First off, I am not Larry. For those of you that don't know me, my name is Dan. I'm usually the guy up on electric guitar. Thank you for letting me do that, by the way. It's a great joy of mine to share that with you most Sunday mornings. I've been at the landing since almost the beginning, for those of you that don't know me. 

I have often joked with one of my friends here at church, Tom, yeah, that I am more excited when someone comes up to me after church to talk about guitar than when they ask me if I happen to be a dentist. So, although to be honest, I should be more excited to be identified as a Christ follower than any of those things. I will tell you, I will be the first to tell you I am not an expert in prayer. Oh, I should say, this is my message, not message, my little talk is entitled Why We don't pray. So in case you wonder what I'm talking about, this is why we don't pray. I'll be the first to tell you I'm not an expert in prayer, nor am I a prayer warrior. I can offer a God help me or a thank you Lord with the best of them, but my prayer closet is unfortunately mostly empty most days. I would offer the same response to a question of how much do you pray as most of my patients respond to my question of how much do you floss? And of course, The answer is typically not as much as I should.

Why We Don’t Pray

So, how l, you may ask, am I given the opportunity to speak on this subject of prayer? Well, let me tell you. My good friend Tom was telling me his concern, or shared with me the concern that men don't pray together when given the opportunity. And I kind of agreed with him. I don't often take the opportunity to attend prayer gatherings myself. So when we were meeting to plan out men's retreat, Tom suggested as one of the breakout sessions the topic of why men don't pray. I raised my hand out of conviction and said I would pray about it. So that was as good as volunteering his book. So then adult Sunday school, Larry's on vacation, and the elders were looking for some ready-made fill-ins with talks prepared. So here I am, I am an expert excuses as to why we don't pray. So over the last several months, I have read many books on prayer. I have spent countless hours watching YouTube sermons on prayer, read and re-read Bible passages dealing with prayer, and googled prayer questions from multiple angles.

I have even spent a decent amount of time conscientiously praying. Talking to God is pretty intuitive, and God has created us in His image with an awareness of Him. So it is a basic reflex to communicate with Him. As a Christian, prayer is crucial to our lives. So why don't we do it? In Ephesians 3.20, it says, Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think, according to the power at work within us. I mean, that's a pretty outstanding statement.

He does above and beyond what we can ask or think. And yet, the easiest thing for us is to not pray, even though we have this tremendous opportunity. So again, we have many reasons why we don't pray. I stand here not as an expert in prayer, but as someone who uses or has used many of the reasons I will cover as to why we don't pray. So that being said, let's pray. Lord God, we thank you for this time this morning. We thank you for your absolute holiness and power, God. We thank you that you have condescended, Lord. You have sent your Son to us, Lord, imperfect creatures as we are, God, and sinful against you. You sent your Son to be a sacrifice for us, God. We thank you for that. We thank you for your Word, God, which guides us. We thank you for the Holy Spirit, which guides us, God. And I ask for your help this morning, Lord, as I give these just random thoughts, God, that you could use them to help us to become.

A people of prayer, God, persons of prayer and a people and a church that prays.

A Prayerful Heart

I ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Now, I want to be careful in saying any of this because I don't want to confuse people. We, because I know we, probably as a church, we do pray really well. And I don't want to accuse any of you of not praying. Maybe this is just for me talking through this. So when I say we, if you're taking offense to it, just know that it's me because I have these problems. So we have many reasons why we don't pray or why we don't pray as much as we should or why we don't pray in groups or go to prayer meetings. I have many well-thought-out reasons, and I also see why these are common excuses. So my goal is to kind of biblically help a deal with them. For lack of time, now more lack of time, I'll mainly focus on private personal prayer issues as they are the most typical hurdles to prayer. At the retreat, I had the guys fill out slips of paper as to the top reasons why they would say, we don't pray.

Let me list them for you. And I want you to see if you can identify with any of these. And I'll tell you, as I did this kind of impromptu at the retreat, and I read them in front of everybody, and I kind of took them to heart. It just kind of sunk in with me. So here's the list. Not focused. Okay, distracted. I'm too busy. Forgetting to do it, and then when I remember it, it kind of feels awkward, like an obligation. I'm in a spiritual drought. I have a hard heart. I have unbelief.

