Intro
We’re beginning our new sermon series on prayer this morning. And it needs to be said that for many of us, prayer does not come naturally. It is not something we feel we are good at, it is not something that we feel particularly passionate about, it is not something we enjoy doing. It might feel forced or awkward or straight up boring. A couple of years ago, I was having a conversation with a guy I was playing basketball with, and I asked if I could pray for him at the end. A week later, he told me he had tried praying for the first time, something I had encouraged him to do, and that he had found it a bit of an awkward experience. Someone on our post-service connection time said something similar recently. They had prayed for the first time the previous week and found it to be strange. It feels like you’re talking to yourself, you’re not sure God can hear you, you don’t know what to say, you don’t know if you’re doing it right.
In Luke 11, we read this:
“One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray”.
Luke 11:1
Think about that. The disciples heard Jesus praying. What would that have been like? I know that people often feel intimidated about prayer, because they hear other people who seem to know what they’re doing. And they go, “I could never do it like that. I’m not even going to bother trying.” Can you imagine hearing Jesus pray? The Bible views Jesus as God’s Son from eternity past. Think about the intimacy of relationship and communion between God the Father and God the Son. The disciples heard that kind of prayer. But rather than being intimidated and being scared of the whole thing, they made a request. Teach us to pray.
See what that implies? It implies that prayer can be learned. Jesus didn’t respond by saying, “no! Either you’ve got it or you don’t, you hosers!” He responded by teaching them in a passage we’ll look at later in this series. The point is, prayer is a practice that is developed, refined, cultivated. It’s something you grow in. The question is, do you want to? Do you want to learn how to pray? Is this something you care about enough to invest in? Let’s pray and then we’ll dig into that a bit more.
1. What is prayer?
Here’s the question that underlies all of that: what is the point of prayer? If you’re going to be motivated to learn how to pray, you need to see what the point is. For a lot of people, it just doesn’t seem worth it. So one of my jobs this morning is simply to convince you that it is worth it. In fact, it’s not just worth it, it is crucial, essential, non-negotiable, it is 100% necessary that you pray and that you grow in it. And if I don’t convince you of that, that’s my fault and you’ll just need to find a perspective that does convince you, because I know it’s true.
What’s the point of prayer? We need to go to the Bible for that, and one of the best places to go is the book of Luke and Acts. Those two New Testament books are written by the same author, Luke. The book of Luke is his report about Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, and the book of Acts is his sequel. It’s the account of the early church in the years after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension. And it’s widely acknowledged in the biblical world that one of Luke’s primary focuses is prayer. It’s a good place to go.
This past week, I was reading through all the references to Jesus praying, as well as the disciples, and something struck me. There was this common thread, this common situation, that popped up again and again. I want to go through a bunch of these references with you and see if you spot it as well. You know the kids’ activity where you have a couple of pictures and spot all the differences? I want you to spot the commonality. Here we go.
In Luke 3, we read that Jesus was praying at his baptism when the Holy Spirit came upon him and sent him into the wilderness to be tested. This was essentially the launch into his public ministry. In Luke 5, his ministry has begun. There are healings, Jesus’ popularity is increasing, crowds are coming to be healed, and we read that “Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.” Right after that, we get more accounts of him healing and teaching. In Luke 6, we read about Jesus praying all night- all night! The next morning chooses his 12 apostles. In Luke 9, we get two mentions of prayer, and they provide a bracket for Jesus’ first prediction of his coming death and resurrection. In Luke 21, Jesus tells Peter that he is praying for him because in this coming trial, Peter is going to tested by the devil and he will need to be strong to overcome. In Luke 22, Jesus is in the Garden of Gethsemane, knowing that he will soon be crucified, and he prays with such anguish that tears fall like drops of blood to the ground.
