Seven Basic Principles About Prayer

It's amazing how many times over the years—I say amazing, it really isn't. It's common. We think we're the only ones who go through this, but time after time people come to me and we sit down and they'll say something like, I don't know, I just have trouble praying. Or why is it that when I pray it feels like my prayers aren't going anyplace? God doesn't listen, God doesn't answer.

Or I've been so upset lately I can't pray. In fact, people say, I need to pray, and yet I can't. And they're always surprised when I say, oh yeah, we've all gone through that. We've all had times when we feel like our prayers are not being answered by God, or God doesn't care, or for some reason we can't pray. Sometimes it's because we're sinning, and then because of that there's a barrier between us and God. But sometimes we just don't understand, and we think, why is it so difficult to pray?

At the core of every one of us, we have an overwhelming need to have a relationship with our Creator. It's actually at the very core of who we are. Why is that so difficult? But then we stop and think about, well, God is omnipotent and I'm not. God is perfect and I'm not. God is powerful and I'm weak. God is eternal. And unless He does something with our lives, we only exist for a little piece of time. And in that realization, it can be so hard. How do we relate to God? We want a relationship with God.

And we say, well, how can I relate to God? And then we'll also say, well, how can God relate to me? God hasn't gone through the things I'm going through. God's never had a husband abandon Him or God's never been through this problem or that problem. God doesn't know what it's like to be just exhausted. So, how do I relate to this powerful being, all-knowing, righteous, perfect being?

And here I am, I mess up all the time. And so a lot of times we don't go to God because we're afraid. Or we think, why even try? Why even try to pray to God because I'm just not worthy anyways and it's not going to work anyways and I'm just doomed? And so we give up.

We talk about prayer all the time. We say to people all the time, I'll pray for you. And then sometimes we don't. Yeah, I'll pray about that. And then later you think, you know, I never did pray about that. You see the person maybe the next week at Sabbath services and think, you know, or someone comes up to you and says, thank you for praying about that. And you think, oh, I forgot to pray about that. God worked it out. God intervened. Why is it that we struggle so much with prayer?

Well, what I want to do today is we're just going to go through seven very basic principles about prayer. I thought when I decided to do this, I thought, oh, you know, prayers. We talk about that all the time. And I started to look on the list of sermons that I give. And I haven't given a sermon on prayer in five years. It didn't seem like that. I said, oh, I've given sermons on prayer, lots of them, over the last year. No, I didn't. Only a year before.

No, I didn't. Well, a year before that. And, you know, this is one of those subjects we should be at least approaching and talking about all the time. Now, it's been talked about in the sermonettes, and it's been talked about as aspects of sermons. But, I mean, just an entire sermon dedicated to prayer, it's been years since I've done one. Others have. So I'm going to go through just seven core, basic, let's go back to some basic understandings about prayer as a relationship with God.

As a relationship with God. First point, seven points. First point, prayer is not a recited ritual. Now, I always feel a little uncomfortable when I go someplace, you know, albeit a funeral or something, and the minister will get up and say, let's now recite the Lord's Prayer. And everybody's reciting, you know, the prayer from the model prayer that's from the Sermon on the Mount, and they're all saying it in monotone.

You ever been in that situation and it's just this funny feeling like, does this mean anything to anybody? As they just say it in monotone. Let's go to Matthew 6. Look at that model prayer for a minute. It's not the, I don't want to dwell entirely on it. A lot of times when we give a prayer, a sermon about prayer, we just, we never get out of Matthew 6.

But I do want to use it as our starting point. When you pray, whether you're on your knees before God, or whether you're walking someplace, or whether you're just in a situation where you start praying to God, maybe you're at your lunch break, you know, and you're at work, and you go out someplace to be alone, and you're sitting there, and you're praying to God, wherever you are, you are, through a very special privilege, being listened to by the awesome Creator of the universe.

What you're thinking or what you're saying out loud is being listened to and responded by the great God, the awesome God. And that's the problem when we make this ritual. It's not relationship. We can do the rituals, we can go through these, you know, the words, and then we say, well, why isn't God responding? Well, you have to think, what if your closest friends or your husband or your wife or your children, they talk to you in ritual?