I don't believe it will change anything. I don't think my prayer will be answered. It seems insignificant. I don't appreciate the power of prayer. Here's another one Fear that praying for the same ideas over and over again is, inconsequential Another one I don't know the correct way to pray I only consider it in times of need I would rather solve the problem myself.

Lack of appreciation for God Robs me of the courage to ask for things I have small thoughts about God We don't know him as we should. How about this one? If I really prayed, I'm afraid of what he might ask me to do. So I will relist these thoughts a little bit. I don't have time. I'm busy. I don't care as I should. I don't believe what I have to pray about matters. I don't matter. God won't hear me. God won't answer my prayers. I don't know what to say. I don't know where to start. I just don't know how. If you fit into any of these categories, I have good news for you. God's Word can help you. We have the Holy Spirit to guide us, and Jesus has made a way for us to come boldly to the throne to help out in our time of need.

Just Do It

Before I go any further, I want to make sure that we all realize, although I'm going to break prayer down into kind of mechanical components, and I'm going to speak of like an order and such, the real truth is.

The best way to pray, or the way to pray is this, as the famous Nike ad said best, just do it. So just do it. If you get nothing else from what I'm saying this morning, just remember this. Prayer. Just do it. Okay? That's what you need to come away from here. Okay. We recently went through Romans 8 and saw that the Holy Spirit teaches us and prays through our groanings. Do not ignore these, because there is, There is help in that. The big thing we typically need to prompt us to pray is realizing that we stand in need. And the more we know God, the more we can see our need and depend on Him. And that's a pretty good pattern to start with. Okay. Check my...

I'm going to read a passage. I was joking with the guys that I've learned to start using this analog Bible thing. Is that what you call it? Analog? It's not digital. So, here's a great passage to help us when we think about prayer. Philippians 4, 6-7 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. That's a great passage. and also something if the only takeaway you get from this is knowing that passage, that's a really good place to be.

So, let's talk about Jesus. Jesus was, I should say not was, is the ultimate prayer warrior. And he taught his disciples to pray. So he can teach us too. Surprise, I'm going to go through the Lord's Prayer, if any of you were wondering. But I'm going to break it down and kind of go through some of the mechanics of it here. Okay, so in the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 6, Jesus taught us to pray. Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. The same pattern is also used in Luke 11.

The Lord’s Prayer

So let me break this prayer down into some essential components. The first half of the prayer is centered on the nature of God. Another, okay, so let me help you hear this. There's also something that's super useful. I wanted to say this at the beginning. I'm going to cover Acts today. And Acts is this ACTS model of prayer. Adoration, for those of you that don't know, adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication. So you can kind of overlap that onto the Lord's Prayer. So I'll try to do that as we go along, because I think it's a helpful model, for praying. It's a little easier than remembering, say, like six different parts. So remember, prayer, just do it. Okay? All right.

First half of the prayer is centered on the nature of God. If we overlap the Acts model of prayer, which breaks down into those components, this would cover pretty much the adoration and thanksgiving parts. Let's take a closer look at the God-centered portion. First, Jesus addresses our relationship to God. He is our Father in heaven. We hear this all the time and take it for granted, but in that day, this was a striking contrast to the commonly accepted way to access the Lord. The expression flew in the face of the religious leader's fearful legal distancing and created a secure, familial belonging accessible by being God's child. Father can even sound formal to us these days. We would hear this today more succinctly as Daddy. That word certainly brings us into a closer understanding of a relationship to Him. Of course, to be in the family, you need to be a son. As Galatians 3.26 says, For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. Second, Jesus addresses our reverence toward God. Hallowed be your name.

This is reverence for God's name, His character, attitudes, attributes, actions, and holiness. This is pure worship. Worship is the adoring contemplation of God as He has revealed Himself in Christ in the Scriptures. Thank you.

