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Matthew chapter 6, verses 9 to
13, please. Our Lord Jesus says, In this
manner, therefore, pray, Our Father in heaven, hallowed be
your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as
it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And do not
lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.
For yours is the kingdom, and the power and the glory forever. Amen. Tonight, with the Lord's
blessing, our topic will be Richard Baxter on prayer. This is found in his Christian
Directory and takes up about two pages. My hope in studying
it is to stimulate you and me alike to pray more, to pray better,
and to love the God who wants us to pray and hears us when
we do. And so Baxter in this chapter
has, I think, about eight heads or eight headings on how to pray
better than you do. I've never in my life met one
Christian who said, I pray as well as I ought to, or even I
pray as well as I want to. And yet nearly every Christian
I've ever talked to deplores his prayer life as being unfruitful,
being rare, being painful, being hypocritical, and so forth. And
so Richard Baxter has some very good ideas to help stir us up
to a better prayer life. So here they are. Number one,
if you want to pray better, know God better. Baxter writes, labor
above all to know that God to whom you pray, as all sufficient
for your relief in the infiniteness of His power, wisdom, and goodness,
and as your chief happiness." Now this is a good way to start
the chapter. He tells us that there's no gimmick
in prayer. There's no time schedule. Nothing
like this matters all that much. They may serve some purposes,
but ultimately, the best way to pray better is to know God. The better you know God, the
better you'll pray to Him. Now we all pay lip service to
these things, but do you believe them? Now if you believed in
God's almighty power, you'd ask him for things, and big things
at that. If you believed in his infinite
love, you'd pray for these big things in faith. If you believed
that his fellowship was your highest joy, you wouldn't think
prayer was such a waste of time, or such a drag. In short, If
you knew God better, you'd pray more, and you'd pray with a heart
full of faith, hope, and love. Now, the best way to know God
better is to read the Bible, and to meditate on the God who
is revealed in it. When you don't have a Bible with
you, think about what you've read before. I mean, most Christians,
and even a lot of kids, can recite one or two verses. John 3.16,
for example. Nearly everybody knows. And yet
what subject this provides for praying, to think of God's infinite
love in sending His Son into the world for our salvation. And so if you don't have a Bible
with you, if you haven't read for several hours, just bring
Bible verses to mind. But what if you can't think of
any? Sometimes I can't think of any Bible verse. Sometimes
my mind is entirely blank. Well, when you don't have a Bible
with you, and when you can't think of a verse, here's what
you do. Open your eyes. The heavens declare the glory
of God, and the firmament shows his handiwork. The size, complexity,
beauty, and order of creation reveals a God who knows how to
help you, and has plenty of power to do the job. That's what Jeremiah
did long ago. God had made a promise to him
that Israel, which is now exiled in Babylon and elsewhere, that
Israel would one day be regathered and brought back to the land
of their fathers. Now this seemed to be just utterly
incredible, until the prophet began thinking about nature and
the God who created it. Then he knew better, and he prayed
Ah, Lord God, behold, you have made the heavens and the earth
by your great power and outstretched arm. There is nothing too hard
for you. See the connection, don't you?
Israel was scattered. The nation was destroyed. The
temple was torn down. I mean, it's just a complete
wipeout. It seems just impossible that
God's people could ever be regathered and brought back to this land.
But then he looked up He saw that God had made the heavens
and the earth by His almighty power, and then the job of regathering
the people and bringing them back to their land didn't seem
so big after all. Problems seem too big to pray
about till we see God high and lifted up. Sins seem too bad
for forgiveness until we see God giving His only begotten
Son for our forgiveness. The two books of God, Scripture
and Nature, reveal a sovereign God who is love. And these books,
when studied with care, stir up our hearts to pray, and to
pray in faith, and to pray with thankfulness, and to pray with
love, and to pray with great confidence that God knows what
to do, and He has plenty of power to do it. What was said in another
connection applies also to prayer. The people who know their God
shall be strong and do exploits. And so, if you want to pray better,
don't worry so much about a schedule, or a quiet time, or a private place. Don't think about
these details half as much as you think about God Himself. Number one. Number two. If you
want to pray better, increase your faith. again to quote Baxter,
labor when you are about to pray to stir in your souls most lively
and serious belief of those unseen things that your prayers have
respect to and pray as if you saw them all the while as if
you saw God in his glory and Jesus Christ your mediator interceding
for you in the heavens as you would pray if your eyes Behold
all these, so strive to pray while you believe them, and say
to yourself, are they not as if I saw them?" Now this is a
very good point. The glory of God and His Son,
the Lord Jesus, seated at His right hand, are real. These are
not just things in a book, things we talk about. These are real
things. Now we don't see them with our
eyeballs, but they're still real. And so what we want to do with
faith is we want to strive to believe in them every bit as
much as if we did see them. What would the vision of Jesus
Christ glorified at God's right hand do with your prayer life? Do you think you'd pray with
more reverence if you saw that? What do you think? Do you think
you'd pray with deeper humility? How about this? Do you think
you'd pray for selfish things? If during your prayer you saw
Christ high and lifted up at God's right hand, do you think
you'd pray for things to consume upon your own lusts? Do you think
you'd complain about His sovereignty? Why'd you do this to me, Lord?
