If - Part 1 - Pastor Raymond Woodward

We're going to be talking about prayer. And by no means would I ever want to give the impression that I think I'm some kind of expert on prayer, that's for sure. I ran across a definition a few months ago that I liked very well, and I use when I'm on the road. An expert is anyone that's 50 miles from home. And if you're less than 50 miles from home, you're not an expert. But once you go 50 miles from home, you're considered an expert. So I'm not an expert tonight, that's for sure.

Secondly, James writes this. He said, "Brethren, don't take it upon yourself to be teachers, because teachers receive greater judgment." Teachers are held to a higher standard. If you're gonna teach it, you better do it. If you're gonna teach it, you better live it. If you're gonna teach it, you better practice it. And so I approach all of these things with a great deal of seriousness of heart. And I think it's gonna be a very profitable series for us. I know it already has been for me studying through these things.

And so tonight, we begin. We think we're going to go for six lessons in this series. We may go less, we might go more. We're gonna try to follow the Lord. And we're gonna talk about prayer. And our series title is simply one two-letter word, and that is "if." Everyone say, "if."

There are 1,595 "ifs" in your Bible. And most of those function as what you might call a conditional conjunction. They're on the front end of one of God's promises. Not all of them, but many of them, most of them. And it works like this: If we meet the condition, then God will deliver on the promise. Our response to God's commands will affect two things. It will affect our relationship with Him, and it will also determine, in a great measure, what we receive from Him.

So many times in our lives, all that's standing between us, our current circumstances, all of our situations, standing between us and our circumstances, and our highest hopes. On this end, we've got crushing circumstances, and we've got confusion, and we've got all kinds of things. But over there, we've got our highest hopes and our greatest dreams. And sometimes all that stands between now and then, all that stands between this and that, is this Bible word, "if." One little "if" can change anything scripturally speaking. One little "if" can change everything biblically speaking.

So, "if," although it's only two letters, it might just be the biggest word in the Bible. And our theme scripture for this series, of course, is probably the biggest "if" scripture in the Bible: Second Chronicles 7:14. "If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and I will heal their land." If you will, then I will.

Now, Jesus, as you would expect, He used the word "if" all the time. More than 40% of the "ifs" in the New Testament are in the Gospel accounts. The four Gospels that tell His story. 248 "ifs" in the Gospels. 602 in the New Testament. So about 41% of all the "ifs" in the New Testament are found in the Gospels. Many of them in Jesus' own words. And Jesus always puts that "if" on man's side of the equation, on our side of the equation. If we will do this, then God will respond. If we will, then He will.

However, although Jesus often talked about what would happen if we believed when we pray, or if we obeyed when we pray, or if we had faith when we pray, or if we persevered when we pray, or if we keep asking, seeking, and knocking when we pray, although He often said things like that, here's one thing Jesus never said. He never used this phrase. He never said, "If you pray." Not one time does Jesus say, "If you pray." Because Jesus expected us to pray. He expects His people to pray. He expects His saints to pray. He expects seniors to pray. He expects children to pray. He expects adults, and He expects single parents, and He expects young people. He expects married couples to pray. He never said, "If you decide to pray," because He expected His people to pray.

Instead of saying, "If you pray," here's what Jesus said. Matthew 6: "And when you pray..." I'm expecting you people to pray. I'm expecting my kids to talk to me. I'm expecting my saints to commune with me. So, "when you pray, don't be like the hypocrites, because some people like to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men." Jesus isn't taking a cheap shot at people who are loud when they pray, or people who stand when they pray, or people who happen to be behind a pulpit when they pray. He's not taking a cheap shot. He's saying, if the only thing you do is pray when other people see you pray, you're not really praying. If the only time you ever talk to Me is when you come to your church building, you're not really a person of prayer. If the only time you ever pray, and the only time you ever acknowledge Me, and the only time you ever say those big, flowing, flowery words, is when other people can see and hear, then you're not really praying. They're only doing it to be seen of men.

Jesus said, "Here's what I want you to do. Verily I say unto you, my people, my disciples, my church, my saints, those people have their reward. But you, when you pray, not if you pray, when you pray, enter into your closet, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father which is in secret. Pray where nobody else can hear. Pray where nobody else can see. Pray when nobody else is aware. Pray when nobody else is awake. Pray when nobody else is around. And your Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly."

Now, we're a church that believes strongly because the Bible teaches corporate prayer. So we pray together because the early church prayed together. We pray together because God's Old Testament people prayed together. We lift up our voices in prayer because the Bible commands us to. We lift up our hands and we get exuberant in prayer because the Bible tells us to. We even get very intense in prayer because there are some things that you have to fight for in prayer, and the Bible teaches us that. So Jesus isn't taking a shot at all of that. He's just saying, if that's all you do, you're not a person of prayer, you're a performer of prayers.

Jesus taught us it's not enough to only pray publicly and periodically. Jesus said you are to pray privately and persistently. Look at this. Luke 18: "And he spoke a parable to them to this end." Here was the purpose of his story. He wanted to teach them that men ought always to pray, and not to faint. He doesn't mean pass out in a faint. He means don't give up. Don't get weary in doing it. We need to always be praying. Everyone say, "always."

He said in Luke 21, "Watch therefore and pray always." Somebody say, "always." "That you may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass." In that context, he's talking about the end times. But could I tell you, if you'll pray always, you'll escape a lot of things that are happening right now, this week, today, in your life. He said, "You'll escape these things, and you'll be worthy to stand before the Son of Man." If you pray always.

