Prayer

A Great Tool for Practical Praying-Lay Something Out Before God

August 17, 2009 by Edwin Crozier Leave a Comment

I need to give props to my good friend Clay Gentry for this tool in prayer. I had not seriously thought about this until a conversation we had last week. Thanks, Clay. I think this is a great tool for our praying. (By the way, go to his blog and tell him to post more. He has great thoughts and we need to read them.)

Lay Something Out Before God with Your Prayer

Even though we are taking a break from learning about prayer from the psalmists, we have still been lingering on prayer. There’s a good reason for that. If we are going to survive each day, we need to be in constant contact with God. Prayer is one of the number one ways to maintain that contact.

Hezekiah gives us a great example of a practical tool we can use with our praying. In Isaiah 36-37, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, wanted to attack Judah but he was being attacked by Tirhakah of Cush. He decided to send Hezekiah the following letter letting him no Judah wasn’t off the hook.

Do not let your God in whom you trust deceive you by promising that Jerusalem will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria. Behold, you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands, devoting them to destruction. And shall you be delivered? Have the gods of the nations delivered them, the nations that my fathers destroyed, Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and the people of Eden who were in Telassar? Where is the king of Hamath, the king of Arpad, the king of the city of Sepharvaim, the king of Hena, or the king of Ivvah?”

Here is the tool for our prayer. Isaiah 37:14-15 says, “Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers, and read it; and Hezekiah went up to the house of the LORD, and spread it before the LORD. And Hezekiah prayed to the LORD.”

Hezekiah didn’t just reference the letter in his prayer. He actually laid it out before God and then prayed. Of course, during the days of the temple, this meant going to the presence of God at the temple and laying out the letter. It was almost like he was letting God read it. Although, we know that isn’t the case. God knew what was in the letter before Hezekiah did.

What a great tool. Have you ever thought about laying something out before God and then praying about it? Maybe you want to pray for your marriage. What about laying out your wedding ring, some wedding pictures, or even your marriage license before God and then praying about your marriage. Maybe you want to pray for your kids or grandkids. How about laying out some pictures of them or some items that represent them. You might even sneak into their bedroom while they are asleep and pray over them, laying them out before God in your prayer. Maybe you are struggling to make ends meet or are working hard to get out of debt. You could take your bills and spread them out before God and pray over them.

The most extreme case of this I’ve heard about was a brother whose wife was cheating on him. This man drove to the motel where she was meeting her sin partner, parked outside the door, and prayed for his wife’s soul and repentance. Certainly, he could have prayed from home, but he laid the whole thing out before God and prayed. WOW!

Certainly, I don’t think laying these items out makes our prayers more effective as far as God is concerned. God doesn’t need to see a picture of our children to know which children we are praying for. However, this may help the efficacy of our prayers as far as we are concerned. Too often, prayer is just an activity of the mind for us and we move from praying to just thinking. Anything we can do to help make our prayers concrete is beneficial I think.

Maybe you think this is a bit odd. That’s okay. Why not try it and see if it doesn’t deepen your praying?

When you have tried it, come back and let us know if it helped or made an impact on your praying at all.

How To Pray for it All When Time is Tight

August 10, 2009 by Edwin Crozier Leave a Comment

Last week we looked at a plan for spending some in depth time with God and making it last. However, the reality is, as you grow in your prayer life, those lists you develop are going to start taking more than 5 minutes a piece. You’re going to start wondering how to get it all in. Or perhaps your schedule just doesn’t allow for an hour. Maybe you’re shooting for 30 minutes or 15 minutes per day (no matter what anyone says, that’s okay). In any event, you’re going to wonder how to get it all in.

You need to set yourself free from the idea that you have to pray for everything in every prayer. You don’t have to cover it all every time you pray. Instead, plan out your prayers for the week and assign different topics to each day.

Obviously, there will be aspects of prayer you keep up with every day. I’m sure you’ll offer some praise and thanksgiving along with confession every day. However, as you consider your intercessions and petitions, you can schedule them out each day.

