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Sermons and messages from Pastor Jason White and others at Colonial Hills Baptist Church in Tyler, TX
Well, I heard a story this week about a pastor who actually decided to skip out on services one day so that he could go hunting. He wanted to do some bear hunting out in the woods, and so he did. He'd skipped out on Sunday services, and he grabbed his gun and all of his gear and took off out into the wilderness to go bear hunting. Well, there this one point he was on this kind of treacherous part of the trail, rounding this really sharp corner, and as he went right around the corner, he actually ran into a bear, and he lost his balance, and he actually fell over the side of the mountain, landed on this rock and he broke both of his legs. I mean, it was a horrible situation that the guy was in. But if that wasn't bad enough, he could see out of the corner of his eye that the bear that he had run into had followed him down the mountain and was now taking off charging at him. And so by instinct, he reached for his gun, only to realize that he had lost his gun as he was falling down the mountain and didn't have it. And so the only other thing that he could think to do was pray. And so he did. He just cried out to the Lord, please, Lord, I am so sorry for skipping church this Sunday. Please forgive me and grant me this one final request. Please, Lord, turn this bear that's charging me into a Christian. And as soon as he finished praying, the bear just came to this screeching halt. He fell to his knees. He clasped his paws together, and he began to pray right there at the pastor's feet. Dear Lord Jesus, please bless this food that I am about to receive
today. As we talk about spiritual disciplines and getting into their rhythms. We're talking about the rhythm of prayer. And for some of us, the only real time that we pray is right before a meal. We pray at these set times every time we sit down to do a meal, or maybe right before bedtime. But whatever it is, we really only pray at these certain times throughout the day, and for a lot of us, when we pray before a meal, we pray before bedtimes. It's the exact same words, we use, the exact same phrases, the same sentences. It's almost word for word, the same prayer every single time we sit down. Now, others of us don't necessarily use the same words or phrases, but, but for a lot of us, when we pray, when we're looking at our prayer life, we would have to characterize our prayer life as transactional praying. Transactional prayers. It's kind of like we're, we're doing business with God, right? I mean, we we talk to God about the stuff that we need, and we try to make deals with him, Lord, if you give me an A on this test, I promise I won't miss church on Sunday, right? Or if you excuse me, get this help me get this job promotion, then I will do X, Y and Z for you in this particular moment. And so we, we kind of make these, these deals with God whenever we're praying sometimes, and even if it's not necessarily making him deals and saying that we're going to do certain things for him, if he does certain things for us, we're at least asking for those things. I mean, if we're really looking at our prayer life, and what it mostly is it's just request that we're needing him to make, to make our lives better.
We feel like we're missing something. We're lacking something in our lives. I need that thing. I need this to happen in order to make me more fulfilled, make me more complete, to satisfy me in some way. So my prayer life is all about asking him to get me those things that I'm missing in that I need, and so that's the way a lot of us pray. Here's something else that we do when we pray. I don't know if you do it, but I've certainly heard other people do it. It seems like when some people pray, for some reason, their personality completely changes. They start using words that they don't ever use in real life, right? I mean, all of a sudden, like the King James, language becomes part of people's normal language, right? Oh, Thine Heavenly Father, majestic, holy one, right? We beseech thee in the name of Jesus and oh, please by thy presence, we pray that Your will be done within. I mean, it's just all of these things that we're adding on to it. And I just wonder sometimes if God is sitting up in heaven going, I don't even know who you are right now. I mean, I do know you, and I know the words you normally use, but you're not being you. Who do you think you have to turn into to pray to Me, but a lot of us, that's the way we feel like we've gotta pray. We've gotta use certain language like that because, I mean, listen, he's God, He's holy, he's all powerful. We need to respect him with our words and the way we say things and the things that we do and so man, it's just this lofty language because we feel like that's the way we have to approach God because of who he is and who we are standing before him, right? So let's talk about that. Let's talk about how we approach God and how that can affect the way that we talk to him when we pray. There's certainly times in Scripture when we see the holiness of God stand out in the fear and the respect that was demanded because of God being a holy God. I mean, in the Old Testament, we see a description of the temple and the tabernacle that was instructed and given to Moses. And we see the directions for the Holy of Holies. This, this innermost part of the temple, and this was to be the dwelling place of God. In this dwelling place of God, right here, there would have been a curtain, or there would have been a veil that was there to separate it from the other parts of the temple, because this is where God would come to dwell. This is where the presence of God would exist, and he is holy, and people are not they're sinners. And that veil needed to be there because of who God is and who we were in his presence. As a matter of fact, when God was given instructions to them about this and interactions in and around this particular area, God told Moses this in Leviticus, chapter 16, verse two, the Lord said to Moses, tell your brother, Aaron, that he is not to come whenever he chooses into the