Means of Grace: Prayer

Has something like this ever happened to you? You thought that you were making some progress in prayer, and then you heard a seasoned mature, perhaps a Christian who had suffered a great deal coming to the Lord in prayer, and you said to yourself, I know almost nothing about what it means to pray. How is your prayer life? Perhaps you're like me and sit down at the kitchen counter or your desk each morning, and you have every intention of devoting special, lengthy time to prayer, but the distractions come.

You get a text or a phone call, or your mind wanders to the busy schedule that you have that day. Perhaps it's time to adjust our thinking about prayer. Let's do that now as Dr. Sinclair Ferguson looks at how Jesus taught His disciples to pray. We're talking at this stage in our studies about what we sometimes refer to as the means of grace, and we've already seen that we shouldn't think of the means of grace as instruments we use in order to get grace, but privileges God has given to us in His grace so that we may know Him better and indeed serve Him well. We thought in the last study about the Bible, and now we're coming to the subject of prayer.

I remember many years ago, I think it must be 40 years ago now, at the privilege of being visited by the senior editor of a major Christian publishing company. And in the course of the conversation, he said to me, we would like you to write a book on prayer. I thought to myself, I would like me to write a book on prayer, but I don't think I'm the man. And so I said to him, you know, I think there must be other people who would do it better than I would. He said, well, would you like to suggest somebody? I suggested a rather well-known name.

He gave a little smile. He said, we asked him, and he declined as well. Do you have another suggestion you might make? I made a second suggestion of someone else who is very well-known.

He gave the same little smile and said, we've asked him, and he declined. He said he didn't really think that he was ready to write a book on prayer. And so it went on and on, and I never did see him publishing a book on prayer. And the experience was, in a sense, an encouragement to me, because many Christian people tell me that they find prayer difficult. But sometimes they erroneously assume that because somebody seems to be an older Christian and a wiser Christian, they therefore find prayer easy. Now, of course, there are seasons in life when prayer is easier than at other times. But we need to understand that when we find prayer difficult, first of all, we are not on our own. And we're not on our own in the sense that Paul says, for example, in Romans chapter 8, there are times when we neither know how to pray nor what to pray for. Now, this is not your pastor. This is not your favorite Christian.

This is the Apostle Paul. There are times when we have cries in our hearts that words cannot express, and we simply do not know how to pray. So we should not despair if we feel, I am finding it difficult to pray. Paul goes on to say, you need to know that in those seasons, the Spirit Himself makes intercession for the saints with groans that words cannot express. And he's giving us this wonderful picture of what it means to know God and to be in fellowship with Him as our Heavenly Father, that He looks upon us in our weakness. And He doesn't, as some super spiritual Christians sometimes do, despise us because we feel that we are not able to pray well. Rather, He sends His Holy Spirit to catch us up in this mysterious way into His purposes. And He says, my child, even although you cannot articulate to me what is in your heart, I am drawing you to myself by my Holy Spirit because I want you to participate in the work that I am doing in the needs of the world and the needs of the church.

So first of all, we should not be discouraged because the Spirit will come to our help. There's another reason not to be discouraged, and that is because the apostles apparently found it difficult to pray. Or at least when they listened to Jesus pray, they must have felt they did not know very much about prayer at all. And so they came to Jesus. You remember at the beginning of Luke's Gospel, chapter 11, Jesus was praying in a certain place and when He finished, one of His disciples said to Him, Lord, teach us to pray as John the Baptist taught his disciples to pray.

And you can see what's happening. It may have happened to you. You thought that you were making some progress in prayer and then you heard a seasoned, mature, perhaps a Christian who had suffered a great deal coming to the Lord in prayer and you said to yourself, I know almost nothing about what it means to pray. I think it was like that with the disciples.

And Jesus does something wonderful. Instead of saying to them, how long have you been listening to me pray and you still don't know how to pray? Sometimes preachers can be like that when they speak about prayer, can't they?

You're not doing well enough. No, Jesus apparently sits down with them and He says, when you pray, pray like this. And He teaches them what we call the Lord's Prayer in Luke's version, Father hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, give us each day our daily bread, forgive us our sins for we forgive others who are indebted to us and lead us not into temptation. And as we've already seen, it's a very interesting feature of this prayer that it looks as though Jesus expected His disciples to pray this prayer every day. Now, I know there are super-spiritual Christians who are way beyond the Lord's Prayer, but it's usually because they haven't noticed that they need to pray each day for their daily bread.

As a matter of fact, they're way beyond praying each day for their daily bread because they're quite capable of providing it for themselves. So there's something humbling about this prayer and there's something true about this prayer. And the reason that's so is because this is not only a model structure for our praying, but it's a model structure for the way we live. And it really underlines for us that praying is not an isolated spiritual exercise. We pray and we live in two different compartments. The truth of the matter is we live as we pray and we pray as we live. And so the Lord's Prayer is not only a basic manual of instruction about how to pray, it's a basic manual of instruction about how to live for God's glory in order that we may learn what it means to pray.

