With Christ in the School of Prayer - Life of Christ Part 38

Well, was it cold enough for you last week?

Oh, man. How cold was it? Well, it was cold enough that the federal government actually closed for a day. I wonder if we saved any money.

Do you think we saved any money by closing for a day? It was so cold that the Statue of Liberty was closed, so cold that Milwaukee couldn't brew beer. It was so cold, this is true, that at the Minnesota Zoo, the Siberian tigers moved inside. That's how cold it was. Banks were closed, ATMs ran out of money, Kentucky closed all of its interstate highways. In Louisville, TWA ran out of de-icing fluid for its airplanes. And as one person said in USA Today, it was colder than a boss's heart.

I'd never heard that one. Ooh, yeah. Now, you know, not every industry in the country suffered from it. Actually, there were three industries that did a booming business in the cold.

I mean, they had record sales. Want to guess what they were? I'll give you a hint. The first one was towing companies. Oh, yes, all right. Want to guess what the other two were?

What do you think? No, the second one was pizza delivery. Domino's and Pizza Hut wiped up last week here.

And you know what the third one was? Video rental shops. Blockbuster did record sales for all the kids that were home. I ran into one lady in the foyer, said all my pipes broke, you should add plumbers to that list, because that plumber charged me a fortune. And I think we should probably also add for this week, all of the family therapists who are going to be busy because moms were home with the kids all last week. You think so?

I do. Well, you know, even though we kind of joking about it, the weather actually was kind of dangerous and even deadly for some people. The story I love is the one about the 91-year-old woman in Chicago. Her name was Victoria Morin, who lived in an unheated apartment. And because of the cold, her pipes burst and water started filling her apartment. Well, she didn't have a telephone. She was 91 years old, so she couldn't get up and get out and get any help.

And so, having nothing else to do, Victoria Morin fell on her knees and just began to pray. When rescuers finally found her, she was frozen to the ground in this water. I mean, literally frozen to the ground. She had water all over and she looked like the tin man.

You know what I'm trying to say? I mean, she couldn't move anything. And they thought she was dead, frozen stiff to the ground, except that when they talked, they could see her head moving a little bit in response to their voices. So anyway, they de-thought her, took her to the hospital.

Actually, she's okay with a little bit of frostbite and a little bit of hypothermia, but she's okay. And when I read that, I thought, when it's colder than a boss's heart out, when you live in an unheated apartment and your pipes break and your apartment's filling with water and you don't have a telephone and you're housebound, that's probably a good time to pray. I find that crises are often what drive people to pray. I find that very few people on cancer wards, very few people in unemployment lines, and very few people in foxholes will ever turn down prayer. And is prayer good at times like this in the crises of life?

You bet it is. But the sad thing is that I think for so many of us, we think that that's the only time we ought to pray, that crisis intervention is the only thing that prayer's good for. And what Jesus wants to do in our passage this morning, what I want to do with you as we talk, is I want to expand our understanding and our scope of what prayer is all about. Prayer has a much broader scope than just crisis intervention.

So let's talk about that and see if we can challenge you to change your daily schedule to include more time for prayer because you understand better what God wants to use it for in your life. Now let's look, verse 1. One day Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples to pray. The Bible tells us that Jesus Christ was God wrapped in human flesh, and if there was ever a person who ought to be able to make it without praying, it ought to be him. But when we read the Bible, what we actually find is that Jesus Christ was a man of prayer, that prayer was part of his regular routine and his regular lifestyle. And we can go through just the Gospel according to Luke, chapter 5, chapter 6, twice in chapter 9, and on we go where over and over again we find Jesus praying.

You can do that in all the Gospel accounts. For Jesus Christ, prayer was not a duty. It was not an obligation. It was not a ritual. It was something he enjoyed doing.

It was a way of life. You say, Lon, how can you be so sure it was something all that enjoyable for him? Well, the answer is that why would these disciples come and say to Jesus, Lord, teach us to pray if his prayer life gave off the impression to them that prayer was cruel and unusual punishment? You know, they would say, oh, yuck, I'm glad he does that. I'm glad I don't have to do that. Let him do the praying.

