Prayer should be a way of life, not just a ritual, and it requires prioritizing time and concentration. The sermon emphasizes that true prayer involves setting aside quality time, especially the "first fruits" of one's day, rather than praying when exhausted or rushed. It highlights Jesus' example in Luke 5:15-16, showing how He made prayer a priority amidst a busy ministry, commencing, continuing, and counting on prayer. The message also stresses the importance of persistent, specific, and fervent prayer, contrasting it with unbiblical practices like prominent, pretentious, prolonged, or presumptuous praying, ultimately urging listeners to examine their prayer lives and make prayer a genuine priority proven by their use of time.
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Good morning. Happy Labor Day to each of you. Hope that you're enjoying the conference as much as I am. I'm certainly privileged to be able to minister here to you and I'm enjoying it very much. And I should mention that I don't want you to think that I'm some young northern whippersnapper coming down here and preaching at you because everything that I say is really first of all directed at myself. And if any of it applies to you, then that's from the Lord. And I'm certainly not preaching at you. I'm just sharing something that God has laid on my heart and has spoken to me about and something that I need to work on in my own life. It's interesting that if you were to look at Luke chapter eleven and verse one, you don't need to turn to it, but the disciples are speaking to Jesus and they said, Lord, teach us to pray.
Notice they did not say, Lord, teach us how to pray. They said, Lord, teach us to pray. And I submit that the reason they phrased it that way is because it wasn't so much that they wanted to learn the mechanics of prayer. It was that they saw a special relationship in Jesus Christ to the Father that they were missing. And in saying, Lord, teach us to pray, they were wanting to enter into that special relationship that Jesus had with the Father. They could see that with Jesus, prayer was a way of life. They could see that Jesus was always walking with the Spirit, and they wanted that for themselves. And so they said, Lord, teach us to pray, not teach us how to pray.
This morning we'd like to proceed to our third session, so if you still have your little blue booklet, you could proceed to session three. Please don't forget to look at those questions in between our meetings. Session number three, we move from... experiencing the power of prayer to exercising the priority of prayer. We'd like to talk this morning about prayer and our priorities and also prayer and our praying. That might sound like double talk, but I think when we get to it, we'll be able to explain. So session number three deals with exercising the priority of prayer. We've been talking right along about how prayer should be a way of life.
And we're going to proceed with that idea, but also talk a little bit about corporate prayers. But before we do, we need to bow in God's presence again, and we need to ask that He'll be with us this morning. We need to ask that I will be controlled and empowered by the Spirit of God, and we need to ask that our hearts would be open to the challenge of God's Word. And let's pray those things silently, please. Father, once again, we express our reliance on your spirit.
Once again, we ask that whatever is said and done will be done in his power to the glory of your Son, the Lord Jesus. And we pray, Father, that each of our hearts and minds would be open to be challenged as we examine our own prayer life. We pray these things in the holy and precious name of our Savior. Amen. We've been talking about the idea that if we abide in Jesus Christ and if we're totally controlled by the Spirit of God and if we're constantly seeking His kingship in our lives, that the result of that will be a powerful prayer life. We've talked about the importance of seeing prayer not as a ritual but as a relationship with the Holy Spirit and not as an activity but as a way of life.
Nevertheless, even though prayer should be a way of life with us, there are certain times when we need to actually set time aside and be in concentrated prayer. That as we go through our daily walk, whatever our job or our responsibility is, we are in attitude of prayer. We're praying without ceasing. It's a way of life. But nevertheless, the Lord would call us at certain times to come apart and to concentrate on prayer, to mold everything else out of our lives and just to be before Him. And in order to do that, we have to talk about priority. We can all say that prayer is an important part of our lives, but the way we use our time really tells the story, doesn't it?
We say that prayer is an important part of our life, but sometimes the way we use our time belies that fact. All of us can say that we have a lot of things to do. We're busy from time to time. We have a lot of responsibilities. I've noticed that even here at a retirement center, that everybody is hustling and bustling and doing their own responsibilities and the ladies in the kitchen and the ladies on the grounds and so on and so forth. And we all have things to do. We're all pinched for time sometimes. But you know, the things that are really important to us, we make time for them, don't we? I know in my own life that I could be going twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, in the ministry the Lord has given to us.
