Why Pray?

Our passage today is Philippians
4, 4 through 9. Thank you so much for reading
that passage. I would like to cover a few key
points. One thing I wanted to mention,
I’ve talked to a few people already, this topic is near and dear to
my heart. It’s been bouncing around in my head for many, many
years. So I’m hoping it’ll be edifying to you as well. My focus
is on certainly the scriptures and the exposition of the scriptures,
but then focusing on application. I spent many years where we didn’t
have a lot of application. Great teaching, but often they
didn’t help you understand how you should be applying this into
your daily lives. So that’s my focus here, and
that’s why the notes are very helpful. So let’s get started. In the Epistle to the Philippians,
it was written around AD 60 to 62. Paul was imprisoned in Rome
under the Praetorian Guard. While many of Paul’s letters
deal with very weighty issues ranging from doctrine to apostasy,
this letter is one that shows Paul’s shepherding heart. It
is truly one of my favorites. It’s a letter filled with joy
and thanksgiving. It shows Paul’s heart and focus
on the glory of God in proclaiming the gospel. Paul was also writing
about being content in any situation. For Paul, this was especially
important in light of the fact that he was in prison. Paul wanted
the Philippians to become servants just as Jesus was. Jesus served
in all humility without clinging to all his rights as the Son
of God. And we can be those servants like Jesus in Christ, but we
are humble and abiding in the Spirit. The Philippians were
well known for having a very high view of themselves. This
is certainly true of the professing church in America today. We think
much of ourselves and we’re steeped in pride and arrogance, even
in the midst of all the false doctrine and even apostasy that’s
so common in the church today. Paul wants us and shows us through
the entire book of Philippians about the life of joy in Christ
that comes by the peace of God. The book of Philippians is fairly
short and very tightly written in terms of scope and content.
A simple outline I’ve seen that I think expresses it very well
is chapter one being joy in living for Christ. Chapter two, joy
in serving Christ in unity. In chapter four, joy in resting
in Christ. And that’s where the bulk of
our focus will be on today. We hear Paul’s instruction in
his letter to all the saints in Christ who were in Philippi,
including the overseers and the deacons. The words Paul wrote
to the Philippians were very important when originally written,
and as the word of God, they speak to us as well. Paul’s encouraging
us, calling us to get closer to God. Paul is telling us how
to obtain that peace with God, peace of God. And now that we’ve
taken a little bit of time to set the background, let’s return
to our focus on the passage of Philippians 4, 4-9. I did slip in verse 9. I told
Barb 4-8, but I slipped in verse 9. And hopefully by the time
we get there, you’ll understand why I added it back in. This passage contains commands
and exhortation. provided for our benefit. And
if you notice, joy is central to the first three chapters in
the book of Philippians. Paul then continues in showing how
we can comfortably, joyfully rest in Christ. So when we read
the passage, let’s read it again. Philippians 4, four through nine. Rejoice in the Lord always. Again,
I will say rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known
to everyone. The Lord is at hand. Do not be
anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication
with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the
peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard
your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers,
whatever is true, Whatever is honorable, whatever is just,
whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable,
if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things. What you have learned and received
and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of
peace will be with you. We’re going to look at each of
the key words and phrases in this passage. We’ll break them
down. I put them into four groupings just to make it easier to track
so that you’re not looking through the entire set of verses there.
Our purpose is to hear and apply what Paul is telling us with
respect to us obtaining that peace of God through prayer,
meditation, rejoicing, humility, and trust. We will understand
that what we do while the Spirit works in us to achieve this peace.
In the first group, group one, I’m gonna cover verses four and
the first part of five. We look at verse four again.
Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say rejoice. The
first three chapters of the book demonstrate that we have much
to be joyful about. The word is repeated twice here for impact
and emphasis. Joy is more of a state of being
than just a pure emotion. There’s an emotional aspect to
it, but this state of being, it permeates to our very core.
While being joyfully is partly a choice, it also requires the
work of the Spirit in us, and our work, and can be seen in
the development of the fruit of the Spirit. We’ve all seen
a truly joyful person. They exude peace, contentment,
confidence, humility, trust, and faith while focusing on the
truth of God. Rejoicing is simply joy expressed.
Paul is telling us to express that inner joy by rejoicing. A joyful person doesn’t have
to be loud and emotionally uncontrolled. They’ll exude these attributes
we just reviewed, peace, contentment, confidence, humility, trust,
and faith. They will exude these attributes that express that
extreme thankfulness that makes them truly happy and joyful.
And this is because of the work of the Holy Spirit in us. In
verse 5a, the first part of verse 5 following on, let your reasonableness
be known to everyone. I really love this. And as I
looked into this and studied this and prayed about this, I’m
hoping this speaks to you. I was kind of confused about
the word reasonableness there. It doesn’t seem to have the bite
that I was expecting it to have. So we’re going to talk about
that here. This first part of the verse is often glossed over
if you see the way it’s It’s listed there just as sort of
an aside, it feels like. We’re instructed to ensure that
our reasonableness is known to everyone. And I don’t like, as
I said, I don’t really care for the word reasonableness, but
when I looked at the other versions, like the NASB, it translates
it as gentle spirit. And New King James, patient and
mild. So you start to get a feeling
that there’s more to this word than just that sort of generic
term of reasonableness. It’s really talking about the
heart of the person and what everybody knows about you. And
so what we see in the Greek, if you look at this, it’s defined
as gentle, yielding, kind and courteous, tolerant, merciful,
and that doesn’t insist on every right of the letter of the law
or custom. And we heard that about Jesus.
