Knock Knock Prayer

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Enjoy it, share it, but most of all, thank you for listening to the Truth Podcast Network. And now, here's James. So, James, you want to start today's encouraging prayer with a knock-knock joke, so all right, go ahead.

No, no, no, no. You start it, Robbie. Go ahead and start my knock-knock joke. Oh, I can't start it because that's not how you tell knock-knock jokes.

I mean, you're the one who wants to tell the joke, so it's your joke. No, actually, it just makes the point that I'm after it. Prayer is more like that than we sometimes realize. So prayer is like starting a knock-knock joke. Well, all right, so I'll bite once with that. Oh, okay.

No, seriously. We like to think of prayer as our idea, but it isn't really. Prayer is God's idea, and realizing that makes all the difference.

No, I think I see where you're going with this. God invented prayer, right? God really wants us to come to him to draw near to him. That's right, and having just gone through Good Friday and Easter, we've been reminded of just how much he loves us and wants a relationship with us.

Yeah, if he would go to the lengths of the cross, to the empty tomb, you know, he must want that pretty deeply. Yeah, and understanding that really helps us to pray, because the truth is, we sometimes think that prayer is all up to us. We often think that way, that it's really our own effort that matters, and that's not to say we shouldn't pray hard or that our efforts don't matter. God wants us to go after him. He wants us to pray passionately. We'll go there in a moment, but the thing that we need to do more is understand what prayer is like from God's perspective.

Listen to what the British poet John Macefield wrote. He said that God warms his hands at man's heart when he prays. And I love that. You know, I think about Isaiah 65, where God describes himself as holding out his hands all day long to an obstinate people. So again, you see his love for us there. And then in that same chapter, actually the verse right before, he says, I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me.

I was found by those who did not seek me, to a nation that did not call on my name. So the point is, God has always been the one who initiates the relationship. Wow, I so appreciate this, James, because you're right. I mean, we often make prayer harder than it has to be, thinking that we have to do the things just right before we can talk with God. And wondering why he isn't more apparent does sometimes. But when we think that way, our emphasis really is just on ourselves.

Well, yeah, that's right. And I felt exactly like that sometimes, even wondering why God had withdrawn, you know, when he actually hadn't. He was right there with me. And of course, we have to examine our hearts and make sure we're not cherishing sin or grieving God's Spirit. And there are also times when the circumstances of our lives make it so that it's difficult to sense God's presence.

But let's go back to the knock-knock thing again. We need to realize that God initiated our relationship. And because he did, he really wants it. He really wants us. So he waits for us to pray, and he loves it when we do. God isn't going to save us and then turn his back on us. Think about how much you enjoy time with your daughter now that she's away at college.

Whenever she comes home, I'll bet you cherish those moments with her just because you love her. Oh, yeah, absolutely. So understanding that our time in prayer really means something to God can help us love him even more and can help us pray. Because he's not standing there with his arms crossed. He's not dissatisfied. He's fully loving us through Jesus.

He's holding out his hands, just as he said. There's so much of Scripture, really. Jesus said that he and the Father would make their home with us. And he told the parable of the prodigal where the Father runs to the Son.

Right. One of my favorite verses in all of Scripture. Luke 15, 20 says that when he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him.

He ran to his son and threw his arms around him and kissed him. I love that phrase, a long way off. And Stephen Verney had a quote about that whole moment that I love. And he really applied it to prayer.

He said, this is the nature of the encounter, not that I'm stumbling toward Abba Father, but that Abba Father is running towards me. When we realize how God has initiated our relationship, it's such a beautiful thing. We touched on this last week when we talked about what Jesus said in the Garden of Gethsemane. Could you watch and pray with me for one hour?

It really wasn't about the amount of time. It was more about that Jesus wanted them to be with him in spirit. Just think about how much God has done for us to reach out to us and save us and bring us to himself. When we go there and take to heart what God's word tells us about this, and when we know how loved we are, it helps us to praise him and thank him. And it helps us stay away from sin because we don't want to sin against someone that loves us so much.

We want to love them in return. And it also helps us pray with passion because when we realize he loves us so much, then we're going to want to go into those places where we don't want to miss anything good that he has for us. But usually we make it so focused on ourselves by saying things like, prayer is so hard, and I'm not very good at prayer, and honestly, I don't think God intended it to be that way.

That's where our emphasis usually is on things like, I don't spend enough time in prayer, I'm not very good at it, and all that. Yeah, so here's another way to think about it. We've all seen those movie scenes where a man and a woman are deeply in love, and they see each other at a distance, maybe in an open field. And then the music begins, and they gaze on each other, and they run, and the camera spins around and zooms in until there's this grand embrace. You know, we've all seen those scenes. Well, just imagine instead that in that moment, instead of looking at each other, one of the lovers is just looking at his own shoes as he runs. That would work very well, would it? Probably.

That tripping might even miss the other one, you know? Exactly, and the point is that God is the lover of our souls. He loved us first.

We love because he first loved us. So, let's run there. Run to him. Keep our eyes on him. And as we do, we will know his embrace.

So, oh my goodness, God, thank you for this reminder, this amazing encouragement to go back to the person that's running for me. Lord, help me to embrace you with my eyes on you. And I pray we all can do that in Jesus' name. Amen. You can hear more from Pastor James by visiting his website, jamesbanks.org, or by visiting Peace Church in Durham, North Carolina. May God bless you and encourage you as you pray.