Lesson 01.5 - Wednesday Application on Practical Praying

Introduction
  1. Welcome to our first Wednesday night - this is our first attempt to do this, so we’re hoping everything works out well.
  2. Our Wednesday night classes are going to be focused on the application of our Sunday morning times together.  Now, just to clarify, you don’t have to be here on Sundays to understand what we’re doing on Wednesdays, but that being said, you won’t have a complete picture of our doctrinal/Scriptural background if you’re not here on Sundays.
  3. We’re not always going to have these be large group discussions.  Next week, we’ll break out into small groups to discuss the Sunday topic, and we’ll continue to mix things up - sometimes we’ll be doing large group discussions like this week, sometimes medium groups, sometimes small groups.

Prayer as a Discipline

  1. We talked on Sunday about the importance of prayer in the life of the Christian.  We are focused not on creating guilt in our lives to motivate us, but rather to seek to understand prayer for what it is - a conversation with God.
    1. Spending time in prayer is not a discipline we pursue as an end in itself, but rather it’s a means to the end of building a relationship with God.
    2. The motivation for our time in prayer is not because we know we’re supposed to, but rather because prayer is one of the ways we can build a deeper relationship with the Lord.
  2. We pray because:
    1. We’re following the example of Jesus, who prayed regularly throughout his ministry - communicating with his Heavenly Father.
    2. We’re bringing delight and happiness to God’s heart.  He wants to hear from us - he never gets tired or annoyed when we’re talking with him.  He really wants to hear from us and wants to relate to us.  It delights and thrills God when we talk with him.
    3. We’re recognizing the reality of spiritual warfare.  There is a real spiritual battle happening all around us that we can’t see.  And because of that battle, just like we would pray intensely if we were on the front lines of a war, we pray because we’re on the front lines of a spiritual war.  Recognizing that reality, we pray.
    4. We’re expressing our dependency on God.  We’re recognizing that we’re not in control of the situations we face, whether that’s when we drive, getting hit by a plane, or anything else.  We don’t have control now, and prayer is us acknowledging that fact.
  3. It’s also often best for us to have support - when you’re in a gospel community that is praying and that you’re part of, you really grow in your own faith and your own prayer life.
    1. So we need to be transparent and authentic about our prayer life, pray together, and grow together through that.