Paul picks up the theme. He learned it from his encounter with God. Ephesians 6: "Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints." Supplication means to go to God and literally ask Him over and over, to present your case over and over, to supplicate, to present your need. And again, Paul says, "Praying always." Someone say, "always."

He says in First Timothy, "I exhort therefore that first of all, before you do anything else, before you think of doing anything else, before you plan anything else, before you get people around and counsel about what you're going to do, I exhort therefore that first of all, before you do the rest, do this: Supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men." And of course, his famous line in First Thessalonians 5:17, "Pray without ceasing."

Now, it is not possible to go through life on your knees, head bowed, hands clasped, and pray without ceasing in a physical posture. He's not talking about 24/7 verbage coming out of your mouth. That's humanly, physically impossible. Here's what he's talking about: Don't you ever get far from that moment of prayer. Don't you ever get out of that attitude of prayer. Don't you ever stray from that heart that is in communion with God. So at any moment of any day, any second of any hour, you can immediately launch yourself into prayer. It shouldn't take you 15 minutes to have to repent of everything you've been doing and thinking and saying, and then finally you're ready to pray. Sometimes something's gonna happen in your life that you're not expecting, and you're gonna need God in an instant. And when that happens, you want to be able to pray without ceasing.

It shouldn't take a 10-minute run in a church service to get people warmed up to pray. We're Pentecostal, we're apostolic, we're Spirit-filled, we're Jesus name. It should just be, "Hey folks, let's pray," and there should instantly be a swell of prayer. Some people will be loud, some people will be soft, some people will be pretty stoic, some people will be very emotional. I'm not talking about how you do it, I'm talking about you do it. There should be a spirit in the Apostolic Church that we pray without ceasing. We should be able to pray on the platform, pray in the altar, pray in the pews, pray in the aisles, pray in the foyer, pray in the parking lot, pray at home, pray at work, pray in the restaurant, pray wherever we are. There should be something built in you that at any second of any minute of any hour of any day of any week, month, or year, you should be able to launch yourself into prayer. Why? Because it hasn't been that long since you were in prayer. Because it hasn't been that long since you talked to God.

Talking to God. We got to get this through our heads. Talking to God is not going to a building to a Saturday night at 7:00 p.m. prayer meeting. That's incredibly valuable because that's corporate prayer. That's where the church gets together to pray. And Jesus was the one who said, "Where two or three agree, where two or three are gathered in my name, He said, there I'll be in the midst of them." So that's why we do corporate prayer. But if you're waiting from Sunday night to Wednesday night to Saturday night to Sunday morning to Sunday night, and that's when you do your praying, and you're not a person of prayer, and Jesus has a problem with that, and the Bible does too.

Now, in light of this scriptural insistence: pray always, pray first, pray without ceasing. In light of that insistence from the Bible, as Christians, not you, we, including pastor, we must be asking ourselves questions like these: Am I praying persistently, or just periodically? Where do I fit? Am I praying persistently, or just periodically? We need to ask this question: Am I praying privately, or just publicly? Where other people are around? When I'm in a church service, am I making prayer a priority? Not in my Sunday every week go-to-church life. Am I making prayer a priority in my daily life?

Now, all of those are good questions. But here's the problem with those good questions: all of those questions are very generic. So perhaps a better thing to do would be to ask these questions. Maybe these next questions would provide a more accurate assessment of our prayer lives. Five questions: Number one, when am I praying? Where am I praying? Who am I praying for? What am I praying for? And why am I praying anyway? And if we can't answer those questions with specifics, we're not praying. If there's no place for prayer, if there's no time for prayer, if there's nobody you're taking to prayer, if there's no situation you're asking about in prayer, and if your only motive you have for praying is to keep pastor or the church off your back, or maybe God off your back, then you're not really praying.

It's not enough to just believe prayer is good. We've got to actually pray. It will get worse, my friend. Paul Graham pastored the great revival, multicultural, multi-ethnic, multilingual, multinational church in Montreal, Quebec. He said this so much that I think it says... I know I've looked it up. People said it years before he was around, but I think it's his because he said it so much: No prayer, no power. Some prayer, some power. Little prayer, little power. Sporadic prayer, sporadic power. Consistent prayer, consistent power. More prayer, more power. Great prayer, great power. Much prayer, much power. Apostolic prayer, apostolic power. Holy Ghost prayer, Holy Ghost power.

So we got to make up our mind what we're gonna do with this thing called prayer. Now, in case you think this is just a series where pastor's gonna beat up on all of us and put us all on a guilt trip, and we already are suffering enough in this area. This series, we will talk specifically, practically about the actual practice of prayer. We will discuss in this series what to do and what to say when you pray. We will talk about how to be more effective when you pray. But none of that will matter until you turn, and unless you turn, "if you pray" into "when you pray." You can only you can do that. Pastor can't do that for you. Church can't do that for you. The Bible's not gonna do that for you. God Himself is not gonna do that for you. That's about your desire. So you are the only person in your life who can turn "if you pray" into "when you pray." And if you'll do that, you can learn the rest. You can get into prayer and then learn as you go.

