Last week we
discussed six reasons God wants us to
pray.
- God desires a relationship with us and that comes through prayer.
- God is ready to help in our time of need.
- It is God’s will that we should pray.
- Prayer helps us avoid sin.
- Through prayer, our joy is made complete.
- Through prayer, we confess known sins and ask God to show us un-confessed sin.
This week we will look at six parts of prayer that will help
us remember how to do it effectively.
There are
two main categories of prayer:
Responding Prayers and Asking Prayers
We will look
first at responding prayers. The
purpose of responding prayers is to identify with God by becoming like
Him. We respond to God four ways:
- Confession
- Praise
- Worship
- Thanksgiving
Confession is to say the same thing as God does,
or agree with Him, about our sin. When
we see and understand the holiness of God, we can’t help but confess that He is
holy and we are not.
We will look
at several scriptures from Psalms because Psalms contains many
prayers. Some are written as poetry or
songs, others are not. The first one we
will look at that shows an example of confession is Psalm 51:1-4, and 10, and 12 “Be gracious to me, God, according
to Your faithful love; according to Your abundant compassion, blot out my
rebellion. Wash away my guilt, and
cleanse me from my sin. For I am
conscious of my rebellion, and my sin is always before me. Against You-You alone-I have sinned and done
this evil in Your sight. So You are
right when You pass sentence; You are blameless when You judge. God, create a clean heart for me and renew a
steadfast spirit within me. Restore the
joy of Your salvation to me, and give me a willing spirit.”
Confession
is our response to the holiness of God.
It expresses a desire to be made clean.
As we have mentioned before we don’t have to make an appointment to come
see Daniel or any of the other pastors in order to be cleansed. We can go directly to God because of the
blood of Jesus Christ that was shed on our behalf. The best way to begin your prayer time in
the morning is by confessing known sin and asking God to show you un-confessed
sin. Also, we should keep a very short
sin account by confessing sin as it happens.
Someone said “If you feel like you’re further from God than you once
were, guess who moved.” Un-confessed sin
can move us away from God because we experience the kind of fear that Adam and
Eve had after they sinned. They went and
hid. They had never done that
before. Confession of our sins, immediately
and specifically, keeps our relationship with God healthy.
Another way
we respond to God is with Praise. Praise is responding to God’s attributes. God reveals His attributes or character
traits because He wants us to become like Him.
As we grow in our knowledge of God, especially through our study of
God’s Word, we will know His attributes more fully. When we know what God is like, we absolutely
want to praise Him. Praise is all about
lifting up and focusing on God’s attributes.
The Book of Psalms is full of praise.
One example is in Psalm 145:3-7 “Yahweh is great and is highly
praised; His greatness is unsearchable.
One generation will declare Your works to the next and will proclaim
Your mighty acts. I will speak of Your
glorious splendor and Your wonderful works.
They will proclaim the power of Your awe-inspiring works, and I will
declare Your greatness. They will give a
testimony of Your great goodness and will joyfully sing of Your righteousness.”
I really believe that regular daily reading of Psalms in addition
to the other parts of the Bible we are reading is an excellent practice. We will learn more about the attributes of
God and how to praise Him as we should.
He is worthy of our praise.
God is also
worthy of our worship. Worship is responding to God’s glory. God’s glory is the evidence of His
attributes. God reveals His glory
through what He does. Creation reveals
God’s glory. Worship is adoring, loving,
and honoring God for what He has done.
An example of worship from Psalms is in Psalm 42:1-2 “As a
deer longs from streams of water, so I long for You, God. I thirst for God, the living God.” And another example: Psalm 96:4-6 “For the Lord is great and is highly praised; He is
feared above all gods. For all the gods
of the peoples are idols, but the Lord made the heavens. Splendor and majesty are before Him; strength
and beauty are in his sanctuary.” When
we see all of the incredible things our God has done, we can’t help but respond
to Him with our worship. He is worthy of
worship. As we go throughout our daily
life, everything we do can be to our God.
We can offer our work, our play, or relationships, our shopping, our driving,
our speech, and everything else to Him as worship. Therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living
sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your spiritual worship. Romans
12:1.
