Good morning, everyone. Great to be in church with you this morning. If you haven't met before,
I'm Stephen, senior pastor here at St. Paul's, and I haven't preached in a while, so I'm looking
forward to getting back into it today. And if you are new here, if you just missed us in the last
couple of weeks, we're on five weeks of prayer. And today, our job is to try and understand
something of the nature of prayer. One of the things that I've loved about being a father is
seeing my own children develop in their prayer life and how children pray with a great deal of
simplicity and ease. You just tell them it's just talking to God. And so they talk to God as if
they're talking to anyone else. One of my girls consistently prays to this day, ends her prayers
with, Dear Jesus, I hope you have a lovely day tomorrow. Now, I kind of work on the assumption
because he exists in eternal bliss that he will. But she's kind of committed to the idea of Jesus
having a lovely day each day. Sometimes, however, when your kids pray, some of the prayers you don't
kind of want to answer, you know, Dear Jesus, help my sister to stop being a rat bag or stop picking
on me or stop, you know, at that point, you kind of go, well, maybe it's more of an announcement,
you know, than an actual prayer. But kids pray with such simplicity. Here's a few other samples from
the lips of children. Dear God, my mum tells me that you have a reason for everything on earth.
I guess broccoli is one of your great mysteries. Dear God, please make my parents understand that if I
don't eat salad, I do better at school. Dear God, please forgive me for hiding my sister's favourite
doll and please don't tell her where it is. Dear God, I need you to make my mum not allergic to cats.
I really want a cat and I really don't want to ask my mum to move out. Dear God, can you get me a
iPhone? It turns out Santa forgot. Dear God, when will my sister stop being annoying? I'm down to my
very last patience. Dear God, please don't let it rain on Saturday. The first ball I hit will be for you.
Dear God, I hope my dog is in heaven with you. Please take care of him and sorry if he chews your sandals.
It's just so easy for kids to pray. Much harder as an adult to say I'm meant to sometimes,
but so easy to pray. But prayer is an almost universal activity. It's part of every culture,
every generation and people group. Muslims pray five times a day while Jews have traditionally prayed
three times a day. And each branch of the Christian church is saturated with various traditions of
common prayer and private prayer and pastoral prayers. Buddhists use a prayer wheel which flings
prayers for compassion into the atmosphere in order to knit the spiritual and the natural to relieve
suffering and to release kindness. Hindus pray for help or peace in the world to any of several
gods. And the ultimate goal of their praying is the union with their supreme being, Brahmin,
and escape from the cycles of reincarnation. People in other cultures, like the Beaver Indians in
southwestern Canada and the Papago Indians of the US southwest, pray through their singing.
Their poetry and their music serve their prayers that unite the spiritual and the physical
realms together. Prayer is one of the most common phenomena of human life.
Even deliberately non-Christian people pray at times. One study from 2004 found that nearly 30% of
atheists admit that they prayed at least sometimes. And another found that 70% of non-believers in God
prayed in fact regularly. Now though prayer is not literally a universal phenomenon in the fact that every single
person prays, it is a global one. And it inhabits all cultures and involving the overwhelming majority
of people at some point in their lives. In fact, there has not been a single culture yet discovered that does not pray in some form or another.
To say prayer is global is not, however, to say that all prayer is the same.
You look at the same. You look at the same. You look at the same. You look at the religious trances of the Native American
shamanists, the chanting of the Benedictine monasteries, the hour-long pastoral pairs of the 17th century Puritan
ministers, the speaking in tongues in Pentecostal churches, Muslims with their forehead and their hands and their knees on the
ground towards Mecca, the strict Orthodox Jew swaying and bowing in prayer, and the Anglican priests reading from the Book of
Common Prayer. So what is prayer? That's really what we're seeking to do today, to try and understand
something of prayer from a biblical perspective. And this is going to be a brief, no, this is going to be a summary,
if you like, of it all, at least to try and capture an idea of it. I've got three main things that I want to try and
understand this morning about prayer. So if you're someone who writes stuff down, this might be helpful
for you. First of all, I'm going to ask the question, what is prayer? Followed by two kind of connecting
answers that sort of, they do flow from one another. That is, it's conversing with God and it's encountering
God. So what is prayer? First of all, I'm using a whole range of different Bible verses. You might want
to just jot them down as we go through. The Christian faith isn't surprised by the global phenomenon
of prayer. That's because at the beginning of the Bible, we are told that all human beings are made
in the image of God, Genesis 1, 26, 27. Bearing God's image means that we are designed by God to reflect
and relate to him. And that's why the 16th century of former John Calvin wrote of the, what he said is
the sense of the deity that, that all human beings have. He wrote this, he said, there is within the
human mind and indeed by natural instinct and awareness of divinity. Other theologians have also understood
this sense of the divine as the reason prayer is so pervasive in the human race. Romans 1, 19 to 20 says
that we look at the world and we conclude that some great power created and sustains it. An experience
of powerlessness in our world is often the thing that triggers this general knowledge into a prayerful
cry for help. We see it in the media all the time, tragedy strikes and people are feeling powerless
and they don't know what to say and how to close it off. And so they just would, you'd often hear them
say our thoughts and our prayers are with all involved. I've heard that come out even in the,
from the mouth of declared atheists, our thoughts and our prayers are with all that are involved.
