In the first article under this same title I shared how prayer should be a top priority of all believers and yet I fear it is often the least practiced discipline of the Christian faith. At best it is often a desperate means of crying for help from a God we barely know.
If the average believer doesn’t really grasp what prayer is nor how it is meant to be practiced is there any wonder why so few pray except for what I call “Shotgun Praying” in which we just throw some desperate request out to God hoping he might hear and might respond favorably? When the average professing Christian feels badly about their prayer life, and at best guilty over the infrequency, is there any wonder so few engage in any meaningful prayer habit except for emergency? I think until our concept of prayer changes people will only infrequently pray and pray weakly.
I am currently teaching a group of pastors in Tanzania Africa, through the means of zoom technology, with principles on Christian leadership. I started this teaching series I called “Leading Like Jesus” because I thought of no one better who modeled leadership than Jesus as he taught his disciples. In the same way, I feel we can best learn the importance of prayer and how to move from prayer that frustrates to prayer that empowers us by exploring life of Jesus and what he taught about prayer.
Prayer at it’s most basic is “Communication“. It is a tool of language that allows the heart to express our thoughts and desires and the vehicle by which God can do the same with us. It is the vehicle by which we can enter the presence of God no matter where we are in the planet, whether we are at sea or on land, whether we are in a crowd or all by ourselves. It is the means by which we can take the principles of scripture and launch off from this world to the heavenly realms where Christ is seated with our heavenly Father. It is there that intimacy and power resides with the Lord. If only we as children of God could understand how much the Father loves us, and wants to communicate with us about how important prayer could become if only we discover the principles of a healthy prayer life. How many wasted hours have we spent in not developing an understanding of how intimacy with God happens? Prayer is the vehicle but it’s only the doorway to the kind of walk with God that we all desire.
Consider Jesus spending 30 years as an average citizen of Israel knowing he was the Son of God who had come to earth to be the savior of the world and yet he was instructed to live as a common man. What do you suppose he was doing during that time? Just making furniture as a carpenter? No, he was preparing himself by growing in intimacy with the Father, as a child and then as an adult. How did he do this? By learning to communicate through prayer. The book of Hebrews says he had the same limitations we have. Those limitations had to be developed into strengths by spending time with his heavenly Father in prayer.
Hebrews 5:8-9 Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered. And having been made perfect, He became to all those who obey Him the source of eternal salvation,
Scripture states that Jesus had a habit of going off to a lonely place to pray while his disciples slept. Why a lonely place? I’m sure it was so he wasn’t distracted by the noise and demands of the world and the ministry he was doing all day. He learned this discipline early in life while he lived and worked as an average human man before his public ministry ever started. He developed his relationship with the Father first, before ministry, so that when the demands of people crowding around him came he could be refreshed in the Father’s presence at night. Always remember it cost the Son of God to become intimate with our heavenly Father and it will cost us if we truly want it.
Matthew 14:23 After He had sent the crowds away, He went up on the mountain by Himself to pray; and when it was evening, He was there alone.
Luke 5:16 But Jesus Himself would often slip away to the wilderness and pray.
When Jesus talks about his prayer communication with the Father we get the picture that his prayer life was like a full color video experience. He says he saw and heard the Father doing things in the spirit and Jesus would do the same in his ministry. He boldly says he didn’t do anything but what he saw and heard the Father communicate. How often do we look at prayer as an opportunity to express our needs and worries rather than an opportunity to learn about the Father’s concerns about us? Without prayer, communication in our relationship falls apart at best and at worst our relationship to the Father becomes cold and indifferent, which makes cold and indifferent in us as well. People become religious when they lack intimacy with God.
John 5:19-21 Jesus replied, “I assure you, the Son can do nothing by himself. He does only what he sees the Father doing. Whatever the Father does, the Son also does. [20] For the Father loves the Son and tells him everything he is doing, and the Son will do far greater things than healing this man. You will be astonished at what he does. [21] He will even raise from the dead anyone he wants to, just as the Father does.
When Jesus started his public ministry the crowds were amazed by him. Why? Because they said he teaches as one having authority. Jesus had authority because he had been in the Father’s presence, not once in a while, but regularly. Having authority and having intimacy go hand in hand.
Mark 1:22 They were amazed at His teaching; for He was teaching them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.
In the gospel of Luke, it states that the power of the Lord was present for Jesus to do miracles. The implication is that there was time when the power of God was not always at the same level. Again, scripture states very clearly that Jesus had the same limitations that we have, only without sin. One of the purposes of Jesus becoming fully human was to demonstrate how to walk in the power of God as a human being and that it is possible for everyone of us to develop intimacy with the Father.
Luke 5:17 One day He was teaching; and there were some Pharisees and teachers of the law sitting there, who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem; and the power of the Lord was present for Him to perform healing.
So let me close this portion on prayer and communication with the following points:
1) Prayer develops our communication abilities with God.
2) Prayer helps us understand the Father’s will.
3) Prayer grants us guidance for our daily lives.
In the next article I will be exploring how prayer equips us and empowers us as we develop our intimacy with our heavenly Father. Prayer is a spiritual muscle that must be exercised in order to preform as God designed. Only as we explore the word of God will we see the principles that can launch our prayer life into dimensions we have yet discovered. We will address the question, does prayer only change us or does it also include receiving power from God for our needs and desires.
Questions:
1) Have you been discouraged with the way your prayer life is? Start reading the gospel of John and write down how Jesus walked with the Father.
2) Do you approach prayer as a piggy bank only to make withdrawals, or the means to build relationship and intimacy with God? If repentance is needed, do it today
Loving God with our heart, mind, will and strength,
Pastor Dale
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