Prayer and Body Language

Well, hello again. It's an interesting program, wasn't it? As we learned, you can kind of see the difference in you watching beyond today's programs in the past of having the speaker speak to a lot of audience. You can just sit and he's into the message more, and we're hoping.

And I know your prayers for that program. This is the avenue that God wants to call more people, you know, that you would pray for the success of that. We're going to continue on Good Morning America. Good morning, Good Morning America. I'm Good Morning America. I'm WGN America, and I'll see how that happens. But even if we at some point decided not to say I'm WGN America, the program will still be produced and still put on YouTube and direct people to that.

So, anyway, I thought you would enjoy seeing, you know, see that program and hear the message. I think that is the program that's going to air the first weekend of February, if I remember correctly. You know, as anyone wants to talk about something, we all have in common, and we all have lives. And our lives differ, you know, one from another, depending on our career, family, where our families are, our children, our children, our family at home, you know, what we do for a living, whether we're retired, whether we're still working.

We all have lives, you know, and those lives have success. We have private lives, and we have personal lives, and the way we behave at home, you know, is different than the way we present ourselves in public. That's just kind of the way things are. And if we look at our public life, you know, it could be divided into subsets as well. We have various things that we do. We go to work, and we handle our work lives in one way. You know, we might handle our public life, our social life in another way. We might handle our relationships at church, you know, and the way we present ourselves at church may be in a different way.

But we all have lives. Personal, public, and we can divide our personal lives down into several things as well. But as Christians, we have a spiritual life. A spiritual life that should encompass all those other lives. It should be the defining thing of how we live at home, how we present ourselves in public, how we are in church, and everything in between. It is the thing that directs our thoughts. It should be the thing that directs our thoughts, helps us relate to God, and as we have this only spirit leading and guiding us, and as we anticipate the return of Jesus Christ, it's the thing that helps us and enables us to become more like Jesus Christ, more like God the Father, complying with the words of the Bible.

And that's what the goals of Christian Scripture are, to become like Him. You know, God gave us the Bible, the Bible you all have in your laps. And when you think about how the Bible has been written over the years, the examples that are in it, it's an amazing book. It's like the world we live in, it's the earth that we live on. It's an amazing creation. God took all that time, all that effort, all those things came into place that we would have this book that we can look at, and He gives us in that book the key to eternal life, the key to living like He is.

And our job is to study that, and to read it, and to incorporate it into our lives by doing the things of that, if we truly are anticipating and believe in Jesus Christ's return, that He is going to the Father through kingdom, and that God wants you and me to be part of that kingdom. You know, God, as we read through the Bible, God is a God of relationships. It's clear in the Bible that He wants a relationship of all of mankind.

He's not willing at any but that all we come to repentance, He says, come to repentance that is turned from the way of this world, the evil age that we live in, and turn to Him. Because that's the key to eternal life. The ways of this world aren't going to be in the kingdom that Jesus Christ established. It will be the way of life we read through the Bible, that we talk about, that we should see each other in each other as we grow, as we get to know each other, and as we practice in our lives. But to do that, we have to have a relationship with God.

He speaks to us. He speaks to us through the Bible that we read each day, and we should be studying it and looking at it as our instruction guide. Not just to, as I often say, not just turning the clock on and saying, I need to read for 30 minutes, but actually looking into it and understanding and asking God to help us see what is it in here that I need to know what do I need to do. There's an important part of our spiritual life that is study, meditation, fasting, all those things that we do to grow closer to God.

One of the very important things to God in our spiritual life is our prayer life. It's our prayer life. And we all have a prayer life. At least I hope we all have a prayer life. Maybe it's not as strong as we know it should be. Maybe it's very, maybe it needs some improvement. Maybe there's questions about it. But you know, our prayer life is our opportunity to talk to God. He speaks to us. He speaks to us, and we have His Word, you know, written in front of us. His Word that He, in through His Holy Spirit, will lead us into understanding of.

Will we meditate? You know, that Spirit will help us to understand and to see the directions we need to go or understand things we didn't understand. Our prayer life is our opportunity to talk to God, which can't have a relationship unless there's two-way communication. We have to talk to God.

We have to build a relationship with Him. Just like we have to build relationships with our spouses before we ever, before we ever got married to them, before we ever had friendships, as we developed friendships and relationships to the Church, we have to talk to each other. If communication is just one play, then a relationship never stops. And so, our prayer life is vitally important. You know, as the disciples, as the disciples watched Jesus Christ, and as they saw Him in actions, they walked with Him for three and a half years, and they saw how He lived.

They saw how He prayed. They saw how He would do things, and He would leave them for a while, and they would probably look at it and know, well, He's praying. How does He pray? What does He do? Back in Luke. Back in Luke 11. They asked that question. You know, the Bible itself, as you turn there, there's so many, there's so cool, so many things about prayer. I asked this question on Google.

How many prayers have been recorded in the Bible? How many prayers do you think that some of the scholars have gone through, people do? So, let's go through the Bible and say, how many prayers are there in the Bible?

The answer came up 650. 650 prayers in the Bible. Some of them are, you know, several verses long, but you can think of them. Some of them are just a short verse, but if you type that in, you'll find where it is it was. I didn't go through all of them. I didn't just double check them.

