In this introductory episode of our prayer series, we tackle the common struggles many Christians face in their prayer life. Through honest discussion, we examine the reasons behind these challenges and shift our focus from merely seeking outcomes to nurturing a meaningful relationship with God. Tune in for insights that can enrich your prayer life and spiritual walk.
Greetings to the brightest audience in the country and welcome to Bob and Yart Live. Today we are getting into part one of Bob and Yart’s series, Having a Great Prayer Life. And that’s one of those things that as Christians, intellectually, we realize and we understand and even verbally we’ll say, hey, yeah, prayer is important, prayer works, prayer changes things. But then… After that, we don’t really put it into action. We don’t put it into practice. And so this is Bob’s first part of his series, Having a Great Prayer Life. You can get the entire thing online if you go to kgov.com slash store, and it’s there for $24.99. Or even a better deal, go to nyart.shop. and sign up at nyart.shop. And for just 10 bucks, you can get this series plus all of Bob and Yart’s Bible studies, all of them for just $10 at nyart.shop. That’s way better than the kgov.com slash store deal to get it for $24.99. With that said, let’s jump right into the broadcast.
SPEAKER 02 :
During three weeks of this month, Lord willing, we will be looking at an effective prayer life. what that means to pray what kind of prayers God wants to hear and what kind of prayers God wants to answer prayer of course is communion with God and the purpose of communion is relationship so that an effective prayer life is one that brings us into a deeper walk with the Lord Now, many Christians struggle with prayer. And I’d like to skip the special case of the Calvinist for now. We could look at that, and we will, next week. But for now, let’s think about the Christians who are more or less in our circle, I don’t mean geographically here, but around the country and around the world, who struggle with prayer. And in the interest of time, I’d like to be direct, even blunt, in addressing this difficulty the best that I can. When people struggle with prayer, what they often mean, if you think about what they mean, is that they don’t get the things they’re asking for. That’s mostly what we mean, and that what they want is continually to ask for more things and get results. Now, that’s not the way we would present it. We would present it in a much more spiritual and humble way. And yes, some of those things… might be wanted that are not physical they might be relational or spiritual but I think the bottom line is that what we describe as a struggle with prayer comes only from a disappointment with God’s performance for example just an example we could have many kinds of examples this is one if we prayed for more money Not because we’re selfish, mind you. No Christian would do that. But because we really need it. And then overnight, a lot more money showed up than expected. Well, if that’s how it worked, then of course, no one would struggle with prayer. Would they? Would one person struggle if that’s what happened? Everyone would have a fantastic prayer life. There would be no lack of motivation whatsoever to pray. And everyone would see the results all around them. But faith does not come by sight. For as Paul wrote to the Romans, faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. That’s Romans 10.17. And Paul also told us that without faith, it’s impossible to please God. But if I prayed for more money, and not only for my own needs or my family’s needs, but, and of course, as most of us have prayed, for the needs of God’s kingdom. Because if God gives me enough money, then of course I’ll fund his kingdom efforts. And I would donate untold thousands of dollars to the creation ministries and to the personhood movement and to evangelism. But alas, I pray, and no money comes supernaturally, so I struggle with prayer. And I should be able to admit that this is my struggle, if indeed I do struggle, because who wouldn’t be on his knees praying fervently each and every day if the results poured forth from heaven like the rainy season in a forest? So then my struggle is really not with me. It’s with God. That’s my struggle. Because heaven knows that otherwise I would be praying earnestly if only God held up his part of the bargain. Now at the beginning I said I’d like to answer as directly as I can and as bluntly as I can. And I’d say this is pretty blunt, right? Now, if the answer to this question, why do so many of us struggle with prayer, if the answer to this seems to come from perhaps a frustration, I suggest that it does, that it comes from God’s frustration. Consider his perspective, the reaction to answered prayer where he physically intervenes from both the good people and the bad people. that is, from the believers and the unbelievers, the reaction from the righteous and from the wicked, how they respond to a miracle-working, physically intervening God. For God knows and has demonstrated repeatedly in the Scriptures, which we’ve all seen, that the more that he directly answers people’s prayers by providing for their