He didn’t seek to lay claim to all that he was entitled to.
We seek to endure all things properly. The idea is that this
is not a momentary action, but one that reflects your spirit
welling up at all times. These distinctives also include
moderation, submission, and surrender. One good example I saw was sort
of an industrial molding process where we’re being pressed into
that mold of Christ. So we’re being pressed into it
to be conformed in Christ to Christ in Christlikeness as we
go through our walk and the Holy Spirit works in us. This welding
up of reasonableness or Christlikeness is helped along by the fruit
of the Spirit. It’s manifested in us as we grow
in Christlikeness. And we’ll take a look at that,
the fruit of the Spirit, here in a moment. It’s very difficult
to maintain this reasonableness or Christlikeness as an inherent
part of your daily behavior if it doesn’t boil up from your
very soul. It’s an ongoing and growing part It’s an ongoing growing part
of the personality and temperament of each individual. It can be
seen as showing grace to all in true humility. And we see
this in our own walks that when it permeates our entire being,
while it may be sporadic at first as we grow, the mature Christian
will be known by this in all that they do. Of course, it doesn’t
mean that they’re perfect. And as I said, we see this in
our own walks. There’s times when we’re up and we’re down,
we’re up and we’re down, and that’s part of life. And so the
whole notion of what we’re talking about here is to engage in that
prayer and meditation, to have that peace of God so that it’s
continually growing and expanding in you and welling up inside
your very soul. And if we look at Galatians 5,
22 and 23, where we talk about the fruit of the spirit, it says
the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, Patience, kindness,
goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such things
there is no law. And you can see with that reasonableness
that if everyone knows you’re a Christian and you’re living
that Christian life and you’re growing in Christ, they would see this
fruit of the Spirit. That would be evident to them.
That would be growing up through you. And that joy that is mentioned
would be there and available for you to be able to rejoice
with. This reasonableness, this Christ-likeness welling up in
us is the manifestation of the fruit of the Spirit in true humility.
This humility is genuine because we understand who we truly are
before our holy God. And I do want to say this quick
side note on this. When you get closer to Christ,
we see less and less of ourselves, okay? We become more Christ-like.
And I have an example here where I always talk to my children
about this, is that imagine the sun and how big and amazing the
sun is and how bright it is. Can’t look at it, et cetera.
But imagine us as that point of the earth. The light from
that sun shines on the earth, and we take benefit from that.
But as you grow in Christ, you should be moving closer to that
sun. Now, if you look at Mercury, it’s very hard to see. You don’t
see Mercury, you see the sun. And so I use that analogy to
show that as we grow in Christ’s likeness and we grow in our Christian
walk, we should be seeing less and less of ourselves. And I
think a lot of Christianity today, we like the position of where
it’s at, where the earth is at, and the sun that shines on there,
we’re comfortable there. We stay there, we don’t necessarily grow
and grow closer to God and to Christ so that we see less of
ourselves. So as you grow in your walk,
we should be seeing more and more of Christ in that Christ-likeness
and less and less of who we were. Okay? This humble understanding
of ourselves enhances that reasonableness and is seen in us with the fruit
of the Spirit that grows as part of the work of the Spirit in
us. So these are, in a sense, what we are called to be, and
what we talk about now is how we strengthen them by abiding
in Christ in the Holy Spirit. In the second grouping, we’re
looking at that second half of verse five and the first part
of verse six. And that is, the Lord is at hand. Do not be anxious about anything. The second part of verse five,
the Lord is at hand, in the first part of verse six, really demonstrate
that God is our caring father. The first part of the sentence
is often overlooked. If you look at it when you read
it in scripture, it’s often something that just is spoken and you pass
on from it. It’s often overlooked because
it is part of verse five. The impact of these few words
are clearly connected to the first portion of verse six via
that semicolon. This is a beautiful picture that
shows us as a part of the same sentence, the Lord is at hand
in both time and space and relationally. He’s so close to us to help us. The phrase at hand is used in
two ways in scriptures for the judgment of people or to help
his people. In this case, it’s clearly used to show that the
Lord is nearby as promised to aid us because he cares for us.
He’s telling us not to worry or be concerned about anything.
We’re to cast all our cares on him. When we are told, We then
are told the way in which we cast all our cares on him is
by prayer. As we pray and meditate, which
is a part of prayer, we will learn more and more about God’s
sovereignty, his providence, and how he is trustworthy in
all things. This along with the sanctifying
work of the Holy Spirit, strengthening us and reducing our anxiousness. Even those lacking in faith will
have their faith strengthened in the same manner. And we know
anxiousness can come from many sources. It comes from issues
in your past, it comes from the desire to control, many other
issues. So think of anxiousness as broader
than anything that you frustrated or worry about or are concerned
about. God commands you to obey in not
being anxious. But he does so as a loving father
that knows what is best for his child. He also knows the priceless
benefit and blessing you will obtain when you obey. And here
in prayer, he gives you the means by which to obtain that. A few
additional verses on anxiety that I want to look at is Luke
12, 22. And he said to his disciples,
therefore, I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what
you will eat, nor about your body or what you will put on.
