Following Jesus At Any Cost 03: Pray

Pastor Mabio Coelho

Midland SDA Church

September 4, 2021

Welcome and Introduction to the series:

In this series we are studying what it means to be a disciple of Jesus, what it means to follow Him. Our goal is that you are not satisfied with knowing facts about Jesus. What I want you to know is to know Jesus for all that He is, so that you can have a daily walk and real relationship with Him. In the course of four weeks that we still have, we will study exactly about that.

We have studied so far about the invitation Jesus made to each one of us, as He invite us to come as we are. It was highlighted that He is not interested in your preparation, in your credentials, but in your availability.

Then we studied together what are some of the ways to appropriately answer Jesus call to us. We discover that Christianity it is a lifestyle and we also became aware of the need to press the big reset button in our life and start in a fresh walk with Jesus.

Today we will continue our Journey, as we have decided to follow Him, what are the practical things which are involved. We will look in the role of prayer in the life and ministry of Jesus and what that says to us. As we continue our worship, if you are able, let’s bow down and pray to our awesome God. (Pray Kneeling).

Sermon:

On the first theme we talked about the Call, the invitation, that Jesus gives us. He invites us into a personal, unique and special relationship with Him. He doesn’t care who we are, or who we think we are. He does not care about our past, for He invites us to come as we are. You can come to Him with your problems and mistakes. Jesus is not interested in your preparation, in your credentials, but in your availability. Come to Jesus with your problems, addictions, stresses, confusion and fears. Come to Him with your guilt, shame and the weight of all your painful memories and let Him guide you towards wholeness and peace.

In the second theme, last Saturday, we studied how to respond to this invitation to come to Jesus. Since the relationship is personal, my response and reaction do not work for you since different people react differently. That is why we discovered together, what are the possible answers to this call.

Last week I ended by saying that it doesn't matter how long you've known Jesus, or even if you haven't known him at all. I said that It's time to reset the clock and start a new walk. I invited you to read Scripture so that you will know for yourself how to follow Him. Do not be satisfied with merely hearing what others say about Jesus. Read “as someone who is with hunger” to get to know Him and follow Him to the end. Don’t pass by this unique opportunity.

Following Jesus is practical and personal, and today we are going to study the first practical way of following him and responding to his call, in a sequence of steps to leave from where we are towards a life dedicated to following Him and serving Him.

Before we start this morning's study let's go, let's pray again for God's guidance

(praying specifically about the need to get to know Christ and really talk to Him….)

Last week, we learned something important: Christianity is not a religion, it is a lifestyle!!! To be a Christian is not to belong to the religion of Christ or to follow its tenets. To be a Christian is to live the life of Christ! So today, instead of looking at Christ's encounters with others, we will look to Christ Himself to learn how to relate to Him as He relates to the Father.

Last week I appealed to you that you would became an avid reader of your Bible looking for a way to get to know Jesus more, learn what He did and how He treated people so that you can do the same. If you actually followed this call and read any of the Gospels this past week, you may have noticed that something stood out in Christ's daily life. Do you guess what was it? (Wait for the answer). Let us read Matthew 26:41 and see an important advice from Jesus to us, which illustrates this important characteristic of His lifestyle:

“Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

What Jesus is trying to say here? He know that most of us are really and sincerely wanting and willing to follow Him to wherever the road leads us but, because our weakness of our flesh (i.e., our sinful nature combined with what society/environment plus the collection of our life experiences teach us), we have that tendency to go to to the opposite direction Jesus is leading us to. That is why prayer is so important. Prayers are not meant to tell Good what we need, because He already know it. Prayers are not meant to send to God our Amazon shopping list to be delivered by tomorrow at 9. That is not what prayer is about. That was exactly how the Pharisees prayed and that is why Jesus said to His disciples, in Matthew 6:8 the following: “Therefore do not be like them. For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him.”

