“Prayer 101”
Matthew 6:5-9
Sermon Series: “Audience Of One”
Introduction: Newsweek ran a cover story about prayer in the late 90’s. According to their research, 29% of Americans pray daily. Another 25% of Americans pray more than once a day. 87% claimed to believe that God answers prayers. If most people pray, the question is, “What is prayer and how do we pray?” Well, the disciples said to Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray.” That is what we are going to do the next couple of weeks. We are going to let Jesus teach us to pray. We are going to do that by answering 3 questions. If we believe in and practice prayer (which we should because Jesus taught us to pray), it is very important for us to understand and apply the answers to these questions.
Question #1-What is the true nature of prayer?
1. Prayer is about connecting with God instead of
impressing people (v. 5).
2. Prayer is having a conversation with God our Father,
who is a real (although spiritual) Person (v. 6).
3. The prayer of a child of God is always heard and
answered [although the answer is not always yes, but sometimes it is no, sometimes it is wait, and sometimes it is God giving us His grace in the middle of a difficult situation] (v. 6).
4. True prayer places its confidence in the heart of God instead of the reciting of religious formulas (v. 7).
5. Prayer is not informing God of things He does not know but trusting Him to do what is best (v. 7). Prayer is about lining ourselves up with God instead of getting Him lined up with us. Answered prayers are God giving us what He knows we need instead of giving us what we think we want.
6. Prayer is first focused on God and then on us (v. 9- 13).
7. We are to pray for others in addition to ourselves (notice that “us” is used by Jesus instead of “me”).
Question #2-Who are we praying to?
We are praying to our Heavenly Father. Here are some of the implications of that truth:
1. Prayer works because of the nature of the One to whom we are praying. The issue is not how much faith we have or praying exactly the “right” way, but the object of our faith, who is our perfect Heavenly Father. We have a Father who rules from His throne (Revelation 3:21-4:11), a Father we can talk to (Matthew 6:9, Ephesians 2:18), a Father who takes care of His children (Matthew 6:25-33), a Father who gives good gifts (Matthew 7:11), a Father who is merciful and comforting (2 Corinthians 1:3-4), a Father who delivers us from the bondage of fear (Romans 8:15), and a Father who will remove us from this messed up world and take us to be with Him (Romans 8:23).
2. Because He is our HEAVENLY Father, He is a great God who is capable of answering our prayers.
3. Because He is our Heavenly FATHER, He is a caring God who wants to meet our needs.
4. Prayer is based on a Father-child relationship. We are not dealing with some kind of impersonal deity but a personal, spiritual Father.
5. We must come to our Heavenly Father through Jesus Christ. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6). 1 Timothy 2:5 says, “For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus.” John 1:12 says, “But as many as received Him [Jesus], to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name.” Really, the first prayer we need to pray is a prayer of faith where we confess our sin and confess Jesus as our Lord and Savior. When we trust Jesus and call on His Name, we become a child of God with full access to the Father. Ephesians 2:13 says, “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” Then verse 18 says, “For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father.”
