Prayer and Body Language

You know, we all have very complete lives. Very complete lives. Whether we're working, whether we're in school, whether we're retired, no matter what, no matter what we do, we have complete lives. And you know, as we look at our lives, you know, people will kind of divide them up. You hear about public lives and private lives. We all have public lives and we all have private lives, whether we're at home all the time or whether we work, whether we go to school, whether we're in whatever profession. You know, we have public lives. There is one way that we present ourselves when we're out among other people, and there's a private life, one way that we live at home. And they should be in concert one another, but at home, you know, we may dress differently, we may not shave one morning, and we may, you know, we're more relaxed and can discuss things, maybe more at home. But we all have public lives and we all have private lives. We all have sub segments of those lives as well. In our private life, you know, we have our social lives that we may have among friends, among people in church, family, and things like that. That's kind of what we all have going. In our public life, we have subsets of that as well, whether we go to work, whether we go to school, whether we're in neighborhood associations, people that we encounter in the store, relationships we have there. There's all those things that are going on there, you know, as we look at celebrities, they will talk about, they have a public life, they have a private life. We have all those things, and you can kind of name all those little lives that are part of all our lives, no matter who we are and what we're doing, we all have those concepts and those segments of our lives that we live in.

Overwriting all of them should be our spiritual life. How we live our lives, no matter whether it's public, whether it's private, no matter if it's friends outside the church or family outside the church or people in the church, there's that overriding element that we have in the church, a spiritual life that we should be living. And it should govern, and it should direct, and it should guide everything that we do. And in that spiritual life, there's subsets of it as well. We have our church life, we come to Sabbath services every week, we have a family that's right here in Orlando, there's a family in Jacksonville, there's a larger family that encompasses all of us all over the world who God has called, who has given His Holy Spirit to, that binds us together as His family. We have church lives, we have study lives, we have prayer lives, prayer lives that we have with God. And our prayer life is a subset of our private life. But our prayer life is something that God is very interested in. Our church life, He's very interested in that, too. He's very interested in that we are becoming part of the family, becoming part of the body that He's developing, that we're allowing the opportunities to grow in the way that He wants us to grow as we live our church life. And live when the congregation and the body that He's placed us in. But we have a prayer life, and our prayer lives are between us and God. I don't know what your prayer life is like. You don't know what my prayer life is like. But we all have prayer lives. They may be very strong prayer lives. We may use our prayer lives, and our prayer lives may draw us closer to God.

And as we communicate with Him, our relationship with Him should go stronger. Just like for those who are married or friendships we have, the more you communicate with someone, the more intense the relationship becomes. You don't become friends and you don't become spouses with each other if there's no communication going on or very limited communication. Love, friendship, all those things develop with communication in time.

And so it is with God. Our prayer life is very important to Him. It's an opportunity for Him to hear us speak to Him. He speaks to us through the Bible that we read, His Word when we read it. He speaks to us when we assemble together before Him, at Sabbath services. Even His Holy Spirit gives us utterance, and He puts the thoughts in our minds that we need to do. Our prayer life is an opportunity for us to talk to Him.

And God learns a lot about us by the way we speak with Him. And just like when we may speak with our parents, or our spouses, or our friends in different ways, we don't speak to them in the same way all the time. It's not always just cheery. Maybe it is in our public life when we see each other at church. But when we become friends, there are times when we're joyous and we share blessings and things that happen good in our lives. There are other times when things not so good happen in our lives. We share and we are encouraged by that interaction that we have with each other.

It doesn't happen unless we have those close relationships. And so the way we approach God is something that He looks at as well. Matthew 12, 34, we don't have to turn there. God says, Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. That's a lesson for all of us. As we speak with each other, we can kind of see where each other are by the type of things we talk about. What are the things that most interest us? Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.

When we speak to God, when we speak to God, He sees where are our hearts. Where are our hearts? Where are we in our relationship with Him? Where are we in our calling with Him? Are we taking it seriously, or is it just something that is us and we just kind of, as I often say, check off the boxes or punch our time clock and the rest of our lives belong to us but not to God? You know, the Bible talks a lot about prayers. If you type in, if you go to Google and type in, how many prayers are recorded in the Bible? I did that. How many prayers? We know the prayers of Daniel.

We know some of the prayers of Paul. We know some of the prayers of Jesus Christ. How many prayers are recorded in the Bible? You know what the answer pops up with? Just in your mind. Think, how many prayers are recorded in the Bible? I didn't take the time to check this out. But the answer came up by one of these groups that we'll go through and study all the Bible. 650 prayers. 650 prayers recorded in the Bible. Some of them are very short. Some of them are longer. Some of them are prayers of praise.

Some of them are prayers of thanksgiving. Others are prayers of forgiveness and repentance. Other prayers are beseeching God for something. There's every sort of example in the Bible on the prayers that God chose to include in the Bible. To see that there's a variety of ways that we approach Him. We just don't come before Him with the same thing every single day. And go through our checklist and at the end of the time get up from our knees or our walk or whatever we're doing and say, I've done my job.

I went through my checklist. Because, again, God is looking at the heart. That's where we grow. We grow in what we are doing and what we're speaking with Him. And our prayer life is very, very important in that. You know, we can go through many scriptures and we'll hit a couple highlights here on prayer and then get into, you know, one aspect of it here that we want to talk about.

Let's go back to Luke 11. In Luke 11, you know, we have the disciples. They've been walking and talking with Jesus Christ. And they watched Him as He would go out to pray. And you know the many times in the Bible where it says He would depart from His disciples, He would go out to the garden, and He would pray.