In 1 Peter 5, 6, and 7. Humble yourselves, therefore,
under the mighty hand of God, so that the proper time He may
exalt you, casting all your anxieties on Him because He cares for you.
Our Master is calling us to trust and faith. Worry and anxiousness
diminishes us. It prevents us from reaping the
benefits that God provides in Him being near at hand. Anxiousness
shows a lack of trust, a lack of faith, and a lack of knowledge
of our sovereign God who says he will guard us. By growing
in the peace of God, our trust in our faith will increase and
our anxiousness will decrease. How do you feel when your child
or someone else ignores or doubts when you say you will take care
of them on any issue? I know how that feels when my
children blow me off. Imagine the heart of our most gracious
Father when we do so. Now, how do we embrace that God is near
and that we are to trust him and obtain the peace of God?
By prayer and meditation. Paul tells us, as we look at
in verses 6b through 8, he tells us how we do that. In verse 6b,
the second part of that, after hearing that the Lord is near
and we’re not to be anxious about anything, But in everything,
by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests
be made known to God. But in everything by prayer,
the first portion, some things, most things, no, everything,
everything by prayer. And I can’t stress this part
enough. Remember that this is the privilege
of God’s true children? Do you comprehend that the sovereign,
all-powerful creator of everything has ordained that we, as believers
in Christ, have the right to come before the throne of grace
and commune with him? Do we really get that? Do we
really believe it? We should always be going to
God first. I would submit that if we did, we wouldn’t treat
prayer as an afterthought. We wouldn’t look to the world
for our comforts, for our answers, our priorities. And we’re all
guilty of this. You know, you hear the thing,
our thoughts and prayers are with you, or I’ll pray about
that. But it’s typically at the end
of the issue and not at the beginning. So please, please, I pray that
we all, including myself, are much better about this. I use
this example, and this is not a slam against Wyoming. Living
in Wyoming the last several years, we understand what a tree needs
to survive. If you imagine a desolate landscape
with only a river running through it, with no vegetation away from
that river, as a tree puts down its roots in the effort to gain
nutrition, growth, support, and life, it does so by striving
to reach the water with its roots. We say it’s inconceivable for
a tree to send only some of its roots toward the water and the
rest towards a desolate land away from the water. Is that
not what we do as Christians with respect to prayer? Do we
not move away from the living waters offered by our own creator,
all through the Holy Spirit and by the means of prayer? We seem
to only go for this living water via prayer as a last resort.
It must not be so. I believe this is why the church
is ineffective. Believers are without power promised
by God, and why God’s people are not joyful and victorious
or excited to share the love and sacrifice of Christ with
the knowledge and hope of what God has done and will do in our
lives and in all his children through eternity. Another example
is when I was in the Marine Corps. You didn’t want to go on sick
call because you weren’t then out in the field in the trenches
with your buddies. And you felt really guilty about
that. And I relate that to the lack of prayer and the lack of
us as believers in being there for one another and for the rest
of the body of Christ as we spend a lot of time on sick call dealing
with our own little issues, our own little victimizations, et
cetera, as opposed to being on the front lines with other Christians
to get out there and proclaim the gospel. A prayer is a petition. It’s a formal request made to
a deity, in this case, the one true God. True prayer for the
Christian can only be offered to God the Father and Jesus the
Son through the Holy Spirit, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and
Joseph, the God of our faith. Prayers offered to other idols
or false gods or of no benefit are in vain. And idols also include
those things where we Create a God that’s not the God of the
Bible. Remember, that is idolatry as well. God reveals himself
to us in his word, and that’s who God is, not what popular
culture says he is. But in everything, by prayer
and supplication, Supplication is a part of prayer and is an
urgent request or plea or even begging. This accompanies the
actual quest like praying for a child’s salvation with the
passion and zeal of begging for that request from God according
to his will. but in everything by prayer and
supplication with thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is showing gratitude
and appreciation. Thanksgiving here is to be viewed
as reactive and proactive. We’re often very comfortable
giving thanks for those prayers that have been granted in the
past, especially if they were a yes, right? We got what we
thought we wanted. We can also give thanks for those
prayers that haven’t been answered yet. This is not presumptuous. Giving thanks for prayers that
have not been answered is based on trusting that God will answer
all of our prayers. Thanksgiving will encompass all of our prayers,
whether God’s answer is yes or no. So be thankful before, after,
during, at all times. In 1 John 5, 13 through 15, we
see the key point is to remember that we are to pray according
to His will. In doing so, we’re thankful that
our sovereign, all-knowing God will answer our prayers in the
best possible way for us, even if the answer is no, because
it is not according to His will. We are to be thankful for everything.
