All Eyes on Jesus - Part 3

Wrapping up the third section of this blog series, where we’ve been focusing on Jesus’ teaching on prayer from Matthew 6 we come to some practical applications for prayer meetings to help coax people out of bondage to their fears of praying in front of others. In my experience as a pastor I’ve learned that there are some very simple changes we can make to our prayer meeting structures that make it a more welcoming and safe place for people who are uncomfortable with corporate prayer. In case you are just joining us now at the end of this series and are wondering were this is coming from, you should know that This is the last post in an 11 post series entitled “Becoming a People of Prayer.” You can Click here for a listing of previous posts in this series if you want to catch up on what you’ve missed.

Four suggestions for making corporate prayer less terrifying

1. Limit prayers to short requests – ask the questions:

The simplest way to make prayer less intimidating is by asking those people who have a tendency to wax eloquently for lengthy periods of time in prayer to keep their prayers succinct. It doesn’t impinge on the potency of the prayer and it might even help that person to be more focused in their prayer life. The easiest way to do that is to evaluate your prayers with the following questions

          “does this glorify God?”

          “does this edify the church?”

Is anything you’re saying glorifying to God; Either by the content of your praise, or the faith of your request? And does your praise or prayer edify the church in the same way? Is it beneficial for a corporate meeting or is it a “prayer closet” issue?

The reality is that not ALL prayer requests are meant for public airing. When I was in high school my youth group had a regular Sunday evening prayer meeting – it was actually pretty awesome that we would gather at my youth pastor’s house and 15 or more of us on a regular basis would have a prayer meeting together. On the outside there really isn’t much better that could have been happening in our youth group – but on the inside things weren’t as healthy as they appeared. I didn’t realize it at the time, and I don’t think my youth pastor (who was fairly young, himself) even was aware of it fully as it was happening, but our prayer meetings were slipping into gossip events and social posturing in the guise of selfless intercessory prayer. What do I mean? Well you would get people who would share details about the lives of other people for “prayer,” but they were details that they had no business sharing with the group, and often (sadly) they were about people that I don’t honestly believe in retrospect they really cared about – it was just an opportunity to share some juicy gossip in a sanctified setting. It was also an opportunity for social posturing by revealing to everyone else in the prayer meeting who you knew intimate or personal details about and flaunting your social connections. Now we were young and immature high school students, and even Paul tells us that when he was a child he walked, talked and acted like a child (1 Corinthians 13) but we need to demonstrate a maturity in our prayer meetings that proves that when we became men (or women as the case may be) that we put childish things behind us. Remember the heading for this section of the series is “All Eyes on Jesus,” what is our focus and intention in sharing a specific prayer request?

Another thing that I think is really unhealthy in a prayer meeting is the “unspoken request” or what is sometimes called a “private issue.” The idea behind this is that you really want prayer for some issue that you’re too embarrassed or unwilling to share with the group. Now before I go any further my position on this is not as ironclad as my other examples, and for sure there will be some who disagree with me on this, but I don’t believe that there should be a place for those types of prayers in a prayer meeting.

I am convinced that these sorts of prayers don’t pass the sniff test of edifying the church. The church cannot be built up by praying for something that they don’t know about, something that they cannot, by virtue of their ignorance, celebrate the answering of or watch for God’s working in. I don’t think that it fosters trust and openness and authenticity among the pray-ers and it becomes a hindrance to what God wants to accomplish in that gathering. It’s not that those prayers, or those burdens are unimportant to Jesus, or that they shouldn’t be brought before God in prayer – it’s just that they need to be brought forward in a different way. Either, you need to trust your fellow brothers and sisters in Christ to bear your request in confidence and actually share the details (if you can – see the above comment on gossip disguised as prayer) or you need to find a different (perhaps smaller) group of people who you can trust with the details and ask them to pray with you through this issue. It’s not just about you when you pray corporately, it’s also about what is happening in the body of Christ through your participation – never forget that.

2. Develop a culture of acceptable silence – allow people to pray silently during (and overtop of) other prayers.

You may not think that we pray over top of each other in this culture but you may have been introduced to that sort of prayer under all sorts of foreign sounding names – but we do. Every time you hear someone but into a prayer with an “amen” or a “yes Lord” or a “please Jesus” or the good old Alliance “mmmm” we’re engaging in polyphonic prayer (that’s a musical term for many lines being played at once). But just as you don’t assume that because someone is not making those noises or saying those things when you pray that they are not praying along in agreement with you – also realize just because they don’t “take a turn” and say something when the time arises that they are not praying along with you either.

