Dale Partridge - Real Christianity #88： How to Strengthen Your Prayer Life.

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Real Christianity. Today, I'm going to be sharing another one of my sermons. We had

00:00:04.380 such great feedback from everybody about my last sermon from church, and I thought I would share

00:00:11.180 another one. We are planning to put a podcast together of all of my sermons, and so that's

00:00:17.400 something that is coming in the near future. But I did a sermon this last weekend that I thought

00:00:23.240 would be very fitting for the podcast, and then we'll get back to the regular Veronica and Dale

00:00:28.340 program that we usually do. So today we're going to be talking about how to nurture a prayer

00:00:35.840 revival. How to nurture a prayer revival. And of the three core spiritual disciplines, which I

00:00:42.060 would say is reading the Word of God, praising God, and praying, I think praying is often the

00:00:47.640 most neglected of the bunch. And I would say that's probably pretty obvious in most of our

00:00:52.820 experiences that prayer is neglected more than worship music, more than the reading of the

00:00:58.320 word john wesley once said by neglecting prayer you lose the taste for it oh man you wrong yourself

00:01:07.840 greatly by omitting these mighty moments with god i don't know a single person who's not interested

00:01:15.040 i should say i don't know a single christian who's not interested in having a better prayer life this

00:01:20.640 is something that i think all of us want we don't necessarily know how to do that but for most

00:01:26.160 believers, we never break into that kind of consistent, powerful, spirit-driven

00:01:32.280 prayer life that we want. We hear about it. We watch movies like The War Room, but

00:01:36.880 we don't actually experience that. And I would say most of our prayers are, you

00:01:42.060 know, small. They remain monotonous. They're weak. They're actually boring. I

00:01:48.200 would say a lot of us are bored with our prayer life. We say the same things

00:01:52.260 over and over. We don't understand how to pray in a way that is dimensional and powerful and

00:02:02.120 scriptural. And so what does the Bible say about prayer? I'm going to give you guys just a couple

00:02:09.060 verses to prime our discussion today to kind of prepare your heart for prayer, the concept of

00:02:15.740 prayer. So I'll start with Philippians 4, 6. It says, do not be anxious for anything, but in

00:02:22.480 everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to

00:02:27.920 God. So just, I'm not going to teach on these verses, but I'll give you a couple of points here

00:02:31.320 by everything in prayer. So prayer is something that we can ask God for anything and everything

00:02:37.640 we could be taking to the Lord. And we do so with thanksgiving. So many of us come to

00:02:44.140 to prayer with the Lord that is in a way that we're expecting something from God, we want to

00:02:48.720 ask something from God, the first thing is to come with thanksgiving. Have a posture of, God, I'm so

00:02:54.880 thankful for everything that I have. Even if you're coming in the midst of a diagnosis of a disease

00:02:59.480 or the tragedy of something that happened in your life, being able to go, oh Lord, thank you for

00:03:05.120 the breath that's in my lungs right now. Father, thank you for the wellness of the rest of my

00:03:11.300 children. Father, thank you for the fact that I've lived as long as I have and the job that I have

00:03:16.860 and that I've never missed a meal. Whatever it might be, we are to come to the Lord in thanksgiving.

00:03:21.180 So that's a primer verse. Romans 8 26 says, likewise, the spirit helps us in our weakness

00:03:29.120 for we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the spirit himself intercedes for us with

00:03:38.000 groanings too deep for words. Okay, so this is implying that the Spirit comes in and assists us

00:03:45.480 in our prayer life, and I would say is an important element of our prayer life. It is a

00:03:52.680 cooperating with the Spirit in these specific moments. It is a spiritual discipline, and

00:03:58.820 sometimes we don't know what to pray, but the Spirit will come in and assist us in that manner.

00:04:03.500 The next one is Matthew 6, 5 through 8.

00:04:05.940 This is Jesus kind of discussing how to pray, what it looks like.

00:04:09.820 He says, and when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites,

00:04:13.800 for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues

00:04:16.680 and at the street corners that they may be seen by others.

00:04:19.780 Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.

00:04:23.260 But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door

00:04:27.140 and pray to your Father who is in secret.