But 650 prayers in the Bible. It shows how important, how fair it lies to God, that He gives us that many examples of what people pray for. Some of them are very pervert prayers. Some of them are prayers of thanksgiving. Some of them are prayers of praise. Some of them are asking for healing. Some of them are times that are just a distress, where people realize there's no hope. No hope by God. No hope by God.

So, if you're interested in the prayers of the Bible, you might pull that up online and do the Bible study on prayers in the Bible, and just see what God recorded for us to learn from that. Might help, you know, our prayer life. Like this helps mine. Let's put a little oven here. A little oven in verse 13. I'm going to go up to verse 13. I'm reading every single verse. This is in verse 1. It came to pass as He, Christ, was praying in a certain place. When He ceased, when did the disciples say to Him, Lord, He dressed the bride as a non-faudist disciples.

How did He dress her? We don't give her close to God. We know that you have a relationship. Teach us. Teach us to do what you're doing. If they watch the season go out in the garden, they wonder, what is He talking about? What is He doing? We're all curious about the things we need to do, right? How do we do that? How do we have the same results that you have? And certainly they knew that if Jesus Christ was on earth and said, watch the book, He had a relationship with God.

And they wanted that same relationship to understand what He was doing. So it says in verse 2, When you pray, say, and then He gives us the model prayer. And I'm not going to go through the model prayer code. Most of us can recite that word for word. But if He tells us at least the type of things to pray for, praise God, thank Him. Ask Him for forgiveness. Pray for His kingdom to come.

Thank Him for the food that He has provided for us every day. Thank Him for the physical food and the spiritual food that you are given. Ask Him to keep you from the evil that's there, to give you the strength to resist the evil and to put Satan behind you. And He gives us these things, the model of what they can pray for, and act like a framework.

Now, some churches will just take that prayer and they just pray. And mindlessly, they just pray it over and over again. The first ten years of my life, I was in a church. And that's all we learned, was that prayer and one other. And when you sinned and you went into your little compassion to the priest, He would say, take ten of these and take ten of these. And you memorized it, but it had absolutely nothing to do with communicating with God.

It was just repeating words. And as Luke recorded these, I'm ahead of myself, but I'm going to go back to Matthew in a minute. But let's go on to verse 5 here and see what Luke, as Christ answered the question to them, this is the model prayer of what you have to say. This is what Luke got out of that prayer.

And it's interesting we compare Luke's record of what Christ said to Matthew's. It came up with two different things. And sometimes when we hear things, I'm always interested in what someone mentions. At that point in your sermon, I think, oh, that wasn't even one of my main points.

But someone got it. Someone else will say something else. And as Luke recorded his message, of his interpretation, not his interpretation, but what was rare, Matthew's is a little different. Let's look at Luke's love and her sorrow. Christ said to them, Where should we be so that our friend, to go get him with his night say again, Friend, let me reload?

For our friend of mine has come to me in a sire, and yet I have nothing to set before him. And you'll answer from within and say, No trouble me, the door is shut, but my children are with me at bed. I can't rise into view. I say to you that we 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 we say, you go to God, you ask. You may not have the answer the first time, but just like you might ask for a friend over and over again, or something, if you keep asking, you know what, he's going to give it to you. Show God that you trusted him, he's going to provide, and you go and you ask him for it. Not just once and give up, be persistent. For everyone, verse 9. So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you.

See that you will find not that it will be open to you. God knows what we need before we ever ask for it. He knows, and he's aware of it. But he expects us to ask. He wants us to talk to him and recognize he provides. He's the one who can give us what we need, provide what we're looking for, answer the questions that we have. If we don't ask, if we don't do anything with them, we may not find it.

But we go to God. He's the source of wisdom. He's the source of everything we have and every will have. Luke is telling us there, and it is even a problem, what Christ said to him. Ask, and it will be given to you. He will find not that it will be open to you.

For everyone who asks receives, and he who sees finds, and to him who knocks, it will be open. If a son asks for bread for any father among you, will he give him some? If he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish? Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a sorbet? If you then, being evil, know how to give goodness to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask?

How he's faithful to give when we ask him faith. When we ask with an attitude of his will be done and not ours, when we are understanding his sovereignty, and what he wants, and what he wants under that, we come to the point that we want the same thing in our lives. We have to ask, we have to talk, we have to have a prayer line that is active and strong in order to be close to God and be doing his will. Let's turn back to Matthew 6 here. Matthew 6, verses 9 through 11 or 12, and Jesus probably sees that model of prayer.

If we think up to it, he tells us a few more things about prayer and our prayer lies. In verse 6 of Matthew 6, Matthew reports this. He says, When you pray, go into your room. When you shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place. Now let me read verse 5 to get into context here. Verse 5, When you pray, speaking to his disciples, you shall not be like the immigrants, for they love the praise standing in the synagogue and on the corners of the streets that they may be seen by men. But surely, I say to you, they have their reward. Look how great I am.

Look at me pray. And they ask what they were looking for, really, and their prayer list, people see them pray. They say, So you, when you pray, keep going to your room. When you shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret.