If they just recited the same words to you over and over again all the time, what kind of relationship would that be? This is why Jesus says, and when you pray, do not use vain repetitions, as the heathen do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Therefore, do not be like them, for your father knows the things you have need of before you ask him. When you go to God, he already knows, so you might as well be honest. He already knows what's going on in your life. He already knows the things you've committed. He already knows the problems you're having. He already knows, so just be honest.

That's what he wants. Now, it doesn't mean be disrespectful, and that's why Jesus gives us this model prayer. Now, I'm not saying it's never wrong to read this prayer to God. You know, if sometimes you can't pray, get on your knees and read this to God, asking Him for a breakthrough. A lot of times when you go through this, you'll find there's a reason contained in this prayer why there's a barrier between you and God. But when we look at this, we have an outline. I've known people that have actually taken this section, written it down, and then beside it on the same piece of paper, wrote down, what does this mean to me?

And used this as an outline to pray. And in doing this, have learned how to have more meaningful prayers. Now, you know, it doesn't mean, once again, this can't be made entirely into a formula. When you look at the Bible and you read through the prayers in the Bible, the prayers that impress us the most, they're just somebody from their heart talking to God.

God, I'm in trouble. God, you're amazing. God, forgive me. God, please protect me from this enemy. They're just human beings going to God in a very real sense. They know God exists and they believe God is listening to them. And they're going to God in a very respectful way, but in a very heartfelt way. And so we have the outline prayer. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name. And how many times have we gone through this prayer and said, when you pray to God, the first thing we should do is recognize His greatness.

Many times, the first thing we say in our prayer is, God, I'm in trouble. And God says, slow down a little bit. How are you doing? Remember where you are. And all of a sudden, that trouble may not seem so big, because we're before our Father. We're before the great Creator.

We're before the awesome God. So we should start our prayer by recognizing who we're going before. This isn't about being religious. It is about relating to God, the person of the Father into Christ. We even talk about Christ in the… It is about relating to our Father. It's about going before Him and understanding His existence, understanding that He's conscious of Himself, understanding that He is real, and praising that. Sometimes we don't have enough praise in our prayer. And so He says, start your prayer with praise.

Start your prayer with acknowledging who God is and His greatness. Your kingdom come, your will be dawned on earth as it is in heaven. We start by asking for God's will. We're going to talk about that in a minute. Give us this day our daily bread. It's okay to ask God for things, but remember you ask for His will first. I really don't go ask God for a million dollars. I don't believe it's His will to give me a million dollars.

If it is, that's wonderful, but I don't think there's a whole lot of… I'm going to go ask, God, you know what I'd really like to be is… I mean, you think of the things that people… I would really like to be a NASCAR racer, okay? I just don't think I'm going to get that one. I know there's lots of petties in NASCAR, but I'm not going to be one of them. So don't go ask for that one. It's not His will.

But it's okay to ask. I've heard people ask for the simplest things in life and receive incredible blessings, because they simply wouldn't ask. They understood who God is, and they know it's okay to ask. Forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors. That's a whole sermon in itself. The need to be forgiven and understanding that we are forgiven, we have a responsibility to forgive others. And if we do not, if we hold grudges, if we slander others, then it interferes with our personal relationship with God, because He is not going to be forgiving us.

Do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. Protect us from Satan. Protect us from deception. Protect us from our own temptations, our own internal problems that we have. Protect us from our own lust and envy and hatreds and selfishness. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, amen. It's a remarkable way with Jesus Christ in just a couple minutes. You can recite that in a minute.

It takes an outline. Use this. Use this as your approach. But He doesn't mean to read this every day and say, good, I've done my prayer to God. This is the VR outline. That's why use it as an outline. Write it down if you have to. I know people who will say things like, well, I need to put that on my prayer list, and they mean it.

They actually have a list. I know people who keep prayer journals. People keep prayer journals. That's interesting, because what they'll do is, you know, okay, today I'm going to pray for this person because I heard him announce the church. They got on my prayer list. In my prayer journal, I prayed for him.

That day I went down and went, okay, this is the key things I want to pray about specifically today, including other things that come to my mind. But I want to get these things before God. What's amazing about people do that, sometimes three or four days later, say we announced somebody needs prayer in church because they're sick. That person will call the person who was sick. The rest of us, three or four days later, have forgotten about it. Wednesday, we forget that they were announced that this person was sick.