And I oftentimes complain about how little time I have, but I always seem to be able to make time for the things that I really want to do. And I need to challenge myself because if prayer is as important to me as I say it is, then I should be making time for concentrated prayer. I should be setting time apart daily when I'm just alone with the Lord and I'm spending an amount of time just in prayer. Now I remind you that as we go through our daily lives, that prayer is a relationship, prayer is a way of life. It should always be going on, but there needs to be time when we set time apart. Everything else is blocked out of our minds and we're totally before the Lord.
And I know as I look at my own life that there are things that I make time for before I make time for prayer. And that's really a question of priorities, isn't it? And the things that I would rather spend time doing or being involved in than praying really tells the story that I can talk about prayer being a priority in my life, but my use of time sort of shows that it's kind of low on the totem pole. A lot of us really don't have that much quality time that we spend laboring in prayer before the Lord. I really want to examine our lives this morning and see if powerful prayer is really a priority.
and to establish it as a priority not by what we say but by how we use our time. The second thing I've listed here is quality of concentration. It's not only the amount of time that we spend in prayer that's important, it's the quality of the time that we spend in prayer. There are many Christians who decide that their prayer time is right before they go to sleep and what they do is after a very busy day when they've been just exhausted, just as they're dozing off and their head is hitting the pillow, they have time for prayer. That's not quality time, is it? We can't concentrate when we're just about asleep.
And some Christians feel that their prayer life consists of saying, God bless everybody, amen, before they go to bed and saying grace before meals. But God wants our quality time in prayer. He wants us to spend the first fruits of our time in prayer. Not something that we pray squeezed in as we're taking a shower right before a meeting or squeezed in between our coffee and when we leave for our day's activities or squeezed in just as we fall off to sleep at night. But he wants us to pray quality time so that we're alert, so that we can concentrate. Now, I know that probably for you as well as for myself, one of the hardest things to do is to concentrate when we pray, isn't it?
our mind has a tendency to wander. And I have a cute little story that I'd like to read here that addresses this idea of the wandering mind. This is a true story. It says, a wandering mind has hindered the prayer life of many. John Wesley was once preaching in England about how few people had an adequate prayer life. After his sermon was over, a man came up to him and began to brag about his own prayer life. The Lord and I are close, he said. We can talk about anything. Wesley looked at him and said, Is that so? I bet you my horse that you cannot even pray for thirty minutes without your mind wandering. So the bet was made.
And right there in public, the man knelt down and began to pray aloud. He did well. For five minutes he prayed for forgiveness. For another ten minutes he prayed for all the missionaries around the world. Then he began to pray for more understanding. He was well into his prayers when he suddenly opened his eyes and said, by the way, Mr. Wesley, do I get the saddle along with the horse as well? A cute story that illustrates something that we've all been plagued by, I'm sure, and that is the difficulty in concentrating before the Lord in prayer. And if we set aside quality time, the first fruits of our time for the Lord, when we're alert and we're able to concentrate, I think we'll have a much better prayer experience.
I'd like to talk a little bit about the example of the Lord Jesus Christ. I'd like to have you open to Luke's Gospel chapter five. Luke's Gospel chapter five. Anytime we are trying to teach something from the Word of God, it behooves us to look at the example of the Lord Jesus. And just in a very brief way, we'll look at the example of the Lord Jesus as to how He concentrated on prayer as to how he used his time. Luke chapter five, verse fifteen and verse sixteen. But so much the more went there of fame abroad of him, and great multitudes came together to hear and to be healed by him of their infirmities.
And he withdrew himself into the wilderness and prayed. Here we find the Lord Jesus Christ. There was nobody that could possibly be busier than he was, could there be. He was swamped by the multitudes, people coming for teaching, people coming for healing. He certainly had more than enough that he could possibly do. And yet he got along with the Lord to pray, got along with the Father to pray, because prayer was a priority with the Lord Jesus. And taking quality, first fruits, time, Making the time to spend in prayer was one of the priorities of our Lord. And there are several things that we can notice about the Lord's life. First of all, His ministry commenced with prayer.
You'll find this in Luke chapter three, verse twenty-one. His ministry commenced with prayer. Secondly, His ministry continued with prayer. Mark chapter one, thirty-five through thirty-eight. Thirdly, His ministry counted upon prayer. Luke five, fifteen and sixteen, the verses that we've just read. And then his ministers, his disciples were chosen through prayer, Luke six, twelve through thirteen. His miracles were consummated by prayer, Matthew fourteen, twenty-three. His ministry on earth was concluded in prayer, Mark fourteen and Luke twenty-three and so on. And his ministry in heaven, right now, continues in prayer.
