Watch Alistair Begg Discuss How to Pray Like the Apostle Paul

[Music] it was your study in the book of Ephesians that caused you to really spend time meditating what it means to pray big right yes I think the prayers of Paul and focused in Ephesians have just challenged me so very very much that they're so different from the way I usually pray and the idea for the book actually came not from myself but from somebody who had been listening to that and they said there's probably worth in this so yeah that's where he came from why is pur such a challenging discipline for all of us do you think well I think first of all this is the frontline of spiritual warfare and the evil one is aware of the fact that God has decided that in a way that is beyond our ability to fully figure out prayer is a means of fulfilling some of his purposes and so we're aware I think of that warfare in a way that isn't necessarily the case even in sharing our faith or whatever else it is it's always been amazing to me how when you settle down to prayers so the phone rings or someone comes and knocks the door even even trivial things disrupt it and also then in my own heart I want to read the newspaper rather than pray I want to check the scores rather than pray I want to study my Bible rather than pray so it seems like everything militates against that and I think it is that essential reason that it is it is there that we have divine power to bring down strongholds and since the strongholds are the evil one strongholds he's really committed beyond that our own self preoccupation works against praying I think when we put our prayers and the prayers we find in Scripture side by side what do we find well the discrepancy is usually pretty big except very short prayers we can probably approximate two but even the way in which find Christ himself praying in in John 17 or the prayer of Daniel Nehemiah's prayers at the beginning at the beginning of that book introduced us to a dimension of engagement with God that if it doesn't encourage us to press on may actually be in the source of real discouragement to us and we find ourselves saying well I can never pray like that or I don't pray like that so maybe I actually just stop can we use the prayers we find in the Bible to help recalibrate we pray well I hope so because I've tried to do that when I when I find it difficult or I feel that I've become pretty well routine in what I'm saying or I can even hear myself saying the same things over and over again I often will go to the Psalms or even to a prayer like Daniels prayer because it gives us a much bigger framework and and a sense of the the grandeur and the greatness of God and helps us at least move into the the arena without starting directly with ourselves and and what we would want to ask God for talk about the grandeur and greatness of God how important is it that our theology is intact as we begin to communicate with God well you know when we speak to people we speak to them and we listen to them in relationship to our knowledge of them our understanding of them we speak to different people in different ways a child hopefully will speak with a measure of respect as someone older and and that is just part of common interaction when we come to God unless we understand God to be God as he's revealed himself in creation as we as he's revealed himself in his word then we may actually be tempted to come to him in a way that if we really just in one says it doesn't a disservice to him that that he has God he has not asked that he is the God that was encountered by Moses and he took his sandals off he's a God that Isaiah met in the temple and he was completely flattened he's the God who reveals himself in Jesus on the boat and the disciples say depart from us we are sinful that's very very different from the kind of hey it's me approach which if it doesn't happen in private very quickly can creep into the the kind of tenor of public prayer when congregations gather together and the outsider might be tempted to think that God is just like us and that we may approach him as if we were approaching anybody else when and I shall fight we can't we shouldn't we mustn't so he is a friend who is closer than a brother but he is high and holy and beyond us we have to keep both of those in tension as we approach him don't we yeah and that's the wonderful thing about the doctrine of the Trinity in part in that this God who is transcendent and holy other and outside of time has in the person of Jesus stepped down into time and who has become for us a high priest who as Hebrews puts it is touched with the feelings of our infirmities so that in the old him there's no throb nor throw that our hearts can know but he feels it above I'm not sure what all of that really comes out like but it encourages me to be very honest then in my prayers and not to feel that I have to get dressed up as a where to come to him or put on my best face because after all he knows me thoroughly he knows the words of my mouth before I even speak them and yet he still wants to hear from me you talked about spiritual warfare being a part of the challenge of prayer is prayer something that comes naturally or a skill that needs to be cultivated and developed well we cry out don't we there is a it's interesting to me often even on the Golf Course I'm amazed at how many times my secular friends seem to have an interest in divinity that doesn't seem to happen at any other time and the cry of the human heart is is is often the cry of despair the the cry of the child in in search of answers so in in one sense our spirits long