00:04:30.740 and your father who sees in secret will reward you. Verse seven, and when you pray, do not heap

00:04:38.340 up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. 1.00

00:04:45.240 Do not be like them, for your father knows what you need before you ask him. So this is talking 1.00

00:04:52.660 about private prayer versus public prayer, and there is an opportunity and a place for both of

00:04:58.060 those things. It's not saying that you should only pray in private and you shouldn't pray in public.

00:05:03.080 No, congregational prayer, prayer before church, that's great things, but you need to be having a

00:05:08.300 private prayer life. And it's not about what you say. It's more about the posture of how you say

00:05:13.360 it. And it's talking about the Lord knows what you need before you ask. It's more about sincerity.

00:05:19.700 It's more about genuine heart for seeking out the Lord. And so we're going to talk a lot about that.

00:05:26.040 So prayer should be constant.

00:05:27.320 It should be carried out in the spirit.

00:05:28.860 And it's something that needs to be coming from a genuine heart.

00:05:31.740 So these are some basic principles here.

00:05:33.760 So how do you nurture a prayer life?

00:05:36.220 How do you invest, you know, build up the appetite for a stronger prayer life?

00:05:43.720 How do you get that biblical solution for prayer revival in your own life?

00:05:48.860 And if you're not interested in this conversation,

00:05:51.460 That should be a sure sign of a huge problem in your own spiritual life.

00:05:56.040 This would be something that you're very much interested in.

00:05:59.200 If you go, oh man, this guy's talking about prayer, move on.

00:06:01.860 That is not the correct posture to have.

00:06:03.960 And that is why your prayer life is weak.

00:06:07.620 Okay, so what are the reasons that we're not experiencing this prayer revival that we want in our own life?

00:06:15.140 Well, first, we know it's not more time.

00:06:18.160 Okay, it's not a lack of time.

00:06:20.300 John Piper puts a huge blow to that argument.

00:06:23.800 He actually makes this statement.

00:06:24.760 He says, one of the great uses of social media

00:06:27.340 will be to prove that prayerlessness

00:06:29.560 was not because of a lack of time.

00:06:33.740 Man, there's no way you're gonna say,

00:06:36.180 oh, I just don't have time,

00:06:37.000 but you're gonna be scrolling on Instagram.

00:06:40.680 I heard a statement that it's like

00:06:42.460 the average person on Instagram

00:06:44.800 scrolls one mile a week or something like that

00:06:48.660 on their scroll feed.

00:06:50.440 I mean, this is crazy how much time we spend on social media

00:06:53.160 that we can't break in and spend some of that time in prayer.

00:06:57.040 So it's not a lack of time.

00:06:59.080 We know that the solution to a better prayer life

00:07:01.900 is not simply more theological knowledge.

00:07:05.340 That's a part of it, but it's not just theological knowledge.

00:07:09.340 A vibrant prayer life is something that happens from the heart,

00:07:12.960 the soul, and the mind, but it's not just,

00:07:16.320 oh, I need to go seek more information about God.

00:07:18.840 That'll revive my prayer life.

00:07:20.600 It's part of it, but it's not the whole thing.

00:07:22.560 We know that the solution isn't necessarily discipline.

00:07:27.600 It's not that you just need to go do it more often

00:07:29.860 and I'm gonna discipline myself into a prayer revival.

00:07:33.040 Again, this is part of it,

00:07:34.380 but you can't isolate these elements.

00:07:36.320 We wanna just be the American thing.

00:07:40.340 We're preaching here in America,

00:07:41.620 but I'm just gonna do the hard work

00:07:43.560 and get it done and focus on that.

00:07:45.140 that's not the way that we need to be approaching prayer. And so I want to talk about this idea

00:07:50.880 just for a second, because I think a lot of us struggle with, well, you know, I just don't want

00:07:55.040 to pray. And I have people all the time that message me and they go, I, you know, I just don't

00:07:59.560 want to read the scriptures. It's, it's not exciting to me. I don't want to, to pray. It's

00:08:04.220 not something that I'm, I'm eager for in the morning. And I understand I get messages all

00:08:10.400 the time. And I've experienced this myself that you go, oh, I just, I just don't want, I want to

00:08:16.760 read because reading, man, what is reading? It's eating the word of God. It's feeding my hunger.