We might have prayed for it, but we forgot about it. The person who has these lists will go back and say, oh, I need to call that person and see if they're feeling better, just simply because they sort of keep a reminder of what they're doing in their relationship with God. So use this as an outline, even if you have to write it down. If you're the type of person that keeps, no, here's what I want to pray about today so you don't forget things, then do it. That's part of your personal relationship with God.

I've actually had people that have a hard time breaking through with God sometimes, and I've had dozens of people say, Mr. Petty, I tried and I tried and I tried, and I just can't pray. There's a problem between me and God. I say, well, write it down. Write down whatever this problem is, and then go read it to them if you have to. And then write it down, and they'll go read it, God, this is what's on my mind.

And pretty soon they're not reading anymore, they're just talking to God, and God's responding. We all process things differently. Some people just get on their knees, and I mean, we've probably all been through this experience, too, where you're on your knees praying to God about something, and you're just going by flow of thought. If somebody listened to your prayer, they would say, I have no idea what that person's even talking about. They're jumping around from thing to thing, going back and forth.

But see, that's what God knows. He understands the connection between this and this, because you're distraught, and God, this happened, and this was horrible, and then this happened, and everybody else would be listening to that and say, I don't understand how you went from this thought to this thought. God knows. He understands the connection. That's why we can't make this a simple exercise in reciting words.

This has got to come from the core of who we are. And sometimes, you know what, the core of who we are, it's pretty messy. And sometimes, at the core of who we are, it's messed up, and that's why the Apostle Paul said that God's Spirit intercedes for us in ways that we can't even express, because God is connected to us.

There's times when you get on your knees and say, I don't even know what to say, and we think God's answer is, what's wrong with you, kid? You worm. You think that's God's answer. And God's answer is, I understand. Have you ever thought about that? Sometimes, you get on your knees and say, I don't even know what to say. And God says, I understand. This is the core relationship. This is what God wants in prayer. Now, that can never be, as we see here in the model of prayer, that can never be taking God for granted.

And that can never, we can't get to the place where we are ignoring the majesty and the greatness and the righteousness and the perfectness of God. But at the same time, what He really wants from us is honest, open, we're coming to Him, recognizing who He is, and we just relate. We let Him relate to us.

So, first point is prayer is not to be recited ritual. The second is, we have to come to God recognizing our unworthiness without Him. Now, there's a lot to be said about this, and I'm just going to turn to one scripture, because this is a broad idea. And I thought about really expanding this out, but I ended up, I realized this was going to become the whole sermon. So, I just want to make the point that we have to approach God with this sense of humility and awe. We have to come before God with a sense of humility and awe. We can't come before God demanding.

We can't come before God believing that, God, it's time you listen to me. The interesting scripture in Isaiah 66. Let's go to Isaiah 66. So, I almost made this into the entire sermon, just because the idea of coming before God with this sense of humility and this sense of realization that He's God and I'm not. That's simple. He's God, I'm not. But Isaiah 66, verse 1 says, Thus is the Lord.

Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. Where is the house that you will build me? Where is the place of my rest? For all those things my hand has made, and all those things exist as the Lord. But on this one will I look on Him who is poor and of a contrite spirit and who trembles at my work.

You know, sometimes we need to review these kinds of scriptures and the scriptures that describe God's throne. Read the part in Revelation that describes God's throne, and when you get on your knees for a second picture what that describes and realize at that moment you are there. That's who you're talking to.

We go to God almost like, you know God, let's talk about this and what I can do for you. You know, like we're making some kind of deal with God. We've got to remember who we're going before. And in that greatness He wants us to come before, as He says here. You know, the heaven is where I live, the earth, the universe, it's mine. I just want you to come before me remembering that, recognizing who I am.

He's never sinned. He's never hurt anybody out of maliciousness or hatred. He's pure. And He says, come here, you can come before me. But if we go before God with pride, He's not going to listen to us. Sometimes we have to go and ask God, God forgive me of my pride.

Let me just be able to come before you. Set my pride aside. Help me work through that, but let me come before you. We say, well, God's not listening to me. Well, maybe it's because you need to go and ask Him, set aside my pride here. Work that through me. Help me work through that so I can come to you with this kind of spirit. Ask for this kind of spirit. Ask for it. So that you can then enter into a relationship where you're relating with God. We want God to relate to us, but we don't want to relate to Him.

