A Candid Discussion on the Evolution of Prayer from Youth to Adulthood

Speaker 1: 0:00

So welcome to Madison Church Online, to our online audience. I'm Stephen Feith, lead pastor, glad that you're joining us. Last month, a couple of guys from our church and my dad and I we went to Kentucky to check out a bunch of bourbon distilleries. We're all into bourbon, which, if you didn't know, is a whiskey made with at least 50% corn, and the trip was really, honestly, it was rewarding and just about every way it could be. We learned a lot about bourbon, the industry, how it's made, what makes everyone a little bit different. We got to try a lot of samples and I'll be honest with you, before we went on the trip and they were telling us that we'd get to try five or six different bourbons at every stop, I was thinking we'd be getting five or six full shots of everything, and so in my mind, I was very worried about driving from one distillery to the next after having six shots and so. But that's not it. They literally just put enough in there just for you to taste it and to move on. So that was. It was fine. In the bourbon world they call it hunting. It's when you're going to different liquor stores and different places looking for rare bottles of bourbon. We all got came home with some, some good stuff in our hall. All of our houses the four of us guys who were on the or the five of us guys who were on this trip all of our houses ended up with a lot more wood flavored alcoholic water. That's what bourbon is right Wood flavored alcohol water. But you know, the best part was probably spending a ton of time with each other Airbnb before and after, standing in line waiting to buy this stuff. It was good.

Speaker 1: 1:27

We took two cars, we took my car, I drove Judd and I drove my dad, and so, on the way back from this trip, I was going about 10 or 13 miles an hour over the speed limit. I wish I could tell you that's because it was a long. You know, it was a good trip, it was a long trip and I was ready to get home, but that would not be the truth. I mean, I was tired and I wanted to get home, but you just got to know about me. I constantly go 10 or 13 miles over the speed limit. If you leave church the same time as me or right before me, I am passing you on the belt line nine out of 10 times. I always speed, and I know just by telling you that I'm inviting your judgment on me. That's fine, you can judge me.

Speaker 1: 2:05

I'm recognizing this is a sin issue. Part of it's believing it first, and the next part is doing something about it. I'm usually pretty good at keeping an eye on the flow of traffic, though I'm not one of those speeders who will risk your life or mine to get somewhere 30 seconds before you. That's not me at all. I don't want to die. I don't want to kill you. I want you to go as unnoticed as possible. That is the key as unnoticed as possible. However, some of you know that they pay people to notice people like me. Right, they pay people to notice people like me.

Speaker 1: 2:36

We're on the way back. I'm going too fast. My heart stops as a state trooper casually pulls out of an area that I didn't notice him. He noticed me first and he ends up following us for a little bit, and both Judd and my dad were sleeping in the car and I was praying. I was praying that they wouldn't wake up with me talking to an Indiana state trooper. That's just what had been really embarrassing. Because I'm a faithful follower of Jesus, I did the spiritually mature thing and I prayed that he would pull over the guy from Florida who was following me. The good news is I didn't get pulled over. That's the good news. I didn't want to pay the ticket, but I also didn't want to have Judd hold this over my head for the rest of our friendship. I did slow down the rest of that trip until I got to Illinois, and then you have to speed up just to stay alive, just like that moment coming back from our trip on the Bourbon Trail.

Speaker 1: 3:30

Why am I telling you all this? I think that it's just human nature to find ourselves whispering prayers when we don't expect to. I wasn't necessarily expecting to start whispering prayers on our way back from Kentucky, but that police officer made me think twice. It made me really conscious of my situation. You may not be like me. Speeding isn't your issue. You're not worried about that. Perhaps there was a test that you didn't study for, you didn't prepare enough for, and you're sitting at the classroom or you're at your computer. You're waiting for the test to turn live and you're praying. You're like God. Give me the gift of prophecy, lord. I need a miracle. Can I just have your favor? Lucky guesses are good enough today God, anything that is self-integrated. Maybe you're circling the parking lot and it's like that awful rainy snow stuff where it hits the ground and it's automatically ice, and you're praying like I just really need a spot close to the entrance so I don't freeze and get just doused in rain.