00:08:22.380 I'm getting something deeply out of it. Praising the Lord before the throne and worship. I love

00:08:29.280 that experience, but praying sometimes feels like, oh, like Lord, I'm not as excited as I am about

00:08:37.700 these other two disciplines, you know, what's going on here? First, I want to say, don't be

00:08:43.040 shocked that your flesh isn't excited about reading the word or praying. Don't be shocked 0.98

00:08:50.980 about this, right? Prayer is a devotion that is driven by the spirit. And we know that the flesh

00:08:58.060 is against the desires of the spirit. The scriptures teach us this, that while the war

00:09:04.520 has been won and we are sealed and redeemed, that there is a battle going on between our flesh

00:09:11.460 and the spirit of God that's within us. Galatians 5, 17 says, for the desires of the flesh are

00:09:18.300 against the spirit. Some translations say are at war with the spirit and the desires of the spirit

00:09:24.480 are against the flesh. And for these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things

00:09:30.700 that you want to do. Okay. Just think about that. The flesh is the great preventer of prayer. It's

00:09:39.000 the great preventer of prayer devotion. And while discipline might be part of something, part of the

00:09:46.240 process of reviving that, it alone will not help a weak prayer life. Okay. So it's not time. It's

00:09:55.060 not knowledge, theological knowledge. It's not discipline. If it's not those three things, what

00:09:59.920 can we do? How do we revive our prayer life? How do we bring it into balance with our reading life

00:10:08.860 and our listening to worship life? How do we bring it into balance with those things? And I would

00:10:14.240 even say, how do we have it supersede those two things? And so what I want to do first is I want

00:10:21.580 to define prayer because I think we have a lot of definitions that are floating around. What is

00:10:26.220 prayer i'm going to define prayer for you and give you a theological definition of prayer that might

00:10:32.380 help you understand what we're actually talking about so this is from the westminster larger

00:10:36.780 catechism it actually asks the question and gives the answer to what is prayer and this is what it

00:10:42.940 says prayer is an offering up of our desires unto god in the name of christ by the help of the spirit

00:10:53.180 with confession of our sins and thankful acknowledgement of his mercies.

00:10:59.200 Okay, I'm going to read that one more time.

00:11:00.660 I want you to grasp this here.

00:11:02.200 Prayer is an offering up of our desires unto God in the name of Christ,

00:11:06.980 by the help of his spirit, with confession of our sins

00:11:10.440 and thankful acknowledgement of his mercies.

00:11:14.220 And so I want to take this definition and I want to really start my case here

00:11:21.080 that prayer is fueled by two fountains, okay?

00:11:26.640 Prayer is fueled by two fountains,

00:11:30.600 and those are love and need, okay?

00:11:34.300 Just follow along with me.

00:11:35.980 Those are love and need.

00:11:38.280 And so first, our prayer life needs to be fueled

00:11:43.040 by our relationship,

00:11:45.680 our loving relationship with Christ, okay?

00:11:48.740 So first, on the love side that we're talking about, our prayer life needs to be fueled by our loving relationship with Christ.

00:11:58.040 I have never met somebody who had a shallow relationship with Christ and a deep discipline of prayer.

00:12:05.800 Okay, I've never met anybody.

00:12:07.460 If you have a shallow relationship with Christ, you will not have a deep discipline of prayer.

00:12:12.620 So the first part is you have to focus on nurturing this relationship with Christ.

00:12:20.820 And the best way to understand God more effectively and more relationally

00:12:25.580 is to understand God's Word more effectively and more relationally.

00:12:31.940 Okay, we know that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God

00:12:35.320 and that Scripture is the agent by which God uses to reveal Himself to us.

00:12:41.220 The reason we know about God is through Scripture.

00:12:44.740 For us that living, you know, not at the time of Christ,

00:12:47.700 the reason that we know of God and the gospel is because of Scripture.

00:12:52.900 So I want to give you an analogy of this relational journey with Scripture

00:12:58.100 and how you build that relationship there.

00:13:01.040 The reading of Scripture, in my experience, is kind of like walking through a museum.

00:13:08.300 It's understanding God is kind of like, or understanding the Bible, is like entering into a museum.

