I Dare You: Pray! Part 2 - Part B

So you see, effective prayer has God's interests in mind, the glory of God.

So get it. Daniel looks upward, adoration. Inward, confession.

Outward, petition. And then he closes his prayer upward again. It's full circle. He ends where he begins. He began with God in adoration.

He ends with God in giving him glory. And again, is that not how Jesus taught us to pray? Prayer is powerful, and God's Word teaches us how to pray effective prayers. So today on Connect with Skip Hyting, listen as Skip challenges you to pray complete prayers and to do it often.

And at the end of the program, we'll join Skip and Lenya as they discuss prayer and how they incorporate it into daily living. Good to work off a list. It's good to have a template. And when you have a template and you work off a list like that, you can be assured that your prayer isn't going to be monolithic.

It's going to be well-rounded. Now, here's an offer that'll strengthen your marriage as you grow closer to your spouse and God. We have an exciting resource to help strengthen your marriage so it can thrive no matter what your circumstances. It's The Marriage Devotional, 52 days to strengthen the soul of your marriage by Levi and Jenny Lusko.

And we'd love to send you a copy as thanks for your gift this month to grow the ministry of Connect with Skip. How do you figure out what's going on underneath your marriage? You ask about it. So when was the last time you've checked in with your spouse? And a little pro tip, Jenny and I, our marriage counselor, for what it's worth, she told us to never, ever, ever do the check-in during date night.

And this has been revolutionary for us. We used to just literally have a fight every single date night because that was our check-in. One of us would be dumb enough over appetizers to go, well, what's going on in your house?

Which is usually code for, please tell me the five things I'm doing wrong this week. You know what I'm saying? And so now I'm pushing the cauliflower away because I'm feeling hot and angry. And then we get in this big fight.

And she goes, oh, gosh, you're doing it wrong. Date night's joy. Date night's fun. Just keep it light.

Put a pin in stuff that's going to give you stress on the date night. But you've got to have the check-in too. Great marriages are made, not born. And this devotional journey will be the encouragement your marriage, not just any marriage, needs to flourish. So we cling. We cling to God. We cling to our spouse. We cling to the local church because we're vines. And we want our marriage to be like a fruitful vine in the heart of our house.

In the marriage devotional, 52 Days to Strengthen the Soul of Your Marriage, Levi and Jenny will point you to God's word and help you experience a depth and beauty you may have never thought possible. We'll send you a copy of this powerful resource as thanks for your gift to expand Connect with Skip Heitzig to reach more people in major US cities. Yours for a donation of $50 or more. Just call 800-922-1888 or visit connectwithskip.com slash offer.

That's connectwithskip.com slash offer. Now let's turn to Daniel 9 and join Skip as he begins today's study. When we communicate with God, there's a progress that we ought to be making the longer we know Him, a mature progress in communication. When you were a baby, you know what your first word was? I do. What was it? Well, can you say it?

What? Wow. Somebody just said wow. I think it was more like wow. I don't think you did wow.

If you did, you were like the coolest baby ever. But that's how that was your first word. It was a cry.

That's all you knew when you wanted your bottle. It was not wow, but wow. You got your mom's attention. She fed you. You needed your diaper changed.

It was wow. Okay, not really great communication skills yet. But then your parents said, use your words, right? And so you use your words and your words were, I want that. I need that.

A little bit of an improvement from the wham, but not really much. But as you grew older, you learned to communicate differently so that when you became an adult, your communication with your parents was far different. In the latter years, when my parents were alive, when I called them on the phone, I never once said, I need, I want, give me this, give me that.

It was always, how are you doing? How can I help you? How can I be a blessing to you? That's mature communication. So it is with prayer.

As you become mature, you get more concerned with this. I'm just in God's presence. It's a humble adoration. Dwight L. Moody, the great evangelist, had a little child.

He was busy preparing for a speaking tour and he was in his study preoccupied with his books and his messages. And his little eight-year-old son came in and sat there and Moody said, what do you want? He said, I don't want anything, daddy. I just want to be where you are. And I think there's something to that in prayer. Lord, I just want to be where you are. You are great. You are awesome. I'm talking to you.

I'm hanging with you. So humble adoration is the first strand. Here's the second one. Honest confession. That needs to be a strand of the rope that you pull when you talk to God.

Honest confession. Beginning in verse five, all the way down to verse 15. It's the longest section of this prayer, which we've already read. It's a confession. It's Daniel saying, we've blown it. I'm sorry. We've done this.