And your Father who sees them secret will reward you openly. You pray for the right reason. Not to be seen by others, not to be seen by your spouse, but to be as close as you want, a relationship with God, because you're talking again. And you close yourself off. It may be in a closet, it may be in the room of the house, it may be some other place, it may be outside on your back porch. That's your place that you can go and you can have just the time to talk.

And to have that relationship with Him, where the rest of the world is kind of closed off. You're not going to have distractions of what it is, but you have a place where you pray. You know, that's very important, as I've come to understand in the years. To have a great place that you go to, but when you go there, you kind of feel God's presence. You kind of feel that this is what I'm here, and there are other things I do in here, but the main thing about this place is I pray here.

And it has that essence to me that this is where I communicate with God most of the time, maybe not all of the time.

So God says, don't be like the immigrants. Don't pray this will be seen. And verse 7 says, when you pray, don't use any repetitions as the heathen do. Don't just say the same thing over and over again. Don't think you have to have the same prayer. Don't think you have to go through every single thing, every single time you pray to God. Because it becomes many repetitions. It doesn't have to be that we may not repeat the model prayer that we read here in Matthew 6 and Luke 11. But we can use many repetitions, and sometimes we can find ourselves just saying things that are not even somewhere else. We're just trying to say anything because we need to pray about that. We need to do about that. God knows what's in our heart when we pray. He says, and I think it's Matthew 12, out of the alumnus of your heart, the mouth speaks. We can't just say that with each other, no? We can't know each other's mind. But when we talk to God, He knows what's in our heart. He knows if we're there with Him, or if we're somewhere else, or if we're just going through the motions. Sometimes we can talk with people, and we can tell when we're talking, they're not paying any attention. They're not paying any attention to what we're saying. And that's okay, we all have other things on our minds sometimes. But God can tell, too. If we can tell, God can tell. Are they really interested? Are they really involved in the Spirit? Are they really communicating with me, or are they just punching the clock? Are they just going through the motions of it? God responds with prayers where people are talking to Him. And takes the time to have themselves, and then has to come talking to Him.

So He says, don't use the baby repetitions that they do. You know, some people ask, well, how often do I pray? I'm sure the cycle starts. How often do we pray? You may have seen Him go off several times in a day. Maybe more in one day than in another day. And they might have asked Him just like some ask, how many times do I pray? I remember when we first came to the church. How often do you pray? How long do you pray? The answer is, you should pray at least. I remember when I was right. At least a half an hour every morning. So you find yourself thinking, wow, I only pray 15 minutes. I haven't been to a God service. But maybe 15 minutes is what is needed that day. Completely what you were doing. Sometimes it's an hour. Sometimes it's more. You can't put a clock on one prayer that we have. There's nowhere in the Bible that says Jesus Christ paid for at least X, X minutes a day. Nowhere in the Bible it says you do that. But you pray as you develop a relationship with God. There's no rules when we get married. You have to talk to our wives, X, X minutes a day. Whether we're working and whether we come home, at least X, X minutes a day. You know what you need to do in order to have that relationship that you built there. If you ignore it, and if you're just going through the motions of it and your heart's not in it, God knows just like Christ knows and others know. We had the Bible study at the camp out. You know, I think someone mentioned that in Psalm 119 it mentions that David prayed seven times a day. Another place in the Psalm is that David prayed morning, noon, and night. Some of the fountain terrors and scholars will say, Well, David may have actually taken seven times to pray. He may have, sometimes, his license seven times for sure I'm going to pray today. Or it could just be a wave of symbolizing I'm praying to God all the time. My prayer of life is such that I am with God all the time, and I pray to Him often. Not just in the morning, not just at night, not just at this time, not just those times, but I have a constant prayer of life. You know, Paul kind of talks about that over here in 1 Thessalonians. 1 Thessalonians 5.

1 Thessalonians 5 and verse 17. In a very short, very short verse, three words, maybe the second shortest verse in the Bible. As he's going through the things that make up a Christian life, at the end of the chapter here, it is the Epistle to the Suphillom. He says in verse 17, Pray without ceasing. And some, you know, might think, Pray without ceasing. How can we do that? I hope we all kind of understand it.

Paul is going to be 24 hours a day, 7 days a week praying. We do nothing else as we did that. We have lives to live, personal lives, public lives, work lives, school lives, other things that happen. Well, you look back at the Greek word that is translated without ceasing. It is the Greek word, adioleptos. It means constantly recur. Constantly recur. And that would have been a better way to translate it. You know, pray, pray, constantly, have prayed constantly, and recurring prayers. Don't just think you're done and get off of your knees, or in the morning, you're done with prayer, I'll just think about that, and you can just lay awake on the next day.

That's not the end of the service I got at once. Don't just, you know, put in the morning and say, when it was pray this time today, I want to do that, and think about it any more. And that's the way that we develop our relationship with God. We're in a constant communication. That when times of trouble come, what we do is the first thing we think of is, I've got to ask God.