In Ephesians 6, 13 through 20, we see the full armor of God,
and it is clear that prayer is critical to the Christian life
as a warrior for Christ. I won’t read the entire set of
the verses. Starting in 13, we talk about
the armor. And in verse 18, we continue on with praying at all
times in the spirit with all prayer and supplication. To that
end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the
saints. And also for me, that words may
be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the
mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in change.”
So think of this too. I really love this passage because
it shows how prayer wraps around, enables and supports that armor.
And I really hope that you can see that all of you as part of
the body of Christ, that prayer forms this interconnected web.
like a spider web. And if you put all the weight
in the world on the spider web, it’s going to be much more difficult
to break with that web in place with all of us working together
as opposed to just one person praying. One single strand in
the web, not so strong. So be there for one another.
This prayer is critical in supporting and taking up that full armor
of God. The armor shows how each of these key elements are the
tools for our success against the evil one. And of course,
as we looked at in verses 18 through 20, we can see how critical
prayer is to wrap around that armor as we engage in the warfare
of our Father. Now in group three, start in
verse seven. And the peace of God, which surpasses
all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ
Jesus. I love the word guard here. It’s
a military term. Think of the guard standing on the walls protecting
you. And you can rest peacefully inside those walls when you have
those guards on the wall. That’s another point I can remember
very well. When you’re in situations where you’re afraid someone’s
going to do something to you, knowing that your buddies are
out there on the wall is very reassuring. The peace of God
is not as the world gives. It’s not a fake peace as man
would define it, which is really sort of an absence of war, compromise,
or other fallible human conventions. This peace comes directly from
God and is fundamental to the construction of the temple in
us by the work of the Holy Spirit. It manifests in that humility
and that fruit of the Spirit as we grow in trust, faith, and
the knowledge of God. It’s part of that fountain that
wells up in us and breaks forth from every soul that rests in
who God truly is based on the illumination of his word by the
Holy Spirit. And that’s a key point that… I found too is
that a lot of our anxiousness, a lot of our anxieties, a lot
of that lack of trust are because we don’t know who God really
is. And that’s a stain on the church. We need to be teaching
each other. We need to be reading God’s word
and see who God says he is. And when you spend time doing
that, you realize you couldn’t have a better God to be looking
out for you, protecting you and guarding you. Let’s take a look
at a few additional insights, a few additional verses for some
additional insights. Isaiah 26.3 says, you keep him
in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you because he trusts
you. Colossians 3.15, and let the
peace of Christ rule in your hearts to which indeed you were
called in one body and be thankful. John 14, 27. Peace I leave with
you, my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives, do I
give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them
be afraid. And when you look at that all
together, you can see God protects our hearts and our minds. There’s
no reason to be afraid. Learn who he is, pray to him,
engage and let the spirit grow in you with the fruit of the
spirit, and you will not be afraid, and your heart will not be troubled.
Notice how we’re told because we trust him, our mind is stayed
on him, and he keeps us in perfect peace. Since we have Christ’s
peace, our hearts should not be troubled or afraid. Here we
see this peace ruling in our hearts and unified in one body. As we grow in Christ, this peace
of God will grow in us because we are growing in the knowledge,
the trust, and the faith of our sovereign Lord. You will see
a growing submission to God’s control and the reduction in
your own anxiousness. This piece keeps watch over and
guards against the work of the evil one. This is all part of
God’s work in us, and it’s vital to the process of sanctification,
our growing in Christlikeness through our time on this earth.
And now we’re gonna look at verse eight. Finally, brothers, whatever
is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, Whatever is
pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any
excellence, if there’s anything worthy of praise, think about
these things. And the key word for me here
is this word, think. When I looked that up and I studied
it, it was some really good insights. NASB says dwell on these things. New King James says to meditate
about these things. This verse is truly transformational
step as a part of prayer, that being meditation. The word think obviously applies
to using our mind to reason, think, and digest the truth of
God’s word. We’re to ponder over the true, honorable, just, pure,
lovely, commendable, excellent, praiseworthy. We are to reckon,
we’re to consider, and we’re to reason over all these things.
John Calvin had some really great content around this, but he definitely
sees this word here as meditation, and the depth of this meditation
being deep. It reaches the level of sighing
or moaning. And in Greek, it also talks about
this word meaning reason, pondering, and carefully considering. We
are to use our minds to actively form connected ideas about the
content we are meditating upon. The example that I ran across
the most in studying was to think of meditating as chewing the
cud like a cow, turning that truth over and over in our minds
so that our minds can make those connections with other text and
content as we’re illuminated by the Holy Spirit. As we think
and meditate on all these proper things, we will see a transformation
in our thoughts. In doing so, we will develop
a Christian thought life, a Christian thought life that is built on
the pure truth of God’s word. As we fill our minds with thoughts
of God, we will push out sinful thoughts. We do this by taking
our thoughts captive, eliminating sinful thoughts and replacing
them with godly thoughts. And I would like to read a verse
here about taking your thoughts captive and why it’s needed.
