Ep. 21 - Why Your Prayers Aren't Working
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Summary
In this episode, Pastor Ken teaches about why God may not be answering our prayers, and why we shouldn't be praying to God at all. He also talks about a time when he prayed for a $300 million jackpot, and God granted it.
Transcript
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So I often hear Christians say that they pray and their prayers don't work. They're not getting
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results. It's like a diet plan or something. I've been doing it. I'm just not shedding the
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pounds. I don't know what's wrong. I have no doubt complained about this in the past myself. And
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the problem is that people become discouraged from prayer because they perceive that it's not
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having the desired effect, and then they stop doing it. And that's how you end up with a body
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of believers in America who don't pray. We have an unpraying Christianity in America,
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and it shows. The statistics that I've read, I don't know if they're true or not, but they sound
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true. It's probably true. I've read that the average Christian spends significantly less than
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10 minutes a day praying. I've also read that the number is actually about one minute a day
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that the average Christian spends in prayer. And that's pretty bad, especially when you consider
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that the average person spends five hours a day watching TV, which I don't know. I mean,
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that's mind-boggling. I don't know. How do you find five hours in the day to sit on a couch and
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just stare at a screen? How could you possibly carve out that much time? And how do you not get bored?
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But anyway, five hours a day watching TV, several more hours a day staring at computer screens and
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phones. So we're wasting a lot of time. And yet we say, I don't know. I just can't find the time
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to pray. I can't find it in my schedule. I've got my schedule right here from about 7 p.m. till 1 a.m.
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I'm going to be watching TV. Can't do anything about that. I mean, I've had that scheduled for weeks
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now. So I thought it would be a good thing maybe to talk about prayer and to talk about why our
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prayers may not be working, why they may not be answered from our perspective. And here are just
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a few points about a few points about prayer. The first thing that I think we should understand is
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that God does answer every prayer said to him. But the crucial thing there is that qualifier said to
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him. If we pray to somebody else that's not him, then he's not necessarily going to answer that
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prayer. And if we're praying for fame and fortune and materialistic, selfish, greedy, prideful things,
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if we are praying to satisfy our gluttony and pride and ego and materialism, that's how we're praying.
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Then we're not praying to God. We may be attaching his name to it, but we're praying to
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some kind of genie that grants wishes. That's what we're praying to. We're basically praying
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to the genie from Aladdin. That's who we're praying to. And that's not God. In other words,
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we are praying to an idol. We are idol worshiping. The person who says a selfish, materialistic,
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greedy prayer is an idol worshiper. And if God responds to that prayer at all, we're probably
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not going to like the response. Let's put it that way. So just a quick story about that. And I'm
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embarrassed to say that a long time ago when I was, I don't know, 20 or 21 years old, I actually
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literally did pray for a winning lottery ticket. Maybe twice in my life, I've purchased one of those
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jackpot lotteries tickets. And so this was one of those times, I think it was a, I don't know,
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it was a $300 million, $400 million jackpot. And so before they drew the numbers that night,
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I said a prayer to God, dear Lord, let me win this $300 million. Lord, please. I don't ask for much,
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just please, $300 million. It's all I need. Okay. Then I'll be happy. I did pray for that. And
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it's, it's a shameful, blasphemous prayer, especially when you consider that Christ in
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the gospel is, is repeatedly warns us about wealth. And he says famously, it's very difficult
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for a rich man to get to heaven, like passing through the eye of a needle. And why is that?
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Because, because the more wealth we have, the more things we have, the more attached we become
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to those things. And the less attached we are to God. And the more that our, our kind of vision,
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our, our view of the divine, of holy, sacred things, the more that view is cluttered and blocked by all
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of this stuff. And that's why he tells us, give up everything, give up all this stuff and just follow
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me. So when I prayed for $300 million, what I was really praying for was God, please make it hard for
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me to get to heaven. Fortunately, thank God. He did not grant that prayer. I did not win the money.
