This past Sunday's
sermon continued the series we are currently studying titled "In His Image" and is the
fourth sermon in the series. The sermon
was titled "Becoming Like Jesus in Prayer". The sermon was given by Dr. Bill Brewer and
it was one of the more intense ones I have heard him preach. He covered a lot of territory in this one, so
we all held on and listened and (hopefully) I took good notes. Here are those notes.
There are a couple
of items in our lives that cause us to have diluted prayer. The first of these is prosperity. After all, when we ask for "Our Daily
Bread", it is a little difficult
when you pantry is completely full. Also
when you are living in a time of prosperity (not necessarily rich like Bill
Gates, but you can pay the bills and have some left over to live comfortably),
you find yourself tending not to pray.
After all everything is going great, so why should we ask for anything
from the Father. It is during these
times that we tend to become more reliant on ourselves, and not reliant on God!
The second item that
causes us to lead a diluted prayer life is our busyness . We have all of the modern conveniences at our
disposal: cell phones, smart phones,
laptops, tablets...and these are all supposed to save us time. What they are doing in fact are taking our
time and making us more "disconnected" in a personal sense. They also allow us to take our time and stay
online, checking email, surfing the internet and tweet and blog just to name a
few. What does this do with our prayer
life? It takes that time away from
us. Of course it's not just our
"smart" devices that cause the busyness of our lives. We can add to that list television, work, and
even friends!
These are both
things that we have to overcome to have a better prayer life!
One of the things
that Dr. Brewer said resonated with the congregation and that was that
"Prayer was Jesus' holy habit" and when you start looking at the
scriptures that's true. Here are the
verses that Dr. Brewer pointed out:
- Luke 3: 21-22
- Luke 5: 15-16
- Luke 6: 12- 13
- Luke 9:18
- Luke 9:28
Jesus prayed in a
number of ways and places. He prayed (I
believe) both during and after his baptism by John. He prayed while alone and actually left
everyone around Him to be secluded in his time in prayer. He prayed before making those most important
decisions. He prayed in public, and he
prayed while his most closest friends were with him.
Prayer was indeed a
holy habit Jesus kept.
In part 2 of this
post for this Sunday's sermon notes, I will go over what Dr. Brewer said about
how Jesus taught us to pray, and what might further hinder us from having this
holy habit we should all be keeping.
Have a great day,
Eric
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