The Discipline of Prayer

Introduction

I’m going to start this morning a little bit differently than I have in the past. We have some young people who will be going away soon to other places, and so I want to say a few words to them before we get into the sermon itself. You are standing on the edge of a new chapter wherever it is you’re going, whether you’re going to college or starting a new job, and you’ll be walking into classrooms or dorms, a new job, making new friends, and experiencing situations that will stretch your thinking and test your values and even shape your future. And so let me give you a few guiding thoughts that I pray will go with you wherever you end up. The first is to never be afraid to find and follow truth.

The world may tell you that truth is subjective, you can’t find it, or it’s your truth or their truth. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and there’s no way to the Father except through me. Follow Jesus. Seeking truth is never a threat to your faith. It is the foundation of it. So ask questions, wrestle with big ideas, dig deep into your thoughts, but do it with a humble heart, hungry for what is real. Realizing that culture often subconsciously shapes our thinking and our beliefs. And scripture must be the ultimate guide, not emotions, others’ opinions, social norms or traditions. And just know that if you follow truth honestly, it will always lead you closer to God and not away from him. So never be afraid of the truth.

The second is make decisions that deepen your relationship with God. Decisions matter. Sometimes seemingly small decisions impact your soul. Which is why Paul says, whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him. The friends you run with and the places you go, they can be vital in your spiritual journey. So learn to ask, is God honored in this? Or can I give thanks for this? The most important thing about your future is not your GPA or your career, your degree program, your resume. It is your relationship with God and other people. Jesus asks, what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul? So my encouragement this morning to our young people who in the next week or two will be going off is don’t just plan a successful life, but to shape a faithful life.

We love you and we’re proud of you. And more than anything, we want to see you walk with God wherever your path takes you. Let’s pray together. Father, we come to you this morning thinking about our young people, particularly those who are soon to leave us and go other places.

Not someone who’s tied to the things of the world, the material things, the temporary things, but see those only as tools to better themselves for your service. We’re thankful for Jesus and his love for us and his love for them, and pray that he will be our guide, that we’ll be true disciples who follow him in the things that we do day after day. It’s in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen. Our attention this morning is going to begin in Matthew chapter six, Matthew the sixth chapter. We’re continuing some thoughts that I’ve been working through throughout the year on spiritual disciplines. And this is one we’re probably more familiar with than a lot of the others, that of prayer. Likely you have developed some kind of prayer life.

I hope that you have. Maybe you wish that it was better. I’m with you on that. And so this is why we talk about these sorts of things and we work through them and we think about them. And I will say that prayer is essential to spiritual growth. A lot of these spiritual disciplines may depend on where you are and the struggles you have and what you think you need training in, whether you do something like fast or get away on a mountain to get closer to God, as we just sang about. And you can do those in a variety of ways. The reality is that prayer is absolutely essential. That being said, I don’t want us to think about it as like a law to keep or something to check off our to-do list.

That’s not really the point. That sort of misses the point. As we’re going to see, it is about relationship, it’s about communication. It is about drawing near to God and him drawing near to us, and that is really the goal, not just a ritual to keep. If that’s the way we view it’s going to have very little impact in our lives. In Matthew chapter six, amongst various other things that Jesus is saying to people and trying to teach them here in the Sermon on the Mount, he says this, beginning in verse 5. Matthew chapter 6 and verse 5. And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others.

Truly I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your father who is in secret. And your father who sees in secret will reward you. And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them. For your father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then like this. 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 also have forgiven our debtors, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your father forgive your trespasses.

1. If We Are Unwilling to Change, We Will Abandon Prayer

Whether it’s in your marriage or maybe in a friendship, when things aren’t right, when they’re not going well, we tend to avoid that interaction, right? Maybe there’s a little spat in your marriage, and so for a little while you kind of avoid each other, and you don’t, and hopefully your relationship is developed to a point where at some point that breaks and you figure it out and you work through it. But isn’t that our tendency? Foster in his book on spiritual discipline says that prayer works in a very similar way. If we are unwilling to change, we will abandon prayer. If we aren’t really willing to listen or submit to the Father’s will, we don’t really want to talk to him. And this thought alone or this idea speaks to the nature of relationship when it comes to our walk with God and what we were trying to accomplish in this very short time on earth.

