for the year and then we're going to have your email address.

Excuse me. Wow. And we'll have your email address and for that we'll send you something that's going to help with this. Sorry about that. But I want to go through, we're going to send you two things. Well one thing actually, what we're going to do is send you a sheet that you can print off that just has all the attributes of God.

And you're going to see, what you're going to find is, I'm going to send you this sheet and it has 31 attributes of God that you can pray through. When we say lifting God up, and I know, yeah I'm not going to get through this class, but that's okay.

Let me start by reading to you my prayer list and give you some ideas of how to pray reverently. Now first thing I do, the first category in my prayers is God attributes. Now I have several different categories for God because God, Thanksgiving, different things like that.

But the first one is God and His attributes. So I pray through the attributes of God. The first attribute, if you attended our academy class on systematic theology, the very first class, we went through all these attributes in those lessons.

So the first one is incomprehensibility. So I pray, I say, God you are greater than our ability to understand. Now one of the things, I have this all written out in my prayer list here, but I don't just sit here and read it vainly.

I put down different ideas that are focused on God's incomprehensibility and I meditate upon each one of these. And that's why it could take me up to 45 minutes just to get through the attributes of God because I have that much information if I just sit and read through it and meditate upon each of these points.

But God is greater than our ability to understand. And just because God is beyond my understanding doesn't mean that I cannot know Him without certainty. God, your ways are greater than my ways. Your understanding is greater than my understanding.

And I do not have to understand everything about you God to know you. I am just, I am responsible to obey that which you have revealed to me. Deuteronomy 29 .29. I have verses with some of these that I've put in there.

Lord, I know you to the ability, I know you to my ability to know you not to your ability to be known. You're greater than I am Lord. I have here one other point, it provides me comfort to know that you are greater than my ability to understand you or to reason to you.

And I'm not reading all the things that I have notes in here for. One of the things I may do as I transition is I may put these into either a Facebook group or send these out to you guys that are enrolled students.

And so these are just, I'm trying to give you some ideas of ways to pray reverently. Omniscience, that's the next one I happen to turn to. It's not the next one in order, that's actually attribute number seven in my list.

God knows everything with a complete and certain knowledge. The past, the present, the future, the real and the possible. Lord, you know all the things that could have happened. You know all the outcomes of the things that I wanted to happen.

And yet, you knew that what did happen would bring you the greatest glory. Lord, you know my every thought, nothing escapes you. When I sin, it does not surprise you. Lord, we are so arrogant in thinking to know that we know so much when in reality, we know so little.

The Lord knows all with an infinite knowledge. Lord, you never forget. An interesting thought. Most people think that he forgets our sin. Lord doesn't forget anything. He's omniscient. And I'll give one more.

Let me go to, I'll just flip to another one. How about justice? Attribute number 20 here is just. Lord, you are just and right in all your ways. We understand what justice is because we understand you.

You are a just judge who's angry with the wicked every day. That's Psalm 711. Lord, you determine right and wrong, just from unjust, from your very nature. We know what justice is because it comes from your character.

So what you end up seeing is just some ideas. And I have, as I said, 32 different things, 31 different attributes of God that I pray through every day. Because it's lifting God up. If I don't get to praying for myself and, you know, Aunt Millie's toenail or whatever, I'm fine with that.

If I spend all my prayer time just lifting God up, it helps me to refocus myself on the whole day. And the reality is, is all those things I want to pray for because I want to think about, I want it to be about me, me, me, me, me, me.

You focus on God, you forget about me. Second thing that I have there, well actually we'll get to that in a little bit, so let me get to it. Letter B in your syllabus, pray submissively. Pray submissively.

We pray for God's will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. That's your blank there, God's will, not our will. Jesus is suggesting that true prayer includes willing obedience to Him. And if we're praying for God's will on earth, then we're also praying, or if we're praying for, if we're praying for God's will on earth, then we are going to be doing God's will on earth.

And that's what you end up seeing. Many people pray for our will. Had someone recently that was trying to, I guess, encourage someone in saying that they were, had big questions, they were kind of getting discouraged over being single and not having a mate and not having some things they wanted in life.

And here someone said, well just write all those things down on a sheet of paper and hide it away and then God will give it to you. Well, that's trying to make God submissive to us, not us submissive to God.

Prayer is us submitting to God. Now remember what I read in Matthew 6. God already knows these things. Are you thinking you're going to lift something up in prayer that God didn't know about? It's going to surprise Him?

Oh, I didn't expect you were going to ask me for that. Really? That's why I look at the attribute on omniscience and I just, I'm like, you know, people that say, oh, well, you know, you can lose your salvation.

Really? Like, I surprised God? He didn't know when He, when He died on that cross, He didn't know what I was going to do? When He saved me, He didn't know what sins I was going to commit? He wouldn't have saved me if that was the case, if it was reliant on me staying obedient.

And so what you end up seeing is that we have to submit to God. That's really what prayer mostly is. Praying submissively is looking to see what God's will is and doing that. Praying that God's will in our life.