We don't want to see things the way He sees them. He defines reality, not you and I. You don't define reality. I don't define reality. God does. So we need to go ask Him at times. Set aside my pride. Reach into me and let me come relate to you. The third point is that you must believe that God hears you and will answer you. You must believe it. Well, I knew God wouldn't listen to me, so I prayed about it. Of course He didn't. That's exactly what happened. Matthew 21. Matthew 21. People will look at this. This is a very important passage, but we also have to put it in the context of other things we're talking about to understand what God does.

We're going to have to understand how to relate to God. We're always frustrated because God isn't relating to us in the way that we want to be related to. I want God to relate to me my way. But relationship means I must come to God because of His greatness and relate to Him His way. Matthew 21, verse 17. Sorry about Jesus Christ. He left them and went out of the city to Bethany, and he lodged there. On the morning, as he returned to the city, he was hungry, and seeing a fig tree by the road, he came upon it and found nothing but a but leaves and said to it, Let no fruit grow on you ever again.

And immediately the fig tree withered away. Now it's interesting, this isn't a temper tantrum. Boy, this fig tree should have had some figs on it that doesn't, and I'm hungry, so I'm just going to fry this fig tree. He sees this as an opportunity to teach his disciples. He's always in teaching mode. Jesus is always in teaching mode. He sees an opportunity to teach. Verse 20, and when the disciples saw it, they marveled, saying, How did the fig tree wither away so soon? How did he do that? So Jesus answered and said to them, Assuredly I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what was done to this fig tree, but also you will say the mountains be removed and cast into the sea, and it will be done.

And whatever things you ask in prayer believe in, you will receive. Now, wow, it's easy to know who true Christians are. They're going to be walking around zapping trees and throwing mountains around. Right? Is that the point he's making? The point he's making is, look, this tree withered because God withered it. You could do things if it's the will of God, if you believe.

But we don't believe. We somehow think God really isn't going to take care of us. He isn't going to do this. And so we lack the faith. We just don't believe He's going to take care of us. We don't believe it'll work out. We really don't believe it'll work out. If I do this, I'll lose my job. Therefore, I have to disobey God.

If I do this, my friends won't like me. Therefore, I can't obey God. If I do this, I won't get the recognition I should receive. Therefore, I must disobey God. We just don't believe it. We don't believe that in the end He works things out. Sometimes He doesn't answer us right away. Sometimes the answer doesn't make any sense to us. And actually, it isn't answered. Sometimes the answer is no. We always think the answer has to be yes.

There's lots of times in life when God says, you bring that, you say, God, I really like this. He says, nah, you're not ready for that. And we think He didn't answer. He doesn't heal us every time, even if we have great faith. That took me a long time to figure out.

In fact, some of the people I've known of greatest faith were allowed to have an illness and said, oh, it's okay. It's God's will. I prayed about it. I've been anointed. I've done what I should do. This is God's will. It's okay. And of course, I'm thinking, especially years ago when I was younger, wait a minute, wait a minute. If you have enough faith, you should be healed. No, it doesn't always work that way, does it? So that's not what He's saying. What He's saying is, you must believe that if you ask, and it's what God wants, it's what God will do.

You must believe that God has a purpose for you, and in the end, it's good. But I want it good right now. Everything isn't good right now. Some things are good right now, but you and I live in Satan's world, and some things aren't good right now, and they're not going to be good, but in the end, do you believe in the end, God will make your life good. There's a purpose for you.

There's an eternal purpose for you. And God's a whole lot more interested in your eternal purpose than He is for what's happening right now. He will let you suffer now so that you can have eternal happiness. He said, well, that's mean. We do that with our children all the time. Now, you can't have a second cookie. It's not good for you, because we want them to grow up to be adults and not eat cookies 24 hours a day, right?

They learn that eating cookies all the time doesn't bring them happiness. It makes them sick. But when you tell that five-year-old they can't have a second cookie, they think you're being abusive. You're the most mean daddy in the world. I'm just going to trade you in another, Mommy. She'll give me two cookies. Now, when they're 25 and they don't make themselves sick, they're health ruined because they eat a box of cookies a day. They thank you for that. It's the same way with God. Right now, he's more concerned with what we will be for eternity than he is whether we get that second cookie right now.

And we think he's so mean. So we have to relate to where he is to understand what he is doing. And when we ask, we must believe in the long term, this is good. This is what's best. God will take care of us. Sometimes in the short term it doesn't feel that way. One of the greatest stories of that, of course, is we won't go there, but Lazarus. Remember when you read the story of Lazarus in John 11?

