Turn to your Bibles very quickly tonight, Matthew 26.41. This is just really going to be a jumping off point tonight as I give some brief reflections on prayer. As many of you know, one of the things that we've been trying to do in the Vesper services is to cultivate from Scripture. a prayer life, a praying life. And I'd be willing to bet that if I asked the question, how many of you would say that your greatest weakness in the Christian life is prayer, that no doubt many of you would raise your hands. In the past, that's been my answer. It's a different answer now. Not that I don't struggle with prayerlessness. I certainly do. But prayer is hard. I remember as a young Christian, I was told, rightly, that two of the greatest spiritual disciplines that should mark the Christian life are prayer and scripture reading. Scripture reading was always pretty easy for me, for the most part. You get a Bible reading plan, you get going, and especially if you have accountability partners that you can talk to about scripture. It's a delightful thing. But for the most part, it's really just taking information in. Not that you're not active in Bible reading, but it's more of a passive activity. But prayer is really an active activity. It's something that you have to engage in. On the one hand, we're not charismatics in the sense that we believe that God speaks to us audibly. We want to be balanced in that. We want to say that we're not putting God in a box. God can do whatever He wants, but it's certainly not the normative way in which God operates today. He certainly speaks through His word. But in prayer, you are, in a sense, listening for God. That's something, we're going to talk about that in a minute. But you're also praying to God. You're seeking God. Some of the old Puritan divines would speak of prayer as entering behind the veil. That's kind of antiquated language, but if you're familiar with your Old Testament, you know exactly what they're talking about. They're talking about that veil that separated the holy place from the most holy place. And the Puritans would cast the activity of prayer in the language of going behind the veil. Going into the Holy of Holies where Christ is. Going where the angels dare to tread, but because of the righteousness of Christ, you have the right to tread on that holy ground. So prayer is something that is immensely important in the Christian life, and I think it's important that we have leaders and mentors and disciples who are constantly stoking us on to greater prayerfulness, because if we don't have those people holding up the Word of God for us, holding our feet to the fire, so to speak, pursuing us with accountability, pursuing us with examples, and displaying before us what it means to engage in this means of grace called prayer, we're just going to be lazy about it. And I've asked you to turn to Matthew 26.41 because, and we've talked about this before, but I want to briefly bring you back to this scene. It was probably Jesus' most stressful hour of His life. And what did He do? He retreated to the Garden of Gethsemane with His disciples to pray. And just as an aside, let me say that if you've ever read through the Gospels consecutively, one of the things that you will constantly notice is that Jesus is always retreating to do what? Pray. He's just always retreating to pray. Now, I would just encourage you, if you take nothing else home tonight, take this home. Was Jesus crazy? Or was he on to something? Was Jesus crazy? Or was he on to something? There was this guy in college that, I've probably told you this story, he was in the dorms, and this guy would always be praying. I mean, it'd be a Friday night, and guys are like watching movies in their dorms, and other guys are playing poker, you know, with a lookout, because it was a Christian college, you can't do that. And other guys are, you know, I don't know, basket weaving. Everybody's doing something, but this guy was in his room praying, and he would pray so much that he earned a nickname, and the nickname was Shekinah. And if you don't know what Shekinah means, it would describe the glory of Yahweh in the Old Testament. And they would call Him Shekinah because basically He would pray so much that it's like He had a weighty sense of the Shekinah glory of God. But I think he was on to something. I think he got something. I think Jesus got something too. And I think what it was is that he was fully and completely dependent on the Lord. And I think that what's happened, and I'll get into this in a minute, is that we've become so accustomed to prayerlessness that it's just kind of become the norm. And I want to speak to that in a moment. But before I do, Jesus comes to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray. And more than ever, what He needed is them to join Him in storming the gates of heaven. Now, He understood this, but I'm not sure that they did. And instead of joining Him in prayer, what did they do? They fell asleep. And in Matthew 26, verse 41, He tells them this. He tells them, "...watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation." And then this famous phrase, The Spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. And I think that this is also the case with us so often. The Spirit is often willing to pray. We've seen examples of prayer. We've heard examples of prayer. Through this series in the Vesper services, we have heard time and time again historically how the Lord has often preceded great works of revival with the prayers of the saints. And we see it, we hear it, we believe it, we know it, but we have a hard time translating that into prayer on a Monday morning. or on a Tuesday evening, or on a Wednesday afternoon, or sometimes even on a Sunday night. We just have a hard time translating it. The spirit is willing to pray, but the flesh is weak. And