Rooted In Prayer: Real Life Praying

How many of you have trouble praying?  When you start to think about it, praying seems like it has to be the simplest thing we can do in the Christian life.  But it can also be the hardest.  All of us were born with a natural desire to pray since we are made in the image and likeness of God.  We have been hard-wired from Creation to communicate with our Creator. However, that’s also what makes it so hard.  We want to talk with God, but so often we can’t.  In fact, there are a number of things and attitudes that hinder us or keep us from praying, like:

• Inauthenticity: You start out praying and even try to worship God in prayer, and that works for a minute, but it starts to feels contrived.  It feels weird telling God how good or great He is, especially if you’re not sure if you mean it, or if you’ve never had much experience with His goodness or greatness.  Its like you don’t really know God well enough to worship Him in prayer, so you stop. Prayer doesn’t feel like a real conversation, so you just stop talking.
• Busyness: Even though the tyranny of busyness doesn’t have as strong a grip on you now as it once did, you still find if hard to slow down and spend time in conversation with God.  You sit down to pray, then out of nowhere your to-do list pops up and your mind is set off on some tangent.  Or you just get restless.  You want to get something done.  But sometimes talking to God doesn’t seem to accomplish much.  You want results but the results aren’t coming the way you hoped. So at times prayer feels as if you are wasting your time.  So you stop.
• Competency or Wealth: In our culture we value competency and wealth. So much so, that we have arranged our lives in such a way, that we can handle pretty much anything that comes our way. Money can do what prayer does if we have enough of it, and is often gets it done quicker.  Our talents and abilities cause us to trust in ourselves, rather than taking the time to trust in God to work.  So praying is nice, but for many it seems unnecessary.  So we don’t pray.
• The Oddness of Praying: When we pray, its’ like we are talking to air.  To some it may seem we are talking to ourselves.  Only crazy people talk to themselves.  We’re pretty sure God is listening.  But rarely do we get an audible reply from God.  We pray, then we wait to see if He answers.  And sometimes that’s pretty odd, because you ask and wait, ask and wait, and nothing ever happens.  Then there’s that nagging question: Doesn’t God already know what I need? Why should I keep asking Him for stuff He already knows I need.  So the oddness of praying sometimes keeps us from praying.

So even though praying might seem like the easiest thing to do, we need to acknowledge, that it can be hard.  And yet, we need to learn how pray in real life.   We need to learn how to pray real prayers in the midst of messy lives.  So that’s what we’re trying to do.  And the way we are trying to do that is by learning how Jesus taught us to pray. So if you brought your Bible with you today, let me encourage you to open it once again to Matthew 6:9-13where last week we learned how prayer begins with our relationship with God: How it’s an intimate conversation with One who loves us.  This week we are going to learn how to pray in real life.

But before we do, lets review what Jesus taught us in the first part of the Lord’s prayer. Jesus wants us to come to our Fatherwith a childlike confidence, drawing near Him as our Abba and trusting in His love for us.  Prayer starts with knowing God as your Father and coming to Him as His beloved child, and resting in that relationship.  Then prayer moves to acknowledging how great a Father you have: to pray with an honoring reverencethat’s due His great name.  And when you remember how great and good your Father is, the more you will draw strength and security from your relationship with Him. Then you can begin to pray with a kingdom purpose,asking God to break into our world to fix what is broken and rescue what is lost. And you begin to align your heart with what breaks the heart of God.  And finally Jesus calls us to pray with a selflesspassionso that we might begin to align our wills with God’s will.  In praying this way, we end up taking our minds off of our needs and struggles and a satisfaction and security takes up residence in our hearts.  Now with our faith elevated in a Godwho wants so much more for us then we can ask or imagine, we can then bring Him our real life needs and know He can meet those needs. So what are our real life needs God’s wants us to bring to Him?

One is Praying for Everyday Needs:  “Give us today our daily bread” In Jesus’ day, getting your daily bread was all consuming. Laborers were commonly paid each day for the work of the day; and that pay was so low that a day’s wages purchased the day’s food. Not only that, but the mention of daily bread would remind Jesus’ listeners of images of their forefathers who daily received Manna from God. Their forefather’s learned to trust God for their daily bread.

What Jesus is reminding us of here is quite profound.  He wants us to understand that the God who created the entire universe, our God who is infinitely holy and completely self-sufficient, cares about supplying our basic physical needs.  In fact, by giving us this prayer request, Jesus is telling us, that the Father obligates Himself to supply our needs.  So we can trust our Father to care for us.  We can depend on Him and not worry.  That’s precisely how Jesus calls us to live in our relationship with the Father. That’s why later in this same Sermon Jesus will say: “Therefore I tell you, donot worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

“And why do you worry about clothes?See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin.  Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.  If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. Matthew 6:25-34

God knows what you need.  He doesn’t want you to worry, but simply ask Him to provide what you need for today, “Give us today our daily bread.”  God is our provider.  It is a misconception to think that we provide for our needs ourselves. If you have all your basic needs met today, then God has been very good to you.  God has blessed you.  He is the one who gave you the opportunity to get a good education, to do well in your career, to put food on the table and to provide a decent nest egg for retirement. Let’s not forget that “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of heavenly lights.”  James 1:17.  If anything, if you have all you need, then you should be thankful.  After all, if you have all your basic needs met, then chances are, you are richer than 99 percent of the rest of the world.  For those who study these things tell us, that all it takes to be in the top one percent in the world is to have an income of $32,400 a year.  If that’s you, then you have been truly blessed. So let us be thankful.

