Time To Pray

 

By Rev. Sjirk Bajema

Heidelberg Catechism – Q/A 118

 

Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ…

What is it like to talk to someone you cannot see, and who doesn’t speak back? Well at least not verbally anyway! How do we manage in that communication with the Lord when the way we relate to those around us is so visible? Or at least when we can’t see them face-to-face we can still know what they look like.

Haven’t we all, at one time or another – perhaps even now – had the sense of a real lack in how we pray? And doesn’t it seem that turning to other Christians – whether in looking to their example or reading what they write – only compounds our frustration? It seems as if they never got off their knees!

You find it hard to pray, though. And when you do, so much comes out like a well-rehearsed patter. You feel very inadequate praying in public. Somehow you feel you don’t match up. Not like some of the others who pray, anyway!

If you have those feelings, you’re exactly the same as the vast majority of believers across the world! So many are just like you – wanting that deeper and higher and broader prayer. They say too, “Oh, that I could be that much closer to Jesus!”

It’s certainly a sincere desire. But there have come hard difficulties between what we are and where the LORD would love us to be. Instead of being refreshed in the Godhead Himself, we become increasingly bound over to “things”. The end result is far worse than how we began.

We have to be careful with prayer. The wrong idea may lead us into terrible tragedy. The right way, though, can become the way to draw us so richly time and time again, and in an ever-increasing measure, into that wonderful salvation we have in Jesus Christ!

Let’s, then, be guided by our confession of Scripture.In following through the Lord’s Day before us, we’ll seek out the Lord’s way for three of the most commonly asked questions about prayer in the life of the believer. These questions are, firstly: SO, WHY PRAY?; secondly: OKAY, THEN HOW DO I PRAY?; and thirdly: AND WHAT DO I PRAY?

Why pray?

Firstly, SO, WHY PRAY? Hasn’t the Lord done it all? Aren’t we saved? Doesn’t God know everything we say and do, and even think? Why bother with something we have so much difficulty with anyway?

Young people, I’m sure there are some things Mum and Dad always seem to be reminding you about. But now you think for a moment about what would be one of the most common of those things you forget. And the answer isn’t what you’d immediately expect. But when you hear it you’ll have to agree that it’s true.

So what is this thing children forget? And I have to say adults often forget it, too! “Now, Johnny, don’t forget to say…thank you!”

Yes – it’s “thank you.” Just two words. Yet don’t we so easily forget them?

But boys and girls, why do you forget to say “thank you”? When you are given something, how come you didn’t straight away show your appreciation? And especially if it is such a good present?

Wasn’t it because you became so involved in the present? You’re so looking forward to playing with it! You are thankful for it, but it just slipped your mind to express your thanks. Your eyes were on the gift, not the giver!

Mind you, you know something’s missing when you don’t say “thank you”. And when we don’t say it we can begin to expect presents as a right. After all, you always get one at your birthday.

As Christians we can do the same. That glorious gift of grace we received by faith in Jesus Christ gets easily taken for granted. It’s just there! We’re given it through the preaching and teaching. We receive it in celebrating the Lord’s Supper.

And then it can almost be as if we’ve just been to any old public meeting. It was nice to meet your friends again. Otherwise, it was pretty well the way that your life runs.

I hope you’re getting a bit upset by now. You know this is no way to be grateful! And this is what Answer 116 says. To the question as to why we pray, it replies, “Because prayer is the most important part of the thankfulness God requires of us.”

Boys and girls, don’t you find that if you’re really looking forward to something – say, your birthday – that that makes you happy whatever present you get? Because the most important thing then is that you’re getting another year older! And you’re so much looking forward to what you’ll be able to do as you get older and bigger and wiser! As our Answer continues in explaining why we need to pray: “And also because God gives his grace and Holy Spirit only to those who pray continually and groan inwardly, asking God for these gifts and thanking him for them.”

That you and I are saved by the blood of Jesus is only the beginning. You’ve come into a completely different world! The Spirit of God Himself has touched your heart! No longer will you be what you were!

Of course your old sinful nature will trip you up sometimes, but you are really now where you have to be. You know God! You realise deep down who makes all the difference in this world.

Luke 11 shows how this is so. There we read, in the verses 9 and 10, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”

Okay, the unbeliever will say, this is logical! It’s common sense to do this if you want anything to happen. But something different is going on. What you want may not be God’s will for you! And once having been opened up into His grace, would we then be right to go it on our own? We couldn’t anyway! That much we know. It’s into this we need to grow.

It’s the same with any of our close relationships. We can’t expect to get on with either girlfriend, boyfriend, husband, or wife, if we have no time for that person! Indeed, whatever we gain from our relationship is because there is a relationship in the first place.

So how are you trying to gain from your relationship? Are you working to make it real? SO, WHY PRAY?

Because you want to make it work! You know that you desperately need God’s grace and the Holy Spirit to make the difference to your life.

We cannot feed a hungry man with good intentions. So why do we starve ourselves by keeping away from the Living Water and the precious Bread of Life? Go on – talk to Him! Get down on your knees and pray. If you haven’t asked, how can you know if there will be a difference to your day?

How do I pray?

OKAY, THEN, HOW DO I PRAY? Our second question in considering prayer. And, as Answer 117 indicates, there is much help for being able to pray so that God will listen. Let’s follow a three-part division.

