Main Idea: Balancing the pattern of our prayer is as vital as the frequency of our prayer.

Introduction: Two summers ago our family spent a wonderful week of vacation in Keystone, Colorado. One evening in the small town square near where we were staying a juggler performed for those who gathered in the cool summer air. I was amazed by the objects that he was able to keep in the air all at once. My amazement and fascination is because I don’t feel I could ever do that.

Michael Moscher, who is a professional juggler, said, "Anyone can learn to juggle. It’s about breaking down complex patterns and maneuvers into simple tasks. Juggling is a system of tosses and throws, of different patterns that once broken down, understood and mastered, can be put together to create something magical." (The Life @ Work Journal, p. 42, Vol. 3. No. 6)

You and I may have come to think about prayer as something that we will never be able to do effectively. We imagine that we must be eloquent or articulate in the words we say. We hear someone else pray or listen to these messages on prayer and believe it is not possible. So we don’t pray or when we do it’s little more than the figurative "Hail Mary" at the buzzer. We may begin to feel guilty because our praying is so one-dimensional – "It’s all about me."

Yet anyone can learn to pray. Praying effectively is about breaking down the elements of prayer and combining them into a balanced pattern that can be utilized to communicate with God. We may think we are doing fine when it comes to a pattern of balanced prayer, but it means something more when God would say the same thing. What would God say about the pattern of your praying?

Anyone can learn to pray. What I want to give you today is another piece of practical instruction. Last week we talked about how we need to pray like Jesus—regularly, privately, sincerely and specifically. You may be struggling with what to actually say in order for your prayer to be more than, "I need…." How can I pray with a pattern for balanced prayer?

Perhaps this is your simple prayer:

Dear Jesus, how desperately I need to learn to pray. And yet when I am honest, I know that I often do not even want to pray.

In your name and for your sake, I pray. –Amen. (Prayer, p. 15, Richard J. Foster)

Psalm 104:1-4 says, "Praise the Lord, I tell myself; O Lord my God, how great you are! You are robed with honor and with majesty; you are dressed in a robe of light. You stretch out the starry curtain of the heavens; you lat out the rafters of your home in the rain clouds. You make the clouds your chariots; you ride upon the wings of the wind. The winds are your messengers; flames of fire are your servants." The writer of this psalm is absolutely overwhelmed inwardly by contemplating how great God is. This psalm particularly describes God as he relates to his creation. He describes the stars that span the universe as God’s clothing and curtain. The clouds are the roof of his dwelling as well as the wind his chariot and messenger. What you hear is the reflection of someone’s heart just telling God how great he is. Telling God how great He is is what we call adoration.

Why is it important that when I pray I begin by adoring God, telling him how great he is? The reason is because when I participate in adoring God first it defines the significance of everything else. If I realize that there is nothing that God doesn’t know then that defines how I feel about what I do not know. If I tell God that there is nothing that is capable of constraining His power then that defines my confidence in his ability. If I tell God just how good he is then I understand the character of the one to whom I am praying. When I tell God how great he is first then that puts everything else I will say to him in a different focus.

When we adore God first, we affirm His character. Where can the words come from? The psalms, hymnal, CD’s creation are all tools to kick-start our adoration. We also are preparing our hearts to enter into a spirit or attitude of prayer. There is something powerfully transforming when we get our minds and our mouth telling God how great He is. It begins to change the direction of our soul. When we adore God first we are participating in the purest form of worship because we are telling God just how worthy and valuable He is.

Some weeks ago I was leaving the hospital just as the sun was going down in the west. I was concerned about one of our church members who was battling the most severe diagnosis. As my heart was particularly heavy I happened to look up and saw the orange rays of the sun breaking through the gray clouds. My heart instantly began to sing, "O Lord my God, how I in awesome wonder consider all the worlds thy hands have made. I see the stars. I hear the rolling thunder, Thy power throughout the universe displayed. Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee, How great Thou art." (How Great Thou Art). That adoration defined the significance of everything else. That is where prayer begins:

II. When we are aware of God’s greatness we see more clearly and seriously our own sinfulness. This is why the next part of the pattern of balanced prayer is confession. (Psalm 51:1-4)

Psalm 51 is David’s admission to God of his sin of adultery with Bathsheba. Second Samuel II records David’s adultery and his plan to try to conceal it. However, God would bring a prophet named Nathan to confront David with the truth. The words of this psalm are his expression of that confession. He said, "Have mercy on me, O God, because of your unfailing love. Because of your great compassion, blot out the stain of my sins. Wash me clean from my guilt. Purify me from my sin. For I recognize my shameful deeds—they haunt me day and night. Against you, and you alone, have I sinned; I have done what is evil in your sight. You will be proved right in what you say, and your judgment against me is just"

Did you hear how David recognized the greatness of God’s love and compassion and how he saw himself in light of that? Here is no trying to define his sin as a "misstep" or a "failure of judgment" or a moral lapse. He defines the actions as sin, accepts full responsibility, describes them as shameful and places himself in the "crosshairs" for God’s punishment. What you see is that confession is admitting to God mentally, morally and emotionally that what he knows about us is true.