What we say to beautiful scientists, we're walking through the forest, the first thing we might think is, I want to thank God for the beauty that you created. What we have when we're talking with someone, and we know they've had a problem, we might ask God, in our mind, God help me to give them the answer that they need to help them, to direct them to them. That He becomes part of our lives in everything that we do. That there's constantly recurring prayers. That that will be 15 minutes long, or 30 minutes long, or go through the entire things that are there in Matthew 6 and Luke 11. But things where we're constantly in contact with God, because He's become our priority.

He's become our God. He's become our mentor. He is who we look to. And that way, it gets to the point where we, provitually, think of Him first. Think of Him first. Because He is, literally, everything. He's our future. He's our present. He's the one who provides. He's the one who heals. He's the one who can help us in times of trouble. He's the one who can inspire. He's the one who can help us get out of the cold rooms and depressions and whatever it is. Everything God can provide, if we think of Him first.

And that's what the mission is. He can help us at work. And the physical things that we do in life, as well as the spiritual lives, as well. He's interested in everything we do. And so, we pray to God at first. And Paul says that, and David understood that. But God looks at our prayers. He wants us to pray.

He wants us to talk to Him. Out of the abundance of our mouths, our hearts speaks to Him. And He sees where we are. But you know, there's another thing that God looks at when we pray. And there's something that we automatically do when we pray. You know, you've all heard of body language, right?

Sometimes you can tell by body language, you know, whether someone's interested or not. When I look around the room when I'm speaking, I can tell by body language, whether I'm connecting or not, or someone's just thinking, get this over with, or whatever. You can tell by body language. You've all been to school, and you know, as you go into college, you tell you when you're working with an employer or whatever, watch your body language, because how you're presenting yourself, and how you're standing, and how you're sitting, and where you are, it tells the person a lot about you.

And we all have a body language when we pray as well. There's prayer positions that we have when we pray, right? We all know what they are. We know the name one, right? Kneeling is the main thing. Well, we think of prayer as the first position that comes into our mind. Kneeling. Kneeling. And sometimes when people ask, people ask, do I have to kneel every time I pray? Well, the answer is no, because as you look at the Bible, and as you look at the 650 prayers that are there, and as you look at the times that are in the Bible and even Jesus Christ Himself, you see that kneeling is a very important position.

Because when we kneel before someone, the body language is saying, we submit to you. We surrender to you. You are superior. You are far above us. We just bend our whole body and our knee to you. You know, years ago I heard someone say that, you know, when people bow, when people bend the knee to kings, because, you know, in America we don't have kings, so we don't bow down to anyone. We don't kneel before the president or anything like that. When people would bend the knee to the kings, they would bend one knee.

They would show their submission and their humility before that king, that he was sovereign and well-bowed. But the guy, we bend both knees. Who's submission? So along the line, as people understood worshiping God or their gods or whatever, the kings wanted to be worshiped, but it wasn't with both knees. If you watch movies and you see things in the old, it's one knee that's bowed. But we got it, we bend both knees, as we are submissive to him.

But the reason we're leaning before God is symbolic of our attitude toward the end. Now if we kneel just because we think we have to, and that's because the only way we can pray is that that says something too. You know, when we speak to each other, we're not consciously thinking about our gestures, we're not thinking about our emotions and lectures, we're not thinking about those things. It just happens. You can kind of tell someone's expressions and their attitude by the things they do.

They're not thinking about it. They're just talking, and they're just relating to you and you to them. So when we pray, if we force ourselves and say, I have to kneel, sometimes that's good, we do need to. We do need to force ourselves to kneel before God. And when we're kneeling before God, it does split in our minds. We are sinic, and we are totally subordinate to Him, and He is sovereign. One day, the Bible tells us, all of mankind is going to tend to be God. Let's go over to Philippians. Philippians 2. And verse 9, And Paul writes, it says, Therefore God also has highly exalted Jesus Christ, and given Him the name which is above every name.

That heaven, the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, of those in heaven and of those on earth and of those under the earth. In the future, every knee will bow to Christ. Not just one, every knee will bow.

When mankind realizes and they accept, as they accept their subordination to Him, when they surrender to Him, when they see Him as the King of Kings, the same thing that you and I do now. And when we pray to God, and when we kneel before Him, we are showing Him that. David talked about kneeling back in Psalm 95. Psalm 95. Psalm 95 and verse 6. Okam. Actually, this may be part of the hymn we sang here this morning. Okam, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the eternal hour maker. Let us worship and let us kneel down before the eternal hour maker. I'm going to do more, so let's turn to one last one about David here, Luke 22, and see Christ's example.

It's interesting that as you see Christ's prayers and look at them, there are a few times that He specifically mentions that He kneels, but other times He doesn't mention what position, what body language He had when He approached God the Father. And we'll see that here in a minute. But over Luke 22 and verse 41, as He is preparing for the time that He was going to be arrested, and you remember He took up here the disciples with Him, He went and prayed, and He came back, and found His way when He came back again. But here it says in verse 41, He was withdrawn from them, those disciples by the stone's throne, and He knelt down and prayed.

He knelt down, He submitted Himself to God the Father, as He was directly Christ's life as well, and what He was about to go through, saying, Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from me. Nevertheless, not mine will, but Yours will be done. And in that prayer, when we are nearly down, you can see the attitude of submission.