Speaker 1: 4:34

I'll be flying to Orlando next week for a leadership conference and I've already started praying a couple things. One of the things I'm praying for is that the door doesn't blow off at 40,000 feet. That was something a year ago I didn't know I needed to pray about, and now I know I need to pray about that. I'm also praying for the babies that are on the plane, that they don't sit by me, that they sit next to somebody else who's just a lot more gracious and patient and loves kids. Now, look, I would cry too if it wasn't appropriate for adults to cry, because who wants to be in an airplane for two or three hours? And so I'm praying for that as well. But in each of those moments our prayers feel like shots in the dark. Don't tell you. There's shots in the dark, and oftentimes the outcome is never what we want it to be.

Speaker 1: 5:24

You failed the test. You prayed for it multiple times. I know that of all of you. Multiple times it happened If you didn't prepare and you prayed and you expected that just God would give you the answers. It did not happen. You didn't get the parking spot and, as a matter of fact, I want to point this out to you that somebody who doesn't pray probably did get the parking spot okay, and in the flight. Well, I'll let you know how that goes in three weeks when I come back to talk. Okay? Now imagine there are those of you in the room and you smile and you laugh, but you don't pray for the test at all. You just study for it like a normal, responsible person and others of you. You do your grocery shopping online now so you never have to worry about parking close, far away range. I don't matter, you're not going, somebody else is going to bring it to your door and you better believe. I'm bringing my noise-canceling earbuds in a week and a half when I am on this plane.

Speaker 1: 6:17

But what about the big things in life? The big things in life, I mean, don't get me wrong. I agree with Pastor and author Mark Batterson when he writes God is great not just because nothing is too big for him. God is great because nothing is too small for him either. That's what makes God great is that God doesn't just care about the big things. He cares about the little things in your life. But while there's nothing too small for God, what about the things that you can barely bring yourself to speak about this morning, the problems you're really good at repressing and burying and ignoring until they're the things keeping you awake at 3 in the morning? What about the things that you couldn't study or prepare for? You know, life sometimes throws things at you that you didn't plan for and that you couldn't have planned for. What about those things in life, the situations that, even if you had all the money in the world, you can't buy your way out of this? That money won't make that thing more convenient.

Speaker 1: 7:15

I think about the big things, like if you have children, adult children who have straight far from their faith as they become adults. Those are the things and their choices. They give you sleepless nights, they give you a heartache so deep you raise them up in the faith, but then, as soon as they left the home, they left the faith and you have this longing, this ache deep inside of you that you know that if they would just come back to the faith that some of the things that they're struggling with would get better. I know there are some of you who have earnest prayers for marriage that is teetering on the brink of a divorce. Every conversation you have with this person, it spirals into conflict. You've done all the things you could do, you've seen the counselor, you've made efforts to mend and yet those kind of things are coming up short. Or worse, some of you. There's a cold war going on at home. It's not explosive, it's not big fighting. It's being ignored completely, it's being shut out, it's being gaslighted and it's the absence of conflict in your relationship that lets you know something's wrong.

Speaker 1: 8:20

I know there are quiet prayers for relief, the relentless pressure of mounting bills, spiraling debt, where the sound of an 800 number ringing on your phone or an unopened bill triggers a minor or maybe major anxiety attack. Where are you going to get more money to pay for these fees that keep adding up because you're not paying on time? And I know there's some people in the room who are begging God to heal them. They're begging God to heal a loved one from something, an illness, a disease, but it keeps getting worse. It's almost like you're not praying at all, or actually it's kind of like you're praying for it to get worse, despite your praying for it to get better. I know we've all been there. I know we're all here right now.

