How to Pray B

How my prayers affect the sovereign God is a mystery. But I do know that the effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. Somehow, in some way, the sovereignty of God and the will of man in prayer connect.

That's a mystery, and I don't know how they do it. I just accept the fact the Scripture says it is. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson. On today's broadcast, you will hear John MacArthur in a unique, small group setting, answering questions from members of his own church on the topic of prayer.

These are perhaps questions you've wrestled with in your own life. And now, if you'd like more resources on prayer, I would also encourage you to visit our website after the lesson. You'll find it at GTY.org. We have numerous sermons and blog articles there that explain what prayer is and how you can pray effectively. But for now, stay right here as John MacArthur continues his series titled Spiritual Boot Camp.

And here's the first question from today's Q&A session. You'll also hear John's response. On the asking the will of God, do you kind of tack that one on like in Jesus' name?

Is that what you're saying? Or, you know, like some people, every time they pray, they go, Lord, if it's Your will, and kind of got the idea that they really don't think it is, but they're going to pray it anyways, would you explain what you mean by asking the will of God? By asking the will of God, I think you are acknowledging that whatever God would want to do would be best. Now, in a very practical sense, there may be some times when God gives you what you ask for even though it isn't the best.

The illustration, number one, would be Saul. The people kept begging God over and over and over and over for a king, and they got one, and he was a bummer. And it was God's way of saying, you're better off to do it my way to start with. So it may be that one way God could teach us a lesson would be to give us what we want, but we really don't want that. In your prayer, honestly and objectively, you really do want God's will because God's will is the best thing. So I think that's the idea of it.

Okay? At the first point you asked, you said that prayer moves God to act. Would you explain how I can move God to act? Well, I'm only responding to Scripture, just exactly how that works. In other words, how my prayers affect the sovereign God is a mystery.

But I do know that the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. I do know, for example, in the Old Testament that God says, I am going to wipe out Israel. And then what happened? Moses starts praying, no, no, God, don't do that, don't do that. And what did God do? God spared them. In other words, somehow in some way the sovereignty of God and the will of man in prayer connect.

That's a mystery and I don't know how they do it. I just accept the fact that Scripture says they do. Incidentally, the mysteries are important because they let God be God. Two things that I'd like you to explain that I hear people use in prayer very often, pleading the blood of Christ and praying to bind Satan, they're common practices.

Would you comment? Well, both of those are ridiculous. And pleading the blood of Christ, I don't even understand what that means. Some people will say to me, well, boy, we were afraid of demons, so we went in this room and pled the blood of Christ in the bedroom and then we pled the blood of Christ in the dining room.

That's ridiculous. You've reduced yourself to magical formulas. You're acting like a witch or a warlock.

You're reducing things to a formula. You don't need to beg the blood of Christ into your house. If you're a Christian, the blood of Christ has covered your sin in your life. You know, going around and saying, I plead the blood of Christ, you know, that little verbosity, those words coming out of your mouth have zero effect on Satan.

They don't have any effect on him. What has an effect on what he does is your own holiness, right? Or the practical righteousness of your life, your salvation.

Saying that doesn't mean anything. So the idea of running around and pleading the blood here, there and everywhere is ridiculous. People get into conflict with demons and they think they've got it all figured out and they forget that demons are so much more intelligent than they are that they're dealing with demons who are infinitely wiser than they are and who are liars, you know.

So you can't believe anything they say. There are even demons that claim to have the name Jesus. So the idea that you could go around and say little formulas and clean Satan out of your house or demons is ridiculous. The way to eliminate them is simply by having a pure life and confessing sin before God and that takes care of it. So the idea of pleading the blood is not even a biblical concept. The blood of Christ has already been pled in your behalf and it's washed away your sins and made you a child of God and you're cleansed forever.

There's nothing left to plead. In addition to that, the idea of praying to bind Satan is again ridiculous. What does that mean?

Does that mean that if you say a little formula it's going to happen? Listen, if you live a holy life, Satan is already bound because greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. The Bible simply says, resist the devil and he'll do what? He'll flee from you.

He can't handle you. And incidentally, the binding and loosing of Matthew 18 has nothing to do with the devil. It has to do with discipline in the church and God's agreement with what's being done in the church. So don't reduce your prayer to formulas. That's not the issue. Q.

