How to Actually Pray, Part 2

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. Nothing in your life should cause you anxiety. There's only one way that can be true, though. That's if you're allowed to pray about everything. Pray about everything in your life, letting your requests with Thanksgiving, let them be made known unto God. What am I supposed to pray for?

Am I supposed to look to God for and depend on Him for? Everything. Summit Life with pastor, author, and theologian J.D. Greer. I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch, and we're excited to be jumping into God's Word with you. Today, we're continuing to walk through the familiar passage of the Lord's Prayer, where Jesus actually teaches us to pray. Pastor J.D. Greer will specifically show us how we can cast our anxiety on God and pray with confidence that He hears us and will answer. If you missed yesterday's program where we began this teaching, be sure to catch up right away at J.D.

Greer.com. But for right now, let's rejoin Pastor J.D. in Luke chapter 11 as he continues this teaching called How to Actually Pray. Let me encourage you to develop the habit, listen, of listening prayer. Most of us think of prayer as only talking. Think of it as a two-way conversation where there's some talking, and there's also some listening while you pray. I know we got to be careful here because there's all kinds of people who feel like they hear things from God and you're like, that's not really from God.

But here's what I know. There are 59 times that the Holy Spirit of God shows up in the book of Acts. 59. Of the 59 times He shows up in Acts, in 36 of the 59, He is speaking. Here's what's frustrating. Frustrating for me is it doesn't usually tell us how He speaks, just that He speaks.

And that's what I want to know. I want to know how He speaks. So Acts 13, too. The Holy Spirit said to the church, separate Barnabas and Saul for the work of the ministry. And I'm like, how'd He say it? Did everybody get like an alert on their phone at the same time? Like, oh, you know, Holy Spirit said, yes.

That would be awesome. That's not what happened, right? How do they know?

I don't know. And I think the ambiguity is intentional because I think there's supposed to be a great deal of humility about what we think we're hearing from the Spirit. Because more havoc has been wreaked in the world following the words God just told me than any other phrase. So I think there's supposed to be some humility about how we think the Spirit is speaking so that when we say, thus says the Lord, we got a chapter and verse to prove it. But you can't therefore use that to say that God no longer speaks to His people on earth, because that's the theme of the entire book of Acts.

And I'm sorry. You're like, well, things are different in Acts than they are now. You cannot convince me that the only book that God gave us that has stories in it of what it looks like to walk with the Spirit is filled with a bunch of stories of people whose experiences have nothing in common with us. He the Spirit prayed through the church in the book of Acts. He's supposed to pray through us today.

So here's my suggestion for you. What if you begin your prayer time by just saying this, God, I don't want to just pray to you today. I want to pray with you today. I want to pray to the Father with the Spirit. The whole Trinity, by the way, is supposed to be involved in your prayer.

To the Father, through the Son, with the Spirit. I want to pray to you. I want to pray to you. I want to pray to you, Father, but I want the Spirit to move in me as I pray. So God, move in me as I pray.

I want to listen. Let me give you one last observation about that phrase, your kingdom coming, your will be done, before I go on to the next phrase. That phrase, your kingdom coming, will be done. Eugene Peterson says that that phrase points to, it points to two different kinds of prayer that believers are supposed to pray that he calls morning prayer and evening prayer. It's a concept he gets from the Psalms and he says morning prayer, morning prayer is where you're praying for something to change. God, let your kingdom come here. God, heal this person. God, answer this prayer. God, change the situation. It's a morning prayer.

It's active, it's petitionary. Evening prayers are where you rest in the will of God, trusting that the heavenly Father has given you what's best, even if it didn't look like what you thought it should look like. And he pulls it out from the Psalms and shows you that all from the Psalms, a morning prayer is this prayer, let your kingdom come. And an evening prayer is God, I trust you and your will. Both prayers, he says, are an important part of the Christian experience. And both of them ought to be a part of your prayer life.

God, change the situation. And then God, I trust that whatever you're giving is the best. And so I rest in you. Here's the next phrase. Give us this day, our daily bread. Most of us never think to pray this phrase, my daily bread, because most of us don't wonder where our next meal is coming from. But the point here is that we develop a posture of dependence on God and thanksgiving to him for everything as the first cause of all the things in our life. You see the essence of sin, the essence of sin, listen to this, is independence and autonomy.

The direction that sin is going to take you every time is independence and autonomy and self-sufficiency. This phrase, though it is a very simple phrase, it goes the opposite way. In fact, in Greek, the phrasing is literally today bread. Give me today bread.