And we should never lose sight of these two realities. So what I want us to do is just to think about this Lord's Prayer to refresh ourselves. Remember what I said at the beginning about Jack Nicklaus, the golfer. I'm sorry for those of you who are not golfers to bring in this golfing illustration again.

Going to his coach while he himself is the greatest golfer in the world and saying, Mr. Grout, teach me how to play golf. And we really do need to keep on returning to the Lord's Prayer so that we too may learn to say to Jesus the great prayer, the one who ever lives to make intercession for His people. Lord Jesus, teach me all over again the fundamentals of prayer so that I may not only examine my own prayer life, but so that the things I'm praying for really conform to Your design and so that I can build on the foundation that You have laid. Now, there are many ways to think about this.

I want us to think about it in three different ways. First of all, the way in which the Lord's Prayer encourages us to have a right attitude in prayer. Now, of course, the Lord's Prayer is given to us in Luke's Gospel, chapter 11, and also in the middle of the Salmon on the Mount.

And in the Salmon on the Mount, it's in a very interesting context. It's within the context of knowing God as your heavenly Father. And Jesus says, when you come to know God as your heavenly Father, two things begin to happen. One is you begin to be delivered from hypocrisy, that is pretending to be something you're not.

How does that happen? Because you know that your heavenly Father knows everything about you. He knows the worst about you. And if you can come to Him, then you have no need to pretend to anyone else that you are something different or better than what you really are. And the other reality that it delivers us from is anxiety.

If you know your heavenly Father, then you know, says Jesus, that He will take care of you. And for that reason, when we come to God in prayer, simplicity is of the essence. We don't need to use big complex words. There are no big complex words in the Lord's Prayer. Jesus brings us down to the absolute essentials in which we're saying, Heavenly Father, I want your glory to be seen, and I need your help.

And that's what Jesus goes on to teach. There is an attitude that we have in prayer, and there is an approach that we develop in prayer. When you pray, say, Father, hallowed be your name, or as we more customarily have it in Matthew's version, our Father, which art in heaven.

What are we doing there? We're recognizing the two realities about the nature of God. First of all, that He is a dear Father, and secondly, that He is in heaven. And because He is our Heavenly Father, it is of the essence that we honor His majestic name. To put it this way, if we do not seek to sanctify the name of God, it's really an indication that we don't really know who God is. I hope we have come through the period in evangelical history in the last twenty years or so when the sign it seemed to be to some people that you really knew God is that you would express yourself to Him in all kinds of chummy ways, which was a real indication you didn't know who God was at all. It had never really crossed your mind how great and glorious He was. Even at the human level, it never dawned on you that you are talking to the Creator of this amazing universe, and you are reducing Him to your own level.

So while there is an intimacy, there is never a false intimacy. It's always Heavenly Father, hallowed be your name. And it's interesting the way Jesus encourages us, especially I think in Matthew's version, when you pray, say, our Father. That means that we pray together.

But you know what's really interesting? It's Jesus who teaches us to pray, our Father. Do you understand what that means? That means that when you come to know God in Jesus Christ, your Father is His Father. Everything that you see about the relationship which Jesus had with His Father is the relationship into which He is inviting you. It's not that He is one Father to the incarnate Lord Jesus and a different Father to you.

He's one and the same Father. And so Jesus teaches His disciples, when you pray, say, our Father. I wonder if you've ever noticed this, that when Jesus prays with one exception, He always calls God Father.

You know what the exception is, don't you? It's His prayer on Calvary, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? When He apparently had no consciousness of His Father's love for Him, but only a consciousness of being forsaken in His humanity by His Heavenly Father.

And yet there's a connection between these two, isn't there? It's only because He sensed Himself to be forsaken, because He took our place, that it's possible for Him to say, I have done everything that is needed for you now with Me to come and say to the God of the whole universe, when I come to you, I call you as Jesus called you, our Father who is in heaven. So there's intimacy in prayer, and that intimacy in prayer is a tremendous encouragement to pray because He is our Father, because as our Father, He's promised to provide for us. And it's because He has promised to do these things that we're able to come to Him with confidence and ask for these things. Those of you who have had children, especially when they're young if they've had any wisdom, they've known how to deal with you if you're a father. They say, Dad, we want this, and you know you're not getting that. And they say, but Dad, we need this, and you say, well, I need does not mean you get. But then if they say to you, but Dad, you promised, Dad, you promised, then you have placed yourself under obligation to give them whatever it is they ask because you promised to do so. And this is the wonder of prayer that the heavenly Father has placed Himself in His Word under obligation to give us certain things, to provide for us certain blessings. And so amazingly and daringly and humbly we're able to come to Him and say to Him, Father, you promised. You sometimes see that in the prayers of the Old Testament saints, don't you? They are not praying out of their own imagination, let me think up what would be good for God's kingdom. They are coming to God sometimes in dire circumstances and saying we cannot understand these circumstances, we cannot explain them, but our God you made these promises.

