#169 - "When You... Pray" (Part 1)

If you're not talking to God, don't pretend you have a real relationship with Him. You may be on your way to heaven, you may have come to know Christ as your Savior, but you don't have the kind of relationship that God wants. Welcome to the One Cry Podcast, a nationwide call for spiritual awakening. The goal, accelerating the movement of God through sharing revival truth, stories, and reports.

Well, hey, welcome to the OneCry podcast. We are honored that you'd give us some time. I'm Kyle Reno with the infamous Bill Eliff over here on the other side, the man, the myth, the legend. He said it last week, so true. We're surprised you're here. I mean, like that you'd give us some time. And what I hope that happens is you hear what God's done in our hearts, and we believe that he wants to do in our nation and revival and a real move of the Spirit.

So it's a privilege. I know that we started last week, Bill, this new four-part series, Win You. And we're really looking at Matthew 6 and in light of God's promise for, hey, live a life where you lay up treasures in heaven. Live a life that you're not finding yourself trying to grasp life and anxious about it. And if you read from the end conclusion into the beginning, he's given us like, hey, here's some ways to live. And when you do these things, it promises a life that matters.

So when you statements matter. So you got eight kids. I got five kids. We like talking about our kids. 13 total yeah so you mean you got some when you conclusions with your kids right like I mean you're gonna do this right you know like things you think so we have one I'm not gonna sell out my which one if you know my kids you probably this out and but we started noticing like you. Hey, is that toothpaste on there from yesterday?

Or is that, like, why is that one toothbrush just got this toothpaste that looks aged? You know, and so. Yeah, and it's hard. Yeah, it's hard. And so, and I asked my son, so you'll know it's not my daughter. Hey, you're brushing your teeth, right? Like you, you, you are. And he looked puzzled and I went, oh, no, you're not. You're really not.

And so it becomes that when you moment, like, all right, son, when you brush your teeth, like for at least a minute, all the teeth in your head, like I was assuming that this was, we'd already covered this ground, right?

But that assumption was wrong. Well, I think that Jesus is having one of those moments, you know, with his disciples and with us going like, hey, when you do this, when you do, right, you're going to do this. And I know that the Lord spoke to your heart specifically about these next two weeks, Bill, about just the nature of when you pray.

Well, yeah, you know, I always envision—, when Jesus says these, when you statements that like, he's got on some glasses and he, and he says, when you, and then he, and then he leans over his glasses and say, you are praying, right? When you, you are giving, right? I know you're doing it when you do this. So, and then he gives us though, just, just these unbelievable divine words that give us instruction.

Now, this is also this passage on prayer is also repeated in Luke when when the disciples came and said, Lord, teach us to pray. And this is the great Lord's Prayer. We call it the model prayer. But you know, the most fascinating thing about this passage to me, Kyle, is a lot of times we pick this up at verse 10, Matthew 6, 10, our father who art in heaven, but that's not where Jesus starts. In fact, the Lord's prayer has 60 words.

I've counted them in my Bible, 60 words from 10 to 15, verse 15, on the model prayer. But in verse 5, when he says, when you pray, till that Lord's Prayer begins, there's 128 words. So there's twice as many words from Jesus leading up to prayer than the words that actually tell us how to pray. So let me just mention two or three things, and then we'll talk about it, and then we're going to pray together. And first of all, he says, when you pray. Okay.

Now, what that means is we must pray. We must pray. There are 650 mentions of prayer in the Bible. Now, this Bible that I have in front of me has 1,000 pages. So just think about that. On 650 references in those 1,000 pages to prayer. So Jesus talks about this. The Father talks about this a lot. And the reason is, is because prayer is the way talking to God and letting him talk to you is the way you build a relationship.

You and I don't have any relationship if we don't talk to each other, right? We could travel in a car for 10 hours, but if we don't talk, we don't get to know each other. But if we talk, we get to know each other. So God says, look, this is the way we're going to have a relationship. And I want a personal daily relationship with you, God says. That's why I created you and I've called you and I've given you purpose.