So in a very basic way, you can define prayer as a personal communicative response to the knowledge of God.
All human beings have some knowledge of God available to them.
And prayer is seeking to respond and connect to that being, to that reality,
even if it's no more than calling out into the air randomly for help.
However, because prayer is a response to our knowledge of God, it means that prayer is profoundly
altered by the amount and the accuracy of that knowledge. Our prayer is shaped, it is defined by the being to whom we pray.
So the Buddhist spinning their prayer wheel, the Hindu sitting in mystic silence, the Muslim with his face
facing Mecca five times a day, are all reflecting something of the character of the God or the gods to whom they're praying to
and what they think their relationship with this being is.
Again, John Calvin observed that we are all, that all of us refashion that sense of deity that we have
to fit our own interests and our own desires.
He says, unless that is, God clearly communicates to us about who he is, what he's like,
that is, unless our view of God is corrected by God himself, we will refashion God into our own image.
So what that means for the Christian is that prayer is not just an instinct that we have common to all people,
it is in fact a unique gift from God.
Christians believe that through the Bible and the work of God's spirit in our lives,
our understanding of God becomes unclouded because he makes it clear.
He clears the cloud.
True knowledge of God is a gift from God.
It's not because Christians are more clever or anything like that.
It's because God has revealed himself clearly.
He has spoken and he has spoken clearly in the person of the Lord Jesus.
In the fullest sense then, prayer for the Christian is really quite simply continuing the conversation
that God has already started with us through his word and his grace,
which eventually becomes a full encounter with him.
So let's have a look at the second point here, conversing with God.
You see, what Christians know about God comes to them through the words of the Bible
and its main message, the gospel.
What we discover in the Bible is that God is a personal God.
We discover that he is a triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The Christian doctrine of the Trinity teaches that there is one God in three persons
who have known and who have loved each other before the dawn of time.
If God is triune, then words and language are seen in a very new light.
In fact, in John 14 to 17, we're going to be launching into that after we finish with prayer.
Jesus refers to his life within the Godhead before he even created the world.
He says, speaking of the glory I had with the Father before the world began.
John 17, 5.
And he also speaks of the words that he received from the Father in John 17, 18.
Sorry, John 17, 8.
So within the Trinity itself, within the Godhead, there has been communication with words.
The Father speaks to the Son.
The Son speaks to the Father.
The Father and Son speak to the Spirit.
And since the Godhead contains a community of persons,
and because language is intrinsic to personal relationship,
there is every reason to expect that God communicates through word.
This is the nature of reality.
And this is the gift and the wonder of prayer for the Christian.
What it means is we're not plunging ourselves into the abyss of the unknown when the Christian prays.
Christian prayer is fellowship with the personal God who reveals himself and his plans and his purposes
and befriends us through speech.
And we exist in a world of words.
Apparently our information is doubling every six, seven years or something like that,
which is just mind-boggling and helps you understand why we need things like Google.
We exist in a world of words, lots of different words.
Men apparently speak a minimum of 7,000 words a day,
and women around 20,000 words a day.
I think it's mainly because women have to keep repeating themselves
because we're not listening.
We're not listening.
And so we are inundated with information each day,
and we are losing the ability to listen.
We skim and we flick articles on our iPads and phones.
We skim reading.
We are losing the ability to follow a train of thought,
to engage with a train of thought.
So why would we want to listen to God speaking?
Why would we want to listen to the God who speaks?
Why would we listen to his words?
The reason we need to listen to God's words and know them and reflect on them and apply them
is God's words have power infinitely beyond any other word.
More powerful than our words.
See, God conversing with us is not a take it or leave it transaction.
It is, in fact, a matter of life and death.
In Genesis 1-3, right at the beginning of the Bible,
God says,
Let there be light.
And the very next statement is,
And there was light.
