Prayer As Conversation With God | Simple Steps to Start

TRANSCRIPT

When you think of the word prayer, what is the one word that comes to mind? Now I can, I'll share with you, ma, while you're doing that. When I first started praying, the first word that came to mind when I thought about prayer is dread. I. And you might say, why? And I'll tell you why. Because I didn't come from a Christian home.

I had a fair bit of baggage, a lot of brokenness, and that kind of, and I dreaded it because I thought, what is he going to require of me? What is he gonna take away from me? What's this gonna cost me? So at the start it was dread, but as. I've gone and I've gone on. Now it just feels like reunion. It like it, it feels now.

Every time I pray, it's like I'm meeting with my best friend that I haven't seen for a while, which is not true. I haven't seen, but it's like it's, it's that kind of feeling. So that's what it's for me. What have we got here? What do you go talk to? God? Heart, peace, personal worship. What do you think, Nita?

They're all over it. We don't need to preach transactional. The word cloud answers the question. Relationship, conversation. Yeah. Plead into session. Did you get what? Did you get what you need? Gratitude. Yeah. That's awesome. All right, well I'm gonna leave this with you there. I like to, um. Think, what are you thinking when we say a specific word around prayer?

I wonder if so one word can reveal so much about what we think about something. Uh, and especially when we have to get it down to one word. I think that that is challenging. So, um, God, relationship, conversation, uh, the biggest winners there, but friendship is there. I'm gonna talk about that today. Uh, communication, intimacy, solitude.

Yeah, so good. Thank you. Thanks for engaging with the Slido with me. I wonder if you've ever been in a one-sided friendship. You know where you show up, you listen, and you ask a lot of questions of someone, but the other person's not really interested. They're distracted and they're not really hearing you.

If you've ever been in a conversation like that, I think you know that it's pretty exhausting. I think it's tiring. I think sometimes prayer can feel like that. Uh, we are showing up, we are talking a lot, doing a lot of talking, maybe not doing a lot of listening to God, talking at God, asking him for a list of things.

And uh, for years I felt a bit like that, like prayer was a checklist of something that I should do because if I'm a Christ follower, prayer is one of the, um, spiritual disciplines, right? And you should do it. So for me it was sometimes like a ritual. I would pray before meals say grace. We should say grace before we eat and bless the food, bless the people that made it.

Uh, we might pray before we go to bed. We might pray at the start of the day or at the end of the day, but more as a ritual rather than a relationship. Uh, when I was a child, I, and some of you, if you've been raised in homes with faith in the center, your parents taught you rightly that you should pray.

Let's say grace. Let's pray for something. Uh, but it sort of builds into our lives that that is a ritual, something that we do at certain times. When I was a child, my parents, uh, had a prayer that we would say at bedtime and we said it every night and it was, now I lay me down to sleep. Does anyone know this one?

Yes. I pray the lord my soul to keep guard me Jesus through the night and wake me with the morning light. Amen. So before I even knew Jesus, I said that prayer. Uh, it was a rote thing. I knew it off by heart. I said it often without feeling. Um, that's what you did before you went to bed. Um, Kev, when I shared that with him, I ran through my message this week.

He had a different version of that prayer, his version, and it might give some insight into him. Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul keep. If I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. Kevin, every one of your generation knows that one. Oh my goodness. Did you go to bed thinking I might not wake up?

Yeah. Oh dear. Well, yeah, you didn't care 'cause God would take care of you. Oh my gosh. Okay. So I hadn't heard that version. I only knew my nice version. Um, this week I sent a message to some friends just asking, saying, I'm sharing on prayer this week, and could you share with me your experience of prayer and.

Surprisingly, or maybe not surprisingly, I got very similar answers from the people that I messaged. Uh, they all shared that there was a time in their life when prayer felt like a checklist, like a list of to-dos or something they should do. And then as their relationship with Jesus grew, prayer turned into more of a conversation.

And developed, uh, over time. And for me, I guess that's true as well. So for me, uh, I had, I had the early childhood of raised in a home with an awareness of God. And then in my teenage years, I. I had sort of a defining moment or a turning point when prayer became a more about a relationship than something I had to do.