I've been asked this, but it is Your will. It's Your will. Whatever you want done, that will be the thing that's gone and will be accepted. But if this can be done another way, let it be done.

Sometimes when we kneel, not sometimes, but when we kneel, we should be thinking of what God's will is. When we sin and we repent, it's a good time to kneel before God and ask His forgiveness. When we are praying perfectly for someone that has an illness or other trial we know He drew, we can probably be kneeling and asking God, because over time, He's showing it is Your will, Father. Teach us, guide us, and we're imploring You, because this is a situation that You, that we need Your involvement in in no other way. We can mark down in your notes there, taking them. Acts 7, verse 16, you know, as Stephen was about to be sown to death, he knelt down and asked God for the people that were around him. As soon as he was submitting himself, he got an email and prayed down and then died. In Acts 9, verse 40, he talked about Peter kneeling as he was in prison. In Acts 20, verse 36, you know, Paul, as he's leading the people of Ephesus, knelt and prayed with them, because he wanted God to look for them. And as you look at the instances, and there's others beside, you can look at your recordings or online, see the instances of kneeling where people are submitting and asking God, please be with us. And when we have those serious prayers that we're looking for, and even prayers and worship and thanks, you know, kneeling before God says something. It says something about our attitude, and it says something about when he sees us willy, kneel down before him. And you know, when you pray, sometimes it's just natural. You just want to kneel before God. Other times, maybe not.

You know, we're here in Ezra. There's something else that we do, you know, when we're praying. And I've got five of these. I'm not going to take as long on all of them here, but in Ezra 9, Ezra 9, we find Ezra. Praying in prayer as, you know, he's coming into the land, the Jews are coming back to Jerusalem. They had this issue of the intermarriage with people of other beliefs that is there, and he's beseeching God. And in verse 5, it says that he's coming back to Israel.

It says, at the evening sacrifice, and this is Ezra 9, at the evening sacrifice, I arose from my passing, very most communicating with God. What can we do about this situation? We have prayed from you, we've done things that were a part of your will. At the evening sacrifice, I arose from my passing, and having formed my garment and my robe, I fell on my knees and spread out my hands to lower my God. And I said, I'm in the due humility to lift up my voice to you. And you can read through that prayer and see that he had it to the desirings. He was looking to God, save us, forgive us, help us to see the things that we need to do. But as he held, he raised his arms to God. He raised his arms to God. And when we raise our arms to God, and I'm sure we've all done that, you're not consciously thinking, oh, I need to raise my arms to God. We just want to go one more prayer to God, we find ourselves raising our arms to Him. And when we raise our arms to Him, just as if we were raising our arms to someone else, we're kind of beseeching Him. We're looking to Him. We're kind of welcoming Him and inviting Him in to our lives. And if you see that go on, you know, that is an expression of body-wing, which again, the God looks at. And he remorses here the Bible for us, as Ezra did that. And Ezra would lift up his hands. And it's a subset, if you will, of me leaving more God, as he says here. You see Moses raising his hands before God. You know, as he fought the Amalekites, his hands were outstretched. And as they cross the Red Sea, his hands were outstretched. Even in the New Testament, in the First Timothy, Paul references it.

As part of our body language and our prayer life, First Timothy 2.

He began in verse 1. In the first four verses in the verse 8.

Verse 8.

So we implore God that we raise our hands to Him.

And that tells God something. When He sees us, just do that. When it just becomes part of our prayer and the body language as we express our words to Him, and use our bodies to express what we want to do in this world. Now, someone asked, why don't we use that in church? Why don't we do that in church? Well, sometimes in church, you know, we, this would be called, I guess, corporate prayer, in a way. But we probably work out.

That's something we would do in Christ, right? When we're talking to God one-on-one, we would raise our hands. This is something we would do here. So we ask God to open services and close services and other times. That would be things that we do for show. And one person does it, then other person's people feel they need to do it. So here we pray and we bow our heads and we ask God, but raising our hands as we pray to God in pride of Him. This is a good thing. That's what you feel. Do it. It helps us and it helps our bodies help us. Sometimes we even express more to God. Well, we want, what our hearts want to express, but we use our bodies to express within what we want. God hears, God hears, and God knows.

Let's look at another position. We have kneeling. We also, you know, stand before God when we pray. The Bible talks about that. Let's go back to 1 Kings 8.

It also sounds like prayer as a dedication to the temple. It takes up many of the verses here in chapter 8, where He's thanking God for the temple, where He goes into a prayer then of asking God that when people look to Him, when they look, of course, in the Old Testament times, they look to the temple. That's where God was. And they would look to Him when they would sin.

They would ask Him for repentance, that He would grant that. When they would sign some famine or distress or disease or war, that He would, that they would look to God, they would do His will, and they would find it. And they would find the redemption, and they would find the answer from Him.

So here ends first scheme stage in verse 22. After Solomon gives some introductory words to the temple and blessing of the people there, so Solomon stood before the altar of the Eternal, in the presence of all the assembly of Israel, and he spread out his hands for heaven. And he said, Lord God of Israel, there is no God in heaven above, for in earth be available like you, who keep your covenant and mercy with your servants, who walk before you, with all their hearts.