And as His disciples would watch Him, and they knew they had a relationship with God. And they wanted that relationship with Him, and they asked the same question that you have probably asked and that I have asked in the past, and that maybe many still ask today. In chapter 11 and verse 1, Isaiah's kids came to pass as Christ was praying in a certain place. When He was done, the one of His disciples said to Him, Lord, teach us to pray as John taught His disciples. We want to pray like You do. I don't know if we're doing it right, but we want that relationship, the way You pray, teach us to do.

And so Jesus Christ gave them what we commonly refer to as the model prayer. You know, there's one religion that all they do is just repeat this prayer in the next four or five verses here. I'm going to take the time to read it, but as you go through that prayer, you see the type of things that Jesus Christ is saying, talk to God about. Pray about the Kingdom to come. Pray that His will be done. Thank Him for the food, spiritual and physical that you have. Be sure you ask for forgiveness and be sure that you forgive others.

Ask that God, as He puts you through trials, not tempt you, but that you lead and you learn the lessons from that, because as we go through the trials that we go to—and some of them can look like temptations— but that we learn the lessons that God wants us to do as He prepares us and develops the character that we must have, must have, if we're going to be in the Kingdom and this is the time in our lives that we must be developing. Too late when Jesus Christ returns. Too late when the Great Tribulation begins. Now is the time.

And then He goes through the model prayer, and then Luke records in verse 5, as Sir Jesus Christ says, this model prayer that they should be, He talks to them about what you would talk about with a friend. He says in verse 5, When you have a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, friend, lend me three loaves. For a friend of mine has come to me on his journey, and I have nothing to set before him.

I don't know what to do. I'm coming to you and asking for help. And he'll answer from within and say, Don't trouble me. The door is shut. My children are with me in bed. I can't rise and give to you. I say to you, though he will not rise, and give to him because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence he will rise and give him as many as he needs.

So I say to you, ask. Ask God. He knows what we need before we ask it, but he wants to know we want it. Ask him for it. Don't just assume he's going to give it. We must show him we're interested. Ask for it. Seek, and you will find. The answer is there. God wants to see. Is our heart in it?

Do we? Will we expend the effort to do that? Seek, and you will find, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks, it will be opened. So he's saying, you go to God in prayer. You ask him for the things you need. You don't understand something. You ask him to open your mind and understand the truth of the Bible. You need something.

You're going through a trial in your life. You take it to him. Not just once, but over and over again to do that. If we go down to verse 13, as Christ wraps up, or Luke records his wrap-up of what Christ said in the aftermath of giving him the model prayer, it says, if you then, if you then being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?

Is that something we ask God for? His Holy Spirit? If our children ask for help, if they need things, we'll give it to them. If they're hungry and someone that we know is hungry will help them with food, how important is it to us that we have God's Holy Spirit and God's Holy Spirit is leading us and guiding us and directing our minds and directing our paths? If we will give those good gifts to our children and to our friends and other people, how much more will God give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?

Something for us to think of. Back in Matthew 6, when Matthew records this conversation with the disciples, Jesus Christ is about to give the model prayer that we've just talked about there in Luke 11.

Leading up to that time, Christ gives the disciples a few more things about prayer that he wants them to remember when they're talking to him. It's a time to ask God. It's a time to praise God. It's a time to focus our mind on His kingdom and what we're here for.

In verse 5 of Matthew 6, He says, When you pray, don't be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets that they may be seen by men. Assuredly I say to you, they have their reward. Why are we praying? Because we really, really want that relationship with God? Because we really, really want to connect with Him? Or we want our wife to see that we're doing it, or our husband to see that we're doing it, or someone else? Or do we do it just because I've got to do it? I've got to brush my teeth every morning, I've got to take my vitamins every day, I have to pray every day, and so I'll do it just to have it over with. Why are we doing it? Why are we doing it? God knows. He knows what's in our heart.

And He says in verse 6, But when you pray, go into your room, and when you shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly. Go to a place where you can communicate with God. Some place where you're not going to be distracted. Some place where the phone maybe is way in the background so you don't hear it and think, I've got to run up and stop what I'm doing to go get the phone. You know, Christ has a secret place. Some people have a closet. I remember when I was at Ambassador College, they would have a prayer closet in each dorm. And it was a place you could shut out the rest of the activities in the dorm that were going on. There's dark, alone, kind of soundproof. You didn't hear what was going on out there. Kind of confining. But it doesn't have to be a dark closet. It can be wherever you can communicate with God. Maybe it's an area of your house that you kind of see, and when you walk into it, over time, you realize, boy, when I'm here, I can communicate with God. You know, I have a place in my house here in Orlando and in Jacksonville, and when I go there, I just feel like I'm in God's presence. It's a thing we use for other things as well, but when I go there, it's become kind of my sanctuary. And it's a place that I can go to pray, and I can shut out the rest of the world and communicate with God. We all need to find that. No matter what room that might be, it might be outside, it might be in your backyard, it might be wherever it is that you find that place. Do it. Do it in secret. Don't do it to be seen by people, but find that place where you feel comfortable and where you can be with God. You know, as we look at Jesus Christ, he didn't have a home that he went to every night. We read about him going into the Garden of Gethsemane. That's where he would pray. He would walk away from the disciples for a while, and he would pray. Out there in the outdoors, it was his place where he could communicate with God. God says, find that place. Communicate with him. Use that place. It doesn't have to be the same place all the time. We all travel, we all have different places, and sometimes it can be difficult in a trial when we go to another place. Sometimes when I'm out of town for a few weeks, it's like, where's the place? It's just different. It's kind of like not having that place. But you've got to adjust yourself to it and still pray to God, and he knows what's in our heart. Then in verse 7, he says something else that many churches in the world just kind of ignore. When you pray, don't use vain repetitions as the heathen do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words.

Don't be like them, for your father knows the things you have need of before you ask him. He knows, but you still need to ask. But don't just go down to checklists and mindfully say, this, this, this, this, this, without really thinking about it. Think about what you're talking to God. Talk to him like you're talking to someone right there in the room with you.