Adoration. This is also a petition to have his name be honored and to have that name be spread across the world. This is a challenge to total commitment to his holiness. If our outward form does not represent our inner condition, we fail to hallow his name. To put it bluntly, if you say you are a Christ follower and you are a Christian, you need to behave like a Christian. There are many examples in the Old Testament of the Israelites causing discredit to the name of the In Romans 2, 23-24, Paul says, You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law. For it is written, The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you. Okay, so we've covered briefly relationship, reverence, and then thirdly, Jesus addresses our resignation before God. Your kingdom come, your will be done. I think I get to the other part here too. Yeah. Okay. God's kingdom is, as in Colossians 1.13 states, for he rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son. The kingdom is anywhere that Christ rules. We must be resigned to give full allegiance to God and his will. We are to pray for God's kingdom to reign in the hearts of men and for Jesus' swift return, as in Revelation 22.20. Even so, come Lord Jesus.

As to your will be done, which can be the more difficult portion of this understanding, I'm going to paraphrase. Okay, so I read a lot of great books when I.

Did my preparation for this. One of the books I'll show you here, it's, It's titled Prayer. But Timothy Keller wrote it. And everybody, I mean everybody almost, I've read several books entitled Prayer. They're all like, I am not an expert. I don't know hardly the first thing about it. But I'll try to do my best. I'll try to muddle along. They all admit to that. Anyways, in this book, he's paraphrasing comments from Martin Luther. Grant us the grace to bear willingly all sorts of sickness, poverty, disgrace, suffering, and adversity, and to recognize that in this your divine will is crucifying our will. Keller says, only if we trust God as Father can we ask for grace to bear our troubles with patience and grace. Jesus is not asking us to do anything he hasn't already done for us.

We don't pray deeply on this aspect at times because indeed we are afraid of what the Lord might ask of us. Keller summarizes what our attitudes should be like in this aspect. And he says this, Lord, I promise to obey your word, whether I like it or not. Secondly, I promise to accept everything that happens in my life, whether I like it or not. He says we need to align ourselves to the Father's will. And when we do, we will find deep rest there. So in essence, you're praying, Father, heal my perspective. Okay, so this is the first half of the prayer. And I think that.

We don't spend a lot of time here. It's very easy for us to just go to supplication, praying for ourselves or the needs of others. And I think that's a major reason why we have so many of these, like, oh, I don't have time. I don't see God for what He is. I'm distracted, not focused, all of these things, I'm willing to bet that most of our prayers focus on the second half. So one of the first reasons we do not pray is we do not, let's start with our Father, we do not know God according to the Bible, or we potentially have a dysfunctional relationship with Him. Meaning you are not in Christ or you are not abiding in Christ. So abiding in Christ is important. I mean, attitudinally, if we are abiding in Him, then here we're.

Moment by moment kind of confessing our sins and kind of staying in lockstep with the Spirit, listening to Him, reading, praying. So that's kind of what abiding is. If you abide in me, John 15, 7 says, if you abide in me, Jesus says, My words abide in you. Ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. And then, further in James 5.16, it states that, The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. I would contend that the word righteous here is referring to a practical righteousness that an abiding Christian possesses. So, you know, I'm not going to talk about, you know, fervency or effectual or that sort of thing, But.

First Excuse: Small View of God

If we are in good relationship to the Father, then we don't have anything held back to ask Him for things. So that's one practical aspect of this. Another big one, or I think probably the biggest one, probably the biggest one for me, is we don't pray because we don't adore God. And this is kind of a catchphrase I got from even leadership journey, adoring God. We have a very small view of God. We don't think much of Him or we do not think of Him. We are so easily distracted by other desires. We live in a time of instant gratification and our desires are fulfilled swiftly. I had something in my cart yesterday, amazon cart i don't mean to plug in these giant corporation things but and i'm like okay well and i press the button and it's gonna be here today like just like that you know and then we get impatient when oh it's not in stock or whatever, i mean that's this is this is the time we live in, so our desires are fulfilled swiftly, it's a jump rope in case you're wondering. That's what I ordered. That sounds silly. Okay.