Let me say this in the first part of this series as clearly as possible, just as straight as I can say it: You will not learn to pray by studying prayer. You will not learn to pray by reading about prayer. You will not learn to pray by listening to other people pray. You will not learn to pray by watching the church pray on Saturday night. You will only learn to pray by praying. You can't learn to pray any other way. And I thank God that we have everything that we do. And yes, I do believe that we can teach our children, and we can teach all that we're supposed to do that. But you are the adults of this church. You're the core of this church. And nobody is going to be able to give you prayer by osmosis. At some point, you have to make a choice. And that choice is going to take discipline. And the reason it takes discipline is because you're a disciple of Jesus. And disciples don't do what feels good; they do what is good. They don't do what appeals to their flesh; they do what's going to grow their spiritual life.

Prayer is personal. Let me be real honest here. Nearly every Christian I've ever met feels like they're not doing prayer right, including the guy I look at in the mirror. Nearly every Christian I know feels like they're not doing prayer as good as somebody else. Nearly every Christian I know feels like they're not getting the results they could be or should be getting in prayer. And can I just kind of address the elephant in the room tonight? Those feelings are normal. But they're only feelings. So ignore those feelings and pray anyway. If you don't get anything else out of this series, that would be it. Ignore all your feelings. "I'm not doing it right. I'm not doing it good. I'm not doing it as good as. I'm not getting the results I want. God must not be happy with my prayer." Those are just feelings. Ignore those feelings and just pray.

What is prayer? Prayer is not complicated. Prayer is talking to God. My goodness, some of you are professionals at talking. You do that more than you do anything else in your life. So it's not the talking that's the problem. It's who you're talking to. Those feelings are normal. Ignore them. Pray anyway. Ignore them. Go to God anyway. Ignore them. Talk to Jesus anyway. And I know what you think. Your first prayer, if you're a new convert, if you're a new believer, if you're a new member at CCC, your first prayer, and you felt this, and that's why you struggle. Your first prayer will probably be something along the lines of a toddler's first painting. It's not real pretty. It's just color slashed everywhere. But you know what? When our toddlers do those, we put them on our fridge anyway because we're in a relationship with that cute little kid. And so we put them on our fridge anyway. God's your heavenly Father. Guess what? He loves your first attempts at prayer. He loves it when you come to Him and you stumble and fumble over your words, and you get distracted, you fall asleep. Anybody here in this church honest enough to ever admit that you have fallen asleep praying? Look at that. Oh, let's go one further. Anybody ever fall asleep during a sermon? That's a better question. I'm not as much honesty there. I watch it from up here. I know some of you were lying just then. But you know what? God looks down from heaven. Can't we just be normal? Would that be okay? Y'all want to be spiritual. Can we just be normal? Has anybody ever fallen asleep talking to another human being? I fall asleep talking to Beverly. I fall asleep talking to Pastor Jack. I've been asleep when people called me on the phone and slept through the whole conversation. That is true. And it's interesting too. And God looks down from heaven. He's not looking for you to do a perfect prayer the first time, or even every time. He just wants you to talk to Him.

When we talk to each other, it doesn't have to be perfect. Pastor Jack and I, we really have to get new cell phones because we spend half of every conversation saying, "What? You're breaking up. What? I can't hear you." I think we need to get new cell phones. Either that, or we need to stop talking to each other from inside like concrete bunkers or whatever we're doing wrong. It's not all a hearing aid. Yeah, speak for yourself, old gray head. Now, this could be jet lag. This could be jelly. You have the mic on? When? No, you don't. For another week. Good. I can say what I want. And and and if your phone cuts out, hopefully you don't just like lose it at the person, "What's wrong with you?" Sometimes we don't get it exactly right. It's not about perfection. It's not about performance. It's about communication. We don't always get it perfect when we talk to each other, even if we're in a marriage relationship, we're a family, or a friendship, or a work relationship, or saints in a church. We don't always get it right when we talk to each other. So don't you think that God, our Heavenly Father, who's forgiven us of all our sins, would give us some grace and cut us some slack if we didn't always get prayer just exactly perfect? I just like to remove the mystery and the guilt that we so often put on ourselves. God's not putting that on us. We're complicating things.

Prayer is personal. So we need to practice praying. We need to just pray. Are you saying, Pastor Raymond, that practice makes perfect? No, because you're never going to get perfect in praying. I'm saying that if you practice praying, practice doesn't make perfect. Practice makes permanent. What you want is to establish the habit of praying, not the perfection of praying. So let's talk about this in a little detail. We're just kind of going to launch tonight, and we'll... we're gonna go through some wonderful things in this series as the Holy Ghost leads, of course. But we're going to go through the Lord's Prayer, of course. We're going to go through putting on the armor of God. We're going to go through praying through the tabernacle. Those are all different methods that people use to kind of get into a routine of prayer. And some people use them all their life. Some people use them for a while till they get prayer established as a habit. But we're going to talk about a lot of those kind of details. But tonight, I just want to talk to you about the main thrust of our series, because if we never turn "if" into "when," it doesn't matter anyway. You can study all the great prayer plans of the Bible, but if it's always "if," you know, it's got to be your choice to turn "if you pray" into "when you pray."

Now, the greatest enemy of prayer is not the devil. The greatest enemy of prayer is distraction. Distraction comes to us before we pray, as we're praying, after we pray. Distraction is never-ending in our lives. And distraction can come from us, it can come from others, it can come from our work, it can come from our technology, it can come from our entertainment, it can come from our responsibilities. Distraction can even come from our personality. And I just felt compelled before service a little while to just push this point just a little bit. We all have personalities, and our personalities are different. They're all unique. But human beings, as we've studied before, way back, human beings basically fit into four categories. Hippocrates, 2400 years ago or so, he before Jesus was ever born, Hippocrates studied this, and he came up with the choleric, the melancholy, the sanguine, and the phlegmatic. And some people call them different things. And whatever, there's four personalities. And our own personality can conspire against us when we pray.