I don't want to do that stuff. But instead, his prayer life was so real and so vibrant and so exciting that they came to him and said, Lord, we don't know how to pray like that. Can you teach us how to pray like that?

That's a whole different dimension that we know nothing about. Well, in response, Jesus carries on a little prayer clinic here in the next 12 verses. And I want us to look at this. There are three things he does in these verses. Number one, he gives us some principles for how to pray. Number two, he gives us a promise about our prayer life. And number three, he gives us a guarantee about the answers we're going to get.

So let's look at this together. What are the principles for a powerful prayer life? Let's look at verse 2. Jesus said, when you pray, say this, Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive others who sin against us.

And lead us not into temptation. You say, well, not long. Wait a minute. What happened to the rest of it? I mean, what happened to the, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever and all the other words. This is only half the thing.

Where's the rest of it? Well, it isn't here. You're thinking about the form of the Lord's prayer Jesus gave in the Sermon on the Mount way back in Matthew's Gospel.

As a matter of fact, it was almost two years before this that he did that one. And yes, it does have some different words. And yes, it does have some different expressions in it. You say, well then, how could this be? How could you have two different Lord's prayer? I mean, when we stand in church to recite it, which one do we say? Well now, wait a minute.

Time out a second. I think it's really good that Jesus gave two different versions that had different words. Because what that means is that the words aren't magic.

Do you understand what I'm saying? So many places where maybe you've been and where I've been and around the world, people stand up and they say the Lord's prayer and they go through it like a mantra every single week. I'm calling. I'm in heaven.

I'll be there. And you know, we've got to be word perfect. And somehow many people think it's like a rabbit's foot or Aladdin's lamp, that if you rub it just right, it's going to produce all kinds of magical stuff from God. But you see, there's no magic to these words. It's the principles that these words are trying to teach us about how to put together a prayer time that really make the difference.

The words themselves are not all that much important. And so in giving us two different forms, what Jesus is really trying to tell us is that God wants you to take the principles that are in the Lord's prayer and put them in your words, express them from your heart, speak them in your language, talk to God like you talk to a friend on the telephone around those principles. He's not just interested in having you stand up and recite the Lord's prayer by heart time after time after time.

There's no magic in that. You with me? Now, what are these principles that he's given us here in the Lord's prayer? Well, there are four that I want to give you. And I don't have time to really develop them this morning. If you'll go up in the tape area, I have a whole series on the Lord's prayer that I did a few years ago, 10 tapes, you can buy it, say 10 tapes, you got 10 tapes out of this? Absolutely.

And there's probably more. But you can go get the 10 tapes and listen to them. I don't have time to give you more than just a real quick overview. But there are four words I want you to write down. You want to put together a prayer time?

Here are the four key words. Exalt, agree, confess, and talk. Exalt, agree, confess, and talk. Look at the prayer. Jesus says, hallowed be thy name.

That's what he starts with. He starts by exalting God first. By saying, Lord, may your name be lifted up. May your name be honored.

May your name be exalted. In other words, when Jesus tells us to pray, what he tells us is, don't start with our needs first. Don't start with our problems first. Don't start with what we want first.

Start with God first. That's where Jesus started the Lord's prayer. And the reason for that is, as one commentator said, only when we give God his proper place will other things fall into their proper place.

Too often we rush in and we want to start talking about us, us, us, us, us, us, us. But we don't have perspective yet. We need to first think about who God is, and then that adds perspective to our prayer life. So you start with exalting God. Second, we agree.

You say, agree what? Well, Jesus goes on to say next, your kingdom come. And he adds in Matthew's version, your will be done. In other words, when we go to prayer, we need to be willing to agree that we're going to submit to God's will before we ask for anything. That however God chooses to answer our prayers, if it's God's will that God answers with, we agree, Lord, we'll accept your will. We're going to tell you what we want, but we'll accept the will of God.

We're going to submit to you when we begin praying. Third is the word confess. Jesus says, forgive us our sins, for we're also willing to forgive other people who sin against us. Confession is very important.