Humor and Prayer

  1. Before we dive into the question of how, when etc. and discuss how some of these things work, I wanted to read you a funny thing about prayer - this is a subject that is challenging to lots of believers.  Jon Acuff is a writer of a blog called Stuff Christians Like, and he’s written the following about “public prayer circles” - those experiences we all have had as Christians:
    1. This, can be a surprisingly tense moment. At church or in a small group, someone will say, “I’ll open us in prayer, Lisa you close us, and everyone else pray if you feel led.”
    2. Suddenly, there’s an expectation. In less than a minute that opening prayer is going to be finished and you’ll be faced with an incredibly difficult decision. Do I pray? Do I feel led? When do I pray? When is the “Closer” going to speak up and put an end to this prayer? How do I not start praying at the same time as someone else? So many questions, each fraught with danger and intrigue. That’s why I have created the simple, “6 people you meet in a prayer circle.” It’s like that book, “5 people you meet in heaven,” but slightly more sarcastic and bound to sell slightly fewer copies. Actually it will sell none, because here it is:
    3. 6 people you meet in a prayer circle:
  1. The Almost-er - This is the person sitting near you that is constantly on the verge of praying. You can hear them doing that little breath thing, that little exhale before you are about to speak. And you can hear it because it’s loud in the deafening silence of the prayer circle. Every time you are about to say a prayer you hear the Almost-er and you stop out of courtesy. And then they don’t pray. So you start again and a long exhale from the Almost-er stops you again. It’s quite a little dance.
  1. The Gun Slinger - When there are only two people left that have not prayed and the Closer is mentally warming up to end the session, you may find yourself in a prayer showdown. It’s just you and another girl that looks like a heathen right now for not praying. The entire circle senses that the prayers were good but they need one more before the Closer prays. They need one more tiny prayer to kind of wrap things up. But you don’t want to pray and neither does the Gun Slinger. So you sit their in silence across from each other like cowboys in the street, waiting, letting the tension and the awkwardness build until finally someone draws their gun and blurts out, “Lord thank you for this day and everything you blessed us with!”
  2. The Opener - You might think the “Closer” is the one with all the power, but don’t be misled, the opener is in control. In addition to often choosing the Closer, they set the tone for the entire prayer circle. If they go long, people after them are going to go long. If they work in cute little jokes to the opening prayer, the people after them are more likely to be casual too. More than that, they don’t need to worry about the Closer or fear someone cutting them off. They can pray and then relax. Their job is over and done in a matter of seconds.
  3. The Rambler - Another name for this person is the “Jon Acuff.” This is the guy or gal that sees the chance to pray in front of people as an open microphone. A chance to not so subtly reference everything they’ve recently learned during their quiet time in one long, rambling prayer. And there’s no way to stop them, unless you are married to them. If you are, then like my wife, you can grab his hand and give him a squeeze that says, “I love you, you are good at praying but no one wants to hear about the spiritual mysteries you have uncovered recently in the book of Joel.”
  4. The Cave In  - Deciding not to pray in a prayer circle is like not giving to a love offering. What you don’t have any love in your heart? What you don’t feel led? You’re the only person in the room that didn’t get led? Maybe we should pray for you instead of doing this prayer circle. Expect at least one person to be the Cave In.
  5. The Closer - Closing a prayer circle is like being Spiderman. It’s a gift and a responsibility. Although you get to determine when it ends, you also have to monitor the amount of quiet time that signifies everyone has gone. Because what you don’t want to happen, what the Closer fears the most is the “Encore-ist.” This is the person that goes after the Closer, boldly defying all rules of group prayer. It’s an embarrassing situation for a Closer and for a few minutes afterward it’s hard to make eye contact with them.
  1. So with all this awkwardness about prayer, what can we do in our own prayer lives?’
  2. Remember, we’re focusing on tools today, not rules.  Our goal is not to make cookie-cutter Christians - each of our individual walks with the Lord is going to look different.  But there will be a walk with him - we can’t say that our walk consists of feeling God’s presence and sniffing up Scripture like it’s cocaine or something.

Time

  1. So first, when do you pray?  The question of when is a problem for us.
    1. How many times have we fallen into bed after a busy night and said a quick prayer, praying about how we need to pray more tomorrow, and that’s it.
    2. We know we should be praying, and we feel terrible that we aren’t
  2. So what do we do?
    1. First, we want to prioritize prayer in our lives - it needs to be a priority for us.
    2. But that priority can be at different times during the day.
      1. For some of us who are morning people, that’s going to be a block of time in the morning.  Some people find it really easy to get up and spend time with the Lord in the morning.
      2. For most of you, I’m guessing that isn’t the case.  Some of you may find it easier to pray in the evenings, or to take a few “offices of prayer” during the day where you spend a few times during the course of the day praying - time in the morning, time at lunch, time in the evening.
    3. Either way, you need to take a look at your schedule and figure out the time that works for you so you can set aside some time to pray.

Place

  1. Place is another big one - where do we pray?  I know many of you are from families where you don’t have control of the household situation, you don’t have a place you can retreat for quiet necessarily, and you don’t know where to go.
    1. Maybe that argues for getting up a few minutes earlier before the younger siblings.
    2. Maybe that means working with your siblings in your room to give you some downtime at a certain point during the day.
      1. And it’s definitely not a matter of “get out of the room so I can be spiritual” - it’s saying, hey, I need your help here to assist me with this.
    3. Maybe there’s a place at your work where you can go that’s quiet for a few minutes - maybe it means getting to work early and sitting in your car outside your job before going in so you can have some time to pray.  I have a co-worker who deals with traffic that way - she just arrives early and then spends a little bit of time in her car first.
  2. Place is a challenge, so we want to talk about that.

What Do We Say?