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And in fact, not only did I not win it, but for the next five years of my life, I had pretty serious
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financial difficulty and I was pretty poor. And I had a lot of trouble just keeping the lights on
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and putting food in the fridge. And that's how I lived in my dumpy little apartment for about five
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years. Now, I'm not saying that that was all a direct result of the prayer that I said for $300
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million, but I don't think it's entirely unrelated. I think God and his wisdom may choose to withhold
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blessings from greedy, selfish, childish people like I was at the time, people who treat him like
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a genie. He may say, you know what, I'm going to withhold. Now you're going to go without for a
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while. And that withholding of a blessing, that thing where we pray for something and then God gives us
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the opposite of what we prayed for, which is kind of what happened to me more than once in my life.
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But that itself is a huge blessing. And I realize now looking back how good it was that I was poor
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during that time. Because if I had money and means, I would have probably used it in selfish ways because
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I was a selfish person and I would have destroyed myself. And so praise God, he didn't go with my
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plan. He went with his. Now, I know that most Christians hopefully aren't praying for hundreds
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of millions of dollars. You know, most Christians hopefully aren't as stupid as I was at the time, but
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there are many other forms of materialistic, selfish prayers, prayer that is essentially just
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gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme. And if such prayers are answered at all, they're more likely to
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be answered with a rebuke. And what I will say is if we do pray selfishly and materialistically
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and greedily, and suddenly we look around and we see that all of our selfish desires
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are actually coming true, well, then we should shudder in fear because those blessings are not
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coming from God. He is, God is not going to indulge our sinful desires. God's not going to do that.
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If we want something sinful, God is not going to say, okay, here you go. So if those blessings
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aren't coming from God above, then they're coming from below. And that's not to say that everyone
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who's ever got wealthy, you know, that those were gifts from Satan. I'm not saying that.
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I'm saying someone who is intensely focused selfishly on materialistic things and someone who is greedy,
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when they look around and see that things are starting to go their way. Well, I think it's much
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more likely that that's Satan kind of walking in front of them and paving the path and making
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things very comfortable for them so that they'll just walk very nicely and very easily right into
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hell. Second thing, kind of related to the first point, Scripture tells us to pray unceasingly,
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persistently. And if we're only praying briefly in this kind of scattershot way, and only when we
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want something, even if what we want is not selfish or materialistic, even if it's a good thing,
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well, then that prayer isn't going to necessarily work. And that's because God desires an intimate
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bond with us. He doesn't want to stand off at a distance and just toss crumbs to us.
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He wants to be our eternal bread. He wants us to be sustained by him through his grace. And he wants
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us to establish a real connection with him, a real relationship. So if we pray just every once in a
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while, and only when we want something, it again could be a great blessing, I think, that he doesn't
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give us what we want. He'll answer the prayer, but he may answer it by saying no. Or he may say,
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you want that, but I'm going to give you this instead. And we may get that answer kind of
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frequently if we're not praying habitually and unceasingly. You know, if we just pray every once
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in a while when we want something and nothing more, then we may get turned down quite a bit because he's
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withholding the fullness of his blessings in order to spur us to greater hunger and a greater
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desperation for his presence. And that is what God wants. He wants desperation. I think God really
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wants us to be desperate people. He wants us to be desperate, like a man in the desert who hasn't
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had a drink of water in two days. That's what he wants. And that's why in Scripture, you'll notice
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he never made it particularly easy for those who came to him, people that came to him asking for
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healing and asking for miracles. He didn't often make it easy for them. They had to fight through a
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crowd, right? Like the woman who grabbed on Christ's robe and she was, she had a, they said there's
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throngs of people. She had a fight and just, and just, you know, she's probably on, probably crawling
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and she just grabs at his robes. And that's what was necessary to demonstrate her faith. And that's
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how she was healed. Or they had to tear the roof off of a house. Remember the paralytic in the gospels
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and they had to, they couldn't get in. Christ was inside a house. They couldn't get in through the
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doors, too many people. So they had to climb up on the, on the roof and tear a hole on the roof
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to get to Jesus. Or they had to travel great distances. Or you have in Matthew chapter nine,
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we read about the two blind men who are following Jesus and shouting, have mercy on me, have mercy on
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me. And, um, eventually when Jesus makes it to the place where he was going and they followed him all
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the way there, then he turns around and heals them. But they had to follow that whole time. He could
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have healed them at any moment. He could have taken two steps and then turned around and said, yeah,
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you're healed. But instead he had these men who are blind. He had these literally blind men
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follow him over. We don't know how long it was, but we can assume it was a bit of a distance
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and to keep following, keep shouting, have mercy on me, have mercy on me. And then he healed them.