00:13:14.940 And the first time you're there, you kind of walk around and it's interesting and you're looking at the different exhibits,

00:13:22.500 but you don't really understand the curated theme or the deep background information behind what's going on.

00:13:31.380 But after visiting several times, you start to begin to understand the purpose of the exhibit,

00:13:39.420 and it increases your appreciation for what's happening in the museum.

00:13:43.560 You start kind of putting things together of like, oh, this, I understand what's going on here

00:13:47.500 and how that connects with that section over there.

00:13:50.760 See, but unlike the earthly museums that we might go to, the Museum of Scripture goes beyond appreciation.

00:13:58.460 It goes further than just our appreciation of these matters, because at some point you're going to realize that the whole museum and that every single exhibit in there is not centrally about history.

00:14:11.460 It's not centrally about geography. It's not necessarily about theology or morality or even the church.

00:14:16.760 It's actually a story about God and you.

00:14:21.060 And when that hits, when that hits in your heart, you begin to comprehend that the grace exhibit, it's not just about the idea of grace.

00:14:36.480 It's not just even about the church.

00:14:39.340 It's about you.

00:14:40.700 And you begin to realize that the forgiveness exhibit, it's not just about forgiveness, it's about you.

00:14:53.460 And you look at the love exhibit, and you look at the love story, and you realize that the love story is your story.

00:15:02.880 And all of this starts to flood in and just overwhelm you.

00:15:09.460 And when that happens through the relationship of Scripture to understanding who God is,

00:15:14.720 the relationship with your Lord, it sends you to your knees.

00:15:19.500 It sends you to your knees because you're no longer ignorant of the beauty

00:15:23.980 of what the Lord has done for you and what he's doing for you.

00:15:29.880 And your desires and confessions and acknowledgement flow out of this posture of love for the Lord.

00:15:37.500 And so when you understand God more, it allows us to more effectively love God more.

00:15:50.640 And so this is the first fountain.

00:15:53.040 I guess if I'm looking over here in the video here, this is the first fountain.

00:15:58.000 And we have another fountain right here, right?

00:16:00.900 So the first fountain is the love for God.

00:16:03.360 The second fountain is need, okay?

00:16:07.500 Need. I want you to pay attention to what this means here.

00:16:10.200 While love is driven by relationship, need is driven by perspective.

00:16:16.760 Love is driven by relationship, need is driven by perspective.

00:16:20.780 And a great theologian once said, prayer is helplessness plus faith.

00:16:27.660 Prayer is helplessness plus faith.

00:16:32.480 Let me illustrate what I think this theologian is saying here.

00:16:37.500 I want to look at Luke and Luke is talking about the story that Jesus is talking and he's giving

00:16:45.660 a parable about the tax collector who's coming to pray and the Pharisee. And you're going to

00:16:52.860 understand the difference between these two people and their perspective of their need.

00:16:57.660 It says also, this is Luke 18, 9 through 14. Also, he spoke this parable to some who trusted

00:17:05.340 in themselves that they were righteous and despised others. Verse 10, he starts the parable.

00:17:12.680 Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.

00:17:18.120 The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank you that I am not like other men,

00:17:24.680 extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. I fast twice a week.

00:17:31.700 I give tithes of all that I possess.

00:17:35.120 And the tax collector, standing afar off,

00:17:39.300 would not so much as even raise his eyes to heaven,

00:17:41.900 but beat his breast.

00:17:45.100 Beat his breast saying, 0.68

00:17:46.980 God, be merciful to me, a sinner. 0.66

00:17:52.400 Jesus says, I tell you,

00:17:53.780 this man went down to his house justified 0.84

00:17:56.000 rather than the other, the Pharisee.

00:17:58.020 For example, or for everyone who exalts himself

00:18:01.000 will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. One man had an inaccurate perspective

00:18:10.960 on himself. The other man had an accurate perspective of himself, okay? One man was blind

00:18:20.820 to his need, the other man was aware of his need. Okay, passionate result or a passionate prayer

00:18:33.500 is the result of humans having an accurate perspective of themselves. We have a tendency

00:18:40.560 to exalt ourselves, okay, and to reduce our need for God. Okay, he becomes our genie and our

00:18:49.840 therapist, that we bring our needs to, and we can cast our demands and desires at his feet.

