Prayer—Anytime, Anywhere
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Prayer—Anytime, Anywhere
March 6, 2011
by Rev. William “Buck” Day
With that thought in mind, let’s do that. Let’s spend a couple minutes in worship with him.
Lord, thank you. Thank you that you are here. You are among your people. Lord we ask that worship would not be a once a week kind of thing but that you would always be on our minds. So Lord, to that end, I ask that you would help us to walk through our days, every moment to be ever mindful of you. We ask that because of Christ. Amen.
Every now and then as we go through our year, we are going to take maybe a couple of weeks or so and just kind of do a little detour and come back to this topic of prayer. We are going to talk about prayer because it is one of those things that I think is really vital for our lives as we walk with Christ. So we are going to do that, we are going to spend some time; and, hopefully, as a result, we will all grow deeper in our prayer life. That is my prayer for all of us.
So to do that, I want to start and just say that some of the things I am talking about today may sound familiar. They are concepts and ideas that John Ortberg first laid out; but I have taken them and played with them a little bit today. So with that we are going to look at our Scripture. Our Scripture is one that I think is worth memorizing. We talked about memorizing Scripture last summer and so I thought: Let’s bring it back. You know what? I think you can do this one. I think you can do this one. I have full confidence that we can memorize this verse of Scripture. Are you guys ready? O.K. Here it is:
1 Thessalonians 5:17
Pray without ceasing.
Alright, let’s all say it together, O.K. Remember how we say it. We say the reference first, then the verse and then the reference again. O.K., so here we go:
1 Thessalonians 5:17
Pray without ceasing.
1 Thessalonians 5:17
O.K. Now if I were to turn this off…O.K.? Ready, let’s just say the verse. One, two, three:
Pray without ceasing.
Yes! We can do this. Alright. Good.
That is what we are going to look at today, this idea of praying without ceasing, because growing our prayer life is something that God wants for his people. That is part of what he desires. For most followers of Christ, they would also add that we desire a better prayer life, as well. But, the truth be told for most of us, I think, we kind of struggle with prayer at some points in our lives if not all the time. Maybe we feel like we just don’t pray very well. Maybe we don’t pray long enough so we beat ourselves up over that. We don’t pray hard enough—we talked about that a couple weeks ago—so we beat ourselves up over that. Or we feel like, you know what? I am just not good enough to pray. I’m not good enough to pray. But that is not the case. Our Scripture today I think when we read that and we are feeling like we do, how many of you just want to go “Ahhhh, I am just running for the hills. I am exiting right now!” That is how we feel sometimes when we read this kind of verse; but I am confident that we can pray constantly, as our Scripture says, because as we do, God will meet us in our prayers in ways I think will blow us away.
So I have confidence that we can not only memorize this verse, but we can actually live this verse out, because prayer is one of those unique things. It is unique in that it has the ability to draw us close to God like nothing else can. So it is vital for our walk with Christ, our relationship with Christ, to be intimate with him in prayer. For God’s desire for all humanity is for us to live life with God, every area of our life, as you saw in the video. If you think about the story of Scripture and how it unfolds, isn’t that always the case? I mean, if you think about the Garden of Eden, God was with Adam and Eve, wasn’t he? He was with the nation of Israel as they went through all of their ups and downs. He is now with the Church, as well. Words like, “I will be your God and you will be my people” reinforce that. Words like, “I will be with you, have courage.” Or “Remember, I am with you always until the end of the age.” “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” All speak to God’s great desire to be intimate with his people; and, of course, it reaches its climax as God in Jesus Christ becomes human and lives with us. God is with us in the flesh because he wants that, he wants that kind of connection with us. That is God’s side of the equation. What is our side of the equation, more often than not? From our perspective, don’t we typically want to hold God kind of at arms’ length? We don’t really want God to get too close. So as a result I think we hold them out there because truth be told, we are the ones who want to be God. We don’t want to be close to God, we want to be God. So if you think about that, God wants to be with us but we want to hold him at bay, is it any wonder why we have a hard time praying? It kind of makes sense, doesn’t it?
The one thing that will bring us closer to God is the one thing that is the hardest for most of us to do. The one thing that will increase intimacy with God and that is a long circuitous way of saying—as we talk about this notion of prayer and what it means to pray without ceasing—we need to give ourselves a little grace. We need to give ourselves a little grace and understand that God knows how difficult prayer can be for us. But it is something we can do. It is something we can do. It is not hard and just like anything we are learning to do, it may be difficult at first but it becomes easier over time. So I have confidence in all of us that we can do this, to pray without ceasing.
