Why we Pray
When Your Soul Thirsts
Our reading today is from Psalm 63. It says, oh God, you are my God. Earnestly I seek you. My soul thirsts for you. My flesh faints for you as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. So I've looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory, because your steadfast love is better than life. My lips praise you. So I'll bless you as long as I live. In your name, I will lift up my hands. My soul be satisfied as was fat and rich food and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips. When I remember you upon my bed and meditate on you in the watches of the night for you have been my help. And in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy. My soul clings to you, my right hand upholds me, your right hand upholds me. But those who seek to destroy my life shall go down into the depths of the earth. They shall be given over to the power of the sword. They shall be a portion for jackals. but the King shall rejoice in God. All who swear by Him shall exalt, for the mouth of the liars will be stopped." Let's begin in prayer. Father, Lord, you have brought us to this very moment now. Lord, to hear your word, to be in the midst of your presence. And so now, Lord, we are here gathered as your people. So would you bless us with open hearts, open minds, Lord, ready to receive, to hear your words. will we be changed and transformed by the power of your spirit, Lord, and with all things, would you help me, Lord, to speak clearly? I pray in Jesus' name, amen. So we started last week a series on prayer. Norm introduced us to it, and there was one thing that I particularly loved about Norm's message. Here's my feedback criticism, Norm, no, it's good stuff, right? Throughout his message, there was a number of stories. Stories that he shared from his own life. And now why is that a good thing? Because it shows that this series that we're going through isn't a theology, well it is a theology of prayer, but it's not unpractical, impractical. It is a very practical thing. The reality is if we go through a series like this talking about prayer, and it actually helps us in no actual way in our true Christian walk, what's the point? So the aim of this... that it will be very practical. We are seeking to how to, I don't know how you say it, how to pray as Christians. How do we truly have a vibrant prayer life? And now it is so important that this is not an abstract concept because prayer is the bread and butter of Christians, right? It is essential for our survival as Christians. It's part of something we do every single day, that we are in communication with a Heavenly Father. And so we can acknowledge that it is very important. Why do we speak on it? Why do we have a series on it? Because most of us can acknowledge it's very hard to do. Prayer is not a simple thing, but yet it is so important, it is so necessary that we address it. And that is why we're addressing now the core struggles that we face as we seek to pray. So the fundamental question that we're going to be asking today, our first question, why? Why do we pray? And look, there's a lot of reasons, but what is the ultimate reason for why we pray? And now the most and most, the most immediate obvious answer is, because Jesus did. We pray because He did. Read with me in Luke 5 verses 15 and 16. But now even more, the report about Him went abroad and great crowds gathered to hear Him, to be healed of their infirmities. but he would withdraw to desolate places and pray. So think, Jesus come down in his earthly ministry, he's ready. And now finally, the report's going out, the Messiah has come. This is finally, and then it's like the minister is growing, everything's going successfully. This is great, this is what Jesus wants, right? And yet in the midst of all of it, now he's saying, I really wanna go away to places where there's no people so I can pray. Now... Why would he want to... Because the reason he came, right? He said, I've come to preach. I've come to share the message of the good news of the gospel. And now suddenly he has the crowd, he has the audience, and now he says, now I want to go away and pray. Seems even more of a contradiction when we know the fact that he's literally God. Why does God need to go and pray to God? What is the point in that? It seems like a waste of time. So why does he withdraw when the people are ready to hear? Well, I want to ask you this question. What was Jesus doing before He came down to earth? Okay, yes, ruling over everything, but what about if you get rid of the earth? Before creation, what was He doing? We have talked about this before. He was enjoying relationship with the Father and the Spirit. Now, I can't, you know, it sounds kind of heavenly and ethereal and no, what does that really mean? All it means is they were enjoying one another. They were in relationship. It was like this party that never grows dull. They didn't create the world because they needed something. They created the world because they were having so much fun. They were like, we want to share this with everyone. And so you see, He was enjoying that, enjoying that fellowship with one another. But when He took on human flesh, He didn't stop doing that. But the way that He did it simply changed. Because how does a human enter into that communion, that fellowship with God? We pray. And so that is what Jesus did. So He would go away so that He can enjoy time with His Father. So, you see, we learn from Jesus why we are to pray. When He shows us that even in the success of His ministry, His most desperate desire was to go and spend time with His Father, to be with Him in prayer. And so you see, he gives us this example, because you see, yes, we have Easter, yes, we talk about the cross and the cross is pivotal, but it is not the only reason he came. He also came to live a life to show us how we, he was not just showing us, sorry, how will you put this? He was showing us the way we were to go. He was showing us what