And I've sent my son and I sent my spirit and I'm preparing a place in heaven so that we can have this relationship. But you've got to talk to me. You've got to talk to me. And let me just pause right here and just say, if you're not talking to God, don't pretend you have a real relationship with him. You may be on your way to heaven. You may have come to know Christ as your Savior, but you don't have the kind of relationship that God wants.

So when you pray, first of all, means we must pray. Secondly, we must enter in to his presence consciously in prayer. Now, these first verses... Uh, Jesus is very specific about this. He says, when you pray, don't pray like the hypocrites. They just want to be seen by men. Don't come in with fancy words. Uh, don't come in doubting because God knows what you need. Even before you ask him, uh, don't, don't come in here and use meaningless repetition, right?

So he tells us all these things about how we enter his presence.

All right, Torrey, I've shared this quote before in his little book, How to Pray. He says, most prayer, both public and private, is not really unto God. And I read that. I thought, what in the world is he talking about? And he goes on to say that we rush into the presence of God to lay our requests before him without even taking a moment to become aware of who we're talking to. And he says we must come and gain a conscious awareness of the presence of God.

And this can only be done by the spirit. So we rely upon him to help us get there. So to that end, he says in verse six, and here's where I want you to camp for a moment. He says, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door, and then pray to your father who's in secret. And your father will reward you for this. So I don't think he's talking about a literal closet.

I think he means this. I visualize it like this. There's a wall and a door, and we enter in literally into the throne room of heaven. We have a right to come in there because of Christ. We have gained access because of his blood, and we can come at any time boldly into the throne of grace to receive mercy and help. Even when you're most sinful is when you most need to be there because only he can clean you and fix you up and make things right.

So we enter into his presence and we shut the door on everything, everybody, all the thoughts of the day, other things. Sometimes when I'm praying in the mornings, I'll just keep my notebook handy there. I always have that. And if thoughts come to me about the day, I just jot them down so I could just forget it, right? I'm shutting the door on that because I'm about to have an audience with a king. I mean, just think about this. I'm about to go into the throne room of heaven

and talk to God just as a friend talks to a friend. What a privilege. And so we've got to consciously enter in. I've got a good friend, Nathan Lino. And we were ministering together overseas this summer to some missionaries. And one of the missionaries asked him, said, how do you how do you meet with the Lord in the mornings? And he said, and it just totally resonated because this was my experience also.

He said, well, I first take time to enter into his presence, to consciously become aware of the Lord. He had a little way that he did that through the Beatitudes. My way of doing that is Matthew 6, 6, of just opening the door, entering, and stepping into his presence. Maybe just worshiping him, singing, listening to some music, whatever it is that just takes me into the presence of God.

And then I go to listen to him through his word and then going to prayer and praying all of that, all of that in. So we must pray. When you pray, we must pray. When you pray, we must enter in consciously into the presence of God. That one truth revolutionized my praying more than anything else that I've ever done.

And then thirdly, we must pray in the spirit. Now, that's not directly addressed in this passage, but in several places. Think of, for instance, Ephesians 6, where he says, listen, we're in a battle against principalities and powers. And so you've got to be strong in the Lord and you've got to put on the full armor of God and you've got to stand. But then here's the battlefield and pray.

Pray, and he says, Ephesians 5.18, with all kinds of prayer, pray at all times in the spirit, with all perseverance for all the saints. There are four alls in that passage, but this little praise in the spirit, what does he mean by that? Is that some kind of weird, I've got to kind of have this strange mystical experience? I don't think that's what it is at all.

I think it means that I have to rely upon the Spirit to help me commune with the Father, just like I have to rely upon the Spirit to do anything. Without Him, I can do nothing, right? Let me just tell you real practically, just to give you an illustration. Administration, I was in a meeting the other day. It was a board meeting for a Christian college that I deeply love. And we were in this incredible moment. I won't describe it to you, but it was just a really neat moment.