Second Corinthians 10, four through five. For the weapons of our
warfare are not of the flesh, but have divine power to destroy
strongholds. We destroy arguments and every
lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take
every thought captive to obey Christ. We see indicated here
that we destroy those strongholds by reasoning with our trust,
faith, and knowledge of God while abiding in the Holy Spirit who
aids us in doing so. We will see our desires changing
as we keep our minds engaged on pure things and not on the
drivel of the world. We must master our thoughts through
the Spirit and remove those things that seek to divert or distract
and take us from our Lord. To obey Christ, we must take
every thought captive. The peace of God, which guards
our hearts and minds, will help us succeed in bringing all our
thoughts captives. We do this through prayer, meditation,
and the reading of scripture. The focus of our meditation is
to be on what is true. The truth in view here is the
word of God. Of course, we can add other pure elements like
godly books, movies, discussions, teaching, et cetera. But the
point here is that we should raise the bar to God’s standard
on what we put before our eyes and ears. This must begin and
end with God’s word, which feeds our hearts and minds. In these
next few verses, we’re going to look at the importance of
meditation in filling our hearts and minds with the word of God.
In Joshua 1.8, this book of the law shall not depart from your
mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night so that you
may be careful to do according to all that is written in it.
Psalm 1, 1 and 2. Blessed is the man who walks
not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the sinners, nor
sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law
of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. Psalm
1914. Let the words of my mouth and
the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord,
my rock and my redeemer. And we see here, the heart feeds
the mind. And the words come from our hearts,
so we need to make sure our words and our meditations are acceptable
in God’s sight. Of course, we are no longer under
condemnation by the law because we are justified by faith alone
in Christ. But we are to obey and meditate
day and night out of love, not out of legalistic requirement.
This is the essence of the tension between the law and the gospel
for the Christian in the New Covenant. The word meditate here
in Hebrew means to murmur, mutter, or growl. I remember when I was
in Israel and going to the Western Wall, which is right at the base
of what used to be the Temple Mount, the Orthodox Jews would
be doing their daily prayers. And you’ve all seen the image
of the Orthodox Jews rocking back and forth saying their prayers
with the verses from the Torah or Law in little boxes tied with
leather straps called the tefillin or the phylacteries on their
foreheads and their arms with their prayer books, murmuring
their prayers and totally engaged in chewing the cud of the Law.
They are seeking to legalistically meditate on the law of God. It’s
a helpful image, but we have a much better testimony with
the word of God written on our hearts and testified to us in
God’s word by the Holy Spirit, which indwells God’s regenerated
children. We have to do our part in meditating
on God’s word while the Holy Spirit works in us. I want to
share just a few quotes from some of the giants of our faith
regarding meditation. Read it to get the facts. Study
it to get the meaning. Meditate it, meditate on it to
get the benefit, John Owen. John Calvin said, meditation
comes first, then action, application. Thomas Manton, what we take in
the word, we digest by meditation and let out by prayer. Meditation
begins to overtake our thoughts and actions that are not focused
on truth. This is the essence of taking
our thoughts captive and working to transform our minds according
to God’s Word. Unlike Eastern meditation, which
strives to empty the mind, and allow all matter of sin to fill
a void. We certainly see this today with the godless medium
pouring into our minds. And that’s a key point I’d really like to
focus on. We’ve walked away from meditation from the Christian
faith, for the most part, since the 1800s. But you notice Eastern
religions have taken over. And meditation today means, for
most people, and terrifies many Christians, because we think
of it as the Eastern meditation, which does seek to empty your
mind. Think how contrary that is to what God wants you to do
in meditating on his word and filling your mind with all that
he has. And we certainly see technology and all the other
diversions that we have seeking to occupy our minds so that we
do not conform our minds to Christ. Biblical meditation seeks to
fill the mind with all things of God. The Reformers and the
Puritans were experts in meditation. While this practice has existed
in various forms, most deeply during the time of the Puritans,
it is rarely practiced today due to all the distractions,
narcissism, and competing idols that exist. Thank you. As we think and meditate along
with prayer on these true things, with the indwelling of the Holy
Spirit, the peace of God grows in us and guards our hearts and
minds. In verse nine. what you have learned and received
and heard and seen in me. Practice these things and the
God of peace will be with you. I do want to call this out. I
wrote this note down as I was reading this and praying about
this, that we as men, women are typically pretty good at practicing
and praying. And I want to just call out the
men because men, in my experience, coming up through primarily the
reformed side of the faith, we love to talk doctrine. We love
to talk theology. We need to be praying. We do
need the knowledge of God, but don’t set aside your prayer life
for the pursuit of pure knowledge. We’re to know God, not just know
of God, okay? In verse nine, Paul tells us
to imitate him. He has told us all these things.
Paul tells us to practice them. And the God of peace will be
with you. Do you hear the difference? Instead of peace of God, it is
the God of peace. Practice these things and you
will have the peace of God and the God of peace. Remember that
he is near. This shows you how near. He is
near to you in time and space and relationally. He wants to
be with you. He wants to commune with you.