So when people say, would you pray for so and so to be healed? So and so has cancer. Would you pray for them to be healed? My prayer is, Lord, if it is your will to heal them, we would be glad of that.

And if it is not your will to heal this person, would you please help them to understand your goodness through this? Now, there's a difference there, isn't there? I'm not just saying, God, we want you to heal this person.

We do. But that's not often the case. A lot of times God doesn't answer those things. And so if that's the case, guess what? God, help us to be submissive. Help us to accept your will. Because if I'm sick and I remain sick, then it's God's will that I be sick.

Because I'm sick. And God is sovereign. So what we want to do is pray that we would submit to His will and accept it and learn to find how it may glorify God. Look for how God can use whatever it is. Be submissive.

Okay? I'm going to get to some of those in my prayers in a moment. Let's go to letter C there. Pray dependently. Pray dependently. We should seek God for our daily provision. That's your blank there. Daily provision, Luke 11 .3.

We should seek God for our daily provision. This attitude includes both reliance upon the provision of God and a contentment with what He's given us. So let me go back to my prayer list. And when I'm discipling someone through this, I actually show them my prayer list as I'm going to try to show you guys.

But my second area that I pray under the category of God is thanksgiving. Some things I thank Him for. I'll just give you a couple. God's word. I give thanks that we have God's word. I thank Him. I'm just reading some of these.

I thank you Lord that we have an absolute authority in this world. I thank you that although the culture believes that everything is relative and there are no absolutes, we have an authority that we can trust.

I thank God that His word is freely available in my country. Are you thankful that if you live in a country where you can get God's word, you have that available? Imputation is another one that I have in my list of things to thank Him for.

Are you thankful for imputation? What is imputation? Let me define it real quick. Imputation is a theological term that describes the transaction where Jesus took our sin upon Himself and gave to us His righteousness.

2 Corinthians 5 .21. He who knew no sin became sin that we might become the righteousness of God. That is Martin Luther called the great transaction. We gave God our sin. He gave us His righteousness.

That is the doctrine of imputation in a nutshell. I thank Him. I say I thank you that all my punishment of sin was laid upon Christ on that cross and He has laid upon me His perfect righteousness. So that Lord, Father, God, you see me through the eyes of Christ.

You see me as Christ with the righteousness of Christ. I have here, without your gift of imputation, all mankind would be dead in trespasses and sins. You alone can offer the righteousness and take punishment of sin because you alone are the eternal God, man.

I thank Him for my daily provisions. I have some things I have here. I thank God, I say, not only for having three meals a day but the ability to have a variety of meals that I can enjoy different meals three times a day for over a month.

That came out of the fact that someone I met from Africa, he defined, he said that this is the definition of rich. The definition of rich to this guy from Africa was that we in America can have a different meal three times a day and not have the same meal in a month.

That is how he defined rich. It is something to think about. I put it here, I thank God for all the different tastes, textures, flavors, colors that we have in our food. You think about that, I mean, think about all the different differences that you have in food.

God can make us eat mud. Just boom, there you are. And that is what we eat. It tastes the same. We eat the same thing every day. I mean, animals do that. They eat the same thing all the time. God could have made us to do that.

But no, He is a great God of design who gives us different flavors and textures and tastes, smells. Maybe some of you can enjoy the smells, but my nose does not work so well. Even though it is this big huge thing, it does not work so well.

A lot of your enjoyment of taste comes through smell, but we have that. I thank Him for my daily provision. I thank Him for the preparation that my wife usually who prepares my food or if I am out somewhere.

I pray and thank God for indoor plumbing and electricity. Do you think about that? That is our daily provision. I mean, we live in a country, most of us here in America at least, we live, we have electricity.

You are watching me because you have electricity. I am just told that the, okay, sorry, we just went off air for a split second. Do not know what happened there with the glitch. Hopefully, it will not happen again.

All right, so where was I? Electricity. We are grateful. I mean, if you have ever been in a third world country where they have no running water, you would be grateful when you get to realize what it is like.

Oh, wow, I can have indoor plumbing like a bathroom. I mean, you really do not appreciate indoor plumbing until you do not have it. I am just saying. Electricity and things like that, I mean, you really want to be able to think about and the fact that we have many, many things that, you know, we take for granted.

I do not know about you, but I try not to. When I think about my brothers and sisters around the world who do not have these things, it causes me to be grateful for my daily provision. And so, that is how I pray dependently.

You want to pray dependently because that is exactly where God wants you to be. If you want the reality, God wants us to be dependent. When people ask me, why do you think God allowed this trial in my life?

Or, you know, I have this temptation and why do you think? Well, probably the reason it is there is so that you depend upon God. Do you ever notice that when you go through trials, you struggle through those things?

That as you are struggling, you tend to rely upon God a lot more? Yeah, you do. So, let us look at letter D here. Pray honestly. Pray honestly. What do we mean here? Well, I say here, to what extent can we expect Jesus to forgive our daily acts of sin?