We've acted wickedly over and over again. He goes through the history of the nation of Israel from the times of the kings and the prophets and shows how they have repeatedly disobeyed God's voice. It's been said that the six most important words in human relations are, I admit that I was wrong. They're the most important words.

They're also the hardest to say. But here is Daniel saying them to God. And when Jesus taught his disciples to pray, did he not tell them that confession was a necessary part of that? Our father, which art in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come.

Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Incidentally, have you ever noticed that when Jesus taught his disciples to pray, he taught them to use the plural, not the singular.

He never said, now when you pray, say my father in heaven, forgive me, give me this day my daily bread. It was always us, we, our, the plural. He wants you to realize that you're a part of something bigger than just you.

You're a part of we. And what's fascinating is that's how Daniel prays here. In this prayer, 16 times he uses the word we, 17 times the word our, nine times the word us.

In total, 42 personal words. In other words, Daniel isn't like aloof from his people, like I am the prophet and they have really sinned and I'm praying for them because they're bad and they're wicked. He said, I'm a part of the problem.

Forgive us. He included himself in it. Sometimes we like to point our fingers at sinners. Daniel locked arms with them, held hands with them, said I am in this with you guys.

I'm a part of this. Something else, you'll note that Daniel's confession follows his adoration and I think that one naturally follows the other. I believe the closer you get to God, the greater you sense your own sin and your own selfishness and your own need to clear the slate with God.

One always follows the other. Classic example, Isaiah chapter six. He gets that grand vision of God high and lifted up.

You know the story. He sees God. It's wonderful.

It's amazing. He's filled with thoughts of adoration, but he says, woe is me. Woe is me.

I'm seeing this. Woe is me. I'm undone.

I'm a man of unclean lips. I'm seeing God and in seeing God, I'm also seeing me. And as I see me in the light of God, I say, woe is me. Leonard Ravenhill said, the self-sufficient do not pray.

The self-satisfied will not pray and the self-righteous cannot pray. You say, but why does he need to confess? Why does anybody need to admit, God, I'm a sinner? Doesn't he already know that?

Yeah, but I think he likes to hear you say it. The first step in humility is admission. I was wrong.

I admit that I was wrong. And Daniel does that. Notice something further with this in verse seven and verse eight. He uses the word shame. Oh, Lord, righteousness belongs to you, but to us, shame of the world. Oh, Lord, righteousness belongs to you, but to us, shame of faith.

That's a word of conscience. It's humiliation. It's embarrassment. It's guilt. Now, if ever there were a day and age where society at large, especially the so-called intellectual elite wants to say that guilt is bad and you should never feel guilt, it's this society. It's this culture.

It's this day and age. Guilt is considered passé, puritanical, cruel, even damaging to the human psyche by some. Get rid of guilt. You shouldn't ever live under guilt.

And so the famous TCBY ad, some of you remember the yogurt ad? All of the pleasure, none of the guilt. A great way to advertise because they knew that people in this culture want to banish guilt altogether.

But you got to, you got to learn, you have to understand something. There's bad guilt. Then there's good guilt. Bad guilt is a person who's just guilty about everything. He's just an insecure person and everything that happens, he has a sense of guilt, but then there's good guilt. And good guilt is when people feel guilty because they are guilty. And when a person is guilty, a person ought to feel guilty. And why is it good guilt? Because it drives you to the savior to get it taken care of.

And that's good. So he prays by looking upward, that's adoration. By looking inward, that's confession. Now in order to do this, you have to stop what you're doing and take time to do it.

He'd been reading the book of Jeremiah, something caught his attention, the 70 years was almost up, the 70 years captivity that Jeremiah predicted, he stopped and he starts praying. I was reading an article sometime back about why pigeons walk funny. I know that's an odd article, but you know, these are interesting little things. Because I used to notice, you know, I've never been a pigeon fan. Every time I see a pigeon, it's like, where's my BB gun? But I see pigeons walk and they got to drive me nuts and they walk funny. They walk and they go like this all the time. Oh yeah, I think that would hurt.

Hurts just now. But the article said that pigeons move their head like that and stop in between steps because they can't focus on things that they're looking at unless their head is completely stopped just momentarily. So they have to completely stop in between steps.

So it's forward, stop, backward, stop, forward, stop, backward, stop, because they're focusing, focusing, refocusing. And I thought about prayer like that. Before we can proceed in our walks with the Lord, we have to spend the time focusing, upward look, inward look, upward look, inward look, adoration, confession, getting our bearings, knowing where we're at, and then proceeding forward. So we have two strands on this rope, adoration, confession.

