Welcome to the Warriors of Grace podcast hosted by Dave Jenkins. Warriors of Grace is about helping men from generation to generation become gospelmen in private, in the home, in the church, and in public through the Word of God. Now for today's episode, let's join our host, Dave Jenkins. Well, welcome back to the Warriors of Grace podcast, men. My name is Dave, and I'm the host for this show. And today we're gonna continue our series, Habits for Growth in the New Year. This is episode number two, and today we're gonna talk about prayer. Now, prayer is an offering up of our desires unto God for this agreeable to his will in the name of Christ, with confession of our sins and thankful acknowledgement of his mercies, as the Westminster Shorter Catechism 98 says. It is one of the most important spiritual disciplines that we can consider, and we can offer up our prayers to God individually as well as corporately with other believers. Prayer may be spontaneous, offered up at a moment's notice without following any specific model, or it might be formal and liturgical, offered according to a specific pattern given in the Word of God. Now prayer though occurs whenever we speak to God with our lips or with our minds, it is one of the most common expresses of faith and devotion in the Christian life. The practice of prayer arises from the Word of God which testifies that God's people have prayed to him from the very beginning of his dealings with humanity. The Bible records many of the prayers offered during biblical times, it gives us models of prayer, it commands us in 1 Thessalonians 5.17 to pray continually. In fact, the definition of prayer that arises from the Westminster Shorter Catechism, which I just read from, it includes the core elements of prayer. Just as the biblical saints express their desires for salvation, for healing, the victory of God's appointed king, and more, we are to offer our desires to God in prayer. These desires must be made according to the will of God, for the Lord gives us what we ask for only when we ask for things that conform to His will. It is simply to pray for things according to his revealed moral will which is found in the word of God. And whenever we ask for what God wants for us in our sanctification, he's going to give it to us. Much of what we pray for, however, is related to God's decretive will. For example, we often pray for things such as healing, a new job, a spouse, or even other specific things in our individual lives about which scripture does not speak directly. We may certainly pray for such things, but we do not know God's will ahead of time regarding such things. They belong to the secret things of the Lord, as Deuteronomy 29.29 says, and we cannot expect that God will always give us what we want in those areas of our lives. Now, prayer is to be offered in the name of Christ. We're told to ask for things in the name of Christ. We are to confess our sins in prayer, knowing that God is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness, as 1 John 1 says. Thanksgiving is also a core element of God-oriented prayer. And just as the failure to give thanks to God is a root of all sin, so the offering of Thanksgiving to God is a root of holiness. And although we may find prayer difficult at times, many models for prayer have been developed throughout church history to help believers to develop a consistent prayer life, men. Now, we dare not overlook the Bible itself as a model of prayer. The book of Psalms in particular is a book of songs that can be prayed, allowing us to pray word for word to the Lord using his word to us. or we can develop our own prayers according to how the Psalms are structured, reflecting the concerns that they address. Now, the Psalms, in fact, are a rich source of prayer and we do well to have a prayer life that includes the various kinds of prayer found in the Psalter, such as Psalms of Thanksgiving, Psalms of Lament, and Precatory Psalms, and even wisdom psalms. Jesus himself was known as a man of prayer, and Jesus himself gives us essential instruction on prayer in the Lord's Prayer. The Lord's Prayer includes the key elements that should be found in our prayers and even directs us to the concerns that we should pray for preeminently. In fact, we can say this, it is particularly important that we pray for the coming of God's kingdom and for the hallowing of His name. And while our individual needs, our individual concerns are important to the Lord, they're to be offered up in prayer to Him, we should first be praying about and be foremost about the advancement of God's kingdom in our lives, in the church, and in the world. Christians can be confident that God works in and through the prayers of His people in order to bring His perfect will to pass in our lives. So our prayers do not change the mind of God, but they do change our circumstances as the Lord intervenes in response to our requests. And we can also be assured that God knows what is best for His people and that He is working for our good and for His glory, whether He says yes or no to our requests. You see, the Lord does hear us. He wants to hear from us. And so we should never hesitate to go to Him in the name of Jesus. By His atoning sacrifice, Christ has opened the way for us to enter into God's heavenly temple when we pray. That is a great privilege indeed. John Calvin in his Institutes of the Christian Religion says, The necessity and the utility of this exercise of prayer no words can sufficiently express. Martin Luther says, Nothing is so necessary as that which we should continually resort to the ear of God, to call upon him, to pray to him, that he would give, preserve, and increase in us us faith and the fulfillment of the Ten Commandments, and that he would remove everything that is in our way and opposes us therein." R.C. Sproul says this, and does prayer change things? Prayer has a vital place in the life of the Christian. One might pray and not be a Christian, but one cannot be a Christian and not pray. You see, it's easy to be critical of prayer. particularly, perhaps, even the prayers of others. Robert Murray McSheen's words are often cited because they remain painfully true. You wish to