In the book of Acts, we read about the disciples praying often. In Acts 1, they pray together continually in the days between Jesus’ ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. In chapter 4, after the disciples begin to experience opposition and persecution in Jerusalem, they pray and afterwards, “they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly”. In Acts 6, there is a crisis within the church as the apostles are being consumed with administrative issues. Leaders are chosen who can deal with these and there is prayer for them. Afterwards, the apostles can devote themselves to prayer and teaching. In Acts 9, after Jesus appears to Paul, Paul is blinded and stuck in Damascus. He prays until a man named Ananias shows up and God pours out His Spirit on Paul through Ananias. In Acts 10, Peter is on a rooftop praying when he receives a vision that indicates that Gentiles are to be welcomed into God’s people. He then receives an invitation to share about Jesus with a Gentile centurion, which leads to a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit. I could keep going, but let’s stop there. Do you notice a common thread running throughout all of those references? What is prayer about here?
Here’s what I noticed: in Luke and Acts, prayer is often depicted as a retreat from the world, both personal and communal, that enables further mission in the world.
“Prayer is a retreat from the world, both personal and communal, that enables further mission in the world.”
Think about it. Times when Jesus prays often precede some trial, some test, some ministry- the start of his ministry, choosing the disciples, anticipating his death. Times when the disciples pray likewise prepare for ministry. For example, it results in the removal of some obstacle, or strengthens believers in times of persecution to keep speaking boldly. Now, there are other aspects to prayer besides this. I often talk about prayer as relationship with God, as communication with Him. It’s us speaking to Him and Him speaking to us. But I don’t know how much attention we give to this missional aspect of prayer, despite how significant it is. Especially in the early church. So that’s where I want to hang out this morning as we talk about the point of prayer. Prayer is a temporary retreat that enables God’s mission to go forward. Let’s break that down.
2. Prayer as retreat
Prayer is retreat. Let’s go back to that passage in Luke 5 again in a bit more detail. Jesus has begun his public ministry. He’s healing people, he’s teaching, people are starting to take notice. Right before the verses we looked at, Jesus heals a man with leprosy and asks him not to tell anyone. The reason is because of what happens right afterward. The man does the opposite of what Jesus asks, he goes and tells everyone what’s happened to him, and now the crowds multiply and press in on Jesus. The word is spreading, everyone’s coming, everyone wants a piece of him, everyone is demanding his attention and time.
Have you ever felt like that? I mean, not exactly like that, but something like it? Have you ever felt that the demands on you were overwhelming? If you’re a parent of young kids, you’ve probably felt this. We’re just now getting to a point where the kids are playing by themselves more and we can actually do things like read or have adult conversations, but for years it felt like every second you were needed to do something. Some of you have jobs like that, where your attention is constantly required, jobs where you are always on call. Maybe some of you have enjoyed a measure of success that caused the crowds to want a piece of you and while it was initially exciting, you soon began to feel drained by it all. And it’s bigger than that, it’s life in the world as a whole.
We live in a world where all the information, all the events, all the perspectives in the world seem to be at our fingertips in the forms of our phones and computers. This creates this expectation that we will be in the know, that we will be on top of news stories, social issues, and the best Netflix shows to watch. It creates an expectation that we will be accessible to people at all times through our email or texting. It creates a tidal wave of noise and distraction. John Mark Comer, a pastor in Portland, has written about this, and quotes an author named Andrew Sullivan: “this new epidemic of distraction is our civilization’s specific weakness. And its threat…is to our souls. At this rate, if the noise does not relent, we might even forget we have any” (quoted in The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, 122). Our world, when we are immersed in it, tends to deaden our souls. It overwhelms us, drains us, burns us out. So yes, we can get a little bit of what Jesus faced in Luke 5.