daily bread, or physical deliverance and victory, or supernatural evidence for faith, that the more he does these things, the more he is looked upon as a butler or a maid or a genie in the bottle. And that’s by his prophets and by his apostles and his followers. That’s from the good people. For with the unbelievers, the more miracles… God performs, the more they harden their hearts against him. And this is all from Christianity 101. This is the basics of learning about God from the story of the Bible. In fact, even those in Scripture who love God and were following him They tend to harden their hearts and get weaker in their faith as they see God physically intervening. How can that be, we wonder? How can it possibly be? It is not a mystery why it is that when God does frequent miracles, people tend to rebel against him even more. We’ve discussed it in many Bible studies here from the pulpit of Denver Bible Church, and it’s even online. One place, I’ll give a web domain, you could probably remember it, kgov.com slash miracles. Real easy. Prayer is communication. In the Bible, God communicates with us, and in prayer, we communicate with God. There’s more to it than that, because we are body, soul, and spirit, and God has made us in such a way that our spirit can relate to his spirit, so prayer is more than just me talking and God hearing. That’s one way. The primary mechanism for two-way is God speaks to us through words. That is his word that he’s filled the scriptures with. There is a two-way communication channel. that enables us to relate to God, our spirit with his spirit, in a deep and profound way, such that we can choose to let the peace of God rule in our hearts. And we could sense the comfort of the Holy Spirit and the power of the Son of God who is in us, who enables us to do all things through Christ who strengthens me. When we communicate, for example, with our husbands or wives, with our parents, is it only to ask for favors? And what if that was the bulk of our communication, just asking for things? Of course, that would get old as it gets old to God. Is that the primary content of someone’s communication? Will you please fix my car, Lord? Or give me money or stop the rain? Or maybe, can you make him be nice to me? I’m so nice, he’s mean. Please make him be nice to me. Or can you make me a success? Or can you get her to love me? Consider the call home from the college student who says, hi, Dad, miss you. Hey, I’m doing great, but I could really use another $300. That’s the call. And then another call. Hi, Mom, can you buy me that jacket that we looked at and ship it to me? I really need that, Mom. And then, hi, Dad, really, Dad, I think I really need a car to get around. The campus is huge, and I think transportation is not a luxury. It’s a necessity. And, Dad, there’s tremendous competition here at school. Everyone is so smart, and a lot of the students, they don’t have to work. All they do is study, and they do so well on the test, and I’m not doing so well because I have to work. What can you do to help me? And, Dad, I’m in trouble. It wasn’t my fault, but I got in trouble last night. I got arrested. I could explain everything. Can you bail me out? And dad, well, that lawyer is expensive, but that’s because he’s so good. He wins all his cases. And you know, dad, if I lose this one, it will ruin my life. What’s even the sense of being in school? Dad, help. Dad, mom, dad, dad, dad. So what people mean, at least people who are not Calvinist, when they say that they struggle with prayer, is that they don’t get the things that they’re asking for. And so, of course, they’re not spending more time in prayer nor getting more results. Now, when Jesus was fasting and praying for 40 days in the wilderness… Do you think that might be a good example for us? And perhaps as Christians who want to follow the Lord and become conformed to the image of Jesus Christ, become more like him, perhaps we could follow his lead. And what do you think he was praying for? Do you think he was praying for things? Any chance he was praying for things, more things? I don’t think so. How about results? Praying for results. How about victory? I don’t think he was praying for victory. I think there’s only one thing the Lord was praying for, relationship. I don’t think there was anything beyond that that Jesus was praying for. And in this, we can be Christ-like and And nothing, absolutely not one thing in heaven or earth could stand in our way. What could prevent us in prayer from falling deeper in love with the Lord? What could possibly prevent us from doing that? Can our neighbor? Can the government? Can our boss, the economy, the Federal Reserve? What could could prevent me from tomorrow loving the Lord even more than today through a prayer life what the devil nothing nothing in heaven or earth can stand in our way through prayer we can have a deeper and more meaningful relationship with God this kind of desire makes prayer more significant, whereas God as caterer makes us more superficial. So prayer is verbal communication with God. It could be silent or out loud, but prayer is verbal communication. We pray in a large group like here at church. We