Now would you notice? We haven't asked for anything yet. Confession is very important because it keeps the channel between us and God unclogged.

It keeps it open. So God is free to respond to our prayers in the kind of powerful way that he really wants to. And you know what? You will find if you get down and you really do a humble and an honest and an authentic job of dealing with your sins and your shortcomings and where you let God down every day, you will find that other people and what they did to you wrong begins to look trivial compared to what you did wrong that day and it makes it a whole lot easier to forgive other people.

I find that Christians who have a very hard time forgiving other people usually are Christians who do a very poor job of examining their own life and confessing, in light of all I examined in my life and do wrong, believe me, what people do to me is trivial by comparison. Fourth and finally, it's now time to talk to God. We've exalted God. We've agreed to submit to his will regardless of what he does.

We've confessed our shortcomings and cleaned out the channel. Now it's time to talk. And Jesus says, there's two things you can talk about. You can say, give me this day my daily need, my daily bread. You can talk to him about what you need for today. And Jesus says, we can say, lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. You can talk about tomorrow and the needs you have for guidance and protection tomorrow.

Those are very legitimate. These are the principles for putting together a powerful prayer life, the skeleton on which you can hang a powerful prayer life. Now there's one other thing I want to say before we leave the Lord's Prayer. And that is, I want us to look at the very first word. Jesus started out by saying, what was the very first word out of his mouth?

What was it? Father. Now father is a word of relationship.

True? A word of relationship. And in the Bible, God tells us that when you trust Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, something very special happens. You become an adopted child of God. You say, I thought everybody was a child of God. No, that's what the rhetoric of this world would have you believe, but that's not what the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches that there are only a limited number of people who are really children of God and you get to be one of them by putting your personal faith and trust in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. John chapter 1 in the Bible says, to all who embraced Jesus Christ, to those people Christ gave the right, the authority to become the children of God.

You see, they weren't before or otherwise he wouldn't have given them the right to become that. Now why does Jesus start with this word father? Because he wants us to understand that prayer assumes this relationship exists. That without this relationship, prayer has no foundation.

That if you want to see God really respond to your prayers, you have to approach him on the basis of a relationship and the relationship comes when you become his child through faith in Jesus Christ. I'm in the office on Tuesdays here and Tuesday afternoon is when I take appointments. If you call and say, I want to see Lon, I want to talk about something, my secretary will say, fine, he sees people on Tuesday afternoon.

And all Tuesday afternoon I go from one appointment to the next, usually half an hour at a time just meeting with people just like you. Now my secretary knows if I get a phone call on Tuesday afternoon when I'm meeting with people, I don't get interrupted. Why?

You say why? The answer is you came in to talk to me about something very important and it's not fair to you to interrupt you. So they take a message.

I don't care who it is, they take a message, except, except for one group of people and that is my family. If my family calls me and they need me, they have direct line. And I will say to you if you're sitting there, would you excuse me for just a second?

I'll only be a moment and I really only will, but it's my family on the phone. I need to take this call. My family know they've got direct line.

No, it doesn't matter what conference I'm in, doesn't matter what meeting I'm in, doesn't matter what I'm doing. If my family needs me, they've got a direct line to get me. Now why is that? How come I'll take a phone call from my children and I won't take a phone call from you on Tuesday? The answer is they're my children and you're not. And I have a special relationship with them I don't have with you. I'm concerned about their needs in a way I'm not concerned about your needs.

I am concerned about your needs, but not like my children because that's a unique relationship. My point is friends, we in God are the very same way, the very same way. If you're here and you've never embraced Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and savior, you are God's creation, but you're not his child. You're not his child. God's children through faith in Jesus Christ are people who have God's ear in a unique way that the rest of the world does not have God's ear. You say, wait a minute Lon, are you saying to me that if I'm not a Christian, God won't answer my prayers? Is that what you're trying to tell me?