Do you think you'd conceal your sins and blame other people for
them? Of course you wouldn't. When Isaiah saw the Lord in glory,
he was overcome with a sense of unworthiness But he also had
a great confidence and felt an eager desire to do whatever the
Lord commanded. Now you know, this side of the
resurrection, your eyeballs are just not going to see the Lord
high and lifted up. So what? He's there and exalted
whether you see him or not. The job of faith is to see God
without your eyes. To hear Christ interceding on
your behalf without your ears. To draw near to Him while He's
in heaven and you're on earth. Now if you did these things,
if you increased your faith, your prayers would be a whole
lot different than they are and a whole lot better too. They'd be full
of praise, they'd be full of thanksgiving. And you pray with
a new joy, and with a new vigor, with a new reverence, with a
new humility, and so forth. And so again, what the disciples
said to the Lord in another connection applies to this too. Lord, increase our faith. And number three, if you want
to pray better, think about your weaknesses and sins. This is
a two-part one. First, he says, labored for a
constant acquaintance with yourselves and your manifold needs. You
know, unfallen, man is weak and dependent on God. Every breath
you take is a gift of God, a gift he's not obliged to give. If
you knew that, you'd pray a lot more than you do, and more fervently,
too. Don't you pray better when you're
sick? Don't you pray more fervently when you're in danger? Well,
sure you do. And here's why. You feel your
need. But you know, you're just as
needy when you don't feel your need. Peter needed the Lord as
much when he stood on the ground as
when he walked on the water. He just didn't realize it. Both
standing on the ground and walking in the water are equally gifts
of God. Our Lord Jesus said, without
me you can do nothing. Think about that, and your praying
will be better. Think about your great need. Think about your great weakness,
and you'll pray better than you did. And not only to think of
your weakness, but also your sin and guilt. Again, to quote
Baxter, Know well what sin is, and what God's wrath and hell
and judgments are, and what sin you have committed, and what
duty you have omitted, and what corruptions are yet within you,
and what mercy and grace you stand in need of, and all this
will make you pray and pray with purpose. The Pharisee prays often
and tastefully, but his prayers are never accepted by God. You
know why? because the only sacrifice God
wants is a broken and contrite heart. Without that, without
a real feeling of your own sin and misery, not somebody else's
sin, but your own sin and misery, you're not praying at all. This
is not to say that you ought to wallow in your sin as though
it were greater than God could forgive, but call it to mind,
confess it, and feel your unworthiness to stand before such holiness
and find washing in the blood of Christ. Nothing, nothing,
nothing hinders prayer more than pride, self-righteousness, self-sufficiency. And nothing is more proud than
thinking you're okay without God, and you're pretty good apart
from His grace. The fact is, you're not. Every
breath you take is a gift of God. You're dependent upon Him
for your next heartbeat. You need God. And everything
we do as fallen sinners deserves the wrath of God. So you not
only need God's power and His mercy in that way, but you also
need His forgiving mercy and cleansing power. And so if you
want to pray better, Think about your weakness and think about
your sin. And then next, if you want to
pray better, be honest with God. Be honest with God. Again, to
quote Baxter, see that you hate hypocrisy and let not your lips
go against your heart. Do not love the sin you pray
against. Truly desire the grace you ask for. And be not like
those lazy wishers who pray God to give them increase in harvest
while they lie in bed. Oh, what an abundance of wretches
offer up mock prayers to God. Now, I don't know about you,
but I find these words very offensive. Mock prayers. What I find so offensive about
them is that They describe my prayers sometimes. Mock prayers. Have you ever prayed to God like
an actor reciting his lines? You think of the actress telling
her man how much she loved him while in fact she never met the
man. And you think about things like this. They don't mean it. They're just saying words for
some effect. Well, this is what mock prayers
are. They're phony prayers. You pray, Lord, forgive my sin,
but while you're saying that, you love the sin. Or, Lord, give
me grace to do such and such, but you don't really want to
do it. And then he compares them to wishers, lazy bums, who just
lie around during harvest time and pray that God would provide
all of their food. And here we pray for the Lord
to make us good witnesses, but we don't have any intention of
witnessing this all. Now, don't you hate to be lied
to? I mean, isn't it a terrible feeling to be lied to? And you
know what makes it really, really bad? You know what's even worse
than being lied to? It's being lied to when you know,
the other person knows, that you know you're being lied to.