Here's the third, heartfelt petition. Now, instead of looking upward or looking inward, he looks outward. Now he actually prays for what he sees happening around him. Verse 16, O Lord, according to your righteousness, I pray, let your anger, your fury be turned away from your city, Jerusalem.

Remember, he's not been there for many years. Your holy mountain, because for our sins and our iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem and your people are a reproach to those around us. Now, therefore, O Lord, hear the prayer of your servant, that's him, and the supplications. And for the Lord's sake, cause your face to shine on your sanctuary, which is desolate. O my God, incline your ear.

That means bend close. Listen carefully, Lord. Incline your ear and hear, open your eyes and see our desolations. And the city, which is called by your name, for we do not present our supplications before you because of our righteous deeds, but because of your great mercies.

I love this last verse. O Lord, hear. O Lord, forgive. O Lord, listen and act. Do not delay for your own sake, my God, for your city and your people who are called by your name. You'll notice that as he prays this prayer, as he prays this petition, and this is really the only time in the prayer he's actually asking God for something, that it's very specific, very specific. O Lord, you see it. Now do something.

Listen, look, act, do it. By the way, that's really what amen means. Amen means so be it or do it.

So here's Daniel. He has read that God is going to bring Israel back after 70 years to Jerusalem. He knows God is going to do it. And he comes along and says, do it. Really, that's what prayer is.

Prayer isn't really getting things from God as much as getting in on things with God. Lord, you said you're going to do it. I believe you're going to do it. Do it. Do it.

It's very specific. Listen, act, do it, Lord. I fear that sometimes our prayers can be rather weak or vague.

Let's put it that way, vague, vague. Lord, just bless everyone, everywhere, with everything. Amen. Amen. I can't say, what is that? That's nothing.

Or have you ever heard this one? Lord, you know every request spoken and unspoken. Okay. But since you're speaking, why don't you tell him what that is specifically? If you were to walk into a restaurant and you were to say, I have an unspoken food need. Bless me. They'd look at you like you're the weirdest cat on earth.

I do take a menu and point something out. We can fetch that for you really quick. Be specific. Daniel was specific in his petition. Also, his petition was sympathetic. He was praying for others around him. He wasn't in Jerusalem. He's praying for that city. In fact, he wouldn't even be returning to Jerusalem.

He would die in Babylon, but others would be returning. So he's praying for other people. Now, this is a part of petition we call intercession. Intercessory prayer is where we pray not for ourselves, but for other people. And can I just say, it's the hardest form of prayer. It's a lot harder to pray for other people.

It's the hardest form of prayer. Worship isn't hard. I mean, God is great. I can hang out with God. He's amazing. He gives blessings.

He knows everything. It's very natural for a child of God. You'd have to be awfully narcissistic to not worship. You'd have to be very self-focused to not to worship. So worshiping is pretty easy. Praying for myself is pretty easy. Even if it's confession, I know what I've done wrong. I can let that fall off my lips before God very quickly.

No problem. Very easy to do that. Praying for things for myself, personal petition, easy. But when I start praying for other people, that's labor. That's where you get spiritual ADD.

That's where you start falling asleep or getting distracted because you're not in touch emotionally with their needs like you are your own needs. So it's laboring in prayer. Paul said of Epaphras in the New Testament, he's a bondservant of Christ, laboring fervently for you in prayer. It is hard work, but it's necessary work.

Because if you don't add intercession to your life, you will become more and more self-absorbed. You will become a pew potato. They're registering. You know what a couch potato is. Guy just sort of sits around these chips, dip, more chips, more dip, just kind of gets bigger by the day watching TV, TV, TV, TV. Couch potato.

You can become a pew potato. It's all in that. There's a crisis a lot of Christians face in their spiritual walk. It's all they're taking it in. They're part of the International Bless Me Club. Well, here I am, Pastor.

Bless me now. And it's all intake. It's all what I can hear, what I can get, what makes me feel good. But there's never an outlet. And so that person becomes spiritually obese.

The only outlet they have is to gossip or slander or complain. You know what will help? A prayer list. A prayer list.

Take a list, whether it's by pencil and paper or your little phone, your little iPhone or whatever gadget you have, not trying to discriminate, and just go in that little note app. And that's what I do. Write little things down that people you know need and keep a running list and pray for them. That's how Jesus also taught us to pray. Give us this day our daily bread.

Here's the fourth and final strand on this great rope that rings the bell, and that is holy motivation. Did you notice something in that last section of the prayer that we looked at? He says, for example, in verse 17, now, therefore, our God, hear the prayer of your servant and his supplications. For the Lord's sake, cause your face to shine on your sanctuary, which is desolate. Verse 19, hear, O Lord, forgive, listen, act.

