series: the prayer of the upright is his delight: stu

Today we are finishing our sermon series on prayer where we started it some two months ago. We started this time of looking at prayer with Jesus’ words of wisdom for us from the Sermon on the Mount. There, we found the reason for our prayers; today, we find the model of our prayers – what our prayers, in their various forms and foci, should look like. The model prayer provides a simple basis for our prayers, yet allows us to build on that basis prayers that fit our various trials and tribulations, times and circumstances.

If we are honest, the majority of our prayers consist in attaining good in the here and now. We pray for jobs and relationships, health and contentment. We are told, in many quarters, that God is always desiring to give these things to us, if we just ask. Indeed, Jesus says as much! If we have faith, we are told, all these things are ours. But what if our greatest blessing comes not in health, comfort, contentment, but in strife, difficulty, pain and suffering? Would this change how you pray? Today we look at Paul's prayer for provision from suffering, and God's strange comfort.

Our culture, largely spurred on, even without notice, by Christian ethics, largely supports the idea of love conquering all. We are all sure, no matter what else separates us, including what “love” is supposed to be, that it is the thing that should define us. After all, as we have recently heard, it is the fruit of the Spirit in the lives of Christians. Yet, today, we read of a passage that appears to drip with violence, vengeance, and vitriol. Should we pray like this? Why are such passages even in the Bible, if God is a God of love?

We are a happy people, or we think that we should be. The nature of our worship songs set the tone for our attitudes of what God should want from Christians: upbeat, thankful, rejoicing. Yet, at many times, and for many people, the sinfulness of the world sets the tone of their song. Their lives ring out with a pitiful dirge, not a playful ditty. Today, we turn to the nature of lament, a prayer of grief and frustration to the Lord. And, in doing so, there is no better place to turn than to the book that carries the name “Lamentations.”

Last week we looked at the thankfulness of David, even in the midst of unmitigated evil. Today, we will try to address how we can be thankful even amidst prosperity. While this is a slight departure from looking simply at prayers through the Scripture, the purpose of the text is to ground the greatness of God over all things. If our prosperity blinds us to the reality of God’s goodness, the remedy is to have placed before us always the greatness and centrality of who God is, and what God has done.

We are continually told in Scripture to give thanks to God for the good things that he gives us. Simply being created beings makes us accountable to be thankful to the one who has created us (Rom 1:18-21). But often, the nature of our sin, and the world around us, makes being thankful hard. Sometimes, we find it difficult because of prosperity, but more often because of difficulty. Today, we have the chance to look at a difficult time in David’s life, and see how he was thankful to God regardless.

While we should pray for others, and especially for their great need of salvation, we cannot think that we are outside of such needs. We, too, are miserable sinners in need of saving grace! How ought we to go about asking for God’s help, when he is the one against whom we have sinned, and the judge who stands to condemn us? In Psalm 51, David writes of his experience praying for this very thing – and he provides for us a helpful model of what it means to be truly repentant for our sins.

When we pray, we often do not just pray for ourselves. Part of being a Christian is recognizing the great needs of those around you. When we pray for others, our prayers are called intercessory prayers. While there are many ways to pray for others, today we look closely at how Moses interceded for the Israelites before God and attempt to think through how his prayer ought to be imitated by us.

Today we are starting a new sermon series pointed at deepening our knowledge of prayer, that we might be more faithful in prayer, and better understand the immense importance of our prayers. This series will look at several diverse types of prayer made by God's people both in the New and the Old Testaments; but before we look at those prayers, it is important that we understand correctly why we pray. We pray because God rewards the prayers of the humble in faith. Here we will look at five major words in that reason in some detail: God, rewards, the prayers, humble, faith.