so I'd like to point out tonight very briefly, just very briefly, more could be said, I know that. If you want to critique it and say, well, I could think of 16 more, great. Blessings on you. I have five hindrances to prayer that we commonly fall into, and hopefully some thoughts on how to overcome them. Iain Bound said that Satan had rather we let the grass grow on the path to our prayer chamber than anything else, and I think that that's something we want to avoid tonight. So number one, we're thinking of three hindrances to prayer. Number one, I think it's important for us to remember that prayer is hindered in stages. Prayer is hindered in stages. I don't need to tell most of you the old story, or the old science experiment, I guess you could call it, that if you put a frog in cold water and you slowly turn up the heat, what's going to happen? They're gonna stay in there, and that frog's gonna die, okay? The frog doesn't realize for whatever scientific reason that the heat is turning up. If you turn the heat up right away, the frog would notice, and it would jump out. But if you just slowly increase that heat over time, that frog will stay in there and die. It'll just croak. And I think in the same way, our prayerlessness creeps up on us like that. We just don't pray, and we don't pray, and we don't pray, and we don't pray. Now it's just become the norm. But what happens with prayer is that first off it is hurried through. We hurry through prayer and then unrest and agitation, fatal to all devout exercise, starts to come in. And then the time in our prayer is shortened and desire for the exercise of prayer fades. Then prayer is crowded into a corner and depends on the fragments of time for its exercise that we give it, like just little scraps to a dog. Its value begins to depreciate, and then it falls out of favor with us, it falls out of favor with our heart, it falls out of habit, and eventually it falls out of our life. We cease to pray, and we cease to live spiritually. And I think the first thing we need to do in overcoming this major hindrance of the kind of progressive nature of prayerlessness is to recognize that it's a problem. Now, what do I mean by that? Well, here's what I mean by that very simply. I think if anybody here on a Sunday morning comes and asks you, and hopefully you're open to it and not like one of those fools in the Proverbs, how's your prayer life? Sometimes our common response is, well, what's our common response? Anybody want to tell me? Not as good as it should be. Yeah, that's our common response. I'm not saying it's a bad thing. I mean, don't lie, okay? But that's our common response. It's not as good as it should be. And as long as our response continues to be that and we don't instead step in and do something about it, then we're gonna be, our prayer life is gonna be like that frog in the kettle that you just continually turn up the heat and finally Prayer is gone and we don't realize it. And guess what? We don't think that there's a problem with it being gone. So secondly, a second hindrance, and this is I think the biggest one with most of us. Turn to James chapter one. James chapter one verses five through eight. The second hindrance is this. We don't really believe that it matters. We don't really believe that prayer matters. We think that it's a waste of time. We think that it doesn't work. And this is what James says in James 1, 5-8. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. But let him ask..." What are those two words? "...in faith, with no doubting, For the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord. For he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways." I confess to you, and I confessed this to you last week, that's something that I struggle with. And I'm embarrassed to tell you on the one hand. On the other hand, I hope that it comforts you in the sense that, you know, you're normal. If on any given morning or afternoon, whenever you go to your prayer closet and you begin to pray and you start to think to yourself, I can think of 15 things that are more productive than what I'm trying to do right now. I can think of a to-do list that needs to be checked off. I can think of whatever, kids that need to be bathed, TPS reports that need to be filed, whatever. I can think of all these things that are more productive than prayer. Well, I think that we need to see James 1 as a mirror and find ourselves, our picture, in that mirror. What we are doing when we have that attitude is we are acting and assuming the posture of a double-minded man who doesn't actually think that there's someone at the end of the line of our prayer telephone. There's not anybody there. We're just throwing up Hail Mary prayers that don't have any receivers. But you know what? I think that this mentality that there's no time for prayer, that it's a waste of time, and all these excuses that we often give, I think that it's more of a commentary on us than it is a commentary on prayer. In other words, I think that what this says is that we are not in the habit of praying, and then when we try to discipline ourselves to get in the habit of praying, you know what we say? We get frustrated because it's hard work, and then one day we think to ourselves, we would never say it. But we think to ourselves as we're trying to get back into the habit of prayer, you know what? I was getting along just fine. I was getting along just fine praying as little as I was. I was getting along just fine. Nothing bad was happening to me. Things were trucking along as normal. So why am I spending so much energy trying to pray more if things were fine before? I have an answer for you. There's a difference between surviving and thriving. There's a difference between surviving and thriving. One old saint said that glorifying God is living fully before God. And