What's Wrong?

Excuses shouldn’t be in the believer’s vocabulary because God’s own children have been given everything they need pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence according to 2 Peter 1:3. It is the power of Christ that is the source of our sufficiency. A true believer will grow because of the life of Christ in him. John MacArthur says that to live godly is to live reverently , loyally, and obediently toward God. As sons and daughters of God the Father, we have privileges and riches in Christ that the world knows nothing about.

So, does it make sense for us to focus on the condemnation of those who do not have all that we have been blessed with? Apart from the ministry of evangelization, there should be nothing that concerns us regarding the lost. What should concern us is the glory of God. We need to be concentrating on the areas in our lives where we fall short of the glory of God as His dear children. One such area where we all fall short is in our prayer lives.

We know from Jeremiah 17:9 that our hearts are desperately wicked above ALL ELSE. “The heart is more deceitful than all else and desperately sick, who can understand it?” Our hearts are deceitful. Our hearts try to rationalize away our sin enabling us to convince ourselves that we are all right. But we’re not. Unless we bring our lives up against the Word of God, our only source of truth, we will continued to be deceived believing we are basically good people apart from the righteousness of God.

But God knows our hearts; nothing can be hidden from His view. We can make all the excuses in the world and He knows the truth. Part of being a Christian is recognizing our sin for what it is and confessing it to the God who knows it already. We must be humble and vulnerable before Him if we are to give Him glory in any way.

One thing I want to stress in the next few blog posts is the vital understanding that
prayerlessness is a great sin. And we must confess it as such to our great God. To recognize our sin for what it is and to say the same thing about it that God says. Only then, can we repent of it and deal with it in God’s way. Prayerlessness is a great sin. But also know this: Nothing better defines the spiritual conditions of a person than that person’s prayer life.

While it is the duty of every Christian, it is also a compulsion of the true believer to pray. Prayer is a duty in that God impresses on us continually in His Word that we are to be a praying people. They are subtle commands throughout Scripture, but commands, nonetheless.

Growing up our earthly fathers gave us commands. Even when given in a loving manner, we knew they weren’t suggestions but commands. They were commands, but it was not just 'law' to us. We also knew that they came from a father who loved us and wanted only the best for us and whose job it was to protect us from harm. If we were obedient children, we gladly did what our fathers told us to do and we honored him by such obedience.

Something we must understand is this: When God redeems a person, He changes a person's desires. We still live in a body of unredeemed flesh with its own desires (hopefully being overcome daily as we battle the flesh), but we also have these new desires that God has given us to do what we could not do in our own flesh. For the Christian, prayer is one of those new desires after God's own heart. Every believer should have the desire to pray.

Philippians 4:6 -- In everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.

Romans 12:12 -- Christians are to be “devoted to prayer.”

Luke 18:1 -- Jesus taught His disciples that “at all times they ought to pray and not to lose heart.”

1 Peter 4:7 -- Believers are to be of sound judgment and sober spirit for the purpose of prayer.

Many passages tell us HOW to pray, based on the assumption that prayer would necessarily and naturally occur.

Matthew 6:9 -- Pray, then, in this way.

Jesus knew that His hearers understood they were to pray and would want to know how.

Colossians 4:2 -- Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving.

1 Thessalonians 5:17 -- Pray without ceasing.

Prayer is the outworking not only of an external requirement but also of an internal passion. The deepest longings of a Spirit-filled heart flow out in prayer.

Psalm 55:1 -- Give ear to my prayer, O God; and do not hide Thyself from my supplication. Give heed to me, and answer me.”

No one commanded the psalmist to pray. He was compelled to pray from the condition of his heart.

Psalm 61:1 -- Hear my cry, O God; give heed to my prayer. From the end of the earth I call to Thee, when my heart is faint.

Psalm 119:58 -- I entreated Thy favor with all my heart.

Psalm 119:145 -- I cried with all my heart; answer me, O Lord!

Prayer is like breathing – you don’t have to be commanded to breathe. Air pressure exerted on your lungs forces you to breathe. Believers exist in sort of a prayer pressure in which praying is a natural response to their environment.

Acts 9:11 -- The Lord spoke to Ananias and said, “Arise and go to the street called Straight, and inquire at the house of Judas for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for behold, he is praying.”

There is no record that Paul was commanded to pray immediately following his conversion. He prayed because his heart was compelled to do so.

Romans 8:15 -- As believers we “have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, ‘Abba! Father!”

1 Thessalonians 3:10 -- Night and day we keep praying most earnestly that we may see your face.

A person can pray earnestly night and day only when it is an internal compulsion. These are things you are not going to have to be reminded to pray about.

1 Timothy 5:5 -- She who is a widow indeed…continues in entreaties and prayers night and day.

WHY WOULD A WIDOW PRAY NIGHT AND DAY? When I first asked this question in our ladies’ Bible study one woman blurted out, “Because she can!” To busy women focused on meeting the needs of our husbands and children, that was funny, perhaps, but in all seriousness, this widow prayed day and night because she had a great need of God. Those who need God most will be found praying most.

WHERE DOES THIS COMPULSION COME FROM? It is generated by the Spirit of God within us.

The measure of a person’s spirituality is not determined by how well he conforms to the demand to pray but by the extent he is compelled to pray because of an internal passion for others in God’s kingdom.

Our first response to hearing the news of someone falling into sin should be to pray for that person whether it is a beliver or an unbeliever. Because God is sovereign he has allowed that person to fall into sin for whatever reasons He may have. But be sure of this: He has His reasons and His purposes will not be thwarted. Because we are fallen, we will fall more often that we would like. Hopefully, when we do, there will be many, many Christians surrounding us in prayer. Even though it does not appear to me to be so, I pray that I am wrong. I also pray that God would awaken in His children the awareness of their own sinfulness in not praying as they should.

We know that our hearts are desperately wicked. We also know that God is at work in the true believer sanctifying him daily as he yields to the Holy Spirit as He cuts, shapes and molds him into the image of Christ. For some of us, that cutting and shaping is more painful than for others. We also know that the unbeliever’s heart is desperately wicked, and nobody is working to make him more holy as he goes about his life in this world. Yet we tend to look at him and judge him or in some ways compare our lives to his in order that we may feel better about ourselves because WE NOW KNOW WE FALL SHORT OF THE GLORY OF GOD. Where are YOU spiritually? Be honest with your Lord and let Him show you how He sees your heart right now.

WHAT IS A GOOD INDICATOR THAT YOUR HEART IS RIGHT? The passions of a person’s heart will come out in his prayers. If you examine what you pray for and find you are praying only for your needs, problems, questions and struggles, that is an indication of where your heart is.

If you pray infrequently, briefly, and in a shallow manner, you have a cold heart because prayer is not an inner desire. Don’t let your heart deceive you into thinking things are okay between you and God! The call to the duty of prayer will not overcome a cold heart because prayer is an internal compulsion not fulfilled by conformity to an external standard. Lack of prayer doesn’t mean that a person is MERELY DISOBEDIENT; it indicates selfishness because of a cold heart.

Something is wrong!

More to come.