When you pray, how do you know, like you're praying earnestly for something over and over and over again, how do you know you're not going to get something like a Saul in your life? A. That's a good question. You probably would have to really search your motives.

And I think that would be the key. I think in the case of Israel it was clearly a pride motive. They were seeking a king and this is what they said, everybody else has a king, we should have a king. You know, that's like praying for a Cadillac because everybody on your block has one. There's a selfish motive there. But I would say that if you have examined your motives and your motives are pure, that you have nothing to fear.

Okay? Q. I understand that idols don't have to be graven images, you know, that we'd bow down to. But can you help us understand what some could be in our lives now?

A. Anything that substitutes for God in your life is an idol. Anything that takes precedence over God is an idol. For some people, I suppose, it could be a girlfriend. I mean, I've seen some people totally abandon all their Christian testimony for the sake of some girl that they fall in love with and vice versa. I've seen girls, you know, going in the church and active and aggressive in the Word of God and they get attracted to some guy and all of a sudden, boing, you know, they're gone, long gone. Just set your goals for God. Anything that diverts you to another thing, nothing wrong with boyfriends and girlfriends. That's all right.

We're for that. But the perspective has to be proper. It could be money. Some people bow down at the shrine of money and they worship money. The biggest thing in their life is to make money. Not so much for the money's sake, usually, but for the sake of being able to show the other people that they have the money. It's always a pride thing, much more than it is a materialistic thing in most cases. It isn't that they really want a different car, house, clothes.

It's they want everybody else to know they have a different one that's better than the other. So it can be materialism. It can be even humanism. You can worship the mind.

Some people go to college and all they want is degrees after degrees after degrees so that they can write them all down on a little piece of paper and everybody will think they're bright and you can worship education. It could be anything. It could be sex. It could be booze.

It could be anything, anything that dominates and diverts you from the total goal of submitting yourself in worship to God. It could be even a hobby. It could be a good thing. Golf is a good thing. A lot of people like golf. You go out there and you bat around a little white ball.

It's terrific. But for some people, it becomes God. You know, it's as if they were worshiping a little white ball.

They can't do anything else. That's their whole life. It's like the guy who was playing golf, you know, and funeral went by and took his hat off and he bowed his head. The funeral went by and this other guy says, I didn't know funerals got to you like that.

He said, they don't normally, but it's my wife. So, you know, you can get to the place with any good thing. You can get to the place where even a good thing, a good thing can become a very evil thing.

Does that help? When we pray, does Satan hear our prayers or can he listen to us? Yeah, if we pray audibly, I think he can, but I don't think it matters a whole lot. I mean, it doesn't make any difference in my life.

I was just curious. Yeah, I think he can hear what you say out loud, but I'm not convinced he can hear the prayers of your heart before God. I don't think he's omniscient as we've covered in our series on that. I don't think Satan knows the secret prayer of your heart, but I think he hears what you say. But frankly, the best time for him to hear you would be when you're praying because you're really in the right contact there. So I don't think it makes any difference that he hears.

I hope he hears a lot of things I say. Would you comment on fleeces? On what? Fleeces. Fleeces? Yes. Is that a herd of fleas? Oh, I see, fleeces.

Okay, I got you. You mean putting out a fleece? Yeah, well, that's a good question. People say, well, I told the Lord that if it rained on Tuesday, then I would take that as a sign from Him.

Bad news. Don't do that to God. You know, don't put God in a situation where you forced the issue. That's just exactly what Jesus was tempted to do by Satan. Satan says, now you dive off the temple, and if he catches you, we'll all know you're the Messiah. So you're forcing God into a corner. And so what did Jesus say?

Thou shalt not what? Tempt the Lord thy God. Don't put God in that kind of deal.

And, you know, people will say that all the time. Well, I put out a fleece, and I said, all right, God, if a phone call comes in between two and four in the afternoon, I'll know that that's your will. That's ridiculous because you're forcing God into a corner, and that might not be His timing. Don't ever do that, and don't make a judgment on the basis of some whimsical desire to have something happen in a certain way.

Yes. I understand why God might not answer a prayer for a 240z, but I don't understand if a family is praying for a safe trip, and on their way back there, half are killed, and it's stated it's God's will. I don't understand what the point of prayer would have been, or even constant prayer, because it was going to be God's will for the family to split in the first place. Well, the point was that we have to learn to let God say no.