And he's thanking God, and he's inviting Him in, to what they're going to do there. So notice in verse 22, he was standing before God, as he began that prayer. And as he stood, he lifted his hands to them.

Sometimes people wonder, is it wrong to stand when we pray? No. There's times when we do stand when we pray. Samuel or Erwin. Problem in here, pray. We go back, and look at the book after Israel, Nehemiah. We find Nehemiah. He came back to Jerusalem after the exile of our southern theaters. And this commission was to complete the walls of our round there, around Jerusalem, to finish the work that God had started. And in chapter 9 of Nehemiah, we see what His is. I should have mentioned it in Ptolemy. We read through that whole prayer. Solace began by standing, but at the end of the prayer, he was kneeling.

When he had done this in verses 52-54, he seemed to know the prayer. He came up from his knees. But during the course of the prayer, the body language changed. He began standing, but then he finished while he was kneeling. As the guy does do, he leads to the prayer. Sometimes we do the same thing. In chapter 9 of Nehemiah, it says, On the 24th day of the month, the children of Israel were simple with fasting, in sack-walk, and with dust on their heads.

This was the time when they were seeking God. This was the time when things had gone on, and they were looking seriously for God. Those of Israel had been used to separate themselves from all foreigners, and they stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers. And they stood 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 worshipped the Lord their God.

And then all these other people would do that. Say, then, appearing when they were seeking God, repenting of what they had done, looking for His will. Now, as they were strengthened from repentance, now as they were seeking God, they felt the strength come back again. Notice what it says in verse 5. And the Levites, and as the people were there gathered, they say, Stand up.

Stand up, and bless the Lord your God, for ever and ever. And as they go into a prayer, stand before God. Well, we stand before God. Just like when we would stand before a king, it could in his name, we're ready. We're ready for battle. We're ready to serve. We're ready to do Your will. We've come out of this time where we have been looking for You. Now we get it.

Now we understand where our lives have been, and what we need to change. We are ready. We are ready to serve You. We have confidence in You. We have confidence in You, and not ourselves. But we are looking to You, Almighty God. And we are ready for service. And sometimes when we pray, we do stand.

It's the natural stance. We're ready. We're ready for what God has to offer us. We're ready to approach Him, and acknowledge our sins, and say, take me, use me, do whatever you want with me. It's not a confidence that comes from us. It's a confidence that comes from God, and He's been seeking Him, and willing to Him. I can do this at 1 Samuel 1, verse 26. You can see Hannah. Remember Hannah? She was the one who was praying for a child, and God eventually gave her a sandal. When she was talking to the high priest there, she said, I stood.

I stood by you and prayed. Let's go back to Mark 11, and see what Jesus Christ said in Mark 11, verse 24. Verse 24, after the incident with the fig tree, when Christ had cursed the fig tree, the next morning they came by, and Peter said, look, that fig tree you cursed, there's no more. There's nothing.

The whole tree that just withers away. In verse 24, in part of Jesus' response to what Peter said, it says, Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask, when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you'll have them. Believe in God. Know that if you are doing His will, and ask them in the right attitude, He will do them. Verse 25, now whenever you stand, pray. Whenever you stand, pray. If you have anything against anyone, forgive them. As they're bothering heaven, they also forgive you your trespasses. If you don't forgive, neither will he forgive your trespasses. Whenever they stand, pray.

Kneel, sometimes. Put your hands to heaven, sometimes. Sing, sometimes. As you feel, and as you are approaching God. So we're in Luke 18. Luke 18. And verse 10.

Luke 18 verse 10. A parable of the two people praying. Luke 18 verse 10. Two men went up to the temple to pray. One a parable of the two, and the other a tax collector. The parable of the two stood, and prayed thus with themselves. God, I think, knew that I'm not like other men, extortioners, unjust, delterers, or even like this tax collector. I pass twice a week. I'm excited to evolve to that success. You stood, but that was the prayer that he gave. Verse 13, the tax collector, also, sadly, a harp, would not so much as lift his eyes to heaven, but beat his breath, saying, God, be merciful to me and the sinner. In Christ's name I tell you, this man, this man, who was standing and praying that prayer, went down to his house and justified rather than the other. For everyone who insults himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. God listened to us. He listened to our people's attitudes. One had a very bad attitude. One had the right attitude. So, when we pray, just standing is the thing we feel naturally like doing at that time, in our private place, not to be seen by others. Then don't feel guilty about it. I won't turn to Ephesians 6 and verse 13 to 18, but there it talks about the armor of God. Throughout those five verses, it talks about standing. Even when we use the preparation to rule prayer, when we're getting ready for the battle that God has for us. At all times, we see people come before the kings, and they will be on one knee. Are they pleading for the king's mercy or direction? Other times they will stand before him because they were ready. They were ready to do this as well. Combine what he wanted to do.

Well, there in Luke 18, we see this text selected, who wouldn't even look up into heaven. Who wouldn't even look up into heaven? Because he felt so humble and so unworthy to even look up into the place where God resides. Other times we find the Bible where people do look up into heaven. And probably when you pray, there are times when you look up into heaven. You know, Psalm 121 says, Where do I lift my eyes? And the heel will tell us, my eyes. For once comes my help. For our help comes from God, who we always is above us.