Do not delay for your own sake, my God, for your city and your people that are called by your name. There's an emphasis on your, your, your, your. Do this for your sake.

We're your people called by your name. You have a reputation to uphold. Do it for that reason.

That's the motivation. Daniel's motive in seeing this prayer answered was not for the good of his people as much as for the glory of his God. Incidentally, one of the reasons, according to the New Testament, that our prayers seem so ineffective or unanswered is because we pray with the wrong motives.

Lord, I really need that big screen really badly. I think you can pray about anything in the world, but I don't know if you really need it all that badly. I mean, start weighing your requests by the motivation of, does this further the program of God in the world?

Does this further the program of God in this world? Listen to what James writes, James chapter four, you want what you don't have. And so you scheme and kill to get it.

You're jealous for what others have, and you can't possess it. And so you fight and quarrel to take it away from them. And yet the reason you don't have what you want is you don't ask God for it.

And even when you do ask, you because your whole motive is wrong, you want only what will give you pleasure. So you see, effective prayer has God's interests in mind, the glory of God. So get it, Daniel looks upward, adoration, inward confession, outward petition. And then he closes his prayer upward again, it's full circle.

He ends where he begins. He began with God and adoration, he ends with God in giving him glory. And again, is that not how Jesus taught us to pray? At the end of the Lord's prayer, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

That's the pattern. So here's the deal, pull the rope, pull the rope, pull it frequently, pull it long and hard. As Spurgeon said, prayer pulls the rope down below that rings the great bell above in the ears of God.

But make sure that when you pull the rope, that four strands are attached, that it's the rope of adoration and confession and petition and holy motivation. Don't be like that man who went fishing with his friends, he really didn't like church all that much, wasn't really a religious kind of a guy. So he didn't want to go to church, didn't want to pray much and didn't care for God, his wife did, but he didn't. And he's out fishing with his buddies and everything's good till a storm came and that boat looked like it was about to sink and he started praying.

Oh God, righteous and holy are you God? And then he paused and goes, Lord, I know I haven't prayed to you in about 15 years, but if you would save me now and bring me home safely, I promise not to bother you for another 15 years. For a lot of people, that's it. It's a 15 year cycle.

It's a crisis cycle when it could be a wonderful relationship where you're just thinking, Lord, I really don't want anything. I just want to be here with you. I'm not really looking for things as much as looking for what you're doing and wanting to be a part of it. So I can just sort of come along and find out what you're doing and go, do that, do it. I like that. Do that. Amen.

What a wonderful place to be. That's Skip Hyten with a message from the series, I Dare You. Find the full message as well as books, booklets, and full teaching series at connectwithskip.com. Now let's hear some practical tips from Skip and Lenya about incorporating prayer into daily life. Skip, I know that you go for walks when you really want to pray. So what are some ways you've woven prayer into your life and into the fabric of it in everyday life?

First of all, there's a template and I believe it's there for our benefit for effective communication. It's called the Lord's Prayer. A better title would be the disciples prayer. Lord, teach us to pray, the disciples ask. When you pray, Jesus said, say our Father who art in heaven. So I believe that's not just a prayer that he said or gave to them to be recited.

I believe it's more of a template, but then also it's good to work off a list. So I've always been bad at this, but I'm just going to encourage our listeners and those tuning in that we have a prayer app for our church. We have a church app and people write in requests and I take those daily and I pray for everyone that comes in and it's just part of the intercession for other people. And you can click on the little praying hands and it says, yeah, basically how many people prayed for that one request.

That's encouraging to see so many people logging on doing that. So I find that helpful. It's good to work off a list. It's good to have a template. And when you have a template and you work off a list like that, you can be assured that your prayer isn't going to be monolithic.

It's going to be well-rounded. Thank you Skip and Lenya. We hope this conversation with Skip and Lenya challenged you to keep pursuing God and his truth. You can help encourage others through God's word with a gift to keep teachings like today's broadcast coming your way. As you give, you'll help advance the vision to make these messages available to more people in more cities across our country. Just call 800-922-1888 to give that's 800-922-1888 or visit connecttheskip.com slash donate. That's connecttheskip.com slash donate.

Thank you. Join us again tomorrow as Skip helps you understand the prophecy found in Daniel chapter nine. Make a connection, make a connection at the foot of the cross. Send, cast all the burdens on his word. Make a connection, a connection. Connect with Skip Hyten is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever-changing times.