No, listen carefully. If you're not a Christian, God may answer your prayers. He may. He has that right and he has that option. But in the Bible, God never obligates himself to answer your prayers if you're not a Christian. He obligates himself to answer the prayers of people who are his children, but he never obligates himself to answer the prayers of people who aren't. He may do it, but he doesn't have to. And so if you really want your prayers answered, then you need to embrace Jesus Christ and become his child through faith in Christ. That's just one of the many good reasons to do it. But if you're here and you've never made a personal decision for Jesus Christ, then everything else I'm going to say about prayer really doesn't apply to you until you make that decision and you've accepted Christ and become his child.

I hope you'll think about that and I hope you'll do it. Well, let's go on. Those are our principles about prayer.

Exalt, right? Agree, confess, and then talk. Now, you say, all right, Long, what if I do that and God blows me off and doesn't even listen to me? Well, that won't happen because of what Jesus says next.

Jesus says, if you're a Christian and you pray, God will listen. And here's why. And he goes on to tell a story.

So what is this promise he gives? Well, it's found in this story. Here's the story.

Let me summarize it. A man went to bed one night. Everything was fine.

All of a sudden he hears a knock at the door and it's a friend of his who just arrived in town about midnight and his friend wants to come in. Now in the ancient Near East, hospitality was a sacred duty. Didn't matter when people arrived or what was going on. You had to show them hospitality. Even today, if you're in an Arab's tent and you're his worst enemy, he's not allowed to do you any harm while you're a guest in his tent.

That hospitality is still paramount in the Near East today. So the man jumps up, but he's not ready. He doesn't have any food. So he runs next door to his neighbor and the host says to his neighbor, hey, hey, you know that banana bread you baked today? I need some of it. I have somebody just got here.

Could I have some of that? And the guy inside the house says, what's wrong with you, man? It's midnight. Everybody's in bed. My kids are in bed. My wife's in bed. I'm in bed. You're going to wake up the baby.

Get out of here. But the host says, no, you don't understand. I got to have some of that banana bread because I got to entertain my guests. You got to wake up and you got to give me some of that banana bread. And the Bible says that even though the guy wouldn't get out of bed just because the guy was his friend, he ends up getting out of bed and giving him the banana bread. Now it doesn't say banana bread in the Bible, but giving him what he needs because the guy kept asking and asking and finally he got up and gave it to him. Now Jesus then finishes the parable by saying, look, look down with me at verse 9. He says, so I say to you, ask and it'll be given to you.

Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened to you. You see the lesson of the parable is a lesson in contrast, contrasting God and this next door neighbor. The point Jesus is trying to make is that God and the next door neighbor are very different. The next door neighbor was just a friend, just an acquaintance. He didn't really have that much interest in the needs of the guy who had had the friend show up, but God is our heavenly father who is deeply interested in everything that goes on in our life. There's a difference. Another difference is that the guy next door was putting his own needs first. He said, I'm in bed. My kids are in bed. I don't care about your neighbor.

Get lost. But God never puts his needs first. He always puts our needs first because we're his children. And finally the next door neighbor, it was an inconvenient time for him, but there's never an inconvenient time for God to answer a prayer.

You see the difference? Jesus is drawing a contrast and saying that God is not at all like this reluctant neighbor and the point is if this host got this selfish, self-centered neighbor to respond at an inconvenient time just by asking him, how much more will our heavenly father respond to us since he's so different from that neighbor if we will only ask him. The promise Jesus is giving us is the promise that says you ask and God will answer. You ask and God will answer. You don't have to kick his door in.

You don't have to beat it down. You ask God's hearts on your frequency and he'll hear you and he'll answer. Say, okay, Lon, got one more problem. Let's say I pray right and let's say God promises to answer. That's good so far, but what if I don't like his answer? I mean, what if he answers, but what he gives me is not what I want and not what I like. I got another problem.

You do. And so Jesus goes on to tell us one more thing about prayer. Not just that God will answer, but Jesus wants to give us a guarantee about the kind of answer God's going to give you.

Look what he says, verse 11. Which of you, if your father, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or which of you, if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, even though you're evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father who's in heaven give the Holy Spirit? And Matthew's gospel says, give good gifts to those who ask him.