most holy place, this innermost part of the temple, behind the curtain in front of the Atonement Cover on the ark. Or else he will die. If you enter into that part, you go behind this curtain, you will surely die. I mean, that's a scary thing, right? You're going to be careful about the way that you approach God, if that is true. And they were careful. As a matter of fact, there was only one person who could enter into that holy, most holy place, the innermost part of that temple, and that was once a year, and this guy couldn't just peel back the curtain and walk in there and say, Yo, what's up? God, this is my one chance to kind of be in here with you thing. I mean, there were many things that he had to go through just to be able to enter in. And even when he did, I'm sure that he was shaking in his boots or his sandals or whatever he was wearing, right? I mean, this guy would have to wash himself the high priest, put on special clothing, gather incense, secure blood from a sacrificed animal. And when he was inside the Holy of Holies, he would burn incense. And he would burn incense to have this, this smoke out before him, to kind of cover his eyes from this direct view of God, or else, again, he was fearful that he would die. He would be sprinkling blood on the mercy seat and the ark to atone for his own sins, and then the sins of the people. And so, as you can see, there was so much involved just for one guy, once a year to go from this part of the temple into the most holy place of the temple, into the presence of God. What a fearful thing that must have been. And quite honestly, I feel like that's the way that most of us, or a lot of us, approach prayer, like again, there's this curtain here, there's the presence of God, and we better be super careful about walking up to the curtain right here and say just the right words and just kind of tiptoe in and around him to make sure that we don't make him mad at us and he's kind of proud of the way that we're talking to him. The only problem with this philosophy is that that curtain is no longer there in Matthew chapter 27 verses 50 and 51 when describing the events of Jesus being on the cross, Matthew says, And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment, the curtain from the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. Why? Why Why was the curtain torn in two? Well, because Jesus had making, had taken a one time or made a one time sacrifice for all the sins of all people, of all time on the cross to do away with them and our sin. Was the reason that that curtain needed to be there. Because the. The Holy God. A holy God cannot be in the presence of sin, and that's why we had to they had to be so careful about the way it is that they entered even one time a year. But now that that once for all, sacrifice was made, the curtain had come down, and as a result, we can now approach God in a different manner. The author of Hebrews refers to this. He says in chapter 10, verses 19 through 22 so dear brothers and sisters, we can boldly enter Heaven's most holy place, that innermost part of the tabernacle that we just talked about because of the blood of Jesus. By His death, Jesus opened a new and life giving way through the curtain into the most holy place. And since we have a great high priest who rules over God's house, he says, Let us go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts, fully trusting him. I think that last sentence that the author of Hebrews says and makes right here based on the finished work of Christ, to allow us to enter into God's presence even says a lot to us about prayer. We don't have to approach God as if we're talking to him through a veil, through a curtain that is still there. We don't have to walk in fear of him judging our prayers and we have don't have to walk around in fear of using certain words when we pray or try to impress him or use certain language or kind of show off whenever it is that we pray. Adam Weber, he's a pastor of a church, and wrote a simple little book called talking with God on prayer. And this isn't anything really profound, but I just think it's great to be reminded of this because of God's finished work on the cross through Jesus Christ to break down the temple. He says this in his book, talking again with God, you don't need to be so uptight and serious when you pray. Yes, of course, it's good to have a healthy reverence of and respect for God, but you don't have to be emotionless or somber. There's no need to practice our prayers before speaking them. God is abundantly loving and gracious. It isn't a sin to smile or laugh when we're speaking with God. We don't need to impress God. He's the one who actually wants to be friends with us, so just be you like the real you not some weird version of you. Don't try to sound all prim and proper. Don't use strange religious words. Don't worry about saying the wrong thing. Don't make it complicated, just talk with him. We can't mess it up. Jesus isn't looking for a show. He's looking he's not looking to be amazed by your words or impressed by your knowledge or your extravagant prayers. More than anything, he just wants to talk with us, the God of the universe who spoke things into existence, just wants to talk to you. And so when we talk about prayer, this spiritual discipline of prayer, what we're really talking about, what I want to talk about today, is getting into this rhythm of relational prayer. I think a lot of times when we think of spiritual discipline of prayer, we think about I need to get up super early before my day really starts, and I need to get alone, and I need to be super structured, and I need to have 15 to 20 minutes or 30 minutes of prayer where I go through a certain acronym of way of praying, or I get my list out and make sure I'm praying for all kinds of people, and I'm saying the certain words and doing all of these things. And listen, that's fine. You can certainly pray that way. The Holy Spirit, I think, will certainly lead us to get alone and to pray and sometimes spend longer times in prayer, and certainly pray for people. That's not a bad thing, right? But what I'm talking about is that when we think about that, for