You know, a phlegmatic person, they're easygoing, and so many times they please other people. It's just kind of a little bit of a quirk in their personality. They want everybody to be happy. And so sometimes they're so busy doing things for other people that that infringes on their prayer time. And then there's the sanguine people, the happy-go-lucky. You know, every day is a new day, every friend's a new friend, and never met a stranger. Those people just bounce around from one thing to another to another to another. So for them to get them to concentrate on prayer for a little while, that's their challenge. And then you've got the choleric people, the powerful people. They like to control everything. In fact, their motto is, "Just give me control and nobody gets hurt." And those people, they're used to doing everything for themselves. And so to sit down, they're thinking, "Just let me go do it, God. I'll fix it, and I'll report to you when I'm done." Just a second. And their challenge is to actually depend on God and talk to God and give it to God.

And then there's the melancholy people, or the perfectionist people. And there's a few of those around. And those people, the thing is, they don't want to do prayer because they can't get it perfect. And if I can't get it perfect, I'm not even going to start. Which is, I got to say, really, really dumb. And I've been there on that one. Some, you know, I like systems. I've tried every Bible app. I've tried every prayer app. There are prayer apps. You can list all your people that you're praying for, and then check them off, and sync them up to other devices. And I think that's really, really cool. And I got that all set up and never used it again. But I got it all set up. It was just amazing. I had the perfect prayer system. It never resulted in any prayer, but it was powerful. It's amazing. Don't laugh at me. You've tried that too.

See, when we let all those things distract us, the devil is not our enemy. Distractions are our enemy. The devil doesn't have to lift a finger. The devil's in Florida. Train him for the hot place. I don't know what he's doing, but he's not working on you. He doesn't have to, because you've distracted yourself. It's not the devil, it's distraction. And that's exactly why Jesus said, "When you pray, shut the door. Get alone. Get away. Be still. Focus on God. Ignore everything else." And when you get there, it's not so much a place as it is an attitude, almost. But when you get there, you're still, you're alone, you're away, you're ignoring everything else, you're putting away your phone and staying away from your computer and all of that stuff. And when you get in that place in your closet with the door shut, then pray, and your Father will see you praying in secret, but the blessings will chase you down openly. It's an amazing thing.

According to Jesus, the acid test of spiritual integrity is your personal, private prayer life. If that doesn't exist, then your spiritual life doesn't. To fail to pray is to fail at being a Christian. And the immediate response is, "But pastor, Raymond, it's hard to pray sometimes." Do you realize there is no eternal value in anything that is easy to do? Everything that has eternal value, there's a challenge to it. So prayer, in that light, prayer should be one of the hardest things we ever do. If you prayed long enough that it's become a habit, that's wonderful, and it's gotten easier. But it's never gonna get easy. It's always gonna be a challenge to set your flesh and your time and your schedule and your priorities and your to-do list and your responsibilities. It's always going to be a challenge to set that aside and just go pray.

And this is what stops a lot of people. When they first try to pray, the very first thing you will discover as you attempt to pray is your own spiritual emptiness. And it will scare you. And you will think, "This isn't working." And you get in that place of prayer, and you set aside that time for prayer, and you're fighting distraction, and your phone's pinging, and emails coming in, and your mind's wandering, and your words seem to be just bouncing off the ceiling. And you feel like, "I must be doing this all wrong. I don't feel anything. And all I can think about is the clock." And the clock, by the way, is moving slower than it ever has before. And I feel like I might as well just give up. I'm so empty. This doesn't seem to be working. I'm not feeling anything. And my words to you at that moment, and God's words to you would be, "Don't stop. Push through your own emptiness." Because pushing through that feeling of emptiness is one of the first critical steps in establishing a prayer life. Because God is trying to teach you, first of all, that it's not about feelings.

Now, I like feelings. Some people don't. Some people just would like us all to be a little Donn's, little robots, and we don't ever get too excited or anything like that. But for most people, they're emotional people. They like to smile and laugh and have fun and get excited about wonderful things in life. And so, you know, it's hard for us to do something where there's not always this emotional feedback. And can I just address the Pentecostals? Because that's what we are, and we're thankful to be Pentecostal. And Pentecostals, we have the privilege of being filled with the Holy Spirit, and we have the privilege of being in a church where God actually moves, and His Spirit comes in, and it's sometimes like a river, and it's sometimes like a wind, and it's sometimes like a roar. And we love it all, and we're never gonna stop doing it because it's all through the Bible. That's how God's people worship Him. But that can be our worst enemy when we're trying to pray alone, when we're trying to pray by ourselves. Because you are not, unless you live in a different house than I live in, you are not going to get the rush of a Sunday night service at 6:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning. It is not happening. And if it does, Beverly is going to be tramping down the stairs saying, "What are you doing?"