I might even say, you know, talk to him like you would talk to your wife. For some of us, guys, we may just mindlessly turn things out. So talk to God differently. Pay attention and know that he is listening to our words, listening to what we have to say.

Don't just use vain repetitions. You know, we don't have to pray about the same thing every single day. We don't have to go through. I remember years ago, you know, we would know. I would know every single regional director in the world. I would know I have a prayer list, and every day I would pray that list every single day. And I came to realize, yeah, we pray for people who are sick, but it doesn't have to be just a list, not this person, this person, this person, this person. It's the fervent prayer that God looks to when our mind is on it and when we're really beseeching him.

That doesn't mean we should never do it, but you don't have to pray every single time you pray exactly the same thing. That's vain repetition. What's in our heart at that time? And just like you go to your spouse and you have different things in your heart when you're talking, you have different things in your heart when you talk to God. Some days you're joyous and you're thankful, and you wake up and you're just full of joy about what's going on.

Other days there's trouble in your heart, things that you may not understand, and you go before God because you have this petition to ask him. You don't get it, or you need help, or you're feeling helpless, or you're feeling down, depressed, or confused for some reason. You seek him and you seek his Holy Spirit and ask him. By repeating to him sometimes the things that we need in our lives. Help me to be strong in the face of this that is facing me.

Help me to have the compassion I need to have. Help me to heal this relationship. And over and over and over, ask that. Every time you feel depressed, every time you feel down, replace those feelings of, that shouldn't be there with feelings of, I'm going to put it in God's hands and remind myself it's He. It's Him who heals. It's Him who provides. It's Him who trains our mind to be who He wants us to be.

It's not us. We make the decision. He'll provide, but we have to ask. And sometimes we have to just discipline ourselves. When I feel this way, when I'm encountering this, when this is the words that want to come out of my mouth, when I'm angry, when I'm bitter, when I'm doubtful, when I feel hopeless, I replace that with, God help me.

God, don't let me feel this way. Give me the strength. Give me the encouragement. Give me Your Holy Spirit that I can overcome, because that's what He wants, but we have to ask, and we have to discipline ourselves to do that. Not just, not just vain repetitions, and feel we have a checklist that we go down through every day. Talk to God. Talk to Him, and communicate with Him.

Another thing that people will ask sometimes, well, how often do I pray? Again, when I was much younger, I remember there was a standard, I don't know if a minister gave it or if just people I knew, you'd pray for half an hour every day. Some people said an hour every day. And so for years it was like, I've got to pray half an hour every day. And if I was done praying in 20 minutes, I remember thinking, oh, I haven't done my job today, I've got to pray that extra 10 minutes.

And I would make myself stay in my closet or wherever I was and pray another 10 minutes thinking, God wants me to pray 30 minutes every day. Well, I came to realize, you know, He's not interested in the time. He's interested in what's our heart. And you don't pray to God just one time a day. You know, in Psalm 119, you know, David makes a comment in that Psalm, somewhere in the hundreds of that verse, that he prays to God seven times a day.

Or that he prays to God seven times a day. Now, some of the commentary said, you know, maybe he literally did. Maybe he took time in his days to think, you know what, I want to remind myself, I stop and I remember God. All these points along the way that I stop and I pray to God. Others say it may have just been him saying, I pray throughout the day. I'm not just praying in the morning or at night. I'm praying throughout the day. David came to a place where he had a relationship with God. He was in constant communication with him. At another place in the Psalm, he says, I pray morning, noon, and night.

How do you reconcile those? David had developed a relationship with God where he was always talking to him. You know, over in 1 Thessalonians, 1 Thessalonians 5, Paul talks about this same concept. In 1 Thessalonians 5, at the end of the chapter there, he kind of rattles off. Do this. Rejoice. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

In verse 17, a very short verse, in 1 Thessalonians 5, he says, Pray without ceasing. Pray without ceasing. And I remember looking at that first thinking, how do you pray without ceasing? I have work I have to do. I have things I have to do. You can't pray without ceasing. I came to understand it's not pray without ceasing like that's all you do. You don't quit your job and just pray all the time to God. But you come to the point where you're in contact with Him.

You know, as we look at the Greek words, which sometimes help us understand things. I know there are some in the audience that I'm going to apologize ahead of time. I'm going to absolutely crucify this Greek word. And I didn't write down the Strong's number, but it's adiolaptos. A-D-I-A-L-E-I-P-T-O-S. And it's translated in verse 17, without ceasing. If you look at what the Greek commentaries, or the Strong's New Cordon says about that, it says it means constantly recurring.

Pray constantly recurring prayers. You know what that means at times during the day? You might just pray to God, I've got this coming up. Help me in this meeting. I'm going to talk to someone here. I need your help. I need your insight, your wisdom. Pray to God and ask Him. Nehemiah is a good example of that. Nehemiah, his commission was to go back and rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. And he prayed and asked God that he would be able to have that. And when the time came, he didn't know when it was going to come, the king turned to him and said, what are you looking so down for today, Nehemiah?

Remember what it said there? We talked about this several times. He said he immediately prayed to God. Give me favor in his sight. Give me the words to speak. So when we're constantly praying to God, when we're in a relationship with Him, and we find these things coming up in our lives, we think of God first. We don't think of us first. We don't think of other things first. We get to the point where we think of God first. How would He have us respond? What would He have us do as Christians?

What would we do? And how will His people act? How would Jesus Christ have handled this situation? And we ask Him because He can see then in our hearts what we want is to be like Him. We want to respond like Him. And the only way we're ever going to do that is with His Holy Spirit. The only way we're ever going to do that is when He gives us the Holy Spirit, when we ask for it and He sees, These people really do want to be like Me.