I know I said a lot of no's in there. But you understand? Someone's
lying to you, And you know he's lying, and he knows that you
know it. I don't know what other way to
describe it. Don't you hate to be lied to
like this? When we offer up mock prayers to God, that's exactly
what we're doing. Forgive my sin when in fact you have no
intention at all of repenting of it. Give me grace to be thus
and so when you don't even try to be thus and so. These are
mock prayers. acts of dishonesty. Now being
dishonest with me is bad, being dishonest with you is bad, but
how bad is it to be dishonest with God, who sees everything
so clearly, who's not in any way faked out by all of our fakery. So if you want to pray better,
be honest with God. If you love your sin, tell God
you love your sin. That's better than saying, oh
Lord, you know what a wretch I am, when you don't really mean
that. Get your fingers crossed behind your back, as though God
can't see it. Tell God you love your sin, and
ask Him to break your heart and give you a hatred for your sin.
Do you pray for something and you don't really want to do it?
Tell God you don't want to do it. Just say, Lord, I don't want
to be a witness. I'm embarrassed to speak up for
Christ. I'm too lazy to do it. Tell them
that and tell them to break your heart and give you a new heart
that wants to witness and feels joy and pride in Christ and not
embarrassment. God give us the grace to be honest
in our prayers and I mean really truly honest. Then the next point
is if you want to pray better, pay attention to the things that
draw you away from God. Another quote. Search your hearts
and watch them carefully, lest some beloved vanity alienate
you from your prayers and turn away your thoughts and affections."
The key word here is vanity. He doesn't say sin. For it's
not only bad things that take us away from prayer, but good
things also do that. Our Lord Jesus said that cares
of the world choke the word. He also said the pleasures of
this life do it. Now, cares of the world are things
like worrying about how you're going to pay your bills, and
that's not a bad thing. And pleasures of this life are things like
planning a vacation, and that's not a bad thing. These are not
bad things in their place. But they mustn't dominate your
thoughts and take you away from God and make prayer impossible.
Now this is a very hard one. Just this week, my own prayers
have been terribly distracted. I started out invoking that sacred
name and not five words into my prayer I was thinking about
something else. Now what do you do about that something else
that keeps worming its way into your prayers? You know, you start
to pray and you start worrying about your bills. Or you start
to pray and you start worrying about, well, your family or your
sickness or something. This thing just worms its way
into your prayer and won't leave. Well, here's what you do. Philippians
4.6 tells you just exactly what to do. says to turn these concerns
into your prayers. Instead of praying for one thing
when really you're thinking about something else, pray about the
very thing you're thinking about. Philippians 4.6 says, Be anxious
for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and supplication with
thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. Don't worry
about anything at all, but turn these worries into prayers. Now
that way you can pray with concentration, you can pray with focus, you
can pray with sincerity, and you can make these real needs
and concerns known to God. Next, if you want to pray better,
pray for what God wants. Another quote, be sure that you
pray for nothing that is disagreeable to the will of God, and that
is not for your good, the good of others, and the honor of God. Now this speaks for itself. James
said, you ask and receive not, because you ask amiss that you
might consume it upon your lust. You're asking for things, but
the only person you're thinking about is yourself. That's all.
And so you might ask yourself, what am I praying for most of
the time? Is it what I want, or is it what God wants? Now
these two very often coincide. For example, you know, we pray
for health, and God heals us. Here we want health, and God
wants to give us health. So that's a good thing. These
things often go together, but not always. Read the Bible and
find out what God wants for your life. What God wanted for David's
life may not be what He wants for your life. What God wanted
for Paul's life may not be what He wants for your life. But there
are some general things that are revealed in the Bible that
He wants for all His people. 1 Thessalonians 4.3 says, This
is the will of God, even your sanctification. There you go,
there's something to pray about. You can be absolutely sure that
God wants you to be holy, so pray for that. And then another
place says, pray without ceasing. You can know that God wants you
to have a good prayer life. Pray for that. God wants you
to be humble. Pray for that. God wants you
to work hard. Pray for that. God wants you
to love your wife. Pray for that. God wants you
to bring up your children in a godly way. Pray for that. These
are the things that we ought to most pray about. There's a
verse in the book of Isaiah that said, I never said to Israel,
seek my face in vain. In other words, God doesn't reveal
these things. Pray for such and such just to mock us, to make
fun of us. He says, pray for these things
because I want to give them to you. So if you want to pray better,
pray for what God wants. Next, if you want to pray better,
work at it. Another quote. Labor hard to
keep a reverent, serious, fervent frame and do not allow your prayers
to grow lax and cold and a lip labor. Well, let's think about it. Expect
someone to be muscle-bound without exercise? No, we don't expect
that. Genetics are at work to some
degree. Some people tend to be leaner than others. Some people
tend to be less lean. I know that. But do you expect
to have big bulging biceps and a V-type chest without exercise? Of course you wouldn't do that.