It's not the same. You don't do it because it always feels the same. The same as you don't stay married because it always feels the same. If you're looking for it to always feel the same, and that's gonna be your criteria for staying married, you're gonna get divorced. Bye-bye. You stay married because you made a commitment, and you're in love with that person, and you're mature enough to realize love is not a fleeting, fickle feeling. Love is a commitment to another person. So when you pray, it's not always going to feel like Sunday night. And most of you don't have a praise team standing beside your easy chair singing to you while you're sipping Tim Hortons. You don't have that. Some of you, you use music to pray, and that's okay. Could I make a suggestion? If your music causes you to sing all the time, it's not good background music. That's good workout music, but it's not good prayer music. The point of music is just to kind of set an atmosphere, not so you're distracted by that. We can set our own distractions up that hurt us when we're trying to pray. Let me get back to these notes somewhere. My goodness.

So pushing through that emptiness, that's important. Because here's the thing, folks. We, because of life, get so empty spiritually that we don't even notice it. We don't even recognize that we're empty because we're so busy, because we're so entertained, because we got so many people needing us and wanting us and wanting to talk to us. So we don't even realize we're empty until we go to pray. We're so used to being empty that we don't even sense it or feel it. We fill up our days and our minds with busyness and calendars and entertainment and talking to others. And we even fill up some of our days with sermons and praying with other people at church. And that's all good. But it's when you finally start to pray on your own that you will feel the hunger and the thirst and the emptiness. It was there all along, but you just kept drowning it out by being busy, busy, busy, busy.

And so God asks us to pray. He expects us to pray. He said, "When you pray." He said, "Praying always." Paul said, "Pray without ceasing." Because it's important that we notice when we're getting empty. It's important that we notice when our spiritual tank is not full. To fail to pray is not about breaking a religious rule. To fail to pray is not trying to live up to some arbitrary standard and you missed. To fail to pray is failing to treat God as God. Failing to pray is actually a sin against His Lordship in our lives, because we're thinking and saying, "I can do it by myself. I'm smart enough to handle everything that comes at me by myself."

Here's what Samuel said. First Samuel 12: "Moreover, as for me, God forbid that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you: but I will teach you the good and the right way." It would be a sin for me. It wouldn't be a sin against you. It wouldn't be a sin against my to-do list. It wouldn't be a sin against my church or my pastor. It would be a sin against God if I didn't pray for you.

Psalm 65: This is kind of the theme of the whole book of Psalms. "O thou that hearest prayer, unto thee shall all flesh come." You know why we pray? Because the Bible tells us God hears our prayer. That's why we pray. I don't need any other reason. If God hears my prayer, I don't need another reason to pray.

Second Chronicles 6: "Now my God, let, I beseech thee, let thine eyes be open, and let thine ears be attent unto the prayer that is made in this place." Do you know what Solomon prayed over the temple? He said, "God, let this be a place of prayer. And God, would you stir up Your people to pray? And God, when we pray, would you please hear us from heaven?" Solomon said, "My prayer is that this would be a place of prayer." And Jesus basically said the same thing in Mark chapter 11. He taught, "Is it not written, My house shall be called of all nations the house of prayer? But you have made it a den of thieves." He was talking about their particular religious practices where they brought animals and temple money, and they were bartering and exchanging at it. You couldn't bring an animal from your house and offer it in the temple. You had to come pay your money and buy a temple animal. And there was all kinds of extortion and cheating going on, and it was really just a mess. And Jesus said, "You've turned this into a place of a lot of activity. You've turned this into a place of a lot of interaction, humanly speaking. You've turned this into a place to make money and do deals. But here's what you haven't done: You haven't done what Solomon prayed over this place. My house shall be a house of prayer."

Now, I want people to look at our church and I want them to say, "That's a church that knows how to worship." I want them to know this is a church that baptizes in Jesus' name, where people still get the Holy Ghost. I want people to know this is a church that believes that the Bible informs us as to how we live our everyday lifestyles, that we're all holy, set-apart people. I want people to recognize that you might not want that. I want that. I want people to look at us, and they might not understand, but if they can see the beauty of it in you, they'll eventually see the beauty of it in scripture. So I want all that. But here's number one, according to what Jesus said: "My house shall be called a house of prayer." So we're never more in line with His purpose than when we're praying. And that's the great thing about prayer. A saint that's been serving God for 75 years, they can pray. But a little child can walk in here from Sunday school, and they can pray. A person can walk in off the street, and they can pray. A person who's a drug addict can reach out to God for the first time, and they can pray. A young person who's struggling can reach up to God, tears running down their face, and they can pray.

And so the number one thing that Jesus wanted this house to be known for is, "My house shall be called a house of prayer." Jesus taught His disciples to pray. He healed people with His prayer. He insisted that some demons only come out by prayer. Jesus prayed often. He prayed regularly. The writer of Hebrews says that He prayed with prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears. Jesus got emotional when He prayed. The Bible says He prayed early in the morning, and sometimes He prayed all night. He was transfigured with glory as He prayed. And when He faced His greatest crisis, He did so with prayer. We hear Jesus praying for His disciples and the church in the few hours before He died. And then we hear Him petitioning God in agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. And finally, Jesus died praying. Immediately after their Lord's death, the disciples prepared for the future of the church by being constantly in prayer together. All church gatherings were devoted to prayer. The power of the Spirit descended on the early Christians in response to their prayer. And when they appointed leaders, they did it only through prayer. All Christians in the New Testament were expected to have a regular, faithful, devoted, fervent prayer life.