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So Jesus didn't go door to door, handing out blessings. Instead, he walked his path.
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He journeyed where he needed to go, where his mission meant that he had to go. And it was up
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to the people to seek him and humble themselves before him and ask for his blessings in faith.
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You know, Jesus says, knock and the door will be opened. And I know Christians will cite that
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verse a lot and they'll say, ah, just whatever you pray for, you'll get. Yeah. Knock and the door's
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open. He never said knock once. He didn't say how many times you might have to knock. You might have
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to knock 10 times. You might have to knock a hundred times. You might have to, you might have
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to knock 10,000 times before he finally answers it. He says, he says, seek and you will find.
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He never said that you're going to find it the first place you look. He never said this process
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of seeking will take five seconds. Could take five days, could take five years, could take 50 years,
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whatever it is. So we have to be persistent and unceasing and keep coming back to God,
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keep coming back, keep coming back, keep crying out to him. And that's really what demonstrates
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our faith because anyone can cry out to God in a moment of desperation and, you know, in a fleeting
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moment of desperation or fleeting moment of need, anyone can cry out, oh God, help me, save me.
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But to continue to continue following God, grasping at his robes, crying out, have mercy on me to
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continue along that path. Well, that's persistence. That's unceasing prayer, I think.
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The third thing, I think a lot of us need to expand our prayer arsenal a little bit because
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there are different kinds of prayer, not just one kind. And I think this is a big problem in
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Christianity today in the West is that people aren't really taught about prayer. We kind of
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assume that it's, oh yeah, you'll figure it out. You'll pick it up on your own. But no, it's something
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people need to be taught and trained in. And we need to learn that there are different kinds of
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prayers. There are prayers of petitions where we ask for something, and we've discussed that.
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And I think for a lot of us, that's the only kind of prayer we ever say. It's just petition. God,
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give me this, give me this, give me this. And we may, we may, we may ask for petitions. We may petition
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on behalf of other people, which is great. We may petition on behalf of our children, our family,
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our spouse, the poor, the disadvantaged, our friends. And those are great prayers to say,
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but those are also petition prayers. And then you also have prayers of thanksgiving.
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Where we give thanks and praise to God. And I think if we're getting shot down on our petition
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prayers a lot, we may have to ask ourselves, how often do we do the thanksgiving prayers?
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Because if it's all petition and it's no thanksgiving, except for maybe on thanksgiving,
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if that's the only time when we thank God, that might be part of the problem. It seems to me it
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should be at least even. For all the time we spend asking God for things, we should spend time
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thanking Him. Thanking Him even when He says no. If He says yes to a prayer. And I know I've done
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this so many times where I'm praying for something, I'm praying for it. And then I get it. And then I
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forget to go back to God and say, thank you for this. And I know I don't tolerate that for my own
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kids. If I go out and get them some ice cream and I hand them the ice cream, they better say,
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thank you. But how often have I done that to our Heavenly Father? Or He gives me something and I'm
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just like a brat. I don't even say thank you for it. But I think even more common, even if we remember
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to say thank you for the yeses, how often do we forget to say thank you for the no's? Because even
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if God says no, we should still go back and thank Him. Because we know that the no was what was best for
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us. And so it was a blessing, even still. So prayers of thanksgiving, prayers of petition.