That's all. And true faith in God will let Him say no. You know, we pray for the safety of our children, but some of our children die. That doesn't cause us to lose faith in God.

That just causes us to say God is sovereign, and He makes the choices. So prayer is still useful because prayer is communing with Him, and prayer then must be offered in His will. We pray, Father, give us a safe trip in Your will. Jesus prayed, Father, save me from this hour. And yet He said, nevertheless, not my will but thine be done. Would you say His prayer did no good? No, because His prayer was if I don't have to go through this, that's what I would prefer, but if you want me to, I will. And I think that's the kind of prayer which says, God, all we can pray as human beings is that you would keep us safe, but if you choose to take us home, then you're God and that's your plan. So He does make a petition and He makes a decision. That's it.

That's it. When you were talking about prayer, you made the comment that it was wrong for us to ask for more love or more peace because we already have this. And I assume that you were referring to us positionally.

We have it all. But then there's the other side, and don't you think that often when people pray for more love or more peace or any of these things that are ours positionally, that they're actually asking that it would be more of a part of their experience without denying the fact that it is their position? Yeah. And that it wouldn't be irrelevant to pray that way. The only thing that I'm saying is that kind of prayer often assumes that you need something that you don't have when all you're really talking about is appropriation.

Right. That the prayer should be framed, Lord, help me to exercise that which you have given me. You know, I just react negatively to the idea that a Christian is incapable of anything and that he has to say, God, I can't do this until you do this for me.

He's done it all for you. It's a question of your willingness to appropriate what is yours. The average Christian thinks that there are things that he still needs, but there aren't really. They're all ours if we will only be obedient to appropriate them. You know, it's like going to your closet and having an unending supply of everything you need.

There's no sense of sitting in the living and praying about it. You might as well go to the closet and use it. So it's that kind of idea. Lord, help me to appropriate what you've given me, just the recognition that you have everything. But it's not wrong to ask Him for the strength to do that. To use it. Yeah.

Right. I have a question concerning the gospel where it's talking about hypocrisy of praying aloud versus praying in the closet and praying the Lord's prayer. Well, you see, when Jesus was talking to the Pharisees and to the Jewish leaders, they wanted to pray in public because that's how they displayed their spirituality.

When they came to pray, they would always put on real cruddy clothes and put ashes all over their head, and they would come down very spiritual with the ashes over their head, and this was their format. And Jesus was saying, you know, that's despicable, because that's pride. If there was anything legitimate to this, you'd go in your closet and pray between you and God. He wasn't saying that always when you pray, go in your closet.

In some places they don't even have closets, you know, so that isn't the point. And sometimes there isn't one around. The point is, He's simply saying as opposed to that public display of pride, there ought to be the private reality of real conversing with God. Does God answer unsaved people's prayers? God is not obligated to answer the prayers of unsaved people. He may choose on some occasion to do that, but normally He would be doing what He would be doing anyway, and they would maybe hit it on the head once in a while.

But if He's driving them to Himself, He may bring those sequence of events. God is not obligated to answer the prayers of unbelievers simply because He says if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord won't hear me. My mother-in-law always says that, you know, she prayed for her kids and everything seemed to turn out okay, which, you know, my husband said that, you know, that undoubtedly her prayers were answered in many ways. But you see, there are just as many people who prayed and their kids didn't turn out all right. So you see, it's just a matter of, you know, they're either going to turn out good or bad, and so you've got a 50-50 shot even if God isn't listening. That's the Lord's will then. It's just this. It's just that an unbeliever has no claim on God, none at all. As I say, some things may happen that appear to be what they prayed for, but you can't say that that's because God is working in their behalf. I didn't know what to say. I just...

Okay, thank you. It's a good question and it's an important question because people often ask that. Now, I believe one prayer that's always answered in the heart of an unbeliever is the prayer of salvation, prayer of faith that seeks to know God and know Christ. I just wanted to ask what suggestions you would have for teaching children to pray?

I think a really great thing to use to teach a child to pray would be just the Lord's prayer, which really should have been called the disciples' prayer. But it's a beautiful thing to talk about the things to pray about. Our Father, God is our Father.

Who art in heaven, that's where He is. Give us this day our daily bread. We pray to God for the food that we eat, the things that we need every day. And there's forgiveness in it.

