River Church NOLA
Wed July 8
  • Counting On God
  • Set A Fire
  • Walk With Me
  • Gracefully Broken
  • You know Boudreaux and Thibodeaux got in a debate about who could pray the loudest? Boudreaux said, "I once prayed so loud in the deer stand, I scared off every buck in the parish." Thibodeaux said, "That ain't nothin'. I prayed so loud over my gumbo, the Lord sent an angel just to ask me to pass the roux." Boudreaux said, "Congraturlations, Thibodeaux -- you the only man I know whose prayers get answered faster than his wife's honey-do list."
    It's a silly way to open a serious subject, but it makes the point: most of us think about prayer in terms of volume, effort, or performance. Jesus is about to tell His followers something different -- and honestly, something like relief.
    Tonight we will answer 3 questions
    What are some foundational truths about prayer?
    How did Jesus teach us to pray?
    Why does it feel sometimes like God doesn’t answer?
    Let’s see where we are before we get into the study.

    Do you consider prayer to be (check all that apply)

    An obligation
    A chore
    Boring
    A waster of time
    A mystery
    Second nature
    Begging for things
    A special opportunity
    Talking to yourself
    A conversation with God

    Look back at the last 24 hours. How many times do you remember praying? If you don’t remember praying at all in the last 24 hours, why do you think that you didn’t?

    I don’t know
    I didn’t feel like it
    It never occurred to me
    I didn’t feel a need to pray.
    There wasn’t enough time
    I don’t know how to pray

    Complete the following sentence. If I could be assured of an answer to any prayer, I would pray for…

    Rate yourself from 1 to 5 about how you believe about God answering prayer.

    1 never 3 sometimes 5 always

    I pray very seldom sometimes all the time

    Praying is difficult not too difficult easy

    Praying is not important sometimes important always important

    Foundational Truths about Prayer

    How would you honestly describe your relationship with prayer? Duty? Mystery? Comfort? Guilt? Get answers…. honesty is the key. There are no right answers.
    No one likes to call someone and get their voicemail. And we are never happy with our messages we leave… so many people don’t leave a message and drives me crazy.

    Prayer is relational, not performative.

    Matthew 6:5–6 NLT
    5 “When you pray, don’t be like the hypocrites who love to pray publicly on street corners and in the synagogues where everyone can see them. I tell you the truth, that is all the reward they will ever get. 6 But when you pray, go away by yourself, shut the door behind you, and pray to your Father in private. Then your Father, who sees everything, will reward you.
    Jesus isn’t condemning public prayer… He prayed publically. John 11:41-42
    John 11:41–42 NLT
    41 So they rolled the stone aside. Then Jesus looked up to heaven and said, “Father, thank you for hearing me. 42 You always hear me, but I said it out loud for the sake of all these people standing here, so that they will believe you sent me.”
    He’s confronting prayer used as a display of spirituality rather than genuine communication with God. The test isn’t the audience. It’s the audience you are trying to impress.
    ? Have you every caught yourself praying more for how it sounded than for what you actually needed? I have…

    Prayer aligns us with God.

    Matthew 6:8 NLT
    8 Don’t be like them, for your Father knows exactly what you need even before you ask him!
    God isn’t waiting on new information. Prayer doesn’t inform God - it aligns us. He already knows the need… before we knew the need. He invites the asking anyway, because prayer is about relationship not data transfer.

    Do you believe that you can pray anytime? Yes No Not Sure

    Prayer is meant to be ongoing, not occasional.

    Ephesians 6:18 NLT
    18 Pray in the Spirit at all times and on every occasion. Stay alert and be persistent in your prayers for all believers everywhere.
    We need to pray all the time. Obviously you cannot close your eyes and pray while driving, but we need to pray while we are driving.

    What can we pray for?

    Philippians 4:6 NLT
    6 Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done.

    Prayer replaces anxiety as our default response to pressure.

    Philippians 4:6–7 NLT
    6 Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. 7 Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.
    Our goal is to pray instead of worrying first.
    Let me ask,
    Which of these (relational… aligning with God’s will… or continual) is the hardest for you?

    How should we pray? PRAY Pattern

    The disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray and He didn’t leave them hanging. Right after warning them about empty, shallow prayer, He gave them and us, a model pray. I grew up calling this the Lord’s Prayer. Around here many people call it the “Our Father” prayer.
    Let’s walk through it using the acrostic PRAY

    P - Praise

    Matthew 6:9 NLT
    9 Pray like this: Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy.
    Prayer always should begin with who God is, not what we want. Praise orients us before we ever get to our list. This isn’t flattery… it’s remembering the truth about the one we are speaking to.

    R - Repent

    Matthew 6:12 NLT
    12 and forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who sin against us.
    Honest prayer includes honest confession. That’s where we own what is actually true about us instead of trying to manage an image.
    Note that Jesus ties our own forgiveness of others directly to this… unresolved bitterness has a way of clogging the line.
    Some things are hard to forgive. I have had to ask God to help me be willing to forgive others when I wasn’t. Maybe that is you as well. it’s difficult and it’s a process… not a one and done thing.

    A - Ask

    Matthew 6:11 NLT
    11 Give us today the food we need,
    God invites requests… daily, practical, ordinary ones, not just spiritual sounding ones. Then James adds an important caution.
    James 4:2–3 NLT
    2 You want what you don’t have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can’t get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them. Yet you don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it. 3 And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure.
    Asking is welcomed. Asking wrongly, purely for self indulgence, with no regard for God’s purposes, runs into a wall. God isn’t being stingy. He is a loving father protecting His chold from what would actually harm them.