be a humble man? Ask him about his prayer life. You see, our prayers, they reveal much about us as men. Prayers with little or no worship and focusing our needs, usually health, they reveal a distorted bent on our sin. What they reveal is self-centeredness, what Martin Luther called homo in seo incurvidus. man curved in on himself. Listen to the prayers at church prayer meeting if one exists at your church and you're going to discover that the majority of prayers are organ recitals, prayers for somebody's liver, kidney, or heart. Not that we shouldn't pray for medical issues, I'm not saying that, but a preoccupation with health is itself a reflection of how little we understand why it is we desire good health. We desire it so that the person we are praying for lives for Jesus Christ. Prayer is talking to God. That is in Graham Prayer and the Knowledge of God, page 15. Sometimes, perhaps too often, the talk is all about us. We've all had those annoying conversations that have been entirely one-sided and that they show little or no interest in us. It's all about them, their interests, desires, needs, and complaints. And prayer can get like that. We pour out our woes, we become totally self-absorbed, we show no interest in dialogue that involves listening to what God has said and what God has revealed in his word. Now, we need to be clear, God is patient in his grace, he responds to us, but it shouldn't be like this. And you see, when Jesus taught us to pray, he showed us that prayer begins and continues with God in Matthew 6, 9, when he says, Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Take a look at the structure of the Lord's Prayer and it's going to show you that at least half of our praying should be addressed to the praise and the worship of God. Now many factors influence Tertullian when he coined the term personae to represent the threeness of God, but he employed this term primarily because the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit talk to each other. They relate personally to each other and to us. In other words, God communicates within himself and with his people. And so it stands to reason that prayer should consist of personal communion with God, talking to God, and the inquisitiveness as to His nature and His desires, and eagerness to learn about the things that please and displease the Lord. At the first petition of the Lord's Prayer, among other things, it reminds us that there must be a clear-headed focus, on our part, on who God is and what God is like. Theologians have reflected on how we come to know God and what it is that we are to know about him. The answer has often come in this form. We know very little, and the answer to the question, what is God, what do we know because God has revealed it to us, is an answer to the question, what is God like? You see, God shows us what he's like by revealing to us his name in the word. Now our minds, whether consciously or sublimely, we are, to use John Calvin's phrase, idle factories, constantly succumbing to, I like to think of God as, formulas, all of which are seriously wrong. They're conceived by a persistent anti-guide bias in our mental, moral, and spiritual systems. And to avoid idolatry in prayer, we must begin by reminding ourselves of the name of God, whether that be God's covenant name, I am who I am, Yahweh, that is self-existent, self-sustaining, self-determining, everywhere present, always in control, or as the Lord's prayer wondrously encapulates, Father, expressive work of the newness of the new covenant and the access and the status to which the work of our Redeemer has introduced us, or Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as Jesus Himself disclosed in the Great Commission in Matthew 28.19. When Jesus commissioned His disciples to baptize in the name singular of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, He revealed the impregnable truth that there is more than one in the one God. You see, God's sinner prayers, it causes us to reflect on the nature of God, what God is like, his attributes. That, too, is the focus of an account in which God tells Moses his name. That context in Exodus 34 is the nasty business of the golden calf, man's idle factory at work again, folks. Having cleared up this mess, Moses ascended Sinai again only to be told God's name once more in Exodus 34. But now expanded with an explanation of his nature. The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children to the third and the fourth generations. Grace, mercy, and holiness are attributes that God assigns to Himself, holiness being His moral perfection that responds in retribution to lawlessness and ingratitude. That is to say, God-centered prayer requires a proper knowledge of God in His Trinitarian glory. Psalm 147 verse 1 says, Praise the Lord, for it is good to sing praises to our God, for it is pleasant and a song of praise is fitting. Now, you see, God is praiseworthy. Getting that fact under our skin is not as easy as we might think. Self-centered prayer, which is a form of idolatry, fails to appreciate that our purpose here on earth is to praise our Creator and our Redeemer. Listen to the psalmist as he extols the praiseworthiness of God again and again and again. The Psalter used to be the basic diet for Christians. Christians sang Psalms around the dining room table and in church service on Sunday. The God-centered praise of the Book of Psalms became the language of prayer for the people of God. And since Psalms singing has waned, the rich God-exalting praise that the Psalter represents has waned as well. Now G.I. Packer reminds us of the need to distinguish between prayers, praise, and thanks, and to ensure that we do both when he says this in his book, Praying, Finding Our Way Through Duty to the Light, saying this, to some extent on us. We thank God for particular gifts given to us and others personally, and for general gifts bestowed on us all. Praise, on the other hand, focuses directly on God. We praise Him for who and what He is. It is the difference between a spouse saying to the other, you are the most understanding person I know, that's one reason I love you so much, and thanks for the sandwich, I need