They really do want to weed out them and bury themselves and have Me create in them who will be in the Kingdom working with Me and serving Me. So we can learn, we can talk about all those things, and we've talked about them. They're all aspects of our prayer life. There's another aspect of our prayer life I want to talk about as well. You know, as we work with each other and as we talk with one another and as you've interfaced with people all your lives, you've heard of a concept called body language, right?

Sometimes you can tell by people's body language, are they listening? Are they getting it? Do they agree with what you're saying? Do they have questions about what you're saying? Are they opposed to what you're saying? Just by looking at the body language. You know, when I look out over the audience, I can look at body language and see, are people really interested in what I'm saying or not? Those of you who speak, you know the same thing. And those of you who are at work, you kind of know the people that are really interested or they're kind of just, you know, letting it go right over their heads because something or whatever is distracting them and taking away their attention from it or they just don't think it's that important to them.

God knows what we're thinking, you know, when we do those things. An important, I won't know, an important yet important part of our prayer life has to do with body language as well. You know, when we think about it, maybe we all, or maybe many people think the only way you can pray to God is on your knees. You can only kneel. And certainly that's an important position in praying. It says a lot about us and our attitude when we kneel before God. But that's not the only way that we can show that we approach God.

You know, sometimes when we come to each other, we come with a very down attitude, if you will. Down as in we're humble and we're looking to God to help us. And we approach someone differently at that time. We don't rush up and smile and shake their hands. We can kind of see there's something on someone's mind that they have to do. Other times there's a big smile, the hand goes out, the hug happens, and we can see from their body language it's been a good time. Other times it's not. Not all our lives are 100% joyous.

Unfortunately, we don't know that. That's in the future when Jesus Christ returns and we're spirit beings. Today we do have trials. We do have things that happen to us. We do have health problems, financial problems, relationship problems, the things that beset us that all give us an opportunity to seek God, to learn how to respond to those things the way that He wants us to respond to.

But how do we respond to God? Well, you know, the Bible, when you look at it, there's many positions of prayer. It's interesting when you look at the positions, the body language that Jesus Christ had when He approached God the Father. There's only a couple times that it mentions that Jesus Christ knelt. Other times, just from the context, we can see He wasn't kneeling when He prayed, yet that prayer was heartfelt.

But let's look at it. I've got five positions that the Bible talks about, five body languages, if you will, that we approach God with. Let's look at kneeling. You could be turning over to... You could be turning over to Mark 1. But let me reference... I think we lost some sound here. Either that or... But in Philippians 2... In Philippians 2, you don't have to turn there. It says that one day, every knee, every knee will bow to Jesus Christ. Every knee will bow. We've got... Is it coming back? Do we have sound on? Can you tell?

You can hear me? Okay. Oh, we're trying to record it, too. Okay. Well, I'll keep talking. Dave Permar, maybe Dave can help out on the sound if he's... He's got some problems, it sounds like. I didn't greet the people on the web. And I think about them when I talk anymore because I know we have a number of people tune in.

And so I know we get comments from them when the sound goes out that they've lost part of the service. Okay. In Philippians 2... A little more sound than we need. In Philippians 2, it says, Every knee will bow to Jesus Christ. Every knee will bow. Now, when we kneel before someone, we don't live in a time where we have kings that we have to approach.

But if you watch movies, and as you study, you know, history, you see and you can see how people approach the kings of their day. And sometimes people would come in and they would kneel before the king. I remember hearing years ago, when you kneel before a king, you kneel on one knee. And as I've watched movies from ancient...that are said in ancient times, I've watched, they always kneel with just one knee.

It means they're submissive, that that's a higher power than them. But when you kneel before God, you kneel with both knees. It indicates total submission. Total submission and dependence on him. When people would bow or kneel before a king, they needed something. They were recognizing his superiority. They were recognizing and they needed something from him in his position.

When we come before God, you know, it indicates that we are beseeching him for something. And there are times where it is very appropriate to kneel. And if we're led by the Holy Spirit, we know on that prayer, sometimes we just feel we need to kneel. It's part of our bangle of the language and the way that we come before God.

Sometimes when we know that we've messed up, we've sinned. We come before God because we know it's only him who could forgive. And so we come before him, supplicate him, beseech him, ask for mercy, and ask for forgiveness. We kneel before him because we recognize how he is and the superiority that he has. As we look in the Bible, we do see, you know, we see kneeling, which is an act of humility, which we all must have if we're going to come before God.

You're in Mark 1. Let me get back there. Mark 1 and verse 40. Mark 1, verse 40. A leper. A leper came to Christ. And you remember leper say it couldn't be healed by any medicine, any doctor. It was only going to be Jesus Christ who could heal them, God who could heal them.

A leper came to Christ imploring him, imploring him, kneeling down to him and saying to him, if you're willing, you can make me clean. This man needed God. He recognized that was his only hope. He knelt before him, submitted himself before him, begged him.

And sometimes when we face our health problems and when we face these problems that we realize and we seek God, really seek him, not as just one of the many things we seek, but when we seek him and know he has the answer. He's not just one of the number of checklist things that we do. He hears. And our attitude would be, we come before you, God, because we need you. We beseech you and we kneel, just as this leper came to him and did that. Mark 10. And verse 17.

This is the story of the young man who was looking for eternal life. And he came to God, came to Jesus Christ and said, how do I inherit eternal life? That's what he says in verse 17. As Christ was going out on the road, one came running. What did he do? He knelt before him and asked him, good teacher, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life? He knelt, you have the answer. I submit to you. I beseech you. I recognize you as the one who can give this answer and no one else. And I'm submitting myself to you. I am bowing my knee to you. I'm symbolically showing you. I surrender and I rely on you. And so he knelt. And it was just part. We've lost it again. And so we have the, I think we've lost the voice again, the sound again.