And then the Kingdom of God to come. I think to use the Lord's prayer is kind of a beautiful way to start to teach a child. Just what are the basic ingredients in prayer?

I was raised up a Catholic and my husband, like when we say prayers before meals, he still says the Catholic prayer. And it's like there's just words to the children and it doesn't really mean a thing. But then he's the one that leads the prayer, so should I just... What does it say?

What is it? Bless this food, O Lord, which we are about to receive from these diabounties through Christ our Lord. That's a good prayer. But it's just repetitious is what you're saying. Right. I mean, like they just say it in, you know... Yeah, you know, you might just, you know... And I know it doesn't mean anything. One of those nice moments when he's got his arm around you just say, hey, you know, I was thinking about, you know, he's probably here tonight, so it won't work.

No, he's not. That's okay. Just say, you know, I was thinking about our prayers. I wonder if the kids really learn what prayer is when they have the same thing. Why don't you just, you know, put on the end of it, Lord, thank You for helping us through the day, or just a little... Make a suggestion that maybe you could add a little thing on the end, or make the suggestion that maybe it would be nice if we could take turns in praying and they could pray maybe some of the things that are on their mind to pray.

I don't know how you can suggest those things, but I think without telling him this is how to do it, you can make those suggestions at the right time and maybe he'll respond to that. I was wondering regarding the area of praying for God's will, kind of along Fleece's line, I guess, that, okay, you know, you talked about in your book about, you know, you go through the aspect of making sure you fill the spirit and you're a Christian and going through all these things, you know, and then you follow your desires, you know. What about the times when you're honestly trying to follow a pattern like that and you're looking in the Word and things like that and you just can't figure out what in the world you want to do, you know, and you're faced with decisions. And because I know I've struggled out several times in my life where I've been faced with something and I've, and in fact I'm in a situation now where I'm trying to, you know, figure out where am I supposed to be going with my life, you know, and what exactly type of ministry I want to go into.

And I think a lot of us face that. And I was just wondering, can you elaborate on your principles for knowing exactly where God wants us and some patterns maybe we can follow to find that out for sure. Yeah, and again, it goes back to this idea of desire. What is the thing you most want to do? You know, if you had your choice, which would you do? If you don't know what you would do, just do something.

Just don't do nothing, you know. Make any choice at that point and let God lead you in it. Personally, I think I would probably choose whichever of the two appeared to be the more difficult.

That's just a personal feeling. Believing that the greater the challenge, the more it will demand of me and the more it demands of me, the better success it's going to be. I find that usually when I choose the easiest of two things that I've chosen for the wrong reasons. That's not always true, but the most difficult thing. I don't know how to answer that other than to say that I don't believe the Holy Spirit wants a Christian in limbo and I believe that the Holy Spirit will show you the right thing.

Do you feel that perhaps He would be leading you through a period of indecision, perhaps to test your faith to show you that, you know, just to trust Him completely? There are times like that. Yeah. Sure, no question about that.

Okay, thank you. I always hear that God helps those who help themselves and like you mentioned, you know, you ought to do something. You shouldn't just be in limbo. How do you draw the line between the point where you are doing something that God can work on and where you're doing so much that it shows that you really don't have faith that He's going to answer your prayer?

That's a very difficult question because I think it would be different in the life of every individual. You know, again, we go back to the simple things. The only thing you can do in your life and you can't get too analytical.

I say this so often, we all get analytical. Am I doing too much of this? Is this the Holy Spirit? Is this me? Who's doing this? Is this the devil? Is this God?

All this stuff. If we would just walk in the Spirit, study the Word of God, commune with the Father and just do and not analyze, we'd be a lot better off. Just accept what's happening. And don't chastise yourself over the idea that, oh, it's probably me and not God doing this.

Just be doing this. And as long as your conscience is clear and your heart is pure before God, don't be concerned with that. You know, it's like losing yourself in the pursuit of Christ and let everything else take its place. I was speaking the other day at a place where they trained psychologists and I was talking about the fact that to the student body that one of the things that really disturbs me is that psychology so often just takes a person inside and leaves them there.

And their whole life is absorbed with themselves and the debilitating aspects of their own self destroys the possibility of ever growing out of that. And you've got to turn people outside, focus on an external thing, the reality of Christ over here and just follow that and don't be analytical because your own mind is not regenerated fully. You still have a mind that's confused by sin and you can't really make those evaluations. So don't let that be a struggle.

