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How to Develop a Powerful Prayer Life, Part Four

1 John 5:14-15

If you’ve been with us these past few weeks, you’ll know that 3 weeks ago we began a spiritual pilgrimage together that we are calling, A Season of Prayer. We are sensing that God’s desire is to grow Petaluma Valley into what the Bible calls, “a house of prayer,” and God is working in our Season of Prayer to move us in that direction. And throughout this Season of Prayer, I’ve been sharing a series of messages titled, “How to Develop a Powerful Prayer Life.” Each week I’ve spoken about a different aspect of a healthy, growing, effective prayer life and I’m going to continue that series this morning. To make sure that we’re all on the same page this morning, let’s briefly review our journey thus far.

--We started our journey by honestly acknowledging to one another that even though we love the Lord, are serious about our relationship with Him and genuinely believe that God wants us to pray…listens to us when we pray…and answers our prayers…even though all of that is true, most of us have found that maintaining a consistent, disciplined practice of getting alone with God each day for a time of unhurried, uninterrupted prayer has, for a variety of reasons, been a real struggle. It’s not been an easy discipline to establish and maintain.

--It is, however, a discipline that is worth whatever effort it takes to establish and maintain because of what results from a healthy prayer life. First and foremost prayer is all about getting closer to God and that’s #1 on God’s priority list for our lives. Contrary to popular opinion, the primary purpose of prayer is not to try to get God to do stuff for us or to try to get God to give things to us. The primary purpose of prayer is for us to get to know God better and to love Him more deeply. Prayer is the means by which we build a stronger and more intimate relationship with God.
So, yes, maintaining a consistent habit of prayer is hard work…but it’s worth it because we get to see the promise of James 4:8 fulfilled in our lives. And what is that promise? James 4:8 says, “Come near to God and He will come near to you.”

--As we moved on to the second week of our prayer journey we noted that the Bible reveals that there are actually a number of different categories or types of prayers. And if our desire is to develop a powerful prayer life then it’s important for us to incorporate each of these different types of prayers into our prayer lives because God uses each of these different types of prayers to accomplish distinct spiritual purposes in our lives. Consequently, if we fail to incorporate any of these various types of prayer into our prayer lives then our relationship with God will be underdeveloped in some significant way.

--And the first type or category of prayer that we identified was, “praise.” Praise is the way we pray when the desire of our heart and the focus of our mind is worship. Praise is giving God the glory, the honor and the thanks that He deserves for who He is and how He has blessed us. And praise is a vitally important part of a powerful prayer life. In fact, I think praise should be the very first focus in all of our praying. Before we ask God for anything, we need to take time to tell Him that we love Him, why we love Him and to thank Him for all of our blessings.

--Then, last week we noted that sincere, joyful, heartfelt praise leads us quite naturally into a second type or category of prayer called, “confession.” Having stood in the presence of a God who is altogether pure and holy we need, then, to acknowledge that we are not. Even after we are saved we sometimes sin. And God hates sin because it is the one thing that can separate us from Him. And God’s remedy for sin is forgiveness. And the way we access God’s forgiveness is through confession. And confession is simply saying about our sin the same thing that God says about our sin. So, confession demands that we resist our natural inclination to justify our sin, excuse our sin or minimize our sin and just admit that it is exactly what God says it is—sin.

And the confidence we have in confessing our sin to God is built on the promise of God’s forgiveness. 1 John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sin he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”

And with that forgiveness, the wall that our sin had built between God and ourselves comes tumbling down, God’s Spirit is once again free to work in us and God’s blessings begin to flow into us. And the first of those blessings is the lifting of a huge burden of guilt.

And that brings us to the third type or category of prayer and that is, “petition.” And petition is almost certainly the type of prayer that is most familiar to most people. And petition is the form that our prayers take when we bring to God’s attention our own personal needs, desires and wants. When we offer prayers of petition we are asking God to provide for our needs—our personal needs, our financial needs, our emotional needs and so forth. God is concerned about all of the things that concern us. Those things that matter to us also matter to God and God doesn’t want us to handle those concerns all by ourselves. He wants us to bring those matters to Him and trust in His provision.

One of the things that I have observed through the years is that a lot of seemingly mature Christians tend to view prayers of petition as a kind of entry-level form of praying. There seems to be an attitude among many seemingly mature Christians that views petition as the way we pray when we’re in the elementary school years of our faith, but once we get more mature…meaning, like them…we should move beyond petition to higher forms of prayer, like praise. So, sometimes I hear comments like these:

--“I don’t pray about my own needs, I just pray for other people.”

--“I don’t think about myself when I pray, I just come into God’s presence to worship Him.”

And, on some level, comments like those give the appearance of spiritual maturity. The problem is, those kinds of comments are not in any way consistent with what the Bible teaches us about prayer in general or about prayers of petition in particular.

In the Sermon on the Mount, for instance, Jesus offered up what is arguably the most powerful, eloquent and spiritually moving prayer that has ever been spoken. And He offered it, specifically, to teach us how to pray. You may remember that he prefaced His prayer with this statement: “This…is how you should pray.” And then He offered up what we call, “The Lord’s Prayer.” And, interestingly, it is largely a prayer of petition.