Over in John 17, in John 17, we have Christ's final prayer. Before he's arrested and he's proceeding, he chapters there, he's talked with his disciples after they've had that last day, that last Passover service. And he's told them the Holy Spirit will come to them. He's told them, Be it so that you go away for a while. And he's setting the stage for them. And as they're doing that, they're walking.

They're walking, they're talking, he's explaining to them. And after he finishes his words in John 16, he goes into his prayer. It doesn't say that he knelt, but as he was talking and he was closing, he said in John 17, he says, Jesus spoke these words, where is the help of his eyes to heaven and say, Father, the hour has now come.

Lore of thy or Son, which o'er some may glorify you. You are where I look. And we probably find that as well. There are other times when we know that we've disappointed God, that we sin. And maybe like the tax collector, we feel so unworthy that we can't even lift our eyes to heaven. So, you know, I was putting this together. I thought I came into my mind, and many of you probably have dogs and whatever. We had a dog for 14 years, and I thought about, you know, that dog, when you would call it, it would come and it would look right at you. And, of course, dogs had to look right at you and your eye.

Well, we had come on under the ring of the way for a while. If it was looking in the eye, you knew it had the right attitude. We came home, and it would come. If we knew it would look you in the eye, you knew. And dogs. And dogs. So, by his body language, by her body language, I should say, we need time to do what's going on, and the same thing can do with us. Sometimes what we're doing with God, you know, we feel so guilty. And we know that we've disappointed Him.

And we need that spring from Him that comes from forgiveness, and opening our minds, and opening our hearts, and pouring our hearts out to Him. The guy's been looking for us to just say the things He wants us to hear, He wants us to say, He wants us to say what's in our hearts. He's the one being on earth we can open up totally to, and pour our hearts to, the things that bother us, the things that we are having trouble with, the things that we don't understand.

Be honest with Him. That's what He's there for, and He can help. And sometimes, it's looking up into Heaven, whether it's standing, or whether it's on our knees, that our lives are placed, and when we're pouring our hearts to God, He'll hear, and He'll answer. But we have to do it, and we have to take the time, and we have to make the time to be able to do what God wants us to do.

Now, let's look at another one. This one is following before God. And that will be following, not just following our head, but, you know, you see some people, and it happens to you in our world today, we'll have to bow their whole body to a dignitary. Again, we don't do that in America, but you may remember a few years ago, some president bowled before some leaders, and he put some plaque for it.

People in America don't bow to other leaders. We are, you know, we don't do that. But in many parts of the world, people still bow to their leaders. And we bow to God at times as well. In Genesis 18, in many places, in the Old Testament, we see the men of God following before God, and they come into His presence. In Genesis 18, this is Abraham, and he encounters the three men who are there with him in this situation. In verse 2, it says, Abraham looked at his eyes, and looked at the whole three men who were standing by him, and he saw them.

He grabbed him from the tent door to meet them, and bowed himself to the ground. And the Hebrew word translated bowler doesn't mean needle, it means, and bowled the body, or bowled the neck, it can be either one. But he bowled before them. He knew he was in the presence of some important men. And he bowed and showed that respect to him, you know, leaning at the end of the surfaces, as many of the surfaces. We bow our heads. We're standing before God. We bow our heads, because volume is a sign of respect to God. And at times, we bow our heads to Him, even in our prayer, our private prayer, because that's just what we do.

You know, Joseph, remember when Joseph was the second in command of the Egypt, and his brothers came to him looking for food. What did they do when they approached Joseph? They bowed and he bore him. There was a man who knew he owed respect, a man who could provide some support. When Jacob went to see Esau, after he left Laban's house, he bowled and he bore him.

He bowled and he bore him to show his respect toward him. And when we bow our heads before God, we're showing our respect to Him. We don't look at the times of those prayers ahead, straight ahead. That was the sign of disrespect. When we bow our heads at church, when we bow our heads when we ask blessings over meals, or in group prayers, we bow our heads. We show, by that action, that body language, what it is, and who we are respecting and recognizing is supremacy over us.

In Isaiah 66, a prophecy from the end of the time. In Isaiah 66 and verse 23.

We ask, then to the body, file the body before me, says the Lord. And sometimes all flesh will bend the knee before God, and all flesh will bow before God. We should be following before God and recognizing what we're doing at that time as well. Okay, let's look at number four. Number five is short. So we'll put a number four and subtract a number's point. This is maybe one we don't use very often in our personal prayers.

We probably have. At some time in our life they say, crisis, whatever that crisis may be. But we might have found ourselves doing what Moses and Aaron did when they found this crisis that they were facing with Israel. The times in our lives when we look around and we make humanly think, I can do this and I can do that and if I do this, this will work. But at some point in our life we realize the only answer is God. There is no will to play in. There is no answer except God.