    Y - Yield

    Matthew 6:10 NLT
    10 May your Kingdom come soon. May your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.
    This is probably the hardest letter, but it’s also the most important one. Prayer in not a vending machine where we put something in and get something out. Prayer is surrender. Jesus modeled that in the Garden of Gethsemane. Matt 26:39
    Matthew 26:39 NLT
    39 He went on a little farther and bowed with his face to the ground, praying, “My Father! If it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.”
    Let’s go back through this pattern. I’ll read it and you pray whatever the specific need.

    Why does it sometimes feel like God doesn’t answer?

    This is where people quietly check out of their prayer life… not from rebellion, but from disappointment. We have all felt like, at times, God didn’t answer our prayers. healing… job… children…
    God answers, but just no the way we always want Him to.

    Sometimes the answer is no or not yet.

    Luke 18:1–8 NLT
    1 One day Jesus told his disciples a story to show that they should always pray and never give up. 2 “There was a judge in a certain city,” he said, “who neither feared God nor cared about people. 3 A widow of that city came to him repeatedly, saying, ‘Give me justice in this dispute with my enemy.’ 4 The judge ignored her for a while, but finally he said to himself, ‘I don’t fear God or care about people, 5 but this woman is driving me crazy. I’m going to see that she gets justice, because she is wearing me out with her constant requests!’ ” 6 Then the Lord said, “Learn a lesson from this unjust judge. 7 Even he rendered a just decision in the end. So don’t you think God will surely give justice to his chosen people who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? 8 I tell you, he will grant justice to them quickly! But when the Son of Man returns, how many will he find on the earth who have faith?”
    Persistence in prayer isn’t about wearing God down. It’s about a posture of continued trust while we wait on a good and loving Father’s timing, which is not always our timing. Joseph… Moses… David…

    Doubt can short-circuit our confidence, not God’s willingness.

    James 1:6–8 NLT
    6 But when you ask him, be sure that your faith is in God alone. Do not waver, for a person with divided loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the wind. 7 Such people should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. 8 Their loyalty is divided between God and the world, and they are unstable in everything they do.
    James is not saying that we have to achieve a perfect, doubt free faith before God will listen. It’s a warning against a divided heart - trying to hedge our bets between God and something else we’re actually trusting more than God.

    Wrong motives get in the way.

    James 4:2–3 NLT
    2 You want what you don’t have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can’t get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them. Yet you don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it. 3 And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure.
    Sometimes unanswered prayer is really a mismatched request… asking God to bless something He never intended to bless.

    Holding a grudge can get in the way

    Matthew 6:14–15 NLT
    14 “If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. 15 But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.
    When we don’t forgive others, we usually don’t think that we need to ask forgiveness.

    Confidence in prayer depends on Christ, not on our performance.

    1 John 5:14–15 NLT
    14 And we are confident that he hears us whenever we ask for anything that pleases him. 15 And since we know he hears us when we make our requests, we also know that he will give us what we ask for.
    Our confidence in prayer was never meant to depend on how well we prayed, how much faith we feel like we mustered, how disciplined our devotional life is or anything else. Our confidence in prayer depends on the fact that Jesus, our great high priest, already opened the way so we can come boldly to the throne of grace.
    Hebrews 4:14–16 NLT
    14 So then, since we have a great High Priest who has entered heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to what we believe. 15 This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin. 16 So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most.
    Closing
    Prayer can feel like an obligation, a mystery, or even a waste of time. But Jesus reframes it as the greatest opportunity we have…

    We have unrestricted access to the Father made possible by Grace, not earned by performance.

    I want everyone to complete this prayer sentence for me…

    If I could be assured of an answer to any prayer, I would pray for …

    Does anyone want to share that with the rest of us?
    Let’s pray over these requests you have written down using this pattern.
    Praise - Matthew 6:9 “9 Pray like this: Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy.”
    Repent - Matthew 6:12 “12 and forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who sin against us.”
    Ask - Matthew 6:11 “11 Give us today the food we need,”
    Yield - Matthew 6:10 “10 May your Kingdom come soon. May your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.”
    God may not always do what you or I want him to do, but that’s because he knows what really is best for us.  Can you think of times when you wished or prayed for something, but now you are so thankful God did not answer your prayer the way you wanted it answered?
    God’s design is always best.  Sometimes it’s about timing.  We are promised that when we pray according to God’s will, (John 15:7) he will answer us. 

    John 15:7 (NLT) — 7 But if  your name remain in me and my words remain in your name , you may ask for anything your name want, and it will be granted!

    Take it home - Here are some action steps we can begin.
    Pray before you get out of bed
    Pray in the shower
    When you sin, confess it immediately
    Keep a journal of your prayer requests and the date you received answers
    Feel free to talk to god throughout the day

      • Matthew 6:5–6NIV

      • John 11:41–42NIV

      • Matthew 6:8NIV

      • Ephesians 6:18NIV

      • Philippians 4:6NIV

      • Philippians 4:6–7NIV

      • Matthew 6:9NIV

      • Matthew 6:12NIV

      • Matthew 6:11NIV

      • James 4:2–3NIV

      • Matthew 6:10NIV

      • Matthew 26:39NIV

      • Luke 18:1–8NIV

      • James 1:6–8NIV

      • James 4:2–3NIV

      • Matthew 6:14–15NIV

      • 1 John 5:14–15NIV

      • Hebrews 4:14–16NIV

      • John 15:7NIV

River Church NOLA
robert@riverchurchnola.com
504-578-8317
https://riverchurchnola.com
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