Another way
we respond to God is with Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is responding to and
participating in God’s blessings. Ephesians 5:20 tells us to thank God in
everything. Thanksgiving is not just an
event or a statement. It is an
attitude. God wants you to have an attitude
of gratitude. Psalm 118 has some wonderful reminders for us: “Give thanks to the
Lord, for He is good; His faithful love endures forever. I will give thanks to You because
You have answered me and have become my salvation. You are my God, and I will give you
thanks. You are my God; I will exalt
You. Give thanks to the Lord, for He is
good; His faithful love endures forever.”
Psalm 118:1, 21, 28-29
What we see
here in this Psalm is that the Psalmist cannot get over how good God is. And we shouldn’t either. God is good all the time and all the time God
is good. Even when things are not as we
would do them, God is still good. His
wisdom is so much greater than ours and He is always working out His sovereign
plan.
So, we see
that there are four ways to respond to
God in prayer:
- Confession – agreeing with God about our sin.
- Praise – responding to God’s attributes; who He is.
- Worship – responding to God’s glory; what He has done.
- Thanksgiving – responding to and participating in God’s blessings.
There are
four types of responding prayers and there are two types of asking prayers:
The first
type of asking prayer, and the one we are probably most familiar with, is Petition.
Petition is asking for yourself, family, church, or group you may be
in (country, workplace, etc.) as you are led by your Heavenly Father. David prayed for himself in Psalm 25 “Lord, I turn my hope to You. My God, I trust in You. Do not let me be disgraced; do not let my
enemies gloat over me. Make Your ways
known to me, Lord; teach me Your paths.
Guide me in Your truth and teach me, for You are the God of my
salvation; I wait for You all day long.”
Psalm 25:1-2, 4-5 Notice
that David is praying for himself, but He is focusing on God more than he is on
himself. This verse is a good example of
how we should come to God with a right heart-attitude. We may be asking Him to do something for us
but the thing we are asking is certainly within His nature to do because of the
attributes that we know of Him.
An often
misused verse is Psalm 37:4 The King
James Versions says it this way “Delight thyself also in the Lord;
and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart.” Many have read that and said
well, if I enjoy the presence of the Lord and live a joyful Christian life,
then when I pray, God will come through.
God is not to be manipulated and He certainly isn’t going to be told
what He must do. Hear the same verse
from the Holman Christian Standard Bible translation. “Take delight in the LORD, and He will
give you your heart's desires.” When
we delight in spending time with God; when we stay tuned into Him every day;
when we are constantly seeking to live in the center of His will, not because
we have to, but because our love for Him compels us to; then He gives us our
heart’s desires. This means our heart
desires what God’s heart desires. The
more we delight in God, the more He shows us His desires, and His desires
become our desires. Then, we can be
assured that we are asking the things that are in line with the will of
God.
Notice a prayer of the early church in Acts 4 “Master, You are the One who made
heaven, the earth, and the sea, and everything in them. And now, Lord, consider their threats, and
grant that Your slaves may speak Your message with complete boldness, while You
stretch out Your hand for healing, signs, and wonders to be performed through the
name of Your holy Servant Jesus.” Acts
4:24, 29-30 Because our petitions should be directed by
our Heavenly Father, through this kind of prayer we become more like the person
God wants us to be as He accomplishes His purpose in our life.
Another type of asking prayer is Intercession. Intercession is
when God leads us to pray for someone else.
Through intercession we work with God as His servant. Through intercession God accomplishes His
will among His people. Paul prayed for
the Church at Ephesus “I pray that He may grant you,
according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His
Spirit in the inner man, and that the Messiah may dwell in your hearts through
faith. I pray that you, being rooted and
firmly established in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what
is the breadth and width, height and depth, and to know the Messiah’s love that
surpasses knowledge, so you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” Ephesians 3:16-19. Notice the important things Paul
was praying for the people of this church:
strength and power, faith, love, to know the Messiah’s love, and to be
full of God. That’s strong praying! Do you pray that way for other people or do
you just stop at “God, help James find a job.”
Or, maybe “God, Mary has cancer.
Please help her get well.” When
you pray those types of prayers do you even know if you are praying the will of
God? Do you pray that way because that’s
what seems to be the most natural way to pray?
If we are really led by God in our interceding with people, then we
first pause and seek the heart of God in how we should pray for people.
So, we have talked about 4 types of Responding Prayers and these
are the place to start in prayer:
- Confession of sin
- Praise God for His attributes
- Worship God for what He has done
- Thanksgiving for His many blessings
And we talked about 2 types of Asking Prayers:
- Petition – asking for myself, or my family, my church, or my group as I am led by God
- Intercession – asking for other people as I am led by God
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