All About Prayer: Why to Pray

This is the first segment of my sermon on Ephesians 3:14-21, entitled "All About Prayer", delivered to Marion Park 6/27/09.
Before continuing you should make sure to read Ephesians 3:14-21.

Since this passage of Ephesians is a prayer, I'm going to deal with three subjects related to prayer today, as we delve into this text. First we're going to look at Why to Pray, then we're going to look at What to Pray for, and lastly we'll deal with the very important subject of Who to Pray to.

Why to Pray
I think almost every Christian has asked the question at one point or another, "Why do I pray?" "What is the purpose, or point, of prayer?" "If God knows everything before I ask him, why ask at all?" Well, the NT is not without answers to that question. Right here Paul records a prayer in his letter to the Ephesian church. And in the way he sets up his prayer, he implies some answers to that question, why pray at all. I can see three of them.

1. It's just what Christians do!
(Eph 3:14) "For this reason I bow my knees before the Father," For what reason Paul? Why do you pray?
(Eph 3:12) "in whom (Christ) we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him." He's talking about prayer there. And if you look back to verse 11 you can that Paul is saying that this boldness to pray and access to God's throne room that we have in Christ was accomplished according to God's eternal purpose.
-The eternal purpose that God has realized in his Son was to restore communion between those who have faith in Jesus and himself. This is why Jesus died! So you could pray to the Father and the Father would hear your prayer. So you could have boldness to enter the throne room, so that you could have confident access to the God who dwells in unapproachable light. Jesus died to restore a right relationship between you and the Father. Adam and Eve had perfect fellowship with God in the garden. But sin marred that fellowship, because a holy God cannot walk in the darkness of sinners. We hid from him in the darkness, because our deeds were evil, and we continue to hide from him by avoiding prayer.
-Have you ever wondered about whether or not God hears the prayers of the wicked? Does God hear the prayer of sinners? or does he only hear the prayer of the righteous?
(Proverbs 15:8 and 29)
⁸ The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the LORD,
but the prayer of the upright is acceptable to him.
²⁹The LORD is far from the wicked,
but he hears the prayer of the righteous.
So it seems like this is saying that God only hears the prayers of the righteous. But this is sort of a trick question, because (excepting Jesus) only the wicked ever pray to God, only sinners ever ask him for anything. No one is righteous, no not one. There is no one who seeks God. But God always hears the prayer of a repentant sinner for mercy. He always hears the prayer of one whom, like Abraham or David, God credits righteousness apart from their own works, but on the basis of Christ's righteousness. This is the reality that Paul has in mind in Ephesians, that by being in Christ we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him. Prayer is the natural result of being a Christian, and it is the privilege of those who are counted righteous in Christ to be heard by God.

-Christians are people of faith. Our faith is in the work of Jesus, in his substitutionary sacrifice for us, that allows us to enter the holy places into the presence of God. Therefore the natural expression of faith is to pray. Christians pray; that's just what we do!

(Hebr 1:19-22) ¹⁹ Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, ²⁰by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, ²¹and since we have a great priest over the house of God, ²²let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

Jesus' blood gives us the confidence to pray. He opens for us a new a living way through the curtain of his flesh. He is our great high priest offering the once for all spiritual sacrifice that makes God able dwell in our hearts. He is the one that sprinkles clean our consciences and washes our bodies in the pure water of baptism. And this is all so that we can draw near to him with a true heart in full assurance of faith. God's eternal purpose in Christ was that you might be able to pray. It's the very definition of what it means to be a Christian. It’s just what Christians do!

2. So that we won't lose heart but will glory in suffering

(Eph 3:14) "For this reason I bow my knees before the Father,"

Paul is telling us why he prays. And this 2^nd reason is in the verse right before our text.

(Eph 3:13) "So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory."

-We are a people who very quickly lose heart. Discouragement is real. In the face of suffering, discouragement happens. It’s something that Christians deal with regularly. Anyone who has earnestly tried to live a holy life before God, to grow in faith, to serve him wholeheartedly in whatever he's called them to do, knows that it can be easy to lose heart. Paul knows this and this is why he prays.

