The Necessity of Prayer (Illustrated)

Pastor Mrs Shade Olukoya. The Westminster Larger Catechism. The Path of Prayer. Developing a Healthy Prayer Life. The Necessity of Self-Examination. The Sermon on the Mount. The Discovery of Divine Healing.

The Life of Faith. From the Library of Charles Spurgeon. The Wonderful Name of Jesus. The Secret of Faith. My God, My Friend. Prayers and Promises for Christmas. The Fruit of the Spirit, Revised Edition. Working for God Illustrated Edition. The Christ of the 40 Days. Expository Notes on the Epistle of James.

The School of Christ. New Life Volume 2. Amazing Secrets of King David. Experiencing Prayer with Jesus. War Against Haman Tozer for the Christian Leader. The Spirit of Christ Illustrated Edition. A Month Guide to Better Prayer. Compiled by Barbour Staff. Knowing God Through Prayer. Stand a Little Taller. Grandma, I Need Your Prayers.

Practical Spiritual Warfare Through Prayer. All the 2s of the Bible. Why Prayer Makes Sense. Praying to the God You Can Trust. For Times of Trouble. The Necessity of Prayer: Why Christians Ought to Pray. The Binding Love of God. The Collected Works of E. Bounds - Ten Books in One. His Personality, Power and Overthrow. Moody Classics Complete Set. The Necessity of Prayer. The Essentials of Prayer. What I mean by that is this — when we study the Bible we know the Bible seems to suggest to us that the work of salvation is totally the work of God, but on the other hand, the Bible instructs us in many ways exhorting us to do certain things.

Christians have a great deal of difficulty reconciling the fact that the Bible says the work of salvation is totally the work of God, but at the same time we are exhorted specifically to do certain things which are said to be pleasing to God. Now it is at the point of prayer. It is at this juncture that we have the union of the divine and human agencies, for it is truly God who does it all but he has ordained the things that he does for men should be done often through prayer.

And so it is reasonable then, it is reasonable from the standpoint from our own spiritual instincts and from the standpoint of reason to pray. But once we have argued the reasons why prayer seems to be senseless and why prayer seems to be very sensible, we come again to this fact, which to me is the climax of all of the argument and it is this; that the one great unanswerable argument for prayer is our Lord Jesus Christ. That is, of course, if we recognize the Bible to contain the message of God. Now that — it seems to me — is the unanswerable argument for prayer.

If Jesus Christ who was very god, a very god as well as very man, a very man should pray, then, of course, I should expect to pray also. Jesus Christ who is, I say, the sovereign and divine soul of earth, prayed. It is remarkable the uniqueness of our Lord Jesus Christ. Great music revolves around him. Great architecture is consecrated to him, and anyone who has traveled Europe and who has seen the great cathedrals of Europe, some of the greatest illustrations of architecture in the world know that those cathedrals were dedicated to him.

It is out of him that these things have come. His thirty years of life bring forth harvest of life generation on generation. This aloneness of Jesus Christ, which Carnegie Simpson has spoken about, is an aloneness in two degrees. He is not the same as you and I are. For example, he who soul searchingly told others the evil within our hearts made no confession of evil himself. He who gave the despairing sinner every other token of brotherhood never spoke of himself as if he were born or had been in the same case.

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He was so morally sensitive that he has become the supreme conscious of mankind. And yet he challenges men to convict him of sin. He tells men that they should repent, but he does not repent of sin himself. On the other hand, looking at it from the positive standpoint, he says that others are sick. He not only is not sick but he is in health and is the good or great physician.

His life is not only not forfeited, but it is his own. And it he makes the ransom for the lives of others. All other men are sinners. Jesus Christ does not only not a sinner but he is the Savior.

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And so the fact that Jesus Christ is so totally different underscores his deity, his uniqueness. He is not like you and me. And it seems to me that that really settles the question of prayer. Now if we who live out west — Texas is west, at least to a Southeasterner — we who live out west know something about the mesas. You may know something about the mesas of New Mexico and Colorado. They lived on those mesas apparently because it afforded them protection. There are, after all, there were the Navahos in the south or north and the Apaches about, and so the mesas were ways in which they could escape.

They provided them safety and some of those mesas you could only ascend to a narrow rock staircase so that a few men could defend them. And they lived on them, and there they obtained safety. Not only that, they also obtained sustenance. From time to time, they would take soil to the top and since the rock was cool, the ground was not parched like the ground down in the valley and so it was a means of sustenance for them. And I think also it must have been a means of stability to them because no matter what happened about, the mesa still stayed firm. Now it has been said prayer is our great mesa, for it is the source of stability.

It is the source of sustenance and it is our safety spiritually. You may remember that there is no direct reference to the fact that Jesus prayed when he was born. It certainly would seem an unusual thing that an infant who could not talk yet should pray. Now, there is, however, a very startling passage in the tenth chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, which I confess has always puzzled me. Then I said behold I have come in the role of the book it is written of me to do thy will oh God. And if you remember the description of the baptism of our Lord in the Gospel of Luke, it states that his baptism took place when he was praying.

He knew with this mighty task that he had to undertake, his messianic task, it was necessary that he have divine enablement. And so he was praying, praying no doubt the passages from the Book of Isaiah which spoke of the fact that God would put his Spirit upon the Messiah. And he was praying that that might come to pass. And as he prayed in his baptismal experience, the Holy Spirit came in the form of a dove in abode upon him. And so his baptism, which began his ministry, he prayed.

Now remember he is the eternal God and yet he finds it necessary to pray. It was of the greatest importance that he should select twelve apostles that had been chosen for that task from the beginning. So at the point of the choosing of the Twelve he prayed. Johnson how do you know. And I know what that transfiguration scene means. And that transfiguration was the answer of God to the prayer of the Son. It was, in effect, his saying there is going to come a time of glory beyond the cross but the cross is the next event in ministry.

Nevertheless not my will but Thine be done. Now the death of our Lord did not end his praying. It ended his earthly praying, but it entered — it was the door to the ministry of prayer in his resurrection state. And ever since our Lord has been at the right hand of the Father he has been praying.

There he ever lives to make intercession for us. So I think you can see from this brief review of prayer in the life of our Lord, it is true it is no exaggeration to say that prayer is the breath of our Lord. The highlight of his ministry on the earth was not conference with men but conference with God. I think it should be obvious to us also, that if we are to make any claim to the authority to our Lord Jesus Christ for the various things that we may be doing, we should not forget the fact that he prayed.

It is that which under urged the whole thing. It is no mere addendum to the teaching of our Lord that he prayed. It is part and parcel of everything that he said and did. And so when we refer to the teaching of our Lord, we should be careful to be sure that we are not only claiming that we live by what he says but that we also do what he did, and that is pray. Well let me move on second to the particulars of his prayer method.

There is ample testimony to the fact that Jesus prayed. There is not, however, as much information about the method and the content of his praying as we would like to have. There are a few outstanding exceptions. That is a model prayer and Jesus gave it in order to instruct us in the doctrine of prayer. So far as we know, he never prayed that prayer.

In fact, he could not pray all of that prayer for himself. So far as we know, the apostles never prayed that prayer. But it is a tremendous lesson on prayer and we are to pay attention to it. Now that is a most unique prayer. Capital A in our outline is assumptions. And let me test detail, three assumptions, which I have not put on the outline for the simple reason that was the last sheet that I had and did not have enough to put one, two, three under capital A but here they are. First of all, the assumption of our Lord in prayer is that God exists. The kind of rational proof that we ourselves particularly like.

And so we are living in the days of prove it to me. Someone has said that kind of mind — the prove it to me mind — sits at home to receive all arguments about God. The gravedigger, the mystic, the novelist and the chemist call in turn. The prove it to me mind is scientifically polite to all and serves afternoon tea.

I am an agnostic. Well now the — our Lord proceeded on the basis of the fact that God exists. And the writer of the epistle of the Hebrews states that specifically. He prayed to a personal God. He did not pray as Alfred North Whitehead, the famous philosopher, to quote the principle of concretion. He did not pray as Paul Tillich, one of our outstanding recent contemporary theologians, to the ground of our being.