It is intentionally short-lived because it means that day by day, I'm looking to God as the ultimate source of everything. Now, of course, not just bread, that's more of a metaphor, but anything that I need for any role that God has given me. Give me the bread of being a good dad. Give me the bread of being a good pastor. Give me the bread of being a good student.

Anything I need for any role that I have, nothing is off limits. Not every request, in other words, has to be spiritual. Anything you need for any role that you're in, bread is not spiritual.

Bread is very practical, very practical. One of my favorite promises on this, Philippians 4, 6, don't be anxious about, what's that word? Anything, nothing in your life should cause you anxiety, nothing.

There's only one way that can be true, though. That's if you're allowed to pray about everything. Pray about everything in your life, letting your requests with thanksgiving, let them be made known unto God. What am I supposed to pray for? Am I supposed to look to God for and depend on Him for?

Everything, everything, literally anything I'm worried about, just for fun. I went through scripture and I made a list of some of the various things that people prayed for. It's not an exhaustive list, but to give you a sampling, I want you to listen how some of them are really spiritual and some of them are really not. For example, Zacharias and Elizabeth wanted a family when they couldn't have kids. So they prayed for a son. Solomon prayed for wisdom in his new job. Eliezer, Genesis 24 prayed that he could meet a pretty girl so that he could set his buddy Isaac up with her. Samson prayed for water when he was thirsty and superhuman strength to accomplish a task. Joshua prayed for the son to stand still so he could finish a battle.

Daniel had a weird dream. He didn't know what it meant. So he asked God to give him an interpretation. Gideon thought God was calling him to do something but he wasn't sure. So he asked God for confirmation. David prayed for forgiveness after committing adultery with Bathsheba. He prayed that God would give him a clean heart, that God would repair what has been destroyed and would give him a renewed steadfast spirit.

Elijah prayed that it wouldn't rain. Paul prayed that some thorn in the flesh that was bothering him would be taken away. The disciples prayed for boldness. Fathers in the New Testament prayed for their little girls to get better. Peter asked Jesus for financial help to pay a tax bill he wasn't expecting that showed up in the mail. Jesus told his disciples to pray to get out of temptation. Jesus told us to pray for lost people and the workers to get the gospel to them. All the apostles prayed for Jesus to come back quickly.

Here's the rule. If it matters to you, it matters to God and you are supposed to pray about it. So Paul says don't be anxious about anything but pray about everything.

Let any request of thanksgiving be known to God and watch what will happen when you do. Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. You see, those who depend on God learn to rest in God because they have the confidence, Psalm 84-11, that no good thing will he withhold from those who walk uprightly before him.

I know that God will supply all of my need and I know that there literally is no assignment he has given me that he will not also give me the bread that I need for that assignment. Let me give you one more verse. Psalm 9. I love this verse. I pray this all the time. Those who know your name trust in you because you have not abandoned those who seek you, Lord. In other words, God never lets down or disappoints you when you look to him for something. He always delivers.

I have been disappointed by all kinds of people and the number one person who has disappointed me in my life is named JD Greer. He has disappointed me bitterly many times, but the one who has never disappointed me and always delivered is when I seek God and I say, God, ultimately I rest in you for provision to do whatever you want me to do. Is that the kind of rest that you want in your life? Is that the kind of rest you want in your life that's found in one way? It is found in prayer.

Paul Miller. It doesn't offer us a less busy life. It offers us a less busy heart. In the midst of our outer busyness, we can develop an inner quiet by spending time with our Father in prayer. We integrate our lives with his, with what he is doing in us.

In other words, you don't need a little water fountain in your thing that's trickling down the rocks to give you that feeling of serenity and, you know, a little whatever you smell like cinnamon or whatever it is that you do to make you feel calm. You just need to learn to pray frequently because that'll give you the rest that you're seeking. Here's the next phrase, forgive us our sins for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us.

Now be honest, try to be transparent here as I can here with you. This is the part of the prayer that I usually forget and I tend to skip in my personal life, but it's there for a reason. Confession is an important part of our lives because it helps us clear out sin so that sin does not grow and spread in us. You see, sin loses its power when it is exposed.

It's like mold. Think of it like mold, you know, mold grows in darkness and the moment you put sunlight on it, boom, it goes away. That's the way sin works in your heart and the moment you begin to confess it, it loses its power. So you confess it first to God and then you begin to confess it to other people, if appropriate, the people in your life that need to know these things. And when the light of God's countenance begins to look at that sin, that sin will lose its power. Why is it that I was like, why is it that this is the part of this prayer I tend to skip over most?

