A bit of a detour tonight. We're not gonna go this week to one of the chapters in the book, which is kind of the way we've been doing it. But I want us to think about poor excuses for a prayerless life. Poor excuses for a prayerless life. And hopefully this will be a challenge to each of us that are here this evening. Jesus, taught his disciples to pray. In fact, one of his parables, Jesus specifically said that men ought always to pray and not to faint. So Jesus expects us to be people who are regularly praying. And let's think about that this evening. But before we do that, why don't we look to the Lord in prayer. Father, what a privilege we have to come before you in prayer. Lord, I confess that as I consider my own life, how often I fall short of what I ought to be. How often I fall short of regularly being in the habit of prayer, being quick to bring my needs and requests to you, being quick to proclaim your praise and to thank you for the goodness that you have brought to me and what you are doing. Lord, I pray that you would convict us and challenge us this evening. We may not always use these excuses out loud, and yet, Father, so often these very excuses we're going to think about this evening are really at the heart of our prayerlessness. So move us to spiritual vitality, move us to prayer. May you be glorified as we obey you. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. So I was reading last week one of those books I had in that big stack of books on prayer. And there was a great chapter in a book called A Call for Spiritual Reformation, or A Call to Spiritual Reformation, by D.A. Carson. And his outline of one of his chapters sparked my mind, and that's really what I'm launching from here. The basic outline is from D.A. Carson's book, as he lists some excuses, and I've kind of taken and plugged in some thoughts of my own and some scripture passages of my own as we think about this together. But here are the excuses. Let's just launch right into it. First of all, I'm too busy to pray. I am too busy to pray. This is one that we may give, and we may be very busy, but it's not really a good excuse not to pray. Carson in his book, tells a story of this family was driving down the highway and they see this guy on the side of the road. So they pull over to help the guy, and the guy says, oh, thank you very much for pulling over to help me. My car ran out of gas. And I was in a hurry to try to make it to this meeting. My car ran out of gas. So they said, oh, we have a little bit of gas here in the gas can in the back of the car. So they took that little bit of gas, poured it into this guy's tank of his gas, And the guy thanked them profusely, and off he went. Well, about 15 miles down the road, they see the same guy pulled over at the side of the road. They come up, they find this guy, and this is what had happened. Rather than driving to a gas station to fill his tank up the rest of the way, he thought, let me try to make it to my meeting with this gas. And in the end, ran out of gas again. and probably in the end missed his meeting. Now we kinda chuckle about that, but that's often the way we operate spiritually. I need to keep going, I need to get going, I need to do this, I need to do that, I need to do the other thing, and away we go, boom, and then we hit the wall. And then we have just little, little recharge, and then away we go again without really spending the time in prayer with God the way we ought to, and again, we run our spiritual batteries dry. We need to pray, we need to pray. Let's look at Luke chapter 10 verses 38 to 42. Luke 10, 38 to 42. Someone has that? Okay. Now it happened as they went that he entered a certain village and a certain woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary who also sat at Jesus' feet and heard his word. But Martha was distracted with much serving, and she approached him and said, Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Therefore, tell her to help me. And Jesus answered and said to her, Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things, but one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her." I think we know this story. I think I've probably, between a Sunday sermon and Wednesday, I think I've talked about this twice since I've been here, in the four years I've been here, we have two sisters, Mary and Martha. Was it wrong that Martha wanted to be a good host? No. But it was right that Mary wanted to sit at the feet of Jesus. In fact, Jesus says that she has chosen the good part, and it's actually, if you look at the original language, it's a contrast. what Mary has chosen is better. In fact, if you have the King James, it actually comes out specifically in the King James, that what Mary had chosen was the better part. It was what she ought to have done. Of the two choices, of the two options, working, laboring, much serving, or sitting at the feet of Jesus, sitting at the feet of Jesus was most important. We would be better served to do less outward activity and spend more time at the feet of Jesus. And that's, it's something that we all need to hear, but it's something that we need to hear in a church like Ennerdale, where there's a tendency, we're a small church with a big church program, and there's a tendency for us to just be going, going, going, going, going, do this, do that, do the other thing, do the next thing, and not do the needful thing, the thing that's really needed, the thing that's better, the good part, the good thing. And we, the danger is that we go to church not having