Prayer is Expected
I want to talk to you this week about prayer. Somebody once said that “A family without prayer is like a house without a roof—exposed to every wind that blows, and every storm that rages.” I think this is so true – and I wonder if you perhaps need to begin praying more consistently.
Jesus Was a Pray-er
Christians, by definition, are people of prayer. Jesus is our main example here. How he prayed!!
Luke 4 begins with Jesus going out into the desert to fast and pray, preparing for His ministry. Later in the same chapter, people have spent all day swarming around Jesus looking for healing, and we read that Jesus went out to a solitary place (4:42). There’s no doubt that his quiet alone time was spent in prayer, because we see this soon again in Luke 6:12, Jesus ‘goes out to a mountainside to pray and spent the night praying to God’, and then in the morning chooses his 12 disciples.
Luke 9:29 sees Jesus ‘praying in private’, and in Luke 11 we read “One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray”. He even spoke about how he prayed for others: “I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail.” (Luke 22:32 NIV11) And later in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night of his arrest, we read how “He withdrew about a stone’s throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed.”
Jesus’ Followers Prayers
The bottom line is that Jesus was a person of prayer! In all situations he prayed. And the disciples followed suit. The book of Acts records that just as Jesus prayed, the disciples now prayed! “They all joined together constantly in prayer” (Acts 1:14 NIV11) And the famous verse describing the early church in Acts 2 says “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” (Acts 2:42 NIV11)
I could go on through each of the letters of Paul, Peter, and the other writers and show you more of this stuff but I think you get the point: the people of Jesus follow His example by being devoted to prayer. It’s expected.
Let me ask us a burning question today: are we people who others expect to pray? Or would prayer coming from our mouths seem strange to the people who know us?
Our Call to Prayer
Sadly many of us shy away from prayer. Maybe we just don’t know where to start. Maybe we’re embarrassed. Maybe we hear the professionals – the people who do it in church – and feel as if we don’t match up and so we don’t pray out loud ever because we feel we’d be inferior.
I think we should be praying so much that it is just natural to us. I think our homes should be so filled with prayer that for us to stop and pray together about something shouldn’t be weird, but normal.
I think we the people of Jesus should we so prayerful that we don’t mind praying with other people around, in public places, out loud.
Prayer is expected not just of the clergy!!! But of every child of God.
Be a person of prayer. If you’re a follower of Jesus, prayer must be at the centre of your life.