What's the big obstacle here? What keeps me from confessing? It's because sometimes in the moment when I come to this phrase, I can't think of anything to ask forgiveness of. Honestly, I can barely remember what happened yesterday, much less, you know, like, like the sins that I committed yesterday. Maybe that is because I have a dull conscience. That's probably it, but that's just where I find myself.

So let me give you a couple of suggestions that have helped me in this. I got three areas of my life that I tend to stumble most often in sin, three kinds of sins that I tend to gravitate toward. Now I know you're like, what are they? I'm not telling you that. Okay. Cause I don't want you trying to point out every time you see me struggling with one, you know, I'm in the mall and you're like, Ooh, I see the materialism is fired up again.

Yeah, no, I don't want you doing that. Um, uh, but when I confess, since I started with those three areas, cause I know that every single day I've got something that where my heart went toward one of those three, usually all three and I start there. And as I'm doing it, it's amazing how much the Holy Spirit starts to bring up other things that are just connected to those. So you just make you a little list of the two or three things that you most often struggle with and start there and let the Holy Spirit shine the light of God's countenance on the sin of your life and let it break its power in you.

You're listening to Summit Life with J.D. Greer and a message titled How to Actually Pray. One thing that we are learning right now is that we have the ability to embrace and communicate with the living God through prayer. And we're trying to equip you more in this area by offering a new bundle of resources designed to boost your prayer life. It includes three short books on prayer meant to help you grow with fresh ideas and new understanding. Each chapter takes a passage of scripture and it looks at how it can influence how we pray for a specific issue. Pray for your city and the people you love more effectively by studying and applying the wisdom in these three books.

Give us a call today at 866-335-5220 or go online to jdgreer.com to reserve your bundle. Now let's get back to our teaching. Here's Pastor J.D. The other thing that confession does that Jesus indicates here is that confession changes our attitude toward others. God forgive me as I forgive those who are indebted to me. You see when we confess our sins it produces compassion and generosity in us toward others as we embrace how gracious and compassionate God has been toward us. I am a man who's been deeply loved and forgiven and God is not asking me to love people who are more unlovely to me than I was to him and he's not asking me to be generous to people to any greater degree than he was generous to me. And if you can't be loving and generous to others it's because you are unaware of the generosity that God has given to you. In fact Jesus even implies here that how God relates to us on a day-by-day basis is directly proportionate to how forgiving and how loving and generous we are to others.

If you're not forgiving those in your life who have wronged you, if you're not loving them then God says day by day that's not how I'm going to relate to you in how I work in your life. We love, we love because he first loved us. We love God, we love others because of the embrace of his love for us. One last little thing I want to point out here that's a little bit off topic but I think it's important to point out one of the commentators I was studying pointed out that this prayer, the Lord's prayer, the model prayer is written as a communal prayer.

Did you notice this? All the pronouns in the Lord's prayer are plural. Our Father forgive us our sins, our daily bread. We point that out because I think we tend to think of prayer and confession as primarily a personal thing and it is.

But there's also a corporate we element to all these things. We're supposed to pray this together. We as a church must lead in confessing saying God forgive our sins and heal our land. And so this is a communal prayer and we ought to pray it together from time to time.

Finally, last phrase here. Lead us not into temptation. Lead us not into temptation.

This is one that I find myself praying a lot these days for me, for my kids, for our staff team, for you. Because see what I realize is that lurking inside every single one of us are the temptations and the sins that will destroy us. And listen to this, left to ourselves we will all self-destruct. Scripture is clear. The natural man does not seek the things of the Spirit of God. If God's grace pulls back from you even a second, you will self-destruct because your heart is inclined toward evil. And so I'm saying God deliver me from my temptations. God deliver my kids from their temptations. God deliver this church from our temptations. Don't pull your grace back as you pull it back even a little bit and we will wander off into darkness.

This has really become I think very personal and real to me when I realize and I'll just again just be totally upfront with you guys. If you'd asked me five years ago, five years ago to name the eight most influential young pastors who are my age in our mid-20s, okay? If you'd asked me to name the eight most influential pastors around the country, of the eight that I would have mentioned back then, five of them are no longer in ministry. Five years later they're not even in ministry. Huge churches, great ministries, books and teaching and blah, blah, blah, but not even in ministry.