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Then we have prayers of contrition, where we ask forgiveness for our sins. That's another one that
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I think Christians tend to neglect in their one minute of daily prayer. And then there are prayers
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of adoration. And a prayer of adoration is a prayer where we simply worship and praise God.
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Now you look at the Lord's prayer, which Christ gave to us, we see that it has all of these
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elements in it. So think about it. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. That's
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adoration. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That's more adoration.
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Give us this day our daily bread. That's petition. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who
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trespass against us. That's contrition. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
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That's also petition. So this is the model prayer. Jesus says, pray like this. And he's not saying
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that every prayer you say should be this specific prayer, these words exactly, although we should
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pray that specific prayer a lot. But what he's saying is every prayer you say should reflect this
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prayer. It should reflect some element of this prayer. So it leads with adoration, praise, worship,
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dwelling in God's holiness. Then it petitions God, but the petition is humble. The petition is
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submissive. It's saying, just give me my daily bread, Lord. Then there's asking for forgiveness.
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forgiveness. And it's kind of a dangerous request for forgiveness because we're saying, forgive us as we
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forgive others. And a lot of us, we don't forgive others that well. And then there's the final petition,
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which is a petition for holiness and for sanctification. And I think when we're asking God for things,
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that should really be the main thing we ask for is for our sanctification, for our holiness. We should
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be saying, you know, make me holy, Lord. Fourth thing, I wanted to focus on adoration prayers for
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a moment because I think this is the kind of prayer that is most lacking for a lot of Christians. And it was
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lacking for me until recently. Not every prayer that we say should involve us saying anything. Not every
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prayer should be said. If we really desire a connection, a relationship with Him, then the
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conversation with God has to be a two-way conversation. And I think a mistake that we often make
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is this is a conversation. We are really bad conversationalists. Okay. We're like the
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conversationalist in the conversation who just dominates the conversation and makes everything
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about themselves and never listens to anybody else. And it's just horrible talking to them.
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I think with God, it's got to be a two-way conversation. All the time we spend talking to
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Him, explaining ourselves and everything, there also have to be times of silence, times of listening,
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prayers. You know, we should be saying prayers where we say nothing, actually, where we ask for
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nothing, but we simply put ourselves in His presence. We meditate upon His majesty and lordship and beauty,
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and we open ourselves up to Him. And then we just sit there in His presence, thinking about Him.
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So that's kind of, that's a contemplative, meditative prayer. People have different sorts of strategies for
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contemplative prayer. I'm certainly no expert myself. What I try to do now, try being the operative word,
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working on it, but what I try to do is, I try to do this every morning, a contemplative prayer.
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And I begin by reading a little bit of scripture, just a short passage, so as to put myself in the
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right frame of mind. And then the next step for me is, is I get on my knees. And I do think that the
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physical posture is important because we are physical beings. And to be on our knees is to
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physically communicate our submission to God. And the whole point of contemplative prayer is to,
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is to meditate upon the presence of God. So we have to think, if Christ were to appear in the flesh,
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right in front of us, if, if, if Christ walked into our living room in the flesh, what would we do?