No, no, that takes work. No pain, no gain. You know that.
Or do you expect to be a really, really brilliant scientist without,
like, studying? I think you're just born knowing
the theory of relativity, understanding all these great mysteries. Well,
no, we wouldn't expect that. And yet, look at this. We expect
to have good prayer lives without working. We really do. We don't expect to be fit without
working. We don't expect to be smart without
working. But we expect to have good prayer lives without ever
making much of an effort. But Baxter says, labor hard to
pray. Bad praying is often the result
of pure laziness. So you've got to repent of that
if you want to pray better. And the last thing, if you want
to pray better, use the Lord's Prayer, or use the model prayer.
Again, Baxter says, for the matter and order of your desires and
prayers, Take the Lord's Prayer as your special rule and labor
to understand it. Now, Richard Baxter does not
mean recite the model prayer. That's not wrong, of course.
There's nothing in the world wrong with reciting the model
prayer. It's as much a part of the Bible as any other verse.
And so it's perfectly fine to just recite, Our Father who art
in heaven, hallowed be thy name, and so on. But that's not really
what he's getting at here. He says to understand the model
prayer and use it as a model. Does the model prayer begin with
praise? Then begin your prayers with
praise. Does the model prayer go on to pray for God's will
to be done on earth as it is in heaven? Yeah. Then you pray
for God's will to be done. Does the model prayer contain
confession of sin? It does. Then you confess your
sin. Does the model prayer contain
a resolution for you to repent? Yeah, it does. Forgive us our
debts even as we forgive our debtors. Does it ask for material
things? It does. Give us this day our
daily bread. Does it ask for spiritual help?
It does. Lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil. Does it close with a ringing
praise and tribute to God? Thine is the kingdom and the
power and the glory forever. Amen. Yeah, it does. All that's
in the model prayer. And so put these things into
your prayers. And again, that doesn't mean recite. And that
doesn't mean every prayer has to be modeled precisely on the
Lord's Prayer. But just these are the ideas
that are best put into prayers. Now by doing this, you're not
just going through the motions. You're not being phony or anything like
that. But what you're really doing is just, well, obeying
the Bible for one thing, but you're also just asking the Lord,
making the same request to the Lord as the disciples did long
ago, which is, Lord, teach us to pray. And so these are some
helpful things, I think at least, to stimulate our prayer life
and to make our prayers better. And my earnest desire for you
and also for me is that we might pray more and pray better than
we have in the past. And so let's ask God to bless
our prayer lives for Christ's sake. Amen. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you that you are
a God who hears prayer, that you command us to pray, and that
you answer our prayers often in ways far greater than we would
expect. And so tonight, Lord, we ask
you to forgive our poor prayer lives, forgive our distractions,
forgive our boring repetitions, forgive our dishonesty. Forgive
us, Lord, for not working hard at it. Forgive us for being embarrassed
to pray in front of other people. Lord, I ask you to increase our
prayer life and to make it what it ought to be. I pray that we
would feel our dependence upon you, which we do have at every
moment, and that we pray accordingly. I pray also, Lord, that our prayers
will be modeled after the Lord's prayer, that we would fill them
with praise, and that we let our requests be made known to
you, for these are things that you can do, and we ask you to
do them. Lord, we thank you for Jesus
Christ, who did rise from the dead, and in that way gave us
a living hope that even though our prayers are not really what
they ought to be and yet you're very gracious to us. So we thank
you for your forgiveness. We thank you for the promise
that one day we'll be with you and be able to pray as you'd
like us to pray. So in Christ's name we ask these
things. Amen.
Puritan Prayer Life
Instructions and ideas to help stir us up to a better prayer life.
TRANSCRIBED SERMONS ON OUR WEBSITE
| Sermon ID | 71302211916 |
| Duration | 27:04 |
| Date | |
| Category | Midweek Service |
| Bible Text | Mathew 6:9-13 |
| Language | English |
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