So now let’s look at practicing these things. And I do that under
application. These instruction commands under
Philippians 4, 4-9 are given in love for our benefit and provides
the means of communing with God and shows us the way to grow
and be more intimate with him. With our study of God’s word,
we must consider how to apply and practice our Christian duty
and discipline. What are some of the scriptural truths we have
reviewed? Pretty straightforward. I like to write them down to
separate them from scripture and to aid me in memorizing. We’re always to rejoice in the
Lord. We’re to be reasonable with everyone. This Christ-likeness is true
humility manifesting the fruit of the Spirit. We’re to understand
that the Lord is near at hand to help us. We are to accept
that he is at hand and near. We are not to be anxious about
anything. We are to offer all of our requests by prayer, supplication,
and thanksgiving to God. We are to believe and to trust
that the peace of God will guard our hearts and minds in Christ
Jesus. We are to meditate. Developing a Christian thought
life on whatever is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable,
excellent, and praiseworthy. This is the word of God. Now,
for the application of these truths, I put these down because
these were ones I focused on with myself. I was mentioning
to someone before the service that Martin Lloyd-Jones This is not orthodox, but he’s
my spirit animal. Okay, so don’t hold that against
me. But he is amazing with this stuff.
And he said, before you preach to people, preach to yourself.
And so as I did that, I finally put that into practice this time
as preparing this. And I thought, if I was sitting out there, all
the things that I wanted to hear, what would I want to hear? What
are the things I want to be focused on? So as we talk about how we
apply this, the first thing that came to my mind, in my reality,
be diligent, disciplined, and don’t give up. You have to build
that habit in prayer and meditation. Satan will use every chance.
Oh, I got to get on a call. I got to drive here. You know,
my road rage won’t allow me to think about God right now. Be
diligent and disciplined. Build that habit. And I think
experts say it takes at least three weeks of repetitive effort
on something to build a habit. So build that habit. And the
second, practice prayer and meditation out of obedience and love in
private with the family and corporately. Practice it out of love and obedience,
not because you have a checklist that says pray this morning.
Prayer is hard. This is another Martin Lloyd-Jones
nugget. Prayer is hard. Warm up the spirit
with scripture. And when I hear that he struggled
with prayer, you get out there to pray in the morning and you
just don’t feel like it. And he’d read a little scripture,
and he’d warm up to it. And he’d be like, oh, especially
if it’s something about God’s majesty. And then he realized
he wanted to pray. So warm up the spirit to pray.
The fourth one I have is purify yourself, your thoughts, and
your actions. John Owen, kill that sin. Kill
it in thought, word, and deed. This includes temptations. Kill
it, or it will be killing you. You cannot compromise with it.
You cannot strike a deal with it. Purify yourself. And the
fifth one, this is one that I’ve really lacked on as we’ve struggled
to find a church home and all the moving we’ve done. Seek intercessory
prayer of your brothers and sisters in Christ. Seek the help of your
brothers and sisters in praying for you, sharing your needs.
Be that integrated web that can support one another. And you
do have a very unique opportunity. As I said, we’ve been around
many parts of this country and many different churches over
the last 30 years. And this church is a very rare diamond. So be
thankful for that. Just the corporate prayer we
heard this morning was so amazing and deep and spot on. That’s
how we should be conducting prayer in all of our life at all times. The last two I put in here, they’re
kind of obvious. Develop a plan for prayer. Develop a plan for
meditation. And what I want to do, since we have time, is share
some thoughts on this, on the plans. These are just sort of
guidance on what you might do, but I call on you to get this
down, get this working. There’s a lot of prayer warriors
in this church. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of amazing
prayer warriors in this church. young, older, whatever, but seek
insights and help from them. They’ve been through the ringer
on this stuff. They know and they will help you. They will
give you guidance and support. Critically important to remember,
sin can break your communion with God and Christ through the
Holy Spirit. I’m not talking about your salvation.
Once you’re saved, you cannot be taken out of the Lord’s hand.
But the plan for prayer needs to address your sin. If you’re
in sin or you have sinned, you need to be repenting of that.
Reestablish that communion, that line of, always think of the
old phones for us old people. We actually had phones on the
wall, you know, and you leave the phone off the hook, you can’t
talk to anybody. Keep that phone line, that connection going at
all times. And that sin is what will break
that. And you notice, if you notice, when someone is engaging
in sin in their life, it’s amazing how they don’t want to pray,
they don’t want to go to church because they’re embarrassed,
whatever their reasoning is. Get reconnected. Confess your
sin. Seek others to help you and to
hold you accountable. We need to be in a state of continual,
sincere repentance in order to maintain that communion with
God. So what I’ve listed out are just three different broad
classifications that you typically see everywhere. Personal prayer,
family prayer, and corporate prayer. As I mentioned, we had
great examples of the corporate prayer this morning. I’m skipping
number three real quick. They’re held as part of the church
meetings, during the worship service, prayer meetings, small
groups, and others. Think about this. Remember, it’s a wonderful
example to new Christians or to your children to learn how
to pray. I remember years ago, I was terrified to pray in any
kind of a public setting. And you try to formulate what
your response is going to be and put all the right stuff down.
Speak your heart. Speak in truth. And we look at
personal prayer. Commit to praying in the morning,
in the evening. Establish a scriptural reading
plan. Everybody typically has these in the back of their Bible.