his followers would do. He was showing us how to follow Him and how to commune with God. And so you see, this is really important because one of the fundamental things we have to break is the idea that Jesus came down just to give us a list of rules. Most of the time, if we've been in church long enough, we've probably gotten past that point. But most of the world think that Christianity is a list of rules. There's not much hope in that, if that's the case, and I'll show you why. Read from Psalm 27 verse 7 to 8. We did it in the kids talk just before. Now, if Christianity was simply a bunch of rules, why would you bother saying back to God, your face, Lord, do I seek after he tells you to seek my face? If he tells you to go do something, Go do it. It's like when a kid back chats to you. like, sorry, just go and do what I told you to do. But there's something a bit deeper here. Why, when he tells the psalmist to go seek his face, does the psalmist then go back to God and say, your face, Lord, then I do seek? Now I want to put out something important here. When God gives a command in the Bible, it isn't... It doesn't always imply that you have the inherent power and strength in yourself to actually fulfill that command. Just think about Deuteronomy 28. God gives the whole law to Israel and then He says, if you screw up in any way, if you screw up any single one, you fall under My curse. Could any of them do that? No. Better yet, Jesus basically says the same thing in Matthew 5 in the Sermon on the Mount. You must be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect. Has anyone, hands up if you figured that out. Has anyone done that yet? No. God, Jesus is giving commands that we can't fulfill. What's the point in that? Because the Bible is not merely a rule book. but rather it is something that when we read it, the purpose is not to say, well, I must have the strength and me to go do that. No, you're meant to say, there's absolutely no way I could pull that off. So let me go to the one who can make it possible. The Bible points us to the place where hope can be found. because we are to turn to the one who said this, with man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible. So you see the commands of God are not simply there to say, well okay, I need to go do that. Most of the time they are actually telling you when you read it, I can't possibly do that, I need the God who can help me do that. Because the whole point of the Bible is not to point you to the rules you need to do, it is to point you back to the God that you desperately need. And so in this, we will go through four points together. Four points is we unwrap the purpose of our prayer. If you can bring them up, sorry, I don't have them noted down in my thing. the Christian's greatest desire, prayer is our greatest battle, prayer reminds us of the truth and then prayer is a foretaste of heaven. So, let us begin with the first one, the Christian's greatest desire. We'll read again from the first verse of Psalm 63. Now, we're gonna kind of take this Psalm and just this first point here. Basically, the rest of the Psalm just repeats that first verse in different ways. David, this is David here, and he's just desperately saying, God, I want you. In this moment, he's in the wilderness. Most likely, it's when Absalom, his son, who came in and took the throne from him, and he is now out in the wilderness because he is running away from his son who wants to kill him. So, King David is now out in the physical wilderness, fleeing from his son, and he brings us to his greatest desire, not relief from his circumstance, not food, not water, not company, not some kind of end to a situation. He says, God, this is all I want. I want to have you. He says, God, if I were to have nothing else, can I please just have this? Can I please have you? To have God is to know Him and to be known by Him. Not just in a factual sense, like, God knows who I am because He knows everything. No, it is to know Him in genuine relationship. Because you see, the end goal of our prayers is that we might be satisfied with the knowledge and presence of God. you see, we've been given this mighty privilege. All of you can enter into the throne room of God with boldness, easily, happily, without fear of any ramifications. What do we use it for? Do we use it to improve our earthly lot, to ask God for earthly requests? And again, this is part of it. But is that all we see it for? Is that all that it was given to us for? this gracious privilege was given to us most of all, that we might know God. Jesus came not so that we might improve our lot here on earth, He came that we might be reconciled to God, that He might actually have that relationship with Him again. And so that relationship now is experienced through prayer. Will we use it to know our God? Or will we simply use it as a solution to our problems? Now you see, this is the reality. So much of our joy in prayer is hindered because of the fact that we have the wrong end goal in mind. Because again, like I said, we see it as solution to earthly problems. We even maybe see it as just something we have to do to tick off a box. But it has an ultimate purpose and that is that we might know God, that we might grow deeper with Him, that He might reveal more of Himself to us. Think of it like this, a child walks up to his father. This father, he's a king. This child sits on his father's lap. and says, Father, here's everything I need for the day. Here is everything I want. Can you please grant me my every request? And of course, the Father says, I will happily provide your every need and want. Gives everything to the child. The child leaves. But then thinking back in his mind, he says, what was the best part of all that? Was it receiving everything? No, it was actually sitting on my father's lap talking to him. He says, that was the best part. Think about when a kid, particular little child is given a gift, right? Any kid loves presents, but what's normally the next thing? Hey dad, watch me play with this. Hey dad, can you play this with me? Because the reality is they love the gift, but they want you to do it with them because what they're actually seeking is you. Every child wants their parents. Maybe when you become a teenager, you're like, I'll just take this stuff and I don't know what you guys do, but anyway, but the reality is... We want that presence. We want that relationship, not just the gifts that come with it. You see, it is funny because the presence, His presence is really the thing we should be longing for. As I wrote this message, it brought me back to a time, naturally when you're doing series on prayer, you think back on how your own prayer life has been. And I remember one of the first prayers in my life that I really remember. It was a time of crisis for me that I was living in Brisbane at the time. I was living with my best friend and his parents because my mom was living here in Delby with her grandparents because she had terminal cancer at the time. Now, I got the call, your mother's in hospital. Inevitably, that's probably, okay, well, Anne's getting close. So I hop in the car and drive off. And it was funny, because I wasn't even Christian at the time. But nonetheless, I still felt the impulse to pray. And so I prayed to God and I prayed this, God, I want to see my mother. But if she is in pain, I want you to take her. Because I do not want her to have to suffer. I don't have to see her. I drove those three hours, got there, I saw her 15 minutes later, she died. Now I ask you this question, when do you think I felt peace during that event? Was it when I got there and saw the answer to my prayer? I got to see my mother and then God took her off, He took care of her, took her off to be no longer in pain? No, it was actually the moment that I prayed. The weirdest thing, I had the cruisiest three hours, I didn't worry about a single thing as I drove up to Dolby. because I knew in that moment, even as a non-Christian, God heard me. God was with me and He was with my mother. Peace. And so you see, it wasn't actually the answer to my prayers that gave me the peace I needed. It was His presence with me. And so you see, that is what we are longing for, that we are trying to get His presence, because that is the thing we truly need. So final note on this point, don't worry, next ones are a bit shorter. Just a quick note. Why does David pray about seeking the Lord? Because inevitably, he feels that he has lost Him. He feels distant from God. Why do you pray for something unless you don't have it, of course? Right? Now, inevitably, we're going to go through this series. You are not going to find a silver bullet that's going to make your life blissful. I am sorry. Life will still be hard after this. There is no guarantee of a endlessly blissful life here on earth because we still live in a world with sin. Christians can never be happy here because this world has sin in it. Till sin's gone, we will never be happy. But it is funny because we also must accept then, as Christians, we will sometimes go through times where we feel distant from God. And it is not because you've done anything, it is simply because God chooses to withdraw His presence from us. It is funny because I say this even as a Christian now, I've actually experienced deeper grief and oppression after becoming Christian than I did beforehand. Why? Because now I know what the presence of God feels like and then sometimes in His sovereign will, He decides to take it from me. Not because I've done anything, but simply as a test. Will the genuineness of my desire show that I will long for Him? That I will seek for Him as David did that saying, I want that presence back. I need that presence. That even if my worldly lot was so great, it wouldn't matter because I don't have Him with me. I need Him with me. And so just remember that sometimes as Christians, you will go through times where you feel distant from God. And it's not because you've done anything. Sometimes it is because we've done things, but not every time. And so what we are to do in that is to remember the times of comfort, remember when God was near and remember there is still nothing between Him and you. Just keep seeking Him and you will find Him. So now we go into our second point. Prayer is our greatest battle. Now, personally for me, I find prayer to be the hardest spiritual discipline of all. I think a fair chunk of you would probably agree with that. There may be some of you that are just prayer worries and are just great at it. But the reality is, I would find it easier to read my Bible every single day, run a Bible study every single night, and give 50 % of my income to charity than just sit and pray intentionally for 20 minutes. I find it that hard. I still try and do it, but it is really difficult. Why is this? Do any of you guys find that similar? You struggle to pray too? Yeah, cool. I'm sure some of you are amazing at it, but... Why do we struggle in prayer so much? Why is it such a battle to just talk to God? Because not everyone wants you to do it. Three spiritual enemies that oppose you. Your sinful nature, the world and the devil. Your sinful nature doesn't like God. There's a part of you in you with desires that doesn't like God at all. So it will oppose you. It will do anything it can to make you just be like, I just don't want to pray today. I am good. You have a world full of distractions that will do anything it can to keep you from God. And then you have the devil who'll bring every line temptation against you so that you do not pray to God. Because I refer to them as the unholy trifecta, some call them the unholy Trinity. That they hate God. They hate God getting glory. And so they will do anything to make sure you don't seek Him. That is why it is so... hard. Their collective goal is to keep you from God, to turn you away from Him. But yet God has given us this promise. James 4, 7 to 8, resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. So you see, God has given us this promise. says, so yes, He acknowledges there is a battle, there is resistance, there is difficulty you must face. But if you keep pushing, if you keep going, the devil will leave and I will draw near to you. He doesn't say that it's all going to be cheery once you become Christian, there will still be resistance. Better yet, the resistance actually starts when you become Christian. But He says, if you keep pushing, you will find me. That is why David was praying, because he knew he would find God. What is so hard about this battle though? Some of you would have been deprived of this childhood experience, but when I was growing up, we lived at the bottom of a hill. And that was the best thing because our street ran up it. And if you had a push bike and you learned how to ride a bike, what's the best thing? You ride up that hill and then you get to come down it. But what's the fun part? Is it going up or going down? Anyone? Going down, right? Exactly. No one likes going up the hill. It sucks. Right? No one likes that part of it. But yet the reason I could go, the reason I was happy to pedal up that hill was because I knew at the top of it, I would receive my reward. I would get to go down, feel the wind just blowing into me and then I'd do a massive skid on a gravel driveway. It was awesome. I loved it growing up. And so you see, it is exactly the same thing in prayer. We have to struggle to get up that hill. There is always a hill every time we pray. There's always difficulty, always resistance. You have to pedal. It is hard. It is not fun. But yet there is a summit. There is a downhill and there is a great reward. But yet there is a very important reason why Jesus gave us this promise, why God gave it to us. The devil knows that God will draw near to us. He knows that he cannot put up an infinite fight. So what does he do? He doesn't... really just make the hill bigger. But what he does is this. He tries us to make us believe the lie that God will not draw near to us. How does he do it? As you pedal up this hill, he puts clouds in your way so that you think there is no summit to this hill. It never will get better. Nothing will change. I can't see the summit, so it's probably just not there. This is just an infinite hill. Because we keep... finding difficulty, we can't see the end point, and so we just say, the reason I could pedal up that hill as a kid was because I saw it was only 100 meters top the top. One of the hardest things as just doing anything in life is if you don't have an end goal, because you're like, when will I get there? I'm so tired, I'm running out of steam. But that is why He gave us this promise. Because God wants us to understand that on the other side of the clouds, there is the summit. It is there, but we have to push through because we can't see it. We don't know when we're going to hit it. We just have to keep going and trust the promise. It says, you will find the top. Resist the devil, he will flee and I will draw near to you. The hardest thing is that the devil knows all of you very well. He knows your breaking point. He knows where you normally give up. So where does He put the clouds? Right at that point. He puts them right there. Because then you know, I've been this far before, there's nothing more up there. It's not gonna work. But God says, keep pushing through the cloud. I will draw near to you. Because you don't trust in your sight. You trust in your faith where God says, I will draw near to you. And so you just have to keep going. Why does the enemy fight so hard? Because he knows there is a great reward for you on the other side. He is desperate that you do not actually get to the summit because if you do, you will actually taste and see that the Lord is good, that He is great. And so this leads us into our third point now, that prayer reminds us of the truth. So we see that prayer helps us to know and to experience more of God. And there is a particular point that helps us draw near to Him. One of the most precious things that a Christian has. In the Lord's Prayer, it is a time where we confess our sins. Why is confession so important? Because it brings us back to the truth of who we are, who God is, and what Jesus has done for us. Now see, asking for forgiveness is a precious part of our lives because it's not motivated by fear of hell. If you're a Christian, you're not going to hell. I'm sorry, there's nothing that can separate you from the love of God. It never will. So we don't do it for fear of hell. Hopefully it's a little impetus, it's probably a good thing, but most of it is because we desire to be near to Him. I want to restore my communion with God. I want to draw near to Him. That is why I do it. I long to be near to Him. And so... Holding on to our sin doesn't mean we're gonna lose our salvation. But what it does do is hinder our joy in God. Sometimes we just neglect daily confession of our sins because we kind of lose track of the fact that every single day we just sin against God in so many ways we see and don't see. We need to confess our sins daily, even just a blanket commitment, just saying, God, I don't even know all the things, but I just know I've done lots of it. Please Lord, forgive me. You were acknowledging who you are. Sometimes we refuse to confess because, well, we don't want to acknowledge we've done wrong. Sometimes we refuse because we just don't think God could ever be happy with us. We just think, that he's distant now, he's punishing us, he won't be happy, so we don't come to him. but all of these are lies. What is the truth? Romans 5.1. Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we are peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Our communion with God, our drawing near to Him is based on not your obedience, but your faith in Him, your faith in Jesus. So you see, You have been made righteous. That is what justified means. You've been made right with God. You're perfect in His sight. There is no anger, no wrath. It's all gone, taken on the cross. All because you've done what? Believed in Jesus. That's all you have to do. And so then, that allows us to come before God to confess our sins and understand, confession doesn't change God's view of you. What confession does is that it reminds you that God's view of you has never changed. You come to God, you confess your sins and you remember, He is always a gracious God, ready to forgive, always. And He has always loved you. you see, prayer draws us to that place where God is most clear of all. It draws us to the cross. Because you see, in the cross, you see the truth of who God is. You see the God of justice, the God of wrath, because He must punish sin. He must deal it out. But then you also meet the God of grace and mercy, because He's not taking it out on you, He's taking out on His Son. justice, wrath, mercy, compassion meet in the cross. Communing with God is seeking to know Him more deeply and you can find His, sorry, He reveals Himself no more deeply than He does in Jesus' death and resurrection. And so that is why our confession is so important because it draws us to the most important part of the gospel. Forgiveness of sins is precious. But now as we come to our fourth point, it is not the only part. Because you see, prayer is just a foretaste of something. Prayer is a foretaste of heaven. Now think about it. David was desperate for the felt presence of God. He wanted to know, God, I want to know you're with me. You particularly think back in his time, right? The presence of God wasn't known by the Holy Spirit, by this indwelling, it was known as being near the temple and being in Jerusalem and he had neither of those things. His son had taken his throne and he was thrown into the wilderness. And so we're saying, God, where are you? God, are you near me? He was desperate to feel that, to know that God was near, to know that God had not left him. And now we have a precious promise, it was precious promise actually from the Old Testament. but that we also receive again in Hebrews 13, 5, where God says, will never leave you, I will never forsake you. That's such a precious thing to know that even when we don't feel Him, He is here with us. But one of the hard things is, I don't want to feel distant from God. I want to feel like I'm near Him 24-7. But that is not for this age. Prayer is a foretaste in looking forward to a day when we shall feel and know His presence forever. There shall never be a day where you doubt that He is not near you. You shall never feel distant from Him again. When is that day? Revelation 21, three and four. Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, they will be His people and God Himself will be with them as their God. So you see, we are seeking for joy in prayer, but what does this joy ultimately get us? It will not satisfy you forever because it's like going into Woolies and taking the kids, you know, bananas and stuff that they put out. It kind of satisfies you while you're shopping, but it's not a whole meal. It is simply a foretaste that creates a longing for the actual meal. And it is so important because often we very much get stuck in the here and now. We love kind of just sitting and being content in this world. But prayer breaks that because prayer gives us a sample of what the joy is to come. And so we're like, that is so much better than anything in this world. I want that. But it creates the longing, but we eagerly wait for it. We're waiting for it to come, but it has not yet come to us. So the joy of the Lord in this moment has a purpose of breaking us from our unhealthy attachment to the world. But we were not meant to have the fullness of heaven's joy here. We have it when He returns. But yet we continually seek Him in our prayers. see that the whole point of this sermon has been this, that the great end goal of our prayers is not to get things, is not to tick off a box, is not even just to make ourselves feel better necessarily. All these things are side effects, but it is to know God. It is to commune with Him, that He might know more of you. That is why you talk to Him. and you might know more of Him as He talks back to you, as you feel Him, as you hear Him in His Word. you get to know Him more deeply. There is nothing more precious than that. We ought to make praying to God and seeking Him our greatest desire, that we would fight for it, that we confess our sins, that we might have joy in it and long for the day when that joy will be ours forevermore without disruption. Prayer has so much more to offer every single one of you. If only we would let it. It is not just a solution to our problems here, but it is a way to experience and know the one who made us. And that is the place where we will find true joy. Just think of all the things the Psalmists say. They say, Lord, just to be a doorkeeper in your house is better than to dwell in the tents of the wicked. Better is a day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere. at your right hand is pleasures forevermore, they say. They just want God. We just need Him. Just strip away everything else. I don't care. I just want you, God. That is what we say. That is what we believe. And so that is what we will wrap up with in prayer now and will lead into a time of communion. Father, you have given us this precious gift that we have a privilege of being able to draw into your throne room, into your presence with boldness. not fear that we shall be struck down by your holiness, Lord, for we are made holy. We are justified, made perfect through faith in your Son. So Lord, we draw near to you in faith in your Son. We bring out every request, we bring out every need, but yet most of all, we bring a desire that we might know you more. Father, reveal yourself to us. Show us more of who you are. Because as we know more of you, Lord, we see that we need nothing else but you. So would you do these things, Father, and would you do more? We pray in Jesus' name, amen.