most of us, it still feels like the checklist. I need to get more disciplined in my prayer life when, when we think about that in our minds, we need to be still, we need to sit down, we need to do it in a structured way, and then we can check it off our list once we've done it that way, and we can feel better about the way that we did it. But what we're talking about is getting into a rhythm of prayer, not a spiritual discipline checklist. Remember, it's not the goal. The goal isn't the checklist. It's not just to do the spiritual the goal is intimacy, to experience the abundant life that we have in Christ. And if we're going to experience the intimate relationship we were created to have with Jesus, then we're going to have to get. To a rhythm of praying, actual relational prayers, where we relate to him. Relational prayers are where we just simply talk to Jesus and we listen to Jesus all throughout our day. We're not talking about a set time to pray. We're not talking about long, drawn out prayers again. There's times for those things, but what we're talking about is just thinking about praying and getting into a rhythm of talking to God all throughout our day. It really goes back to the thing that we've been talking about the last couple of weeks, with the rhythm of awareness, getting into this rhythm of being aware of Jesus's presence. He's omnipresent. He's with us all day long, everywhere we go, in every situation, in every circumstance that we will ever find ourselves in. And when we get into this rhythm of noticing and being aware of his presence and looking for him to speak to us through His personality, then it will lead us into relating with him in those moments, listening and hearing him, speak to us in those moments, and then talking to him in those particular moments. And it's through that that we begin to develop that intimacy we experience, the intimacy that we already have. Isn't that how most of your relationships work with people. It's through short, little interactions, sometimes long, but you're listening for what they have to say, and you're talking to them in moments, and then you enter into experiencing that relationship to gather. And so this is what we are talking about, learning to get into a rhythm of relational prayer all throughout our day, looking for those opportunities to relate to him and talk to him and listen to what he's saying. Well,
what does it look like? Let me give you three things to think about. Number one, let's keep it short again. I'm not saying that you can't pray long prayers. That's not what I'm saying. But what I'm saying is it that if you're going to experience really having a relationship with Jesus all throughout your day, you're going to have to learn to get into a rhythm of just praying short prayers at times. I'm talking a couple of minutes sometimes, or maybe even just a sentence or a phrase here and there can still be considered prayer. We all have these tasks that we have to do throughout the day, and sometimes those tasks that we're doing allow us to be able to pray. We can pray while we're doing certain tasks. If I'm driving down the road, I can pray for however long it is that I'm driving, if I'm mowing the yard, I can pray. If I'm vacuuming, I can pray, right? I mean, there's a number of different tasks that we can do that we can talk and relate to God. Now, there's a number of tasks that we perform throughout the day that don't allow us to really do that right? You're talking to a customer, you've got to be focused on them. You've got to be listening to what they're saying. You've got to use words to talk to them. It's kind of hard to be listening to God in that moment and talking to him in that moment, or you're writing an email, or you're doing these different things, but in between these tasks, you come up for air and you have listened for his voice, and you're able to talk to him and relate to him, or maybe you can even pause for a second in the middle of one of those task. It's just looking and listening, realizing that he's even there in those moments, in ways that you can relate to him, because he's there and he wants to be involved in whatever it is that you are doing, and in between the things that you are doing. And so there's these ways that we can have these short conversational prayers with God in the rhythms of our day, short sentences, short comments, short remarks to him. Other than keeping it short, let's keep it simple. This goes back to the King James language and lofty prayer language and these detailed things that we feel like we have to get in sometimes, that that's the only way to pray. The gap the curtain is down. We can approach the throne of God with confidence and in a different manner, and don't have to walk up and be kind of scared and nervous of him. Just keep your words simple something like, Jesus show me your love today. That's a prayer. That is a one sentence prayer, Jesus show me your love today. And honestly, that's a prayer that the apostle Paul was praying over the church at Ephesus. It's one of my favorite prayers in all of the Bible. Look at what Paul says to the church at Ephesus. He says, I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord's holy people, to grasp how wide, long, high and deep is. Love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. I mean, out of all the things that the apostle Paul could pray over and for these people, for the church, the one thing he says that he's praying for them is that they would begin to grasp how much they are loved by Jesus. Can you imagine that? I mean, we think that he would be praying for all the stuff they're supposed to be doing for Jesus. He goes, No, I'm praying that you'll just grasp how much Jesus loves you, and that you'll know how much he loves you. And if this is what the Apostle Paul was praying over and for the church, then maybe for you and I, the simplicity of the prayer should also just be and Jesus help me to grasp your love today. Show me your love today. And as he begins to show us his love and reveal it to us in a number of different ways, then what if we simply responded to him in those moments by saying,
Jesus,
I love you.
