Prayer

Loved Matt's sermon on prayer a while back. Meant to post this earlier :)

Why Pray?

1. Daily act of humility and dependence on God "I cannot, You can. I do not know, You know."

2. Fellowship with God. God speaks to us through His Word and His Holy Spirit, we speak to God through prayer. This is called "relationship".

3. In prayer, God allows us to be involved in activities that are eternally important. We are involved in something much, much bigger than ourselves.

4. Prayer changes things

5. Means of confession

6. Prayer is a means to fighting sin. Prayer is a spirit driven activity which means when we’re praying we’re disconnecting from the sinful falleness of this world and we’re connecting to what is holy, right and good.

7. We’re commanded to. God has ordained that through prayer He would accomplish His purposes and so He has commanded to the individual life of the believer to pray and therefore fulfill His purposes.


Is God sovereign over all things or can we move Him by our prayers?
Yes
The problem is that we have a hard time believing both of these to be true and we’ll want to pick one and play it against the other.

Ephesians 1 is very clear that salvation belongs to God and that no man can be converted without Christ opening his heart. That the only way you believe and that you have the ability to believe is that if God opens your heart and your mind to understand the gospel, that He gets you out of darkness and into light – that’s the only way you believe.

If that’s true, then why preach? If preaching doesn’t open the hearts and minds of people but only the Holy Spirit does, then why share your faith with your neighbor? Why share your faith with your friends, family?

Because God’s appointed means to achieving His appointed purpose is the proclamation of the Word which means God said the means by which I’m going to accomplish this is the preaching, teaching and proclamation of the Word. So, He’s going to save men through the preaching/teaching of the Bible and through interpersonal relationships where the gospel is taught and lived out. The same is true about prayer.
Prayer becomes the means by which the purposes of God are accomplished. So that in this way prayer changes things.