Speaker 1: 9:15

These are prayers that go beyond daily inconveniences. They reach the depths of our soul. They give us an ache that's spiritual. You know what this is, this spiritual ache? It's not just emotional, it's not a physical ache, but there's a spiritual cry, the heavy prayers that remind us of our deepest fears, hopes and desires. And when these prayers go unanswered, we question our faith. We question our faith and we find ourselves grappling with profound questions about God's presence, god's plan and our place within it.

Speaker 1: 9:51

And with that opening, we're beginning a new five-part series on prayer today, and it's similar to the series we just did when we were taking a common subject, something we talk about all the time in church. Last time it was the Bible and this time it's prayer, but we're talking about it like adults. That's why the series is called Mature Audiences Only, not because there's a bunch of profanity, but because the content that we are getting into requires a certain maturity from you and from me. Oftentimes we grow up and our faith just doesn't. We get bigger physically, we get emotionally mature, but our faith stays in the nursery and when it comes to prayer, as kids, we're taught that prayer is simply asking God for things.

Speaker 1: 10:42

I mean, we teach our kids at home to pray three things. Every night. We tell Oliver and Elijah and Sunday, quinn, please, I'm sorry and thank you. We want you to come up with a prayer to God and what you acknowledge you did something wrong today and you're seeking forgiveness, something that you need God's help with. You're gonna say, please, god, let me. And then you're gonna say thank you. And so every night, in their own words, they say please, god, give us good dreams. They say I'm sorry that I wasn't nicer to my brother, and they say thank you for the house we live in or something to that effect. And that's a good place to start for little kids and as an adult, if you're not used to praying, that's a good place to start for you. It gives you kind of the start, but it's a start and unfortunately for a lot of us, the rest of our life got started and we still got our feet on the starting line of prayer and because of that, because we grow up, but our faith doesn't, our understanding of prayer doesn't.

Speaker 1: 11:41

We think that if we just prayed hard enough, or if you had enough faith, god will answer your prayers. That's why your prayers haven't been answered. We tell ourselves I just didn't have enough faith, I didn't pray hard enough, or we think that there's a perfect way to pray. This is when we kind of treat God as like a cosmic ATM machine. I have faith. It's my debit card. God is this machine. He's gonna give me what I want. I put my faith in. I say God, this is what I want, and then all of a sudden the pin number pops up. I don't remember that, and God seems to change it every six months. And so then we go through and we're trying to think what is the formula? What is there? There's gotta be a right way to pray, and if I could just pray the right way, god would be so eager to answer my prayers. It says.

Speaker 1: 12:24

These are the things we believe. We believe that maybe only certain people have a gift of prayer and you are not one of them and even though most of us, we know that those things aren't true, they are the invisible scripts dictating so much of our lives. We may not say it, but we're thinking it and deep down we believe it, and what happens is there's an unconscious argument building up against prayer. But when our maturity about prayer doesn't grow up, it doesn't just affect our faith, it hurts how you view yourself. I don't know if you've thought about that, but it hurts how you view yourself. For example, if God doesn't listen to me, he might listen to you, but he doesn't listen to me.

Speaker 1: 13:07

I'm just not important enough. I hear you talking about how God answers your prayers, but I can't think of one time God has answered mine. I just must not be important enough. Or maybe it's not that I'm not important enough. Maybe there's sin in my life. Maybe you've been told that you grew up in around the church and you heard the thing that was keeping God from answering your prayers was that you had sin in your life and for a while you prayed God, I'm so sorry for this, this and this, and you acknowledged all of the things that you knew weren't right, but then God still wasn't answering your prayer. And then you're like well, maybe there's like sin in my life that I don't know about. So then you just kind of generically pray about that God I'm sorry about the things I don't know that I'm doing wrong. And then God still doesn't answer the prayer. And then you're on this endless hunt for what is wrong with me Because God's not answering my prayers. And perhaps you've just concluded today that God's punishing me because I'm bad. God doesn't answer my prayers, I'm damaged goods.

Speaker 1: 14:02

You might find yourself at this point. If this is you, this is your story. This is where you're at this morning. The big things, the little things. You find that God is not answering your prayers. It's damaging to your faith. It's hurting yourself. You may agree with Atheist Sam Harris who says nothing fails like prayer.