So it was when I was in high school and uh, it was senior. I think I was grade 11 and I was in a Christian school environment, but I had a friend who was in a terrible car accident and he had made some bad choices and that ended him in hospital in intensive care and we thought he was not going to make it.

And at that moment as a, I would've been maybe 15 or 16-year-old, it was a harsh reality to, um, realize that he might not live. And my friends and I, we couldn't really do anything to fix it. He was in hospital, uh, his, we didn't know his family that well, but at that moment, God spoke to me about. Praying and I had never done anything like that before.

I wasn't really a leader. I was a shy kid at school. Uh, I wasn't. The one who was out the front, um, saying, follow me and join this and do that. I was not, uh, extroverted. I was the quiet one. But God really spoke to my heart about starting a prayer meeting at our school in, at lunchtime. So it wasn't super popular.

Um, people didn't want to come and pray in the lunchtime, but I spoke to a teacher and said, can I have a classroom to do this? Anyway, I did it in year 11, and the goal was to pray for Ricky who was in hospital. And we gathered probably a small group of us, maybe five or six friends, and we just prayed. We prayed, we pleaded with God.

We asked, uh, that he would heal Ricky. That he would be with Ricky. And at that moment, my prayer life changed from something I had to do to something that I wanted to do. Uh, we joined together. Our hearts were knit together for him. It was actually a journey of months. He was in hospital for the rest of that year.

And, uh. Then at some point we were allowed to go and visit him in the hospital. So that group of friends that prayed together at lunchtime for him on a Thursday afternoon, we had these, um, spare lessons where seniors finished early. Often people would go to the shops or head home early, but we got on a train and caught the train from Ipswich to Brisbane and went to the hospital to be with Ricky and to pray with him.

So. Prayer did something in our hearts that connected us to his need in that season. And for me it was a defining moment. And I was thinking this morning that I wonder what he would think. Um, he's no longer with us. Um, his injuries led to years of sort of rehabilitation and a really difficult life. But I do believe in the end that he did find Jesus.

And, um, the fact that I can share that his. Uh, circumstance put me on a new track of my own relationship with God, I think is also amazing. So I wonder if you have a story like that, like a story when prayer and God became a reality to you, uh, in your own life. It shifted for me and it changed everything.

As I said before, it went from being something I had to do to something that I wanted to do. And it was when I really realized that prayer is about a relationship. Yeah, so I think being real, uh, I could say that probably a lot of people struggle with prayer. So we think we need the right words. What are the right words to say?

We think it has to be long or meaningful. Uh, we get nervous to say prayers in front of someone. What if I say the wrong thing? Or maybe we think only holy people can do it. Someone with robes and that direct relationship with God. Um, but. Because of those difficulties or challenges, we just give up. We go, oh, that's too hard.

Prayer's not for me. Or, or we just say, I'm too busy for that. But prayer was never meant to be complicated or complex. As you said in your Slido at the start, prayer was meant to be a conversation. It's about making space. It's about connection, and it's about a conversation with Jesus. So prayer is supposed to be natural, just like breathing, just like we would breathe every day, like talking with a close friend.

And we discover this, if we look at the examples of the first Christians. So in the Book of Acts, the first century believers actually prayed. With deeply relational and deeply, they were deeply relational with God and deeply natural as well. So they didn't see prayer as a ritual. They understood that prayer was a daily conversation with the living God.

They prayed throughout the day spontaneously, but also at set times. If we look back on their practices, they prayed together in homes. In synagogues, uh, on the streets. They used everyday language when they were praying. They used words like Abba Father, which means daddy, God. So it was a deeply personal relationship that they had.

They prayed with raw honesty, rejoicing, crying, and wrestling with God. I was doing research into the different kinds of prayer. Uh, for this message. We could actually talk for five hours on this topic because there is so much, but there is, uh. All through scripture, there's different ways people prayed and the wrestling with God.

Prayer is a really good one. God actually welcomes our wrestling. He, he welcomes the big questions. He welcomes us when we are not sure, when we are unsure about our faith. He welcomes that. He asks us to talk to him. Have a conversation about it. Uh, Paul and Silas did this in the Book of Acts. Acts 16 verse 25.