Now that may sound vague, but maybe it answers what you're thinking. In praying for a brother that is in some sin, and this brother continues to be in sin, should it come to a point where we should discontinue our prayers or what should be along that line? I wouldn't say so. I would say we could continue to pray for him until such a time as 1 John 5, you know, where he's taken away. But even in that case, I don't think 1 John 5 is saying, stop praying for him. It's just saying it won't do any good if you do.

But you don't know that. That's for God to decide. So I think definitely you should continue to pray for him. Well, this has been good, some practical things, and let's have prayer and then we'll let you go. Thank you, our Father, for bringing us together. Thank you for these, many of them new Christians, eager and desirous of knowing the basics. We thank you for what you're going to do in their lives because they have been faithful to acknowledge this need and to submit themselves to some instruction and some sharing in this area. We pray that you'll use them. We give you the praise and glory for all that has been done and will be done in their lives in Christ's name.

Amen. You've just heard John MacArthur, chancellor of the Master's University and Seminary, answering a broad range of questions about prayer. Today's Q&A was part of John's current series on Grace to You, titled Spiritual Boot Camp. So we covered a lot of ground today answering some of the key questions people always ask about prayer, and John, one of the things I love when we do these questions and answers is the way you always go straight to Scripture to bring out the answer.

The answer is there in Scripture, and although we all love hearing you answer questions, one of the goals of Grace to You is to teach people to be as self-sufficient as possible so that they learn to find their own answers in Scripture. Yeah, and that is pretty much how we live and move and have our being, and you're part of that as well, Phil, because you're a teacher of the Word of God. We think biblically. So our first instinct when a question, a spiritual question is asked or a question about life is asked, immediately verses pop into our heads.

I mean, this is just, this is our life as a man thinks in his heart, so he speaks with his mouth. So, you know, I was thinking about that recently when I see Christian leaders sometimes caught in terrible sin, and I think back. It's amazing how many times my comments about them have been, why don't they use the Bible?

They give answers that might be reasonable, rational, thoughtful answers, but where is the Word of God? And the psalmist said, Your word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin. Scripture controlling our thinking, therefore, prevents our sinning. So it's absolutely critical that we think biblically, and that is true with regard to prayer. It's true with every aspect of our lives.

Everything should be controlled by divine thoughts, and that's what Paul said when he said we want to bring every thought captive to Christ. I'm excited about this series we're doing on Spiritual Boot Camp because it lays the foundations of thinking biblically, and I want to let you know we have a brand new study guide. We haven't produced study guides in 40 years, but we're redoing them. The first new study guide is the original study guide.

Spiritual Boot Camp goes right along with the series we're airing. It's a softbound book. It'll help you dig deeply into the issues we're looking at in this study, how to pray, how to study God's Word, how to function in the church, and how to witness. A suggestion, get a few copies of the study guide to use with your discipleship group in your home Bible study.

It's about 100 pages long. It has questions and answers associated with it right in the booklet itself. You can order the new Spiritual Boot Camp study guide today, available exclusively from Grace To You, and shipping is free on orders placed in the U.S. That's right, and the disciplines John looks at in this study guide are really the heart of Christian living and growth. There's always more you can learn about them, so to order your copy of the Spiritual Boot Camp study guide, contact us today.

Our number here, 855grace, and our website, gty.org. Both new and veteran saints will benefit from the Spiritual Boot Camp study guide. It answers practical questions like, what should I do if I don't desire to read the Bible? Why do I need to join a church?

And how can I teach my children to pray? To place your order, call 855grace or go to gty.org. And if you'd like to download every message in John's Spiritual Boot Camp series, you can get those at the website gty.org. There you will also find previous studies that we've aired, hundreds of lessons that we've yet to put on the radio. In fact, all of John's sermons from 52 years of his pulpit ministry are free to download in audio or transcript format at gty.org. The website is also the place to find and purchase John's many books, including his New Testament commentaries, the MacArthur Study Bible, the systematic theology titled Biblical Doctrine, and much, much more. Our website, again, gty.org. Now for John MacArthur and the staff, thanks for tuning in today, and invite a friend to join you tomorrow for another half hour of Unleashing God's Truth, one verse at a time, on Grace To You.