prayed that God would do a work in our heart. We serve in Sunday school and not, having not prayed that God would work through his word in the lives of those that are being taught. We sing in choir without praying that God would help us to glorify Him with our voices and that the words and music of what we are singing would be honoring and glorifying and edifying to the people of God. We involve ourselves with teaching and preaching and singing and doing all of these things, kids club, youth group, and there's a danger we do all those things without having prayed. It's terrible. It would be better for us to cancel every single one of those things than to do them without prayer. If you are too busy to pray, you're too busy. That's the reality. If you're too busy to pray, you're too busy. I think, though, we have much encouragement when we read a verse like 1 Thessalonians 5.17, which may not seem to be encouraging at first. 1 Thessalonians 5.17 says, three words, pray without ceasing. Now, the reason this is encouraging is because the nature of prayer is such that we don't always have to carve out a huge section of time to do it. If we are to be praying without ceasing, that indicates that prayer can at times be a short and quick thing. Now, if that's all we're doing in our prayer life over an extended period of time, that's not healthy. But we have that freedom. We have that opportunity. And so let none of us give that as an excuse. I'm too busy to pray. First of all, if you're too busy to pray, stop doing something. But if, you're too busy to pray, don't forget those moments where you can bring your request to God. And I gave the example before of Nehemiah, right, the cupbearer. He's before the king, and he has very, very short time, because the king sees that he's upset, what's wrong? And he prays to God before he answers the king. Now, we know that he didn't, you know, excuse me, I gotta go walk over into another room, find my closet, hello, Jennifer. We know that it was a quick thing. And we are invited to do the same thing. We have that privilege as well. So I am too busy to pray. If you're too busy to pray, you're too busy. Second, I feel too spiritually dry to pray. I feel too spiritually dry to pray. Probably all of us have been in that place. Romans chapter 12, verse 12, if someone would read that one for us. Rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing steadfastly in prayer. So Paul here, under the Holy Spirit's inspiration, tells us that we're to be continuing steadfastly in prayer. Jesus, and I made reference to this earlier, I'm not gonna read this entire passage, but Jesus in Luke chapter 18 tells a parable to them, and the point of this parable is, chapter 18, verse one, that men always ought to pray and not lose heart. When we say, I feel too spiritually dry to pray, and use that as an excuse, To legitimize our prayerlessness, there's two problems with it. Problem number one, feelings are not what determine your obedience. You might remember your childhood. Your teacher or your parent told you to do something and you said, I don't feel like it. Wrong answer. That's not a legitimate answer, okay? Just because you don't feel like it, that's no excuse for doing what's right. Furthermore, isn't spiritual dryness an indication that we need to pray, rather than an excuse not to pray? I mean, it's when we feel spiritually dry that we ought to be recognizing I need God. I need his grace. I need mercy from on high right now. So don't use that one. It's our flesh. It's the devil that would take something like this, which ought to spur us to prayer and use it as a barrier to prayer. The door is always open because of Christ. The door is open to thirsty sinners. The well of living water will never run dry for God's people. Third, I feel no need to pray. Now, this is one of those ones we probably would never say. Why didn't you pray this week? We'd probably say, well, I got busy or whatever. We probably wouldn't say, ah, I don't have any need to. But, Practically speaking, we get there mentally. Let's say that you're involved in a ministry in the church and it's going well. Your life is progressing well. Your bills are paid. You have groceries in the fridge. We have a tendency to fall into this, I'm okay. Things are good. And whether we would say it or not, we almost subconsciously think, I don't need to pray. Everything's going well. We see an example of that. I won't read the entire passage. Joshua 9, 9-15. Let's just turn there so we get the context. Joshua 9, 9-15. After 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, The people of Israel go into the promised land. Things go well at first, then there's the sin of Achan. They get done with that. They deal with the sin of Achan and they go in and they take out Ai. Everything's going well at that point. But in Joshua chapter nine, just as everything is going well, God had remember told them to, Get rid of all the Canaanites. No mercy. Get rid of all of them. What happens is the Gibeonites come walking up to the Israelites and they make a pretense that they've come from a very, very long distance, as though they'd come from outside the land of Canaan. They have moldy bread. They have worn out clothes. They have worn out shoes. And they'd say, you know, we've come from a very far country. We want to make a treaty with you. Please don't attack us. We want to be at peace with you. And Joshua and the Israelites, everything's going well. Isn't this another indication that everything's going well? After all, now we have people