it, J.I. Packer says. Now praising God doesn't come naturally to us. We must be resolute about it. That's why Jesus warned his disciples in the Preference to the Lord's Prayer about a religious performance more concerned about the outward spectacle and the ceremony than the inward authenticity and true worship. Hypocrite is a term Jesus uses in Matthew 6.5, a term just about as offensive now as it was then. Play acting, pretending to pray, praying without the reality of knowing that we're in the presence of God is a harsh judgment, but a true one nevertheless. You see, when we do such things, we are praying to exalt ourselves, not the Lord. It is self-centeredness that plagues us, that needs to be rooted out and destroyed. Authentic prayer, God-centered prayer, and realize that the promise of prayer is God himself. Being in the presence of God is a greatest reward of prayer. Godly people have always cherished this reality. Psalm 26 says, Oh Lord, I love the habitation of your house and the place where your glory dwells. Psalm 65 says, Blessed is the one you choose and bring near to dwell in your courts. We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house, the holiness of your temple. Isaiah 55 6 says do you know any anything of this if not pursue him and tell you find him seek the Lord while While he may be found call upon him while he's near. How can we ensure that our prayers are God-centered? We'll consider these five steps first remind yourself that there is only one God in the universe that you're not him second Adoration comes first, before confession, thanksgiving, or supplication. Worship the Lord in your praying. Third, read a psalm before you pray. Attempt to emulate what you find there, a preoccupation with God and His multifaceted nature. Find psalms of joy or grief, praise or lament, and note how the psalmist spends time with God, making Him the center of his thoughts and desires. Fourth, learn to love God's name so that saying and even repeating them fills you with an inexpressible joy, a reminder of who He is, and His covenant faithfulness to you in the gospel of grace. Fifth, learn to wait on the Lord. Watch how the psalmist, fainting as he thinks of his own troubles, finds relief by deliberately focusing on the great things that God has done in Psalms 77, 11 through 12, which says, I will remember the deeds of the Lord. Yes, I will remember your wonders of old. I will ponder all your work and meditate on your mighty deeds. Prayer is the measure of a man spiritually in a way that nothing else is, J.A. Packer says. That is to say, our prayers reveal what our hearts want the most. They reveal how we regard God and his power. They reveal the quality and the measure of faith. Do we pray often, men, and carefully, or not much at all? For churches, too, prayers are revealing. They reveal what a church values and where it places their hope. Belief as mental assent seldom prays. Belief as, I know New Zealand exists, but it makes no difference in my life, seldom prays. Nominal Christianity seldom prays. A person sitting on God's throne does not pray. And so a failure to pray much may suggest something about what we think about the Lord. That is to say, genuine faith, though, it prays. It prays to the Lord. Holy Spirit-given trust prays. Leaning on God like sitting on a chair prays. I need God like my lungs need air prays. Prayer is to faith as breathing is to the body. It's what the thing does to survive. And so examining your own prayer life, my own prayer life, what do we see? And in the corporate prayer life of your church. The book of Acts shows how much the early church prayed. In Acts 114 and Acts 124, all these with one accord were devoted themselves to prayer. And of course, Acts 242, and they devoted themselves to the prayers. And when they had prayed, Acts 431. Acts 12.5 says, but earnest prayer for him was made to God by the church. And in verse 12 of Acts 12, it says, Many were gathered together and were praying. Acts 13, 3 says, After fasting and praying, they laid their hands on them and sent them off. Acts 20, 36 says, He knelt down and prayed with them all. It was not just groups or churches that prayed. Individuals prayed privately too. The apostles in Acts 6-4, in Acts 6-6, Peter in Acts 9-40, Acts 10-9, Acts 11-5, Cornelius in Acts 10-2, in Acts 10-4, Paul and Silas in Acts 16-25, and Acts 28-8. You see, good prayers need not be long. Ecclesiastes 5, 1-2 says, guard your steps when you go to the house of God. Let your words be few. Think of the Lord's prayer. Good prayers should be honest, they should be forthright, and yet they should also be humble and contrite. Think of the Psalms or Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. Good prayers should begin and end wherever possible with thanksgiving and praise. Good prayers adhere to the Word of God, as we see in Psalm 119. Good prayers always rely on the blood of Jesus Christ. Good prayer works. And if you're a church leader and you listen to Warriors of Grace, lead your church to pray more, pastor. Every Sunday morning, devote 3-5 minutes to a prayer of confession, 3-7 to praise, 5-10 to intercession, 1-2 to thanksgiving. And spend 30 minutes on Sunday evenings praying together. A church's public prayers teach the saints how to pray privately. And it's remarkable that we sometimes go through a day without prayer. What are we doing there? We are being self-sufficient. And yet, praise God, the blood of His Son cleanses us from sin, and His Spirit intercedes for us, as we see in 1 John 1, 7 and Romans 8, 26-27. Our confidence is not finally in our prayers, but in Christ alone. God be praised. Well, man, I want to thank you for listening or watching this week's episode of Warriors of Grace. Until next week, may the Lord richly bless you and keep you. Thank you for listening to the Warriors of Grace podcast. If you enjoyed the show today, please subscribe, leave a rating on the app, and share our episode with your friends and family. If you want to, you can follow us on Instagram at Servants of Grace, on Twitter at Servants of Grace, or search Servants of Grace on Facebook. You can also find our show on the front page of the website ServantsofGrace.org.