How To Pray And Not Hurt Yourself

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 bestselling 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. It's Quitters Day, the day most folks give up on their New Year's resolutions. So how about it?

How are yours coming along, especially the resolution to pray? So James, where do you want to go with this? Oh, wow. What do you mean?

Well, we're looking at them saying, well, God's judging you for not having a child. And Luke tells all about it in the first chapter of Luke. And it's an amazing story. You know, Zechariah is a priest, and he's going in to offer incense at the temple. And as he does, an angel appears to him. And you remember some of the story, right?

Oh, yeah. Well, you know, Zechariah is like anybody. He's going to hit the deck, you know, when all of a sudden something like that happens. He's afraid. And the angel gives him great news, like, it's a boy. We talked about it before. Yeah, and the way he says it is, you know, do not be afraid.

Your prayer has been answered. But it's what Zechariah says after that, that really gets me. Keep in mind, this is the angel Gabriel, okay?

And Zechariah turns to him and says, how can I be sure of this? As I would say, that was a dumb question. And so you're going to be dumb for a while.

Right? He's not going to speak for nine months, you know. And that's, just think about it again. This angel, no one less than the angel Gabriel, who has got to be fearsome to look at. But still, in spite of all of that, Zechariah says, I'm not so sure I believe you, you know.

And to me, that shows you where the injury happened. Because Zechariah and Elizabeth had been praying for years and years and years that they would have a baby. And so the angel Gabriel shows up with this wonderful news. And, you know, your prayer has been answered. And he's probably at that point thinking, well, what prayer? Because the prayer was made so long ago. But when an angel shows up and gives you wonderful news, you know, think about it.

The proper response is, yes sir, or thank you. Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah, you're right. I mean, just think about it. He's talking to an angel.

That doesn't happen every day. And the angel's giving him a message from God that, you know, what the angel means is, the word angel itself means a messenger. And so obviously, you know, this has come from God. And Zechariah is a good man who's standing in the presence of God, you know, in the temple, you know.

How is he going to respond to the message he's given? Well, not so sure I believe you. That is not the right answer.

Yeah, no, it's not. But we can relate to it, can't we? I mean, sometimes, I mean, yeah, we pray and pray and pray about things.

And then maybe nothing seems to happen or the very opposite seems to happen. And it's like, God, what are you doing here? And what happened, I think, is that in part of his soul, even though he was a good and faithful man, Zechariah stopped believing that his prayers mattered a long time ago. And, you know, that's, again, why I think the first words out of Gabriel's mouth were, your prayer has been answered. But you can see Zechariah in verse 18 kind of trying to explain it all the way.

Well, I'm an old man, and my wife is well along in years. So he gives all of these practical reasons. And it's like they weren't staying open to God. So how can we prevent this from happening in our own lives, James? Well, again, this is the challenging thing, because Luke tells us Zechariah was a righteous man. I mean, he's a good man. He's a priest. He's serving God.

But as I said a moment ago, it's like he's not staying open. He's not keeping that sense of wonder about what God alone can do. And that can be hard sometimes. And in saying this, I don't want to be insensitive to the heart rending circumstances that occur, that sometimes God allows, and we pray, and we pray, and then still the circumstance doesn't work out. But I think behind us, the real question is, are we letting God have our hearts in the middle of that?

You know, we have to take the time to not just go through the motions, the rituals, if you will, but to sit down in God's presence and to seek his heart and to pray, Abba, Father, I do not understand this, but I want to trust you. I want to love you even in this, so help me, help me get through this wilderness, because that's where it really is. And it's in the wilderness places that God meets us and helps us unlike any other place.

Because we come to understand that we have nowhere else to turn. Wildernesses can also be places of temptation, you know, where we turn to that which is less than God for comfort and, you know, make our golden cows out of whatever we can lay our hands on. But as my friend Soshi Dixon pointed out in a recent Our Daily Bread, some of the most intimate moments of worship and God recorded in Scripture took place in the wilderness.

Think of Moses and the burning bush or on top of Mount Sinai or David betrayed and on the run in Psalm 63. He reaches back to the times God has been good to him and he says, because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you, I will praise you as long as I live, because you are my help, I sing in the shadow of your wings, I cling to you, your right hand upholds me. So let's, let's pray. Father, would you help us just to have faith, just keep putting one foot in front of the other, and to worship you, to humble ourselves before you, to affirm yes, you are the best thing in my life and I love you. Lord, thank you that through your spirit you can keep us there. So keep us close, we pray. We thank you that you are faithful 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.