Sunday, July 8, 2018 – Ephesians 6:18

The Proper Attitude and Motivation in Prayer Demonstrated by Jesus Christ, Pt. 1 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2un38Lsv1i8 

Pastor/Teacher, Jim Rickard

Grace Fellowship Church

www.GraceDoctrine.org

Stand in Warfare – Eph 6:10-20.

In our outline of Eph 6:10-24, (The Believer’s Walk in Warfare; God’s Provision for His Children’s Spiritual Battles).

1. The Empowerment, vs. 10.

2. The Enemy, vs. 11-12. 

3. The Equipment, vs. 13-17. 

4. The Energy, vs. 18-20, God’s Appeal for Prayer in the Church.

5. The Encouragement, vs. 21-24.

Vs. 18, Prayer Makes the Armor of God Effective for Victory!

Principles on Prayer.

Someone once correctly stated, “the secret of all failure is our failure in secret prayer.” This does not just mean that we are not praying – our failure to pray, but more importantly, how we go about our prayers - our failure in prayer.

Written by the anonymous author of the classic little book on prayer entitled, “The Kneeling Christian,” (Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids: 1971). The author means that the reason we so often fall into sin or live in discouragement or fail to bear fruit is because we do not cling to God in Christ above all things. We do not diligently seek Him or lean on Him or plead with Him or draw on His strength. We give ourselves to busyness over communion with God, and in this way we seek to accomplish in our flesh what can only be accomplished in the power of the Spirit.

This is demonstrated for us by our Lord in the parable about the Pharisee and the Tax Collector in Luke 18:11-14, when a Pharisee went up to the temple to pray, he literally prayed with reference to himself, thus we would understand that he was not really concerned about his relation to God. As a result, his prayers were never heard by God because neither he nor his prayers were ever right with God.

You see his thought and prayer exclude one key ingredient, “Your will be done.” This individual was self-centered. It was all about him, rather than about His relationship with God and God’s will for his life. When our prayers are all about ourselves, we do not have the proper motivation in prayer and do not have the proper requests in prayer.

You see, prayer moves to a whole new plane when you are willing to say, (and truly mean and believe), “Your will be done.”

When you can get to the point in your spiritual walk when your prayer time involves relinquishing your grip on your own personal desires and abandoning yourself to God in every possible way, then your prayers will be on target and you will see them answered time after time in fantastic ways.

Victor Hugo said, “Prayer, then, is an attitude of the heart that humbles itself before a living God, silently declaring, ‘I need You’.”

Scripture clearly indicates that there are hindrances to an effective prayer life. That is why our Lord tells us in Mat 6:1-7, that prayer is not some formula for attaining personal wants or ambitions, nor is it expressly designed for crisis situations.

James Hudson Taylor said, “When we work, we work, when we pray, God works.”

Throughout history, the men and women that God has used mightily have been people who knew how to pray and for whom prayer was both a priority and a necessity. Our Lord demonstrated and taught the disciples how to pray when we compare John 14:12-13; 15:7; 1 John 15:7.

John 14:12-13 “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go to the Father. ¹³ And whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.”

John 15:7 “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it shall be done for you.”

1 John 5:14-15, “This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. ¹⁵And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him.”

The vision and discipline of Biblical praying as committed disciples of the Lord Jesus has somehow escaped the body of Christ. We talk of its necessity, but too often we fail to accomplish its reality. This is what led the disciple to plea to the Lord in Luke 11:1.

Luke 11:1, “It came about that while He was praying in a certain place, after He had finished, one of His disciples said to Him, “Lord, teach us to pray just as John also taught his disciples.”

It is interesting that if you were to open your Bibles and read through the four gospels, you would never find an instance where the disciples asked, “Lord teach us how to witness,” or “teach us how to perform miracles,” or “teach us how to teach.” But in this passage, we do find one of the disciples asking, “Lord, teach us to pray …” That is quite incredible and significant.

This was a very wise question, a very needed question, and from these disciples, who were sometimes so slow about spiritual values, this question becomes extremely significant.

Remember, these disciples heard the Pharisees prayer and they witnessed Jesus praying too. So what was the difference they saw in Jesus that they wanted to have themselves? It was the way He prayed in relation to God the Father and the plan the Father had for Jesus’ life on earth. It was Jesus’ manner and attitude in prayer that saturated His total being and living, His every step and action, which also manifested the intimacy of His relationship with and dependence on the Father.

Prayer for Jesus, as it should be for you and I, was never just a religious responsibility or an exercise He engaged in because He was obligated to do so.

Prayer for our Lord proceeded out of a basic attitude of deep dependence that resulted in a very intimate fellowship that He always had with the Father. This relationship came from the viewpoint of His humanity, He was totally convinced He could do nothing from His own resources. Therefore, He was totally dependent on the Father for all things, situations, and circumstances.

It was this reliance and dependences that demonstrated Jesus’ deep conviction to the disciples that created a longing in their lives for the same. As such, they came to recognize that while they could be believers in the Lord, they could not be true disciples who became like their teacher unless they learned to pray to the Father like the Lord Jesus in the intimacy and dependency that He constantly demonstrated, cf. Luke 6:40.

Luke 6:40, “A pupil is not above his teacher; but everyone, after he has been fully trained, will be like his teacher.”

This principle shows us one of the basic principles that governed the life of the Savior. In John 5:19 Christ said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner.”

Then, in John 8:28-29 and 14:10 He repeated the principle.

John 8:28-29, “So Jesus said, "When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and I do nothing on My own initiative, but I speak these things as the Father taught Me. ²⁹And He who sent Me is with Me; He has not left Me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to Him".”

John 14:10, “Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works.”

The principle should be obvious to us. For Jesus Christ, prayer was a way of life, an absolute necessity: it was a means of communion with the Father and the means of bringing the power of God the Father to bear on the humanity of Jesus Christ moment by moment. We see this in Mat 12:18 when Jesus quoted Isa 42:1.

Mat 12:18, “Behold, My servant whom I have chosen; My beloved in whom My soul is well-pleased; I will put My Spirit upon Him, and He shall proclaim justice to the gentiles.”