That it’s only when we are willing to submit that we will actually speak to him, which actually goes to show the absolute importance of spending time regularly in prayer. It kind of has this little catch 22, right? If we’re willing to do it, then we’re willing to accept some of the weaknesses and struggles that we have. We’re forced to. That’s the nature of what happens in this kind of communication. And when we don’t want to do it, is probably when we need to do it the most. But it helps, as we’ve been working through this idea of training or disciplining ourselves, it helps to have habits so that even when we find ourselves kind of in the doldrums of faith, when things are not good, we have these habits, we have these routines to rely on, where even when we don’t really want to, we’re still in the habit of doing this, and it forces us to think and consider who we are.

And it’s about our growth. It’s about drawing close to God. God is not afraid of our imperfections. He already knows them. So this is the importance of recognizing ourselves for who we are.

2. Prayer Without Regular Discipline

Dallas Willard, who is a recognized philosopher, actually a biblical scholar as well, who writes a lot about these issues, has this to say. This is a rather lengthy quote, and some of this is his opinion, but I want to work off of this to kind of think through some things that are important for us. And I think maybe we identify with this a little bit. We can understand where he’s going with some of what he’s saying here. He says, in many churches, prayer and Bible study are held up as the activities that will make us spiritually rich. But very few people actually succeed in attaining spiritual richness through them, and indeed often find them to be intolerably burdensome. The open secret of many Bible-believing churches is that a vanishing small percentage of those talking about prayer and Bible reading are actually doing what they are talking about.

They have not been shown how to change their life as a whole, permeating it with appropriate disciplines so that prayer and Bible reading will be spiritually successful. What he’s getting at here is sort of the idea where you’re having a problem or you’re struggling with something, and someone just says, Well, go pray about it and read your Bible. Well, that’s great advice, and we should be doing that. One of the limitations, though, is if we don’t have a habit of doing that, if it’s not something that’s regular, what people tend to do is in desperation or in moments of weakness, when they realize they can’t do anything themselves, that’s when they cry out to God. And then when things don’t work out the way they want them to work out, they declare that this just doesn’t work.

Right? It’s sort of this cycle that goes on, kind of the sporadic use not only of prayer, but also of Bible reading. And so we find a verse when we’re hurting or when we’re sad, or that condemns the actions of others that they’ve done against us, or condemns somebody else’s or challenge someone else’s doctrine that we disagree with. Simultaneously, we maybe not give any attention to things like solitude or silence or sacrifice or service or submission. These various other disciplines that actually help open our heart to the things of God. We miss kind of the regularity and the habits and the routines that allow God to then work in us and through us. And when we do that, and let me remind you again, this is not about keeping rules or laws.

There’s no checklist. I’ve done my solitude today, I’ve done my silence today. The aim of all of this is to open ourselves up for spiritual growth. It’s to allow the word of God to affect me, allow God to work in me. So when I am not doing that regularly, when I don’t have a habit, haven’t developed that in my life, and then at a certain moment, all of a sudden I want it. That’s a little bit like deciding I’m gonna go to run a marathon when I haven’t run it all. I haven’t trained for it. I don’t know how to get through those difficult lulls in the run, in the race. Where I don’t want to keep going anymore. If I haven’t trained and I haven’t prepared, what am I gonna do?

Just gonna stop.

It is working on ourselves, not for the purpose of keeping a rule, but to grow closer to God, to help our lives, to become more spiritual in our thinking, to shape our minds. We do that with things like Bible study, but we do it when we take this on as a regular part of our life. And so without regular discipline, I mostly recognize my weaknesses in moments of trial that drive me to prayer. But the reality is I desperately need God when life is going well too. I just fail to consider that. If I’m not disciplined in my thinking and in my living. I think maybe a good way to illustrate this or understand it is a parent-child relationship. We’re going to work through this a little bit this morning a couple different times.

Sometimes our children, particularly our older children, really feel like they understand what to do and how to live. They’ve got it figured out, they can be independent. And then the car breaks down and they don’t have any money. It all seems so good. They had it all together and it all worked until they finally hit a snag that they have no way to fix themselves. And so then what happens? Well, we happen, don’t we? Parents. You know, they reach out to us, I’m in need, I’m stuck on the side of the road, I’m not sure what to do. Sometimes it’s there’s no money, sometimes it’s no experience. I’m not even sure how to handle this situation. My tire balloons on the side of the road. What do I do now?

And you tell them, well, there’s one underneath the back of the car, and you can handle it that way, or we’ve got this card you can call, triple A, or whatever. There’s ways, there’s solutions, right? And as parents, we have those solutions. Sometimes children don’t ask for solutions, and they figured it out themselves, and sometimes they experience those the hard way. Even though mom and dad may have had really good answers for them. They didn’t ask for those answers. But also consider that if the child only values their parents when they have some urgent request. They really fail to appreciate the relationship that their parents desire or want with them. And I imagine God feels the same way.