I said before, the early church didn't just have a prayer meeting. The early church *was* a prayer meeting. Now, we've got a lot of things they didn't have. We've got buildings and pulpits and sound systems and internet and choir and webcast. We've got praise teams. We got all kinds of things that they didn't have. But here's the one thing they did have that we have to have: We have to be a church that prays. But you don't get a church that prays if you don't have people who pray. Prayer is so powerful that wherever you look in the Bible, prayer is there. Why is that? Because wherever God is, prayer is. And wherever prayer is, God is.

Now, this is neat to me. I was studying this system. Fascinating. We learn language so early in our lives that we have no memory of how we did it. And that's not true if you're learning a second or third language. But your first mother tongue, we call it, we learned that language so early that we have no memory of the process. So it would be easy to look back and imagine that somehow we taught ourselves to speak. But that wasn't the case. Language is spoken to us when we're very small babes in arms, little infants. We learn language only as we are spoken to. As soon as we're born, and our parents cherish us and take us home, we're plunged into a sea of language. We hear talking all around us. And then little by little, and syllable by syllable, we learn to mimic, and we learn to repeat, and we acquire the capacity to answer: Mama, Papa, blanket, bottle, yes, no. We get it. Not one of those words we say, "Oh, isn't that cute? That's their first word." That wasn't the first word because all speech that we ever say is actually answering speech. The first word was somebody that said it, and we heard it and mimicked it. So really, none of us have a first word. The first word preceded our speaking. We were spoken to before we ever spoke.

And now, many studies have evaluated this. They've shown that children's ability to understand and communicate is profoundly affected by the number of words and the breadth of the vocabulary they're exposed to way back when they're infants and toddlers. So, really, here's the principle. We learned this from science and from study. We were all spoken to before we ever spoke, and we speak only to the degree that we're spoken to. And that informs what I want to say to you as I close tonight about this wonderful thing called prayer.

In this very first part of this Bible study series, prayer is our reply to God. He's already talking to us. He talks to us through His Word. When you pray, it's not your first initiative. You're replying to the God who's already spoken to you through His Gospel, through His Spirit, through His servants, through His church, through His Word. So that means that if we're going to learn to pray effectively, it's not enough to just kind of watch people pray. Here's the best way to learn how to pray. Here is the handbook on prayer. The more familiar you become with the language and the prayers and the people and the events of the Bible, the more you will instinctively know how to pray. Because this book is God talking to us. And when you hear God talking to you over and over and over, then you will learn instinctively how to respond to Him.

What are you saying, pastor? I'm saying we need to plunge ourselves into the ocean of God's language. We should study and think and meditate and reflect and ponder the Scriptures. Because then, when we pray, we're praying intelligently. There's a response in our heart and our mind. They in the Bible. Here's what you're going to discover. This may shock you. You're gonna discover a God who's quite complex. You're gonna discover a God who's very real. And you're gonna discover a God who aggravates you sometimes. And if you have any relationship with any real person, you're gonna know that instinctively. Any real person you're in relationship with, you're going to be confused by them sometimes. You're going to be aggravated by them sometimes. And exactly the same way, sometimes you'll be confused by God. Sometimes you'll be aggravated by what God allows and what He does. But you will also be amazed, and you will be comforted, because God is a real person. And God is speaking to you through His Word.

We know how we should pray by getting our vocabulary from the Bible. That shouldn't be a surprise, since that's how we learned to pray as toddlers and babies. And somebody said, "Well, yeah, but God spoke audible words to people in the Bible." I wish God would speak to me like that. Can I just say, no, you probably don't. It was scary to death. We'd be having your funeral. But there's a bigger issue. Please know, we have something far better than a disembodied voice coming occasionally out of the heavens. We have the Bible. And the Bible is the Word of God. And that's why you need to have a relationship with God through the Word if you want to have a relationship with God through prayer. John 1:1: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." John 1:14: "The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us." Hebrews 4:12: "The word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword." See, God acts through His Word. We don't get past the first chapter of the Word of God but what is said, "And God said," and there was. God acts through His Word. The Word of God is quick and powerful. It's alive and active. So if you want God to be alive and active in your life, you get that through getting familiar, getting your face in the scripture, and learning it.

I'm not saying you need to read 25 chapters a day. But if you could read a verse a day and figure out what that verse means, and better than that, talk to Jesus while you're reading, or immediately after you read, and say, "God, what are you trying to say to me today through the Word?" Start with a verse. Start with a phrase. Start with a chapter. Start with a bite-sized piece of the Word of God. You don't have to give God the whole life history of you every time you pray. And He doesn't have to give you His whole life history every time you read. But if you can just have that conversation going, that helps us in prayer. The goal in reading your Bible is not just to get information about God. The goal of this is to actually hear God speak and to meet God in the pages of His Word.

A lady named Anne Lamott, she's a best-selling author. She wrote a best-selling, top-charting, humorous little book called "Help, Thanks, Wow." The three essential prayers: Help, Thanks, Wow. Now, in that book, she actually gets some things right. She creatively names the three biblical categories for prayer: Help, that's called supplication. That's one prayer. Thanks, that's Thanksgiving. That's a good category for prayer. So, Help, Thanks, and Wow, that's adoration. God, you're so great. Help, Thanks, Wow. The three essential prayers. It's striking, though, that her book leaves out one of the most critical categories for prayer, and that's repentance. If you take her book, which isn't very long, but if you contrast it with the Lord's Prayer, which is much shorter than her book, you'll find out that the lack of emphasis on repentance is a glaring omission. Even in a light-hearted book about prayer. Jesus taught us much about repentance and confession, even in the short little thing we call the Lord's Prayer. So if I was writing her book, I'd at least call it "Help, Thanks, Wow, Sorry." At least.