pray in small groups as before a meal. We pray alone when no one else is around. And how important is prayer? Well, in the Bible, it’s mentioned 370 times the word prayer in the New King James. And why so often? That’s a lot. Well, it’s because prayer is about relationship, and that’s what matters. Prayer is communication with God, spending time with him, telling him of your love, praising him, thanking him, and yes, also asking him for help. But in our dispensation of grace, certain kinds of help As God said to Paul, my grace is sufficient for you, certain kinds of help are withheld. And other kinds of help are fully available. And we’ll be looking into that next week more specifically. When I pray out loud… before a group or even just our family, I tried to benefit from a lesson I learned many, many years ago when I would hear people pray and I would realize that they were not talking to God. They were talking to me and to the group. And they were explaining reasons, for example, why I should put more money in the collection plate than I had intended. And I thought prayer is communication with God, but there’s a new kind of prayer where you’re talking to people. You’re praying to the congregation. So please give. And so I try to benefit from that lesson because it’s so easy to forget what we’re doing and sort of fall into the flesh and use prayer as a pretense to try to manipulate others. even if there’s not a negative motivation. Like I want my kids to respect their mom, so I’m going to pray in a certain way so they hear, so they’ll be guilty if they don’t, right? So I ask God to help me when I pray out loud. When you pray to yourself, it’s pretty much hard to do, to pray to manipulate other people, but unless you really have problems. But when I pray out loud, I ask God, Lord, help me to not be preaching. Help me to not be teaching. Of course, a prayer that honors God will teach. Those who hear it will learn. But let that not be my goal, Lord. When I’m praying to you, help me to really think about you and be directing my thoughts and words to you. Because if I’m pretending to talk to God, and I’m really talking to the crowd, then what am I doing? It’s the same thing as profaning God’s name. It’s the same thing. When you mention God, but you’re not talking to him or about him, you’re profaning his name. when people use God or Jesus just because it’s a filler in a sentence, or they don’t know what else to say, or they stub their toe, and it’s profaning the Lord God. So I don’t want to pretend that I’m talking to God and really be sending a message to someone else. And so an effective prayer life comes with spiritual maturity. with learning about God, with getting to know God. Because when you know someone, you’re able to bless them. When you don’t know them, the things you do or say may backfire. Sometimes people pray and their faith actually weakens because their prayer is not answered. And that is an issue of maturity. Isn’t prayer just a simple matter of asking God to intervene, to get something, to fix something, to pay for something, to heal something? Well, prayer is primarily about what is most important in our lives, in all of existence. And when someone says, what is the most important thing, we’re right to say God, of course, but But even within the Godhead, within the Trinity, the most important thing is relationship. So that when the Lord was in the wilderness, what was on his mind is his relationship with the Father. And within the Trinity, we see the Father’s love for the Son, for example. And God made us in his likeness as living, personal, and relational people. And so the most important thing in all of existence for us is our relationship with Him, with God. And then we’ve heard it a hundred times, including through the secular media, and they’re right, of how important communication is in a relationship. So of course, whether it’s a marriage, a business… foreign affairs, communication is vital. But it’s not a magic solution to all problems, is it? Is that if you take a marriage where the husband and wife are just cats and dogs at odds with each other, and you have them communicate and they talk, does that fix everything? Well, not necessarily. They could just more clearly tell each other what’s wrong with each other. Almost exactly five years ago, Joe Scott, with some of our pro-life friends here, attended a meeting with the CEO of Exempla Lutheran Hospital on 38th and Kipling there, between Kipling and Wadsworth and Wheat Ridge. His name was Bob Malti. And he was willing to meet with the pro-lifers because they had been protesting at his hospital because they were doing abortions and late-term abortions and all kinds of terrible things to children. And the purpose of the meeting was communication, but that doesn’t get you very far when there are irreconcilable differences. One side defending immorality and wickedness and the other side pleading. In fact, things actually ended up worse after they communicated. Were you there, Leslie? No. Things actually ended up worse because the CEO let something slip that he hadn’t intended to, and that was that they were also doing abortions for handicapped children for no