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Muskegon SDA Church

Lord, Teach us to Pray

Jason Sliger

Lord, Teach us to Pray - Part 1

Father in heaven, we are grateful that we can come into your presence as a church family.

And Father, it's a blessing from heaven that we are requesting.

We pray that your Holy Spirit would speak to us through your word today.

Thank you, Father, for this lifeline connection that you have given to us, the gift of prayer.

It was about 4 years ago, my family and I were down in the Sunshine State of Florida, where everybody wants to be right now.

And we were visiting some family down there.

We have, on my wife's side of the family, Midori's side, her aunt and uncle are down there, and her grandma lives down there as well.

And so every now and then we get away, we go down and we visit the family down there.

At the time, Midori's grandmother was 99 years old.

And I was, we finished our evening ritual of putting the kids to bed and they were asleep.

And I was walking down the hallway past her grandmother's room and there was a light on in there.

And as I walked past, I couldn't resist it.

I had to kind of sneak a peek inside her bedroom.

And as I looked into the bedroom, this is what I saw there, a 99-year-old lady on her knees next to her bed praying.

My heart was touched, and I said, Lord, I want to have that type of experience with you.

That even when I'm 100 years old, I'm still compelled to get down on my knees and pray.

And as I looked at her kneeling there, I thought, you know, there's probably a lot about prayer that she could teach me, but I didn't want to interrupt her prayer at the time.

And, you know, the disciples 1 day, the Bible tells us, that they were listening to Jesus pray.

So we read in our scripture reading this morning in Luke chapter 11 and verse 1.

And as they were listening to Jesus pray, they made this request, Lord, teach us to pray.

Now, why do you ask somebody to teach you to do something?

Because you're hoping that they can impart to you something that you do not have.

Right, and so they come to Jesus and they say, Lord, teach us to pray.

At this particular time, the disciples were ordained ministers.

And they're coming to Jesus with this request, Lord, teach us to pray.

As they listened to Jesus, the Son of God, pouring out his heart to his heavenly Father, they all of a sudden realized that although they had the hands of ordination laid upon them, that they did not know how to pray.

And so they came to Jesus with this rich request, Lord, teach us to pray, and Jesus goes on and he shares with them the Lord's Prayer that we are all so familiar with.

You know, I don't know about you, maybe you can identify with this, but for many years, I kind of, whenever somebody started talking about prayer, whether it was in a sermon or at prayer meeting or something I was listening to online, whenever prayer kind of came up, my mind would tend to shift into neutral because I thought, I got that 1 covered.

You get down on your knees, you fold your hands, you close your eyes, and you make this, you know, have this conversation with God.

And I think that's probably how the disciples felt until they heard Jesus's prayer.

I think we all need this time in our life where we get a little shooken up in our prayer life, where we all of a sudden realize, you know, there's something here that I'm missing that I need to have a deeper experience in my prayer life.

We need to have a similar experience to what the disciples had, where when they were in the presence of Jesus, they realized that they needed something that he had.

And so this morning, I wanna share with you some practical things that I have gleaned as I have studied and listened and learned at the feet of other men and women of great faith and prayer that I hope will help you.

And chances are, as we come as a church family this morning and make this request that the disciples made, Lord, teach us to pray.

Chances are you've probably heard a few of these things, and if you have, great.

We're gonna get very practical in our time together this morning.

Something that you can take home and put into practice right away.

Taylor Bunch once wrote in his book, Prevailing Prayer, page 13, he said, someone has said that prayer is the golden river at whose brink some die of thirst while others kneel and drink.

I want to be the 1 who kneels and drink deeply at the fountain of prayer.

Well, let's take a look at this together this morning.

If you have your Bibles, please turn with me to Matthew 6.

Matthew 6, and we're going to look at our first step in prayer.

We're going to look at 8 over the next 2 presentations, 4 today, 4 in the next 1.

As we ask this question, Lord, teach us to pray.

Step number 1, as we look at this concept of prayer in a practical light, is that we want to find a secret place to pray.

The Bible tells us in Matthew 6 and verse 6, but thou when thou prayest, enter into thy what?

Shut the door, pray to thy father which is in secret, and thy father which seeth in secret shall reward thee, " how?