after that which we do not really grasp that this God has said eternity in our hearts and he's done so in order that we might be able to seek Him you have the context in Athens when Paul encounters these people and they clearly are searching for something they're looking for something so and then when we come to know God in Jesus and the Spirit comes to live within ours and enables us as Paul says to cry Abba Father to call him dear father and again this is something that separates us from the unbelieving world I I find that people will often say oh god or oh something but I haven't heard anyone other than a genuine believer say oh father they may use father in the Lord's Prayer because they've come to learn it at school but that awareness of the fact that I have a father and that he has bid me come to him helps me then to grow in my approach to him and to prepare to come into his presence I find as well prayer books helpful the Book of Common Prayer I don't use it all the time but I use it a lot more than people would imagine Bailey's diary of private prayer I find that really helpful and the wonderful book valley of vision by banner of truth tremendous helpful one of the things you address in the book pray big is the issue of how prayer deals with our dependence on God we live under the illusion of being in control the masters of our own fate - our own destiny prayer is a way to remind us that we are not in control isn't it well yes and and to the extent that we don't pray we continue to live with that illusion that we don't need to and so God in His mercy actually uses things in our lives in order to remind us that we are not the master of our own destiny we're not the captain of the ship and whether that comes in the gift of a child and we realize the magnificence of it whether it comes in the awareness of how finite we are in relationship to the magnificence of the universe the heavens declare is glory the firmament shows his handiwork in those things or whether it comes in the awareness that we have of our own human frailty perhaps in the loss of a friend or a loved one or in the experience of pain and suffering and difficulty or perhaps we've become unbelievably depressed and overwhelmed and and we know that there must be someone there must be something somewhere and God uses these things in order to bring our attention to where it needs to be it's almost instinctive in humans and in Nations in times of calamity and trial to respond by crying out to someone who is in control when we're not yes and it's it's it's quite amazing isn't it when you when you think about that even in the history of our own country how that has taken place that has happened you need to go back through two or three or four presidents to get back to the last time I really remember it happening but that is true here it's true in the history of Great Britain and it speaks to the very point that you're making so the the issue of dependence and and this abandoning of the illusion of control how can we model our prayers to remind us of the fact that God is sovereign but also to not to realize that our purse still have meaning when we're talking to a sovereign God right well you know first of all I think it's good for us to recognize that we're in good company when we feel this way the disciples come to Jesus and they say Lord teach us how to pray they don't say hey we have this they know that they need help and so that's a good starting point to to say quite honestly I'd like to be able to pray more sensibly more knowledgeably you know in a genuine spirit of dependence and expectation so where shall I go to find help in this well let's go to the Bible and let's see how others have approached God and that's really how this came about because in in observing Paul's approach I was struck again by the fact that although he's in prison although his circumstances are not exactly what we would call wonderful his prayers are striking not so much in what he prays as in what he doesn't pray that he doesn't ask to be removed from jail he doesn't have a long list of to the church you know you can't believe how bad it is in here I hope I can be out soon please pray this and then oh is something far greater now you say well that was the Apostle Paul yes it was but he has said and set as an example that we can follow in his steps and also he has given us an indication of what it really means to pray big prayers explain for us what the difference is between a small program a big prayer well I think in in the context that I'm suggesting in this book it is just the difference between starting with ourselves and our limited horizons and beginning with God and his glory and his grandeur and his purposes I mean Paul's first prayer in Ephesus only comes after the amazing beginning which starts in eternity past and the immensity of God's love that he has chosen us before the foundation of the world that he has been purposing in this way so he is already he's he's well advanced if you like as he then comes and and he says and now I'm praying for you he says in light of what I know of God that he has you know he has chosen you in him and some of you uhare the word of truth the gospel of your salvation you believe you're now in Christ and now you're in Christ therefore you're no longer what you once where you are once dead you're now alive you're once trapped or now free this is immense he says now it is in this context that I want to pray the things that are on my heart for you as a church and for you as individuals so in other words his his own his own prayers emerge out of the vastness