Dear BPCWA worshipper, Having covered the first three sermons in last week’s pastoral, I will continue to summarise the next three, based on our theme verse from Eph 6:18 “Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints”. I do hope these recapitulations will cause you to be reminded and stirred to maintain a life of prayer.

The Kinds of Prayer.  What are the kinds of prayer? 1) Adoration. We must spend time in adoration of God, where our hearts are lifted to magnify and glorify God as we stand in amazement of Him. Only if we do this will we change how we approach God and view prayer as a privilege to be found in His presence. God’s glory is man’s chief end and so we must praise Him from our hearts and not just with our lips. 2) Confession. This involves remorse and a broken spirit. It is not just a cold roll call of our sins, nor confessing so that God will help us with our petitions to get what we want. In Psalm 51, David shows genuine remorse when he confesses the awfulness of his sin. Does your face blush when you confess your sin or do you just name your sins before God? 3) Thanksgiving. Instead of murmuring and complaining, we must thank God for His goodness and mercies because we owe Him so much. Sadly, we often have no real appreciation and instead, take God and our salvation for granted. We will increase our love for God as we think about Him with thankfulness in our hearts. 4) Petition. Like supplications, which means a humble pleading with urgency, petitions i.e. submitting to God our requests, must not be cold, but must be expressed with a strong desire for our Lord to hear and help us because God can help us. When we have such strong requests, we will readily pray importunately. 5) Intercession. Here, we come to God for someone else, just as Christ intercedes for us. This is not a prayer for ourselves, just as our monthly prayer booklet is prayer for the church and others. 6) Imprecatory. This prayer asks God to stop His enemies from stopping His work. Such prayers are not for self or personal vindication at all. It may invoke the calling down of calamities, but it is always upon His enemies who intentionally and unrepentantly interrupt His kingdom and His will being done and not because of personal offense. Why should we pray all prayers? When our thinking changes to loftier themes about God and His magnificence, it brings growth in our fellowship and draws us closer to God. Our love toward God will also grow when we go beyond the transactional petitionary prayers that we often pray. Appreciation changes you. Thankfulness makes you constrained by His love. When this happens, you do His bidding with joy. All prayer also teaches you to be less selfish because it is not just about you, your relatives, or your circle of interest. It also increases our dependency on God if we have the right attitude in prayer. We must practice an all-rounded 360° prayer. We run out of things to pray for because we typically pray petitions for ourselves. When we pray with all prayers, time flies!

The Attitude in Prayer. 1) According to the will of God. Rom 8:26 tells us that the Holy Spirit helps us to pray and how we ought to pray. When we are struggling, the Holy Spirit moves us to pray certain prayers. There is the involvement of the Holy Spirit in our prayers, and He will teach our hearts through the Word of God. As He guides my emotions and thoughts, I submit to God’s will as I pray. Hence, you must know God’s Word well. Do not attribute your own will and own ideas to be the Spirit’s leading in prayer! As you do your devotion, God convicts you about something and you pray to God to help you submit. This is the highest form of attitude in prayer when we are willing to submit to God’s will. We must have absolute surrender of our will to God’s will until our desires are genuinely desirous to do God’s will. One of our infirmities is that we are not willing to submit to God. Real prayer is total surrender. There is no point in praying if we don’t pray according to God’s will. 2) Prayer doesn’t change God’s mind, it changes your mind. We pray because God asked us to pray, even if it doesn’t change His mind. Prayer is God’s appointed means for us to receive anything. In our infirmities, we are confused as to how to pray, but the Holy Spirit works in our hearts to cause us to pray according to the will of God, thereby making us more spiritual. Personal spiritual growth is directly proportional to prayer. Our heads may be full of theology, but only when our hearts are full of prayers will the Word change us. We are orthodox but if we don’t change in prayer, we will have dead orthodoxy because there is transformation in us when we pray. One test of living orthodoxy is whether we truly pray in the Spirit, as elaborated more in the next point. 3) Prayer is confrontational. Rom 8:26 shows us a confrontational prayer – when our infirmity is that we don’t want to change, the Holy Spirit works in you to confront your self-will. Our groanings may be because of our frustration about our spiritual state or an unwillingness to deal with our sin. The Holy Spirit convicts us, and we know we need to submit to God. Ultimately, the reason for the Holy Spirit’s work in our prayers is found in Rom 8:28-29, where the reason for our salvation is “to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Rom 8:29). Confession and dealing with sin are the reasons why God saved you. When we realise this, then we realise that prayer has an attitude – I want to be more sanctified and holy because I want to be conformed to Christ. When we pray in the Spirit, our aim is to be a holy and godly Christian and not just have a semblance of Christian life. Prayer is an honest self-confrontation before God. Are your prayers truly praying in the Spirit?

The Consciousness of Prayer. To watch in prayer, we must watch what goes before this word “watch” in Ephesians 6:18 – praying always, having all prayers, all the time, being honest with God, and praying in the Spirit. How to be conscious that I do not slip in prayer? 1) Growing. We must watch our spiritual thermometer. What else can I prioritise or remove to have more opportunities to pray? We must look out for more opportunities to pray, with a desire to increase in prayerfulness. Watching is driven by a motive that is more than just maintaining where we are at, but about wanting to draw near to God and growing to love God more. When there is love, you will be willing to forgo rest and sleep for it. The spiritual desire in us to commune with God drives the physical awakeness from within. Just as we gravitate naturally to the people we like, we will want to gravitate to God. Such prayer will be driven by love, not duty. When we have a heart in connection with God, our speech naturally goes in that direction as well. 2) Guarding. We must watch if our prayer habit is slowing down, dipping, or reducing . . . and it will, unless we consciously guard and act. In the military, a sentry guard is court marshalled if they are delinquent at the guard post. Why? When we fail in watchfulness in a war, we risk our own lives and the lives of those in the camp. We must guard 1) Our routine. We don’t pray only when things are urgent. Nothing must affect our routine. 2) Busyness. Christ’s ministerial life was full, but He sent the multitudes away because He watched His time with the Father. Daniel took time off his important country duties to pray to God. We must never be too busy to commune with Him whom we love. 3) Legitimate things. The Apostles reprioritised and reorganised the church to remove what was less important so that they could give themselves to prayer. 4) Emergencies. Even when these happen, they must not break our stride of prayer. 5) Threats. Daniel had such a tight routine that his enemies knew how they could put him in a death trap. Despite this, he never faltered or changed his routine. 6) Service. We must not be overtaken in our service so that prayer is relegated to the “background”. Prayer is the most important part of the service we are involved in! 7) World. In 2Tim 4:10, Demas did not fall overnight. Demas fell because he loved the world. The love of the world draws us away from prayer. 8) Failing to pray in the Spirit. Though Demas was probably praying with Paul as they worked together, things were changing in Demas’ heart but he was not watchful. Likewise, you can be backsliding or not wanting to deal with your sin, though still “praying” at home and in church.  Finally, we must take heed of Christ’s rebukes about being hypocritical before He taught His disciples the Lord’s prayer. If we pray to look good outwardly, we will have no reward. We must be honest and sincere in our prayers. We must not pray insincerely to be seen of man. We must pray in the spirit and not be a hypocrite. 9) Going back to old habits of doing without praying. We can revert to being mere doers without praying.

How has your life of prayer been since camp ended?

Yours in our Lord’s service,
Pastor