We believe that God has been speaking to us about growth, growth in influence and numerical growth. He has also been speaking to us about the need to make changes to accommodate and facilitate growth. However, as we have seen, it is God who causes things to grow. The best we can do is work with God, trying not to get in the way. Prayer becomes even more important than normal. Prayer declares our total reliance on God; prayer is how we come close to God; prayer is how we hear from God.
The best place to start when talking about prayer is the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples. Luke 11v1-4, Matthew 6v9-13. However it is also difficult to say something brief about this prayer. I will try to be succinct!
Firstly Jesus taught the disciples to pray this prayer because they asked him to. See Luke. They had obviously noticed how regularly Jesus would go away to a quiet place by himself and spend time talking to his heavenly Father. This was unusual and distinctive. They wanted to know how to do it themselves. If we are looking for motivation to pray we can’t do better than follow the example of Jesus.
Other things worthy of note are –
- Jesus starts by saying that Jesus is “Our Father” not “My Father”. Even though we pray alone there is a corporate element about our relationship with God. He isn’t just my Father, or Jesus’ Father – he is our Father.
- We should address the person we are praying to, see him, consider him, picture him as Father as we prayer. Not as our experience of earthly Father, good or bad as that may be, but as the picture of the ideal loving, intimate Father. The Father that human Fathers are meant to emulate.
- Our focus on prayer should be on God rather than ourselves and our needs, especially at the start of our prayer. Our desire should be that God’s name will be honoured and glorified, that His will is done. We suspect His will is for us to grow in influence and numerically, lets pray for His will to be done.
- We should be looking and asking for our basic needs to be met, our daily bread, without that we will not be able to do God’s will.
- Similarly we need to ensure that we ask for and receive forgiveness as this will impact our ability to do God’s will. As will the fact that we haven’t forgiven others.
- Temptation is something else we want to avoid as that too gets in the way of doing the Father’s will.
Let us prayer as Jesus did, as regularly as he did, and focusing on the Fathers will rather than ourselves!
This links with the sermon preached on Sunday 20th November which can be found by clicking here
Written by Tony Thompson
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