They came to Jesus and said, Lazarus is sick. They need you to come right now. He wasn't that far away, and he refused to go. And Lazarus died. And when he showed up, Lazarus' sisters came up and they said, if you would have only come, we didn't know that God works through you. We didn't know that you could have healed him. We didn't know. But you didn't come. We don't understand why didn't you come. You could just see the agony and the way that they say it. Why didn't you come?

We know what to do. He wouldn't have died if he would have just showed up. He had plenty of notice, plenty of time, and he just, for reasons that made no sense, there wasn't another emergency that came up. He wasn't exhausted. He wasn't sick. He just refused to come and heal his friend. Jesus refused to go heal his friend. Not when he did not come when he was sick. He never showed up at the funeral. Can you imagine that? He's within walking distance, and he doesn't even come to the funeral.

Boy, God sure doesn't know what he's doing, does He?

And He said, no, this happened so that we could show you God knows what he's doing.

And Jesus Christ walked into that tomb, or walked up to the tomb, and Lazarus came walking out.

See the point? It didn't make any sense and understand the grief and the feeling of betrayal that His sisters would have had. Lazarus's sisters. Imagine the absolute disbelief and trauma that all those disciples were going through. Why would He do this? Lazarus was His friend. He wasn't just another Jew that came up to Him. I mean, there was a close relationship here, and He refused to even go to the funeral. How could this be the love of God?

And Jesus said, now let me show you what God's really all about. Lazarus came out of the tomb, and He did. See, we forget. We have to have faith that God's in this for the long haul.

God's in your life for the long haul. God has a purpose for you that's eternal, and that's what He's working out. That's what we have to see. That's what we have to believe.

That's what we pray about.

The fourth point, and this leads right into the fourth point, is if we're going to do that, that means whenever we pray, we must seek God's will.

I've had people say to me, you know, there's things I haven't prayed about because I'm afraid God's will is different than what I want. I've been there, done that, didn't change a thing, did it?

You just overmatched in this fight. How many times do I tell my children, don't box with God, your arms are too short. You're probably tired of hearing me say that.

We just want to force our will on God, and there's a point of total submission where we figure out He really knows what He's doing, so I'm going to give into it.

First John, Chapter 5. First John, Chapter 5.

Verse 14.

First John, 5.14.

Now, this is the confidence that we have in Him. It's the confidence in God.

It's our confidence in Him, the Person of God, our Father. We have confidence in that. We have a assurance in that. We have a stability in that. We have a peace in that. We know who God is, and we know what He's promised. We know what He said He's going to do, and we're coming along for the ride. We're going to go wherever He takes us, whatever His will is. Now, this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.

And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him. That's an interesting statement, because a petition was brought before a king as a written statement. You know, it's written down. So, it's like when you go ask of God, His will, it's like there's this formal ceremony where He reads your petition.

Hey, even the word prayer in English really goes to a root word that means to beg.

We go beg God. The word prayer in itself, it just means to implore with an intense emotion.

We're looking for the will of God in our lives. We're looking for God to...

You know what you're doing, so help me figure this out.

So, I can't... I have a hard time relating to God.

You know, that's one of the reasons why Jesus Christ became flesh.

Well, so that we can say, okay, God can relate to me. Guess who's sitting at His right hand?

Guess who's sitting at the right hand of God? Someone will say, oh no, no, no, I know what it's like.

I know what it's like. I've been there. I know what it's like to be cold. I know what it's like to be caught in the rain. I know what it's like to get up in the morning and say, boy, do I need a good couple. They did have coffee, so I don't know what he drank. A good couple, but whatever he needed.

I know what it's like to have Peter get on your nerves, believe me.

I know what it's like to have so many people around me. He said he got in a boat and went out into a middle of a lake just to get away from them. He says, I need a little alone time here with me and God. I can't do this. He knows what it's like to be tempted with sin and reject it.

That's one of the reasons. It's interesting what he says in Matthew 12.

Matthew 12.

