R492 Learning to Pray

We all could use some encouragement and we'll find it together today in the Bible-based preaching of Dr. Don Wilton and the message, Learning to Pray.

Yes, this is The Encouraging Word featuring Dr. Don Wilton, well-known author, evangelist, seminary professor, pastor, and today he takes us to Luke chapter 18 as we study more about learning to pray. And as we do so, Dr. Don wants to remind you we're here to pray with you and for you as well. Our phone number is 866-899-WORD.

Jot that down, store it in your cell, 866-899-9673. We'll always connect you with one of us, happy to talk, to listen, to pray as we open God's encouraging Word together. We're connecting also on our website at www.tewonline.org. That's www.tewonline.org.

Now today's message with Dr. Don Wilton. I want to read one illustration of this. It's found in Luke chapter 18 and verse 9. To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable. Two men went up to the temple to pray. One a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself.

Now if I may just pause a minute there. In the Greek text that word, he prayed about himself, doesn't mean that there is something wrong, in fact the very opposite is true, about praying for yourself. The Greek text there actually is better read, he was praying to himself. He was having a conversation with himself.

I'm sure we've all done that. You know, we talk to ourselves sometimes. And here this man was giving the impression that he was praying, but the Bible says that what he was doing is he was talking to himself. In other words, the word there literally means that the focus of everything that he was saying was not presenting himself to God, rather he was presenting himself to himself for the benefit of everybody else. If I could put it in these terms, all this man was doing was putting on a show.

Alright, let's read it together. The Pharisee stood up and prayed to himself, God, I thank you that I'm not like other men. Robbers, evildoers, adulterers, or even like this tax collector over here. I fast twice a week and I give a tenth of all I get.

But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but rather he beat his breast and said, God have mercy on me, a sinner. I tell you, said Jesus, that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. May the Lord write his word upon our hearts, learning to pray. In just a moment, we are going to pray together. And I want you before God today, all of us, I want us to be able to talk to God from our hearts according to what God tells us to do.

Let me say some things to you. How can we learn to pray? How do you learn to pray? Well, I think by understanding three very simple truths. First of all, by understanding why God invites us to pray. We've got to understand why.

Now folks, listen carefully. The Bible tells us that there are three fundamental reasons why God invites us to pray. Number one, because we owe it to ourselves to pray. Rather a strange thought, isn't it? God allows you and me to talk to him, and to pray to him, and to share with him, first of all, because he wants us to know that we owe it to ourselves.

Now why? If you flip over the page to 2 Peter 1 and verse 4, let me show you something. 2 Peter 1 and verse 4. Listen to what he says, the apostle. 2 Peter 1 and verse 4. Through these, God has given us his very great and precious promises.

Now watch me for a minute. Do you want to have God's great and precious promises? Watch what God says. He says, through these things, God has given us his very great and precious promises so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

Consider a baby in her mother's womb, linked by the umbilical cord, that blood flow, that growing baby feeds upon his or her mother and grows to the point at birth. It is no different when we become children of God. God says that as his children, as it were, we are connected by a spiritual umbilical cord. And what God is saying to us is simply this. He's saying, you owe it to yourself, not because of yourself, but because of my grace, you owe it to yourself to feed upon the divine nature and character of God. God has said to us, I have made available to you my divine nature.

In fact, dear friends, listen to me this morning. There is a sense in which when you and I do not pray to God, it is as though God is giving to us, spiritually speaking, a plate of food and we are desperately hungry and we say, well, I know I'm hungry and I'm starving and God, you've given me a plate of food, but I'm not going to eat it. God says, look, I've put before you this incredible opportunity to feed and to draw nourishment from my divine nature, from my character.

I'm going to give to you everything. I'm going to allow you to become a partaker, a participant in the very character, the heart and the holiness of God, it's yours. And if you don't pray, my friend, you are robbing yourself of what God has given to you. So why do we pray?

How do we learn to pray? We need to understand why. And the first answer to why is because we owe it to ourselves. Number two, because we owe it to others. We owe it to others. God has made it abundantly clear that there is one thing above all else that we can do for one another is that we can pray for one another. And God says, listen, you will never learn how to pray if you don't understand why.

So here's what it means. If you have a need today and I don't pray for you, guess what I'm doing to you? I'm robbing you.

It's what I'm doing. Listen to what Samuel said in the twilight of his life, 1 Samuel chapter 12 and verse 23. He said, far be it that I should sin against the Lord by failing to pray for you.