You and I are selfish, folks. And yet even as selfish parents, we know how to give good gifts to our children. Now if we as selfish parents know how to do that, how much more will an unselfish, loving, almighty God always do and give what's best to his children? You see, Jesus is saying here that a good father always gives his children what's best for them. A good father never gives his child something that he knows is going to hurt them, knows is going to damage them. No matter how bad they want it or how incessantly they plead for it, he's not going to give it to them.

He's going to give them what's best. I know what my children want. They ask for it all the time, over and over and over and over and over and over again. They want to play video games all day. They want to watch television all night. They want to stay up to midnight on school nights. They never want vegetables to ever appear on their plate. They want to be waited on hand and foot. They don't want to do any chores around the house. They want to lay downstairs on television, snap their fingers, have me bring them iced tea or Twinkies or whatever they feel like eating. I know exactly what my children want. I want to tell you something.

You say, Lon, do you give it to them? Are you crazy? Not on your life.

Not on your life. Girls, you marry one of my guys and I'll tell you, he will know how to wash the dishes. He'll know how to load the dishwasher. He'll know how to vacuum floors. He'll know how to do the laundry. He'll know how to clean the bathroom. He'll know how to cut the grass. And he will know how to put a clean paper bag back in the kitchen trash can after he takes the trash out.

Yes, sir. Now, whether you can get him to do it after he gets married is your problem. But he will know how to do it.

My boys will. And the reason they'll know is because we don't do for our boys what they want to do, what they feel like doing, what they think is best. We do for them what we know is best for them.

We don't give them what they want. And I want to tell you something. God is raising some winners too. We're trying to raise you girls some winners. And God is raising some winners too. And you know how God does it? He doesn't do it by giving us everything we want. He doesn't do it by giving us everything we'd like to have to make our creature comfort level higher?

No, no. God answers our prayers by giving us what He knows is best. It's not always what we want, but it's what He knows is best for us.

Why? Because He's a good Father. And this is Jesus' guarantee when it comes to our prayers. Every prayer as a Christian you pray will be answered, Jesus promised. But it will not be answered in the time and in the way and according to the plan that you've got.

It'll be answered in the time and in the way and according to the schedule that God knows to be best for you. And right now if God's not given you exactly what you're asking for, my dear friend, it's because what you're asking for is not what's best for you. If it were, God would give it to you.

It's not what's best for you. And God loves you too much to do it the way you want if it's not what's best for you. The great commentator J. Vernon McGee, the great Bible teacher, maybe some of you know who he is, said this, and I quote, he said, I've learned over the years that the best answer God has given to some of my prayers was no.

Was no. Are you mature enough yet that you've learned as a Christian that the best answer God ever gave you for some of your prayers was no? Because if He'd have given you what you really would have wanted, it would have destroyed your life. God wants to get us to the point where we're smart enough to realize that.

What have we learned this morning? Well, we got some principles about praying and we've learned God's promise. You pray as a Christian, God will answer.

You ask and you will get. But you'll get, third, you'll get according to what God knows is best for you to resolve the problem that you're concerned about. Now that's our passage, but it leaves us with the question, what?

Let's see if we can answer that as we close. If I were to give you a three by five card and say, okay, I want you to write down the second half of this sentence. Okay, here's the first half of the sentence, you write the second half. The real purpose of prayer is, you write the second half.

What do you think most people would write? The real purpose of prayer is, you know what I think most people would write? I think they would write, the real purpose of prayer is to change things, to change my circumstances, to make things different, to make things better, to change the kind of situation I'm in. Now, does prayer work for that? Yes, it does. Is prayer good for that? Yes, it does. Does prayer change things?

You bet it does. James Chapter 5 says, the prayer of a Christian is powerful and effective and gives us the example of Elijah who prayed and it didn't rain for three years. I'd say that is what I would call a serious altering of the situation through prayer.

Wouldn't you? There was a very interesting article in Time Magazine that related to this back in January of 1992. The article was entitled Talking to God.