And so we have, you know, when we come before God, and we're asking, ...

That, huh. Okay. No, I guess not. Is it on now? Yeah, it sounds like it's on. Okay, very good. You know, as we come before God, there are times when we want to approach Him on our knees. And our attitude and our body language should be that it drives us to our knees. Now, not every single prayer we give to God is going to be we're beseeching Him, we're repentant, we're in this situation where we need, well, we always need God. I don't mean to say that. But our attitudes are a little different to times when we pray. There are times when we are going to just find ourselves kneeling naturally, like this young man did, like the leper did, like Jesus Christ did, in Luke 22. Luke 22, in verse 41, here we have Jesus Christ, He is about to be arrested, He's gone through the final Passover with His disciples, they're going out into the garden, and He's going to God to pray. He leaves the disciples behind Him and He tells Him, you watch with me for an hour, and you remember the story that couldn't even stay awake a little bit at a time. In Luke 22, in verse 41, it says, He was withdrawn from them about a stone's throw, and He knelt down and prayed. It's one of the few times in the Bible that it says Jesus Christ knelt down and prayed. Now, I know He did it many times, and I'm not saying that this is the only time, but it's interesting, and we'll see a little time a little later, that apparently He didn't kneel down on a very halt for a prayer, but He was in, if I can use that, desperate situation. There was no one who could deliver Him from what is coming up here except God, saying, Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me. Nevertheless, not My will, but Yours be done. And even He knelt on His knees because He needed God. And there are times in our lives that we need God, and we have to see Him as the only answer, and only He can deliver. Now, we should be down on our knees, symbolizing to Him complete surrender, complete dependence. And if the Holy Spirit is leading us, you'll know when to pray kneeling down. It will simply happen. Let me give you some more verses you can look at later. You know, Stephen, Stephen, when he was being stoned to death, the last thing he did was kneel down and pray, Acts 7, verse 60. Acts 9, verse 40, and Acts 20, verse 36, you see Peter and Paul kneeling as they pray in desperate situations. Ephesians 3, 14, and really that's the whole section of there, Ephesians 3, 14 through about 21, you see Paul praying for the church and beseeching God, and that they would be with them, and that they would be one, and that they would be committed to Him as he looked to God and knew it was God who was going to make that happen. So we have these occasions where we kneel to pray, and certainly that's an important body language that we would have. You know, as a subset of kneeling, there's something else that we may do and probably naturally do. Let's go back to the book of Ezra. Ezra, right before three books before the book of Psalms. In Ezra 9, you know, actually what I'm going to talk about here in chapter 9, the next is a subset of kneeling, can also be a subset of one of the next one we'll talk about. It's mentioned 147 times in the Bible, 147 times in the Bible, according to the people who put these things together. Ezra 9, verse 5.

You know, Ezra, the people have sinned, they have taken wives from outside their belief. It's caused some problems there as they're back in Jerusalem rebuilding the temple. In chapter 9, verse 5, Ezra is playing to God. It says, At the evening sacrifice I arose from my fasting. So you can kind of see the seriousness of the situation. Ezra's been fasting, people have been fasting with him. At the evening sacrifice I arose from my fasting, and having torn my garment and my robe, I fell on my knees, and I spread out my hands to the Lord my God. I had a preparation time. I was fasting, I was getting ready for this, and when it was time has come, I just fell down on my knees, and what did he do? He spread his hands out to God. Now I know when you pray, there are times that you naturally just spread your hands out to God. And while we do that, we're inviting him in and we're beseeching him, and we're welcoming him to our lives. There's the type of thing that we would do even when you see politicians do that. They will open their arms. Like, come to me, I'm there with you. And when we spread our arms to God just naturally as our body language, it shows God I'm willing to have you in. I'm willing to have you in, and I want you, pardon me, I reach my arms out to you, and I seek you. Now sometimes, in church, I've been asked, how come the people in the church never raise their hands to God? Well, it is something we do in private. You know, if we go back and we look at Matthew 6 and we talked about it, raising our hands to God is something we would do in our private prayer life. But all too often, if we do it in public, it's for a show. You know, there's general prayers that we ask when we come before God. And we don't do it as a show like some do. You know, some places that you go into church, they have little kneeling things. You kneel down, you stand up, you raise your hands, you bow your head, all these other things. Certainly we'll get to bow your head in a minute, but we bow our heads, but we wouldn't raise our hands. That's not something we do in general prayers and corporate prayers, but we at home, it is something we should do. When you feel that you should do it, do it! It shows God what's in your heart, and you just have it happen naturally. You don't record it, you don't plan it, you don't say, okay, at this stage in my prayer, I'm going to raise my hands to God. Let it happen. Let it happen, and understand when you're doing that, you're giving God a message to what you do. You know, Moses raised his hands to God. There's examples of that throughout the Bible, but let's go back to 1 Timothy. 1 Timothy here in the New Testament. 1 Timothy 2, verse 1.

Therefore, Paul writes to Timothy, therefore I exhort. First of all, that's supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks. Notice the different types of prayers that Paul talks about there, the different types of forms our prayers can take. Supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings, and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence, for this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. Then if we drop down to verse 8. I desire, therefore, that the men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands, without wrath, and without doubting.

Invite God in. Let it be part of your prayer life, that when you feel that you raise out your hands to Him, realize, ask the body language you give God that shows Him, I want what you have. I want what you have and what you can give me.

Okay, let's move on to another position. Let's go back to Nehemiah here, the book after Ezra. We talked about kneeling, talked about spreading out your hands, as mentioned many times in the Bible as part of the body language of people of God who have prayed to Him. In Nehemiah 9, we find another one. Nehemiah 9 and verse 1. As we go through these, you might look at it.