So we can see the premium that the Lord Jesus Christ puts on prayer. His ministry commenced with prayer. It continued with prayer and it counted upon prayer. His ministers were chosen through prayer. His miracles were consummated by prayer. His ministry on earth concluded in prayer and praise the Lord that right now His ministry in heaven continues in prayer. And so we see that prayer is a priority in the life of our Lord Jesus and it behooves us to follow His example. The third thing I've listed as we evaluate as individuals prayers and our priorities is the amount of time or the amount of energy and attention that we devote to it.
We can devote a lot of our physical and mental and emotional energy to a lot of different things. And where we expend that energy really shows our priorities, doesn't it? How much time or how much energy shall we say and attention do we spend on prayer as compared to the energy and attention we spend on things like our home or our responsibilities or our hobbies or our sports or our crafts or our personal needs or our personal problems or our gossip or whatever it is. We have many ways to spend our energy and our attention. The question is, is if prayer is really a priority in our lives, are we spending quality attention and quality energy in prayer?
My wife and I were invited to view some of the beautiful race horses one time up in Saratoga. We weren't there watching the races. We were invited to view these beautiful, magnificent creations of the Lord. And as we were viewing the horses, we saw people, all crowds of people hustling and bustling around and just literally pouring over the racing sheets so that they could more intelligently place their bets that day. And both of us were very saddened by it because we felt if those people had spent one-twentieth of the time in prayer or in studying the scripture that they did in studying the racing sheets, how much better their lives would be.
And the point that I want to make here is that people pour their attention and their energies into things like racing sheets or whatever it is. And you and I may pour our energies and attentions into things also. But we should be pouring our energy and our attention into prayer and into study of the Word of God. Now, I have also listed here prayer and our priorities as assemblies, as assemblies. Very important. We can look at an assembly. I have no idea what the situation here is at Park of the Palms, but I go to many different assemblies.
And you can usually tell if prayer is a priority in assembly by looking at the attendance at the weekly prayer meeting. There's really no substitute for strong corporate prayer. There's no substitute for coming together regularly. It's extremely important that we come together regularly as others and sisters in Christ to come before the Lord in prayer. and the regular prayer meeting that most assemblies have has probably produced more people with more excuses for not going to that meeting as I travel in different places. People have all kinds of excuses. I have something else to do. It's too far to drive. I can't afford the gas. I'm tired after dinner, after a day's work, whatever the situation might be.
There are any number of excuses. And I'm really reminded of the importance of it and the effect on someone's life. A couple years ago, my wife and I were invited an assembly where I was going to speak and we were put up with a local family. And as we walked into the family's home, we knew nothing about them. But as we walked into their home for the first time, there was something different about that home. It was just as if the Lord definitely lived in that home. There was something about that home and that family and the way things were that just radiated Christ. And you could just feel the presence of the Lord in that home. And that's the way a Christian home should be. And I said, there must be something special about this family because it struck both of us independently as soon as we walked through the door.
And as we got to know them a little better, we found out that in order for them to get to the assembly with which they were involved, that it was a forty mile drive. and we came to discover that this man never, ever missed a midweek prayer service. He would work all day at a very demanding construction job. He would come home and just barely have time to drive forty miles to the prayer meeting, stay for the prayer meeting, and get back late at night with another forty mile drive. You see, it was a priority in his life and he wasn't going to make any excuses even though he had a natural one there. And the point I want to make is it showed in the way his house was.
It showed in the way his family lived. You see, his dedication to prayer was an outgrowth of a spiritual life that radiated through his whole family, and two outsiders could see the difference the moment they walked through the door. It's so important that we meet corporately for prayer. When we were first called into full-time work several years ago, it was about five years ago, The Lord put us through a series of what I consider very serious trials, very hard tribulations. We had problems with our health, we had catastrophes in our home, we had problems with our cars and our appliances, we had health problems in an individual level. And one of the things that was probably the hardest for us to go through is our little girl, Tiffany, that many of you have seen, the little blonde girl.