I love
you, Jesus. I
mean, that's what you say to people that you love. I mean, you look at your spouse every now and then and you tell them, I
love you.
And there's something inside you that emotionally comes up and stirs within you when you say that, when you enter into a relationship with your kids, and you're looking them in the eye and you're going, son, I love you, daughter, do you know how much I love you? And you get the goosebumps and you you feel it. It's an emotional thing. You say it to people that you love. How come we don't just say that to Jesus? I mean, I sometimes do, and I'm praying out loud and people and, you know, I'm just, it's it, honestly, it just becomes a phrase that sometimes I say, We love you, Jesus, Thanks for loving us. And then I just kind of move right on, as if there wasn't any emotion involved, and it's just something that I'm supposed to I'm supposed to say. But what if I paused moments throughout the day and just pictured Jesus
and said, Jesus? Do you know?
Do you know how much I love you?
I mean driving in the car, Jesus, I love you, walking down the halls at school. Jesus,
I love
you seeing
a memory come up on your phone in your picture, you're going, oh my gosh, Jesus, I Jesus, I love you. Something that makes you laugh and you're smiling, you just go, Oh my God, Jesus, I
love you. That was hilarious, right?
I mean, all of these different moments when you wake up and you smell coffee in the morning, Jesus, I love you. Can't wait to drink coffee and spend some time with you watching your kids play, and they're having so much fun watching your grandkids play, and
you're just like, Oh, Jesus, this is the best I just Oh, I just love you. Thank you. All these moments throughout our day you're listening to a worship song, him, Jesus, I
I love you. If the goal is intimacy, to live in the relationship that we have with him and and we know that Paul prayed these words that we would grasp His love, if we know that we're told to love God with all of our heart, mind, soul and strength, then why wouldn't we just say and get into a rhythm all day long.
Jesus, I love you, I love you.
Jesus, I love you.
I love you. Jesus,
I love you,
so we keep it simple,
we keep it short, we keep it simple. The third thing I want you to keep in mind is you just gotta keep it real. Gotta
keep it honest. We're
really gonna relate and experience this intimacy. Jesus,
I'm struggling.
I'm hurting. Jesus, I'm
anxious. Jesus, I'm
worried, I'm I'm depressed. Jesus, I'm sad, and I don't even know why I'm sad, but we're being honest. You're upset, Jesus, why? Why did you allow someone that I love to go through that? Jesus, why am I sick? Why does my mom have cancer? Why did you allow someone to die? I mean, just be real. Talk to him about those particular things. Jesus, I'm I'm really tempted to do something in this moment that I probably shouldn't be doing. Jesus. I just did the thing that I was
tempted to do, and I know I shouldn't do,
be honest, just be real. I mean, the Psalms are filled with David crying out to God with honesty. He can handle what it is that we have to say. And quite honestly, I think he wants us to be honest with him, and that helps develop the intimacy when you're honest with your spouse or a friend or your kids, and they're honest with you, it draws you in. You begin to experience the intimacy within that relationship. We become more and more aware when we're honest with God, and we realize that he's still so faithful to be there. I think that's what it's all about getting us into this rhythm of relational prayer to experience his his faithful and his intimate and trustworthy companionship. So this week, I just want to encourage you to get into this rhythm of praying relationally, this relational prayer, talking to Jesus all throughout your day. Talk to him as if he's right there doing whatever that you're doing in the middle of whatever it is that you're doing, because he is right there and in the middle of whatever you're doing. And keep it short. Keep it simple, keep it honest whenever you pray. This is the way we do relational prayer. Just tell him about your day, tell him about things that come up, ask him to get involved with the things that you're doing. And if you don't know what to say, then maybe just start with Jesus. I love you. Reveal your love to me. Show me who you want me to love today. Keep it simple,
keep it short.
Keep it honest. Matter of
fact, I want to give you a chance to do that just right now.