The Method of Prayer

Sovereign Grace Family Church

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Greetings guys, this is Pastor Keith and I want to welcome you to today's lesson and I want to talk about what we're going to be doing over the next couple weeks because I'm not going to be with you.

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By the way, if you're listening to this online, this message is being presented for the men of Set Free Ministry and this is, I usually teach there on Thursday mornings, but for the next three weeks I'm going to be out.

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This is my normal time of taking time off and because of everything going on with COVID, I talked to Pastor Mark and we just decided it would be better if I produced some video lessons for the group.

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So I'm producing the video lessons on behalf of Set Free and for your benefit.

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What we have been talking about over the last couple weeks has been the concept of prayer and the sovereignty of God.

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We looked at the question, if God knows everything and has already determined what He is going to do, then what is the purpose of prayer? Why do we pray? And so that has, that became a two-part lesson.

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The first was the question of, has God determined what He's going to do? And does God know the future perfectly? And we learned the answer to that is, of course, yes.

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And then we said, well what is the purpose of prayer? And we said that prayer, there were four purposes of prayer and that was in our lesson last time.

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We talked about the purpose of growing in maturity, the purpose of worship, the purpose of following the command of God, and of course the purpose of asking of God those things that we need.

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And so that was the purposes of prayer and that was our lesson last week.

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But what I want to do is I want to continue this study of prayer out and I'm going to do three more lessons on the subject of prayer.

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And I want to focus more, I want to dive a little deeper into the subject of prayer, hoping by God's grace that this will help you.

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Because I know that many of you men are desiring to pray, you want to pray, and hopefully by God's grace you want to become better at praying.

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And I know that sounds funny because a lot of people I don't think even think about the fact that we can become better at praying, but in the same way that we can become better at studying the Word of God, as the same way that we can become better at following the Lord and the things that He's called us to do, I do think we can become better prayers.

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I think that our prayers can become more intimate.

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I think our prayers can become more personal.

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I think our prayers can become more meaningful.

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And I think ultimately not only for people that we're praying with, but our own personal prayer life can grow.

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And so what I've broken this down into three parts.

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I've broken it down into first, we're going to look at the method of prayer.

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That's going to be today's lesson.

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Now next week we're going to look at the attitude of prayer.

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So that means how should I approach prayer? And then lastly we're going to look at the object of prayer.

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Who am I praying to? What should I be thinking about while I pray? What is the focus of my prayer? Now there'll be some overlap in some of this.

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Some of the method and the attitude will go together.

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Some of the object and the rest will go together because you can't sort of talk about one without talking about all of them.

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But I hope that by the end of this you'll understand the value of what I'm trying to get across to you today.

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So if you have your Bibles turn with me to Luke 11.

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And we're going to look at Luke 11 chapter verse 1.

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And we're going to go down to verse 4.

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We're going to look here.

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This is Luke's version of what is typically called the Lord's Prayer.

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Now I don't believe this is the Lord's Prayer.

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I believe this is the model prayer.

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The Lord's Prayer I believe is in John 17.

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That's the prayer that Jesus prayed.

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And if you read John 17 that's what we call the high priestly prayer of Jesus.

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But Jesus gives a model for prayer.

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And that's why I said we're going to look today at methodology.

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We're going to look at how we are to pray.

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And we're going to base this on a question that the disciples asked Jesus because they asked Jesus to teach them how to pray.

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So let's read the text together.

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Now Jesus was praying in a certain place.

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When he finished one of his disciples said to him, Lord teach us to pray as John taught his disciples.

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And 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 ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us and lead us not into temptation.

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Let us pray.

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Father in heaven as I seek to give an exposition on the subject of prayer over the next few weeks I pray first and foremost Lord that you'll keep me from error.

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For God that I know that I'm a fallible man and I know that I'm capable of preaching error and for the sake of your name and for the sake of my conscience I don't want to preach error.

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And Lord I also don't want to be a coward.

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So I pray that you would keep me from error and cowardice.

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I pray also for the men who will hear this message.

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For the men of Set Free.

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For Pastor Mark I pray that you'll give him strength and vitality and encouragement and an extra measure of your spirit to do what you've called him to do.

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For the other men of Set Free for the overseers I pray that you would encourage them in their leadership and their example.

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And to the men who maybe are just coming into Set Free that you'll give them the the desire to continue with the program to understand the value of what they're doing.

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Lord most of all that we would understand the value of prayer.

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To understand the value of having an intimate relationship with you.

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And I pray all of this Lord in Jesus name and for his sake Amen.

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The method of prayer that is our subject today and the first thing we're going to do is we're going to look at our text.

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It says number one it says Jesus was praying in a certain place.

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It says now Jesus was praying in a certain place.

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That reminds us something right away before we even talk about our need for prayer and the way that we ought to pray.

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One of the things that we notice in the life of Jesus Christ was a consistent constant and perpetual prayer life.

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Jesus would pray all night.

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Jesus would pray various times throughout his ministry.

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There would be whole sections where it was just him focused on the subject of prayer.

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Communing with God.

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And you say but wait a minute Jesus is God in the flesh.

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Why would he need to commune with God? Well there's an inter-trinitarian relationship.

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The Father and the Son and the Spirit are all God.

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They are one in essence but they are not all the same person.

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The Father is not the Son and the Son is not the Spirit.

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They interrelate to one another.

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That's what we're going to talk about in our third lesson.

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The object of our prayers is the Trinity.

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We are to pray trinitarian prayers.

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When Jesus is on the earth Jesus is praying to the Father.

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Jesus is in communion with God the Father.

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God the Son on earth is in communion with God the Father in heaven.

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And it is a vital part of his ministry.

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We must not ever forget that prayer was a vital part of what Jesus did in his ministry.

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And he considered it very important.

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And it says here that he 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.

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Now the John that he's referring to there of course is John the Baptist.

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John the Baptist had preceded Jesus.

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John the Baptist was the forerunner of Jesus Christ.

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And John the Baptist very clearly taught his disciples how to pray.

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And so the disciples of Jesus are looking at John and his disciples and saying okay John gave them a method for prayer.

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Jesus we need a method for prayer.

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Give us this prayer method that we will know how to pray.

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And for a moment I want to just consider the fact that I think this is a lost desire in many places because a lot of people when you hear people say I don't know how to pray a lot of people say well just pray just say what's on your heart.

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Just speak from the heart.

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Just talk to God like you were talking to a friend.

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Just talk to God like a child talks to a parent.

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All those things may sound good and in a sense there is some truth to them.

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But when Jesus was asked Lord teach us to pray Jesus did not say just be willy-nilly.

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Jesus did not say just follow your heart.

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You know the Bible says the heart is desperately wicked who can know it.

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So the idea of following your heart in prayer not always the best idea.

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And Jesus didn't say treat God like Santa Claus.

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Climb up into his lap and just talk to him like you're talking to a grandfather or a Santa Claus figure or friend.

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Jesus gave them a method for prayer.

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And by the way I do think Jesus gave a method for prayer.

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I don't believe Jesus gave a prayer that was meant to be recited.

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And I want to clarify this because I do teach my children to recite the Lord's Prayer.

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But I know and I explained to them that the reason why they're learning to recite the Lord's Prayer is because one it's scripture and it's always good to learn to memorize scripture.

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And two the prayer provides for them a framework from which to build their prayers.