00:18:56.160 That is what he becomes for many people. Okay, this is an incredibly prideful posture to have

00:19:03.220 before the Lord. Okay, brother or sister, you are far more gross than you realize. 0.99

00:19:12.640 You're far more gross than you realize. And I'm going to give you an example to make you recognize 0.99

00:19:18.520 how fallen you really are. Okay, what's the first and greatest commandment? Hopefully you guys know

00:19:26.280 this. I'm going to recite it for you. But if I asked my daughter, Aria, who is sitting right

00:19:29.900 here, I'd say, hey, Aria, what's the first and greatest commandment? She'd say, oh, it's to love

00:19:33.780 the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. And the second

00:19:38.720 is like it, to love your neighbor as yourself. Okay, I want to ask you a question. Have you ever

00:19:45.380 for one second, for one second in your life, loved the Lord your God with all your heart,

00:19:51.960 with all your soul, and with all your mind? Have you ever for one second loved your neighbor

00:19:57.920 as much as you love yourself? No. No, you haven't. You have not done that. We can't even keep the

00:20:07.660 first commandment, the first and second commandments. That's how broken we are.

00:20:13.260 that's how entrenched we are in our sin we we must have this recognition this deep perspective

00:20:22.740 of our need for christ the gospel is not just for the lost it's for the saved this is why we

00:20:28.960 we do communion we we remind ourselves of what happened on the cross this is why we preach the

00:20:36.260 gospel to ourselves often because it's easy to forget we are factories of self-love of self

00:20:42.980 exaltation. We must remember our perspective that I can't even keep the first commandment, Jesus.

00:20:49.120 Father, I am here at my feet, a sinner, Father, broken in need of you.

00:20:57.380 Okay, we pray from a place of entitlement and it's terribly misguided.

00:21:04.920 It's terribly misguided. And the moment that we forget our need, our perspective of where we are

00:21:12.480 in this story

00:21:13.540 and the grace

00:21:15.120 that's been given to us

00:21:16.380 we lose our gratitude

00:21:17.900 we lose our posture

00:21:19.840 we lose our

00:21:21.700 our heart

00:21:24.700 our incredible

00:21:26.820 and immense

00:21:27.620 understanding of the gospel

00:21:29.620 we become entitled

00:21:31.420 we demand 0.97

00:21:32.140 a man aware

00:21:35.480 of his deep need for Christ

00:21:36.800 is a man

00:21:37.840 who has deep prayer

00:21:39.120 so you

00:21:41.400 you have this man who has a deep need for Christ.

00:21:46.000 He understands his posture on that totem pole.

00:21:49.780 He is a deep man of prayer.

00:21:52.440 Alistair Begg once said,

00:21:54.020 prayer is an acknowledgement that our need of God's help

00:21:56.680 is not partial, but total.

00:22:01.620 It's not partial, but total.

00:22:05.400 And so as I promised,

00:22:07.100 you guys might be thinking,

00:22:09.960 okay, all right, so we have these two fountains, right? We have love and we have need.

00:22:15.020 Understanding God, understanding that museum, and then on the other side

00:22:19.080 is keeping the perspective is that I'm broken and in need of the Lord. Those fountains fuel prayer.

00:22:29.320 But what about the practical tips, right? What about the basic stuff? What about the things

00:22:32.800 that I can just, I can start easily cultivating my journey. You know, how do we break through

00:22:40.740 this monotonous prayer life? How do we get back into a passionate prayer devotion time? How do

00:22:47.640 we add more dimension into our prayer? And so I'm going to give you three quick tips and I'm going

00:22:51.900 to close the story and then we'll be done. So three quick tips on this matter. The first is

00:22:58.560 read the prayers of great saints. I read a little book, and I wish I had it with me right here,

00:23:03.980 called The Valley of Vision. It's daily prayers from the Puritans. There's another one by Lexham

00:23:09.760 Press called Piercing Heaven. And there's several others that you can look for, but The Valley of

00:23:15.840 Vision and Piercing Heaven, these give you the vision of where you want your prayer life to be.

00:23:25.080 And they're not perfect.

00:23:26.340 They're fallen men.