And the president had asked me to pray. Well, I didn't want I want to get up there and impress everybody and try to show them I knew how to pray. What a stupid thing. And so here's what I did. I said, Holy Spirit, would you pray through me? Just pray through me. And I have to tell you, and I've had this experience many, many times, as I began to pray, the Lord put words in my mouth that voiced what was in all of our hearts.

And it was just this very special spiritual moment. And I believe God heard and will answer those prayers. I went and sat down and a guy said, man, that was an incredible prayer. And then I tried to think about what I had said and I didn't really know. I couldn't recall it. I think it was just the Lord said, look, I prayed that prayer. I don't want you to rehearse it because you'll get proud thinking you did that. There's something about learning to pray about your praying and ask the Holy

Spirit to pray through you. So we've got to pray.

We've got to enter into his presence when we pray. we've got to pray in the spirit letting the holy spirit help us pray sometimes with groanings too deep to be uttered and then one final thing kyle and that is we must understand the kinds of prayer he goes on and in verse 10 and following and says pray like this our father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name that's a prayer of adoration thy kingdom come thy will be done That's a prayer of aligning, alignment, I like to say.

We align ourselves with heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. We're praying about our daily provisions. Forgive us our sin as a prayer of confession and repentance. Lead us not in temptation. These are prayers of spiritual warfare. So different moments call for different kinds of prayer. And that's why in Ephesians 5, he says, or 6, he says, with all kinds of prayer. Prayers of intercession for people, prayers of supplication, prayers of grief that we pray, that we're just crying out to God.

All these different kinds of prayers. Listen, if you're going to become a master at anything, become a master at talking to God, because there's nothing more important than your communion with God.

And and kyle he's teaching us here in this passage when you pray and he just gives us i think honestly in this in these these uh 10 verses here i think he's giving us everything we need to know yeah about everything we need to know about about prayer it's worth studying isn't it amazing just this thought in my spirit even as you're sharing god has everything to gain by teaching us how to commune with God. Oh, man. Yeah, so this is why he's the hero. We never are.

You know, our prayer life's never the, man, look how great we pray. But instead, in humility, to approach this like, just like you said, Holy Spirit, pray through me. Just to even approach it, Lord, help me meet with you. Help me to distinguish the place, the time. And once I get there, know how to pray. And God's already said yes to that. Just to our listeners, just the engagement and pastors that are thinking about their local churches. To do everything we can to help

people believe that God wants to help you learn how to pray. Yeah, yeah. You know, I can't tell you. You know, Kyle, you know this because we serve together in a church, uh. Uh for years and we still do our staff met every week just to pray no other agenda no tactical no nothing it's i i've always felt like it was the most important meeting of our church, and and when our elders met for two hours every week the first hour was just the word of god and prayer.

And when I finally started thinking right about this, I would come to those meetings praying about those prayer times. And because I said, Lord, I don't want our staff to think that prayer is this boring, useless thing. So Father, would you just ignite this prayer time by your spirit. And, uh, you know, I've been through a million boring prayer meetings and I don't want to ever do it again.

I don't want to ever, and I don't have to, because just what you said, the father wants to meet with us more than we even want to meet with him. But we need to pray when we, when you pray, pray about it, pray about your prayer times and then enter in His presence and do it the way He tells us to do it.

He says that. I mean, what I love about this scripture is, and I totally agree, in these passages alone, you can learn everything you need to know to have a powerful, effective, life-changing, world-shaping prayer life. Because He has everything. God's not trying to hide this from us. He's saying, come this way. Let me teach you. And I remember, Bill, and we've all had those moments. And then I'm going to help lead our people to pray here that are listening.