If I only run to him when the car’s broken down on the side of the road and the tire’s blown. That says something about the quality of our relationship. Now, because God is who he is, and because as parents we are who we are, we still want to help, don’t we? We don’t say, hey, you haven’t talked to me in the last three days. You haven’t told me anything else about your life. Good luck fixing the tire. That’s not usually how we treat our kids. And hopefully, as parents, we wouldn’t do that because we should be demonstrating the love of God and the things that we do. But I do want us to consider the nature of how relationships work. And so God is not just this kind of magical guy in the sky that just answers every request whenever we have a need.

That’s not really the idea of God, and we’re not going to get into the theory of prayer and all that this morning. That’ll be for another time. But that is sometimes the way we view him. It’s like a mechanism, it’s a machine. I offer the right words, and then the results pop out the way I want them to. Consider why would an infinite, all powerful God grant every request of a finite, imperfect being. That’s a thought to carry with you for the future. But sometimes that’s the way we imagine it. But what God is really looking for is a relationship to build with us where we’re seeing the quality of that relationship and the benefit of that relationship for our life, and it’s actually shaping our behaviors.

3. Disciplined Prayer Is Frequent and Purposeful

We’re looking to him even more so than speaking to him. We’re looking for answers from him. And we can find that through scripture. We can find that through the words he’s revealed to us. And prayer, if done correctly, will drive us to that. And so I want us to think about what disciplined prayer looks like this morning. Some of it is just the function of it. It can happen a variety of ways, but in essence, disciplined prayer is going to be prayer that is frequent and purposeful. It’s just a part of our daily life. Just like others of great faith. As we’ve been looking at these various disciplines, whatever they might be, the obvious example is Jesus. He himself was regular in prayer. He was getting away to quiet places, and prayer is one of those disciplines that often is going to work with something else.

Something like solitude and silence or fasting or various other spiritual disciplines are often going to work in concert with prayer. We see that happening with Jesus frequently, and we’ve looked at many of those passages in past sermons. But there are others of great faith as well. Daniel prayed three times a day. The Jews had built into their whole economy hours of prayer, where every day they had sacrifices and they had times of prayer to help orient their mind toward the things of God over and over and over again each day. And we should be learning and growing in our prayer. And so frequency, I don’t know if you’ve experienced this. I certainly have in my life. Frequency in prayer will reveal any shallowness in my prayer life.

You can only say the same phrases over and over and over again for so long before you start to think, maybe I need to think a little deeper about this process and who I’m talking to. And it’s not that praying for the same things frequently is bad. That can be a very good thing. It can be real persistent in prayer, like the widow in Luke 18, asking God for the things that we really want or desire, which hopefully are being shaped through a better understanding of Him. That’s ultimately where we want to be with this. And so it’s not that we shouldn’t say the same phrases, but hopefully, if we’re learning and growing in our prayer life, that frequency will say, What else can I pray for?

Who else can I pray for? There’s all sorts of types of prayer. And Jesus warns us about some of the dangers in all of this. He said, Don’t be like the Gentiles, don’t be like the pagans. Their idea of prayer is a little bit like what I said earlier, where it’s the idea you could kind of obligate the gods. If you go through the ritual in just the right way, you say the incantation and just the right format, then this being, this divine being, then has to grant your blessing or curse on somebody else. This is how paganism worked. We even have some of those prayers that have been preserved throughout the centuries that still exist from the ancient world, in which that is the nature of how they took place.

And so Jesus is saying it’s not about heaping up a bunch of phrases. This is not abracadabra, and then you get what you want. That’s not the idea of prayer. It is meaningful, thoughtful communication with the Lord. And that can be done in a variety of ways. It’s not just lots of words, it’s not flowery language. It’s not saying it in just the right way. God doesn’t care about that. He’s not looking for graduate level essays in our prayers, and that’s the only way we can get his attention. That is not the way God works. He wants sincerity and honesty. He wants openness and trust.