Distractions are everywhere, and it's hard to tune them out. It's as if we have spiritual ADHD. So, trying to find, I mean, there's all sorts of biblical cures for this, but I kind of gravitated towards a C.S. Lewis quote that I'm sure you've heard. And this is the thing. It would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures fooling about with you name it. I said, put our phones here, because our phones are easy distractions. And we're half-hearted creatures fooling about with, like I said, you name it, when infinite joy is offered us. Like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by an offer of a holiday at the sea. We are too far easily pleased. Okay, so in this same vein, we are too busy to spend time in prayer. Many times when things are going good for us, we don't thank Him. And then we just all in, all in out forget Him. So if you adore someone, let's go back to adoration. If you adore someone, you want to spend time with them, right? I mean, and that's kind of what.

Maybe I'll embarrass myself, but that's okay. I just remember there being times where in studying this and reading these books, I wanted to wake up. I have this problem. I wake up early, right? But I woke up super early, and I'm like, if I wake up super early, then I could spend more time reading these books, or I could spend more time praying. I'm just like, what is going on in my head? If you adore someone, you spend time with them. And that's true. So we need to spend time with God, and prayer is a great way to do that. If you're not spending time adoring God in prayer, you're missing out. You're missing out, because it changes everything else. If there was a second thing I wanted you to get out of this besides prayer, just do it, than it is prayer. Spend time adoring God because it's super important. If you forgot how to adore someone, you need to repent. I mean, in the case of God, read through the letters to the churches in Revelation even. That was kind of what came to my mind is repent, do the first works again.

Remember what you love about that person or him. Remember what you love about God. The more time we spend in adoration, in prayer, the bigger and more real God becomes to us. And the bigger God becomes, the smaller our excuses and problems become. Our worship and adoration can be completely pure if we can adore God for who He is, outside of what He has done for us. It's when the goal of worshiping God becomes getting more of Him.

Pretty big deal. If you're having trouble with the adoration aspect of prayer, as I do, or even your life, a good place to start would be reading through the Psalms. There are many examples of adoration and prayer in the Psalms. So along with this first half, God cares more about the posture of our hearts when we approach Him. Keller says, prayer is the only way you can know yourself. Prayer is the only way you can see yourself through God. Prayer is the only way you can know God. And prayer is the only way you can change. So there's hope in that, in prayer, that God can change us. And we can see ourselves through His eyes, and He can change us. Is no intimacy where there is self-centeredness.

When we don't learn to pray privately, and we are just asking for things with very little adoration, it's about what we want from Him, right? Not about Him, it's about what we want from Him. And it comes and goes depending on what we're doing. It becomes about getting control and doing what we are doing to get what we need from Him. When our posture is reverent and our hearts are cleared of selfish motives, our prayers change. We can change.

Daily Bread and Confession

Okay, so let's move on to the second half, which is based on the needs of man, the second half of the Lord's Prayer. I will not spend a lot of time on this section because I think this is something that comes a little more intuitively to us. I would say that Many of the reasons of not praying in the second half are potentially more blockages, shall I say, than excuses. What I mean by that is reasons why God won't hear our prayers, or maybe from our end why we don't want to offer prayers because we feel we are unworthy.

The first is a request for provision. Give us this day our daily bread. This could also be the S in Acts, supplication. So, this is daily dependence of God. This is pouring out our requests to the Lord. I like this. This is a very moderate passage from Proverbs 30, which is great. It's a good balance. Proverbs 38 and 9, Give me neither poverty or riches. Feed me with the food that is my portion, that I not be full and deny you and say, Who is the Lord? Or that I not be in want and steal and profane the name of my God. So, moderation. I think it's easy for us to see, like, if God gives us a super abundance of things, how we could easily be trusting in that abundance of things instead of Him, instead of depending on Him. That kind of goes back to that, it's easier for a camel to enter the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven.

So here are some blockages, I guess, as we're calling it relating to the provision portion of the prayer. We are content and comfortable, and so we don't ask for things. We're quietly confident that time, money, and talent are all we need to overcome. James 4.3, we are selfish. You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions. Or, we are impatient. Are conditioned to get things, next day prime delivery instead of waiting on the Lord. So suffice it to say, God takes care of us and we should be thankful for what He gives us. We should be thankful for.