other reason than that they were handicapped. So that meeting, there was plenty of communication, but it was a catastrophe. And by the end of it, things were worse off than before it started. Now fast forward five years later, and Bob Malty is gone, and the hospital was purchased by the Sisters of Leavenworth. And their policy is that they absolutely refuse to allow abortions to be done in any of their hospitals. So praise God. Now that result, that didn’t come from the effective communication at that meeting. But that communication was tension that led to an eventual movement by pro-lifers to try to change injustice in the world. So communication in and of itself is not a magic solution, but think about communication where the person you’re corresponding with is God, And his desires for you are only good and never evil. When you have the ingredients of a healthy relationship, communication is vital and it’s at the core of that relationship. Because that is what a personal relationship is. It is a connection with someone, an association. And the primary way that persons connect is through communication. So our relationship requires communication, and we can do that with God when we pray. When we pray for things that God will not do, it tends to hurt the relationship. because it gets us confused about what God is all about and what this relationship thing is all about. And if we misunderstand God and the purpose of praying to Him, then we have a difficulty in overcoming that hurdle in our maturity as Christians. So we could get stuck, and prayer could be the very thing that keeps us back in our Christian life. So God has revealed himself to us through his word, the Bible, and the better we understand him, then the more effective our prayer life will be. Now, God will not bless our sin, for example, yet many times… We will pray for things that if we achieve them or obtain them or saw the result, that result would be far worse than the condition that we’re trying to change. And that is easy to see, for example, just in the realm of our church’s involvement in the pro-life battle. We could see, I won’t give examples, there are so many, but where Christians pray for things that are actually immoral and destructive. We have relatives who were married a while back in Pennsylvania, and the Lutheran pastor who performed the wedding, his name is Brian Cox, and I ended up interviewing him. It’s on the internet. And he asked God to bless the relationship and the marriage, even though it was utterly immoral. It was a wicked and rebellious relationship, and he asked God before the people to bless this union. Do we pray for things that God will not do? If we are doing that, obviously, we’re causing a difficulty, not only for ourselves, but for God, because God wants prayer to be a blessing to us. Now these examples are obvious, yet I think it’s possible in countless ways that for Christians, for we Christians, to pray for things that God disapproves of. The churches that take care to know God from His Word, especially regarding the fundamentals, they should know enough and their congregation know enough to not be deceived. And then… When we remove obstacles to a prayer life, of course, then we could be blessed through our prayer life, but that blessing should be indirect, and it should be the unintended consequence of my prayer life. How can this be? Well, this week, let’s all together try to do this, and it’s something we should all do all the time anyway. Let us pray to know him, to love him, and not to be blessed, but to bless God. Let us pray this week consciously as we find time to speak with him. I am going to pray not to be blessed, Lord God, but to bless you. Then the windows of heaven are opened. then they are because God desires more than anything else a loving relationship with all those who are in union with him of course within the Godhead Father Son and Holy Spirit but then with the angels in with his created beings us human beings who have come to him humbly. So let’s pray this week. I’m sure many of you do this, and I will do this intentionally. Lord God, I want to bless you. I want to be a blessing to you. I want to honor you and bring glory to you. Please help me to do that. And then next week, we will look at some of these requests that we put.
SPEAKER 01 :
Stop the tape, stop the tape. Hey, this is Dominic and you’re in studio jumping into the broadcast and we are out of time here on KLTT Radio. If you want the entire thing, the entire having a great prayer life series, you can find that by going to kgov.com slash store and getting it for $24.99. or even a better deal, you can go to nyart.shop. Just type in your browser, nyart.shop, and get this study series and all of Bob Enyart’s Bible studies for just $10. That is such a better deal. Hey, may God bless you guys.
In this introductory episode of our prayer series, we tackle the common struggles many Christians face in their prayer life. Through honest discussion, we examine the reasons behind these challenges and shift our focus from merely seeking outcomes to nurturing a meaningful relationship with God. Tune in for insights that can enrich your prayer life and spiritual walk.