She was very young at the time, only a year and a half or two years old, and she came very close to dying. She was in the hospital in isolation, and she was in pretty serious condition. We were scheduled for a prayer meeting one night when she was in the hospital, and we had a freak snowstorm. You don't have many of those down here, I'm sure, but when we have a snowstorm in New England, it's bad. We had a freak snowstorm and all the power was out and the streets, without exaggeration, the streets were piled this deep with a thick, heavy, slushy type material. And so we as the elders got together and we decided that the most prudent thing to do in light of the conditions and the light that there was no power and so on, the most prudent thing to do was to cancel the prayer meeting.
Well, the older women didn't go for that. and one of the older women that is so precious to us said to us that it would take a lot more than a little snow and a little slush and a little lack of power would take a lot more than that to call off a prayer meeting because they wanted to come and pray for Tiffany and they were determined that they were going to pray for our daughter and no weather was going to stop them and so these older women stomped through the slush that was up almost to their calves without light, without power and by candlelight We all prayed together. It was a priority and God raised up our daughter almost immediately in the next morning. She took a decided turn for the better.
The point I want to make is that for those older ladies, and they were example to those of us who were supposed to be the elders in the assembly, for those older ladies, prayer was a priority. And there was nothing that was going to stop them from praying. So it's very important that we have a really strong prayer life as a corporate unit, as an assembly. And we should be having regular prayer meetings and vigils. We should have prayer chains. We should have teaching on prayer. And I've listed the quality and frequency of results here. And what I want to say about that is... The quality and the frequency of the results that you see from your prayer life is an indicator of how strong that assembly really is.
If you're a strong assembly and if you're really devoted to the Lord and following the Lord and if prayer is a priority, you're going to see answer to prayer. God will answer prayer. And an indicator of the health of an assembly is are they seeing regular, frequent answers to prayer. I believe that two of the major indicators of the health and life and of assembly are, number one, are people being saved. Is the assembly reaching out and are people being saved? And number two, are they experiencing frequent answer to prayer? And it's then that we can see if our assemblies are healthy as we see God answering prayer and as we see people being saved.
Now, you might want to insert on your outlines there under... Assemblies, as assemblies, letter D and letter E. And letter D would be advantages and the importance of corporate prayer. I'd like to just list for you some of the advantages of corporate prayer. As we gather together as brothers and sisters in Christ, what are some of the advantages in being together? Well, number one, it enables us to pray with assurance. Matthew, eighteen, nineteen says that if two or more are agreed on something on earth, And the idea is that we can pray with assurance. If we're led by the Spirit and we agree on something, we can have great assurance as we come together.
Secondly, corporate prayer builds Christian fellowship, meaningful interaction. Thirdly, it expresses a scriptural truth, and that is the truth of the body. When we gather together in prayer, we're expressing the truth of Christ's body that we're all one in Him. Fourthly, it expresses sort of what I'll call a special presence of Christ. because Christ has promised that wherever two or three are gathered together in His name, there He is in the midst. Now we know that He's with us at all times in a special way. He does make that special promise that if we gather together by two or three or more, that He's there in our midst. And then, fifthly, it helps us to secure the blessing that God wants us to give.
You know, there's no telling how much we miss out on because we just refuse to gather together for prayer and really lay our burdens at the feet of the Lord. He wants to give us so many things. He wants us to experience so many things, and oftentimes we miss out. And letter E would be the marks of a true united prayer. If we have true united prayer in the Lord, there will be an agreement. There'll be a harmony amongst the brethren. It doesn't mean that we'll never have a disagreement, but it means that there'll be harmony and there'll be agreement and unity. And then there'll be a sure answer. God will answer our prayer and the mark of a true united prayer is God's answering in dramatic ways.
Okay, we want to move on then to prayer and our praying. Now that probably sounds like double talk to you. This is the second major portion of section three, and that letter B should be capitalized there in your outlines. That's a typographical error. You might ask, well, why is prayer and our praying listed under priorities? And the reason is, that we need to examine our prayers to see if they're the kind of prayer that God wants us to have. If prayer is really a priority in our lives, then our prayers will be certain ways. Sometimes I think it's very healthy for us to just listen to ourselves as we pray sometimes, because sometimes we pray in a way that's kind of nonsensical.