I'm not reading the whole prayer, but it might be helpful to go home and read some of these prayers that are associated with some of these things that we're talking about here. Nehemiah 9, verse 1. Nehemiah came and he was rebuilding the walls. That was his commission as he asked God to give him that commission that God gave it to him. It says, on the 24th day of this month, the children of Israel were assembled with fasting. Here we are again, this time again, they're looking to God. They were in sackcloth and with dust on their heads. Then those of Israelite lineage separated themselves from all foreigners.

And they stood and they confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers. And they stood up in their place and read from the book of the law of the Lord their God for one fourth of the day. And for another fourth, they confessed and worshiped the eternal their God. So they fasted. They were in sackcloth. They were repenting. Then they stood up and they read God's word. Down in verse 5, talks about these people who then spoke to the congregation. In the middle of verse 5 it says, stand up. Stand up and bless the Lord your God forever and ever.

Blessed be your glorious name which is exalted above all blessing and praise. And then it goes on through the prayer, praising God, acknowledging his sovereignty, acknowledging his will, acknowledging how good and righteous he is. But you notice after this time when they came out of prayer and fasting, they stood before God.

And sometimes when we stand before God and we pray, just like if we were standing before a king, a physical king, if we lived in that time, it would indicate that we are ready. We are ready for battle. We are ready to do what he has to say. We now have confidence in that we are in the right frame of mind with him. The king, the physical king, would have no issue with us. We are there and presenting ourselves before him for service. And when God sees that we've repented, we've fasted, we are before him, and we're looking to do his service, sometimes we stand to pray.

Don't beat yourself up if one morning, or several mornings, you stand and pray. And don't kneel. God hears the prayers regardless of the position because he's looking at what's in the heart. What's the attitude? And sometimes it's just natural to stand. You are ready for what God has to say. You are ready to talk to him. Sometimes you go into your boss at work, and you might have messed up something royally.

You go in with both tails between your legs. You don't kneel before him, but he can see the humility, and he can see I'm at your mercy. Other times you go before your boss, you stand before him. And he gives you what you need to do, what you need to do, and you do it. And you talk to him.

You've got an issue, you talk with him. And you get the direction from him. And when we stand before God, when we stand before God, he hears our prayers that way, too, and it tells him something. I will give you verses 32-38 to read at a later time. Let's go back to Mark here and see what Jesus Christ had to say about this.

Mark 11. Mark 11 in verse 24. Mark 11 verse 24 The occasion where Jesus Christ has cursed the fig tree, Peter comes by and says, look, that fig tree you kissed the other day, it's no longer there, it's withered away. And Christ tells him to have faith in God in verse 24. He says, therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them.

Have faith and know that you're coming before God who can grant anything we ask. Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them and you will have them. And whenever you stand praying, notice that? Whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him, that your Father in Heaven may also forgive you your trespasses, because if you don't forgive, neither will he forgive your trespasses. It's okay to stand when you pray. There are times when it's appropriate to kneel, times when it's okay to stand.

And if that's the body language you're showing, that's what you feel at that time, that you're coming before God, the Holy Spirit will lead you. And God isn't going to say, I'm not listening to that prayer because you're not on your knees. Now, if we're consciously thinking I'm never going to kneel again, that's an issue. I hope you follow what I'm saying here. Let's go back to Luke 18. Luke 18, verse 10. Very, very common words of Jesus Christ here. Luke 18, verse 10. Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.

The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank you that I'm not like these other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I possess. He was standing as he gave that prayer. Did God hear that prayer? No. Verse 13 and the tax collector. Standing afar off, he was standing as he prayed, wouldn't even so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breath saying, God, be merciful to me a sinner.

God says, I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other, for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. Is it okay to stand when you pray? Sometimes. Yes, it is. God doesn't look at the position, he looks at the heart, and he looks what our body languages say as we just allow that to happen. Let me give you Ephesians 6, verses 13-18, that you can look at at a later time.

But as a subset of standing, let's look at Jesus Christ and his last prayer before he was arrested in John 17. After that last Passover, he went out. He went out from where they were, and he was talking to his disciples. And as they talked, and they walked, he wasn't on his knees the whole time during verse 14, 15, and 16. As he was talking to the disciples, he was walking with them. He was walking with them, and he was talking to them. He was telling them what was going to happen.

You will receive the Holy Spirit. It's good that I go away. You don't understand now, but you will understand later, et cetera, et cetera. And at the end of chapter 16, he finishes with words telling them that they will have peace. Even in tribulation, in chapter 17, he immediately begins praying to God. And the sense of the verse here is that he was still speaking as he said this. Jesus spoke these words, lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son also may glorify you, as you have given him authority over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as you have given him.

And then he goes on through that prayer. Standing as he prayed that, a very heartfelt prayer that God heard, that the disciples heard, and they knew what was in his heart, and God knew what was in his heart. He was ready for what he was going to have to endure next. He was ready. His job had been done. He had in several hours to go before he would finally yield his life for you and me. But he was ready. And as he prayed that last prayer, he stood before God, but he looked up into heaven.

Psalm 121 says, I look to the hills from whence comes my help. And sometimes when we're praying, we look up into heaven because we know that God is up there. And as you pray, I'm sure you look up into heaven and you realize God is up there. At other times we bow our heads because we realize I'm not even worthy like that tax collector who was praying.

I'm not even worthy to look up to you because I am such a beginner and I'm such a mess and I need you. And I'm humbled before you as I come before and look at you. Our body language says a lot to God about what we're doing. If we just stand stoically or kneel stoically and just think about whatever discomfort we're in or whatever we need to do mechanically, we're not praying the way God wants us to.