of the reservoir of his personal understanding of God and one of the reasons that my prayers are as pure as they are is because my reservoir is now full enough it's not as grand it's not it's it's not there where it might be the answer to that is not a book on prayer the answer to that is coming to know God and coming to be aware of the fight that I am known by him and that he is able to do immeasurably more than I could ask or even imagine you mentioned being struck by the things that Paul didn't pray for while he was in prison the things we do pray for are often those immediate trials those challenges our anxieties our fears our frustrations is it wrong to bring those things before God Kenneth Taylor paraphrased it don't worry about anything which is jolly hard to do pray about everything tell God your needs and don't forget to thank him for his answers well that that's good instruction and that's from Paul as well paraphrase but nevertheless that's what Paul is saying so we know that it is the invitation of God for us to cast our burdens upon him therefore it would be very wrong to say we're not going to pray about these pressing issues I mean earlier today we've had occasion to pray together along those very lines and someone could have said well that's a rather small prayer well it may be a very small prayer but it's to a very big God and the reason that we prayed it is because what we know of God and what he's promised us not that he will promise necessarily the answer that we've asked for by the but but because he is so kind and because he is so big and because he's able to do beyond our asking our I think and we feel confident to bring this thing to him your book pray big helps us take what might be our impulses of prayer and and make them bigger by by broadening our our vision or our sights one of the things you you talk about is understanding the the riches that are ours in Christ and praying for those riches right and that that again is Paul he says you know I want you to understand that one day you're going to be very very rich now you haven't fully entered into the entire inheritance but it is it is yours if you like and it is yours not because of who you are but because of who Christ is and because of your union with Christ I think one of the things in Paul's prayers that is comes across most forcibly is is the fact that everything that he's really saying is is tied to this understanding of the believers union with Christ we have been united with him in his death and in his resurrection his Spirit has been given to fill our lives and so the riches that are ours in Jesus are actually ours and it's a tragedy when some of us live as spiritual paupers when in point of fight we have all of these resources at hand one of the ways in which this is of course corrupted is in the kind of teaching that suggests that God is in the business of just making sure that we all become financially very rich which of course to teach that is really to teach from a close Bible and a bit of an empty head God chooses to bless certain people in certain ways and he gives us all things richly to enjoy but the richest about which Paul is praying are those spiritual riches which are ours in Jesus those who are experiencing challenges with material wealth what's the right way to pray for your material needs in those times well you know when James gives us encouragement along these lines remember he says if anyone likes wisdom let him ask of God and you know the the first prayer that we have in that respect is probably a prayer for wisdom some of us get ourselves in those positions because of a lack of wise choices that we have actually put ourselves in that predicament and we may now be coming somewhat presumptuously to God asking for some kind of miraculous intervention when in point of fight he may choose not to do that in the same way that we may choose not to bail our children out not because we're unwilling to do so but because we know that it is harmful for us to do so and what they need is not what they want because what they need is in order to think sensibly about decisions that have been made and in many cases that calls for just a complete recalibration of the way in which we view the temporal things of our lives and what we believe is a sensible use of resources and what we believe about the place of work and the place of employment in the place of saving and all those things and it really is too bad if I make if I disregard the clear instruction of the Bible in many of those areas and then come and suggest that since God is able to do exceedingly abundantly beyond you know he God can do anything he want and I've stated that yes he can and he will and and he will act according to his good pleasure I've had the experience of God recalibrating my thinking as I brought my requests to him that in the context of praying sometimes the answer comes in in my own words as I just say them out loud right and that's actually when we haven't really said much about this but that is one of it that is the other aspect of prayer and that is that we are not only talking but we're also listening and we're not listening in a vacuum but we're listening to God speak in the means whereby he always speaks which is through his word and that's why our knowledge of the Bible is is vital I remember when I used to take exams and my father would pray in the car before I got out of the car you know dear lord please bring to allister's remembrance the things that he has learned which was all was a bit of a a bit of a binder because I hadn't learned that much you know and