The verse does not say,
First of all, God said,
Let there be light.
And then he went and built a power station.
When he speaks,
It happens.
His word itself brought the light about.
Now, I can say,
In this room,
Let there be light.
And then I've got to walk over to the corner and go,
Flick everything up.
That is, my word in itself does not switch the lights on in this room.
Because my words do not have power.
They need actions to back them up.
Or they fail to achieve their purposes.
We can make a promise to do something,
but in fact lack the power to fulfill what we promise.
We may have every intention of fulfilling the promise.
I might say to my kids,
I'll pick you up at 3 o'clock this afternoon.
And because of bad traffic or for some other reason,
I get there at 3 o'clock.
It's something totally out of my power.
I cannot fulfill my promise.
Because my words do not have power.
They need actions to make them powerful.
God's words, however,
cannot fail their purposes,
because for God,
speaking and acting are exactly the same thing.
The God of the Bible is a God who by his very nature acts through speaking.
God's word creates.
Jesus commands very specifically,
Lazarus being dead in the tomb for four days,
Lazarus come out.
He didn't just say to the tomb,
come out.
Everyone in the tomb would have walked out at that moment.
Just you, Lazarus.
Come out.
He tells the waves to stop,
and they do.
No further action.
When the Bible talks of God's word,
it is talking about God's active presence in his world.
To say that God's word goes out to do something
is the same as saying that God has gone out to do something.
To break one of God's commands or his words
is to break relationship with him.
So how are we to receive God's words?
They come to us,
and I'm going to shorten everything here,
they come to us in the Bible.
The Bible says that God
will put his words in the mouth of prophets.
Deuteronomy 18, 15 to 20,
Jeremiah 1, 9 to 10.
And once a prophet receives God's word,
they can be written down
and can effectively be read
as God's speech
when the prophet is not present
or even after he's long dead,
according to Jeremiah 36, 1 to 32.
The Bible then is God's written word,
and it remains God's word
when it's read today.
And the conclusion is clear.
God acts through his word,
and his word is alive and active,
according to Hebrews 4.
And therefore,
the way to have God
active,
let's just say active,
in your world,
in your life,
is through the Bible.
You see,
to understand the Bible
is not simply
to get information about God.
When you attend to it
with trust and faith,
the Bible is the way
God continues
his conversation
with us.
It's hearing God speak.
We know who we are praying to
only if we first learn it
in the Bible.
And we know
how we should be praying
only by getting
our vocabulary
from the Bible.
which means
that our prayers
should arise
out of immersion
in the Scriptures,
in the Bible.
We should plunge ourselves
into the sea
of God's language.
And what we discover
in the Bible
about this God,
and as we just read
from Psalm 145,
this God is simple
and he's complex,
complex,
he's majestic
and he's tender,
he's holy
and he's forgiving,
he's loving,
he's personable
and he's mysterious.
Therefore,
as we listen
and as we study
and we think
and reflect
and we've pondered
this God
in the Bible,
our response
to him in prayer
in our hearts
and our minds
is going to be
multifaceted.
It's going to be varied.
It may be one of shame.
It may be one of joy
or of confusion
or of appeal.
Our prayer
can never be
primarily
just confession
or just praise
or just appeals.
It in fact
can't be
primarily
any one type
of expression.
Some prayers
in the Bible
are like
an intimate conversation
with a friend.
Others are like
appeal to a great monarch.
others are the wrestling match.
In every case,
the nature of prayer
is determined
by the God
who's revealed himself,
by the character
of this God
who is at once
our friend.
He is our father,
our lover,
our shepherd
and our king.
We pray
in response
to God himself
and only
if we respond
to his word
will our own
prayer life
be as rich
and as varied.
Edmund Clowney,
a theologian,
wrote this
for all of you
who want to
get a book on
or love to
just get to the
cut of the chase
on how I should pray.
He wrote,
the Bible
does not present
an art of prayer.
It presents
the God
of prayer.
It doesn't present
the art of prayer.
It presents
the God
of prayer.
The more clearly
we grasp
who God
is,
the one who
has spoken
to us,
the more
our prayer
is shaped
and determined
accordingly.
But be patient,
my friends.
This journey
may be just
as slow
as a child
learning to speak.
So who is the
God that we
encounter
in the Bible?
If prayer
is continuing
a conversation
that God
has started
through his
word and his
grace to us,
which eventually
becomes a full
encounter with
him,
prayer is
continuing
a conversation
that God
has started
with us
through his
word and his
grace,
what is this
God?