The probably the reason she didn't think of that is because Anne Lamott is not using Scripture as a starting point for knowing God. Here's a quote from her book. Listen to this: "Let's not get bogged down on whom or what we pray to. Let's just say prayer is a communication from our hearts to the great mystery, or to goodness, or to Howard, or to the animating energy of love we are sometimes bold enough to believe in. To something unimaginably big and not us. We could call this force 'not me,' or we could call it 'not preachers on stage with a choir of 800.' Or for convenience, we could just say God." The problem with Anne Lamott's approach is, if God is not the starting point for prayer, then what happens? And this can happen to church people. This can happen to Pentecostal people. This is why you need a relationship with the Bible if you're going to pray. Because if God isn't the starting point, then our own needs become the starting point. If God isn't the starting point, our own needs and desires become the sole focus of our prayer. It's not right to decide how to pray based on how you're feeling or based on what experiences you went through today.

Instead, what we need to do is do everything we can through the Word to behold our God as He is. And then, if you actually ever behold Him as He is, you'll want to talk to Him. And you will say, "Thanks," and you will say, "Help," and you will say, "Sorry," and you will say, "Wow," and you'll say a whole lot of other things. Not because you're a professional player, it'll be because you have a relationship with a real God in a real Bible.

The more clearly we grasp who God is, the more it shapes our prayer. And that, by the way, is apostolic. Why we pray as the Bible teaches us in Jesus' name. We're not praying to the cosmos. We're not trained to goodness. We're not praying to the Force. We're praying in Jesus' name. And Jesus isn't somebody you have to guess. He was a real person. He left us His real Bible. And so everything that He inspired people to write down about Him, you can trust it and take it to the bank.

I've got one more scripture. Without a basis in the Bible, our prayers will be shallow. But they almost also might be untethered from any reality at all. Because if you're like Miss Lamont, you're responding not to the real God. You're responding to what you wish God was like, or what you wish your life to be like. And if we are left to ourselves, our hearts, they'll tend to create a God who doesn't even exist. These are God, He's a figment of our imagination. And people in Canada, they want a God who's loving. They want a God who's forgiving. They don't want a God who's holy or righteous or has any expectations. And that's why when they do studies of the spiritual habits of young adults in Canada, and they do say that they pray, but here's what the studies reveal: they pray, but they never repent. And they've never experienced the joy of having their sins forgiven because they pray to a God who's not concerned about sin. It's a figment of their imagination.

Without prayer that is responding to the God of the Bible, we're only talking to ourselves. And if you want to talk to yourself for an hour, that's good. That's fine. We won't have a problem with that. But you're only talking to God if you know the God of the Bible.

Final scripture: Ephesians chapter 1, verse 15. "Wherefore I also, Paul says, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and loved unto all the saints, I cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers."

Can I stop there and just say that was one of my struggles in prayer as a perfectionist? I'm not even a recovering perfectionist. When you're perfect, you don't try to recover. I'm just—that was one of my struggles. I thought, because your brain still, it won't turn off for some of us. And my brain says, you know what, good does this do? God, touch Pastor Jack and Sister Cathy. And God, touch Eric and Annette. And God, touch Pastor Matt and Trashin. What good does that do? Like, I'm just going through kind of a little list. Like, what good does that do? You know, if I could make a speech to God and write it all down and have it perfectly formed and tell God how meritorious these people are of Him doing something gracious for them, and I could get it all formed, I'd be fine. But Paul just hit me right in the head right there. He said, "I made mention of you in my prayers." I didn't make a speech. I didn't talk to God for a half hour about every one of you. I mentioned you to God.

And if you can just think about this with me for a second, when you're talking to somebody, you might say to somebody, "I'm really concerned. I'm really concerned about Brother Phillips. I'm really concerned about Alan Porter. I'm really concerned about Pastor Jack. Pray for them." You wouldn't go on and on and on and on. You might just mention them. And you mention them because you care. And you mention them because you love them. You don't have to make a speech. And so mentioning somebody in prayer, that's prayer. Mentioning somebody to God who already knows their name, their need, their address, their prognosis, their diagnosis, mentioning them in prayer, that's valuable prayer. And I really struggle with that. Maybe nobody else has, but I really struggle with that feeling like, well, if I just list off their names, I'm not really praying. You are really praying. You're making mention of them. Now, sometimes you need to bear down because the Spirit will lead you. But make it mention. That's valid, valuable prayer.

Here's what I pray. Paul said, "that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ." So this is all the people he's mentioned. This is all of his friends and colleagues. This is what he's praying for them. "That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, I'm praying that He may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him. I'm praying that the eyes of your understanding would be enlightened, that you might know what is the hope of His calling, the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power." That's my prayer requests for all my friends and colleagues in ministry.

And if you compare that passage in Ephesians 1 with passages in Philippians 1 and Colossians 1, several other places in the epistles, here's what you'll figure out very quickly: this is how Paul prayed for people that he loved. Here's his prayer: "I just keep asking Jesus. I just keep mentioning you to Jesus. I just keep bringing your name up before Jesus." A pastor called today. I was in Alexandria with Beverly over the weekend and last week. Had a wonderful time. And that great church sends their greetings to hear. And we love them, and they love us. And Pastor called today, and yesterday, I think. And we were just chatting very briefly. "How's Matt? How's Pastor Jack?" We didn't go on for a half an hour. He just loves them, and he wanted to know if they're okay. If they weren't okay, we could talk. But it's a mention.