Corporate prayer is about coming together in agreement in prayer – and sometimes you go to pray in a prayer meeting and realize that someone has already just prayed everything that was laid on your heart and all you really have left to add is “amen”. That’s okay. There is nothing unspiritual about that. Create a prayer environment where the heartfelt “amen” is an acceptable prayer. It helps put the focus on God and off of our words.

3. Challenge attendees to think about what it is they are saying and who they are saying it to.

In the same way ask people to think long and hard about what they are praying for and who they are praying to. When I was travelling with the Canadian Bible College choir during my college days we had a specific pattern of prayer before we went out to minister to the crowds at concerts. There was a hard and fast rule that we didn’t engage in any “poor me” prayers. We had a corporate devotional time every morning for our own personal needs but when we got ready for a concert we intentionally focused our prayers on the people in attendance and the things God wanted to do. It took the pressure off of us to consider each other for a time and only focus on God and his ministry.

In the same way encourage people in prayer not to praise people. Prayer is for praising God. If you want to tell someone how wonderful they are don’t wait until a prayer meeting to tell God (in front of them of course) how thankful you are for them, and what a blessing they have been in your life. Go tell them that before the prayer meeting, or when they are being a blessing. A Prayer meeting is not the time for social posturing of any kind no matter how heartfelt or genuine it might be. And in the same way, there are times and opportunities for praying for your personal needs in a corporate setting. Some prayer meetings are designed for those very issues to be addressed (what you pray about with your small group is a perfect example of that) but there are other times when the focus needs to be taken off of us and put on others. For example, at our monthly Acts 2 prayer meetings we are committed to not praying for our own needs but instead to pray for revival in the church to spill into the community so that the Gospel may go out and the world may be transformed starting with our little corner of the city. We don’t entertain personal prayer requests at that gathering because that is not the focus. Keep your focus on the right things and make sure everyone at the meeting knows the “rules” so that we can all pull toward the same goal.

And lastly:

4. All eyes on Jesus

“So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; those who seek find; and to those who knock, the door will be opened.”

Luke 11:9-10

The secret – if there is one – to God honouring, powerful effective prayer corporately or privately is very simple. Keep your eyes on Jesus. Keep focusing on the object of our prayers. Keep coming back to His truth, seeking His will, asking for His plans, praying for His power while being moved by His heart. That’s what everything is all about. And that brothers and sisters is how we move toward becoming a people of prayer.

All Eyes on Jesus - Part 2

Continuing on from our last post where we started examining Jesus’ teaching on prayer from the Sermon on the Mount – the part that encapsulates that most famous of prayers, The Lord’s Prayer. Our goal today is to identify some biblical principles that will help us to do corporate prayer well. In case you are just joining us now and are wondering were this is coming from, you should know that This is part 10 in an ongoing series entitled “Becoming a People of Prayer ”and you can Click here for a listing of previous posts in this series if you want to catch up on what you’ve missed.

Using our text from Matthew 6 as a guide here are a few Biblical principles that should guide our prayer:

1. Prayer is not a performance art!

Now bear with me on this one because it can get a little convoluted. It is clear as mud that Jesus in our text rebukes the Pharisees (here he calls them hypocrites but the context makes it very clear to whom he’s referring) for their showy prayers and instead tells them that they should take those prayers into the privacy of their own homes. But at the same time we’ve already established that corporate prayer is normative and healthy in the life of God’s people – so what is Jesus point here. What can we take away from this that is non-contradictory and helpful for us in developing our own pattern of prayer?

Here’s what I’ve come to as I’ve read and meditated on this text over and over again. What I see is something very different that simple public prayer being offered, I see self-righteous religious people putting on a performance. Listen to these words again.

And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. 

Listen to the breakdown of that statement. 

When you pray:  That is a command to be a people of prayer – we’ve covered that already

Don’t be like the hypocrites: don’t be like these guys. Okay I get that, but why?

For they love to pray: Okay that sounds pretty good so far – what’s the qualifier here?

Standing in the synagogues and on the street corners: Okay so they love to pray publicly a little weird but as we’ve already established that’s not unbiblical. Where is the problem? Here it comes:

To be seen by others:  Ah, there is the rub. What makes the prayers of the Pharisees so detestable is that their prayers are not for God. They have turned communion with the Almighty into a performance art. They have taken a holy and transcendent privilege given by God to his people and turned it into the equivalent of a mime on the street corner pretending to be trapped in a box. What they are doing – and claiming to do in the name of God – is patently offensive. And Jesus wants his followers to have no part in it.