So the Bible tells us that we need to have a private place, a secret place where we come and meet God.

Now the word closet in this passage literally means a secret place, a place where it's just you and God.

And that idea is given to us with the concept of a door being closed.

Now it doesn't mean secret where nobody can find you, it's secret in the sense that it's just you and him that are meeting together.

So scripture advises us to have a secret place to pray, where it's just us and God.

Now, this isn't too far removed from our understanding.

Many of us, we have places to do various things.

Right, we have places where we do things.

Bible tells us that we should have a place to pray.

And I know some of you may be thinking of Paul's advice in 1 Timothy 2 in verse 8 where he says that we should pray everywhere.

And indeed, that is true, we should pray everywhere.

But I'm gonna suggest to you this morning that before you can pray everywhere, you first have to pray somewhere.

So the Bible is telling us, have a secret place where you meet God.

Now maybe you already do this, and if you do, great.

But if you haven't developed this idea of having a place to pray, you need to do this.

Now that doesn't mean you can only have 1 place.

Jesus had multiple places where he would pray, but he had a place where he prayed.

And so before you can have many, you first have to have 1 place where you are meeting the Lord in prayer each day.

Listen to what we are told in Thoughts from the Mount of Blessings, page 84.

It says this, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet.

Jesus had select places for communion with God, and so should we.

We need often to retire to some spot, however humble, where we can be alone with God.

Do you have a place to meet God every morning?

It's a sweet thing when you have that place where you're going to meet him.

And again, sometimes we have more than 1 spot.

But we have a place, this is where I'm going to meet God in the morning.

And it's almost like a sacred place when you wake up and you go there, or maybe it's there in your bedroom, or wherever it is, that it's almost like a sacred place where you are meeting the creator of the world.

Lord, Teach us to Pray - Part 2

Indeed, Father, there is much that we can praise the Lord for.

There are great things that He has done and is doing and will do in our lives.

And Father, as we gather here at the worship hour, as a church family seeking your will in our lives, as always, Lord, we invite the presence of your Holy Spirit to be here with us.

We pray that you'd speak to our hearts individually, and that you would draw us nearer to you.

Speak to us now, we ask in Jesus' name, amen.

Jeremiah chapter 33 and verse 3 is a passage that has grown to be 1 of great comfort to me.

We've read this before in our series on prayer that we're going through right now, where Jeremiah tells us, the Lord invites us to call upon him.

It says, call upon me and I will answer thee and show thee great and mighty things that thou knowest not.

I guess you're not too enthusiastic about it.

It's almost like God saying, listen, I want to have a conversation with you.

Let's have a conversation together with 1 another.

God is inviting us and he says, listen, as you call upon me, as I answer you, I'm going to show you things that you've never saw before.

That's something that I want to experience on a daily basis in my devotional life, in my prayer life, and in every aspect of my life that as I call upon God, he will show me great and mighty things.

This is the relationship that God wants to have with you.

Now of course we know Satan does not like this type of relationship.

In the book Steps to Christ, page 94, We're told this, the darkness of the evil 1 encloses those who neglect to pray.

Now I want you to think about that as you reflect upon this past week, was the devil successful in your prayer life?

The darkness of the evil 1 encloses those who neglect to pray.

If you are neglecting to pray, don't be surprised if the darkness of the evil 1 closes around you.

The whispered temptations of the enemy entices them to sin.

And it's all because they do not make use of the privilege that God has given them in the divine appointment of prayer.

The devil does not want you to have that relationship that Jeremiah describes in Jeremiah 33 and verse 3, where God shows you great and mighty things.

And so he orchestrates things in your life so that we neglect the very thing that we need the most, prayer and a relationship with God.

Now as negative as this statement may appear, there is a promise, and I like to do this in my personal study of the Bible, and as I read in Spirit of Prophecy as well, I like to take things and flip them around the opposite way.

She says that the darkness of the evil 1 encloses those who neglect to pray, which also means that those who do not neglect to pray, the darkness of the evil 1 is banished.

And the light of God and his word surrounds that individual who is not neglecting the gift of prayer.

The whispered temptations of the enemy do not reach their ears because they are not neglecting this great spiritual gift that God has given to us.