so if he was only going to bring to mind what I'd remember what I had learned there's a short you know short se but I was looking more in the miraculous level you know like he brings to his mind things he's never learned and God is able to do those things too but by and large it is in the reservoir again of his truth brought home to us by the spirit that like you say we get answers to our own questions as we come humbly into his presence instead of coming in demanding or with it with the answer already in mind you talk in the book about praying for power power has kind of gotten a bad rap in our day we should be we should be releasing power rather than praying for power what well again it is a question of what do we mean by praying for power what was Paul talking about that they might have an awareness of the fact that once again United with Christ made available to them is the very power of the Resurrection which raised Jesus from the dead so you know to go back into the Old Testament you go to a situation where Jehoshaphat is there before the armies that come against him and he stands in the public arena with the adults and with children who can understand and he says Lord we do not know what to do but our eyes are upon you and and now he looks for a power that is entirely outside of himself a power that will enable him to think properly about the dilemma that he faces and then will enable him to lead the people who are under his care and will allow him to not violate anything that he knows of God's character and His purposes you have a similar thing with Paul where his thorn in the flesh he it seemed to him that it was legitimate to pray on three separate occasions at least for the removal of that and what is the answer that is given and said God says no my grace is sufficient for you for my power is or my strength is made perfect in weakness and so you have this amazing juxtaposition whereby it is when we are weak that we are strong so that's what we're thinking about in terms of power the the power that enables us not to boss people around or to establish our own jurisdiction but the power that suddenly discovers that if we will be obedient and launch out just a little bit when someone says now don't you go to that church up there by the golf course and inside we recoil and we go well I don't know if I want to get into this and it was oh yes I do well what do they do in there and you're in sight you're saying this is terrible I'm so weak at this and you're saying Lord power I need NEADS I need something here he comes through talked about how we should understand the the sovereignty of God with the reality that our prayers somehow affect the outcome of circumstances yes of course it's not uncommon to discover that there are certain people who think they believe in the sovereignty of God but they're actually fatalists they're really like Muslims you know when I've been in in Islamic countries I've been staggered to see how many people are prepared to drive in in the most reckless of manners I mean the wrong way on the freeway on the opposite side of the road why because they believe that if it is in the will of Allah they will be dead and if it isn't in the will of Allah they will get there now that is stupidity and that is not an understanding that the Bible gives us the Bible says no is supposed to be sensible that's why we have these rules and we have the left and right and so on but what we do know is that God always accomplishes his purposes that God had a purpose for his people that they could not fire them when they found themselves in the doldrums mmm this fellow called Joseph could never really have put the pieces of the puzzle together in the immediacy of it all and the cries of his own heart which are not really recorded for us in the Bible must often have been cries late Lord what are you doing here looking through the rearview mirror he realizes and the short answer I think is this that not only does God ordained the ends that he has appointed but he ordains the means to those ends and part of the means to the ends of the accomplishing of his purposes are as you say mysterious in the fact that our prayers are part of that otherwise there's no point in praying ever at all I mean if prayers just an exercise in deep breathing I mean I have a thing on my watch you know it tells me every so often it tells me breathe you know and and some people think that's what prayer is even Christians and and and that's why many of them have have succumbed to all kinds of meditative practices with a vague Christianized dimension to them but it's not what Paul is talking about doing when he cries out to God in Ephesians and that needs to be our pattern not this other stuff you prayed audaciously asked God for miraculous big things that some some would scoff at it's not wrong to do that is it no I mean the only caveat to that is I have somewhere in my notes a quote from Calvin's Institute's where Calvin who wants us to come to God with that sort of expensive sense that warns against I can remember his phraseology but it's like a lot basically alive in our minds just to go crazy foolish pretentious and presumptuous illusions he says that that that neither speaks well of the person who's praying nor does they speak well of God leaving that aside for the moment it would seem to me that the prayers of the early church were prayers that did not have many of the caveat that we have apparently decided to introduce two hours so they were earnestly in prayer for Peter who was you know in the jail and their prayer was pretty straightforward could we