Listen to what it said. It said, in an experiment at San Francisco General Hospital reported in the Southern Medical Journal, outsiders were asked to pray for a group of cardiac patients. Even though the patients were not told that prayer was being said for them, the study found that they recovered faster than those in an otherwise identical control group, end of quote. Very interesting, isn't that? Isn't that incredible? Now, this wasn't Christians running this thing, folks. Does prayer change things?

Yes, it does. I'll never forget when my dad was in the hospital a number of years ago down in Atlanta and I flew down to see him. He was very bad and after I came out of cardiac intensive care and he was unconscious, I saw the doctor and the doctor said, I haven't been able to bring myself to tell your mother this because she's so upset, but if you have any final arrangements that you need to make, he said, I would suggest you call and make them.

I said, well, how long do you? He said, I would call today if I were you because he said, I seriously doubt your dad's going to make it to tomorrow. Now, you know, that's doctor language that says your dad's going to die. You know, doctor language.

They've got this other language for everything. Surgery is not surgery. It's a procedure. I know it's not a procedure. It's a surgery.

I know exactly what this is. Well, anyway, that's something else, but this was doctor language. Doctor language. So I went down a little chapel there in the hospital and never forget, I was all by myself. It was late at night and I got down on my knees and I said, now God, you know, my father's heard about Jesus Christ a number of times. I've talked to him about Christ over and over and over and he's never made a decision. If he dies tonight, he's not going to be with you. In your mercy, I'm asking you to give my dad one more chance to hear. Maybe he'll never get out of the bed, but at least bring him around to consciousness enough, because he was unconscious, that at least I get one more shot at my dad.

That's what I'm asking you. And I got a real sense of peace that God said, go home and go to bed. I got the whole thing under control. So I went home and got to bed. I was prepared to stay there, pray all night. God said, go home, go to bed.

So I did. You know, my dad recovered. Not only did he recover, he lived three more years.

And in living those three years, eventually gave his life to Christ before he died. Does prayer change things? Don't tell me prayer doesn't change things. And I'm sure there are many of you who could tell me story after story just like this of how you prayed and God did something in your job. You prayed and God did something in your health. You prayed and God did something with people that you wanted to see come to know Christ. You prayed and God did something in your love life or in your marriage. You prayed and God did something with your children.

You prayed and God did something with your finances. God changes things in response to prayer. But most of us as Christians think that's the biggest and greatest purpose of prayer. It isn't.

You say it isn't? No. No, you see, my friend, the greatest purpose of prayer is not to change circumstances. The greatest purpose in prayer is to change you. To change you. You say, Lon, I don't understand what you mean.

Well, now, wait a minute. Remember we said a minute ago that God has a master plan for your life and that he always answers your prayers according to the master plan he has for your life? Well, everything goes fine until God's master plan cuts across the grain of what you want, doesn't it? And then we got a problem. And the problem is you get angry.

So do I. We get bitter. We get upset. We get stressed out. We lose our joy.

We lose our peace. We get all worked up. We call our friends on the telephone.

Life isn't going the way we want it to go. We go see our therapist. We lay down. We talk about this.

We do all. My friend, wait a minute. Hold, stop a second. That's not the solution for the problem. Prayer is the solution because, you see, the highest purpose of prayer is not to change circumstances. It's to change your heart and my heart, to change our will, to change our desires, and bring them in line with the will and the plan that Almighty God has for our life. See, when our will and God's will are in collision course, the way you resolve that is not in the therapist's office and not on the phone with your friends but on your knees with God because that's where God takes your attitude and adjusts it so it's in line with his. You remember when Jesus went to the Garden of Gethsemane?

Everybody knows that story, I think. The Bible says Jesus went in in anguish. He was grieved. He was troubled. He was sorrowful.

He got on his knees and he poured out his heart to God and he said, God, God, if there's any way this cross can pass from me, let it pass. I don't want to go to the cross. I don't want the pain. I don't want the humiliation. I don't want the suffering.