He did not talk to the life essence as some have suggested that we define God; or the power not ourselves that makes for righteousness, as someone else has defined God. They undoubtedly were unusual men and very gifted men intellectually. But when it comes to the prayer life of our Lord and the prayer life of a simple Christian, it just does not help us to say that we should define God as the ground of our being. Now the third thing that Jesus assumed is that the universe is both faithful and flexible.

He assumed that we could count on things in this universe. Let me read you a paragraph which I found very good. It is a paragraph — I hesitate to say who it is because this man is not a member of what I would call the evangelical wing of the Christian church or at least only broadly so — but he is an outstanding man, a well known man and in this book, at least, has said a number of very good things. Buttrick has said that the universe is faithful both for a man and God, we would quickly agree.

Invariably, the sun rises in the east. Invariably, spring follows winter. This inflexibility is at once the postulate and native air of the scientific quest. The botanist assumes that an oak tree will not overnight change its identity to become a potato. The astronomer assumes that Saturn will not break out with an attack of the zig zags but will keep its orbit.

The chemist assumes that two parts of hydrogen and one part of oxygen will not suddenly become the formula for sulfuric acid but will continue to be the constituent parts of water. Knowledge would be impossible in an eccentric world. Nay, self-consciousness itself requires a certain constancy in nature and in human nature.

If John Smith were one moment Jim Jones and the next moment Bob Clark, life would be much more fantastic than a hall of mirrors. We have sometime failed to see that our freedom and our very prayers can only breath in a faithful scheme. Now I think in the prayer life of our Lord there is an assumption that the universe is both favorable and flexible. That is, it is possible for a God who controls the affairs of this earth to intervene in ways that we do not completely understand.

This is one of the assumptions of our Lord. That may be true but I discovered this that the coincidences came much more frequently when I prayed [laughter] and so I continued to pray.

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Now these are the assumptions of our Lord in prayer. I just want you to notice that they are assumptions of our Lord. He assumes that God existed. He assumed that God is personal.

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He assumed that the universe is faithful and flexible. Now, his practices, capital B. First of all, his prayers were reverent. Now in the garden of Gethsemane, he not only got down upon his knees but he actually after he had been on his knees for some time, he fell upon his face in the most total, the most abject picture of dependence upon God.

His prayers were reverent so he kneeled. He not only prayed Father. He prayed Holy Father. And then he prayed righteous Father. All of these are expressions designed to stress the fact that God is the supreme and controlling force in his life, God the Father. Now this I think has impressed me a great deal. I am interested in several things.

And July the first is the deadline. And the phrases and clauses of the word of God should be so common to him that he is able to sight them as the Holy Spirit leads, and as his memory holds up. Now he did not read that prayer. There was no one inside the belly of that great fish to stand by his side and hold the lamp while he read the prayer.

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So he did not use the prayer book when he prayed. Those were phrases that were common to him. He had studied the Scriptures that he had. And apparently had studied them fairly widely, for those phrases come from several sections from the word of God. And I do think this — I have noticed from experience in dealing with souls of men in my twenty years of pastoral experience — that when Christians are in trouble, when they are disturbed, when the are in perplexity, when they are in the midst of tragedy, they do not appeal to the songs of our hymnody.

But when they are in difficulty, it is the word of God to which they appeal and which strengthens them and which encourages then. And when a man gets down upon his face before God and he has none of the phrases of the word of God, well then his language is lacking for the life of prayer.

Hallowed be thy name. Now if you will go through that short simple prayer and if you will look at the phrases of that prayer and the clauses of that prayer and compare them in your concordance. In your concordance with other phrases in the Bible, you will discover even that prayer is largely a prayer composed from truths of holy Scripture, phrases of holy Scripture.

And when our Lord prayed, think of his prayers when he died. Almost all of those petitions that he uttered, all those statements that he made are statements from Scripture. He made Holy Scripture the food, the daily food, the daily meditation of his life. His prayers were scriptural.