First of all, you pray because the God of the Bible is very real. That’s why this Lord’s Day is based on Scripture. And that’s why as we speak with the Lord we consider who he is.

None of us would go and speak with a dear friend about things that made no sense to him, or that would hurt her. We respect them. How much more, then, shouldn’t we speak to God knowing who He is, and what he wants to hear? On this the Bible is absolutely clear.

The believer, as he reads the Bible, responds to that reading in prayer. If God has just spoken by His Word at our dinner table, then we aren’t responding to Him if we pray afterwards for other things without mentioning the lesson of what we read. And for the rest of our prayers, we know that we pray them because they are what the Lord has told us to pray.

That’s why asking Him to bless that lotto ticket you’ve bought makes no sense when He speaks against chance. He has told us to get our money by working for it. Not by stealing from others.

When we pray, our words and our lives must show that we know to whom we’re speaking. Of this Psalm 145:18 said, “The LORD is near to all who call on him, all who call on him in truth.”

Secondly, how I pray is by doing it with honesty and humility. In the words of the Catechism, “we must acknowledge our need and misery, hiding nothing, and humble ourselves in his majestic presence.”

This puts us in our place! As God declares in Isaiah 66:2, “Has not my hand made all these things, and so they come into being? This is the one I esteem: he who is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word.”

We can easily enough pray for a whole shopping list of needed things. But is it with that deep sense of respect? Do we begin by not demanding? To hear you pray, would I say that it’s a real privilege to know this God who knows everything about me?

We don’t put on a false front with the Lord. We’re actually painfully honest. Trying to deceive a person you very much love just doesn’t work. They know anyway! Especially if they’re so close. So how more is that so with our Lord?

And, yet, in the third aspect to how we pray, we must do it in Jesus’ Name. This is why we end our prayers, “in Jesus’ Name.” We not only acknowledge who God is, and who we are, but also we come through Him who has come to us.

You have come to faith through the work of the Second Person of the Trinity. It is this One – God’s Son, Jesus Christ – who says to us in John 14:13, “I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father.” And later in John 16:23, “I tell you the truth, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.”

When we pray, do we have that promise in mind? Do we speak with the Lord because we know He will listen! Are we praying expecting an answer? Or do we say yet again the same old subjects, the familiar phrases, without meaning it at all?

Did that man in Luke 11 go to his friend thinking he wouldn’t get what he needed? Congregation, he went, even at the late hour of the night, because he would be heard, and eventually answered. And since Jesus has done the work his Father set him to do, for the Father’s glory, so whatever we ask that is for His Father’s glory, He will do it.

So it’s not a matter of wondering, “Do I dare to ask?” Rather it’s the question, “Do I dare not to ask?”

Fellow believers, it’s something that will become more apparent the further we grow in the Lord.

What do I pray?

So we come to our third question. This asks, YES, THOUGH, WHAT DO I PRAY? For having answered why you pray, and seen how you pray, we move to what makes up the prayer itself.

But here Answer 118 is surprisingly short. In responding to the question, “What did God command us to pray for?”, it replies, “Everything we need, spiritually and physically.”

It appears quite open. Everything. Yet “everything” is qualified. It is everything we need.

This makes all the difference in the world. Because what we need is often completely different than what we want.

What we need is what is essential for our survival – whether physical or spiritual. What we want, though, is so often a whim for that moment. And while it would nice to have – I mean everyone else has got it! – it’s not important for where the Lord desires us to go.

That means we will sometimes be mistaken with what we pray for. But here too the Lord shows us how. For Answer 118, as well as being our confession that we are to pray for everything we need, spiritually and physically, goes on to point the way, saying, “as embraced in the prayer Christ our Lord Himself taught us.”

And what prayer could that be but the Lord’s Prayer? The next Answer will tell us that. It’s this content to our prayers that we’ll consider over the next seven Lord’s days in the Catechism.

That this is all important we cannot doubt. And that there will be many times of disillusionment alone the way, we can be sure. Frans Bakker describes our journey in prayer this way, “Blessed are you if you experience failures, for there is work for the Spirit. The more the Spirit works, the more you learn to pray according to the will of God, the more trust, peace, and divine instruction you will receive. When we think we can pray well, we deceive ourselves in this most holy work and there is less work for the Spirit to do.”

It doesn’t matter the style you have when you pray. Words that seem to come out so awkwardly, with difficulty, and hesitantly, are likely to be much better than those which flow so readily. It matter most of all that you do pray! Because then it’s from your heart. Then you know it’s makes all the difference to your life here below that you stay in touch with Him who’s above!

As someone put it so well once, “The man who kneels to God can stand up to anything!”

Amen.

 

PRAYER:

Let’s pray… LORD God, none of us is greater than our prayer life with You. For without that constant communion with You what use can we be to You? Then we aren’t open to Your Word and Spirit. Then we are very much wrapped up in ourselves.

Lord Jesus, together with the disciples long ago we too ask of You now, again, “Please teach us how to pray.” They saw the communion You had with Your Father then and knew they needed that, too. As You answered them so may You answer us – both in the preaching of Your Word about prayer but especially that from now on we will pray – every day, in the right way! In Your Name alone we pray, Amen.