It says about midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. They were in prison. Um, not rightly so. They were placed in prison. They weren't waiting for perfect circumstances to pray to God. They prayed in their suffering, but they also prayed with hope.

They weren't praying to check a box or say, this is what I had to do. They were praying because they knew God was with them and they could reach out to him. Speak to him just like they would a friend. It was the same when Jesus was at the cross. We recently had Easter and I was reading through some of those accounts, uh, leading up to the cross.

And when Jesus prays and he says, father, if it is your will, take this cup from me. He prays to God, uh, with a pleading and an honest heart that he did not wanna have to go through what he was facing. He knew he had to face at the cross. He reached out to God in a relational way. So prayer in the new covenant, in the new part of the Bible is not.

A ritual. It's not something that we have to tick off. It's actually highly relational. In John 15, verse 15, uh, he says, I no longer call you servants because a servant does not know his master's business. But instead, I have called you friends. So God wants us to approach as a friend. In the old covenant, they often had to have middlemen, people who stood in the middle of them and God to act on their behalf.

So priests would act as middlemen for, uh, people who believed in God, and they would go to the priest and share their need, and the priest would then pray. Uh, so they had to sacrifice for access to God, or they had to. Do certain rituals to become clean enough to approach the throne of God. Uh, this was all old covenant when Jesus came and died on the cross For us, that all changed.

We now have direct access to the Father and can speak directly to him. In Hebrews four, verse 16, it says, let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. We can come boldly to the father. To Jesus himself, not because we are worthy, but because Jesus is worthy and he paid that price for us so that we can have direct access to God.

Even before the new Covenant, before Jesus, uh, died and rose again, Moses, who was a one of the most significant leaders in the Bible, in the Old Testament, he was actually chosen by God to lead the Israelites out of slavery and into the Promised Land. So Moses had a unique relationship with God. Uh. He was, he had a deeply personal, uh, relationship with God that many people assume is only possible after the cross.

But in Exodus 33, verse 11, it says, the Lord would speak to Moses face to face as one who speaks to a friend. And that is an extraordinary statement. So Moses wasn't just a rule giver. Or a prophet. He was a friend of God. God, he spent time in God's presence. He had to climb a mountain to do so. He spent timing his presence through prayer.

He wrestled with God for decisions. If you look into the life of Moses and how he interacted with God, it's actually quite fascinating 'cause his prayers were not polished or religious. They were just raw and real and relational. But here's what's incredible is Moses had that amazing. Relationship with God.

And this was pre-loss. This came before Jesus. So this was before the Holy Spirit was poured out on all people before he could experience the Holy Spirit inside of him guiding and leading him. Um, he. If he could have that relationship with God, how much more is it possible for us now to have relationship with God?

Because we actually have the spirit of God available to us, uh, alive and living within us. So as followers under the new Covenant, we have access to something that Moses only. Caught a glimpse of, and that is the spirit of God living in us. John 14, verse 16, uh, says, and I will ask the father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and to be with you forever, and that is the spirit of truth.

The world cannot accept him because it neither knows him. Uh, or nor sees him, but you know him and he lives in you and will be with you. So that is the scripture about the Holy Spirit, um, being in our lives. And next week, um, pastor Kevs going to talk more about spirit led prayers. And how we can tap into that Holy Spirit in us to guide and lead us in our prayer life.

But the reality is we don't actually have to climb a mountain to be with God. Now, he's made his home in our hearts if we've accepted Him as our Lord and Savior. And we have received a spirit of adoption. So God has adopted us into his family and we are, uh, have that family relationship where we can reach out to God and say, Abba, father and Daddy, God, uh, share our heart with him.

And, uh, although we don't have to climb a mountain, maybe we have to do what's harder. And that is to sit at Jesus' feet. Especially in today's world where we are busy, there's a lot going on. It takes discipline to. Learn to abide in him and spend time with him sitting at Jesus' feet. We have to set aside other things and go and have an, uh, choose to have an intimate relationship with God.

Um, and we should allow Moses story to stir our hunger for that, not just for answered prayer, but for relationship with Jesus. Uh, if. He could walk in that kind of friendship with God, then we should be able to too. We should expect to and we should allow the Holy Spirit to guide and lead us into that. So prayer is an ongoing conversation.