Many of you have heard of Laman Strauss. You've probably heard him speak. He has a book out called Sense and Nonsense About Prayer. Some of you may have read it. It's a very, very good book. One of the statements he makes is this. For almost half a century, I have been listening to my own prayers and to the prayers of others, and I am convinced that many of our prayers contain more nonsense than sense. And he has a lot of illustrations of prayers that he has actually heard here that you really wonder sometimes why people have given these prayers. Here's an example. It says, a tragic plane crash resulted in the death of all persons aboard.
I was at a conference in northern Pennsylvania at the time. The conference director called on a man to pray. He apparently wanted to pray for the families who survived those who had died in the crash. Unable to recall the location of the crash, he said, now this is his actual prayer. Lord, bless that plane crash out there and, well, Lord, you know where it is. You must have read it in the morning newspaper. Now, that's humorous, isn't it? But the tragedy is, is this was a mature Christian, and that was his actual prayer. Sometimes our prayers just don't make a whole lot of sense.
Sometimes we spend a lot of time telling the Lord things that he already knows, things that we find in his word. Sometimes we say things that simply do not make sense. And this book is loaded with those kinds of particular illustrations. There's another one in here. Well, I'll get to that in a little bit. But there's maybe a couple others that I'll read to you as we go along. But the point that is made here is that sometimes we don't listen to ourselves. and therefore our prayers really don't make a whole lot of sense sometimes. There are many humorous illustrations if we just had the time to go into them. But what I want to do in this section is sort of look at our praying and let's each have the courage and the honesty and the integrity to look at our own prayer lives and to consider the way we pray to see if we are guilty of any of these infractions.
Our prayer should be biblical. Our praying should be biblical. What does that mean? Well, the first thing I've listed there is constant. First Thessalonians five eighteen says that we should pray without ceasing. We've talked about this a little bit, that prayer should be a way of life, and that when we identify with the Lord Jesus and in His intercession, His constant intercession, we're entering into the idea of praying without ceasing. And so our prayer should be constant. And I think we've emphasized that enough. We'll move on to persistence. In Luke chapter eleven, verses five through ten, we are taught the importance of perseverance or persistence in prayer. Jesus teaches that we should persist in our asking.
Now that's a somewhat controversial parable, but I believe that that parable teaches that if persistence can eventually obtain help from an earthly human neighbor, How much more will persistence avail if we're going to a God who already wants to give? You see, the Lord is not unwilling. He wants to give. He teaches us persistence in prayer so that our faith will strengthen, so that our knowledge and experience in prayer will strengthen. It's not that He does not want to give, and He wants us to persist and persist and He finally gives in. That's not our God. Our God wants to give.
but He wants us to learn to pray and to persist in prayer. He wants us to pray thoroughly through a situation. I don't know about you, but sometimes I'm faced with a problem or a burden and I just pray about it once or twice and then I just sort of forget about it. But the Lord wants us to pray thoroughly through a given problem until He has given us clear direction. He wants us to have that relationship, to enter into the idea that The more we pray, the more we know about prayer. And the more we persist, the deeper our faith will be. And sometimes the Lord deliberately delays answers to our prayers, just so that our faith will increase, so that we'll know a little bit more about prayer.
You know, my mother, I shared with you a little bit my testimony the other night. My mother prayed fervently for eight years for me before I came to know the Lord. And she's still praying for me. In fact, she's praying for me right now. because whenever I have a speaking engagement I always tell her when the sessions are and I ask her to pray for me but she prayed for me for eight years before I came to the Lord so some of you have probably prayed even longer for some children or someone that you've known in your life the Lord wants us to persist in prayer not because he doesn't want to answer but because he wants to teach us more about faith and more about prayer and I think that's what that parable teaches and then in Luke There's another parable, and that's about the unrighteous judge.
And he finally responded to persistence. And I think the parable there is, is if an unrighteous judge will respond to persistence, how much more will we be blessed by persistence, by a Lord who is not only righteous, but also willing to give and willing to help? It's something that he wants to teach us in prayer. Now I know that Mark eleven twenty four also teaches that we are to believe as if we've already received. So you might say, well, how does this idea of persistence go along with this idea of having faith that things have already happened? And I believe that they do go together. They're in the same school, but they're sort of different lessons.
The Lord wants us to have the kind of faith where we immediately and directly say, yes, we've triumphed, we've experienced a victory. Thank you, Lord. And it's the kind of faith where we've already received the answer. But other times he wants to teach us about faith that it carries the load over a long period of time, that maybe the answer isn't going to be immediate. It's going to be somewhere down the line and we need to be strengthened through persistence. So I guess what I'm saying is, is that to some people at some times, faith is really persistent waiting. But to other people at other times, faith is that triumphant victory right away where we thank you, Lord, that it's happened already.