Now why? Well it's not, I mean they actually, every single one of those that I would have named for you is a better preacher than I am and more capable in ministry. In fact, I would say they were better men than I am. It's not that they're categorically different from me. I asked a guy named Paul Tripp, who's a Christian counselor.

I said, why is it? And he said, well, there's two patterns I've seen in all their lives. He said, number one is they get separated from authentic community, people who can really look into their lives and say that's bad and you should change that.

He said, the second thing goes right along with it. He says, they all forget the power of indwelling sin. The power of indwelling sin, which means that when you become a pastor or you become spiritually mature, that that indwelling sin is just as present in you as it was at the beginning and they forget to keep putting that to death and so it overcomes them and it destroys them. You see, when I come to that phrase, leave me not in temptation, I am calling out to God saying, God, it's not that I'm a better man and I don't have to worry about this.

God, I know left to myself, I will self-destruct. So God give me grace and God give my kids grace and God give this church grace. They don't need a great sermon.

They don't need great leaders. They need the grace of the Holy Spirit. So lead us not into temptation, deliver us from the evil that is inside us and all around us. Now, I don't want to end that really discouraging with you feeling overwhelmed because see, here's the good news. While it is certainly true that there are temptations that will lead you astray and destroy you, God has promised through prayers like this one that He will deliver you if you just ask Him. One of the verses that I memorized and I pray, 1 Corinthians 10, 13, God will with every temptation that you encounter, He will always make a way of escape, always.

No matter how overwhelming it feels, He always puts a back door in there for you to get out of. You know what I think of? I'm a child of the 80s, back when video games were awesome and pure and simple. There were dots on the screen and you would eat them. There were missiles that came down in straight lines and you would shoot them. A donkey would roll barrels at you and you would jump over them.

It was simple, right? Well, one of the greatest ones was Pac-Man, right? Remember this? And so Pac-Man, you know, you're moving around the thing and you're eating the little dots, but then you find yourself in trouble because you're at a little flashy dots, which means you can't eat the ghosts. And you're like, I'm trapped. But remember there was a, there was a little gate. If you were in one of the corners, you could always just go outside. And what would happen? You'd pop back over the other side and the ghost couldn't go through it. And you were all by yourself again.

You know what I'm talking about? And when I play that game, I'm like, that's exactly what God's promised in 1 Corinthians 10, 13. Here I am overwhelmed by Satan.

I'm overwhelmed. My problem was wherever you were on the board, there wasn't always a little trap door, but in God's promises, there's always a door. And when I feel those temptations coming to me and they feel overwhelming, God always says, just go through that door right there and you'll come out scot-free and there won't be a single ghost anywhere around you. What God is promising you is that He will deliver you. He wants to deliver you. He died to deliver you so that you wouldn't destroy your life. You just got to ask Him.

And He tells you to ask Him every single day. Let me end this. Let me land this plan by giving you a few really practical suggestions in light of what we've talked about that I think will help you either start a daily prayer time if you don't have one or jumpstart one if you've gotten into a rut.

Here's my first suggestion. Riff on the Lord's prayer. You know what I mean by that? All right, maybe you're not cool like me so you don't know what the word riff means. So riffing in jazz is, and I'm not a musician at all, but riffing in jazz, you know, they don't play the melody, but the melody is kind of there in the background and they play around the melody, right?

So they're just taking the melody and they're doing their own thing around it. You ought to use the Lord's prayer like the melody and you riff on it when you start. For the last two years at least, the first five minutes of every prayer time that I have every day is me riffing on the Lord's prayer where I go through phrase by phrase and then I let the Holy Spirit apply it to certain ways in my life. God, you're my father and I just want to rest in that. God, the daily bread that I need as a dad, daily bread I need as a pastor of the Summit Church, and I just riff on the Lord's prayer. That's my first suggestion to you. Riff on the Lord's prayer.

Here's the second thing you could do. It's similar to that one and that is a little acrostic called acts, A-C-T-S, and it's an outline very similar to the Lord's prayer that you could work through. A stands for adoration, C stands for confession, T stands for thanksgiving, right? And you can see these, our Father who art in heaven hallowed be your name and forgiven our sins and thanking him for daily bread.

S supplication, which is a fancy word for ask. So acts is a way that you could just pray through and use as an outline for your prayer. I would commend that to you.

