The Prayer of Giving Up Control
Prayer
Pastor Tom
September 28, 2008
We are continuing our series on prayer today. We started by looking at simple prayer. It involved recognizing God as God and we’re His creatures. We also learned we needed to embrace our dependent role as God’s children. Then we looked at confessional prayer because closeness to God, yields clarity in sin. As we grow in prayer, we realize prayer is not all about getting things from God. It’s about getting to know God. It’s about a love relationship with God. As we get to know our loving God, we discover we must come to Him when life overwhelms us. Jesus spoke His giving up control prayer in a desperate situation. It was hours before His arrest. . . the Last Supper is over; Judas has left to betray him; the full weight of what is about to happen hits Jesus. Sorrow and anguish overwhelm Him. Jesus faced a day where much suffering would be inflicted upon Him by sinners. But more fearsome was the wrath of God that would be poured out upon Him on the cross. Jesus knew it was coming. Yet His humanity recoiled in horror at it all. How would He gain the strength to stay and face His betrayer? How would He go to the cross knowing what awaited Him there? He shows us how He gave over control to His Father through his agonized prayer in Gethsemane. Today, we are going to learn the basics of the “giving up control prayer”
The Great Gift of Confessional Prayer
Prayer
Pastor Tom
September 14, 2008
Today we continue our series on prayer. Last week we looked at a simple prayer – humbling ourselves before God and embracing our role as His dependants. Today we’re going to look at a prayer that we don’t want to pray. In fact, if we were brought up with a version of Christianity focused on good feelings and prosperity, this prayer sounds depressing. But though we might not want to pray this prayer, we need to pray to this prayer because we are all sinners. Sin is any thought, word or action contrary to God’s law. When we sin, we offend the Holy God, grieve the Holy Spirit and experience a deep interruption in our relationship with God.
This does not mean we are no longer Christians. We are still God’s children. Our sin does not change the status of our relationship with God. But sin affects the state of our relationship with God. Instead of a relationship of harmony, closeness and oneness, we experience disharmony, distance and separation from our Loving God.
Simple Prayer to God Starts with Simple Hard to do Acts
Prayer
Pastor Tom
September 7, 2008
The primary purpose of prayer is to get to know God; to enter into love relationship with Him. When we look at prayer like that, it has the potential to transform our attitude towards prayer. I hope you discover this a lot sooner than I did. Though I’ve been a Christian for 37 years, I think its only in the last 10 to 12 years that I have gone deeper in prayer.
I now celebrate discoveries like prayer is the glorious means to communicate with the Almighty God of the Universe. It is one of the Christian’s greatest resource and source of deep comfort. Through prayer, God settles my spirit during turbulent times. Through prayer I know I am never alone day or night, I carry with me the gift of knowing that the Lord goes with me into every situation. So I invite you to enter into this series on prayer. My desire is not to motivate us to pray by guilt; “we should be praying more.” I believe God invites
us to deeper with Him through one of the greatest resources He has given.
Today, we’re going to look at how to start praying.