--“Forgive us our debts.” Petition.

--“Lead us not into temptation.” Petition.

--“Deliver us from the evil one.” Petition.

--And the most elementary petition of all? “Give us today our daily bread.”

Folks, if asking God to provide for our needs…even a need as basic as bread…is an immature form of prayer, do you really think Jesus would have taught us to pray that way? Clearly, it’s not immature to bring your needs to God in prayer. Jesus encourages us to do so.

One of the reasons that we’re encouraged to ask God to provide for our needs is because doing so is evidence of an intimate relationship with God. I might be hesitant to ask a stranger for help, but I would never hesitate for a moment to ask my father for help because he’s my father. And I know he loves me. And he knows that I love him. My father would want me to tell him if I had an unmet need in my life and I know that he would do anything for me if he knew that it was for my good.
And, so it is in our relationship with our Heavenly Father. We can confidently approach Him with any of our personal needs knowing that we’re always welcome in our Father’s presence and that His answers to our requests will always be in our best interests.

This image of God as our Heavenly Father is one that Jesus draws on later in The Sermon on the Mount to further instruct us on the nature of prayers of petition. In Matthew 7:11 he says, “If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”

So, again, Jesus encourages us to ask God to provide for of our personal needs, knowing that our Father loves us and His heart is inclined to provide for us. David makes the same point in Psalm 37:4 when he says, “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.”

So, asking God to provide our needs and desires is not something that we’re to grow out of as we mature in our faith. In fact, just the opposite is true. God’s desire is that we will grow more and more dependent on Him as we mature in our faith and asking for His provision each day deepens that sense of dependency.

Now, while it is true that becoming more and more spiritually mature does not lead us to stop asking God to provide for our daily needs, it’s also true that becoming more and more spiritually mature does have a dramatic impact on the kinds of things that we ask God to provide. It broadens the scope of the things about which we seek God’s provision. And here’s how that process unfolds.

As we begin to grow in our relationship with God and He leads us further and further along the path of spiritual maturity, we begin to see the world around us more and more from God’s perspective and we begin to see ourselves more and more from God’s perspective. We begin to realize, in ways we didn’t understand before, that God is working in our world to accomplish His eternal purposes and God is also working in us to accomplish His eternal purposes. And one of the grandest of those purposes is to conform us to the image of Christ. Romans 8:29 says it like this, “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son…”

God is constantly working in each and every one of us, His children, to make us more and more like Jesus. He’s growing the character of Christ in us. He’s growing the mind of Christ in us. And God is passionate about this growth process because it is at the very heart of His purpose for our lives. And as we become more and more spiritually mature we begin to develop a passion for God’s purposes. We become more and more passionate about seeing God’s work accomplished in us.

And one of the primary ways that our passion for God’s purposes shows itself is in the content of our prayers of petition. We still pray for God’s provision of our temporal needs—things like food, shelter, safety, comfort in the midst of our hurts, losses and crises and so forth—but because of our growing passion for seeing God’s purposes accomplished in us, we also begin to ask God for things of eternal consequence; things that further God’s kingdom building purposes in us.

And to that end, the scriptures are absolutely invaluable, because they teach us about the character and mind of Christ. Consequently, one of the most important practices that we can incorporate into our prayers of petition is to pray those scriptures in which God reveals His will for our lives; those scriptures that identify specific character traits and spiritual purposes that God desires to produce in each and every one of His children. And once you begin looking for those kinds of scriptures, you’ll discover that they are scattered throughout the Bible.

Now, let me show you what I’m talking about with one example, Galatians 5:22-23, which says, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”

Question—Is it God’s will that those character traits would be present in increasing measure in none of His children, some of His children or all of His children?

Answer—All of His children. That includes you and me.

Question—As you consider those character traits, would you say that God has finished His work in You or are you a work in progress? So, ask God to continue the work.

“Father, you have such wonderful plans for my life and I long to see you finish those plans. Father, fill me with love. Help me to love people the way that Jesus loves them. And not just some people, but all people. People like me. People different from me. People of every race and color. Father, if Jesus loves them then I need to love them and I need Your help to do so.
And, Father, fill me with joy. Supernatural joy that comes from You. Joy that is fueled by the gift of my salvation, the love of Jesus and the sweet, sweet presence of the Holy Spirit. Joy that I can’t contain, so that it spills out on everyone around me.

And, Father, fill me with your peace. By the power of Your Holy Spirit, drive every trace of worry out of my life. Help me never to choose worry rather than trusting in You. And, Lord, I trust You to fill me with Your peace.”

And, on and on you can go through the rest of this passage and on to others, because the Bible is filled with similar passages that reveal in very specific ways God’s will for your life. And as you begin to pray those passages you will experience an outpouring of God’s blessings into your life that you cannot even imagine, because God has promised to give us everything we ask for…provided that is consistent with His will. 1 John 5:14-15 says this: “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.”

Folks, when we pray according to God’s will, He gives us everything that what we ask for. And there is no better way to know that you are praying according to God’s will than to pray the scriptures.

“This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.”

And all of God’s people said, AMEN!