When I or a worship leader or one of the elders or anyone else stands up here in church and delivers a prayer on the congregation’s behalf we have the daunting responsibility to make sure that our words our genuine and that our eyes are on Jesus. Public prayer is about keeping everyone’s eyes on Jesus. It’s not about how eloquent or articulate the prayer leader is – it’s about whom they are focusing on. If I stand up to pray publicly and my goal in prayer is to impress you – it doesn’t matter how beautiful my words are – they are offensive and ugly to God. And if you stand up in the congregation, or in your small group, or in a prayer meeting to lead people in prayer and you are truly focused on communing with Jesus on the group’s behalf – it doesn’t matter how clumsy, or simple your words are – God loves what you’re doing. We need to keep our eyes on Jesus because prayer is not a performance art.

2. Fear God; not others

After rebuking the prayer pattern of the Pharisees Jesus delivers this little gem of insight when he says:

Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

Near the beginning of the book of Galatians, Paul picks up on this idea is the motivating drive for his ministry:

Am I now trying to win human approval, or God’s approval? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.

Galatians 1:10

Who are we looking to impress with our prayers? Does it really matter what the other people around you think about your prayers, your eloquence or lack thereof; does it matter what other people think about your vocabulary, or the perceived simplicity of your prayers? Whose approval are you trying to win? In Proverbs 29 there is a wonderful truth that explains what happens in our heart when we get this backwards – it’s especially poignant in the Common English Bible translation where it says:

People are trapped by their fear of others;
   those who trust the LORD are secure.

Proverbs 29:25

Are you trapped by your fear of others ore are you joyfully free to respond to God in the fear of the Lord? Too often we become paralyzed by the fear of what people are going to think about us when we are seeking validation in the wrong places.

Those of you who only ever see me at church may not realize that I'm a terribly self conscious person. I have quite a bit of social anxiety when it comes to certain things. For instance, I actually have to work my self up to do cold calling. If I've got to call around to ask for help for some event or project it terrifies me - being transparent with you here, it's one of those areas where I struggle with the whole fear-of-man thing.

On the flip side though EVEN THOUGH I'm extremely self conscious about singing in front of people (choirs don't count, there is safety in numbers) you probably wouldn't be able to discern that if you saw me leading worship because when I sing for God the people out there really don't matter that much. When we understand in our hearts who we are aiming to please, it can make the difference between a grown man afraid to make phone calls and a singer getting lost in God in front of a hundred people.

And it makes a difference in prayer too. Don't get wrapped up in the fear of what others think. If you stutter, then stutter to the glory of God. If you've got a funny accent, just remember that somewhere else in the world it would be the rest of the group that talked funny. If you don't have an expansive vocabulary, remember the most powerful prayers are prayed on our behalf by the Holy Spirit in groans that cannot be understood by human ears. Keep your eyes on Jesus and don't worry about who else might be watching.

3. You can’t wear down God with words 

Jesus continues with these instructions:

And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 

First when you pray, don’t be like the Pharisees – we’ve covered that – but now Jesus uses a different comparable – Don’t be like the pagans. Well what did the pagans do that was so wrong?  Well of course the answer starts and ends with the recognition of Jesus as God with a lot of stuff in between but specifically Jesus is talking here about their pattern of prayer. The pagan approach to prayer in the 1^st century was to keep repeating yourself until whatever god you were praying to gets so weary of hearing you that he relents and does what you want.  That's basically it.  Just keep doing it and doing it and saying it and saying it until he gets so sick of hearing it, that He finally reacts. 

In fact, if you'll remember back in the encounter between Elijah and the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18), Elijah played up this fact for comedy.  Elijah kept egging them on.  Maybe He's on a vacation.  Maybe he can't hear you, better yell a little louder, he might be asleep.  And the prophets of Baal just kept on and on and on.  All day long and they kept crying out oh Baal hear us.  Oh Baal hear us.  Oh Baal hear us.  Oh Baal hear us.  Hour after hour after hour, they mumbled that same phrase, trying to wake up their god.  Trying to pester him into doing something.

