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.