Here’s Jesus’ response according to Luke: “but Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.” He withdrew. As in, he retreated from the noise, the distraction, the demands, the accessibility. Where? To lonely places. The word here is also translated as wilderness, but the idea isn’t that you’ve got to find a patch of sand or some windblown desolate place. The idea is, again, away from the noise. A room without any of your technology will do. A walk in the park will do. You don’t need to go on a 12 hour hike in the backcountry behind Grouse Mountain. He withdrew to places away from the noise. When did he do this? Often. And by the way, there’s nothing magical about waking up at 5am to pray vs. staying up late at night. The time of day isn’t important. The point is often. We see that in Luke, but this statement says it happened far, far more frequently than the instances Luke notes. He did it habitually. He did it regularly. He did it for long periods of time. Luke 6 talks about an all-night retreat. And what did he do in those times? He prayed. He spent time in God’s presence. Judging by what he says and prays elsewhere, he likely spent that time praising his Father and recalling His identity in light of the identity of the Father. He likely spent that time bringing the issues and challenges of the day before God. He withdrew to lonely places often and prayed.
See, some of you will say, “that’s fine, but I don’t have time for that. My life is too busy. My work is too demanding.” Maybe you even think that your tasks in life are too important to regularly take substantial time to retreat and pray. Wait, sorry, can you say that again? Too important? Too demanding? Are you saying your work is more demanding than Jesus’ work? If you’ll believe it, He is the Son of God come to save humanity. He came raising the dead, healing the sick, teaching about the Kingdom of God, leading up to a death that stands at the centre of history as God’s singular salvation from sin. If anyone had too much work that he couldn’t retreat, it was Jesus. I mean, how many more dead could he have raised, how many more people could he have reached? Part of the answer to that we’ll address in a few minutes, but listen. Jesus needed to do this. You do too. If you’re too busy to pray, you’re too busy. Whoever you are, whatever your situation is, you need to change priorities. You need to remove things. I promise there is a way, somehow, that you can work regular prayer retreat into your life. In a world of noise and chaos, you need it simply for soul survival.
3. Individual and corporate
Prayer is retreat, and it’s to be done both personally and corporately. Maybe you buy into the prayer as a necessary retreat from the distractions of the world. After all, that’s not a uniquely Christian insight. There’s lots of talk today in our culture about the importance of meditation and mindfulness. But you might be thinking, why do I need to pray with other people? Why can’t I just do that alone? If anything, praying with people is more distracting. Some people pray weird, they say strange things, and I’m worried about how people will perceive what I say. What if I say something heretical? You might think, I hate public speaking in the first place, now I have to do public speaking but as a spiritual performance. You might think, I don’t get anything out of praying with others, what’s the point? Look, I get all that. I understand where you’re coming from. Every practice can be corrupted and twisted. But you’re not going to succeed in convincing me from the Bible that praying together with people is optional.
In the Gospel of Luke, it’s true, we mostly only see Jesus praying, on his own. Although, you could argue that whenever the disciples talk to Jesus, they’re actually praying. Even if they don’t realize it. But in Acts, the corporate dimension of prayer shines through. It shines most clearly in chapter 1. Jesus tells the disciples to go to Jerusalem and wait for the gift of the Holy Spirit. So what do they do? They go to Jerusalem and “they all joined together constantly in prayer” (Acts 1:14). They “joined together” means with the same mind, in united purpose and intent. It’s not just that they were physically together, they were together in what they wanted to see happen. And they joined together in prayer constantly. In fact, Acts 2:47 lists the things the early church was devoted to: the apostle’s teaching, fellowship and the breaking of bread, and prayer. 3 or 4 things, depending on how you count them, all done in community. Prayer is one of them. You see it again and again in Acts.
And this isn’t just an observation about a practice. It’s consistent with Jesus’ own teaching. In Matthew 18, for example, Jesus says: “I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them” (18:19-20). Corporate prayer is powerful. Some argue it’s even more effective than personal prayer because of this unity. Jesus says it. There is something special about his followers coming together and praying with the same heart for something. Praying together in community, as a church- you can’t do without it.
See, we get this in other realms of life. Let’s talk about exercise. For years, I have tried to institute an exercise routine into my life, working out on my own in the home. I do it for a while, I don’t really like it, nobody’s keeping me accountable or motivating me, and eventually I just give up. But recently some guys from our church started up a high intensity workout thing in the park. Numerous studies show that working out together, in partners or in teams, produces better results than working out alone. Better results both in terms of workout duration and side benefits like stress release and general mental health. And here’s something else: studies have also shown that working out with people who are more fit than you is even better. You end up pushing yourself, working out longer and doing more reps and doing them better.
One of the things I hear is that people are intimidated to pray with others who seem more skilled in prayer. They don’t want to pray with them because they don’t feel they match up. We’ll talk more about this next week. But if it’s true that prayer is something that can be learned, and that there are some people who are more comfortable and have learned it, then it makes sense to pray with those people! If you’re a basketball player, will you become a better basketball player by playing on an awful team with awful players, or with people who know the game well and have skills you can pick up on? I don’t see the early church breaking the church into prayer meetings depending on spiritual level. Like, the super spiritual ones get together on Tuesday night and then the 2 minute Lord’s prayer people do Friday morning. They’re all together, apostles and new Christians alike, praying together!
I know I’m harping on this a bit. But it’s a genuine concern for me. I know that some of you pray personally, I know a few who pray together. But I know that in every churches I’ve served, any call to pray together as a church receives a pitiful response. We can get hundreds to listen to a sermon, but get people together to pray? Maybe ten. Does that sound like New Testament Christianity? Here’s Jim Cymbala, whose church experienced a dramatic transformation when it made corporate prayer central to the life of its church:
”What does it say about our churches today that God birthed the church in a prayer meeting, and prayer meetings today are almost extinct?”
Jim Cymbala, Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire, 72
4. For mission
That last phrase, about God birthing the church in a prayer meeting and initiating this world-altering movement through prayer, brings us to the last part of our definition. Prayer is a temporary retreat, both individually and corporately, that empowers further mission. What is the mission we’re talking about here that prayer empowers? One common description of that is found in Jesus’ words to his disciples in Matthew 28:19- go and make disciples. Teach people about Jesus, show them what Jesus is like, help them become disciples of Jesus too. And for this mission to happen, we need prayer, because there’s no way we can do this on our own. I mean, I am convinced that the hope of the world is to be found in this crucified and resurrected man 2000 years ago. I want to give him my life because I believe he’s worthy of it. But on my own, what chance do I have of persuading people in 21st century Canada of that? The mission is incredible, the success of it is beyond us.
So prayer empowers us for this. Remember, prayer is a temporary retreat. It’s not permanent. It’s not that we as Christians stay huddled up while the world burns, just praying that God would protect us from the world. It’s temporary. It’s meant to equip us to go back out to battle. To use the sports imagery, it’s the team meeting, it’s the practice, it’s the workout that prepares us for the game. But see, I don’t think that the temptation for most Western Christians is to stay in the retreat mode. I think for most, the temptation is to skip that altogether. A decade or two ago, one of the big conversations in the church world was this thing called the missional church movement. This movement, in its more extreme form, encouraged Christians to stop meeting together so much and get involved in their communities. Get involved in neighbourhood associations, sports teams, and so on. And there’s much about that, of course, that’s really good! But what some of those leaders have now realized is that they were sending people out who weren’t actually themselves disciples. They were asking people who hadn’t been formed by Christ, who were still very much of the world, to go out and make disciples…and it wasn’t happening. There was no space for them to retreat, to be equipped.
One of the misconceptions about prayer that might have provoked that thought is that prayer is passive or defensive. And I’ve been in prayer meetings like that. It’s boring. When you’re just praying for people to get over colds or pass tests, it’s like, why bother? Not that we don’t pray about the day to day stuff and that we don’t pray for healing. Of course we do. But even then, the point is God’s glory. The point is the mission to make Jesus known. Prayer is offensive- not in the sense of being politically incorrect, though it can be that, but in the sense that is one of the primary ways God’s Kingdom breaks into the world. In Ephesians 6, Paul talks about the armour of God. Most of what he talks about is defensive. It’s shields of faith and helmets of salvation and so on. But at the end, he talks about the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, and prayer, which is to enable him to speak the word of God boldly (Ephesians 6:17-20). Prayer is linked with the word of God and with the Spirit as our offensive weapons, as the things that bring others into the kingdom.