coming from a far distance to make a treaty with us. And rather than bringing the matter to God, they simply made the treaty. And of course we know that it was a foolish treaty, it was a foolish covenant, because they would later discover that these Gibeonites were from just over the hill, basically, in Canaan. We, too, are never at a point, no matter how well things are going, we're never at a point where we don't need prayer. Because when we get to the point, we start thinking, I don't really need to pray about this. You know what we're really saying? I don't really need God for this. That's really where we're landing. Now, we wouldn't say that either, would we? But we might live that way. I don't need Him. Things are going well. We never get to that point. We will never get to that point where we don't need God. Thus, we'll never get to the point where we don't need prayer. This is something that is particularly important, I think, in the life of the minister of God, because it's possible for a minister to spend his week reading passages, finding connections in scripture, writing a sermon down, and get up to stand in the pulpit and realize, you know, I haven't really prayed much about this. That's terrible. as though my study replaces the need for God's help. No. Without Him I can do nothing. I can make use of all the tools He's given me, all the things that He's enabled me to have, but without Him I can do nothing. So when I get to a point where I start standing up in the pulpit without having prayed over the message, that's a very, very bad spot to be in. We never get to a point where we We can handle things on our own. The old hymn, I need thee every hour. We do. We need him every hour. As the song says, in joy or in pain. At all times. Alright, let's move on here. Fourth, I feel too bitter to pray. I feel too bitter to pray. Let's look at Matthew chapter 6 verses 14 and 15. Does someone have that for us? right after Jesus gives his teaching on prayer. We who are the people of God ought to be forgiving. We who have received much mercy We who have received God's forgiveness ought to be willing to extend forgiveness to others. Bitterness can be a very devastating thing in a person's life. And I know that there are real pains that are caused in our lives by other people's sin. And I don't, for a moment, wish to minimize the effect of sin. Also, I want to remind you that the Bible is very clear on how it teaches us that we should be getting rid of bitterness. Take a look with me, I don't have this passage down, but take a look with me at Ephesians chapter 4 verse 31. Does someone have that one for us? Notice there that first command, let all bitterness be put away from you. It's not always an easy thing. It's something that takes grace. But we have to let bitterness go. We have to let all bitterness be put away from us. Once again, if you're in a condition where you feel too bitter about someone else, that's another one of those clues that you need to be in prayer. Rather than driving you away from prayer, that should drive you into prayer. Lord, this is what I'm feeling in my heart. Lord, this is what I'm struggling with. That should push you, that should push me into prayer. So if you're feeling bitter against others and you're using that as an excuse not to pray, you are in effect saying, I want my sin more than I want God. Now some might have bitterness not as much toward others, but ultimately toward God. There are some who might be angry at God. Again, this would indicate that you need to repent. It would indicate you need to grow. But let me come at this from another angle. God's people can express the reality of their heart to God. It's not like God doesn't know. It's not like God does not know the turmoil in your heart. You look at some of the ways that David prays in the Psalms, he's very plain. Psalm 13, how long are you gonna forget me God, forever? Psalm, another one I was looking at this week, Psalm 77, nine. And the memorable words of the old King James, hath God forgotten to be gracious? God knows what's on your heart and he can handle it. You come to God in the honesty of your heart. I'm not here advocating that you be presumptuous. I'm not here trying to tell you to be arrogant toward God, but you come to God expressing the burden of your heart and you'll find that your time in prayer, God will help you. God already knows it anyways. You're not hiding it from Him. So bring your requests to God. God can handle the most open and honest of prayers. We do remember who He is when we come to pray to Him. But we also remember that He knows us completely, thoroughly. We can bring the hardest of requests, the deepest of our disappointments, to Him. Moving on, number five, I feel too ashamed. I feel too ashamed. Sometimes present sins or past guilt result in persistent shame. And we feel as though, well, I'm not worthy to come before him. Well, let me agree with you, you're not, and neither am I, right? That's why we need a passage like Hebrews chapter four, verses 12 to 16. Sorry, verses, I put 12 to 16, I mean 14. Well, it is good for us to see verses 12 and 13, because verses 12 and 13 speak about God's word, but it also tells us in verse 13 that God knows everything. He knows it all. But can I have someone read for us Hebrews chapter four, verses 14 to 16? Seeing then that we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was at all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us, therefore, come boldly to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. We don't