Just let it be natural to think it is with husband and wife, with parent and child, with friends who are talking to each other. As we talk to each other at church, talk to him. Relate to him. Tell him your troubles. Give him your cares. Ask him constantly for the help in the areas that you need help in. He will give it to you if you ask. Develop that relationship. And don't just be mechanical about it or just, I'm punching the clock and that's done.

He is and he wants us to become the way he wants us to become through good times and through bad times. And as he makes us aware of shortcomings in our lives and problems that we have, weaknesses that we overcome or can overcome only through him. Okay. Let's talk about bowing. Now, as you read through the Old Testament, you remember, and as you've watched movies, that even in today's world, one of the signs of respect that people give to each other, we don't do it in America, but people in some of the other countries, they will bow down.

You see it in Japan, you see it among the Muslim countries, they will bow down to each other. You remember back several years ago, the president at that time bowed down before some Muslim leaders and it created quite a stir because presidents, we say, of the United States shouldn't bow down to anyone is what they say. But as we bow down before God, it shows respect to him.

And as we stand and as we have our prayers before and after services each week, we bow our heads. It's a show of respect to God. It's not right that during those prayers we should be looking ahead. When we ask our meals, when we ask prayers for our meals, we should bow our heads. It's a sign of respect and deference to God, showing the humility to him and recognizing to him that we are dependent on him, that we are certainly not equal to him, that we are reliant on him, that we are developing and have that healthy respect that we should all have.

In Genesis 18, verse 2, when Abraham encountered the three men, he immediately knew to bow his head. He bowed down to those men. He knew what was going on. He knew who they were. In Exodus 20, I'll show you something back here in the Ten Commandments. Exodus 20, as God gives us his lifestyle that's reflected in these Ten Commandments we have physically and spiritually as we apply them into our lives.

He says this in verse 4, the second commandment, it says, you shall not make for yourself a carved image any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them nor serve them. Don't bow down to them. He doesn't say don't kneel to them, which we wouldn't kneel either.

Don't pray to them. Don't bow down to them. They're not worthy of your respect, only God is worthy of that spiritual respect. You shall not bow down to them nor serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate or don't respect me, showing mercy to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments and show me by what they do in their lives.

They really do love me. They really do love me by what they do and what they choose to do in their lives. Matthew 26.

Matthew 26.

Nope. I'm one ahead of myself. Matthew 26 comes on the next one. So instead, let's turn to Isaiah 66. Isaiah 66.

Isaiah 66. Talking about the future. Talking about when Jesus Christ is returned. And people will be in his kingdom doing the things that he wants, praying to him, serving him, yielding to him, being trained by him, learning to overcome themselves by asking him continually, help me become the way you want me to become, expressing faith in him, allowing him to grow faith in them by asking them for faith and consciously looking to God in times of trouble, distress, doubt, or whenever times. Verse 22. For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me, says the eternal, so shall your descendants and your name remain. And it shall come to pass that from one new moon to another, and from one Sabbath to another, which will be observed in the kingdom, and for as long as mankind is on earth, all flesh shall come to worship before me, says the eternal. When you look up that word worship, the Greek word means they will bow down before God. They will humble themselves before him. They will worship him, and they will bow down before him, recognizing him as the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. Every knee will bow. Every man will bow in the presence of God. Okay. Fourth position we can talk about. Let's turn to Numbers 20. So we kneel when we pray. We stand when we pray. We bow down before God when we pray. Numbers 20. And also in the New Testament we see another thing that we do. And this is probably something that we don't maybe do a lot in our lives, but there are times in our life when it is very appropriate to do this. And there will be a time in your life. There is a time, been a time in my life, and there will be a time again in my life where this will come naturally, and we must find ourselves doing this just as Moses and Aaron did in the face of what was going on with Israel as they came out of Egypt. Numbers 20 and verse 2.

So we have to bring up out of Egypt to bring us to this evil place. Is it not a place of grain or figs? Or it is not a place of grain or figs or vines or pomegranates? Nor is there any water to drink? You can see what they were doing. They were in the middle of a desert. Moses and Aaron had no answers. They couldn't just send out to Walmart and say, bring me in some Zephyrhills water, bring in millions of cases of it.

It was hopeless. There was no way to turn. And they didn't know what to do. There was no answer except God. At times in our life, and sometime in your life, there will be, there is no answer but God.

Notice what they did. Moses and Aaron went from the presence of the assembly to the door of the taper of the tackle of meeting, and they fell on their faces. They just fell flat on their faces, prostrate on the ground.

Totally, totally helpless. We don't even have, we can't even stand before you, we can't even kneel before you, we have no answers. We are totally, totally, totally, totally dependent on you. Totally dependent on you. And there will be times in our life when we face something that we will just find we lay down before God and say, I don't have the answers. I don't have anything else I can do but rely on you.

If you haven't experienced that, you will. But maybe we need to look and realize there are times when we need to realize the only answer we have is from God. And we let go of all these other human things that we feel we need to do. As we kind of like have God in the picture but don't really have Him in the picture except that He's one of many things we're going to do.

That we come to rely totally on Him. Moses and Aaron did it. God saw the body language. He saw what was in their hearts. And it says, the glory of the Lord appeared to them. And He gave them an answer that they could have never imagined that the water would come out of the rock and the multitudes, the millions of people that were out there would be watered.

Never saw that coming. God has answers we can't even imagine ourselves. But when He sees what's in our heart, when we come before Him in total surrender and looking into Him and believing in Him and having practiced the faith and the prayer to Him and drawing closer to Him and the reliance on Him, we all must have, He answered. Let's go back this time to Matthew 26. Matthew's account of the time before Jesus Christ was arrested. Sometimes, you know, there's a progression in our prayers.

Sometimes, you know, we may begin our prayer stage standing up. We find our prayer. We find ourselves kneeling at the end. If you go back and look at Solomon's prayer after the dedication of the temple, you find in 1 Kings 8, He starts His prayer by standing up and raising His arms to heaven.