Prayer in Scripture is expressed in a few different ways. There’s doxology, which is just a word of praise. Talking about the glory of God, extolling him for the way he is. Actually, many or almost all of the biblical prayers end in doxology. We tend to say, in Jesus’ name, we pray, Amen. That is not how biblical prayers end. To him be glory in the church in Christ Jesus, forever and ever. Amen. That’s a doxology. And so a prayer can be a word of praise or recognizing God for who he is and how he is worthy, he is creator. There is supplication, we’re very familiar with that, asking for the things that we want or desire. Intercession, asking on the behalf of somebody else, or thanksgiving. This is the idea of expressing gratitude in prayer, or just crying out in distress.

There’s times that’s where we are. Paul tells us sometimes we don’t even know what to pray, and takes the spirit interceding for us with groanings too deep for words. And so prayer is expressed in a lot of different ways. In the Psalms, we see that as well. We have laments, even. We have imprecatory psalms about those who have harmed someone. There’s all sorts of ways that prayer plays out. And when Paul says pray without ceasing, I think this is the idea he’s getting at. That God is such a part of my whole life that prayer is being expressed in all scenarios in all formats. He doesn’t mean that at all times, everywhere, that we’re like this with our eyes closed, praying constantly. That’s not the concept.

But it is that it is a life of prayer expressed in multifaceted ways in all parts of our life, so it is affecting our very being and everything that we’re doing. That’s what it means to pray without ceasing. Part of this praying with frequency and purpose is thinking about the right way to pray. James says, you ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions. As we develop in our prayer life, it should be something that goes further and further away from selfishness, from just the things I want, although God does want to know sometimes the things we want. But it is being oriented toward the things of God. James goes on to say, submit to God. Resist the devil.

Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Humble yourselves, and he will exalt you. All of that is not discourse that’s about me getting what I want. It is about looking to God for the answer, seeing who he is, understanding his will, and submitting myself to his will and asking for his will to be done, as Jesus does in this model prayer. And so as we develop in our prayer life, even if in its infancy, it’s something that’s going to be oriented toward the things of God. And we’ll be learning and growing along the way. But the important thing is that we’re establishing a habit of communication, that there is a channel open between me and God at all times. And how amazing that he has made a way for that.

You know, we don’t have to wait for just the right time to go talk to somebody and say, hey, could you tell God about this? He is open for us to speak to him. I can go before him. I can go before the throne of grace at all times. He’s ready to help. We have a high priest who is in the heavens. He’s at the right hand of God, who is interceding. He is our advocate, and we can speak through Jesus to God at any time. And so, with that thought in mind, it’s something that we should be thinking about developing with some frequency and purpose in our life. Please don’t check a box. That’s not the goal. If you need some sort of system to help you build a habit, that’s fine.

4. Disciplined Prayer Welcomes God's Presence in My Heart

I can understand that. But the end goal is not to check off a list and say, I’ve done it today. It is to develop a relationship with God so that my heart can be inclined toward the things of God and that my mind and my soul can be shaped to carry out God’s will in this world. And so discipline prayer is prayer that welcomes God’s presence in my heart. And this is why when we don’t want to submit to the will of God, we are so hesitant to want to pray to Him. It is the very nature of what prayer is doing. It is an invitation to welcome God into my life and into my heart and into my mind. And when we are embroiled in sin, that is the last thing that we want to do.

It is ironic because God already knows anyway. It’s not as if I don’t talk to him, then he won’t find out. Now we can imagine that sometimes maybe with our parents or some other authority figure, a boss, maybe we’ve done something we shouldn’t have done at work, and so we don’t want to talk to them about it. We can imagine that in human relationships, which maybe then gives us the idea that somehow we can keep things from God. But God knows things before we ask. That’s what Jesus says here in Matthew chapter 6. He already knows what you need. The point of prayer is not to inform God on the things in my life. It may be for God to recognize that I’m aware of the things going on in my life, but he already knows them.

I’m not keeping anything from him. I’m not hiding from God the things that are taking place. In fact, he wants me to be open about my weaknesses so that he can work through me and reshape me to change those things about my life to build a relationship that then encourages transformation. That is actually the fix to our problems, both divine and human. The solution to addictions in our life, to problems we face, to sins we have is deep relationships, including the relationship we have with God the Father Himself. And so restricting that, even when we don’t really feel like it, is only hurting ourselves that much more.

When we don’t see the value in developing a disciplined prayer life. Prayer connects our heart to God for him to work and to will for his good pleasure. It is an effort for us to lean on him rather than leaning on ourselves. And when we lean on ourselves, things just don’t go very well.