You all agreed in the Slido that prayer was a relationship and a conversation, but it's maintaining contact with the one who saves our soul. It's having that direct line to Jesus. So one of our key verses for this series is one Thessalonians five, verse 16 to 18, and it says, rejoice always pray continually.

Give thanks in all circumstances for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. So the rejoice always part. I love when this scripture comes up in my devotions. I'm always writing it out in, I'm a bit visual, so I like to see it. So I'm writing it out in section. So rejoice. Always is first. Um, and then pray continually something I can do and give thanks in all circumstances.

So rejoice, pray and give thanks if that's something we can build into our prayer life as a daily, um, way of connecting. It doesn't actually mean, um, locking ourselves away all day. It means living with a constant awareness that God is with us. Paul and Silas did that in prison, uh, as they walked the streets.

Jesus did it when he was in just. Aware of God's presence with him every day. Uh, and that is what praying continually means. I wonder what it looks like with us to really have connection with him, uh, in that everyday relationship. So prayer isn't a one time event, it's an ongoing conversation that we're having with.

Jesus as a life lived with God and the people who shared their testimonies with me this week, um, I loved the parts where they talked about that prayer had been a season. Also, there'd been seasons when they prayed differently depending on the circumstances that they were in. And sometimes it's pleading with God.

Sometimes it was, uh, asking God for things. But other times, just being grateful and thankful for what God had done. Everyone connects differently. With God. And that's a good thing because prayer does not need to look the same for all of us. So there is some good news, um, because we all connect differently with God, we will all connect with him differently in relationships.

Some of us through worship, some of you love. The singing and praising, and that is your pathway. That's how you feel closest to God. You play worship music in the car. You are coming on Sundays because you like the singing bit and you wonder why is there not 40 minutes of that and 10 minutes of this so that, you know, you love that.

That's your pathway. Uh, and that. Can be prayerful and worshipful. Some of you love to be in nature and that helps you to feel closest to God. Uh, some of you need to walk on the beach, need to be out in nature, need to look at a sunset or a rainbow, and you realize at that moment that you have connection with God.

So that's a another pathway. Another pathway is with silence and solitude. So sitting quietly in God's presence is how you feel. Best connected to him. And that is a discipline for some people because, uh, you are not wired that way, but for people who are, they know that they need this and make space for it.

And then the other one, um, I identified was through scripture and journaling. So last week, pastor Kev talked about our soap devotions. Um, plan that we do here as a community and one of, uh, so soap. If you weren't here, I encourage you to go back and watch that teaching. It was a workshop style. It was quite different last week, but you would connect with it and really know how to soap when you're finished.

Um, but scripture, observation, application and prayer is the soap. Process and soap is not, and it's on the screen over here. Soap is not a law to follow. It's a spirit led invitation to experience Jesus in community. But the last, the last one, prayer. Often I get to the end of my soap and I filled a page and I have one line left and I'm like, I'll just do a quick prayer.

Um, Lord, help is usually my quick. My breath, prayer, the breath, the prayer I can say in a breath. Um, but prayer. I would encourage you in your soap devotions to really link that prayer component of your soap to asking God to show you how you can apply the application, what he has revealed to you that day.

Uh, and pray into that link, that prayer to the application that you have, um, through your soap devotions that day. Over the next three weeks, I wanna encourage you to make daily space to have a conversation with Jesus. So if you don't already, maybe that looks like a set prayer time where you can set aside time with him.

Maybe it looks like you starting, uh, some sort of a prayer journal. If that's not something that you do, maybe it looks like a note on your phone where you are writing down what you are praying for and asking God to answer. Um, maybe it is looking at different styles of prayer. So I said earlier about a breath prayer.

Simply, uh, that can mean a lot of things in our new age world that we live in. But the way I think of a breath prayer is something I can say in a breath as I go along my day and often it is, Lord help or, um, thank you Jesus, like thanking him for something. But it's something we can cultivate a practice of that.

Um. Being able to ask God, uh, for what we need in a breath. Our gratitude prayers are awesome for reframing our thinking around the circumstances that we're facing. If I'm in a dire circumstance or not feeling great, always I can look. To God for something I'm grateful for. And it will actually change how I feel that day because I'm changing my focus from the negative to the positive thing.