please have Peter out of the jail and of course he came out of the jail and then they were surprised because obviously they didn't ever think he would come potato which is again there is true of most of our prayer meetings you know asking God for things now he's never going to happen you know so we don't really believe yeah III I'm challenged in this III know I don't know if I have to if I have to keep using the same phraseology because I do know that God does things according to his will I know that I know that Jesus in the garden said nevertheless not my will but yours be done that was a very very personal moment between in the interaction of divinity itself clearly God knows that it is his will that needs to be done and not my well I'm not sure I need to remind him of that so therefore why can't I pray raise this baby he Lord from from this illness please you you are the God who can do this please now if he chooses through them will thank him if he chooses not to them will thank him why because we know that he's too kind to be cruel and he's too wise to make mistakes and because he's our Father he knows what's best for us in the same way I want a 650 cc motorbike dad you're not getting one Oh you remain dad well I may be a mean dad but I'm also a wise dad and I've seen you fall off your bike so many times I can't imagine what you're gonna do with 650 CCS in the same way our father knows best in that regard to hope is a part of praying it's one of the things you talk about in the book pray big how do we understand the relationship between biblical hope and our prayers well it's this it's a very important question and and it comes up all the time doesn't it that people say well if it's hope how can it be certain if because hope means I hope it won't snow before I fly out tonight there's no there no way of controlling that at all but when when you know Peter says we've been born again to a Living Hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead he's not talking about being born again to a living possibility he's don about being born again to a reality now that reality which is ultimately ours eventually in in a new heaven and a new earth is as he says elsewhere is reserved in heaven for you it's got your name on it if you like it's yours so it hope speaks of a reality that has not yet been enjoyed has not yet been experienced and that's why in the words of committal at the gravesite that I use I don't know if everyone does but I always say and in the sure and certain hope to the resurrection of eternal life through Jesus and how can it be sure certain and hope unless hope is that which is promised to us but not yet experienced so how does that help those who have prayed maybe for decades and seen those prayers not yet answered what do we do with that kind of challenge to our prayer life well it's hard and I've had times in my life where quite honestly you know I've been driving in the car and saying lord I don't even I I don't even know if I ought to keep up with this I mean I know many how many times how many times shall I ask you this now I don't say that presumptuously or but I don't even like mention it tell me the truth but I i've got i've had enough in my own life to to know that and have enough in my own life to know the reality of unanswered prayer unanswered in the sense that there is no immediate response that would give me a yes or a No so is then the delay on god's part capricious can't be is it part peaceful must be therefore what must i do pray on and in certain cases i have to believe that the covenant promises of god will be fulfilled if not in my lifetime nevertheless fulfilled and that for some of us there will be there will be joys in heaven that are peculiar to the discovery of the answer to our prayers which we never saw before we left because God will fulfill his purposes that's the best I can do you start the book pray big with a quote from 19th century Scottish preacher Robert Murray McShane tell us a bit about McShane and then sure the quote well McShane was clearly a peculiar young man in as much as you know his whole life was lived and and ended by the age of four twenty nine in that he packed into those years more than many of us have packed into a sort of regular lifetime he was godly they said that in his preaching just his very presence seemed to someone said that you know it was like it's like a rapier that was taken to you yielded by God to cut open the hearts and and life's of people and and he obviously was somebody for whom prayer was foundational he went as far as to say and I think this is the quote that what a man is on his knees before God that is what he is and nothing more which of course is a profoundly challenging notion and when most of the time people want to introduce us any of course what could they know about us in the privacy of our own homes but it's usually all about other stuff that make us who we are did this when their company started wrote this the thing and makes you in it saying essentially you know what Paul says and that is it's not where you have to say about yourself that matters it's what God has to say about you and there's nowhere that is more obvious I suppose than in our interaction with him in in personal devotion so that you know God I suppose could say well I'm not that impressed with how much bag talks because he proportionately he doesn't really talk that much to me talk about your own prayer life it's hard to it's hard to because if people a fellow wrote it's hard to for a number of reasons which I'll come to but a fella did a demon thesis on on me explaining