But that’s not what our God responds to. God is not interested in superhuman feats of repetitive stamina as if we could wear down his resolve and change his mind by our stubbornness – he’s interested in a heart that longs to be in relationship with him and a spirit that is committed to waiting on him. That doesn’t mean as some have suggested that you ask for something once and then never speak of it again – it means you come to God with your need and earnestly wait for an answer. When you pray for the same thing over again it is not because you think that God has forgotten it’s because you are reminding yourself that God has not answered that prayer yet and you are professing anew to the Lord that you are trusting in Him to provide that answer.

The perfect and timely example is the prayer for healing. We believe that God heals our bodies. We believe that we are promised a complete and physical renewal in the end times and that glimmers of that renewal are breaking through into this world with the coming of the kingdom of God. And so when someone is sick – we pray. We anoint. And we call out to God and we do not stop until we receive an answer – and in that sense healing is an easy one – either God heals or that person waits for the resurrection and full restoration in paradise. What is your heart’s orientation toward God?  He is not impressed or interested with mantras or vain repetition. He is interested in persistent faithful trust in his power to act. Keep your eyes on Jesus and not on any formulas or mantras that you might have learned for prayer.

Which brings us full circle back to our initial quandary: how do we overcome the crippling fear of praying in front of others so that our corporate prayer life can be vital and effective? Well in our next, and penultimate post in this series I will have four quick suggestions for you to consider. These suggestions are less exegesis (now that you know what that word means) and more application but I think that they are important things for us to consider in making prayer meetings accessible to those who struggle with this problem.  But to see them, you’ll need to come back next time.

All Eyes on Jesus - Part 1

Today we begin to wrap up our mini-series on becoming a people of prayer with a series of posts that I have entitled “all eyes on Jesus.” I want to once again look at what scripture teaches us about a very practical problem that many of us in the church face – and what I know keeps many people from engaging in and participating in corporate prayer. As we get into this topic though let’s drop all pretence and masquerade and fess up to something we all know – praying in front of people can be one of the most terrifying experiences in the world for a Christian. Perhaps you pray like a seasoned pastor today but most of us can remember a time in our lives when we were self-conscious about praying in public and for some of us that fear has kept us away from being involved in corporate prayer even when we feel the conviction of the Holy Spirit that we should.

This is why I want to look at arguably the most famous and well-known passage on prayer in the whole Bible and see what Jesus’ simple and plain instructions and practice say to us today on this matter. In case you are just joining us now and are wondering were this is coming from, you should know that This is part 9 in an ongoing series entitled “Becoming a People of Prayer ”and you can Click here for a listing of previous posts in this series if you want to catch up on what you’ve missed.

“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.   “This, then, is how you should pray:    ‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed 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 debts,
   as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
   but deliver us from the evil one.’ For if you forgive others when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

Matthew 6:5-15

The first thing that any preacher worth their salt will always tell you when looking at a text like this is the direction of the first four words – “and when you pray.” Before we go any further – this is a teaching given to a people who are already committed to prayer and are in need of guidance on how to grow their prayer lives. Let me be blunt and honest with you – if you are not already striving to cultivate a pattern of prayer then don’t let this text or this post overcomplicate things for you – Jesus wants you to pray. Period. He wants you to commune with him, to talk to him, to listen to him, to build a relationship with him through prayer.

Jesus doesn’t preface his teaching with the option of “if you pray” it’s assumed that his followers will be people of prayer – and so I’m going to proceed as if everyone reading this already has that first part down – I’m not delusional enough to actually believe that’s the case but if you find yourself thinking that you don’t even have a pattern of prayer to work on – then file this information away for a later time and get to work at cultivating a pattern of prayer period so that you can apply these important teachings of Jesus to it. Okay? Disclaimer understood? Let’s get into the meat of the text.

Before we go anywhere with mechanics or specifics did you first catch what seems to be the shocking (especially in light of the purpose of this series) implication of Jesus’ teaching here?

Wait! Didn’t Jesus just condemn the practice of corporate prayer?!?!

Yes! On the surface it looks like Jesus is telling his disciples that praying in public or praying corporately is a bad thing and that the practice of prayer should be a private event between you and God alone. Have you ever had someone tell you that before? Have you ever heard someone use that excuse for not attending a prayer meeting? For having a lousy attitude when it comes to corporate prayer in the church? A quick survey of the Internet reveals that there are a lot of people out there that actually believe that to be so.

Now you’re thinking to yourself – “Have I just wasted the last two weeks reading these blogs encouraging me to do something Jesus advocated against?”