So gratitude is an awesome practice just to think of things you're grateful for. I use that in our family, uh, with my kids. They hate it. I'm, when they're cranky, I'm like, what are you grateful for? Tell me three things. And they're like, mom, but I, I'm like, no, it's actually it. It changes your state when you can go from being down in the dumps to what am I actually grateful for?

You know, I've got when I'm not happy about something I have to do at home or I think, oh, I wish someone else would clean this house, or things like that. Little things like just the life things, right? I can go, Lord, I thank you that I have a house to clean. Like it's just a change of um. Perspective, thank you that I get to clean my car because we own a car.

Like it's that sort of gratitude and that position, I guess. And that thinking is what I wanna build into my kids so that they, their mind goes to that instead of the whinging and complaining. 'cause we can all do the whinging and complaining. Um, and when your kids start saying to you, mom, what are you grateful for?

Then, you know, right. I'm doing too much whinging or nagging. What are you grateful for today? Uh, I have done things like written it on the mirror in the bathroom or left notes out, um, at the start of this term for school because we were quite. But one of my children was unhappy about going back to school.

I'm like, no, let's make a list of things that we are grateful for and we get to do this and let's, so just trying to build into them that idea of gratitude. That's a form of prayer and asking God to, uh, show us what other things we can be grateful for. Intercessory prayer is another area of. Prayer that we can spend time in now, that is where we take a need or a person that we're praying for and we intercede.

And that often requires time and dedicated time set aside where God talks to our heart about praying for that particular need, and we focus on it for me, and it might be different for everyone, I. Find that I think about something consistently. So it's in the back of my mind when I wake, I'm thinking about that person before I go to sleep.

I'm thinking about that person and I have learned in my own relationship with God that that means God wants me to pray for them. So it's a way of, uh, I think, oh, why am I fixating on that need? But that. That's how I've learn. God's talking to me about that. I need to actually pray for that situation. Not necessarily do anything about it, but I, my mind is always going back there.

My, uh, last week my cousin's husband passed away. He was young. It was early, um, in his life. He had three children. He knew Jesus, praise God. And he is with him now. But it is a hard situation and I have woken up every day since thinking about my cousin, and I know that means God wants me to pray into that.

I can't fix it. I can't change it. I can't solve it, but. This power in prayer, and I love that God. Is prompting me and I'm far away from there. Um, and I can't meet her physical needs in this season, but I can pray. And that is in what intercession is when we spend time focusing and praying. So ask God to show you what do you want me to pray for, Lord?

And he will, he'll bring to your mind things to pray for. Uh, I was speaking to, actually, Lynn this week popped in and we were talking about prayer and. Um, she said the same thing, that her prayer life has been a journey, and now when she hears an ambulance on the road, she stops and prays for the people that are in that ambulance.

You don't know them, but there's power in that. There's power in pausing for a moment and asking God to be with the people in that situation. Um, yeah. That's powerful. The acts, um. Form of prayer. I don't know if you've heard of that, but it is adoration confession, Thanksgiving and supplication. That helped me, uh, and.

It might sound strange to say prayer's not a ritual, it's a relationship. And then I'm giving you a way to pray. 'cause that feels like a ritual, right? But it's just a tool. It's a tool that helps us turn our prayers from a list of things we wanna ask God for, to remembering that we can spend time in prayer adoring him, being grateful for who he is, saying thank you Jesus.

Uh, and. Confessing, what are the things in our hearts that are not right? Asking forgiveness for our sins, for things that we've done wrong. Um, giving thanks to him for what he's done, and then supplication sharing or asking for our, the needs or the things that we need to be met also. Um, our prayers can be simple like Jesus.

Thank you that you are with me right now. Holy Spirit, what do you want me to notice today? Father, help me love this person the way that you do. You know, when you're in that difficult circumstance and you do not love that person, Lord, help me love that person. 'cause you love them. They're annoying me right now, but you know, that whole idea, um, I love the thank you God that you are with me right now.

That is something that I am always, um, mindful of. You know, just remembering that God is with you everywhere in every circumstance as you walk the day. He cares about the little things. He cares about the decisions at work. He cares about that difficult colleague. He cares about the big, he cares when you are in the doctor's appointment, receiving a diagnosis.