Speaker 1: 14:19

There's an uncomfortable element of familiarity in that quote, because 100% of every single person who has ever uttered a prayer has also experienced unanswered prayer. We all know what it's like to throw words up to the sky only to seemingly watch them fall and hit the ground and die right in front of us. We grow up, but our understanding of prayer doesn't. It doesn't just hurt our faith, it hurts how we see ourselves and our relationship with God. We believe about prayer and how we practice. It also affects our view of God. God doesn't care about people. That's why he's not listening. It's not just me and it's not just you. We can get a group of people together talking about unanswered prayer and saying, well, god just must not care. Or worse, god is vindicative, god is out for revenge, god is punishing you. We all must have done something wrong and God is just kind of sitting back watching us suffer because he kind of enjoys it. Or maybe God doesn't answer prayers because God doesn't exist.

Speaker 1: 15:33

You see, when our prayer life doesn't grow up, these are the natural destinations we arrive at, and over the next month I hope to take you on a journey of learning and unlearning. Learning is just as important as unlearning. I want to help you deconstruct some false things you've picked up along the way about prayer so that you can reconstruct some good things about prayer in its place. And together we're going to see that it's possible for our grown-up beliefs and practices about prayer to strengthen our faith, to positively impact how we see ourselves and to improve our relationship with God.

Speaker 1: 16:16

And so let's start this series Mature Audiences Only about prayer by asking a very basic question why pray? Why pray? Sometimes we pray because we need something. Sometimes we pray because someone else needs something. I mean, that's why we do the elder thing in the back during our prayer and worship time. In case you need prayer for yourself, we do the connection card. You can write down prayers for yourself or for someone else.

Speaker 1: 16:41

So why pray? Well, sometimes I need something and sometimes someone else needs something. Why pray? Well, other times it's an act of worship. We're adoring God, we're glorifying God with the things that we say or the words that we sing. That's also part of our time here today. It could be spiritual warfare that you're praying through and I do not have time at all to unpack that today, but we have done three messages in the last 12 months on that that you can find on our YouTube channel. So there are lots of reasons why you might say you pray today, but today I want to suggest that, while all of those reasons are valid, they're important, they're biblical, they're theologically sound, I want to say there's an even greater reason that we pray that you may not acknowledge, and the reason that we should pray, the most important reason that you and I should pray, is to align our will with God's will. It should be to align our will with God's will.

Speaker 1: 17:35

Jesus is very intentional about everything that he ever said and did? I mean? There's one person who did everything intentionally. It was Jesus. And so when his closest friends and followers ask him, lord, teach us how to pray, it is no mistake that he leads with this Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy. And then, before like I need this before my friend needs that, before, protect us from spiritual warfare, before any of the things that are biblically sounding good to pray about, he says may your kingdom come soon. That's God's will and the things you want to have happen there, happen here. May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. No, jesus tells us when we begin to pray, that we are to refer to God as our Father. And he says you ask your heavenly Father for his will to be done.

Speaker 1: 18:32

Jesus says don't think of God as just God, just as deity, god lots of deities they prayed for in the society all around them. Right, he uses family language. Think of God as a Father, not a stranger and not a friend, but an actual member of your family. And I was thinking about this this week and I've gone back. It's not even in my notes, I'm just going to go for it and maybe I'll cut it out of the YouTube video. This is part of the joy of being here in person is because you never know what gets cut.

Speaker 1: 19:06

This might be a barrier for some of you God as Father. And why would it be a barrier for you? Well, because your Father was absent growing up. Your Father should have been there for you. I know that I believe that You're awesome and I'm not mean that like facetiously or sarcastic. Your dad should have been there for you. For whatever reasons good or bad he wasn't there. He was absent For some of you. It might be a little bit worse. For some of you, your Father was abusive. He was worse than absent Father. He was there and he hurt you emotionally, physically. Otherwise it's awful. So when you hear heavenly Father, maybe you're triggered a little bit, because when you grew up, your dad was an asshole.