Is that not amazing? Now folks, listen, that means if we don't pray for one another, what are we guilty of? Sin. We're sinning against God. Number one, we owe it to ourselves. Number two, we owe it to one another. Number three, we owe it to the Lord to pray. You consider what Jesus Christ himself did right throughout his ministry upon the earth. He did three things, folks. He practiced prayer, he taught prayer and he demonstrated prayer.

He was right out there in front of us all the time. Jesus led by precept and example so that I need to know why I need to pray. God has given me permission.

Why? Because I owe it to myself. Number two, because I owe it to other people. I owe that to my sons and daughters.

Moms and dads, look at me, grandparents. If you did not pray for your sons and daughters this week, you are guilty of sin against God. The greatest thing we can do for one another is to pray for one another. It is one of the most profound and most wonderful things that God has ever given to us.

And so you're going in for surgery this week. I want you to know that we're going to pray for you. That's why the intercessory prayer ministry of this church is so important. That's why when we fill out cards and we send cards to each other saying we're praying for you, that's why it's so important.

We're not going through some kind of ritual or motion just to make people think how good we are. We're doing something that God has given to us. Wives, are you praying for your husbands? Husbands, are you praying for your wives? Are we praying for our elderly parents? Are we praying for one another in our grief? Are we praying for our widows and our widowers? Are we praying for our teenagers?

Are we praying for one another? Listen to what John 14 and verse 13 says, one of my favorite verses of scripture. Jesus said this, John 14 and verse 13. He said, I will do whatsoever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father.

Listen to that, that is incredible. I will do whatever you ask in my name, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, with what purpose? What goal in mine? So that I, the Son, may bring glory to the Father. In fact, in Philippians, God gives to us his blank check. My God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus. This is God speaking.

God says to us, I'm going to give to you. We owe it to ourselves. We owe it to one another. That's the least I can do for you.

That's the least you can do for me. And we owe it to the Lord Jesus, because he loves us so much. Learn to pray, my friend. Number one, by understanding why. Number two, by knowing when to pray. You say, now pastor, when do I pray? When do we pray? Let me give you five times to pray according to Scripture.

You see, folks, listen, listen to me. The Bible says in Ephesians chapter 6 and verse 18, that on all occasions, with all kinds of prayers, they prayed. So there is a sense in which what I'm about to say to you is redundant, because God says pray all the time.

You know what that means? It means when I'm driving down the interstate in my motor car, good time to have a prayer. By the way, I just counsel you not to close your eyes.

And by the way, that's alright. Now when the Bible says that you must close your eyes, do you know sometimes, not often, it's the exception, but sometimes I pray with my eyes open. Do you know why I do that? Because sometimes my mind wonders when I pray, especially when I'm by myself, or even if I'm in a group prayer meeting and it's silent and everybody's quiet and I'm down there and I'm praying quietly in my heart. Do you know what happens to me sometimes, folks? My mind begins to wonder. All of a sudden, in the middle of my prayer, you know, I'm watching a ball game, or I'm riding a bus, or I'm preaching in a prison somewhere, or I'm in the pulpit, or I'm talking to something, my mind just kaboom, boom, boom, boom, like that, it's gone. I'm away, I'm not, I tell you, the next minute, has your mind ever wondered? That's why I open my eyes.

I open my eyes and it brings me back to reality, and I look around and sometimes it helps me to focus, even though that's a strange thing to understand. But that's what I do in order to help me. Now listen to me, God says, you can pray at all times.

But let's get specific in this. Number one, number one, pray at regular times. Psalm 55 and verse 17, in the evening, the morning, the noon, I cry out to God and he hears me.

Pray at regular times. Of course, Daniel's one of my favorite characters. Daniel chapter 6 and verse 10, what does the Bible say? That Daniel went into his room, his apartment, his home, and he prayed three times a day, and we know that Daniel was facing all kinds of circumstances and trials. Three times a day, Daniel prayed.

So pray at regular times. Number two, number two, pray as the Holy Spirit urges you to pray. Now turn with me in your Bibles to the book of Romans. I'm going to show you just a remarkable passage of scope.

Come on, I want to hear the pages turning in here. Romans chapter 8, chapter 8. Very important to look at this together. Romans chapter 8 and verse 26. We need to know when to pray. Number one, at regular times.