(Hey a pastor can hope you’ve been faithfully reading along…)

Thankfully – it doesn’t even take a Greek scholar to go deeper into this passage, and to survey the rest of the New Testament to understand that that was not at all what Jesus was saying. Anyone with a half-decent English translation of the Bible can deduce this for themselves with a careful reading of the text but so often we see a passage like this and we latch onto it because we think it justifies our own discomfort with the practice of corporate prayer and we engage in the dangerous an destructive art of proof texting to make a few verses of scripture, taken out of context, dance to our own tune. In scholarly language we would call this eisegesis. Which is a big word that you may not have heard before that is the opposite of a big word that you likely have heard before – exegesis. Exegesis is the process of studying the text carefully and learning what its meaning is and to the best of or ability doing so with an objective and unbiased goal (post modern philosophers will argue that there is no such thing as an objective reading of the text which I would largely agree with, but it’s the intent that matters). Eisegesis on the other hand is going to the text with an overt agenda – “I don’t like to pray in public so I’m going to look in the Bible for something Jesus says to justify what I believe” And when you find a passage like this you read these words and slam your Bible shut and say – “See. I told you so!” and you don’t look any further to see what else Jesus wants to say on the topic.

Well I’m happy to confirm for you that proper exegesis of this text makes it clear that this IS NOT a condemnation of public or corporate prayer and now I’m going to explain to you why:

Firstly,  right after these instructions the disciples ask Jesus to teach them how to pray and his response is to teach them what we commonly call the Lord’s Prayer  - or more technically correct what some call the Disciple’s Prayer. It provides for many traditions in Christendom what would best be described as the normative pattern for prayer. Even if you’ve never opened a Bible before today – you likely already know the prayer – it’s that famous. But have you ever thought about where this prayer was supposed to be prayed? I think this is one of those times when society has not gotten the practice wrong because when do we most often recite this prayer? In public – together. That’s because right there in the pronouns of the prayer we can tell that – The prayer he teaches them is a communal prayer

“Our Father...Give us... forgive us... lead us... deliver us”

The writers of the Bible were not grammatical neophytes. They understood how to properly construct sentences and denote the difference between singular and plural pronouns. The fact that Jesus is quoted in this prayer as written gives us a good indication that he expected the disciples to be praying together – and that means (GASP!) in public; in front of other people. As terrifying as it sounds to some of us that means unless Jesus is into self-contradiction (which he’s not by the way) that the previous verses about praying alone in your closet CANNOT be read as a blanket condemnation of corporate prayer. What does it mean then?  We’ll get to that shortly but first let me give you a couple other positive reinforcements why corporate prayer is not only allowed by Jesus but encouraged.

Jesus teaches on the benefits of praying together in agreement

In what is another famous saying of Jesus he encourages the disciples to ask the Father for things in agreement – that is the essence of corporate prayer, to come before God in agreement through prayer. And lest someone take that text and try to twist it to be interpreted as you can be in agreement through private prayer (which I supposed you could be – I could tell you to all go home and pray by yourself for church growth, and we would be in agreement – actually that’s a good idea – you should totally do that) lest someone believe that was what he was saying he follows up with the next sentence setting the context for the instruction:

“Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven*. For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.”

Matthew 18:19-20

Jesus wants us to gather together and pray in agreement. That sounds a lot to me like corporate prayer.

*As an aside to this passage – one of the questions that has come up in a few places during our preparation for the ASK ANYTHING series we will be launching in the fall is a question of the limits of Christ’s promise of doing anything we ask in agreement. Obviously our experience doesn’t bear out a literal rendering of that in the plain English. Stay tuned in about a month on this blog for a short examination of the context and purpose of that promise and how we should be reading an applying it in our prayer activity.

Lastly, The corporate prayer of the early church was validated by the presence of the Holy Spirit

After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.

Acts 4:31

What happens repeatedly when the early church gathers together to pray? The Holy Spirit shows up and pours out power upon the gathered masses. Why would God do that if he didn’t approve of their methods? You see it’s pretty clearly demonstrated in Scripture both by teaching and by example that there is no prohibition against praying together as the people of God – moreover (and perhaps more importantly) there is plenty of encouragement to do so. So if we’ve debunked that myth/excuse for not praying corporately what then does Jesus want to teach us in our passage today and what encouragement is there for those of us who are still uncomfortable with the idea of praying in front of others?

In our next post we’ll aim to answer that very question.