Now for the
Christian,
as I've said,
prayer is a gift
where God
comes to us
by his
spirit and
illuminates the
darkness in our
lives so that
we might see
him,
the God who
has revealed
himself to
us.
Conversations,
however,
can be
mere
exchanges
of information
that do
not always
lead to
true
personal
encounter
or
relationship.
Have a
think about
that in
terms of
the
relationships
that you
have and
if you're
married or
in a
relationship
with someone,
have a
think about
that.
Your
conversations,
are they
just mere
transfer of
information
or is
there a
desire to
seek the
person?
You see,
we do not
want to
just know
about God,
but to
know God,
to seek
his face
and his
presence.
Truth
is crucial
for knowing.
But what
we really
need is
to experience
the truth.
We need
an encounter
with God.
And one
crucial thing
that the
Bible reveals
about God
is that he
is supremely
powerful and
can achieve
anything that
he wants.
Jeremiah 32,
17,
our sovereign
Lord,
you have
made the
heavens and
the earth
by your
great power
and your
outstretched
arm.
nothing is
too hard
for you.
We've
just sung
that as
a church.
But we
also read
in Psalm
145 that
this is the
God who
sustains and
uphold all
things,
all things
that says
look to
you for
their food.
Now it's
often this
instinct about
God that
causes many
to pray.
I'm feeling
powerless and
I need
something that's
more powerful
and so
God,
you solved
this problem.
We have
this instinct
of the
divine who
is supremely
powerful in
some way.
But another
crucial thing
that God
tells us
about himself
in the
Bible,
as I've
already said,
is that he
is a
triune
God.
He is a
personal,
relational
God.
And in
the New
Testament,
the triune
nature of
God becomes
explicit,
but few
places are
as compressed
and as
direct as
Matthew 28
19.
And this
is where
Jesus sends
his disciples
out into
the world
to baptize
in the name
of the
Father,
the Son,
and the
Holy Spirit.
It does
not say
in the
names of
the Father,
the Son,
and the
Holy Spirit,
but the
name.
They have
a single
name.
Now for
us,
the term
name may
be just
a label
or a
brand
that can
be discarded,
it can
be changed
at will.
But in
biblical
times,
first century
Palestine,
it denotes
the very
nature and
the being
of the
person.
This
means the
Father,
Son,
and the
Holy Spirit
all share
one divine
nature.
They are
one being.
There is
only one
God,
not three.
The
Father,
the Son,
and the
Holy Spirit
are all
equal.
They are
three persons
within the
unity of
God's
being who
are all
equally
divine,
who know
and love
one another,
and who
from all
eternity
have been
working
together
for the
salvation
of humanity.
And the
implications
of the
Trinity
of God
for prayer
are just
never-ending.
for starters,
it means
that God
has always
had within
himself
perfect
relationship.
The
Father,
Son,
and the
Holy Spirit
are adoring
one another,
giving glory
and love
to one
another,
and delighting
in one
another.
God,
therefore,
in and of
himself,
is infinitely,
profoundly happy,
filled with
perfect joy.
Not some
abstract
tranquility,
but the
fierce happiness
of dynamic,
loving relationships.
And knowing
this God
is filled
with glorious
love and joy
because that
is what he
has in
himself.
which means
the only
reason
that this
God would
have had
for creating
us
was not
in order
to abstract
some sort
of cosmic
love and joy
from having
relationship
with us
because he's
already got
that,
but to
share his
cosmic love
and joy
with us.
And this
is why
this God
of this
Bible
calls us
to converse
with him,
to know
him,
to relate
to him.
Christianity
is the
only
religion
in the
world
of all
time
that declares
that God
is not just
all-powerful,
but that he's
all-personable,
all-merciful
and all-loving.
this God
wants to
share the
joy he
has.
Prayer is
our way
of continuing
the conversation
that God
has started
with us
by his
grace
and
entering
into
the happiness
of God
himself.
what we
also discover
is that
when the
Trinity
becomes
explicit
in the
New
Testament,
the
character
of God's
fatherhood
also
becomes
prominent
and clear.
It's mentioned
a couple of
times in the
Old Testament.
It becomes
explicit in the
New Testament.
In Ephesians 1 verses 3 to 10,
the Father sends the Son to save us from our sin
that we might become God's adopted sons and daughters.
In John 1, 12 and 13,
we see that when we are born again through faith in Christ,
we receive the right to be called God's children
and we have the right to call him Father.
In first century Palestine,
when Jesus taught his disciples to pray and said,
you can call him Father,
that was offensive.
It was offensive to the Jew and it was offensive to the pagan.
No religion would ever declare such intimacy
with the universal everlasting God.