What we do is we believe that God can't relate to us when we give up. There's no way God can understand how I'm feeling. We forget he designed us. The emotions you have he designed. So, of course, he knows what they're like. He designed them. But not only did he design them, but Jesus Christ, the Word, came and became flesh to experiencing them for us. To say this, I'll experience this for you. And why? Matthew 12. This is actually one of the subjects I was working on for a sermon and ended up going into prayer. Because I find this so profound that I've never quite wrapped my mind around a certain concept here yet. I'm trying to. Verse 46, it says, While he was still talking to the multitudes, behold, his mother and brother stood outside seeking to speak to him. Now, people are offended by this. You see, Jesus is spending so much time teaching people that his own mother, his own sisters, or brothers, so his mother and his physical brothers, his half-brothers, are trying to see him and they're waiting in line.

We say, well, that's not right. That's just not right.

Jesus should be showing his mother a little more attention. I mean, it says to honor your mother and your father, right? You can almost hear what people are saying.

Then one of them said, look, your mother and your brothers are standing outside seeking to speak with you. But he answered and said to the one who told him, who is my mother and who are my brothers? Now, once again, he's about to tell us how God sees things, how God relates. He's about to do some mind expansion here on some people. We know your mother is this marriage. She's standing right outside the door here. She's been out there for two hours waiting to try to get through the crowd to talk to you. Verse 49, he stretched out his hand towards his disciples and said, Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother. Of all the ways that we relate to God and to Christ, relating to God as Father, I find it to be very easy. Do we really relate to Jesus Christ as a brother? He says, You do the will of my Father in heaven and you're my sister. You're my brother. We must be seeking the will of God, and when we do, God is our Father, and Jesus Christ is our brother. And in that we have empathy. I mean, to be betrayed by a friend, Jesus says, Oh yeah, all twelve of them. All twelve of them. Yeah, but you know, my family, and you read through that not one of his brothers accepted him as the Messiah until after he died and was resurrected. Not one of them! They saw the miracles. It's like, Yeah, well, that's just Jesus. I know Jesus. I played ball with him. Yeah, I remember Jesus. I remember he was twelve. He was a pretty good carpenter.

Hey, Jesus, why don't you turn some water into wine for us, you know?

His brother's not one! That's pretty hard, isn't it? You're thirty years old, and you're doing all these miracles, and God's working through you, and James and some of the other guys are saying, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jesus always got to be in the limelight.

He thinks you have family problems.

And he changed. Being resurrected had a profound effect on them.

That he was resurrected. But you see, what he says here, he expands this out.

I've come to be your brother, so I've become stuff like you. I used to not be stuff.

I am stuff now. I'm material. I can relate to you. That's why he sits at the right hand of the Father.

The fifth point is, if we're going to seek the will of God, we also have to obey the will of God. You see, well, this is about prayer. I can't really talk about prayer without obedience.

If we refuse to obey God, then our prayers will be hindered.

If we seek His will, we must do His will. I know I've had people tell me in the past, I know what God's will here is. I just don't want to do it, so I'm not going to do it. And then they're upset because God doesn't seem to be in their lives.

If we seek God's will, we must be obedient. 1 Peter 3.

1 Peter 3. We're going through 1 Peter on the East Side Bible studies.

We just read this Wednesday night, verse 8.

Peter's talking to the church here. He says, Finally, all of you be of one mind, having compassion for one another. Love as brothers, be tender-hearted, be courteous, not returning evil for evil, reviling or for reviling, but on the contrary, blessing, knowing that you were called to this, that you may inherit a blessing. And I said Wednesday night, that's a whole sermon right there. Maybe I'll make a sermon out of those two verses. But then he quotes from the Old Testament. He says, For who would love life and see good days? Let him refrain his tongue from evil, his lips from speaking deceit. Let him turn away from evil and do good. Let him seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayers. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil. And when you and I do not go before God and acknowledge our sin, we simply build a barrier and get farther and farther away from God. Until the reach of the point, he does not listen to our prayers.

He said, Well, how do I break that barrier down? You go confess your sin. If you are separated from God because of sin, you must go, I'm ashamed. We know already, so you might as well go spill your guts here. He already knows your sin. He already knows the thoughts you've had or the actions you've done. So you go tell him.

Well, I don't want to tell him that I really hate my boss. I mean, I hate my boss. But I want to tell God that. Was he listening to your prayers? No.

Well, then you better go tell him you hate your boss. And you better go ask him to help you stop hating your boss and forgive you for hating your boss. Of course, since he has a much larger viewpoint for your life, don't be surprised if he makes you now be a good example to your lousy boss. I mean, his answer to your prayer may not be to kill your boss, like you're sort of hoping. Your answer to your prayer might be your boss gets sick, or some of your boss comes to you and says, can we talk? You know, you're a Christian, I know that, and I've got some questions. And you're thinking, oh no. The guy may reward you by converting your boss.