Well, the answer is, as we forgive others. That is your blank there. As we forgive others. That is how he says it here. I did not put up the verse. Thank you. I should have put that up. Thank you. Let us look at Luke 11, 1 -4.

Now, Jesus was praying in a certain place and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray as John taught his disciples. That is something a disciple would do. We talked about this last time.

A disciple would teach others to pray. He said to them, when you pray, say, Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread and forgive us our sins for we also forgive everyone else who is indebted to us and lead us not into temptation.

That is the passage that we are going through in this. What you see with that is that we are to forgive others. We should be, as Christians, the most forgiving people toward other people. Why? Because we have been forgiven so much.

I have here in your next paragraph, Christ taught that we should ask God to forgive us as we forgive others. When a Christian sins, he should confess his sin before God. We have that in 1 John 1 -9. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

You should always have the person you are discipling read those. Do not read it for them. I hope you are reading out loud as I read this. And so, we want to make sure that you guys are kind of reading it when I say it.

But you want to have your student read it. You want to get the Word of God into them. The more repetition, the more they are going to know the Scriptures. If a Christian has sinned against another person, they should seek the forgiveness of that person.

So, here is the situation before we look at Matthew. We have a situation where we are going to sin. I know there are some people who try to argue that nobody sins. Now, if you are talking to someone who is a new believer, you may want to get into that.

But you want to give them the assurance, look, every Christian is going to sin. Do not think that now that you are a Christian, you somehow have to live a perfect life. You should not make an excuse for sin.

But if you blow it, do not beat yourself up over it. Alright, you want to give them that comfort. But if they do sin against another person, we have two passages of Scripture. Have them read these two.

One is if you know that your brother has sinned against you. There is someone who has an issue with you. Matthew 5 comes into play there. Now, if you look here, Matthew 5 verse 23 and 24. So, if you are offering your gift at the altar and you remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go.

Be reconciled to your brother and then come with your gift. And so, what you see there is one of the things I do whenever I would do a Lord's Supper, a communion. I would challenge people. If you know that you have an issue, that someone has an issue with you, let the elements go past you and go reconcile with that person.

It is more important than partaking of the elements. But we, if we know someone has something against us, go to that person. That is hard to do. And quite frankly, sometimes they just deny. I have had that multiple, multiple times.

I have had it where people that will say things publicly about me, when I go to them privately, which is the way we are supposed to do it, as we will see in a moment, they totally ignore it. They, oh, no, that wasn't you.

No, that was someone else. Oh, yeah, no, hey, I got no issue with you. You know, they will say things to others, but they are not willing to say it to me. Well, in cases like that, what do I do? Well, I can't do anything more.

I tried to reconcile. They are unwilling. I have to leave it there. But if I have done something, what Matthew 18 says, if your brother sins against you, go to him. Tell him his faults between you and him alone.

If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church.

If you refuse to listen to the church, to even the church, let him be as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth is bound in heaven, and whatever is loosed on earth is loosed in heaven.

So, two or three gathered is not a prayer meeting. It's a church discipline, okay? But there's a pattern to follow, and if you want, you can go to our store and you can pick this up. This is our process of reconciliation.

It's two-sided. It's a nice, hard stock, you know, glossy thing, and what you see here is steps that you can follow in recognizing, okay, if somebody is sinning, what's the process that I go through?

I'd encourage you to get a student one of these, and you can walk them through this so they know, hey, if you've got some struggles, you're going to struggle with people. This is what you do. So, feel free to pick that up at our store if you want that.

But what are we talking about here? We're talking about the fact that we pray with confession of sin, okay? So, I'm not going to get into specific details, okay? But I have a section. My next section after I speak of God is confession of sins, and I have some specific things that I struggle with on a regular basis and some things that sometimes just happen to come up that I struggle with, and I have these things listed here for things that I need to ask God for forgiveness for, okay?

And so, what we end up doing there is following that, then I pray for my own spiritual maturity along with that. But I recognize, and notice, I haven't even gotten to, you know, my family, myself, my friends, my church, the ministry, none of that stuff yet, okay?

I haven't even gotten there. And, you know, this could be an hour before I even get here in prayer. But notice where my focus has been this whole time, on how great God is and how little I am. And that's what you want to drill into your disciple-ee.

You want them thinking that way. You want them thinking, God is good, I am not, okay? You want to lift God up on high. Too many churches nowadays, they want to lift up man and put down God. They want to sing songs about men, to men, not about God, to God.

And so, we want that preaching is to men and their felt needs versus to God. When we sing, when we pray, when we preach, it is unto God alone, first and foremost. And the rest may get benefited from it, but it's to God.

And so, we pray, we want to pray honestly. I mean, admit our sin before God. If we're going to try to cover up sin, we're going to be in a heap of trouble. And you want to help people understand that.

You want to guide them through that, okay? Because human pride, they're going to think like, I can't tell anyone that I have this sin. What, like you think no one else struggles? If a person tells me they don't struggle with a sin, they're not the type of person I'm going to go to when I struggle with something, because they're not being honest with themselves.