And Paul said, "Here's what I do when I pray for all my friends: I just mention you before Jesus. And here's what I pray for all of you: I pray that you'll get to know Him better." That's my number one prayer for all of you. Now, that's amazing. It's remarkable that in all of his writings, Paul's prayers for his friends contain no appeals for changes in their circumstances. Those people lived under the Roman Empire. They faced hardships and dangers and persecution and death from disease and oppression by powerful forces and separation from loved ones and threat of jail and massacre and murder and death. Their existence was far less secure than ours was. Ours is today. But in Paul's prayers for his friends, you don't see one petition, not one, for a better Emperor, for protection from all the armies. He doesn't even pray for bread for his next meal. He doesn't pray a lot of the things we usually have at the top of our prayer list.

Now, does that mean it would have been wrong for Paul to pray for that? No, because Paul knew, like we know, that Jesus invited us to pray for our daily bread. And Jesus invited us to pray, "Deliver us from evil." So it's not wrong. It's just that Paul said it's minor. The big thing I'm praying for you because you're my friends is that whatever you happen to be walking through right now, I'm praying that God will let you know Him better through what you're going through. That's what I'm praying. He said the most important thing I can pray to God for you, the most important thing I can ask God to give to you, is to know Him better. So Paul, he taught us something. Prayer is not just a way to get things from God. Prayer is a way to get more of God. And that's how we need to pray for each other. First and most of all is that when you're walking through the pain of losing a loved one, I pray, I can pray all kinds of things. God, comfort them. And God, be with them. But the most important thing is, God, would You reveal more of Yourself to them? Because if You reveal more of Yourself to them, they'll be okay. They'll get through it.

Walking through that dreaded regimen of treatment for that scary disease, God, I pray that You'll heal them. And God, I pray that that'll be a good report. And God, I pray that You'll turn it around. It's right to pray all those things. Don't stop praying all those things. But while you're praying all those things, God, make Yourself real to them. Reveal Your Spirit to them in the middle of this trial. Because I can't control how the trial can turn out. But God, You gave me permission to pray. God, in the middle of the trial, I'm praying that You'll reveal Yourself to them. And that's how Paul always prayed for everybody.

As soon as we turn if we pray into when we pray, there is unlimited potential for the church to do amazing, amazing things. Would you lift your hands right now? Posture has been in, in, intentionally a teacher tonight. I'm not trying to make a cheap play for your emotions. I'm not trying to goad you or shame you. I'm not trying to incite you. I'm just trying to teach you and explain to you some things. I'd like you to remove all the guilt that you felt and all the times you thought, "I'm not doing this right," and whatever. And I'd like you to just pull out of your mind all the times when you shut down praying because you thought you weren't feeling anything. You might not be feeling anything right now. That's very cool because you don't have to feel something to pray to a God who fills time and space in the universe.

So would you lift up your voice right now? And would you start by just thanking Him for being such a God, such a great God, such a good friend, such a faithful Father? Would you just thank Him for all of that for just a moment? Jesus, I worship You because there's no one quite like You. There's no one that walks with me like You do. And there's no one that's been there for me like You have been there for me. And God, I thank You for Your hand on this great church and these precious people. And God, so many of them walk through so many things. And right now, we've got some of them in the hospital. And some of them under doctor's care. And some of them, they're quite fearful of a diagnosis. And some of them are negotiating a family situation. And some of them have had horrendous financial setbacks. And some of them, they've got all kinds of heartbreak in their life. And Jesus, it's good to take all those situations and name them out in detail. And we do. And I do. But God, tonight, I'm praying for Your precious people that whatever they happen to be walking through right now, our prayer is that we would know You. Not just in the power of Your Spirit, but we know You can also let us know You in the fellowship of Your sufferings. So God, whatever the situation, I'm just praying You to let us know You. And You let us answer You. We read about You in the Word. We hear about You in the Word. And prayer is our answer back to You. I thank You for a great church that believes in truth and loves the moving of Your Spirit. And I thank You for Bible study. And I thank You for faithful saints. And I thank You, God, for all of that. And we respond to You tonight. You've given us so much, Jesus. You've given us so much. And our prayer is our response to everything You've said and everything You've done. Help us to pray. Teach us to pray. Oh my. Would you just let that gentle undercurrent of prayer? Would you just let that flow for just a moment? Just a moment. Oh, I worship You, Jesus. Oh, I worship You, Jesus. Thank You, Jesus, for Your sweet Spirit that's in this room right now. Thank You that You visit us so regularly and so often by the moving of Your Spirit. Thank You for that, God.

Would you stand with Pastor right now? We're certainly not doing this little series because I'm trying to wow you with some great lesson. We're certainly not doing it because we're trying to condemn anybody. We're just doing it because the Bible tells us when we pray, things happen. "If My people, which are called by My name, if we'll just humble ourselves and pray, God will." If we will, He will.

Over the next few weeks as we go through this series, I'm asking this great church if you'd make a special personal effort to give yourself especially to prayer. If you're not consistently praying, start with five minutes and build it up to 10. That's way better than starting with an hour and shrinking it down to zero. Just start. Just do. Just try. And when you get there and you don't feel this, or you don't feel Sunday night, or you don't feel the choir and the praise team, that's good because you're becoming a person of prayer. And you don't need all the emotion to pray. You just need to know that God is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.