Galatians 4 verses 4 to 6 puts it succinctly.
God sent his Son, born of a woman,
born under the law to redeem those under the law
that we might receive adoption to sonship.
Because you are his sons,
God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts,
the Spirit who calls out,
Abba, Father.
Daddy.
To be adopted is a legal event.
But of course it means more than that.
To be adopted into a new family means a revolution
of how you live your life day by day.
In Jesus,
believers are not only legally,
but personally established in God's fatherly love.
John 17, 23 is a remarkable verse
where Jesus prays to the Father for his followers.
And he prays,
the world will know that you sent me
and have loved them
even as you have loved me.
To be adopted
means that now God loves us
as if we had lived,
as if Jesus had lived,
in the way that he lived.
We can run to this father without fear.
We have the most intimate
and unbreakable relationship possible
with the God of the universe.
To be a child means free access.
And prayer for the Christian
is offered on the basis of God's
free, saving grace
and his steadfast,
endless,
fatherly love.
How is it possible
that we would have that access
and that freedom
the only time
in all of the Gospels,
the only time,
you hear me say only,
the only time
in all of the Gospels
that Jesus Christ,
the Son of God,
prays to his Father
but doesn't call him Father
is on the cross.
My God,
my God,
why have you forsaken me?
Why have you abandoned me?
Jesus lost his relationship
with the Father
so that we could have relationship
with God as Father.
Jesus was forgotten
so that we could be remembered forever
from everlasting to everlasting.
Jesus Christ
bore all
the eternal punishment
that our sins deserve.
That is the cost
of our prayer.
Jesus paid the price
so God
could be our Father
and we could have
free access to him
to continue
the cosmic conversation.
and the Christian
who understands
this good news
by the power
of the Holy Spirit,
it's a gift,
doesn't seek God
primarily
to gain reward
or to avoid punishment.
Instead,
Galatians 4
verses 6 and 7
says,
the Spirit
leads us
to call out
passionately to God
as our heavenly Father,
our loving Father.
Paul refers to this experience
as knowing God.
God.
That's the ground motive
of Spirit-directed,
Christ-mediated prayer,
to simply know God,
to encounter God better,
to enjoy his presence.
Prayer is about
encountering the God
who has already
communicated to us.
friends,
just pause for a moment
and consider
how different
this is
from the way
we normally pray.
In our natural state,
we pray to God
to get things.
As I've said before,
he's like the
cosmic vending machine.
Drop the coins in
and get the product
you want.
We may believe in God
but our deepest hopes
and happiness
often reside
in other things,
in how successful
we are,
for instance,
or in our social
relationships.
And so,
we pray mainly
when our career
or our finances
are in trouble
or when some relationship
or social status
is in jeopardy
or some other things
need fixing.
See,
when life is going
smoothly,
our truest
heart treasure
feels safe.
It does not occur
to us
that we need to pray
except out of a sense
of duty to God.
It also means
that our prayers
are not varied.
They consist
usually of petitions
and occasionally
some confession,
particularly if we know
we've done something wrong
and God might slap us
on the wrist
by taking something
we want
or that we like
away from us.
Seldom,
never,
do we spend
sustained time
adoring
and praising
the God
who's revealed
himself to us.
That is,
we have no
positive
inner desire
to pray.
We do it
only
when circumstances
force us to.
why?
Have this sense
that God's there
but we
tend to see
him
as a means
through which
we get the things
that make us
really happy.
For too many,
he's not
our happiness.
He's not
our joy.
We haven't
truly encountered
the God
who exists
in supreme
happiness
and joy.
we therefore
pray to get
things
not to know
him.
All these
changes
when we
discover
that we
have been
bogged down
all of our
lives
in all kinds
of different
forms of
self-salvation
and we
turn to
Christ.
We surrender
to him.
When we
grasp his
astonishing
costly
sacrifice
for us,
we transfer
our trust
and our
hope
from other
things
to Jesus
and we
ask for
God's
acceptance
and his
grace.
We begin
to realize
the Spirit's
help,
the magnitude
of our
benefits and
the blessings
that we have
in Jesus
and then we
begin to
want almost
desperately
to know
and love
this God
more.
To know
him for
himself,
for who
he is.
his love
and regard
make popularity
and worldly
status look
just so pale
and thin.
Finally,
the God
who has
spoken,
the God
who has
conversed
with us,
we've
finally
encountered
him
and being
delighted
in him
and
delighting
in him
becomes
inherently
fulfilling
and
beautiful.
and
him
well
he
Jesus
and
he
Black
he