I don't want the abuse. I don't want to go to the cross. When Jesus came out of the garden, he had a whole different attitude, didn't he? He came out of the garden at peace, calm, resolute, and quietly in obedience to God went to the cross for you and me. Something happened in the garden that changed the way Jesus went in to the way Jesus came out, that readjusted his will and his desires from not wanting to go to the cross to being willing to go without a complaint or without in any way trying to stop it. What happened in the garden that changed him?

Well, what was the only thing Jesus did in the garden? The only thing he did was pray. And friend, this is the greatest aspect of prayer. So often we go into prayer saying, my will be done. But you see, what God does is by the time we come out of prayer, we come out saying, no, Lord, that's wrong.

Your will be done. Prayer is the ultimate attitude adjuster, folks. It's what God uses to change our heart and our will and our desires and bring them in line with his master plan. Now, listen to me. You can't do that driving down the beltway in your car. You can't do that having devotions on the Metro. You can't let God do that in your heart by getting down and saying, now lay me down and say, pray Lord my soul to keep and hopping in bed. For God to do that, it takes time. There are some things that just can't be rushed a la Americana.

And this is one of them. To get everything out of prayer that God has in it, you got to spend some time for God to adjust you like that. And one of the greatest, I believe, shortcomings in 20th century Christianity is our prayerlessness. How little time we really spend alone with God, just us and God, so that God can do through prayer everything he wants to do in your heart and life. I never realized all of that was in prayer.

Well, now you do. So now let me ask you, now what? What are you going to do about it?

Is it going to make any difference in your schedule? Is it going to make any difference in the time you carve out to be with God? Folks, prayerlessness is one of the greatest enemies you have in your life. A prayerless life is a powerless life. A prayerless life is a frustrated life. A prayerless life is a misguided life because you'll miss where God's going if you're not on your knees talking to him about it. A prayerless life is a vulnerable life. You don't spend time with God in prayer and your conscience will get dull and you will do things that you never thought as a Christian you were capable of doing, but you'll do them because with a dull conscience you're vulnerable. A prayerless life is a life full of anxiety and stress and conflict. God doesn't want you living that way. That's why he gave you prayer. But the quick fix, fly by, drive down the road prayer is not going to cut it, folks. Won't cut it. You need time alone with God where God can do everything in your heart that he wants to do.

Let me ask you a question in closing. How much time do you spend all by yourself with God every day? Say, you mean driving down the beltway doesn't count? Doesn't count. Riding on the metro doesn't count? Doesn't count. Praying while I'm brushing my teeth doesn't count? Doesn't count.

Oh. Going to church doesn't count? Doesn't count.

I'm talking you, God, closed door, room all by yourself, on your knees, just talking and listening, no distractions, radio's not on, television didn't go in. How much time? Say, Lon, I'm embarrassed to tell you. Okay, I accept that. It's never too soon to start. Never too late to start. You can start anytime you want.

So why don't you start? You say, well I never realized it was all that important. Well, that's the whole point of this morning.

Isn't it? God has some great things he wants to do in your heart, but he needs time with just you and him. I hope that as a result of being here this morning, you'll reexamine your time schedule and say, you know what? I need to make some time for me and God in here. Not driving my car, not riding the metro, not shaving, not brushing my teeth, but just me and God where I can concentrate and we can be alone.

God help you do that. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, the word of God speaks to the real needs of our hearts and I pray this morning that you would take it and you would speak to the needs of each one of us here. Lord, what we need is time with you.

We don't need more time at the therapist, we don't need more time on the phone bemoaning our fate to our friends. We don't need to commiserate more, we need to pray more. And Heavenly Father, I pray you would forgive us as your children in the 20th century for how little we pray. Lord we've got the quick fix mentality for everything, but teach us that the great men and women of God who made a difference didn't have a quick fix when it came to prayer.

They spent time with you. And I pray Father that many of us here would be willing to change our daily schedules to make sure we get the kind of time with you we need so that prayer can accomplish everything in our life that you want it to. Change the way we live by what we've heard here today Father I pray in Jesus' name, Amen. Amen.