The abilities He gives us to make a living, to go to a grocery store, to purchase the things that we need to put on the table. We should be thankful for all of those things. It kind of like, I know it escapes me just to take for granted like, oh, there's food in the fridge. You know, we have lots of food in the fridge. But God provides all of that. And if we don't recognize that, that's, it gets down to like, you know, almost, I'd say it is a kind of a sinful issue to not be thankful for what God has provided. Okay, the second part of the prayer is a request for pardon. This would be the C in Acts, confession. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Jesus clearly links our relationship with God with our relationship with others. I may not read some of these passages for sake of time here, but here are some blocks. Unconfessed sin, Psalm 66, 18. If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.", sorts of passages on that. So, unconfessed sin is an issue. Unforgiveness, we hold unforgiveness.

In the passage where in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6, You forgive others for their transgressions, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you." And then he goes on to state the negative, if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions. And I'm not saying this as in, I don't think Jesus is seeing it as an ultimate condemnation, But I think the truth is, understanding how much God has forgiven us, if you truly understand how much God has forgiven us, then that should pour out to other people. So, another block in this pardon, where it says, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Strained relationships with those close to us, spouses especially. So in 3 Peter 7, I think.

The—careful here— live with your husband, live with your wives in an understanding way that your prayers not be hindered. I think that's the verse. So fortunately, time doesn't allow me to go much further into that. Suffice it to say, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all righteousness, 1 John 1.9.

Protection From Temptation

Third, we have requests for protection. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

God cannot be tempted with evil, nor does he tempt any man. We are praying to not be permitted to be lured into temptation. So, we have an adversary. So we are, okay, so we are easily tempted. That is a known. So we're just praying to, you know, God doesn't take away our desires. He can change them, and we—he does—, Temptation has taken hold of you except that which is common to man. But God is faithful and he provides a way out. We just have to take it. Okay? Paraphrase of 1 Corinthians 10.13. We have an adversary of the devil. And this is a big deal. And, you know, we could talk about this a lot. But he's out there and he's trying to frustrate us from praying. And then there's things we just don't understand that we can't see. Things that are unseen to us. Spiritual warfare. So we need to pray against those things.

Prayer Holds Us Together

Okay, I'm going to run through these last couple things here. Okay, this is the important stuff. Just do it. Adore God. Prayer is a key to growing in our Christian lives. Weak prayer lives lead to weak Christians.

Use a passage that we all know well, Ephesians 6, 10 through 20, where it talks about the armor of God. This might be where I close as I try to stay on time. We know this passage as we have all learned the armor of God, but do you realize what holds it all together? As Keller succinctly says in his book, Prayer, Paul comes out of the metaphor and says, and pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord's people. Many interpreters try to list prayer as one of the items in the armor, along with truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation, and the Word of God. That won't work, however, because every other item is likened to something like a helmet, a sword, or a breastplate. When he comes to the end, he just says, pray, pray, pray, Pray, pray in the Spirit, pray with alertness, pray all kinds of ways, pray all the time. You can't get more basic than this. Prayer is the way that all things we believe in and that Christ has won for us actually become our strength. Prayer is the way that truth is worked into your hearts to create new instincts, reflexes, and dispositions.

It's not mine, but I find it's so true. I will say quickly, yeah. These are my thoughts in comparison. I'd like to offer a few words on Bible reading and prayer as essentials to spiritual growth. They are both important. It is easy to check a box on a reading plan, but prayer is easy to give up on. Prayer, however, should be a non-negotiable. As Martin Luther said, To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing. We are so apt to go to a Bible study and learn the Bible, but we are less likely to go to a prayer meeting. Prayer is what holds all of this knowledge together. We are building a wall and knowing Scripture. If building a wall and knowing Scripture is like having bricks, prayer is what holds everything together. It is the mortar, the grout, even the paint. If we don't pray, all we have to offer is bricks or a wall that easily falls over.

That's all we have time for. I was close to the end. I hope this has been helpful for you. Let me just summarize. Prayer is important. Prayer, just do it. Prayer, adore God. So let's close in prayer quickly. Father, we're thankful for this time. I pray that you could just remind us, Lord, instill in our hearts that we need to communicate with you and to talk with you, God, and just show us how to pray, Lord, and help us to pray. That we may grow internally, individually, Lord, and as a church through the mighty power of prayer. We pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen.