Intro…
Welcome to the Cornerstone Baptist church podcast. My name is Justin Wheeler, I am the preaching pastor for Cornerstone and today we are in week 45 of our journey through the Heidelberg Catechism. Today, I will be talking to you about question 116-119.
This week’s questions are aimed at the Christian’s prayer life.
Question 116: Why do Christians need to pray?
Answer: Because prayer is the most important part of the thankfulness God requires of us. and also because God gives His grace and Holy Spirit only to those who pray continually and groan inwardly, asking God for the these gifts and thanking Him for them.
We are still in the gratitude section of the Catechism and we need to remind ourselves that we have arrived at this point only because we have travelled through the guilt and grace sections. We started out the year 2019 by opening the first pages of the Heidelberg and learning that the greatest problem facing humanity is not a political one, it is not a financial one, nor a social one; it is a spiritual problem.
We live in a natural state of sin and misery. God has graciously revealed to us that the root of all that has gone wrong in the world is the separation that exists between the Creator and His creatures. We have sinned and our sin sets us at odds with our Holy God. But God’s mercy is greater than our sin.
In Christ, God has poured out grace to cover our sin. On the cross, Jesus paid our debt and has ransomed us from our guilt and into relationship with God. Once we were far off but now by the blood of Christ we have been brought near to God. By faith in Christ we now have a relationship with God and prayer is a key component in that relationship.
Transition…
In prayer we express our gratitude for God’s love and grace. In prayer we ask God for forgiveness, wisdom, strength, and help. In prayer we seek the comfort and guidance of the Holy Spirit. In prayer we talk to our heavenly Father. Most of us know this, but at the same time, most of us still struggle with prayer.
In his book, A Praying Life, Paul Miller asks us to imagine a trip to a prayer therapist who is going to help us with our prayer struggles. The therapist begins the session by asking us to describe what it means to be a child of God.
You reply that it means you have complete access to your heavenly Father through Jesus. You have true intimacy, based not on how good you are but on the goodness of Jesus. Not only that, but Jesus is your brother. You are a fellow heir with him.
The therapist smiles and says, “That is right. You’ve done a wonderful job of describing the doctrine of Sonship. Now tell me what it is like for you to be with your Father? What is it like to talk with him?”
You cautiously tell the therapist how difficult it is to be in your Father’s presence, even for a couple of minutes. Your mind wanders. You aren’t sure what to say. You wonder, does prayer make any difference? Is God even there? Then you feel guilty for your doubts and just give up.
Your therapist tells you what you already suspect. “Your relationship with your heavenly Father is dysfunctional. You talk as if you have an intimate relationship, but you don’t. Theoretically, it is close. Practically, it is distant. You need help.”[1]
I think we all need some help in the area of prayer. So, let’s see what Heidelberg has to say that might help us.
Lord’s Day Focus...
Question 117: How does God want us to pray so that He will listen to us?
Answer: First, we must pray from the heart to no other than the one true God, who has revealed Himself in His Word, asking for everything He has commanded us to ask for. Second, we must acknowledge our need and misery, hiding nothing, and humble ourselves in His majestic presence. Third, we must rest on this unshakable foundation: even though we do not deserve it, God will surely listen to our prayer because of Christ our Lord. This is what He promised us in His Word.
This is a very thorough answer and every line of it has something to teach us. Let me encourage you to take your time and go through this line by line, meditating on the instruction found here. We could spend the rest of our time in this devotion, teasing out all the points mentioned here but for the purpose of this devotion I will offer a summary of this answer.
Our prayers should be directed by Scripture. The first part of this answer assumes that the person praying has a thorough grasp of Biblical truth. God isn’t interested in vain, repetitious or arrogant prayer. He is God and the way we approach Him needs to be informed by what the Bible teaches us about Him.
Our prayers should be from a heart that remembers our guilt and God’s grace. We are the ones facing sin and misery, not God. God is not obligated to do anything for us, not obligated to give anything to us, not even obligated to listen to our plea for help. But He does because He is majestic and gracious.
Our prayers should be motivated by the confidence that we have through Christ. We do not come to God in prayer on our own, we come through the blood and mediation of Jesus. It is because of Him that we have a relationship to God and this knowledge should guide and motivate us to prayer.
So our prayers should take all of this and more into consideration.
Question 118: What did God command us to pray for?
Answer: Everything we need, spiritually and physically, as embraced in the prayer Christ our Lord Himself taught us.
I’ve never really gotten over the fact that Jesus told His disciples that the reason they don’t have certain things is because they have failed to ask for those things. “You have not because you have asked not.” He also said that we don’t have things because we ask with wrong motives, meaning we simply ask for things that satisfy some fleshly appetite not a spiritual one.
All of this, and the catechism is aimed to help us realize that we are helpless children and our God is a wise, loving and generous Father. We come to Him with every need that we can think of and when we run out of things, we look to Him and His Word to help us grasp what our true needs are, and we ask for those as well.
Too many of us take prayer for granted and therefore we don’t pray. Too many of us treat prayer like an unimportant thing and therefore we don’t pray the way God tells us to. Too many of us pray selfishly and get frustrated when we don’t get what we want.
But now that we have a relationship with God through Jesus, our prayers should be shaped by the Father-child relationship. We should pray with a sense of our Father’s gracious presence. We should pray with the knowledge of His Fatherly generosity. We should pray with our mind on His Kingdom and how He wants us to live while still in this world.
That is how I would summarize the way Jesus teaches us to pray.
Question 119: What is the Prayer?
Answer: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgives us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
In this model prayer, Jesus wants us to pray sincerely, humbly and confidently. He wants us to pray with His saving grace as fuel, in fact we can’t come to God unless we come through Jesus, through the fountain of flowing grace. But by faith in Christ we come and pray.
He wants us to pray from the heart and from our head. He doesn’t want vain repetitive babbling. He doesn’t want pseudo-spiritual and hypocritical speeches. He wants honest prayer to flow from the hearts of His children to their One True Father in Heaven.
The essence of Christian prayer is relational communion with our heavenly Father. When Jesus teaches us to pray, He tells us to approach God with love, as a son or daughter would approach their father. He teaches us to begin our prayer with, “Our Father…” How does a child talk with their father? Loudly, boldly, unashamedly, desperately, with no regard for decorum. They will interrupt you in a second if they have a need, or a want, or even an idea. Big words never enter that conversation, but feeling, and emotion almost always do.
Paul Miller,
Being a child in prayer means to just come. Children are not tied up in all the details when they come to their parents. They just come.
Jesus invites those who are weary and heavy laden to come to him. He doesn’t call the organized and fixed up but the broken. Why do we forget that when it comes to prayer? The dirty, imperfect and broken you is the real you. Don’t try to put on the spiritual façade in prayer. You can talk to God about whatever is on your heart, so just come as you are. Be weak and open in prayer before God. In this way you are remembering and applying the gospel to your prayer life. We need to learn helplessness. That is what a child reflects.[2]
Don’t come to your God pretending to be something or someone you are not, He can see straight through that. But come as you are, open your heart to His saving grace in Christ. Repent and receive Jesus as savior and Lord, and when you bow before Him in prayer you will find all the love you will ever need. Come broken and find His compassion. Come needy and find His supply. Come confused and find His Wisdom.
Thank you for joining me today to discuss Christian prayer. Next week, we will dig a little deeper into the Lord’s prayer and I hope you will join me for that discussion as we look at Lord’s Day 46 and questions 120-121.
Conclusion…
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Thanks for listening.
[1] Miller, Paul E.. A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World (p. 5). NavPress. Kindle Edition.
[2] https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/helping-your-people-discover-the-praying-life