come to God on our own merits. We come to God on the merits of our great high priest. And our great high priest, Jesus, has experienced temptation. He knows what we, the struggles that we face. And he sympathizes with us. And because of that, we can come boldly before the throne of grace. Not because we're awesome, but because he is. We can come boldly to the throne of grace to find, to obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need, we come on Jesus' merits. The most downtrodden soul who comes before the Father in the merits of Christ finds the Father happy, ready, willing to receive his prayer. that the most sin-spotted, low-down, iniquitous person that comes before God in the name of Jesus, truly in the name of Jesus, finds the Father eager to hear. We are accepted in the Beloved. So run, run to Christ. Run to the throne of grace. His grace is greater than your shame. His grace is greater than your sin. Satan would love to tell us all the, entirely the other way, right? We sing about that when we sing before the throne of God above. When Satan tempts me to despair and tells me of the guilt within, upward I look and see him there who made an end of all my sin. Because my sinless Savior died, my sinful soul is counted free. For God the just is satisfied to look on Him and pardon me. That's our hope. Our hope is Jesus. Our hope is the gospel. Our hope is the work of Christ, not our merits, but His. We are accepted in the beloved. So don't let shame hold you back. Run to the Father. He will eagerly hear your request. Number six. This is not one that you're likely to say out loud either, but it's there sometimes. I am content with my spiritual mediocrity. I am content with my spiritual mediocrity. more often than we would like to admit spiritual hardness and backsliding lies at the heart of our prayerlessness. That we think we're good enough, we think we're okay. We're not that bad. We're not like that publican over yonder. We're not like those sinners outside the church. We're not like our neighbor who doesn't even go to church on Sunday. We're not like, and we can always in our mind look around and say, hey, I'm not that bad. I'm okay. But when we say that, in effect we're saying, I'm okay with being spiritually mediocre. Which in turn becomes spiritually hardened and spiritually backslidden. I put down James chapter 4, verses 3 to 10, but I'd rather look to the Old Testament, I think, for this one. Hosea chapter 10, verses 12 and 13. Hosea 10, verses 12 and 13. Someone would read Hosea chapter 10 verses 12 and 13 for us. Sow for yourself righteousness, reap in mercy, break up your fallow ground. For it is time to seek the Lord, till he comes and rains righteousness on you. You have plowed wickedness. You have ripped iniquity. You have eaten the fruit of lies, because you trusted in your own way, in the multitude of your mighty men. So you see in this passage, by way of contrast, they have allowed the fields of righteousness to lay fallow, not growing the fruit of righteousness. Instead, the fields of iniquity have grown. And the prophet Hosea says, it's time for you to break up your fallow ground. It's time for you to plow that up. It's time for you to break up that hardened ground. Do what's right. We need to hear those kind of direct words to us sometimes too. Before the series on atheism, One of the top downloaded messages was a message I did on backsliding a while back. And I think it's something that was downloaded a lot because we all have experienced it. We all know what it's like to enter into that condition of spiritual coldness or dullness or hardness. What do we do? What do we do when we reach that spot? Don't use it as an excuse not to pray. Once again, go to the Lord in prayer. Break up that hardened, fallow ground. Start doing what's right. I think that when we reach a point where we think we're okay, we're in a condition of hardness, backsliding, spiritual mediocrity, we need to hear the words of Jesus to the Ephesian church. Ephesians chapter 2, verses 1-7, Jesus speaks, sorry, Revelation chapter 2, verses 1-7, Jesus speaks to the Ephesians church, and he tells the Ephesians that they've done a lot of really good, important things. I know your works, verse 2, your labor, your patience, you cannot bear those who are evil, you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not, I found them Liars, you've persevered, you have patience, you've labored for my name's sake, have not become weary. Verse four, nevertheless, I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Listen, prayerlessness is evidence of having lost your first love. Just as in a marriage or a relationship, when people don't want to talk to one another, It's a sign that that relationship is not where it ought to be. So it is in our spiritual relationship. What do we do? Versus five. Verse five, really, I think is, I often use this as an appeal to those who are backsliding, because you really see three things. There's, what do you do when you find yourself? Remember therefore from where you have fallen, repent and do the first works. Or as I put it, remember, repent, return. Go back to where you're supposed to be. Remember, repent, return. If you find yourself making excuses, I don't need to pray because I'm okay. I don't need to pray because I'm not that bad. Really, you're in a condition of spiritual decline. You're in a condition of backsliding. Remember where you've fallen from. Repent of that sin. and return, and you will find the Father eager to welcome you and to restore you to Himself.