Why is this so important? Because we are people who are so stubborn and prideful, refusing to admit we were wrong much less defining it as a sin in the eyes of God. We don’t understand that when we allow sin into our life that it disrupts our relationship with God, staining our conscience, deadening us to the feelings of his love and constricting our ability to communicate with Him. What God wants is, as David described, "a broken spirit…a broken and a repentant heart" (Psalm 51:17). When we willingly admit that what God says about us is true, then our relationship with Him is restored, our conscience is clear, His love is free to flow and I feel that once again we are communicating heart to heart.

I am not advising you to become guilty about things in an unhealthy, ruthless way; what I am saying is that our confession needs to be specific enough that we hear exactly what we know to be true. I didn’t "stretch the truth"—I lied. I didn’t express my concern—I gossiped. I wasn’t inspired by someone else’s ideas—I stole their notes. George Buttrick said that our confession "should set hooks into the facts." (Devotional Classics, p. 101, edited by Richard Foster and James Bryan Smith).

Tell God what he knows to be true. Let your tears of contrition flow. Then let His forgiveness wash them away.

The Psalms are absolutely filled with expressions of thanksgiving to God. "Enter His gates with thanksgiving. And His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him; bless His name. For the Lord is good; His lovingkindness is everlasting, and His faithfulness to all generations" (Psalm 100:4-5). "He helps me, and my heart is filled with joy. I burst out in songs of thanksgiving" (Psalm 28:7). "Give thanks to the Lord for He is good! His faithful love endures forever! (Psalm 107:1). This pattern of giving thanks following a time of confession is often the theme of many of our classic hymns and contemporary choruses. Charles Wesley wrote, "Amazing love! How can it be; That Thou, my God should die for me!" Mac Powell of the group Third Day writes, "I am, O Lord, filled with your love. You are, O God, my salvation. Guard my life and rescue me. My broken spirit shouts. My mended heart cries out!" ("My Hope Is You"—Mac Powell)

Why is this important? Because when you give thanks you are telling Him or showing Him just how dependent you are on Him. For what are we to give thanks? We can thank Him for prayers he has answered. We can also thank Him for the benefits He has given us. Those may be spiritual, like being amazed by His love. They could be relationships that are important to you. They should be for the material blessings God affords to us. Whatever it is that God has done stop and say thank you specifically.

One of the family stories Kathy and I mutually treasure relates to our children’s gratitude. One fall when we lived in Ft. Smith we went to the fair. The fair was a fairly large event and evidently in the minds of Jennifer and Amy was the closest thing to a trip to Disney World that they were going to get at that time. We left right after school, rode several rides, and then went to KFC for supper. Now Kathy and I still don’t know what that experience said to our girls but all the way home they just thanked us over and over. It may have been that for once I didn’t complain about spending the money. It made us feel awkward because we didn’t do anything extravagant to deserve such gratitude. It was one of those moments when you observed pure, unbounded gratitude for something very simple. And we have never forgotten. God loves to hear the voices of His children say, "Thank you. Thank you" for the benefits and blessings they receive.

"I love the Lord because he hears and answers my prayers. Because he bends down and listens, I will pray as long as I have breath! I believed in you, so I prayed, ‘I am deeply troubled, Lord’" (Psalm 116:1-2, 10).

The NLT just uses the word "prayers," but the word in Hebrew is one that describes someone who is destitute requesting favor from one who is wealthy. Paul uses this word in Philippians 4:6 "Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God." It is virtually the same concept of a person in great need seeking the meeting of that need from another’s great supply. This powerfully describes the attitude or even our posture as we pray. We are to come to God recognizing that alone we are destitute and have great needs. We come to Him because we recognize how absolutely capable and powerful He is to supply that need. This is the place where we specifically ask Him to supply and provide for the needs in our lives and the lives of others.

While, admittedly, this is where we most often allow our praying to get out of balance, still God commands us to come to Him to meet our needs. Jesus said to ask, seek and knock. James said that we are lacking because we are not asking. Defining our requests in prayer reminds us that there is no request that is too small, no request that is ignored, no request that is too big and no request that is too personal.

But do we come to God with our "want" list like a child informs their parents at Christmas? No, because if we are sincere about the request then we will want to be specific and caring, allowing the need to become part of our own souls. That’s why if we are ever going to grow in our praying then we will find ourselves praying for more and more areas of life than just our own. We will bring the needs of family, friends, church, community, nation, missions, crisis, culture and kingdom all before our God. I know Jesus said that the Father knows our needs before we ask. Yet as one writer has said, "Love loves to be told what it knows already…it wants to be asked for what it longs to give." (Prayer, p. 181) The prayer of supplication is the heart of the child telling the parent what they already know. It’s asking for help.

Conclusion: Do you remember the definition of juggling? "It’s about breaking down complex patterns and maneuvers into simple tasks." That’s what we’ve sought to do this morning because prayer can seem so complex that we give up or lose our focus. Anyone can learn to pray when you break down the elements of recognizing God’s greatness by adoring Him, admitting our sinfulness through confession, expressing our gratitude by thanksgiving and defining my helplessness in supplication. Understand there is no perfect balance in life nor is there perfect balance in prayer. These are only road signs to guide us in our journey of communicating with the God of all the universe. The goal is not to pray perfectly but to simply pray and pray simply. "Prayer is nothing more than an ongoing and growing love relationship with God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit." (Prayer, p. 13). Only one thing is required – love.

Sunday, February 25, 2001

Dr. Bruce Tippit, Pastor

First Baptist Church

Jonesboro, Arkansas

btippit@fbcjonesboro.org