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Unless we are arrogant beyond all comprehension, we would fall to our knees. We'd probably fall all the
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way prostrate on our faces, is what we would do. Remember in Revelation, John talks about his vision
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of the Lord. And he says, when I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. And that is what a person
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ought to do when confronted with the blinding, heavenly light of perfection. So if we're praying
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whenever possible, I think it's important to put our minds where our minds need to be by putting our
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bodies, how our bodies need to be. And I'm not saying that every time we pray, we have to be on our
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knees because I know some, I'll pray sometimes when I'm driving, when I'm walking, when I'm doing
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chores, you know, so, so we could pray in any physical position whatsoever, but we should also
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be carving out specific time in the day for prayer, not just when we can fit it in, when we're doing
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something else, which is fine. As long as we also have that time that is just for prayer, nothing else,
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put aside all the distractions. And in those moments, I think it's so important for us to
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get on our knees in this act of submission and reverence. And this is something that I think is
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really lacking, not just prayer, but something really lacking among Christians in America is
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reverence, is this sense of total reverence, this sense of the sacred, you know, that we are in front
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of something truly sacred. So anyway, then on my knees, I asked the Holy Spirit to come into my heart
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and then I spend some time saying nothing, trying not to say anything even in my head, trying to
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cancel out any thoughts of things that I need or things I need to do. And I just imagine myself
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before Christ. And that's the prayer. I know some people in contemplative prayer, they'll meditate on
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a passage of scripture or they'll meditate on the cross. I think over time, you figure out what works
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best for you. What's the best way that God speaks to you personally. But I think this should really be
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the bedrock of our prayer life, that private, quiet contemplation, that passive kind of receiving
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of God and receiving of him, you know, a him speaking to us. But if we really want to hear what
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he's saying to us, we need to just shut up and listen, which I know we all struggle with. I certainly
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do. But I think when we incorporate all of these forms of prayer and we pray unceasingly and we
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really start to take our prayer life seriously, I think that's when we see that our prayers really
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start to work. They really work. And they work in many ways. But here's the primary way that I think
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a really, a really well-grounded prayer life works. Or here's the place, if you're really praying a lot
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and you're praying well, here's the place where you're really going to see a change. You may not see a
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change in anything else. Your financial situation may stay the same. Your health may stay the same.
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Everything in your life may stay exactly the same. Or they may not. But it may all stay exactly the
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same. But the one place where you will absolutely 100% guaranteed see a change is in your appetites.
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I don't mean physical appetites. I mean that when we really have a prayer life, that's when we start
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to feel a deeper desire for holy things. The more we pursue God, the more of a desire we have for him.
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And we start to crave these, we start to crave holiness. And so we feel less desire for the hollow
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things. We want holy things, not hollow things, not superficial things, not unholy things. Our
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spiritual and intellectual appetites grow deeper. They grow more mature. We may find that a lot of
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the music we like to listen to, a lot of the shows we watch, a lot of the movies we watch,
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just a lot of the stuff we used to do, no longer has any appeal to us whatsoever.
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And we'll even find that certain sins and certain temptations that we've struggled with,
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that have just had a hold on us for so long, suddenly they don't have a hold on us anymore.
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Suddenly, and you might not even notice it when it happens, it's not that you'll become a perfect
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person who never sins. But if there are certain sins that have just had you in their grasp for so
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long, and then you really start praying unceasingly, every day, constantly, that's when
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you find that, and you almost don't even notice the transition, but one day you look, and that sin
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is just kind of over there. And you can look at it, and you can say, you've got no power on me.
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You've got no power. And you'll just want more of the sacred in your life.
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And you'll find that certain things that you found appealing before aren't appealing anymore.
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Certain things you didn't find appealing are appealing. You'll love people more. You'll hate
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sin more. You'll want to read the Bible more. You'll want to think about God more and talk about him
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more. I think when you look at Christians who, it would seem that their appetites are exactly like
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everyone else's. In other words, they're listening to trashy music, and they're just watching all this
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trash on TV, and they're just living and consuming in exactly the same way as people without faith.
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And they seem to have no appetite whatsoever for God, prayer, church, scripture. Well,
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the reason why they're like that is that they don't pray. That's the problem, is they don't pray.
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And I think then the more we change from prayer, the less we look at prayer as a thing that brings
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results or a thing that works or doesn't work. We just see prayer as an opportunity to spend time
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with God and to think about him and worship him, and not always to be asking for things,
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but just to have our bond with him grow stronger and stronger and to be in his presence and to listen
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to him. I don't say this as someone who's mastered the art of praying, not by a long shot, but I know
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that this is what prayer is. And we could all certainly benefit from praying significantly more
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than we are now. So maybe we should all make that resolve, make that resolution right now.
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All right, I'll leave it there. Thanks for watching, everybody. Godspeed.