Sometimes at bedtime, sometimes at the table, whenever it might be. But number two, pray as the Holy Spirit urges us to pray. Romans chapter 8 and verse 26. In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express, and he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will. Wow!

Isn't that amazing? You see folks, God by His Spirit moves in our hearts and compels us to pray at times that we might least of all think it's good to pray. Many years ago, sitting in my office in New Orleans, I suddenly felt the compulsion to pray for Dr. Clyde Hall, who's manager of the youth section at LifeWay Resources, the Sunday School Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. I didn't know where he was, I just prayed for him. I wrote him a note. Two months later, he saw me and he said to me, Don, let me tell you what happened on that Friday at 12 o'clock US time.

I was in the Philippines. We went into a bad place. We got captured by some terrorists who were armed with guns and everything else, and we were taken to this place and they were threatening to get violent with us and even to execute us.

And exactly at 12 o'clock US time, the leader of this group walked in, took our blindfolds off and told us to get out of there. Now, folks, listen to me. I'm not going to claim anything, but I am going to say to you that we owe it to ourselves and we owe it to one another and we owe it to the Lord to pray.

Forgive the interruption. We'll be back with more of today's message on how we are growing and learning to pray with Dr. Don Wilton in just a moment. But if you haven't been to our website lately, you've missed out on a wonderful new book from Charles Stanley called Courageous Faith. Now, you know, Dr. Stanley and Dr. Wilton have been friends for a good long time here, decades now, and this book is just one of those that we just felt like we had to make available to you. If you'd like to get details, Courageous Faith, along with Dr. Wilton's message, Pressing Forward, are a wonderful combination of resources that are available right now on our website at TEWonline.org. As a matter of fact, if you don't want to wait until the end of the program to visit the website, you can even give us a call. Our phone number, 866-899-WORD, will also connect you with one of us. Happy to give you the details on how you can get a copy of this fresh book from Charles Stanley called Courageous Faith and the message from Dr. Don Wilton, Pressing Forward, both available on our website at TEWonline.org or by calling 866-899-9673. Now, back to today's great teaching with Dr. Don Wilton. When? Regular times. Second, at the urging, at the prompting of the Holy Spirit.

I know moms and dads, grandparents. You know when all of a sudden you just have this sense in your heart to pray for your son, your daughter, your friend? Just do it. Just pray. God speaking to you. Number three, when care and trouble press us. Care and trouble come upon us which can be manifest in so many different ways.

Psalm 50 and verse 15, the psalmist said, Call upon me in the day of trouble and I will deliver you. In Acts chapter 16 and verse 25, Paul and Silas found themselves in prison. They were in trouble. What did they do? They prayed. God came upon them. God spoke to them. God blessed them.

God delivered them. Number four, pray at a time of special needs. Now folks, every one of us here today has special needs. I don't know what it might be. Maybe I do, maybe I don't.

Maybe nobody else knows that. But pray to God. Let me show you. Turn with me to the book of James, just before 1 Peter. The book of James in chapter 5. I want to show you a remarkable verse of Scripture. James chapter 5.

Listen to this. Folks, this passage of Scripture will revolutionize your life. It will change the course of your life. It will give you meaning in life.

James chapter 5 and verse 13. Is any one of you in trouble? Alright, hold on now. Everybody look at me. I don't want anybody to raise a hand. I don't want anybody standing up here.

But I'm going to ask this question. Is there anyone here today who is in trouble? Is there anyone here today? That word trouble there means are you facing surgery?

Have you been diagnosed with a sickness? Are you going through something? Is there anyone here today? That's what the Bible says.

Is there anyone here today? Marriage is in the rocks. And by the way, that word trouble is not just negative, it's positive. Maybe you've been blessed with so much and you don't know what to do with it. Maybe God has just done something for you and you want to just you want to turn to Him.

Listen. Is anyone of you in trouble? He should pray.

Is anyone happy? Let Him sing songs of praise. Is anyone of you sick? He should call on the elders of the church to pray over Him and anoint Him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well.

The Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. God says that of me. God says that of you. God tells us that He has allowed us by virtue of our connectedness into the divine character of God to be effective as we pray for ourselves and for one another. That is unbelievable.

Unbelievable. Number five, pray together with others. There's another time, according to Scripture. Matthew chapter 18, Acts chapter 1. They all join together. If you go into the book of Acts and you go back to Acts chapter 1 and you go right through the Scriptures, you're going to find time without number that the church came together and when they came together, they prayed together and when they prayed together, God moved in amongst them in a big way.

