I became increasingly convicted this week about how little I pray. So today, I am preaching first of all to myself. This topic is at the heart of revival of this church. My father told me when I was a teenager that the greatest problem of the Christians is their prayerless praying.
What we need to do today is not just confront this problem of prayerless praying, but search for conclusions. All of our excuses are obnoxious in the eyes of God. It is tragic when followers of Jesus, who are supposed to be people of prayer, can rest comfortably in this wicked prayerless condition. It is easier perhaps to riddle ourselves with guilt than to do something about it. I’m not trying to beat you with guilt but to encourage you to pursue a faithful and more fervent prayer life with our Savior. This will require us to take hold of ourselves and to take hold of God. The title of today’s sermon is: Don’t Stop Praying.
I know it was maybe a few months ago when I preached a message titled, “Pray until you pray.” In that sermon I articulated that we needed to keep praying until all that comes out of our mouths are prayers because that’s the human condition, that is how society bridled itself on us. If you look at the last few months since I preached that message, it has not been clearer in the news and in our global society that followers of Jesus are now, more than ever mandated to pray until praying doesn’t fall off our lips.
With that being said, I want to reiterate the theme verse of our series this summer from Hebrews 10:35-36: 35 Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. 36 For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised. (Hebrews 10:35-36)
There is nothing else we can do in this horrible and tragic society except to hang on and wait for it… the glorious power of Jesus Christ in our lives. I don’t know about you, but I need a break from this world. I am waiting for what God promised me. I’m sure you’re waiting for what God promised you. But guess what, in order to get what God promised you and me – eternal life with the king of glory and majesty, we need to have endurance and further, confidence that God is the God of fulfilling promises. We need to live like God’s people still matter in this age and society. We need to live like when we pray faithfully that God moves and does things that we don’t anticipate or believe is possible in our lives.
Let’s go to Matthew 6. We’re looking at four verses today.
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. 6 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.
7 “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. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. (Matthew 6:5-8)
On the radio the other day, I heard Pastor James Macdonald say this about this passage, “the secret to prayer is praying in secret.” Blew my mind. Let me try to unlock what he was saying when he said this. Prayer doesn’t mean anything to anybody unless you’re willing to pray when nobody is watching and when nobody cares. That’s when prayer means something.
I’m sure you knew that, but how many of us really practice that? Moreover, how many of us pray when nobody cares whether we are praying or not? Do you? I am a professional and I rarely do, and it’s a shame that I don’t care enough to pray when nobody else cares enough in the day. In the morning, when I wake up, I’m praying. But what about any other time, when I’m not rushing to get to work? At the gym when I’m lifting weights with my headphones on, I’m praying while I drip sweat onto the rubber mats, but what about the times I’m just driving from one other luxury to another?
The giants of church history dwarf us because of the time and energy that they devoted to private prayer. In all of his busyness, John Calvin spent hours in prayer every day. Unless we fix certain hours of every day in prayer, he said, it would slip from our memory. We must taste the sweetness of the fellowship of God in our prayer. We need to strive to grow in prayer. Martin Luther was not shy in is prayers. He would often pray loudly and boldly. He said praying was hard work. And he’s right. There is so much working against us in our prayers. Distraction arises in our cold heart and disturbance comes up in those around us. Luther spent the first two hours of every day in prayer.
True prayer is putting ourselves into our petitions, crying out to God Almighty and praying in our prayers. The problem is not that we don’t pray, but rather that seldom we truly prayerfully pray in our prayers. This is where backsliding begins, in the secret places where we’re not praying. I want us to turn quickly to Matthew 14:23. Matthew writes about Jesus, “23 And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray.” (Matthew 14:23a) Nobody was around and Jesus was praying in secret. We know nobody was around because he sent his other disciples on a boat to go to the other side of the lake. This was that night when Peter walked on water because Jesus was walking on water to get from point a to point b as fast as possible.
In the four verses that we just read from Matthew 6 there are a few things we need to learn that will cause us to keep on praying long after this message.
First, we pray because we can’t do anything without God. Look at how this passage starts about the hypocrites. “…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” (Matthew 6:5) The reason they received their reward is because they believe they are above the rest. They love the attention. They love to be seen by others like they have something to show off. It’s understated here, but there is a hyperbole with whom Matthew calls hypocrites here because it’s obvious that they really didn’t receive anything at all. In fact, what we can get from this line if we read between the lines is that “without God, they can do nothing,” so what are they really achieving by praying only when it is mandated to?
Look at what Jesus says in John 15:5-8
5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. 6 If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. 7 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples. (John 15:5-8)
This is exactly what is at stake here when we pray. When we pray, it’s not about us, it’s about God doing things through us. It is not about how we control the prayer or the conversation of prayer. We do not just pray for God’s benefits but God himself. We need God intimacy and God dependency.
Here’s the second thing: God is in secret… that word “secret” in Greek is actually “kryptos” but more than secret, it really implies a hidden-ness about God. See what we have to know is that God values things done secretly because those are the things that we were going to do anyways. There is no motive behind doing things in secret because we were going to do them regardless. Now, when we pray, do we pray with a motive behind our prayers like we would only do so in some type of posturing or if we needed something? Matthew says in verse 6 that the God who is in secret when you pray to Him in secret will see you in secret and reward you. I highly doubt the reward is secret because that caveat isn’t added there. There is a sincerity of things when we do things in secret. Praying is no different. We pray in secret because God is hidden and watching our devotions for Him because it is sincere. God does not look at the logic of your prayers or the style of your prayers but the sincerity of your prayers.
This leads me to ask, “What is happening in the private place that only you and God know about? How vibrant is your secret life of prayer?”
We need to use every opportunity to pray, when we have a chance. I remember reading a sermon or commentary that John Calvin wrote about prayer as he compared it to a child crawling up into his father’s lap in relation to prayer. Pray continually. Ask God to help you do that. Whenever you have the least impulse to pray, pray! We have so few impulses to pray that we ought to take advantage of every one of them. This is not the public prayers, but the secret prayers that are here mentioned by Jesus in this passage.
Here’s the third thing. If we look at verses 7 and 8 we see that people use more words to be more articulate or to kill time in order to confuse. I know this trick. Consultants throw around meaningless words all the time. That’s not what prayer is. So let’s stop the nonsense. In 1st Kings 18, there is a story about Elijah and the prophets of Baal, and I think it represents exactly what prayer isn’t.
25 Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, “Choose one of the bulls and prepare it first, since there are so many of you. Call on the name of your god, but do not light the fire.” 26 So they took the bull given them and prepared it. Then they called on the name of Baal from morning till noon. “Baal, answer us!” they shouted. But there was no response; no one answered. And they danced around the altar they had made. 27 At noon Elijah began to taunt them. “Shout louder!” he said. “Surely he is a god! Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or traveling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened.” 28 So they shouted louder and slashed themselves with swords and spears, as was their custom, until their blood flowed. 29 Midday passed, and they continued their frantic prophesying until the time for the evening sacrifice. But there was no response, no one answered, no one paid attention. (1 Kings 18:25-29)
This is not our God. Our God knows what we need before we even before we begin praying, but we pray to God as God works in us when we pray. My aim is not to discourage you. Don’t despair no matter how bad your prayer life is right now. There is more for you in prayer. Battle unbelief, despair, hopelessness with prayer. We need not be crushed by demands to pray for hours but to pray with earnestness. Take hope in the almighty God who loves you so much that He sent us His One and only son to save us before we even said our first sinner’s prayer. Don’t stop praying because you and I need to pray now more than ever! Let’s pray.
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