Consider the following schedule as just a suggestion:

Sunday: Praise and thanksgiving

Monday: Personal requests and family issues

Tuesday: The local congregation, members, elders, deacons, evangelists, the work, special events

Wednesday: Other congregations, their elders, deacons and evangelists

Thursday: Special needs, the lost, the sick

Friday: Our nation, the world, war and peace

Saturday: Clean-up (anything that has come up over the week that you need to pray about)

Obviously, you can make up your own schedule, but you get the idea.

I know some people will say, “But, Edwin, that means I’m not praying for it all every day.” That’s true. However, to be quite honest, before I started this plan, I kept saying, “I don’t have time to pray right now.” Then I wasn’t praying for anything. With this plan, at least I’m getting it all prayed for in a timely fashion.

This is just a suggestion. Just make sure you are praying. You need the connection to God to survive.

How to Pray for An Hour

August 3, 2009 by Edwin Crozier 2 Comments

We sing the song “Sweet Hour of Prayer,” but then we start praying and wonder how on earth we can even make it through sweet 10 minutes of prayer. I want to thank my friend and fellow preacher Jeff May for showing me a great tool to organize our prayers and help us spend some real meaningful time with God.

Of course, let me first point out that you don’t have to pray for an hour for it to be legitimate. Prayer isn’t real because of the length. At the same time, many of us know there is so much more to be done in our prayer lives but when we finally hit our knees we get that deer-in-the-headlights feeling, we stammer something out and then spend the rest of the day thinking of other things we should have prayed for.

In those cases, don’t worry. When you think of them you can offer up a prayer right then. However, if you want to work on having some serious, in-depth, on your knees time try the PRAYER CLOCK approach.

An hour divides into 12 sections of 5 minutes. Think of 12 areas for which you want to pray and devote 5 minutes for each area. When you are done, you spent an hour in prayer. You don’t have to follow my list this is just for example purposes.

5 minutes of…

Praise
Thanksgiving
Confession
Family
Home congregation
Elders and Deacons (Home congregation and others)
Preachers (Home congregation and others)
Other churches
The lost and evangelism
Special needs, sick, etc.
Our nation (other nations)
Praise

You just spent an hour in prayer.

Granted, to make even 5 minutes in prayer for each topic, you probably want to start developing some lists. Make a list of special needs, elders, deacons, preachers, churches, things for which you are thankful, folks who are lost, etc. As you work on this, you’ll be surprised to find out that 5 minutes won’t be enough for some areas. You’ll have to come up with a plan for getting all these prayers in over the week.

In fact, come back next Monday to learn a plan for getting in all your prayers when you just have so much to pray for you can’t get it in all in one prayer session–even if you’re going for an hour.

Believing in the God of the Psalmists, Part 10: God is Love

July 13, 2009 by Edwin Crozier Leave a Comment

(If you are stumbling across this for the first time, you may want to start at the beginning of the series and work your way through the links at the end of each post. Or check out the index for this entire series of posts. We’ve learned so much about the psalmists and their relationship with God. I hope today’s is no exception.)

God is Love

A popular modern approach to God as revealed in the Bible is to change God between the testaments. Folks look at the God of the Old Testament as a harsh, legalistic, sometimes mean, sometimes brutal, judging God. Then they come to the New Testament and say all that has changed. Now, God is a God of love. He doesn’t judge, He is never harsh. He just wants us to know how much He loves us.

However, that doesn’t mesh with the Psalmists view of God at all. Despite the brutal judgment God sometimes administered, the Psalmists were completely sure that God was a God of love. The psalmists mention God’s love 123 times. Consider just a few of the statements.

God’s steadfast love is precious (Psalm 36:7).
We enter His house through His steadfast love (Psalm 5:7).
He delivers us for the sake of His steadfast love (Psalm 6:4).
He is merciful and forgets our sins because of His steadfast love (Psalm 25:6-7).
His steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts Him (Psalm 32:10).
His steadfast love endures all day (Psalm 52:1).
God answers our pleas because of His steadfast love (Psalm 69:16).
His steadfast love holds us up when we think we’ll slip (Psalm 94:18).
His steadfast love endures forever (Psalm 100:5).

This story of God’s love crescendoes in Psalm 136. Here the Psalmist repeats “For his steadfast love endures forever” 26 times. In fact, this was most certainly a liturgical psalm used in public assemblies and worship for the Jews. The priest or officiate would say the first line of each couplet and the congregation would shout the refrain–“For his steadfast love endures forever.” What an amazing experience that must have been, hearing the entire congregation praise God for his love as the stories of God’s love were repeated to them.

No doubt, the psalmists were sometimes happy, sometimes sad, sometimes hurt, sometimes angry, sometimes lonely, sometimes joyful, sometimes bitter. But they always knew God loved them.

How can we not pray to a God whose steadfast love for us endures forever, no matter who we are, where we come from, or what we’ve done?

Whatever you do today, don’t forget–God Loves You!

(I think we’re going to take a little break from this study of the Psalms. But keep your eyes open, in a few weeks we’ll get back to them and start learning to look at ourselves the way the Psalmists did.)

Believing in the God of the Psalmists, Part 9: God is Near

July 6, 2009 by Edwin Crozier Leave a Comment

Option Three

I just finished reading N.T. Wright’s Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense (yes, that is an affiliate link; help a guy out and buy a copy). I really liked his explanation of the three world views for those who believe in God. There was Option One: pantheism. That view says God is everywhere because God is everything. The computer on which you are reading this is as divine the dog your are petting by your side or the baby screaming upstairs in its crib or the plastic flowers decorating your dining table. God is the sum total of all things. Then there was Option Two: deism. That view says God is in some distant realm. He created the world and is now hands off.

With the first approach, prayer is nothing more than an exercise of reaching inside and meeting the divine within you. That is not prayer, that is just introspection. With the second, prayer is nothing more than…well, nothing. It is really pointless. For the deist prayer is sending some message out into the void to one who simply doesn’t listen. If he does, he doesn’t respond.

But there was also Option Three: it says God is not everything, but He is near. It says heaven and earth connect in real ways. It says we can walk with God and talk with God. He listens and responds. His response doesn’t have to be in some space crossing, super miraculous interjection of God’s power in the world. Rather, He can work through the world because He is in the world.

Option Three is the option the psalmists accept.

God is Near

I know this may seem odd because the Psalmists often spoke of how far away God was. “Why, O LORD, do you stand far away? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” (Psalm 10:1). Or “How long will you hide your face from me?” (Psalm 13:1). Reading these statements, we may be tempted to think they took Option Two. However, that is not true. These statements showed how they felt because of their struggles. It doesn’t show what they really believed about God.

In fact, despite these feelings the Psalmists almost always come around in the very same psalms to show what they really believed. Psalm 10:14 says, “But you do see, for you note mischief and vexation, that you may take it into your hands; to you the helpless commits himself; you have been the helper of the fatherless.” Psalm 13:5-6 says, “But I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the LORD, because he has dealt bountifully with me.”

No doubt, at times it feels like God is far away, like He is hidden behind the clouds or off in the distant reaches of space ignoring us. The psalmists felt that way. But instead of turning their back on God, they went to God about it. Why? Because despite how they felt, they knew God was near. When they felt that way, they didn’t resign themselves to believe it was that way. They knew that was wrong and went God about it.

In fact, there were other times when the psalmists just flat told us God is near.

“The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.”–Psalm 34:18.

“But you are near, O LORD, and all your commandments are true.”–Psalm 119:151.

“The LORD is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.”–Psalm 145:18.

We can call on God. He is near. He listens. He responds. No doubt, there are times we won’t feel that way. In those times we can cry out to God because He is near.

(Come back next week to learn that God is love.)

Believing in the God of the Psalmists, Part 8: God is My Shepherd

June 29, 2009 by Edwin Crozier 1 Comment

God is My Shepherd

Psalm 28:9 says: “Oh, save your people and bless your heritage! Be their shepherd and carry them forever.”

Psalm 80:1 says: “Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock!”

However, the psalm we think of the most when it comes to shepherding is Psalm 23.

The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters.
He restores my soul.
He leads me in paths of righteousness
for his name’s sake.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
forever.

But what does it mean to be a shepherd. I love Phillip Keller’s book, A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23. (Yes, that is an affiliate link. Help a guy out, click the link and buy the book.) I encourage you to get this book for a deep study of this relationship.

However, for our brief purposes, we see a shepherd as a leader, a provider, a protector and a restorer.

1. God is My Leader

As my shepherd, I follow God’s lead. As Americans, we don’t like this much. We like to strike out on our own. We like to go it on our own. We want to blaze a trail. We want to lead the way. We want to find and discover new things for ourselves. Sadly, when we sheep try to do this, we get ourselves in trouble. We burrow into brambles from which we cannot escape. We discover fields with poisonous weeds and diseased grounds. We actually don’t really go anywhere, we just trample our own little circle until it is useless.

As long as we see ourselves as our own leaders, we are going to be in trouble. We have to see God as our leader, our shepherd. When we, like the psalmists, become excited about God as our shepherd, we change. We don’t strike out on our own. We follow the leader. We know we can trust Him. His leadership is beside quiet, still waters, not trampled, disturbed, diseased waters. He makes us lie down in green pastures. He leads us in paths of righteousness. We know that He will lead us on to the higher ground, the greener pastures.

How could we not pray like the psalmists when we understand the only leader we can trust is God?

2. God is My Provider

He prepares a table. Some suggest this sections changes the metaphor from shepherd to host at a banquet. Perhaps that is the case. However, I am not completely convinced. But in either case we learn about our God. He provides for us. He feeds us.

He sets the table for my spiritual feast. He anoints my head with oil. My cup overflows. I’ll never thirst while under His care. Therefore, I can expect goodness and mercy to follow me all the days of my life.

Oh, I know that I can’t sit on my hands and just expect God to drop food down from heaven. But, in the end, I understand that every good gift I have comes from the Father above. How could we not pray like the psalmists when we understand that the only true source of all good gifts is God our Shepherd.

3. God is My Protector

Our enemies roam about us. The path we walk is the valley of the shadow of death. Predators and dangers loom large on all sides. We are but sheep. We have no defenses. If we did try to defend ourselves, the most we could accomplish is to run in circles, bleating helplessly until we collapse from exhaustion only making ourselves easier targets. While we rely on ourselves from protection, our only hope is death.

However, our God is the good shepherd. He protects us from the enemy. We need fear no evil. God, with His rod and staff, will protect us. Yes, we can’t help but see discipline in that rod. But we know our God’s discipline is for our good. We can trust Him, even if we don’t always understand it at the time. The enemies may look on, but they cannot overpower us. No matter what we face, we know our Shepherd will carry us through and bring us out on the other side.

That doesn’t mean we will never face hard times. That doesn’t mean we’ll never face flash floods, rock slides, predatory attacks on our journey to the table top grazing lands. It simply means our Shepherd will lead us through. If we will only follow Him.

How can we not pray like the psalmists when we know our only hope against the enemy that attacks is our Shepherd?

4. God is My Restorer

Perhaps this is the most important. We are sheep. Even when we love our Shepherd, we go astray at times. That is just what we do. We wander on to a ledge to get a little scrub of grass and then can’t find our way back. We get caught in a thicket from which we cannot escape. We wander out of the prepared field into dangerous regions. Sometimes we just get lazy, lay down, roll over, and can’t get up.

We thrash about. We bleat and holler. We kick and scream. We run in circles. Eventually, we stop, exhausted, downcast, distressed. There is nothing we can do. All seems lost. Our only hope is a quick and painless death, but we know it will be a slow and painful process.

However, we do not have to fear, our ever watchful Shepherd is there. Instead of disinheriting us for acting like sheep. He restores us. He refreshes us. He provides for us. He comforts us. He sets us back on the path of righteousness and leads us onward.

What a great shepherd we have.

How can we not pray like the psalmists when we know our Shepherd wants to restore us, lifting us up on His shoulders, carrying us back to the clear streams and green pastures, comforting us?

If we want to pray like the psalmists, we must be as sheep and let God be our Shepherd. He is the great God who loves, leads, provides, protects, and restores.

(Come back next week as we learn that the Psalmists saw God as near.)