  1. Then once we get time and we get a quiet place, it then becomes a challenge to know what to say.  What do you say when you pray?
    1. There’s a few things I’ve found helpful, and we’ll throw this open for some additional discussion for other ideas y’all have.
    2. For a long time, I struggled with how to keep my mind from wandering during prayer.
      1. I would start praying, and next thing I knew, I was planning some event somewhere, walking through my to-do list for the day, or just generally way off base from praying.
      2. One thing I heard that was really helpful from a pastor in Texas was to pray with your eyes open (insert gasp here) and write while you pray.  So in the morning now, I have a little notebook and I write out what I’m praying about just as a paragraph.  It’s not really to look back so much as it is to help me focus on what I’m praying about.
      3. That’s something I’ve found helpful - others of you may find other things helpful or have other ideas.
    3. Also, there’s the issue of what to say.
      1. Concentric circles is a good place to start - start with yourself and work your way out as far as praying for people around you.
        1. So first, you confess what’s going on with you.
        2. Then it rolls out from there - your family, your parents.
        3. Your job, your church leadership
        4. Friends you know that have needs
        5. Your neighbors
        6. Other people who have needs that you know - co-workers
        7. Larger more global requests - missionaries, God’s work in the world, etc.
      2. And that may all be at one time of prayer, or you may start with a few circles in the morning, pray about others as the day goes by, and then others in the evening.
      3. It’s not like every time you pray you have to talk about the same things or make the same requests.

Public Prayer

  1. One more topic and then we’ll talk about this.  Public prayer is a hard one, as evidenced by the “prayer circle” story from earlier.
    1. I still don’t have all of that figured out, but the reason for public prayer is so that we can all pray about something together.
    2. So when Pastor Doug or someone else is praying, our minds shouldn’t be wandering to try to figure out who’s at church, where they’re sitting, or what we’re doing for food after the service is over.  Instead, we should be engaged with praying along with him - as he prays for the service, we hear and agree in our hearts about it.
    3. As TP prays about the message and that we would have discernment, there’s a real chance for us to grow in that and agree with him in that prayer.
  2. And when you’re called to pray in public, I know this is so hard, because we all tend to develop a “Speech.”
    1. For years, I had certain buzzwords I loved to throw in that showed that I had been studying my Bible and could show my Bible knowledge off.
    2. Or at least that I was a very “Refined” public pray-er - it’s silly, but it’s what I was doing.
    3. To this day, if someone asks me to pray in a group, my brain starts to develop a few key words I need to throw in, requests I need to make, etc.
  3. In reality, as hard as this is for all of us, our public prayers should really just be a continuation of our private conversations with God.
    1. We’re still just talking to him.  So if you’re in a group, you don’t need to shout so the Lord will hear you.  As long as everyone else in the group can hear you, that’s fine.
    2. And there’s no need to repeat God’s name over and over as you beg for him to hear you - he’s listening.  Just talk to him.
      1. Words like “Lord” can become a crutch for us almost like “uh” or “um” - “Lord, I just really Lord want to ask you, Lord, about Lord whether I should go to school, Lord.”
      2. Words like “just” can become a crutch too - “Lord, just hear us tonight. We just lift up our hands to you and pray that you will just send your love down to us in ways we just can’t understand. Take us just as we are Lord. Just, just. Just, just.”
    3. The more we can see prayer as a conversation - as talking with God - the more we’re going to be relaxed and be able to pray effectively in a group.
  4. It’s not easy, in part because so few of us love to get up in front of people and jabber on, but it can happen as we learn about this topic.

Discussion Time

  1. So with that as our background, I now want to throw it open for y’all - let’s talk about these topics.
    1. Time
      1. What times have you found work for you?
      2. Have you had bad experiences with certain times?
      3. Do you have absolutely zero time on your schedule right now?
    2. Place
      1. Is it really hard to find a place to pray?
      2. Where is a good place you’ve found to pray?
      3. How responsive has your family been to that?
    3. What Do We Say?
      1. What ways have you found to keep your mind focused while praying?
      2. Certain methods like ACTS or like following the Lord’s Prayer?
      3. Other ways?  What have you found that works?
    4. Public Prayer
      1. Ok, so what about public prayer - have y’all had trouble with those topics before?
      2. What makes you nervous about praying in public?
      3. Is it hard to focus while other people are praying?

Practicum

  1. Ok, that’s a good discussion - let’s take our last 5-10 minutes here and spend some time practicing what we’ve been talking about.
  2. Let’s just take a few minutes, pray individually in a quiet place here, and then I’ll “close” us once we’re all set - no prayer circles, but just talking to the Lord individually.
    1. If you finish praying, think about some of these questions - how you can become a person of prayer in your life.