-Paul knows that just giving us commands is not enough. He doesn't just tell us to buck up and keep a good attitude. Just telling us not to lose heart because of suffering is not going to do it. It's not enough. God has to do it. God has to work to make us not lose heart. God has to move us so powerfully that we actually glory in suffering. That's his work, not something we can muster up in our selves, nor should we try to. Paul does give the command; he does give us the encouragement about what we need to do, but then immediately after he goes to prayer. He begs God to do it, to make it happen.

-Paul prays, and prays fervently, because he feels the fact that just exhorting his churches to live like a Christian is not going to do it. You've got to feel your need. You've got to know you really are inclined to lose heart; you’ve got to know that glorying in suffering does not come naturally. You can't just put it on your to do list, and then you'll be fine. If you really feel your need, like Paul, then you will pray. If you think you can do it without God, your not going to have motivation to pray to him.

-Right here we are at the point in the letter where Paul is transitioning from 3 chapters of theology, prayer and worship, into practical commands and exhortations. A lot of what passes for preaching in our churches does not do this because we don't really believe in prayer. If the 3 points of every sermon are "Pray, read your Bible, go to church," then we're simply not preaching and teaching in the way Paul did. Yes, there are things for us to do, and it is necessary to be practical, but if every thing is just "do this, do that" then people are not hearing the gospel. Our message is not the power of men it is the power of God. Paul's teaching was always in the posture of prayer.

-The only way you’re not going to lose heart, but glory in your suffering is if God does it in you. And if you come to him in Christ asking that he keep you from discouragement, and that he grant you the mysterious power to glory in your sufferings, God will not despise that prayer, but will surely grant what you ask for.

3. Because God is sovereign over all creation and the Namer of every family

(Eph 3:14-15) "For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named,"

-God is not just the God of Israel, he is the God of the whole world. God is not just a tribal deity. He's not just one among many options that you can pray to, hopefully in order to have him do something for you. You’re never going to be excluded on the basis of your family or anyone in your family. No tribe has a particular claim on the Father above anybody else. God is sovereign over all creation and every family in heaven and on earth is named by him, meaning that he owns them all. When you name something you have a sort of power over it, you own it. I was reading a fantasy series recently and one peculiarity that speaks to this issue was that there was this ancient language, in which it was impossible for you to lie, you could not say an untruth in it. And along with this, if you found out the true name of something or someone, then that meant that you would have power over it, you could make it do whatever you wanted. Well, God knows the true name of everything in the world, of every family, every person, everything. God knows perfectly and exactly the true nature of everything and everyone. And with that he has complete power over it all. God is completely sovereign over all creation. If he wants something done, it gets done. There's nothing that God can't do. You can see why it makes sense to pray to him, if that’s the kind of God he is.

-Now, all around the world, people are praying to all sorts of gods; all throughout time, people have been praying to many many, many gods and goddesses; all sorts of little idols, made of wood and stone, or silver and gold, or trees or water or the sun or earth. All around the world, all throughout time, people have been praying to Anvari and Apollo and Ares and Apsu, to Aphrodite and Baal and Brahma and Chalchiutlicue, to Chemosh and Cheng-huang and Dagon and Damkina, to Diana and Dionysus and Enki and Freya, to Gaia and Geong Si and Hades and Huitzilopochtli, to Hsi-Wang-Mu and Ishtar and Isis and Jupiter, to Krishna and Lakshmi and Luna and Mercury, to Mot and Nanna and Neptune and Odin, to Oyamatsumi and Phoebe and Poseidon and Rama, to Seti and Shen Yi and Tezcatlipoca and Utu, to Venus and Vishnu, to Yarikh and Yu Huang and Zeus. And none of them has the power to really answer prayer, and none of them is sovereign over all creation, and none of them knows the true name of everything in heaven and earth, and none of them is the true God but all are a lie. And you and I wonder, Christian, why we should pray to our God? Clearly the human heart naturally gravitates to pray to something. The question is not why to pray, it's not whether to pray, it's who are you actually praying to. Because if you're not praying to the God of the Bible, you're probably praying to some other god of your own devising, you’re probably praying to one of the gods I just named, even if you don’t know it.

So, to sum up, why to pray: 1. It's just what Christians do! 2. So that we won't lose heart but will glory in suffering. 3. Because God is sovereign over all creation and the Namer of every family.