And it does this in a couple of ways. In prayer, we affect God. God responds to our missional prayers and does what only He can do. In the book of Acts, there is a Jesus movement among the Samaritans, a group of people with some mixed Israelite heritage. The disciples Peter and John visit them, pray for them, and the Holy Spirit comes on the Samaritans. In another story, in Acts 4, the disciples have experienced some persecution. The church gathers together to pray, and it’s one of my favorite prayers in the Bible. In our day, a lot of churches would pray for protection from the persecution, they’d pray for it to stop. But instead, this early church retreats in prayer and asks that God would do more signs and wonders (which was the thing that got them in trouble in the first place) and enable them to speak boldly. That’s an offensive prayer. And God responds by filling them with the Holy Spirit so that they could continue to speak boldly. One commentator on Acts looks at stories like this and says it seems there are things God wants to do in the world, but chooses not to until His people ask for it in prayer. Prayer is missional because it affects God’s powerful work.
Prayer is also missional because it affects us. In prayer, we receive our marching orders, to continue the battle image. In Acts 10, there’s the story about the disciple Peter, who was praying one day. And in prayer, he sees a vision through which God shows him that Gentiles (non-Jews) are to be accepted in God’s people just as the Jews are. God also tells him that he will have an opportunity to share the good news of Jesus with a Gentile, which then happens right after the prayer. This eventually leads to a new outpouring of the Spirit on Gentiles, and it starts because God speaks to Peter in prayer about what his next moves are to be. This has happened to me many times. As I’m in prayer, I’m prompted to reach out to someone, or I suddenly have an idea about something we can do to be more effective in mission. Just about everything good that I’ve done, any good idea I’ve had as a pastor, was something that came in a time of prayer. Prayer is missional because it affects us.
I need to hammer this home, because in my experience, it is a crucial ingredient that is missing from our understanding of prayer. It’s the reason so many of us question its usefulness. We can only be useful for the Kingdom if we are committed to prayer. Leonard Ravenhill, whose writings about prayer have greatly impacted me, says that the law of prayer is the same as the law of the harvest: sow sparingly in prayer, reap sparingly, sow bountifully in prayer, reap bountifully. In another place, Ravenhill talks about how people chafe against the idea of long times of intercession. However, he makes the point that historically, the people who did the most for God were the ones who accomplished most for God. To sum it up, he says
“To be much for God, we must be much with God.”
Leonard Ravenhill, Revival Praying, 60
And this, by the way, is yet one more explanation of why prayer must be corporate in addition to individual. The mission God has given us is not a mission for me and a mission for you. It is a mission for us. It is something we do together, so it only makes sense that if prayer is missional, we pray together. It’s just logic guys!
And one more word, particularly to those who aren’t followers of Jesus. You might be thinking that this last part is especially irrelevant. You might think, I can be a good and moral person without prayer. And maybe that’s true. But the question is not, can you be a relatively good person? The question is, do you have an understanding of what God wants from you? Do you understand why He made you, the purpose He’s given you, the calling on your life? On the one hand, you won’t be able to live out that purpose until you’ve given your life to Jesus- He’s the one who forgives you, washes you clean, restores you to relationship with God. Pray that He would make that known to you. Invite Him to reveal Jesus to you. And when that relationship has been restored, when you’ve put your trust in Jesus, then in prayer He will make clear to you what He asks of you.
Conclusion
What’s the point of prayer? It’s mission. It is a temporary retreat, time set apart consciously with God. It is something we do both personally and communally that God uses to empower us to keep serving Him. If you want to see God’s glory, if you want to see His Kingdom, if you want to see brokenness in the world healed, if you want to be His servant, you cannot live without it. Now, are you willing to learn how?
“To make my weak heart strong and brave, send the fire. To live a dying world to save, send the fire. Oh, see me on Thy altar lay my life, my all, this very day; to crown the offering now, I pray: send the fire!”
Frederick Booth-Tucker