But I've had those moments where I've personally walked away from times thinking, I mean, I just gave God some time, but I didn't really give God my attention. Wow. I checked the box here. And I'm just at this point in walking with the Lord, by God's grace, I recognize that more now, and I'm like, I don't want to do that. That's not good for me. It's sure not glorifying of God. There's just so much more. And I've been in those moments where I prayed with people.

I remember walking away, and this is on me. I'm not making this reference to the – but I had another pastor, and we served in close proximity together, and we decided to spend some time praying every week. And we spent an hour, and we talked a lot, and then we prayed some.

And then I walked away, and I thought, I don't think we ever one time engaged God. God wasn't even in the conversation. And if the Lord answered everything we asked, nothing would have changed. That's going to change. And it was just a convictional moment in me going like, I'm never going to do that again. Like, I don't want to. There's so much more. Well, if you don't consciously, this is why entering in is so important.

Yeah. If you don't consciously enter in. Yeah. And I just, I cannot stress that enough. Then you're just often just spouting off human initiated words. Yeah. But if you enter in and you look to him and, you know, Kyle, a lot of times now, as you mature a little bit in prayer, a lot of my praying is not asking him stuff. I mean, it's not telling him stuff or asking for stuff. It's asking him questions. Yeah, talking. Father, what do you want to be?

What do you want to do about this? What do you want me to do next? How should I feel about this? What should I say? and then listening. That's what a conversation is. It's a two-way street. And Rosalind Rinker said prayer is a conversation between two people who really love each other. Amen. Amen. Yeah, John Stott, when I heard years ago how he engaged the Lord each morning with a good morning, Lord.

Yeah. And I thought, oh, wow, that's the spirit. I can't wait for next week, Bill, even to just continue to take this thought and build upon it. So let's do this in a minute. Bill, why don't you help our people that are listening pray and ask, what adjustments again?

What is this call from God through the Scripture to enter into the secret place and pray? What things can we apply? And I think it's not just practices and practice helps. It's just catching the spirit of it you know exactly and that this is an invitation from God to come and see it so let's just do this it just take wherever you are driving down the road enter in consciously mm-hmm realize that the blood of Jesus Christ was spilled.

So that the veil would be torn through his resurrection, that we might even now, even now, enter into the throne room of grace and mercy to a secret place. Bill, won't you pray for just what's next for each one of us? Amen. Amen. So, Father, what a privilege to be in your presence. And, Lord, to be here with many people. Lord, we have people who listen literally all over the world.

And what a wonderful thing to think that we're all coming from India and from South America and from Atlanta, Georgia, and from Seattle, Washington, and we can all come into the throne of grace to receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. So, Father, I just want to pray. I just want to ask you one thing. Lord, would you teach us how to pray? Would you teach us how to enter in consciously?

Would you teach us how to become aware of your presence and be willing to take the time to just sit before you and wait on the Lord and listen to you? Would you teach us how to rely upon your spirit who lives within us to literally pray through us and help us in our praying? Lord, you promised promised that in Romans 8. And so, Lord, would you take us there? And.

Would you show us how, like you told us to, to pray all kinds of prayer all the time in the spirit with all perseverance for all the saints. And Lord, we want to tell you that we love you and we want to know you more and show us that the means for doing that is your word and prayer. That incredible combination of word driven, unceasing prayer. So we we ask you all that in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Well, again, honored that you'd give us some time.

If this has helped you, share it with somebody else. Just take a few moments and send a text or link or whatever it might be. And Kyle, let me remind people, on the OneCry.com website, there's some resources there. One of them is our little book on Simply Prayer. error. And we actually walk right through this passage in more detail. And so if the podcast today has stimulated something in your heart, you can go there and get that book.

You can get that book most places, Amazon, whatever, but you can get it on our OneCry website and Simply Prayer, I think it'll be a help to people. That's right. Awesome. Well, again, thank you for your time. Man, we look forward to next week, part two of this, really, about when you pray. Until then. Music.