So what I want to do is to have just a few moments to just think about what that means for us practically. What does that look like as we were to walk through our day? And the question for me as I think about that in practical terms is, when we leave home, does God go with us? Does God go with us? Now, the reason I ask that is because a recent study said that eighty percent of people, who do pray, pray at home. That is where most of us pray. We pray at home. So the question then is, does God only hear us when we are at home? Well, we know that Scripture says that God is always with us and he goes with us wherever we go. Scripture reinforces that. Think about when Abraham left his home country, what did God say? God said “I will make you a great nation and I will go with you.” When Jacob left home, he met God along the way and God said, “I will be with you.” So Jacob made some pillars to God and he called that place Beth-el, the house of God. So the question I think for us is, how can we take the house of God, how can we take the Beth-el, with us as we go through our day? What would that look like? So if we were to think about that, I want to issue you a challenge. The challenge is this: To just take one day, just take one ordinary, average, typical day and walk through it with Jesus. Walk through it making your day a Beth-el, the house of God. Take this and live it out for just one day.
If you were to do that, if you take on that challenge, then the question would be: what does that look like? What does that look like as we were to go through our day? So I have put together some pictures that will be reminders for us as we walk through our day. So if we are going to walk through a day with God, we need to start where?…at the beginning of the day, right? So that is why we start here. We start with a pillow. (Picture on screen is a pillow.) We start with a pillow because the biblical perspective of a day starts in the evening. It starts at night. Look at creation. As God was creating, what does the creation account tell us? It says that there was evening and then there was day and it was Day 1. Then there was evening and then there was day and it was Day 2. So we begin our day by laying our heads on the pillow at night. If we are going to begin our day there, then, as we do, we can lay our heads on our pillows to go to sleep knowing that God is running the world. God is comfortably in charge of what is going on. Everything that goes on throughout the evening, doesn’t escape God. God’s got night vision goggles like you wouldn’t believe. He knows. So as we start our day, we can lay our heads on our pillows, thanking God that we are alive. As a result, we can let go of any worries, any concerns, that may be on our lives. Psalm 3:5 says:
I lie down and sleep; I wake again, for the Lord sustains me.
Then Psalm 4:8
I will both lie down and sleep in peace; for you alone, O Lord, make me lie down in safety.
That is how we are to start our day. So when we lie down, we don’t need to be afraid. So our dreams can be sweet because we are releasing everything to the Lord. That is the place to start our day, when we go to bed.
Well, when we get up, I know that is the highlight for some people, for others, not so much; but when we get up, what do we get up to? We get up to an alarm clock, don’t we? (Picture on screen is an alarm clock.) Now, think about that—an alarm clock. O.K. Think about an alarm. When we hear an alarm, what happens to us? …trouble, right? We are in deep weeds that something has gone wrong. So if we are thinking about getting up in the day to the Lord, perhaps an alarm clock is not the best name. So I have been kind of working with it and trying to come up with a name; and if you have some ideas I would love to hear them. But for right now, I am going to call it a “resurrection clock.” Psalm 118 says:
This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.
So the whole day is before us. It is a God ordained day and because it is a God ordained day, it is not an ordinary day; but it is an opportunity for when our alarm clock goes off, our resurrection clock goes off, it is an opportunity for us to invite Jesus into our day, to welcome him. Maybe before even your feet hit the floor and you are out of bed, just say, Lord, thank you. I am glad you are with me. Be with me as I go through this day. Just commit the day to Jesus.
Then, after you get out of bed, what do we typically do after that? Don’t we do a little cleaning, perhaps? (Picture on the screen is a tooth brush.) When we get out of bed we begin to clean up our body a little bit, maybe as well as clean up our soul; because, you know, bad things happen at night, don’t they? Has anyone looked at your hair when you get out of bed in the morning? I know I fall in that category. How about smelled your breath? It is not a pretty sight at times. But this is an opportunity as we begin today and begin to start to clean up our body; it is also a chance to clean ourselves up for the day ahead, for Psalm 139 says, “
Search me, O God, and… See if there is any offensive way in me…
So as we clean our bodies up to get started in the morning, it is an opportunity for us to invite God to clean our spirit as we start the day, as well.
So we begin our day. As we begin our day there are relationships in our lives. That is what the phone represents (picture on the screen of a phone). The phone represents relationships. Think about it, the first greeting of the day, whatever it might be, how do you want that to go? What do you want that to be like? Do you want to greet them in Jesus’ name? Maybe what kind of volume would you want to include in that morning greeting? Because Proverbs 27:14 says,
Whoever blesses a neighbor with a loud voice, rising early in the morning, will be counted as cursing.
So, maybe not the loud voice would be the way to go. But, how you interact with people as you go through your day, how do you want to greet them? I don’t just mean greet them and say I bless you in Jesus’ name. I mean it can be that but that is not what I am talking about. How do you bring Jesus into your relationships in your greetings as you walk through your day?
There is a story of a Benedictine Monk who would open his house to travelers as they were traveling through. It wasn’t uncommon for people to just show up at this door and knock on the door. What would happen was the Monk had a little prayer that, as he was going to answer the door, he would go to the door and as he was reaching for the knob he said, his prayer would be, “It may be the Lord.” It may be the Lord. So perhaps for us, as we pick up our phones, maybe, as we receive text messages, or emails, what can be our prayer? Can our prayer be “It might be the Lord at the other end of the phone”? Because the truth is, Scripture tells us that we have entertained angels without even knowing it. So that is not out of the realm of possibility.
So, how do we live in our relationships as we go through our day? I invite you to think about that. Then the one that maybe is car keys is driving. (Picture on the screen is car keys.) How do you drive in Jesus’ name? What does that look like? If Jesus were a passenger in your car, would he be afraid? And if Jesus is a passenger in your car, how might your driving change? How might your car become Beth-el? Perhaps a way to think about that is simply leave for work early enough so that when you arrive at work you are not stressed out. One way to make your car Beth-el—you heard about the singing of praises; some people pray in the car. How can you make that the house of God?
And then there is this. This represents our work, our work. Our work is where we spend the majority of our time, the things that we do. So then the question becomes what does it mean to walk with Jesus into our workplace? The way to think about that is what would happen if Jesus were your supervisor? If Jesus were your supervisor, because Colossians says that we are to “work as though unto the Lord, not for human masters.” So that should be our perspective, our mindset, as we walk into work each day. So what would it be like to have Jesus as your supervisor? What would that mean? What might that look like? Would you be on time? Would you have a great attitude when you walk into work? And if, let’s say, you are working through the day and you get stuck on a project or something like that; what would you do? Would you walk into Jesus’ office and say, “Jesus, I am kind of stuck on this one. What do you think?” Could you do that? Or maybe you have a difficult co-worker. I know that doesn’t exist anywhere…. Could you ask Jesus to help you out with that? Could that be a possibility? Then when we get our work done, can we let go of it? Can we let go of it and say “it’s done, it’s behind us” and we can move on? Taking Jesus to work, what would that look like in your life, for just one day, just one day?
Then after work, a remote control, a remote control. (Picture on screen is a remote control.) A remote control would represent our leisure time—what do we do in our off hours?—because T.V. is the number one leisure activity that we have in this country. You can make your own judgments about that. But the idea is, O.K., if T.V. is what it is, how do we watch T.V. with Jesus? What would that mean? What would that look like? Maybe you are watching the news and there is a story that tugs at you. Could you talk to him about it? Could you pray about it? Or how about the things you watch on T.V.? Do they build you up? Do they fill your mind and your thoughts with things that you would rather Jesus didn’t watch? An opportunity to think about how we spend our leisure time—we are talking about just doing it one day, just one day.
And then this one (picture on the screen is a bottle of stain remover.) The reality is as we go through our day, this one ordinary day with Jesus, the reality is there are going to be mess ups. There is going to be some stains that happen in our lives. Maybe there are things we forget to do. Anybody here ever forgotten to do something at work…or maybe done something you shouldn’t have done? When that is the case, what happens? “Oh man, I did it again. I forgot to do that.” So it becomes kind of a stain in the day, perhaps, alright? Well Jesus is the one who removes the guilt from our stains. Jesus, if you will, is our stain remover. You knew I was going to get to that. So that we don’t have to feel defeated. We don’t have to feel defeated because Jesus, it says, he gave himself up for the church, that’s you and me—that’s both of us. He said he gave himself up so he could present her without stain or blemish. So Jesus is the one who removes those times when we mess up. We have to acknowledge that we are going to mess up through the course of the day and Jesus is going to be the one who removes them as we ask him to do that, as we ask for forgiveness. So that when we get to the end of the day, we can come full circle and we can lay our head once again back on the pillow to enjoy the day and thank him for being with us through the whole day.
What do you think? Just one day. Just one day. Do you think you could do just one day? Spend just one day with Jesus, one ordinary, average, typical day in your life. I think you can. I do believe that we can do that together, because if we can spend one ordinary day with Jesus, the reality is that we can spend every day with Jesus one day at a time. One day at a time. But it is for you to decide, it is your opportunity.
So I invite you, I invite you to take advantage of it, for in doing that, you will draw close to God. I trust God with that. Amen.