to his readers the head the the only explanation for what I do is tied to my devotional life well how he came up with that as a strategy I don't know because when I finally he was well into by the time I met him and he wanted to do an interview with me and we Skyped and so he came on and he essentially said now I know that it is because of this that this and I said how do you know that he said well I assume that I said well that's quite an assumption isn't it and then he said so why don't you tell me I said no I don't want to tell you he said but it's my thesis poor guy who's paralyzed at the other end of the thing but I said I said look let's suppose I tell you and that it's amazingly impressive it'll sound like I'm blowing my own horn unless supposing I tell you and it's horribly bad then you'll lose all confidence in in your thesis and the whole thing will go south I said so I'll tell you this it's patchy it's like my exercise program its fits and starts its periods of immense devotion followed by significant sessions of chronic inertia it is it is deep resolve it is short term engagement it is it is all of the above it's like a relationship and I don't know if I want to find solace in this and thereby absolve myself of the absence of a kind of pontil ear discipline which I see in other people I mean I've got friends they have day blokes they put in the thing they tick it off the class and cross for this read for that yellow for this there's no point me even starting one of them I keep a journal every day of my life but it's not like that it's just it's just chronically in the fact that when I get asked questions like this I don't know how to answer them but it's I I find that the awareness that I have you know where again in Philippians where he says let your gentleness be known to all the Lord is at hand or the Lord is near you know it's true that his return is near according to the eschatological perspective but I think what he's really saying is the Lord is near so I want to get a sense of what brother Lawrence was all about in terms of practice in the presence of God so that in the same way that you and I don't need to have an agenda we don't need to have a program we don't have to notch it up in ten minute increments or something we just sit listen to music talk whatever else it is periods of silence books you've read things you've done it all unfolds that's that's what I'm trying to discover in in my devotional life that's why I'm reaching for the Psalms that's why I'm reaching for Christian biography trying to learn from them Eric Alexander who's a huge influence of my life forever at a banner of truth conference years ago I asked him because I figured he's so holy and such a good preacher that he must be one of these guys you know like the three o'clock in the morning guys so he must be up you know bare-legged you know aa-aa-aa-aah a rough floor his knees you know and and so I figure I'm gonna find out right now cuz they had a cue today and so I said mr. Alexander I said tell me about how your morning begins he said well I get up a little later than I probably should I usually take my children to school sometimes I read my Bible and then I read the newspaper and sometimes I read the newspaper and then I read my Bible sometimes I pray before I leave sometimes I don't pray till I come but I said okay you told me I know it's good I get it in other words this peculiar francis of assisi trip to which I can't even aspire I'm not so sure as represented in the lifes of all of my heroes but I do know this they do pray they do come to God independents they do read the word they do live in his presence and that's kind of like what I'm trying to do and hopefully you know 2019 is better than 18 I know your book pray big as a call for all of us to grow in this discipline of Prayer if you could make one or two adjustments in how most of us do our praying what would those adjustments be well you know on a corporate level having grown up with prayer meetings you know a couple of immediate adjustments would be just to to clean up the vocabulary of Prayer and I don't mean just the just the standard cliches about you know brother Reynolds who's laid on one side and stuff like that and please get mrs. Jenkins out for a bed of sickness which is a horrible picture but but the whole notion of Lord we just pray that you will be with as a curry there you know where he is you remember that his aunt is staying with him at the moment now now we're actually not praying to God at all but we're given a report on Zachary's mother went to California and so his aunt has been staying with him since Tuesday and and now God has actually turned it turned the sound off already himself and we're just left in the room going hey if you wanted to tell us about Zachary then you could have done that why are you calling it a prayer and furthermore he is with him so why he keep asking for him to be with him and furthermore don't say just be with them as if some are another you're embarrassed to even ask that kind of thing on the corporate level which one I ever mentioned it scares everybody into complete silence nobody ever praised because they're so full of B wits they can't even stop it but on a on a personal level I you know I would like to be better at what some of my friends are better I've you know in the in the diary of private prayer you know I've started on the blank sites you know to write in the you know like Lapine family life today some and I write it in but then I don't like how I wrote it right because of like some disorders that I have so then I rub that