Think about again the parent-child relationship. How often, parents, do we actually know what is best for our child? We look at the situation, maybe we’ve been in something very similar ourselves. We know the thing that they actually need, or what would be the solution for them. Sometimes when they’re younger, we just make it happen. Other times we let them learn through the process, and sometimes they have to get burned by touching something they shouldn’t, or whatever the thing might be, we allow it to happen as a lesson or a way to teach them. However, if they would ask, we could offer them some wisdom in that decision they’re making. There’d be something as a father or as a mother that we could benefit them in if they would come to us.

And so in a much bigger way, this is a comparison that is has a huge gap because God the Father is infinite. He is glorious and majestic.

But even in our earthly relationships, we understand this concept. And so think even more about God and how he works. James says, if we pray for wisdom, he will give it to us. John tells us in 1 John chapter 5 that he will request if it’s according to his will. If we’re shaping our hearts and our minds according to the will of God, and we’re thinking and we’re asking for things that have to do with God’s kingdom, then he will give us the things that we need. Now, if we refuse, if we try to go about it our own way, it’s a little bit like our children when they do that. Things tend to go poorly. And that is the encouragement to be regular in prayer, to be frequent, to always be wondering what would God say about this?

5. The Elements of Jesus' Prayer

What does God say about this? Letting the peace of Christ rule in our hearts, as Paul says to do in Colossians chapter 3. That’s the idea of being deep in prayer and deep in a relationship with God with what we know about him and what we’ve learned about him and the communication we have with him, guiding us and leading us in the right direction. Notice the elements of Jesus’ prayer here. I think it would be great to memorize this prayer, as some do. I think it’s beneficial to maybe have this be a regular utterance. I don’t think it’s a necessity. Although in Luke’s account, he does say, this is how you should pray. So that’s worth saying. Here it says, pray like this, or in this way.

But there’s some elements of this prayer that I think are really helpful in understanding. The first is he begins by honoring God. Hallowed be your name. That is the word hagiatzo. It’s the idea of sanctification or being made holy. And what he’s saying is, your name is sacred. He’s identifying God as a being, his name itself is something that is sacred and holy. And the starting place of our interaction with God is understanding who he is and who I am. That he is high above me. His understanding is well above my understanding. And at the very outset of prayer, Jesus is saying, you recognize that God is sacred. He’s in heaven and I’m on earth. The wise man in Ecclesiastes says the same thing. Do not be rash with your mouth when you enter the holy place.

God is in heaven and you are on earth. It’s a perspective. And this is how Jesus begins his prayer. Then he focuses on the progressing of God’s kingdom in the world, God’s work and his will and his counsel. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And so the focus of Jesus’ prayer here is not just honoring God, although that’s where it begins, but also honoring the work that God is doing in the world through his people. And then the reality that God’s will isn’t being done on earth, but we want it to be done on earth as it is in heaven. And so we should be working toward that end. And then he ends the prayer with where most of our prayers focus.

And that is on divine provisions. Give us this day our daily bread. Don’t give us bread for the next month, year. He doesn’t focus there. Just today. What I’m looking for today, that you will provide for me on this day, right now, in this moment. Looking for God’s mercy and deliverance, but in connection with our own Christ-like behavior. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And it’s interesting that Jesus goes on to comment on this phrase after the prayer. There’s an aspect to how this works. If you forgive others, then your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you don’t forgive others, then he will not forgive you your trespasses. There are conditions to how this works. And so in the nature of deliverance and mercy and even provision, there is an element of this that has to do with am I living like Jesus Christ?

6. We Need to Make Prayer Personal

Am I living with the same kind of attitude as he is? And the importance then of welcoming God into my heart to shape me and to change me to be like him. I talked not too long ago about worship itself being a manner by which we look at Jesus in the mirror, 2 Corinthians 3 18. And we behold him or we reflect him, it says there, then we are transformed into his glory. And prayer is an essential part of that process. We are connecting hearts and minds with the divine, changing the way we think to be like him. That is the goal of what should be happening in prayer. And then in connection with the discipline, let me just say this. We need to make prayer personal.

The way I go about this may be different than how you go about it, and that’s totally fine. There’s a functional part of this that we have to set up in a way that works in our life that makes sense. And so there’s times where we’re going to incorporate this with other parts of our life, like we can get away and have some quiet. Maybe as you drive to work is a good time for that. Or maybe you just have to get away to somewhere else in the house. But having some kind of plan and purpose to what we’re doing, which we talked about earlier, and then making it personal for you. Just because someone else has a 45 minute drive to work and they can spend deep time in prayer doesn’t mean you have that.

