Christmas Prayers

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This is the Truth Network. Encouraging Prayer. God offers an open invitation for His people to talk with Him at any time about anything. On Encouraging Prayer, Dr. James Banks, author of the best-selling Prayers for Prodigals and many other books on prayer, provides weekly biblical insight to help you learn to love to pray. And now, here's James.

Oh, have we got something special for you? For the next episodes, five episodes of Encouraging Prayer, we're going to be talking about five different ways to pray. We're calling it Five Christmas Prayers, because each way has to do with something that happens around Jesus's birth, and I'm excited about this. Christmas is a popular time for Encouraging Prayer broadcasts and the podcast, and you're going to want to share this with a friend.

So, James, why don't you take it from here? All right, well, Robbie, I'm excited about this, too, because the prayers surrounding Christmas are amazing, and that's not hyping it a bit, to put it that way. There's just so much about them. There's wisdom and insight into who Jesus is and the difference He makes, and these prayers, excuse me, these prayers can change our own lives, too, because they can teach us how to pray and also show us how to live.

The difference they can make in our lives is significant. Okay, I'm ready, so where do we start? All right, well, with the Christmas story, of course, just the very beginning of it in Luke 1, what happens here is honestly breathtaking from a spiritual standpoint, but the funny thing about it is, we either see it or we don't. What we're talking about is Mary's response to the angel when he tells her that she is going to conceive a child through the Holy Spirit. You'll find it in Luke chapter 1, verse 26 and following. Who less than the archangel Gabriel appears to Mary and says to her, greetings you who are highly favored, the Lord is with you. And Luke tells us Mary was troubled by these words, and that shows us something about her that we'll get to. But then the angel gives her the news and tells her the baby will be the Messiah, God's promised Savior for his people. Robbie, you've got your Bible open, so why don't you take it from here, starting in verse 34.

Okay, gotcha. How will this be, Mary asked the angel, since I'm a virgin? The angel answered, the Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you, so the Holy One is to be born who will be called the Son of God.

Even Elizabeth, your relative, is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive in her sixth month. For no word from God will ever fail. I am the Lord's servant, Mary answered. May your words to me be fulfilled. Then the angel left her.

Okay, there it is. Now, it would be fair if you were wondering at this point, where's the prayer in this? And that's where we have to understand what's really happening here. The word angel means messenger, and what Mary tells the angel is a prayer because it's a message to God. The Lord is with her, the Lord is in the moment, and of course the angel is always in the presence of God, so what Mary says, she is telling the Lord, and that makes it a prayer. And it's what she says that is so striking, because it shows us something that is so special about her. So what she says is, I'm the Lord's servant.

May your word to me be fulfilled. Or some translations have it, may it be to me as you have said. You know, but you're right, if you think about it, the implications of what the angel has told her, Mary is saying that she is fine with that. But that's a pretty big deal, really, the biggest deal of all. I mean, there's nothing bigger than God's plan of salvation, but Mary's just a girl, and it's believed that she would only been like 13 or 14 at that time, right? And she's not married yet, which means scandal, and because she was betrothed, according to the system of the day, her life could have been in danger, because betrothal was considered a form of marriage before it was consummated, and so it would appear, you know, that she'd been unfaithful, and therefore she could be stoned to death, right, for the punishment of adultery.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. So to simply say, I'm the Lord's servant, there's a lot in that. It's an incredibly humble thing, and that brings us to the way we can pray, like Mary did, and the difference it can make for our own lives.

God showed me this again just yesterday, and it was really convicting. I was at this thrift store that is run by an organization that helps people coming out of substance abuse here in Durham, and I needed help with an item in the store, so I was talking with one of the employees about it. He was a young guy, maybe around 20 of that, and we struck up this conversation, and you could tell he'd seen a lot of life for his years.

He was all tatted up, but you know, the kind of tattoos that show he was probably involved in a gang, like teardrops around his eyes, and while we were talking about it, it came out that I was a pastor, and you could tell this was really a sincere kid. He was trying to turn his life around, so I spoke some words of encouragement to him, and told him about my own son, who had been in and out of jail, and had been a heroin addict, and you know, God set him free, and he's a pastor in student ministry today, and I told him that if he stayed with God, God would help him, and anything was possible, and then I asked him, and again his name was Josh, how I could pray for him, and in that moment he said something that just blew me away. He said, just pray that I will be humble, and all of a sudden I was humbled by that, because I thought, when was the last time I prayed that prayer?

You had to say that, didn't you? All right, so you think you're doing something for him, and God suddenly lays that one in your lap, right? That's amazing.

Yeah, it really was. I mean, I walked around the store thinking, so I'm the pastor, asking how I can pray for him, you know, kind of piously, and God is using this young man to show me how my own heart needs to be more humble, because what he was doing with that prayer request was really wise and mature, and immediately God showed me how pride had crept into my heart, and how I needed to pray the same way. So again, I was humbled by it.

Wow, so now I see where you're going with this, really. I mean, that was the thing about Mary's heart, that it was so humble, which of course was one of the reasons God chose her, because in spite of everything that would happen, she still said, right, I'm the Lord's servant. Yeah, that's exactly it, and think about what God's word says about this. It's so important to him that both Peter and James quote the same verse out of Proverbs in their own writings, but in Proverbs 3.34, so it's three times in the Bible, God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Or think about Psalm 138 6 that says, though the Lord is great, he cares for the humble, but he keeps his distance from the proud. So man, we want to pray this way, we want to be this way, because we don't want God opposing us or keeping his distance from us, we want him giving us grace and caring for us, so we want to pray like, Lord, help me to be humble. We want to tell him, I'm your servant, and to ask him, how can I serve you today?

What can I do for you and for your kingdom today? If we pray this way, this season, then it will really be Christmas for us. And don't be afraid that God will, you know, zap you if you ask for humility, because he loves that prayer. It's a prayer that's close to his heart, and if Scripture shows us anything, it shows us that God will be with us all the more when we pray, and that's a good thing.

He says that himself. Let me just wrap up with these words from Isaiah 57-15. I live in a high and holy place, says the Lord, but also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.

Wow, that is so, you're right, it's so amazingly helpful, I can hardly wait for the next four, so I'll just close this in prayer. What an opportunity, Lord. You know, I'm sure all of us feel the same way, like, you know, help us to be just humble servants, like, just to hear from you and to know that you were so lowly of heart that you came in a manger, right? And that you came to a young girl that was 13 to show us, you know, what humility looked like in such a way, Lord, help us to see that as we reach out to people with tattoos, or whoever that might be this Christmas, that they would see in us that same spirit that was in you. And we ask this in Jesus' name, Amen. 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. This is the Truth Network.