Read your Bible in a year or whatever. But even something as simple
as reading one chapter in the morning and one in the evening
of the Old Testament and New Testament, you will be astonished
at Committing to doing that and doing that and following that
up with some prayer time doesn’t have to take a lot of time. Build
that habit. Build that time in 10, 15 minutes,
whatever. Just take that time to do that.
And one of the most popular Means of praying is the old AXE acronym. If everybody’s probably seen
that, I see heads nodding. Adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and
supplication. I just put some points in there
to help you along. It’s amazing. I keep coming back
to this example of monarchies and how we’ve lost that understanding.
And if you remember, I always thought, someone who told me
a long time ago, what if you went to meet the Queen of England?
I’d put on my best clothes. Even if my best clothes were
jeans, I’d put on my best clothes. I would go in. I would be deferential,
respectful, and following. This is the queen. This is just
another human being. And yet we don’t approach God
that way. God loves us and wants to be there for us in everything.
But we need to show the proper respect to him as the creator
of the universe. And that’s why adoration is first.
Because as you progress from adoration, so you see really
how big God is. and then you confess your sins
and you see yourself in relation to God, then you give thanks
for all that he has done for you. Once you get warmed up on
Thanksgiving and you start to go through that, you’ll be amazed
at how quickly you can find anything. You can spend tons of time just
in giving Thanksgiving. But by the time you get to your
supplication, we often come to prayer and supplication first.
I really want that Tesla. I really want this. I really
want that, right? It’s usually where we start.
But if you start in this order, adoration, confession, thanksgiving,
it gives us a right-sized view of ourselves. before we seek
requests from God. And it’s amazing as you do this
more and more, you start to find you’re not requesting the same
stuff you used to be. You start to see your requests
coming in alignment with what God wants in your life. It’s
amazing how much more of your requests are yes at that point. Thankfully, God did not answer
yes to many of the requests I had when I was a young Christian.
So I highly recommend following this example and reading that
scripture, warming your heart in preparation for prayer, Focus on that new habit based
in love and obedience. Start small and grow. Focus on
obeying and love, not legalism. Don’t think of that checklist.
And even when you don’t wanna do it, there’ll be times when
you don’t wanna do it. Plow through and do it, and you’ll find that
you’ll be very thankful you did. Even if it feels like a dirge,
you’ll be thankful you did it after the fact. Family prayer.
Commit to pray with your family before meals, in the evening,
at bedtime. All these are good things to
do. There’s tons of books out there on helping families pray
with their kids and with one another. Mom and dad, you’ve
got to pray. You’ve got to be praying for the kids whenever
you can. And let me tell you, when they’re
all grown up and graduated and having grandbabies, it doesn’t
stop. It grows, right? Now we’re looking
at with eight grandchildren and 10 kids. I could spend my whole
day in prayer just on those points alone. Be flexible in your time. Every stage in life is difficult,
but young moms, you know how difficult it is to stick to a
schedule with just all the busyness that you have. Dads, remember
this, recognize this. Just be faithful in praying. You don’t have to be legalistic
that it must happen at 5.45 p.m. before we break bread every time.
If you can do that, that’s great, but don’t become enamored or
stuck into that so that you have to do it that way. And again,
as we talked about with corporate prayer, learning how to pray,
showing the kids how to pray, especially out loud, is a very
powerful example to them. And seeing that prayer is not
something to be feared. You shouldn’t fear prayer. You
shouldn’t be afraid to go to speak to God, to that throne
of grace. Help them understand all these things. OK, now into
the plan for meditation. We’ll wrap this up in a few minutes.
The process of meditation includes the memorization, the reading
and the study of scripture, to be followed by turning over these
truths over and over in your mind to such an extent that you
thoroughly digest what you have read, captured, and memorized,
so that you’re able to apply it to all areas of your life.
Meditation then transform into that constant state of prayer
Paul called us to as you consider the truths of God and imbibe
them into your very heart and mind. At this point, you cannot
help but pray and praise God. Engaging in this prayer and meditative
process is in what is meant by never ceasing to pray. In doing
this, we maintain that deep level of communion and praise with
God that can take us through our entire day. And I was speaking
to someone about this before the service today too. We tend
to get, focused on one aspect, formal prayer, morning and evening. How can I pray all day long?
Well, the notion of meditation is that it becomes so part of
your being that thinking on God on a specific verse and chewing
on that through the day when you’re sitting listening to your
endless meetings all day long, and I have the memorization in
my head, I have that scripture in my head that I’ve memorized,
and I can just keep repeating it over and over and thinking
how that connects to this over here. Making my mind to make those
connections all through the day. And when you get in that groove
and you’re doing that, you’ll find that it’s not hard to do
this all the day long. And there’s nothing better to
focus on than what God has revealed to us. So in that next section
there, I just gave seven points, possible plan for meditating.
Really take a look, make things your own. I’m big on taking notes
now. It’s another thing Martin Lowe
Jones taught me is keeping a little notebook handy for topics I want
to study, things I want to look up, questions I have, or interesting
facts. I’m amazed at the insights I
get. When I talk to my children or
other children, we used to teach Sunday school. We were in charge
of the children’s ministry at a church for several years in
Laramie. And the insights and the wisdom
you get from children from 5 to 10-year-olds, and they just nugget
it down, right? We’re so good at blathering and
long doctrinal responses. And they can just get to the
point. So take advantage of that. Make sure you capture things.