00:23:27.180 But these are beautiful, mature, fervent prayers that are fueled by both love and need.

00:23:35.840 And you get to see them and read them.

00:23:37.820 It gives you something to grasp mentally and understand and really add dimension to your prayer life.

00:23:43.940 So that's one thing.

00:23:45.560 The second tip I'm going to give you is organize your prayers.

00:23:49.580 This is something that has helped me over the years.

00:23:51.600 is there's really five categories that you can have

00:23:55.560 and you could fit all your prayers into these categories.

00:24:00.400 You have your needs,

00:24:02.320 and these are your spiritual and physical needs.

00:24:04.660 This is also your need for confession, forgiveness,

00:24:07.600 wisdom, ailments, whatever it is.

00:24:09.480 So the first one is your needs.

00:24:11.760 And you can kind of go over those things.

00:24:13.720 The second thing, and I would say this is chronological,

00:24:16.480 is family.

00:24:17.560 So the needs and desires of your family,

00:24:19.480 their spiritual needs, their physical needs,

00:24:20.980 spouse, children, parents, siblings, direct family. Then you have your friends and you have

00:24:26.060 the needs and desires for the saved and the lost. So you have your needs, family's needs,

00:24:31.040 friends' needs, and then you have the church's needs. So your local church, right? This is your

00:24:34.980 pastor. If you're not praying for your pastor on a regular basis, please, please, you cannot read

00:24:41.540 the epistles of Paul and not recognize his constant call for them to pray for him. So please pray for

00:24:47.400 your pastor. Praying for the unity of the church, the fruitfulness of your gathering, the regional

00:24:52.980 area of your church, the global church, the persecuted church, all this important, important

00:24:57.580 stuff. And the last thing you should be praying for is God's mission on earth, right? So general

00:25:01.860 and specific ministry needs, the great commission, the government leaders, the poor, all these things

00:25:09.280 go into these categories. So you have these five categories, your needs, family, friends, church,

00:25:14.180 and then God's mission. So that's my second point of kind of practical.

00:25:19.740 The third is just to pray scripture back to God. Pray scripture back to God. This is a really

00:25:26.260 simple tip that's really helped me break through in seasons to deeper prayer. And what I mean by

00:25:34.380 that is, well, first let me explain. The Bible's theology of prayer, if you want to look up a

00:25:39.160 biblical theology of prayer, meaning that what does the Bible say about prayer? Prayer is inaugurated

00:25:44.760 in Genesis chapter four. It's the first time you actually see the idea that men began to call upon

00:25:51.000 the name of the Lord. And the call that they were calling upon is they're calling for God to come

00:25:56.860 through and fulfill his promises. And so you can't ask God to fulfill his promises in scripture if

00:26:04.380 you don't know what they are. And so that's one thing is that the purpose of prayer is to call

00:26:09.420 God to fulfill and to come through on his promises. And so one way that I've been able to do this

00:26:16.200 that's helped me, and I learned this from Dr. Donald Whitney at Southern Seminary. He actually

00:26:20.820 has a good video on this of praying prayer, or sorry, praying scripture back to God is open up

00:26:27.020 the Psalms. Okay, open up the Psalms and you can just start using the Psalms as a prompt to

00:26:36.220 understand prayer and to give you ideas and further motivation and momentum in your prayers. You don't

00:26:43.880 need to make it robotic. You can still have it spirit-led. You can still start off your prayer

00:26:48.260 however you want, but you have the Psalms there to keep you going deeper and deeper and deeper

00:26:55.120 into prayer. And I'm going to just give a good example. Dr. Whitney did this as an example,

00:27:00.680 and I thought it was helpful. It's Psalm 23. So I'm going to just imagine you open up Psalm 23

00:27:05.520 and you're in the middle of your prayer and you're thanking God for the things that you have. You're

00:27:09.980 asking God for your specific needs. And you kind of get to this point where you go, oh, I just don't

00:27:13.880 have anything else to say. This is a place where you can exercise prayer. And you go with the first

00:27:20.740 verse in Psalm 23, the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. And you start going, oh Lord,

00:27:27.180 thank you for being my shepherd. Father, to not leave me as a stray, but Father, you have guided

00:27:31.940 me all the way. Lord, you take me to places. I can trust you. Father, you protect me. You are my

00:27:38.780 shield. Father, you have always cared for me and I've not wanted anything. I've not wanted food.