You’ve got to find how to do this some other way in your life.

Maybe pick up the Bible and spend time in prayer with scripture. Maybe it’s a habit thing, like I’m going to pick up my Bible and I’m going to pray before I pick up my phone. Or a video game controller. And recognizing that I want to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and not the things of the world. Sometimes it’s just simple little things like that help gear our mind in the right direction. Pray with scripture. Read and meditate on a text prior to prayer. It’ll keep us centered on things that are true and right. It’ll provide variety. It’ll get into different parts of our life. It might be for you that it’s good to handwrite a text, to allow your mind to slow down, to think about it, to then say, how does this apply to me?

And what can I pray about in reference to this text?

Be real with God. Be honest and open and trusting. Part of healthy relationships is the willingness to do this. And that’s what he wants from us. In the case of prayer, we talk to God because we love him. And we trust him that he knows what is best and he has the answers for us. And let me suggest this last one, as something that I’ve experienced in my own life a little bit, I think that is really important. And I think it mimics the characteristic of Jesus and how he operated. And that is to think about praying for people, not just events or things. Let me explain that a little bit more. Someone’s sick or they’re going through a struggle. And what I’m trying to get at here is they’re a person and you love them.

And they matter to you. It’s not just a disease, it’s not just a financial problem, it’s not just whatever it is. It’s because you love that person and they matter so much to you. And it may be that even, this may sound strange to us, that we restrict our prayers to focus on some people we are very ardent about, that we’re very close with, that we can really dig down and deep into their situation that we know really well, and we are praying for them. We’re having compassion or we feel empathy because the situation that they’re in, whatever it might be. It’s not just something else to add to the prayer list. Now, again, there’s good and bad in all of this. I have you ever made a list of done this, and it’s like pages long.

It’s like every one of the problems in our world is that we’re so connected. We know about everything. You know, we’re praying about the earthquake in Russia, and we’re praying about this over here, and that, and it ends up, and I want to be careful how I say this, but it ends up being a lot of nameless people we don’t know in situations we’re really not aware of. And I’m not saying we can’t ever pray for that. But don’t lose sight of the importance of personal relationships and how much they matter and how deeper that’s going to make our prayers. That there are people in this congregation that I pray about every single day because I love them and I care about them and they mean something to me, and I want to see changes in their life, whether it’s through their health or whatever it might be, those things matter.

And those people matter. It’s not just an event or a thing. And it may be that in our minds, at least, that in our minds it helps us in this process to make it personal, to make it a little bit more real. As we see what takes place in the lives of others around us, as we’re trying to intercede for them. And in fact, scripture says we can do that. 1 John 5 says, if you see someone who is sinning with a sin that’s not leading to death, you pray for them and they will be forgiven. This is the power of prayer in connection with God. You see me doing something wrong and it doesn’t kill me, you can pray for me and I’ll be forgiven.

That is intercessory prayer. That is amazing. That we have that kind of pool with the Father who is in heaven. That’s personal. That involves relationship both with other people and with God himself. Well, prayers for ourselves should emerge from recognizing our own weaknesses or needs. Our prayers for others should emerge from compassion and love and concern. And so that’s just a suggestion for how we can make the things we’re talking about this morning become very personal in our lives. I want us to think carefully about the way we consider. That’s the point of what we’re doing this morning. It’s not a rule to follow. It’s not that we just do it because God said so. I mean, there are things we do like that, and we ought to do it because God does say so, but it’s deeper than that.

Conclusion

It should be more meaningful. If we truly want to follow Jesus Christ and we truly want a relationship with God, then we’ll want to talk to him. We will want him to be a part of our lives. We will want his guidance, his love, his concern, his compassion. But most of all, we’ll want to be one with him. We want that connection between our spirit and his.

Should? If so, you can recommit yourself to opening that channel to allow him in your heart. You can do that this morning. Maybe you aren’t even in Christ. You haven’t given your life to Jesus Christ. We’d love to help you with that this morning. Scriptures tell us how to do that. It tells us we die with him. We give up ourselves. We give up the selfishness of a material, temporary world, and we see the beauty of eternal life, and we die to self, and we’re buried in the waters of baptism. We’re ready this morning to help you with that. And you’re resurrected to a new life. You’re resurrected out of the old man to the new man, now a man of God, following after the nature of Jesus Christ.

Paul says that he doesn’t consider people according to the flesh when they’re in Christ, but according to the spirit. And you can have that this morning. Can we help you? Why don’t you come as we stand and we sing together?