You don't want him converted. You want him hurt. You know, I don't want him killed. I just want him to be in pain all the time. I don't want to always care to fall out.

See, we have to realize when we are seeking the will of God, we have to do it, or our prayers are hindered. It's just not enough to seek it.

So this has to do with prayer. And one of the reasons there are barriers between us and God sometimes. The sixth reason, or sixth point, is that you have to be persistent and patient.

God's timetable isn't our timetable. We have totally different timetables than God.

Of course, when you live in eternity, what's ten minutes? But when your tooth aches and you're asking God to take away the pain, ten minutes can seem like an eternity, can it?

The way he's perceiving things is different. So we have to learn to be patient and persistent in what we do. That's why Jesus gave the parable that many have misunderstood in Luke 18.

Luke 18.

Luke chapter 18. He's not saying here that God is this way. He's making a point.

Verse 1 of Luke 18. Then he spoke a parable to them, The men always ought to pray and not lose heart. Now that's the lesson.

The lesson is, keep praying. Keep pouring out your heart to God, and don't get discouraged, because God has your best interest at heart. God is working out a bigger picture.

I've been amazed in my life how many times I have prayed for something and not got it and gave up, and five years later I got it.

And I realized, you know, it was too important to me. God had to give it to me after it wasn't that important. I told someone this the other day. I may have told you this before. I forget, you know, once you've been in a place for seventeen years, you forget what you tell.

I had given a prayer as a child. In our house on Friday evening, you know, all the television was off, and all music was not played except if it was religious music or classical music, because the Sabbath was a special time, and that was just part of our family tradition.

Now, you know, I grew up in Appalachia. Nobody listened to classical music.

But I remember laying there as a child in the living room. Everybody go on the bed, and I'm listening on a record player to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

And I'm pretending to lead it. Okay? Pretending. Counting out the music, listening to it. And I remember praying, God, just once in my life, I would like to lead this. Lead this piece of music.

I can't even read music. I mean, I can a little bit now, but not much.

One year at the Feast of Tabernacles, I've got a 105-piece orchestra, and 350 people a choir behind me, and 10,000 people singing. And in the middle of leading this song, guess what I realized I was leading? It only took 35 years.

But guess what I was leading? And I remembered that prayer as a child.

Now, there's no way that kid from Appalachia should have been able to do that. There's no way you could plot that out from that prayer to this on any sensible life. That's a little thing, isn't it? But it's what I asked.

I can tell you the big things, but sometimes it's the little things that help you realize, yes, God is concerned. And there's this big picture. And to lead that at nine would have been absolute waste. To lead it at forty was incredible.

Verse 2, Christ says, There was a certain city of judge who did not fear God, nor regard man. Now, there was a widow in that city. She came to Him, saying, Get justice for me from my adversary. And He would not for a while. But afterward He said within Himself, Though I do not fear God, nor regard man, yet because of this widow troubling me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she wear in me. Then the Lord said, Hear what the unjust judge said. Shall God not avenge His own elect, who cry out day and night to Him, though He bears long with them? I tell you that He will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will He finally find faith on the earth?

He says it's going to be easy, especially as we get closer to the time of the end, that we will lose our faith. And as we get closer and closer to the time of the end, people will lose their faith. We will not trust that God is in our lives. We will not trust His purpose. We will not trust that He's in the church. We will not trust that He's going to send Jesus Christ back. We'll lose all that. People will lose that. We're told. Now, you and I don't have to lose that, but it's going to happen. So we have to make sure it doesn't happen. Now, the point here is that He isn't making this unjust judge. He's not using him as an example of God. What He's saying here is, if unrighteous people will do this, don't you surely think that the righteous God will do this? If unrighteous people will do this just because they get hassled, if God loves you, don't you think He will? But it's on His timetable, and that's where we have the trouble. We want everything on our timetable. And I just wish God would just go by my timetable, and my life would be perfect. But you know, deep inside, I know that's not true.

I feel that way sometimes, but I know it's not true. I know that only His timetable works.

I just wish He was a little faster with things.

It's His timetable.

And then the last point is in John 16.

John 16.