out or I realize I wrote it on the wrong page and then it really takes me off and so I just have to go forget this I'll never be able to do this so III would like to be more organized I would like to be more consistent I would like to be more like Paul in the largeness of things as opposed to going down the same road asking for the same things all the time you end the book asking the question who should we pray for and you say there are three dimensions of our prayers what are those yeah I think we say first of all given all that we've said earlier about you know why we shouldn't necessarily be just praying about this that we do pray for ourselves it would be weird if we didn't God expects that we bring our needs to him we bring our praise to him and so on so we pray for ourselves even as Jesus prayed for himself in in the garden he also then prayed for them I pray father for them and we pray for others as we have the privilege of entering into their lives it's it's both a responsibility and a privilege at the same time and those circles of engagement may be tight and and and fairly limited or they may be very large I mean I think you and I both know what it is to receive let from people though we have never met and may never meet and they tell us that on a consistent basis they are praying for us so we in turn have the privilege of doing that then and then the third thing that we mentioned to the close of the book is that is that Paul was actually praying so it was like for for our sake for their sake for his sake so that he's praying to the end that God will be glorified that his purposes will be fulfilled and that his name will be will be honored and if you think about it that really fits within the framework of the Lord's Prayer itself the the order may be a little different but nevertheless those those dimensions are there those three dimensions I think help us not stay focused in one area right our needs but broaden it and say I need to be thinking about meditating on and asking God for his will to be done in these areas as well it really is a learning curve I I mean I come back to where we were I mean we've I find myself consistently with the disciples saying as it were Lord teach teach me how to pray because if you pray in the can a shopping shopping list approach it's relentless in its asking and again when you pray as a group you know asking people to come home from work and get in their cars and drive out and go in a room and and and sit down and then all we do is rehearse a bunch of health requests well then when I'm going to fight you can hardly find anything in the Bible about praying about people's health and yet this sort of slightly the number one thing I had catched myself all the time in public prayer I say you know the only way to get prayed for in this church is like have a heart attack or you know get a diagnosis then they'll pray for you but but what about all the people that didn't have a heart attack that are well and they badly need prayer so yes it does when we pray big kingdom prayers you know we press you know your kidney your kingdom come unless we actually say and it is for this reason that we're praying about Malawi today it is for this reason that we're praying for the persecuted Church in Egypt today then the idea of the kingdom can be just like aids who knows what it is so again that's where leadership and prayer comes and we're very exercised about it as a church it's actually quite timely that this book will come out because we have said as a leadership partly as a result of our studies in Ephesians we better get serious here about what the Bible is saying concerning the nature of Prayer and encouraging each other to pray big do you think if we all prayed bigger we'd see God move in our in our world and our circumstances I think our reading of church history would at least allow us to see that through the rearview mirror at least the dramatic radical shift for example in the darkness and deadness of England was not answered politically but was answered spiritually as a result of people that we have never met who prayed along these big lines for God to radically alter the circumstances and and and hence Wesley hence Whitfield in other words God's answer was the gift of a baby and who knows I always say that when who knows but the children that are here and in our nursery we we may only be keeping our foot in the door for a generation or for two generations because of what God has in purpose in the thing does it matter if we see it or if everyone says we did it well to our ego it matters but in terms of the scheme of things now now one of the things you do in the book is you offer sample prayers at the end of each chapter that I think are very helpful you want to close with one of those burners surely I think from memory this is the one that's in the final chapter and sometimes I will actually read prayers like this as well to stop myself from being repetitious hmm father in heaven I thank you for the gift of prayer even though there are some things that are a mystery to me I know that this is a necessity and I exercise the privilege fully confident in both uribl 'ti and willingness to do far more than I could ever imagine or guess so help me then to ask for big things for the sake of your glory and through your matchless power enable me to pray big for Jesus sake amen [Music] you

Channel: Alistair Begg

Views: 81,679

Keywords: Prayer, Truth For Life, Alistair Begg, Praying, Apostle Paul, Ephesians

Id: wEkSWh2_yM4

Length: 49min 30sec (2970 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 10 2019