I wanna suggest something to you that might be new.

Prayer is a relationship, not a religious activity.

Is it something that you feel obligated to do that if you don't do it in the morning that you'll feel guilty as you go throughout the rest of the day?

Or is it a relationship that you have with God that you can't help but start your day talking together with him.

You see, conversation develops relationship.

And prayer is a conversation, as we talked about in our last time together, where God wants to speak to us as we speak to him.

It is a relationship that you are entering into with our heavenly father.

Through prayer, we adjust to God and not God to us.

He already knows what's going on in your life, right?

You're the 1, I'm the 1 that needs prayer because as I go and I spend time with God in my prayer closet, it is there that God reveals himself to me in his word and his will for my life.

It is a relationship that God wants to have with you.

Now as we spent our time in our last study together 2 weeks ago, we looked at Luke chapter 11 and verse 1, which was our scripture reading this morning, where the disciples come to Jesus and it says, and it came to pass that as he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, 1 of his disciples said unto him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.

And I mentioned to you that at this point, the disciples were already ordained ministers.

They had been walking and talking with Jesus.

They had done much good at this point, but as they sat there in the stillness of the morning, as the dew rested upon the grass and the trees around them, As they sat there and listened to Jesus talk to his heavenly Father, they all of a sudden realized they did not, even though they were ordained ministers, they did not know how to pray.

And so they asked him, teach us, Lord, how we ought to pray.

And we went through this concept in our study together last time, where we looked at elements in the Bible that help us learn how to pray more effectively.

We looked at 4 keys or 4 suggestions from the word of God that help us to have a better prayer life.

And we're gonna add 2 more to that in our study together this morning.

But just in a quick review, in our last study together, we talked about how the Bible tells us that we should have a secret place where we meet God every morning.

We should have a place, this is the spot that I'm going to meet with my heavenly Father.

And as I have 1 place, that spills over into me having many places.

Jesus had specific places where he met with his heavenly father morning by morning.

We also looked at how we should have a time to pray.

The psalmist said, morning and evening and at noon will I pray and cry aloud and he will hear my voice.

So not only do we have a place, but we have a specific time that we meet with God, and as we do that, it spills over into me praying without ceasing as I go throughout my day.

Number 3, we looked at how we should learn to pray out loud where only God can hear, and this is something that makes us uncomfortable because we don't like other people to hear our thoughts and some people have suggested this idea that if we pray our prayers out loud then the devil will hear those prayers and he'll go and make sure that they don't happen but we realize that our God is more powerful than Satan, and that when we pray out loud, it actually causes him to tremble.

Jesus prayed out loud, and we wanna follow that example as well.

And then we also looked at how we need to learn how to what?

Listen, and oftentimes our prayer experience is a constant stream of information that we're shooting to God and then boom, we're off throughout our day and we haven't stopped to be still and listen to God talk to us.

And we looked at the life of Samuel, how he prayed 5 simple words and God responded to that prayer with over 103 words in response.

And we concluded that that's the type of prayer life that we wanna have, where we're saying less and God is saying more.

Now before I add to this list this morning, I want to bring something into focus here.

And by the way, when I implemented this into my personal life several years ago, it radically transformed my devotional life.

And if you're looking for a fresh, you know, infusion of life into your devotional life, if devotions have become kind of stale for you and aren't really going anywhere, if you're not doing this already, I wanna suggest that you take this and apply it into your devotions tomorrow morning.

It just radically transformed my time together with the Lord morning by morning.

And I want you to enter into that experience as well if you haven't already.

But I wanna just remind us of something here because we're looking at suggestions and tools from the word of God that help us to have a more fervent and more prosperous prayer life.

But before we can even enter into the beauty of prayer, we have to first realize that there is something that separates us from having this communication with God.

And we talked about this once before, but I wanna reemphasize it again.

Psalms chapter 66 and verse 18, the Bible says, if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not want.

Intellectually, we know this, but for some reason, it hasn't always spilled over into our daily lives.

And so we can't expect God to hear our prayers.

We can't expect to have a radical prayer life if we have known sin in our lives.

And don't blame it on the fact that prayer doesn't work.