But let us not stop there.  For if God has blessed you with an abundance, then God has given you the ability to bless others.  This is the principle of Matthew 6:19-21, where Jesus said, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.  But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

So then, maybe one way we can apply this request is to start praying for the everyday needsof those in Eloy and Casa Grande.  And to do that, we need to learn what those needs are.  We know the Food Bank is emptied out every week; so the need for daily bread is a reality for many. We also know that The Heart of Eloy uses their profits to purchase shoes for the children of Eloy at least once a year. But what of other needs?  Are there housing needs?  Do fathers or mothers need job training?  Do teenagers need mentors?  As we begin to learn the “real life needs” of those around us we can ask God to meet those needs and yes, to use us to be a blessing.  “Give us today our daily bread.”   That’s an extraordinary request, that our God wants to answer!

That’s where Jesus begins teaching us about real life praying.  God cares for our everyday needs, but He also cares for your relational needs. That’s why our next request focuses on Praying for Everyday Relationships: “And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”

Jesus is quick to link our relationship with God to our relationship with others.  It works two ways.  If we have not seen our sin and sought the radical forgiveness of God, we will not be able to forgive and seek the good of those who have wronged us.   So then, coming to God for daily forgiveness is an amazing privilege.  However, without forgiveness we are left powerless, weak and useless to God. And since we are far from perfect and continue to sin, we need the Father’s gracious forgiveness everyday.  And He is more than eager to keep on forgiving His children. This is His promises: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to purify us from all unrighteousness”1 John 1:9.

However, it does us no good to ask God for forgiveness if we are not willing to forgive those who have offended us.Our forgiveness of others is what makes us most like Jesus.  That’s why Jesus teaches us to pray this way.  He wants us to treat others the same way He has treated us.  Think of it this way: The price God paid to forgive you is the same price He paid to forgive the person who wronged you.

The world wants you to think its okay to hold a grudge; that it’s right to seek revenge, or hold ill will toward someone who has wronged you.  But can you imagine if God treated you that way? That’s why Jesus wants us to pray this way.  When we bring our broken relationships to God we invite Him to be our peacemaker.

Most of us know what it’s like to have been betrayed, wronged, cheated, ignored, or abused.  For some, your parents may have abandoned you.  A sibling may have wronged you.  Your spouse may have betrayed you.  Your children may have ignored you.  A close friend may have stabbed you in the back.  And everyday we encounter hurting and sin-sick people who disappoint, discourage, attack or slander you.  But Jesus asks us to pray: “And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” 

And if we truly pray this way, it will change us and we will become a blessing in our world because we will treat others as Jesus has treated us: forgiving one another, just as in Christ God forgave you. When you pray like Jesus and you will forgive like Jesus…  That’s the second request of real life praying, now the third…

Praying for Everyday Struggles: “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.” There are two parts to this last request, but they go together.  The first has to do with temptation.  The Bible clearly teaches that God does not tempt us to sin. So this request must be understood like this:  We are to ask for God to lead us not into temptation, but away from it – so He can deliver us from the evil one.

Following Jesus is not easy to do.  Living a surrendered is not easy to do.  Our sinful nature within us still fights us, still wants to call the shots, and wants us to fall prey to the temptations constantly thrown at us.  But if we recognize that we can have God’s help in battling temptation, then this request is huge for us.  God doesn’t mean for us to battle temptation on our own.  He wants to help us.

This is why Jesus asked his disciples to pray when they were with him in the Garden of Gethsemane, saying, “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.  The spirit is willing, but the body is weak.” Matthew 26:41  What happened after Jesus commanded his disciples to watch and pray?  They didn’t do it.  They were weak.  They couldn’t stay awake for Jesus.  The temptation of the flesh won out, because they didn’t ask for God’s help.

The Bible says this about the temptations we face: No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it. 1 Corinthians 10:13.  God will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.  He is faithful.  He promises to help you.  He has the power to strengthen you, to give you endurance, or patience.  But you must ask for His help.  You are not strong enough to face temptation on your own.

Not only that, but you are strong enough to face the evil in our world on your own. We need the protection God provides. This is what Jesus prayed for in John 17:5 when he said, “My prayer is not that you take them out of the world, but that you protect them from the evil one.”

God doesn’t want you to avoid the world, He wants you to live in the world so you might be a blessing to others in this world. But the world is a dangerous place.  The world is the realm of the evil one, who wants to destroy anyone who bears the name of Jesus.  The spiritual realm is real, the occult is real, evil is real. We live in a world where spiritual forces of evil are at work trying to tear down all that is good and godly. This why Jesus teaches us to pray this way.  So if you’re struggling with depression or discouragement, anger or discontentment, it could be you are trying to face the temptations and evils of everyday life on your own.  Everyday life is hard. People will disappoint you, circumstances will turn on you, evil will work against you. That’s why we need to call on our Father who can deliver us from evil.  God wants to protect you in your everyday struggles. That’s why we need to pray like Jesus.

Give us today our daily bread… God is the provider of your everyday needs! And forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors…  God is the peacemakerfor your everyday relationships! And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.  God is the protectorin your everyday struggles.  He cares about what you face each and every day.  So lets call on Him everyday and trust Him to give us what we need. Let’s pray.