He cares about those things and he's actually with you and closer. Uh, the Bible talks about being closer than a friend, but he's a friend. He wants you to reach out and have a chat with him. Maybe it looks like praying while you're driving. Uh, maybe it looks like journaling your prayers or taking a prayer walk.

I haven't done much of this prayer walking. I think I did when my kids were babies in a carrier and I had to walk up and down the street at 10 o'clock at night to get them to go to sleep. I think I prayed a lot then. But a prayer walk is powerful. Imagine walking your neighborhood and praying for the people in there.

Pastor Kev does this regularly here. I'm giving away your secret. Now, it probably says to pray in secret, but he will come often on a Saturday when no one's here. And pray for all of you and pray for the people that will be here tomorrow. And pray that you will hear the words you need to hear to be able to draw closer to God in your discipleship journey.

Prayer, walking, going to a place and praying, um, is powerful and maybe prayer looks like just sitting and listening. Imagine if we all as a community made space for daily prayer that looked like this. Imagine the stories and the faith and the change that would happen if we oriented our hearts around this type of prayer.

We wouldn't be rushing through life on our own. We would be walking, breathing, and moving in constant conversation with him. And I was thinking about this in terms of a music bed for our life. So imagine if prayer wasn't just a few minutes that we grab in the morning, but the background music for our whole day.

And I had a slide, Audrey for that one. Um, I think if your computer's not crashing, but. I wanted to pause on it for a minute because it impacted me, and maybe it's just because I love music and that's probably one of my pathways. But just think about that. You think about a movie. Movies are not as powerful without a soundtrack, without a music bed.

Have you ever watched, um. Uh, I, in a previous life taught film and tv and one of the things that we did was look at films and look at music scores for films. And we watched the film to analyze the editing without the music, and then we watched it with the music and we looked at the power that music gives to the story.

So the power that. Our music background of prayer gives to our story of our life of every day. Uh, imagine if that was part of our life. Think about it as an underscore, as a music bed, as something that gives power to the story that we are living. I wonder what would change in your relationships and your confidence and what would change in your peace and your just sense of peace.

Uh, in God. Prayer is not a religious duty, but a friendship that we have with God, and I wondered if we could commit as a church to having that kind of personal prayer life that then spills out into the prayer life that we have with each other. It is maintaining contact with the one who saves our soul.

I'm gonna take a moment just to pray and then I'm going to get you to pray with me after that. Lord, I thank you that prayer is not about ritual or performance, but it's about friendship. Lord, I pray that you would teach us how to have a conversation with you that, uh, ends up to be like a music bed of our life.

Lord, help us to hear your voice and respond with hearts full of gratitude. Lord, we wanna make space for you in this season. And looking at prayer as a discipline. But Lord, I pray that you would help, uh, the prayers that we pray to change our hearts and impact our lives, and therefore impact the people who we are engaging with in our community.

We thank you for it in Jesus' name. At one point in scripture, and it's highlighted twice in the scriptures, is the disciples are confused and they say to Jesus, Lord, how should we pray? And Jesus taught them to pray like this. He said, our father in heaven. And he's beginning with relationship. He's calling Godfather.

So it starts there with relationship. Hallowed be your name. We honor God's Holiness and we worship him, uh, saying who God is. And then it says, your kingdom come, your will be done. So we align our hearts with his kingdom plan for our lives, his purposes, not just our own wants and needs. It says, give us this day our daily bread.

So we trust God for provision. We trust him for the things that we need in our lives. Forgive us our debts. So we ask forgiveness for sins. Uh, when I learned this prayer as a child, I learned, forgive us our sins. There are different ways of saying it, but Lord, forgive me for the things that I've done. So that's the confession part.

And lead us not into temptations. So we ask for guidance and protection from him. And then some versions of the scripture finish with, um, for yours is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen. Um, so that is the Lord's Prayer that some of you may know. So before I finish and before the team leads us in, um, a song, I wonder if you could stand with me and we could pray that prayer together.

So, let's pray together. Our Father in Heaven Hall, be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread, and forgive us our sins as we forgive those who've sinned against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For yours is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever.

Amen.