If you have known sin in your life, we have to get rid of that sin through confession to God and then we can enter into that beautiful prayer experience.

And so that's why it's always good for us to begin our prayer time where we have a moment of confession, making sure that our heart is right with the Lord.

And if you take time to pause long enough to listen to the Lord, the Holy Spirit will convict you on what you need to make right in your life.

But then it's gonna be up to you to actually go and make that thing right.

Okay, so I just wanna just reemphasize this concept.

We looked at it once before, but I wanna just kind of make this clear in our minds because we wanna have a more fervent prayer life And sin is something that blocks that from happening.

It's just not gonna take place if we have sin that is unconfessed in our lives.

So let's go on and see what else we find out in our slavery together.

Lord, Teach us to Pray - Part 3

Loving Father in heaven It is with joy that we come into the presence of God Seeking good things from you and your word Father you have been faithful in your blessings to us time and again.

And Lord, it's with anticipation that we look forward to yet another blessing this morning.

Father, we pray that you would remove any distractions And that you would prepare our hearts for the message that you have prepared for us Speak to us now Lord we ask we thank you in Jesus name Amen We started our study together last week with this passage that we've looked at several times in Jeremiah chapter 33 and verse 3 where we find this exciting invitation that God gives to us as his children.

He says, call unto me and I will answer thee and show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not.

God is inviting his children to call upon him and this is something that we get to engage in on a daily basis, calling upon God and letting him show us great and mighty things that we have never seen or experienced before in our relationship with him.

We're studying this concept of calling upon God, which we call prayer.

In the book Gospel Workers, page 254, there's a beautiful passage here that we've read once before but I think it's worth repeating.

We're told this, that prayer is the breadth of the soul.

And we know how important it is for us to breathe.

It is something we do not on a daily basis.

It's not something we do on an hourly basis, but it's something we do every few seconds.

She says, prayer is the breath of the soul.

No other means of grace can be substituted and the health of the soul be preserved.

Prayer brings the heart into immediate connection with the wellspring of life and strengthens the sinew and muscle of the religious experience.

Neglect the exercise of prayer or engage in prayer spasmodically now and then as seems convenient, and you lose your hold on God.

The spiritual faculties lose their vitality.

The religious experience lacks health and vigor.

What a privilege we have to breathe the atmosphere of heaven moment by moment as we engage in this spiritual strength of prayer.

Now I mentioned in our study together last week, and I want to repeat this because I don't want you to forget it, and it's this, that prayer is a relationship, not a religious activity.

Okay, so we don't look at prayer as an activity, a religious activity that we do periodically throughout the day.

Prayer is a relationship with a God that wants to communicate with us.

And just like we communicate with 1 another and we develop our relationship through communication, so we develop our relationship with God through communing with Him.

We have to change our view of prayer to look at it from the perspective that we are developing a knowledge and a relationship with God as we spend time with him in prayer.

Through prayer, we adjust to what God wants and not God to what we want.

We don't need to tell him what he already knows.

In fact, prayer is actually more for us than it is for God, right?

It's for us as we pray we are bringing ourselves in line with our Father's will.

Now we've been studying this passage together where the disciples come and they ask Jesus, Lord, teach us to pray.

In Luke 11, verse 1, as I've mentioned several times, at this point, the disciples were already ordained as ministers, but yet when they heard Jesus' prayer, they realized that they did not know how to pray as they should.

And so Jesus, after this, he shares with them the Lord's Prayer that we have become so familiar with in answering this request.

And there are lots of little details in the Bible that help us to understand how we can have a more meaningful prayer life.

And we've looked at 6 of them so far in our time together.

We're gonna look at 2 more in our time together here today.

But just as a quick review, we found that the Bible tells us that we should have a secret what?

We should have a secret place, a specific spot where we are meeting with God on a daily basis.

This is the place that I meet with him when I wake up in the morning or maybe when you go to bed at night or at some point throughout your day.

I have a place, a specific spot that I meet together with God on a regular basis.

And then that translates to meeting with him all, wherever you go throughout your day.

Number 2, we study how the Bible tells us that we should have a what?

David said, morning and evening and at noon will I pray and cry out loud.

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Lord, Teach us to Pray

Lord, Teach us to Pray - Part 2

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