And so we come to you on the basis of these promises and we ask that you will keep them. That's actually the prayer of faith that James speaks about that sometimes I think people misunderstand. Now you remember how he says that the effectual prayer of a righteous man avails much, and he uses Elijah as an illustration. Elijah prayed and the heavens were closed, there was no rain.

Elijah prayed again and the rain came. And people say, that's the kind of prayer we need, we need the prayer of faith. Well, what is the prayer of faith? The prayer of faith was just Elijah coming to the heavenly Father and saying, heavenly Father, it's in Your Word, it's in Your promises that if we rebelled like this, the heavens would be closed, they would be as brass, the earth would become a famine.

Now, great God, great covenant-keeping God, I'm coming to you and I'm saying to you, God you promised it would be so, so may it be so. And it's in this that he was confident, not because he had unusual measures of faith that enabled him to imagine great things that God could do, but because he had faith that took hold of the promise of God, was able to come to God and say to Him, You are our Father and you promised. And then the faith to believe that if he had promised and if Elijah asked, then it must be so.

What does that teach us? Well, among other things, it teaches us we need to get to grips with the promises of God. And that's actually what the Lord's Prayer does. There is nothing in the Lord's Prayer that does not focus on what God has promised to be and to do.

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. And how can we pray that with confidence? Well, because look at what's happening in the church, there are marvelous things happening in the church.

Well, what do you say when there aren't marvelous things happening in the church? No, you pray your kingdom come because God has promised to bring in His kingdom. Your will be done because God has promised that His will will indeed be done. And so we need to understand not only this attitude that we have in prayer and this general approach that we have in prayer, the great fathers of the church down through the Reformation fathers understood this, that prayer needs to be directed by the Word, and therefore prayer will be fed by the Word.

Sometimes people say, well, I just asked for anything I want, and I know that He will hear. But God is not your servant. What we need to learn to pray for is what God has promised to do. That's not always what you hear in gatherings for prayer, is it? So often we are focused on what we think is important, and it's not so often that you hear people today coming and saying, and Lord, we come to you about this because this is what you have promised to do. And therefore we look to you to keep your promise.

Father, we're like little children coming to their daddies and saying, but Dad, you promised and we're going to hold on to you until you fulfill your promise. Then I want you to notice some of the things that we need to ask for in prayer, and there are several of them obviously. The first is our need for daily provision. Give us this day our daily bread. If you say the Lord's Prayer in your church, you say that every Sunday and I wonder how much of it registers. I mean, after all, why are you praying for what's lying there in your refrigerator or in the freezer or in the grocery store?

Why should that be the case? And the answer is not that the people in Jesus' time were incapable of making and having bread. It was that Jesus understood the bread you eat will do nothing unless God sanctifies it to your nourishment.

And that's broadly applicable, isn't it? This is a prayer for the blessing of God upon the necessities of our life that will nourish us in such a way that we'll be able to live for His glory. You could apply that, for example, to every spoonful of medicine you take. It will not help you unless God in His sovereignty sanctifies it to you, and you know that. And so we need to learn this daily dependence on God. And then there's our need for pardon as we pray that God will forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors.

And you see the logic of what, I mean, have you ever thought about what you're actually asking for there? You have the boldness to say to God, God, find somebody else who will pay my debt because it must be paid. You're really praying what David prayed in Psalm 51, O God, there is no sacrifice for this sin of mine. Find another sacrifice. In essence, what you're saying to God is, O God, send your son to die on the cross so that I don't have to die forever in eternal hell. So, this is an amazing prayer. And you see, when we grasp it, we understand why it is that we also pray as we forgive those who have sinned against us.

When we realize what He has done to bring us forgiveness, then how can we possibly withhold forgiveness from others? And then, of course, lead me not into temptation. Don't bring me to a test that I'm not able to bear because I'm so conscious of my weakness, and I know that you will deliver me from evil. I read a book when I was a very young Christian by a Norwegian physician, I think he was, named O. Halasby, and he begins it by saying, prayer is weakness. Prayer is weakness. My dear friends, that's the church's greatest problem in the West. We don't realize how weak we really are, and therefore we pray so little.

And that's my problem as a Christian. I think I can do it, and that makes me prayerless. And it's only when I realize how dependent I am on Him that I'll learn to pray. So we want to say, Lord, teach me how to pray. It's so true, isn't it? By and large, much of the Western Church has experienced decades of peace and comfort, and it's resulted in a lack of prayer. We've forgotten that we are weak and needy. Dr. Sinclair Ferguson has pointed us back to the importance, indeed the essential nature of prayer today.

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