Here are some other ones. Take a morning walk with no devices and pray out loud. The reason I am telling you to take a walk is because I know that's how some of you, the only way you will develop the courage to actually pray out loud and you really should pray out loud. Every prayer that Jesus prayed in the New Testament, he prayed out loud when he was by himself.

And I know that you're not going to do it at home because you got to think your family members or your roommate thinks you're weird. So just take a walk, get by yourself and pray out loud. Leave your devices at home.

Okay? So take a walk and pray out loud. Set reminders on your calendar to pray for specific needs at specific times. You know, have an alarm go off throughout the day and know that at this time I'm gonna pray for this situation or this person. Use a prayer app like echo prayer or prayer mate or Evernote that can help you organize and keep track of your prayer needs.

This is one that I use. I have a little prayer that goes along with that one prayer cards. A prayer card is a card about a specific request where you just jot down little things the Holy Spirit says to you while you're praying about them. So I've got cards for different people in my life, different situations. And on all these cards, I've got scripture verses and specific things that I'm praying and you can build that into one of these prayer notes. By the way, you don't have to do all these things. You can just, this is like a grab bag. Take a few of them.

Here's another one. Pray in the moment with people. Don't just promise to pray for them. Pray in the moment. When somebody's talking about a need or somebody, especially if they asked you to pray, just stop right then and pray.

Just right then, right there. But it feels weird. You should do it so often that it doesn't feel weird anymore.

It only feels weird to you because you don't do it. Just stop right then, right there and say, let's pray about that right now and go to the Father right now. By the way, I do this sometimes with waiters and waitresses.

I did it the other day. They come up to the table and they're like, you know this? And I'm like, hey, we're about to pray for our food.

Thank God. Is there anything I can pray for you about? Now, nine out of 10 times, I get health and happiness or some weird look, okay? Just nine out of 10 times.

But one out of 10 times, I get the mother load, right? And I get the 10 minute, let me tell you about my life. And it always ends with me being able to share the gospel with them and invite them here to the Summit Church. Just stop right then and say, hey, can I pray for you right then? Or give me something to pray about when I pray. Prayer walk your neighborhood or the office or some part of the city. Now, let me point out, don't be weird.

Please don't be weird, okay? If you're going to prayer walk your office, don't walk around the cubicles with your hands raised, okay? Leave the oil at home. Do not anoint anything with oil at your workplace. Why is the water cooler greasy? It should not be no oil. Just leave that at home and don't be weird, okay? Here's one. Try two or three short times of prayer instead of one long time of prayer.

This is where some of you get torpedoed every single year. You're like, I'm going to pray. And you will try an hour and you make it 10 minutes and you stop. Just five minutes, maybe do five minutes right in the morning, maybe five minutes right after lunch, maybe five minutes right before you go to bed.

Just start there rather than one long time. Pray regularly with your kids. Let your kids hear you pray. Use a kid's version of Acts. The kid's version of Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication is wow, sorry, thanks, help. Which helpfully spells woozeth, okay? So you can use that. Use a prayer companion in your daily time with God.

The Valley of Vision, I've already mentioned that one. The Songs of Jesus is a book by Tim Keller where he turns all 150 Psalms into prayers. And I've used that and it's been fantastic.

Daily Light is one I've used for the last several years. It's just a group of scriptures collected around one theme that kind of jump starts my prayers and it's fantastic. It's been around for about 150 years. Above all, above all, just start. Prayer is a muscle that grows when you use it.

Just start. A great reminder for all of us. Today we'd like to get a very encouraging resource into your hands. It's a set of three guides that will help you to pray for three specific areas in your life. Praying for your kids, for your parents, and for your community. Each prayer suggestion is based on a passage of the Bible so you can be confident as you use it that you are praying great prayers.

Prayers that God wants you to pray because they're based on his word. You can request this three book bundle when you give a one-time gift today or when you make your first donation as a monthly Gospel partner. Gospel partners commit to regular giving and in a real sense they're the backbone of this ministry. If you've been growing through this program and diving deeper into the Gospel with us, why not join the team that makes all of this happen? Give us a call at 866-335-5220 and remember to ask for the five things to pray bundle.

That number once again is 866-335-5220 or you can give and request the book online at jdcareer.com. You also don't want to forget to follow Pastor JD on Facebook and Instagram for more updates and encouraging content. I'm Molly Vidovitch inviting you to join us again tomorrow as Pastor JD explores an age-old question. Does prayer actually change God's mind? Come back Wednesday for more solid biblical wisdom here on Summit Life with JD Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries.