Good morning, and welcome to
the Sunday morning broadcast of the Grace Community Church
of Rock Valley, Iowa. We invite you to tune in this
time each week as we bring you the message of the grace of God.
Stay tuned at the end of the message for contact information.
See if this is as true for you as it is for me. I find that
the most difficult of all spiritual exercises is prayer. Studying,
meditating, and preaching are all relatively easy for me, but
to pray, that's No sooner do I try to pray than a thousand
other thoughts invade my mind, the little details of life that
need attention. Even thoughts about some portion
of Scripture will arrest my attention and draw me away from praying.
Because I experience such weakness in prayer, it's encouraging for
me to read what Paul wrote in Romans 8, verse 26. Likewise,
the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We have all sorts of weaknesses,
don't But Paul is specific about the weakness to which he refers,
for he goes on to say, For we do not know what to pray for
as we ought. Right there it is, weakness in
prayer. We are so weak in this matter
we do not even know what sort of things we should pray for.
Yet Paul does not leave us in a state of despair about our
prayers, for he goes on to say, But the Spirit himself intercedes
for us with groanings too deep for words. you who struggle in
prayer. Do not be surprised or overwhelmed
with this difficulty. Pray as you can, knowing this,
the Spirit of God will take your rambling prayer, purify it from
all flesh, add to it what you should have put in it, and present
it to God as a perfect prayer. This is true for every child
of God. None of us is powerful in prayer.
The power in our prayers does not arise from some strength,
righteousness, holiness, or wisdom of our own. Rather, the prayers
of God's saints are powerful and effective because the Spirit
of God intercedes for us. He fixes our prayers and sends
them on to the Father. We have difficulty in prayer
because of our natural weakness in spiritual things. When our
Lord was in Gethsemane praying to His Father about the things
that would shortly take place, He returned to His disciples
to find them sleeping. This happened three times, and
He rebuked them with, could you not pray with me for one hour?
No doubt that stung, but he did not leave it right there. He
continued by saying, truly, the spirit is willing, but the flesh
is weak. In essence, the Lord was saying, I know that in your
spirit you would have gladly prayed many hours with me, but
the flesh is weak and prevents it. James says we have difficulty
due to covetousness. In James 4 we read, you do not
have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive because
you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions. So often the prayers
of God's people sound more like a note to Santa Claus than a
prayer to the living God. Peter warns men to dwell with
their wives in understanding and consideration, taking into
account that they have weaknesses specific to their gender, otherwise
their prayers will be hindered. And we can generalize that principle
to any relationship in which one is in a superior position
of authority. Fathers should deal with their
children mercifully, understanding the weaknesses of children. Bosses
should deal with those who work for them in compassion, understanding
their limitations. How can we expect God to show
mercy to us in our weakness when we do not show mercy to others
in their weaknesses? Busyness hinders our prayer life.
We are so busy. And we use that as an excuse
not to pray. This shows how little regard
we have for prayer and the privilege of it. I am certain that if you
were to receive a call from the White House saying that tomorrow
you could meet with the President of the United States of America,
you would find a way to clear your schedule. But what is that
compared to the privilege of coming into the presence of God,
addressing Him as Father, and laying out our hearts to Him?
If we are too busy to pray, we are too busy. Period. Unbelief
is also a great hindrance to prayer. James wrote in chapter
1 verse 6, But let him ask in faith, with no doubting. For
the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and
tossed by the wind. Such a person must not suppose
that he will receive anything from the Lord. Sometimes your
unbelief may take this form. You worry that you are unworthy
of a hearing in the presence of God. Well, let me settle that
worry right now. You are unworthy, but that is
irrelevant. In illustrating the willingness
of God to give good things to his children when they ask, the
Lord Jesus said, if you, who are evil, know how to give good
gifts to your children, how much more will your Father, who is
in heaven, give good gifts to those who ask him? Your unworthiness
of God's goodness is not news to Christ, nor will it be news
to God. The very ones Christ is teaching
to pray are the ones that He calls evil. The Lord Jesus said,
Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and ye shall find. Knock, and it will be opened
to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks
finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. These words
must not be taken out of their context. They are found in Luke
11, verse 9 and are part of a longer teaching on prayer. That teaching
began with Christ's model prayer, which is traditionally called
the Lord's Prayer. It is prayers such as this which
come with a promise about asking, seeking, and knocking. The promise
concerns prayers delivered as a child to its father. The Lord
said to pray, What an unspeakably wonderful relationship believers
have with God. He is their father. This speaks
to us of the affection that God has for His people. He sees them
as a father sees his children. It is written, like as a father
pities his children, so the Lord pities them that fear Him. For
He knows our frame. He remembers that we are dust.
When a believer prays to God, he is not coming to Him as a
slave to his master. He is coming as a child to His
Father, assured of His Father's love and affection. He is also
coming to God in the submission of a child, not demanding things,
but asking things. The Lord's promise concerns prayers
of worship, for He taught us to pray, Hallowed be your name. The name of our God is holy,
and it is a great grief to the child of God to see his Father's
name treated with such disrespect in this world. but it is His
delight to glorify His Father and revere His name. When we
come before God our Father, understanding the great and majestic and holy
being that He is, it puts us in a frame of mind that sanctifies
our prayer. It will change the character
of our prayers if we keep in mind who it is we pray to. Your
kingdom come. Instantly, the reverence God's
children have for Him shows itself in the great concern of their
hearts, their father's kingdom. What child is not interested
in its father's kingdom? What is our great concern? Do
we find our joy in seeing God's gospel spread and sinners coming
to repentance? Or are our hearts stuck on praying
for the pleasures, riches, and comforts of this life? We are
taught to pray for our daily necessities. Give us each day
our daily bread. In another place, the Lord said
that we should content ourselves with having sufficient food and
clothes. So we should ask for and be content with daily provisions. We are not taught to pray for
a full pantry. When there is an abundance of
supply, we tend to start trusting the supply rather than the supplier. Who of us prays for money unless
the bank account is near empty? Therefore, do not be surprised
if God never gives you more than what you need today. and be thankful
and content that He does just that. Forgive us our sins. We can never get very far from
the truth that, even though we are God's children, we are still
sinners. And we must also keep in mind
that even though God is our Father, He does not cease to be the holy
and just God He has always been. The convicted sinner who has
never called on God certainly feels the need for forgiveness.
How much more should those who have tasted that the Lord is
good desire their sins be forgiven by their gracious Father. Do
not lead us into temptation. Our Father is not only the one
who is our Savior in times of distress, He is the one who protects
us from many distresses. While we may be willing to endure
whatever the Lord wills, our prayer is that He not direct
our paths into circumstances that severely test us. Regarding
prayers like this, the Lord says, Ask, and it will be given to
you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and it will be opened
to you. Asking, seeking, knocking, all
three of these indicate a desire for something, but each is more
earnest than the preceding one. We are told to ask with the promise
that we shall receive. We are to make our request known
to God, and provided our request is not merely for fleshly things,
we can be assured that we shall receive. Now, the promise is
not that we shall receive exactly what we ask for, or that we shall
receive it in the way we might have expected. But God will not
ignore the request of His children, and He will give them the true
desire of their heart in such a way as will be good for us. A request for health might be
answered with grace to endure sickness, and we shall discover
that God's supply of grace was better than our request for healing.
Seek, and you will find. A person may ask for frivolous
things, yet not be willing to put any effort into obtaining
them. God may test the sincerity of our desires by making us seek
the thing we desire, even making us seek it with all our hearts.
What do you seek? For what are you willing to expend
your labor to have? If we ask for a deeper understanding
of the things of God, yet give no time to reading His book or
worshiping Him from the heart, can we then expect that He will
give us what we ask for? If we ask only once and do not
ask again and even again and again, we may not find. God says,
seek. Knock, and it shall be opened
unto you. In the early 80s, I was an orchid man. I had about 300
accounts I had to service each month. I quickly learned that
doorbells were untrustworthy, for they may not ring. I learned
always to knock. And if I did not get an answer,
I would knock harder. They knew what day I was supposed
to be there, and I did not want them to ignore me, making it
necessary for me to go back to their house. Knock. And knock
again, but louder. And knock again, if need be.
The door will be open. Now, there may be some listening
who do not consider themselves to be children of God, yet they
would like to be. Well, you may also rely on this
promise. Do you want God's salvation?
Ask for it, and it shall be given to you. Does your heart long
for God? Seek Him with all your heart,
and you will find Him. Do you desire a place in God's
household? Then knock on the door, and the
Lord will send a servant to open it for you, a gospel preacher.
When the door is open, enter into the king's palace and discover
that you are in your father's house. The Lord Jesus has gone
in ahead of us, and there is a guarantee to everyone and anyone
that he who knocks upon the door of God's grace in Christ shall
find the door to swing open. May God add his blessing to his
work. We pray that you've been blessed
by today's message. Visit our website where you can
find more information regarding our church. Our web address is
www.rvgrace.com. There you can find information
on our worship times, audio and video recordings of our worship
service and Bible study, plus a weekly devotional. Our email
address is pastor at rvgrace.com. Until next week, may the God
of all grace and comfort bless you in Christ Jesus.