Prayers are meant to elevate us to God. They are meant to create intimacy between us and God. As we pray we get straight from above and become more willing to surrender our life to Him. This morning I read something on my devotionals that illustrate the point well. It was not on my original sermon script, but I want to share with you a nipped of a book of one of my favorite authors:

“When in trouble, when assailed by fierce temptations, they have the privilege of prayer. What an exalted privilege! Finite beings, of dust and ashes, admitted through the mediation of Christ, into the audience-chamber of the Most High. In such exercises the soul is brought into a sacred nearness with God, and is renewed in knowledge, and true holiness, and fortified against the assaults of the enemy.”¹ Ellen G. White, An Appeal to Mothers (1864), 24

Prayer was vital to Jesus and is vital to us today if we want to live like Him. That is why now we are going to look at another story. We are going to follow how a typical day in Jesus’s life started, as we see from the different Gospels. So, as last week, as I tell the story, put yourself in it, imagine yourself living it, being the protagonist of the story and try to make this your personal story. Imagine the following: (Tell today’s story from the book of Mark )

Now, to learn about prayer, which was a constant in Christ’s life, we need to personalize His experience in order that His experience becomes ours. To do that, I need to talk to you and ask you some questions.

1 – The first question is a two-folded question: Why do you invest time in communicating with your family and friends? Why would you be interested in investing time in communicating with God in prayer?

2 – What was Jesus' practice, according to the text we are reading Today (Mark 1:35)?

“Having risen early in the morning, he left, went to a deserted place and prayed there. "

(If necessary, see Luke 5:16): “So He Himself often withdrew into the wilderness and prayed.”

3 – How do you pray to God? (What is the mots important thing or things we do need in prayer?) Here are some practical steps:

(a) Pray sharing with God how you feel. Be honest. In the book of Psalms, David provides us with numerous examples of honest and open-hearted prayers. We have to be real, honest, and even blunt with God. Let's explore some of these prayers to find out how we too can pray to God:

Psalm 9:1,2

“I will praise You, O Lord, with my whole heart;

I will tell of all Your marvelous works.
I will be glad and rejoice in You;
I will sing praise to Your name, O Most High.”

(Why praise is good? Why should we praise Him?)

Psalm 13:1

“How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever?

How long will You hide Your face from me?”

(Why David was talking like that?)

Psalm 18:1,2

“I will love You, O Lord, my strength.
The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer;

My God, my [a]strength, in whom I will trust;

My shield and the [b]horn of my salvation, my stronghold.”

Psalm 42:1,2

“As the deer [b]pants for the water brooks,

So pants my soul for You, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When shall I come and appear before God?”

Psalm 51:7-12

“7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;

Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

8 Make me hear joy and gladness,

That the bones You have broken may rejoice.

9 Hide Your face from my sins,

And blot out all my iniquities.

10 Create in me a clean heart, O God,

And renew a steadfast spirit within me.

11 Do not cast me away from Your presence,

And do not take Your Holy Spirit from me.

12 Restore to me the joy of Your salvation,

And uphold me by Your generous Spirit.”

(b) Pray using themes Jesus used when He gave his disciples an example in Matthew 6: 9-13

“ 9 In this manner, therefore, pray:

Our Father in heaven,

Hallowed be Your name.

10 Your kingdom come.

Your will be done

On earth as it is in heaven.

11 Give us this day our daily bread.

12 And forgive us our debts,

As we forgive our debtors.

13 And do not lead us into temptation,

But deliver us from the evil one.

[For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.]”

(c)There is also something important that Jesus taught in John 15:16:

“You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you.”

So, what is to pray in Jesus’ s name?

Praying in the name of Jesus is not just saying this at the end of the prayer, but it is staying in Christ, emulating his character. It is praying as He prayed and trying to intentionally create the habit of living as He did!

Ask for Jesus' promise. How many times have you asked for what you wanted instead of asking for what He wants and promised you? If we ask ourselves what He promised, would we receive different results? What do you think? See 1 John 5: 14-15.

“Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. ¹⁵And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him.”

(d) Pray in the expectation that He will answer His prayer. Let’s read Psalm 5:3

“My voice You shall hear in the morning, O Lord;

In the morning I will direct it to You,

And I will look up.”

Psalm 91:15:

“He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him;

I will be with him in trouble;

I will deliver him and honor him.”

The way we pray continually changes over time (as we grow and change). In the past, my prayers were more formal, as if I was talking to someone far away. In my youth I read psalms and was shocked by the direct (and sometimes even aggressive) way in which David spoke to God. I was surprised to see how he shared his anger, frustration, and doubts with his Creator!

I started to study more about it and share it with my wife, at a time when we were going through a major financial crisis. We had lost 80-90% of our savings due to a dishonest partner, I was at the time studying in a theological seminary in Brazil entirely by faith, because what I managed to kept (houses, car) did not fill my belly and did not pay the bills. As she studied these things by herself, it challenged her to approach God in this way and open her heart to Him to speak about what She was experiencing in life.

(Talk about the day I got home from college early and She was fighting God so hard I thought she was arguing with a thief in the house). This experience changed me and made me want to relate like that too.

But what prevented us from that? In the rush of our daily lives, it is very easy to get distracted and forget that I need to reconvert each and every day. And how comforting it is to know that I can share anything with Him at any time. I can share my struggles, my temptations, my fears, and He hears it.

A few years ago, I made a discovery that still continues to impact my life today. When I read Isaiah 50:4, a passage in which its context is talking about the coming of Messiah. Although the context was talking about what God wished for the earthly ministry of Jesus, I realized He wish the same for me too. I realized that God longs to wake me up each morning so that He can teach me how to be His disciples through studying His word and through prayer. I started asking Him at night, when I went to sleep, that He would wake me up anytime so that I could pray and spend some time alone with Him. And I found that God was ready to honor His promise in Is 50:4. Morning after morning He wakes me up so that I look to him in the Scriptures and listen to him in prayer for what He has to say for my life. Every day I ask Him what is your program for me on that day.

As a child who meets a wonderful friend, I have rediscovered God by having quality time to savor what He wrote in the Bible and waiting to hear what He has to say to me through His Holy Spirit. God has much more to say to us when we slow down in His presence.

You may be thinking, "How can I be sure that God is speaking in my heart?" My friend, ALWAYS test your impressions and beliefs by the Written Word of God. God will NEVER guide you on a path that contradicts His Word!

4 – What would change in your life if you prayed as a continuing conversation with God throughout the day?

(For starters, I think we could have a greater awareness of God’s presence)

5 – What is your next step?

(Challenge)

If you surrender your life to God in prayer every day, and every moment of the day, you will start to notice that, slowly but surely, God is changing you because you are opening up yourself to Him in prayer. Ask God Today to awake you up tomorrow a few minutes earlier than usual and spend this extra time as quality time between you and Him. Do like Jesus, pour you heart out to Him and try to hear His voice. Ask Him His agenda for you that day and try to carve sometime time to spend at least a couple of minutes in prayer with God. It requires discipline, but is rewarding. When my wife was starting this process in her walk with God, she setup the all arm clock on her phone to fire several times a day so she could be reminded to stop for a minute and reconnect with God. Try that, it may be a life changing experience.

I want to end by sharing another thing I read in my devotional Today:

“Our time here is short. We can pass through this world but once; as we pass along, let us make the most of life.[...] If we will open our hearts and homes to the divine principles of life we shall become channels for currents of life-giving power. From our homes will flow streams of healing, bringing life and beauty and fruitfulness where now are barrenness and dearth.” Ministry of Healing, 355

Did you heard that. She expanded here the Biblical teaching that Jesus taught many time. The reference here was John 4 and Jesus encounter with the Samaritan woman. He said if she accepted Jesus’s invitation, she would herself become a well springing up living water. And so do you if you want to live as Jesus did and follows His steps.