Write them down. Learn from them. Well, not only
that, but I’ve actually had a couple of my children look at some of
the things I’ve written and wanted to read about them so that they
could take advantage of that. Build on this with yourselves,
for your families, for other believers. There are a number
of amazing resources on meditation from the Puritans and the Reformers.
There’s been a few in the last few decades, really good books
that I read as part of my seminary classes. But a good source is
monergism.com. Just search on meditation. They’ve
got all the good Puritan stuff, really good stuff. It’s one of
those things where I didn’t get into the Puritans until I was.
in my 30s at a church in Dallas, and I saw these books. It was
a set of Puritan books. They were smaller books, and
they were like extracts from the larger, because a Puritan
can’t write in less than 600 pages. So these extracts were
down into about 100 pages, right? And they’re really great, amazing
stuff. And I just was blown away that there was this depth of
Christianity that I didn’t know anything about. And most people
in our country today know nothing about this. And all the wisdom
and the Sure, some got legalistic and went beyond the pale, but
they did it out of the desire to get close to God and be true
to God. So I highly recommend taking advantage of that. You
don’t have to read all 600 pages. You can typically whittle your
way through and just get what you need, take some notes, and
move on. In conclusion, our pilgrimage here on earth must be bathed
in prayer and meditation daily and moment by moment to grow
in Christ through the Holy Spirit as he cleanses us from our iniquity
and as the Holy Spirit illumines the Word of God for and in us.
To answer the question we posed at the beginning, why pray? My
simple response is it’s because God has commanded us to do so
because he loves us and he wants to commune with us. When we pursue
zealous prayer and meditation based on love, we will grow more
and more intimate with our God as the peace of God guards our
hearts and our minds and enables our transformation to be more
like Christ. Another quote from Martin Lloyd-Jones
too actually. The ultimate test of my understanding
of the scriptural teaching is the amount of time I spend in
prayer. As theology is ultimately the knowledge of God, the more
theology I know, the more it should drive me to seek to know
God. Not to know about him, but to know him. I love Martin Lloyd-Jones
because he was a medical doctor. He didn’t go to seminary. He
was going to be the doctor for the queen. And as he was selected
for that within a couple of years, he decided he wanted to minister.
So he became a preacher. And that’s the kind of insights
I love to see. I didn’t come from a seminary,
and that’s the point I’m making. As theology is ultimately the
knowledge of God, the more theology I know, the more it should drive
me to seek to know God. Not to know about him, but to
know him. And another quote from Martin
Lloyd-Jones, prayer, in many ways, is the supreme expression
of our faith in God. Once you have this prayer life,
You’ll not be able to do without it. You can ask these prayer
warriors in this church. Once you get into it and you
get hooked on it, you have to have it. It’s better than anything
you can imagine. And you realize that what you
thought you had to do, control, and were anxious about, worried
about, when God’s in control of it. you can live a very peaceful
life. And prayer is that cord that
binds the entire truly converted Christian life. From that first
prayer, where we call out to God in sincere repentance to
become a believer, being born again, our entire life, that
relational prayer life, that sanctifying prayer, and that
supplication, asking for everything, looking for support and guidance,
that is to be part of our every breath through the rest of our
lives. And then that final prayer as we pass from this world into
eternity by committing our soul to God. If you do not have this
reassurance or that peace of God because you aren’t a believer
in Christ, I urge you to consider the gospel message of Christ
as your savior. Please seek the Father while he may still be
found. Please reach out and talk to
myself or anybody else here about this most precious gift. Salvation
in Christ is the only path to heaven and eternity with him.
There’s nothing more amazing or important to discuss. Your
eternity depends on it. And here we have the blessed
privilege of communing with the creator of the universe. Come
to him through Christ. Reorder your life out of duty,
out of respect, out of love. And know your God. Follow your
God. Obey your God out of gratitude,
thankfulness, and love. Let’s pray. Holy Father, thank
you for giving us this word to learn and apply to our lives.
I pray, Lord, that you’ll reach into the hearts and minds of
everyone here, for those committed warriors for your faith as prayer
warriors, and for those who haven’t had as much luck or success or
haven’t put as much effort into it, I pray that through your
Spirit, you will open their hearts and their minds to see the need
for this and the benefit for this, and that you are there
for them, you are near. You want to engage relationally
with them. You want to be their everything. You want to be in their lives.
You want to guard them, secure them. So that in everything we
do, we don’t have to have good things. This peace of God will
be with us. No matter the situation, it transcends
the situation. To hear the amazing stories of
your faithful servants in Nazi Germany, in concentration camps,
in other places around the world and through history, that peace
of God was with them even in those most horrendous times,
and they were secure and safe and joyful. We pray, Lord, that
you’ll do the same for us, that we’ll be mindful of your teaching,
that we’ll apply it to our lives. We ask this in Jesus’ holy name.
Amen.