You see the difference. Sometimes the Lord grants our requests immediately and faith then is believing that it's happened and thanking him for it. but sometimes he delays the answer so that over the long haul our faith will be strengthened and our persistence will be built up. Then the Lord not only wants us to pray constantly and persistently but specifically, I believe this is hot in Philippians four, six through seven, where it says, let your requests be made known to God. Mark ten, fifty one, Luke eighteen, forty one. The story of the blind man. Remember the blind man and Jesus came along and Jesus had to say to the blind man, what is it that you would have me to do?
Jesus knew what the man wanted, didn't he? But he wanted that man to specifically express what his desire was. And so God wants us to pray specifically. And I think sometimes we fall down on that. Sometimes we just sort of give general prayers and we don't labor specifically for certain things that God wants us to pray for. God wants our prayers to be specific. You know, one of the most beautiful things about specific prayer is that it brings specific results. And that really increases the excitement. When we pray specifically for something and God grants it, how exciting it is to see that God answered that prayer precisely the way we asked.
My favorite illustration of that is something that happened to us and our family several years ago. We had just gone out on faith and we're living before the Lord on faith and it was a new experience to us and our son came to us and I don't know how old he was at the time, probably about five, five, six years old. something of this nature. And he said, Mom, I want a new sweatshirt and I want it to be blue and I don't want it to have a hood on it. It seemed like all the sweatshirts that he had had hoods on him. Pardon me. So he wanted a sweatshirt and he wanted it to be blue and he didn't want to have a hood on it. Well, we had just gone out on faith.
and we didn't have much in the way of money and we didn't feel that we could spend money on something like that and so we tried to explain to him that we were living for the Lord and that the Lord would have to provide our needs and that if he felt he needed that or he wanted that that he should pray about it and so his mother and in himself got down and they began to pray and Robbie prayed very specifically he prayed to the Lord that he wanted a blue sweatshirt without a hood And my wife was trying to explain to him that sometimes God doesn't answer prayer exactly the way we want it. So, you know, don't be too disappointed. And she was trying so that his bubble wouldn't be burst. And the very next day, we received from a family a bag of clothing.
They had given us a bag of clothing for our ministry. And as we were going through this bag of clothing, there was a blue sweatshirt without a hood, about halfway down in the back. And my wife was just aghast as she looked at this because this was such a specific answer to prayer. But my son, in his childlike face, said, oh, there's my sweatshirt. He had prayed specifically and God had answered specifically and what a blessing it was. And we've had many, many other specific answers to prayer and I'm sure you have too. The Lord wants us to pray specifically. And as he answers specifically, what a blessing it is. And then he wants us to pray fervently.
Now fervently comes from a Greek word which means to stretch it to its completeness, stretch it as far as it'll go. And the best illustration I can give you of that is the idea many of you have maybe seen on television you've seen a beautiful racehorse crossing the finish line in a photo finish and you see that magnificent animal in every single muscle in that animal's body is stretched to the limit and that's what fervent means it means stretch it to the limit and we should be praying fervently the best example I can give you of fervent prayer is Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane isn't that a precious story He sweat as it were a great drop of blood.
Fervent prayer, he labored, he stretched, he strained in prayer until it hurts. I wonder if you and I have really experienced that. I'm sure many of you have. And I have on a couple isolated occasions. I've experienced what it really means to strain in prayer, to stretch to the limit, to really labor before the Lord, perhaps in a small way as Jesus did in Gethsemane. Jesus set the example for praying fervently, and I don't know if we've really experienced that to any extent at all. Have we stretched? Have we labored? Have we pushed our prayers? I want to end this morning's session with talking about some unbiblical praying, and I've listed three there, and I'm going to talk about a fourth as well.
Prominent, pretentious, prolonged, and you can add the word presumptuous if you want, for a fourth one. We need to listen to our own prayers and we need to see if our prayers fall into any of these unbiblical examples that Jesus himself gave. In Matthew six, verse five, Jesus talked about prominent praying. He was talking about those who prayed in public to draw attention to themselves. He wasn't condemning public prayers, but he was condemning prayer that was offered in public for no other reason than to draw attention to ourselves. Perhaps you've witnessed individuals who have stood up in a public meeting and they've prayed and you can't judge their motives, but it would seem that their motive in praying was to show people how eloquent they are, to show people what great prayers they are, so that the attention would be drawn to them.
We really must watch that we never pray in order to draw attention to ourselves. And then in Matthew, twenty three, fourteen, we see pretentious prayers. And this is sort of the act of going through the motions of prayer when there's really sin in our life, putting on a false front, putting on a facade, if you will, a facade of holiness when we're sinful in our heart. And I know myself that sometimes I'm sad to say and I regret to say that I have prayed when I really shouldn't have because there was iniquity in my heart, but I've put on a facade because I've known the words to say. We have to be very careful that our hearts are pure before the Lord, before we pray.
Otherwise, we'll be praying with pretense or pretentious. And then we all know what prolonged prayer is. Long, long public prayer. You don't have to be long to get across the truth that God wants you to get across. There's nothing in Scripture that commends long prayers. The model prayer that Jesus gave his disciples is only sixty-six words long. Why do people pray for such a long period of time? Do they think it's godly? There's another illustration here that I'll read from Lehman Strauss that is kind of humorous along this example. It's talking about a man who was asked to say grace.
At mealtime, during a certain Bible conference I attended, the conference director called on a man to offer thanks for the food. That prayer led us on a journey from Egypt to Canaan, and when we finally reached Canaan, the hot food on the table had become cold. Incidentally, in the process, he had forgotten to thank God for the food. We've all experienced prolonged prayer, praying much longer than we need to pray, for whatever reason I don't know. I recall that two years ago I was at Greenwood Hills, Bible Conference in Pennsylvania, many of you are familiar with it. There are some godly, godly people that go to Greenwood Hills.
And we were having the evening men's prayer meeting. And one right after another, great men of God got up and stood and prayed. And they were beautiful prayers. Some of them were launched. They were beautiful prayers. Men that really had prayed in public for many, many years. And then a man got up to his feet. He had been saved about, I think about a week at the time. And with tears flowing down his face, he stood up to his feet after all these long, beautiful prayers. And he said, Lord, I just thank you for the privilege of being saved. And he sat down and all of us burst into tears. No flowery language, no long sentences.
He didn't know how to pray, did he? Oh, but he did because it came from right here. Oh, Lord, thank you for the privilege of being saved. That was what was on his life. You know, he taught us all a lot about prayer that day. The last thing I'll mention is presumptuous prayer. And that's praying with an attitude that God owes us an answer. Praying with an attitude that God owes us an answer right now the way we want. There's a big difference between faith and presumption, isn't there? So I just want to close this session with asking especially for myself, and maybe you'd like to ask for yourself too, that we're really careful about how we pray.
Is prayer a priority in our life? Do we show that by the time we spend and by the quality of attention and energy that we expend? And are our prayers biblical? Are they constant? and fervent and the other things that we discuss persistent and specific and are they sometimes prominent or pretentious or prolonged or presumptive the important thing is that prayer must come from our heart it must be led of the Holy Spirit maybe we should listen to ourselves sometime and make sure that prayer is the proper priority in our life and that we're praying in the Bible way Let's close in prayer.
Father, we thank you so much for your word. We thank you, Lord, for the time that you give each of us. Each of us are given twenty-four hours each day. Lord, we would pray that from now on, if it's not already true, that prayer would be a real priority in our lives. And that that priority would be proven by the way we spend our time. by the quality of time that we devote to it. And Lord, we pray that it would be the first fruits of our time, not what's left over. Father, make it a priority in our own individual lives and also in the lives of our assembly.
May prayer on an assembly-wide basis be the priority that you want it to be, and may we see real answers. Then, Lord, give each of us the courage to examine our own prayer lives next to the biblical guidelines and next to the example of the Lord Jesus. May our prayers be truly biblical. May they be constant and specific, persistent and fervent. And may we avoid the pitfalls of unbiblical prayer. Help us to monitor our prayer lives. Help us to pray only in the power of the Holy Spirit. For it is only then that our prayers will be pleasing in your sight. Lord, we thank you for the privilege of prayer. and for everything your word teaches us about it.
And may these things really show up in our lives in the weeks and months and years to come. We pray it in the holy and precious name of our Lord and Savior. Amen.