God began to reveal Himself to them. If you've just had a baby born in your home, the greatest thing you can do is pray for that baby. You've got a child going off to college and they've grown up on you and they're leaving first year.

The greatest thing you can do is pray for them. I had a young person come to me this week and say to me, Pastor, you sure took the fun out of going to Myrtle Beach. I said, well, Rudy, toot, toot, toot. I said, what did you hear me say? Did I tell you not to go to Myrtle Beach?

He said, no, sir. I said, let me tell you, I wish I could go with you. Myrtle Beach is a great place to be.

It's the best fun of your life. But I am going to pray that when you do go to Myrtle Beach, that you don't come back in pieces, that you don't come back as a destroyed life, that you don't come back for the sake of a few days of pleasure with pieces that are broken and scattered that you are going to spend years trying to recover from. So what can I do? I cannot go with him to Myrtle Beach, but I'll tell you what I can do. I can pray for him. And not only can I pray for him, he can pray for himself.

He can ask God to do for him what nobody else can do, and God will move in. We are praying for the families. We are praying for the joy of the Lord. We are praying because God said we can do it.

So the final question is this. If we can learn how to pray by understanding why and by knowing when, I think we can learn to pray by practicing how to pray. Four key words we must pray humbly, humbly in the presence of the Lord.

Number two, we must pray simply. You see, God said that when we talk to him, we just talk to him. Lord, could I share with you about the pain in my leg today? Lord, could I talk to you about my son? Lord, I have a burden in my heart. Lord, I feel so lonely. Lord, I had my husband for 55 years and he's gone to be with you.

I know time passes by, but I'm hurting so much. I'm so lonely. Lord, can I talk to you about that? Lord, I'm struggling to make ends meet and I want to talk to you because I need to draw from your divine nature, from your character.

I need something more than Charles Schwab right now. Lord, I need you. Lord, can I tell you about my desire to play ball at college? Lord, I know that I did well at school and Lord, I'm going down to Myrtle Beach with a group of my friends and we're going to have a good time, but Lord, your word is spoken to my heart and I love you. Lord, last Sunday at graduation, Sunday, I walked down this aisle. I've drifted away from you, Lord. I've been fighting against you, but last Sunday I made a recommitment of my life. Lord, help me to make it through the day and help me to stay close to you and help me not to be pulled aside by all these things. Talk to the Lord.

We can talk together. And I want you to know today just how very much I love you and how much I pray for you, my friend. I pray for you. I pray that the Lord would just get all over you, that He'd bless you.

Would you bow your heads with me for a moment? As Dr. Don leads in this time of prayer and dedication, perhaps you would open your heart to what you've been hearing throughout this day. Not only do we owe it to ourselves to spend time in prayer, but we also pray that as we open our hearts to communicating with God that we would realize He's using this broadcast to communicate with you as well, to let you know that He loves you.

He has a plan for your life, a place for you in heaven, and an opportunity in this life to make a difference like never before. I pray that you've been listening to Dr. Wilton and he's been teaching and preaching from the pulpit, but now as he steps into the studio, would you open your heart to what Dr. Don wants to share with you next? Are you ready to give your heart and life to the Lord Jesus Christ? Why don't you pray this prayer with me right now? Dear God, I know that I'm a sinner, and I know that Jesus died for me on the cross. Today I repent of my sin, and by faith I receive you into my heart. In Jesus' name. My friend, I welcome you today into the family of God.

This is exciting news. If you just prayed along with Dr. Don Wilton to give your life to Jesus Christ or perhaps to rededicate your life to Christ, you need to know that we stand ready, along with the angels in heaven, to celebrate, to rejoice with you, and to walk with you in the next steps of growing in your faith. The number again is 866-899-9673. Psalm 17-6 says, I call on you, my God, for you will answer me. Turn your ear to me and hear my prayer. The encouraging word has a 24-hour live prayer line. You can call 866-899-WORD. That's 866-899-9673 and talk to a real person who will be glad to pray with you. The encouraging word is a viewer and listener-supported ministry. Thank you for listening today.

Our time's almost gone, but I want to remind you about the daily devotional from Dr. Don Wilton. It's available. You can sign up right now on our website at www.tewonline.org. You'll receive an email every morning, or if you'd rather receive a hard copy, that's available as well. You can sign up online at www.tewonline.org here on the encouraging word.