And here in verse two of Numbers 20, we find... Yes, Numbers 20 verse two. It says there was no water for the congregation. Here they have updated. They were out in the middle of the desert. There was no water. Well, none of us can create water. The people were complaining. So they gathered together in this Moses and Aaron. The people contended with Moses and spoke, saying, If we had just died, when our brethren died before the eternal, why did you bring the assembly of the Lord into this wilderness that we and our animals should die here?

Why did you make us come up out of Egypt to bring us a deceival place? It's not a place of grain or thick or pine or pomegranates, nor is there any water to drain. We can imagine what Moses and Aaron were thinking. We don't have the answer. We have no idea what to do.

Your voices are heard. We understand what you're saying. We don't have an answer. We can't do anything about it. Notice what they did. Moses and Aaron hung from the presence of the assembly to the door of the tabernacle of the living, and they fell on their faces.

They fell on their faces. They didn't just kneel. They didn't stand. They did just file. They fell on their faces. They were lying cross-grade on the ground, total and complete surrender and sufficient to God. You are the only one who can save us. This is only you that can do that. And when they did that body language, when they fell before God on their faces, the glory of the Lord appeared to them and gave them the answer.

And sometimes in our life, and probably at some time in all of our lives, we will find ourselves in a situation where there is no answer but God. And at that time, I hope our spirit, and I hope our body language will be we fall cross-state before God flat on our faces and recognize He is the only one. There is nothing left. We are as flat as that unleavened bread that we eat during the days of unleavened bread. No pride left. No answers left.

Complete submission and dependence on Him. It's a time in our lives I hope we all experience and we recognize it when we come to it. And we fall on our faces to God at that time, recognizing and symbolizing to Him, You are. You are our only hope. You are our only hope. And at some time, as we continue to walk with God, as we continue down this path between now and the time Jesus Christ returns, I think all of us are going to face this time when we have to look at it and say, our only hope is you.

And at that time, our body language will follow what our whole parts are saying. We wait for safety for you. All humility, all pride, all stealth, all answers are going. We don't know how we completely rely on you. If you can mark that on Luke 5 verse 12 in the leper. Remember lepers? There was no cure. If the leper sees Jesus Christ, he'll die leper in Luke 5 verse 12.

He felt a fire in his face before Jesus Christ. There is no answer but you. He was helping me to describe sin, Christ healed me. In Matthew 26, Matthew 26, again before Jesus Christ, before Jesus Christ was arrested in verse 39, and after he found this, he fell on a little farther. Jesus Christ. And he fell on his face. He fell on his face. What he was facing was excruciating to think about. To have to be facing. None of us could even imagine what he was about to go through.

He went a little farther and fell on his face. And prayed, saying, again, you know, who says Neil? Matthew says he fell on his face. He was completely dependent on God, even Jesus Christ, that he recognized what he needed to do. And that there was no strength in himself to go through that fire. No answers that he had to go through it. It's completely dependent on time. It's even free. So one of the things that we might find in our body language will be lying cross-safety for God.

And one last one. One last one in verse chronicles. Verse chronicles 17. Verse 16. This is David. Verse 16 is that it is King David, Lincoln, and Sath. And Sath before the Eternal. And so, who am I? Oh Lord God, what is my house? That you have brought me this far. And yet, this was a small thing in your sight of God.

And then he goes on and he talks, conversationally, with God. But it says he's fat before God. And at that point, he was comfortable with God. This wasn't prayer or urgency. This wasn't prayer, seeking anything. He's just talking to God.

Why are you mindful of me? When he laid out in the fields and looked up at the skies, he was laid back on the fact that he had some meaningful prayers. As he asked God, you know, what did the heavens declare? Did he declare your report? You know, our body was just a lot about how we relate to each other. Our body was a wish and our prayers tells God, a lot of what's in our hearts.

Yet it's not planned, it's just automatic, it's something that just happens as a result of the prayers and the permanency that we give.

Can we use any of those? Yes. The physical approach that we have before God tells him a lot about us. Doesn't always have to be just me.

Doesn't always have to be just standing. It isn't always just lying in cross faith on your face. It isn't always lifting up your hands to heaven or lifting your eyes up to heaven or following your head. There's different times and different prayers. What God is looking for is not the physical. What he's looking for in our prayers is what is in our hearts. That's what he is looking for. He's supposed to have a little tabulator up there and say, well, he only kneeled before me four times this week, and it's going to be four times, what does that say about him? No, he's looking at what is in our hearts. What we say, how we say it, not becoming uncomfortable, you know, and that sometimes it's just hard to kneel for 15 or 20 minutes, isn't it? The older I get, I realize my knees really hurt sometimes. And all of a sudden, I'm not thinking about my prayer, but I'm thinking about how bad my knees hurt after a while. So I get out of the walk, and I get out of the stand, and you know what? The prayer comes back. God is the goal. I hope God is the only God who will say, you'll only help for 12 minutes during that prayer, that then, and the rest of the time you are standing. He looks at what's in our hearts. When we pray, and as we live our spiritual lives, and as we prepare ourselves for the time that Jesus Christ returns, make sure you don't be left to prayer life that we have. It's our opportunity to talk to God and build relationships with Him. Do the things. Pray. And understand God knows, but pray from the heart. And don't go just through the mechanics of what it is, but pray from the heart.

Thank you.