Speaker 1: 20:02

And I need you to be offended, not because I said a bad word that we all say from time to time. I need you to be offended that there are people in the world who would hurt their kids and I need you to be offended that the ripple effect of that damage is affecting people as adults today. I need you to be more offended that that occurred than the language I used today. I need you to understand that it didn't just affect the relationship with their dad, but it affects their relationship with God and in many cases, it reflects their relationship with other people and they find themselves in abusive relationships once again. Partnership with Ace. Okay, that's why we're doing this. That's a reality. So if you can't pray to your heavenly father today, I just want you to know. I understand, I get it If that's your situation, circumstances, but I want to remove that barrier for you. Pray to God your perfect parent. Pray to God your mother. That's fine with me. I would actually argue it's okay with Jesus.

Speaker 1: 21:09

Jesus is the first person in the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, to refer to God in motherly terms. He refers to God as a mother hen, he refers to God as an old lady looking for her coin, and there are a couple other examples of that. Jesus is the very first one, in a society that was dominated by the patriarchy, to say but don't forget, god isn't a guy, he isn't a man. Oh man, god is God, and all of us in the room are in his image, not just the dads, but the moms too. And so if you got to begin there. You got to begin praying to mom or you got to pray to your parent. Begin there. But I want to ask you to keep in the forefront of your mind that someday let God redeem fatherhood for you. Someday, let God redeem what a good dad is. There are good dads not enough of them. I pray that we're raising two good boys, two good men. We have two sons at home, and that's a prayer. I pray that we raise good men because the world is short on them. But let God redeem father for you and for some of you.

Speaker 1: 22:19

If I do keep this in the video you're watching or listening online and you think this is some like woke liberal propaganda crap. It's not one Jesus is the one who first introduces this idea that God has motherly attributes. And two you're assuming that people need to believe the right things to have a relationship with God or to pray to God, and that's not true. That's something you might have learned along the way. People don't have to have the right beliefs to have a relationship with God. I hate to break it to you, but none of you have the right beliefs. None of us do. We won't find out to the end of our lives what was right and what was wrong. We're all doing the best we can, yet God meets us here and so it's not this. It might be perhaps that you're too far right and to begin to see as I've challenged the other people in the room who need to begin to maybe start with a parent or mother and begin to work toward a father. Maybe what you need to do is to deconstruct some of this male and patriarchal and fatherly language you got and begin to see God full dimensional, which also includes female and motherly attributes as well, and so when we pray, we come to God as the perfect parent.

Speaker 1: 23:24

But the other part of this prayer is learning what God's will is. It probably begins as a generic God let your will be done in my life. But eventually, as we pray, what we're seeking out is to learn specifically what God's will is. It starts generic, but as we pray we begin to specifically learn what God wants done. I love what the Psalmist writes in chapter 37, verse 4. He writes take the light and the Lord, and he will give you your heart's desires.

Speaker 1: 23:57

Now, a common misreading of this is like the things I want are the things God's going to answer? Right, because that's kind of what it translates in English, as If we're just reading original languages here. They're telling you that the things you want will come from God. Okay, not that I get whatever I want, because I prayed for it. They're saying that when we pray, when we walk in God's path, when we're seeking God's will, pretty soon what happens is the things that I want are the things that God wants.

Speaker 1: 24:25

And the Psalmist is saying this is where we want to get to, because when God's will is our will, we have found truly our North Star. We have found something outside of ourselves that we can't find inside of ourselves. When we seek out God's will, there's something out there that can change us in here and lead us to better directions. But I know for a lot of us we're looking inside. What's the answer? Is it a new job? Is it a raise? Is it a promotion? Is it a relationship, a romantic partner? Is it more money? Is it less money? We look in all of these things and instead what we need to do is find the North Star here, which is what is God's will.