But at the end of the prayer, Psalm 45 verses later, He rises up from His knees. As He implores God and as He feels the emotion, He gets down on His knees in front of the congregation and then stands up. Luke's account, I guess it was Luke's account of Jesus Christ, He was kneeling. Here's what Matthew remembers about Jesus Christ, who may have begun kneeling, but at the end we see what Jesus Christ was doing.

Matthew 26, verse 38. Christ said to those, to those, to Peter, James, and John who are with Him that night as He went out to pray, My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here and watch with Me. He went a little farther and He fell on His face. No answer but you, God. Maybe He began kneeling and maybe as His prayer went on, He fell a ladder in His face. There's no answer but you.

I have no more answers. It is totally dependent on you and He yielded Himself to God's will. Totally yielded Himself to God's will. Fell on His face and prayed, saying, Father, if it's possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will. Tremendous attitude. Tremendous attitude that we would emulate and be well to learn as we go through our lives, as God gives us the opportunity to build faith in Him, build relationships with Him, pray to Him, and deepen our prayer lives, that it becomes pleasing to Him, that we do get to the point where we are praying constantly recurring prayers, thinking of Him when things happen in our lives, getting Him involved in most things that go on in our life, if not everything, knowing that He's there, teaching our children that He's there.

There will come a time in our life that we will lay prostrate before God and recognize it's only Him, only Him that can deliver us. It's not going to happen if we don't develop a prayer life now, if we don't understand how important that part of our spiritual life is. One more. One more. First Chronicles. We are laying prostrate before God. It is complete submission, complete surrender, complete reliance, nowhere else to look. First Chronicles 17. We all know that King David had a relationship with God. There were times he wandered in his life but as you read through the Psalms and as you read through the accounts of Him as he was King of Israel, you see him praying to God all different sorts of prayers.

Prayers of thanksgiving, prayers of strength as I go through. All these people, I keep wanting to do what you want me to do, God, but all these people are against me. He prayed that God would give them the strength and David handled all those well. If we were in David's situation, how many of us would have taken matters into our own hands and said, I'm going to do this and I'm going to do this. It must be God's will if I do this. He waited for God and he learned how to do that.

Well, here in chapter 17, chapter 17 and verse 16, David, who had a relationship with God who was on his knees, I'm sure when he prayed the prayer of repentance in Psalm 51, who stood before him when he was looking for strength and when he came before God, ready to do what he did, bowed his head before him, looked to him, I'm sure laid prostrate on the face many times as he looked to God as the only help that was out there.

He also had times of comfort with God and peace with God where he was in a relationship with him, where he just wanted to talk to him. Just like with our spouses and just like with our children, there's easy times to talk and there's times when we talk to God because we don't, aren't pleading with him and always begging for something. We just want to talk to him. Just want to clear our minds.

Just want to talk to him as we would talk to each other because he's got the answers. He's got the Holy Spirit. He can give it to us. He can help us through all the things. Sometimes we just need to process things through our lives, like we might do in the middle of the night when we're praying and when we're laying in bed and we can't sleep or when we're walking out in the field and we see something and we want to just instantly praise God for the beauty that we see here or there or whatever.

Just as we're walking with him, we think, I just need the time alone. I just need to talk to him as Jesus Christ might have done when he went into the Garden of Gethsemane and just needed to talk to God. Not because he was in times of distress because he just wanted to talk to him. And David finds himself in that position here in chapter 17 and verse 16.

David had that. I wouldn't do it every time, but sometimes sitting down shows God you're comfortable with him and you're just having a conversation with him. Like you do with mom or dad,Various times like you do with husband or wife,like you do with a friend. And not every interaction we have with each other is a time of distress or a time of extreme joy. Just a time when you get together with a friend and talk. David had that. Abraham had that. You and I can and should have that as we develop our relationship with God. Sometimes when we just sit and talk to God, it shows that we are at rest and at peace with Him. And He sees that in our body language. And it's okay if what you feel at that time is to sit and talk to God. You know, as you go through the Bible and you look at the prayers, and as you have occasion to look at some of those 650 prayers that are recorded in the Bible, you learn a lot. You learn a lot about what God wants, and you find that none of those prayers are exactly the same. I certainly haven't looked at all 650 of them. They're different. People prayed in the occasion. We pray in the occasion. We don't just go through a list and say, this is what I have to do each morning, or this is what I have to do before I go to bed each night. We pray in the occasion. We pray to God, but we are constantly in contact with Him. And we talk to Him about things. And there are times when we make ourselves pray for each other and whatever and get ourselves in that mindset. You know, we know what to do, and God will lead us to do. You know, it says in Romans 8 that the Holy Spirit will give utterance to us. He'll put in our minds what we need to pray about, and sometimes, just like, you know, Mr. Went would tell you the same thing, sometimes you sit down to write a sermon. It turns out totally different than what you had in mind. And sometimes when you pray, what you end up talking about is totally different than what you thought you were going to talk about as you began that prayer. And some of the insights that God gives you during that prayer comfort, encourage, and inspire you. There's body language in prayer. Our prayer life is extremely important, just like our study life is extremely important. That we look at God's Word, but we look at it in the light of the entire Bible. Not just New Testament like so many churches do, not just Old Testament like so many other churches do, and they lose their way along the way. You only learned that by studying the Bible. That's a topic for another time. But, you know, our body language is important. But what God looks at, God looks at, and what He wants in our prayer life is what is in our hearts. What are we saying? How are we approaching Him? With humility, with surrender, with adoration, with tribute, with comfort, totally helpless and reliant on Him.

The position. Don't focus on that. Do what's in your heart. Out of the abundance of our heart, speak, and let God hear the prayers you offer Him.