00:27:44.260 I have everything that I need. Father, thank you. And then you move on to verse two. He makes me

00:27:49.800 lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. Oh, Father, thank you for always

00:27:54.100 providing for my needs spiritually and physically. He restores my soul. He leads me in the path of

00:27:59.240 the righteous for his namesake. I mean, you can go on and on and it becomes a beautiful prompt.

00:28:03.920 Again, don't make it robotic. Allow the Holy Spirit to lead you through that. But that has

00:28:08.200 been a very practical and helpful way to add a dimension of prayer for me. And yeah, and just go

00:28:17.600 until you complete the prayer. You don't need to keep going and going and going just to fill the

00:28:22.060 room. But you really need to work staying genuine with that, right? Spurgeon says, true prayer is

00:28:28.180 measured by weight, not by length. Tozer says, when we become too glib in our prayer, we are most

00:28:35.420 surely talking to ourselves. So we've got this wrap-up idea. We know that it's these two

00:28:43.240 elements, right? Love and need. We've got some practical tips. I want to close with just a story,

00:28:48.580 a short story about what I think is the power of prayer that we need to recognize that if the

00:28:53.400 Lord's not in it, man, you're just laboring by yourselves. So I'm going to tell you a story

00:28:56.980 about a guy named D.E. Host. Okay, if you guys know who Hudson Taylor is, D.E. Host is the guy

00:29:04.340 that took over Hudson Taylor's ministry in China after he had been doing that great evangelism

00:29:10.140 work there. And he wrote a book called Behind the Ranges. And he was trying to analyze a problem

00:29:17.720 that he'd been seeing. So he had two villages, right? One village that he lived at, and he did

00:29:23.040 his ministry, and he was with these people. And then over the mountain range, there's another

00:29:27.500 village that he would go over periodically and spend some time with. But he learned that the

00:29:33.840 people that he was spending the most time with, you know, regardless of how much preaching,

00:29:41.600 how much counseling, how much praising, how much church gathering, they were actually not doing

00:29:48.180 quite well. He was there, he was investing, but on the other side of the range where he wasn't

00:29:53.940 present, they were always doing great. And so he was confused by the fact that, man, I'm here

00:29:59.620 and I'm investing over here, yet the church spiritually isn't doing well. Yet over here

00:30:05.840 where I'm absent, the church is doing really great. What's actually happening here between

00:30:12.700 these two churches? And after seeking the Lord in prayer, he recognized that while he was with

00:30:21.280 the people here doing the preaching and the counseling and the teaching, he was praying

00:30:25.320 less for those people that he was with. And he was, because he was absent, he was praying more

00:30:30.940 for the community that he was not with. And so it came to him to a conclusion.

00:30:37.220 He said, there are four basic elements of making disciples and missionary work.

00:30:42.940 He says, number one is prayer. Number two is prayer. Number three, prayer. And number four,

00:30:50.260 the word of God in that order and about that proportion. And I just thought that was a

00:30:56.100 beautiful story that you go, you can do all you want in your own labors, but until you just invoke

00:31:02.000 the Holy Spirit and the power of Jesus Christ in your prayer, man, you're working on your own.

00:31:07.700 How many of us have just gone raw in our own efforts while neglecting the power of God that

00:31:15.600 could come in and do more in a second than we could in a lifetime. So let's close in prayer.

00:31:21.620 Father, we thank you, Lord, for this opportunity to teach on this matter. Lord, I pray that I've

00:31:25.720 been faithful to the text and that we have a better understanding of prayer. Father, we thank you

00:31:30.620 that you've given us an opportunity to communicate with you, Lord, and that you've promised that you

00:31:35.840 hear our prayers. Father, we thank you that we have an ability to come to you. Lord, we ask for

00:31:41.100 a revival in our hearts. Lord, teach us how to want to want you more, Father. Put that in with

00:31:46.920 us, Father. We love you. We thank you. In Jesus' name, amen.

Dale Partridge - March 11, 2020

Real Christianity #88： How to Strengthen Your Prayer Life.

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