Speaker 1: 25:03

We pray and Jesus says begin here, god, what is your will for my life? And as we begin to do that, god begins to show us his will and we begin to seek that out. And as we begin to seek out God's will for our lives, and as it begins to get specific, we find that the things that we want in our hearts, the things that we desire, are God's will. And then that's when things start coming together and that John 10.10 promised that God wants you to have life and experience life to its fullest and its best. That's when we find it, and so my challenge for you today, as we wrap up, is to begin praying with your relationship with God in mind. Begin here Before we ask him for something I need, before you ask him for something someone else needs, before you ask for the protection in whatever spiritual battles you're facing, stop, pause, breathe and connect with your heavenly Father, your perfect parents, and soak that in. And I wanna suggest for your prayer life to grow up, one of the very first and most important steps that you need to take, beginning today if possible, and to put into practice this week, is to find a place to pray in your house, in your apartment Maybe it's in your car, cause that's the only place you can get peace and quiet, but you need to find a place to pray.

Speaker 1: 26:33

I've been learning all about this week and as I've been studying this, but you know, jesus took regular breaks. He would go to places to pray. He could have stopped and prayed anywhere. He usually did, but a lot of times too, he found a place to pray. Before choosing the 12 disciples, jesus goes off and prays. Before his arrest and subsequent death, jesus goes to a garden to pray. He didn't have to travel to pray, he could have saved the trip. But we notice that, again, jesus being intentional, he goes to places to pray. We also see him just go away to pray as a regular practice.

Speaker 1: 27:08

It's not always the big things in life. This was just something Jesus regularly did, and then it wasn't just something he's like. This is what I do because it works for me. I know that's a lot of common language and it's good language for our world today, but Jesus says it's not just good for me, it's good for you. So, even before telling his disciples how to pray, he says when you go pray, go away by yourself. This is Matthew 6,6. Shut the door behind you and pray to your father in private, and then your father, who sees everything, will reward you, and so, as I've been studying this week, I'm reminded that the Holy Spirit fills places just as much as he fills people.

Speaker 1: 27:50

I think of Acts 2, when the Holy Spirit filled the upper room and all those who were in it. And this is something I'm learning mostly, to be honest with you, mostly through my experience. I know theologically God is everywhere, at all times. He is as much in this room as he is on the car right here. But then I sit there in my car on the way home and I said why did it feel like I was experiencing God so much more 15 minutes ago than right now?

Speaker 1: 28:15

Celtic Christians gave me some language this week. The Celtic Christians understood that the Holy Spirit saturates places and they called these places thin places. Thin places. It's like taking a blanket off and now, all of a sudden, there's nothing interrupting the relationship and Madison Church, in this building, this basement, for whatever reason, we have found a thin place. But I wanna stick with what I know, and that's that God is everywhere, at all times, just as with you here. So find a thin place at your own home and then set aside and spend time in prayer this week so that you can have that tangible and intimate connection with your Father, god. I love what Richard Foster says Just find a place of focus a loft, a garden, a spare room, maybe just a designated chair, somewhere away from the routine of life.

Speaker 1: 29:08

This is gonna become your prayer space, out of the path of distractions, and allow this spot to become a sacred tent of meeting. A sacred tent of meeting. Find a place, like Madison Church at 11 o'clock on Sundays, where you expect to hear from God. This is available to all of you. This could be your tent of meeting.

Speaker 1: 29:30

Next week, we're gonna talk about how not to pray. Last year I did a seven part series on how to pray. Next week, I'm just gonna tell you how not to pray All in one message. I figured why didn't I do this last year? Could have saved seven weeks of content. Just talk about the common mistakes we all make in prayer and how we practice it. The week after that, jason is gonna tell us what to pray for, what to pray for, now that we're adults. But all that's coming next for now and today, and what I want to leave you with is this foundation that when we come to pray, it's about a connection and it's about a relationship. That's more important. So go ahead and pray for the test you didn't study for. I'm gonna keep praying for that baby or those babies on my flight, keep praying to be healed, keep praying for those around you to have spiritual breakthroughs. But before you do, take that moment and remind yourself this is about a relationship and God. What's your will.