I mentioned about Jesus Christ being our brother as part of our understanding of prayer, because we're praying directly to the Father, and yet Christ is there at the right hand of God. What does He do with the right hand of God while you're praying?

Much of the time we go to the Father, we pray, and we really don't think about Jesus Christ much. I mean, how do we enter prayers? Well, that's about all I have to say, in Jesus' name, amen.

In Jesus' name, amen is just sort of a ... that's how we wrap this up. That's how I'm supposed to finish this prayer. Well, look what Christ did teach in John 16.23.

These things I have spoken to you in figurative language, but the time is coming when I will speak no longer to you in figurative language, but I will tell you plainly about the Father. Verse 26. And in that day you will ask in my name, and I do not say to you that I will pray the Father for you.

Now, I want you to think what this says here. In that day you will ask in my name, and I do not say to you that I shall pray the Father for you. In other words, what I'm telling you is when you pray in my name, the Father Himself will listen to you.

But it is in His name, and that's the seventh point. You and I do not go to God except through Jesus Christ. You and I aren't allowed to go to the Father except through Jesus Christ.

The Father will not listen to us except through Jesus Christ.

Notice what He says here. Because He says in that day you will ask in my name. We know in other places where He said that when you ask in my name I will give it to you. That's all through the book of John over and over again. He brings that out. When you ask in my name, I will give it to you, or God will give it to you. God will respond to you when you ask in my name. Here He says that when you ask in my name, He says that I don't have to pray to you for you. You're going directly to the Father. But then the next verse is what's very interesting. For the Father Himself loves you. The Father loves you. He says, I want you to understand I'll be there interceding for you, yes, at the right hand of God, and you have to ask in my name.

And the Father loves you. So He's going to directly be listening to you. What a privilege! What an honor! But notice the rest of the sentence.

The Father Himself loves you because—okay, if this—I want Father to love me. I want God to love me. And if it's because of something, I want to know what causes this. Because you have loved me and have believed that I came from the Father. I came forth from the Father and have come into the world. Again, I leave the world and go to the Father. When you go to God and speak directly to the great God, that privilege is given to you because of Jesus Christ. And He says, you will pray in my name. There was another Scripture we read here in the same sermon where it's, you pray in my name. But it isn't like a magic formula that we pray in His name and Jesus' name. When we pray in the name of Jesus Christ, we are acknowledging who He is and where He is and what He does. And unless we acknowledge who He is and where He is and what He does, the Father will not listen to us.

He loves us because we've loved Him. We cannot relegate Jesus Christ to some kind of formula, some kind of words we say. No meaning. You know, I have to admit, there's been times I prayed and then the phone has rung or something and I say, in Jesus' name, amen, I jump up and run off, stopped, went back, got down on my knees and said, I am so sorry.

I am so sorry. Because I figure from that, whatever I prayed up to that point, God just, you know, that petition just got ripped up.

Like sometimes I wonder, why don't we start our prayer with, in Jesus' name I'm praying.

I'm here acknowledging your son. You love me because I love him.

I understand. When you pray in somebody's name, you're acknowledging who He is.

To not pray in Jesus' name is to not be heard.

You and I pray in the name of Jesus Christ.

We do it all the time. It's our habit. And have we forgotten why we do it?

It's because He's the one who gives us the privilege to go there.

If He didn't die for us, if He's not our sacrifice, if He wasn't resurrected and He's sitting at the right hand of the Father right now, interceding for us, then praying in His name is meaningless. Why would you be praying in the name of somebody who died? I pray in the name of George Washington. How much power does that have? That's meaningless, isn't it?

It's meaningless. We're recognizing who He is. Do not. I believe there are times when our prayers are not heard because we don't pray in the name of Jesus Christ. We say it, but we don't mean it.

We don't really mean it. And the Father doesn't accept it.

God has initiated a personal relationship with every one of you.

Through His mercy, it has been made possible.

As His children understand, He wants us to relate to Him as a person, or as a being, as a living being. We're to relate to God. We're to relate to Jesus Christ as a living being.

We're trying to understand who they are in our own limited way. We must obey. We must follow.

We must cement. We must believe. We must do it in His name. It is His will and His wish that we follow. But remember, because of this privilege you have, because of this privilege that has been open to you, anytime, any place, anywhere, when you say, My Father who art in heaven, the Creator of the universe stops and listens.