hopefully you know what I mean when I say that. Hopefully you know what I'm getting at. I think that there's a difference between, as one voice in popular culture has said, eating out a living, just making it, making ends meet, and actually thriving in your life. Because let me tell you this, there are so many mundane episodes of your life, whether you are a mom taking care of children, whether you are a worker or middle management or upper management or whatever it is that you're doing, where you face adversity. And what I would submit to you is that whether or not you are immersing yourself in prayer makes the difference between stressing out in the midst of adversity and trusting in a sovereign God in the midst of adversity. And I would submit to you that if you are in a constant season of prayer, it's going to be easier for you to face that adversity. I don't say easy. I say easier. Because I think you will have a greater awareness of God's presence in your life as you are pressing into Him daily and expecting to hear from Him, not only from the Word, but through prayer. So there's a difference between surviving and thriving. I can honestly, for what it's worth, I can honestly report to you that when I'm in a consistent season of prayer, my anxiety levels are lower. And I do struggle with anxiety probably as much as you guys do. But I think what Christina and I were talking this morning, we're talking about anxiety, actually, and we're remembering this song from, I think it was Cademan's Call. I'm trying to remember the lyrics. Maybe Christina can help me out, but it basically said something like, this day's been crazy, but everything's happened on schedule, from the rain and the snow to the drink that I spilled on my shirt. Because you knew how you made me how you you'd save me before I fell dead in the garden You knew this day long before you made me out of dirt For you know the plans that you have for me and you can't plan the end without the means and we were talking about that we're just thinking man if I had that mentality in my mind all throughout the day as I'm dealing with the mundane things this somewhat crazy things and the disasters and I'd remember, the Lord can't plan the ends, my glorification, without these pesky means. And he's got a plan for these pesky means that are gonna culminate and flower in this beautiful end, and it's through the connection of prayer that I'm mindful of that. It's through the connection of prayer that I'm mindful of that. So I would say, when you get tempted this week with the thought that, I'm wasting my time by praying, remind yourself that's more of a commentary on you than it is on prayer. And the second thing I'd encourage you to consider is this. These thoughts on prayer, that it's a waste of time, proceed from an imbalanced view of what prayer is. Prayer is not, and I've said this over and over again, exclusively about asking for something and then getting it. I wouldn't even say that prayer is primarily about that. Instead, I would say that prayer is primarily about God conforming our wills to His will. And this is what Jesus puts on a boilerplate in His prayer in the garden. Lord, not my will, but Your will be done. So I think the solution to this hindrance is, as James says, we need to ask in faith. Faith is active. Faith doesn't simply ask for something and then just sit around and wait for God to do it. Faith works. And I think that what the proper sequence looks like is we pray for something, and then in our human powers, we do everything that we possibly can to make that thing come about. We have limitations, obviously, else we wouldn't be praying. But we do everything that we can to bring that about, and then we wait and see what the Lord has done. What we don't do is pray and then become sloths, okay, or a slothful, and just wait for the Lord to do something He expects us to work. What's the third hindrance, very quickly? We fail to plan prayer, and therefore, prayer fails to take root. We just fail to plan to pray. It's really that simple. All of us have a routine. I don't care if you're an organized person or an unorganized person. Everybody here has a routine. Everybody eats at a certain time of the day, right? Everybody gets up at a certain window of time during the day. Everybody brushes, I hope, their teeth at some point in the day. And you do it at a certain time or a window of time, right? Everybody takes their coffee break at a certain time of the day. Everybody checks their mail at a certain time. Like you have a routine. If you took those routines out, you would say something is amiss. Guess what? You've planned those routines in your life. And how much more should we not plan the routine of prayer? Let me tell you something, it's a flash bulletin. Prayer is not naturally going to happen. Oh, that it did. But prayer's not naturally gonna happen. You have to plan to pray or you will fail to pray. So what do you do? You plan a time to pray. Look, very simply, if you don't have a time set aside to pray, I would encourage you to pick a time in the day and just spend five minutes, just five minutes. The first time you do that, you're gonna be like, five minutes has never seemed so long. I'm serious, I'm just gonna be honest with you. Time yourself, that's so pharisaical. Hey, you wanna make a habit? You wanna make a habit? Time yourself. Just five minutes. Okay, I pray. All right. Next day, do it again. Next day, do it again. Five minutes, that's all we're asking. That's all the Lord's asking. Well, He's not literally asking that, but that's what I'm asking. Okay, five minutes, and then you know what's going to happen? It's going to start becoming a routine. I just read the other day, I can't remember where, but there was this lady who's 92 years old that every day walks two miles. Every day. And somebody interviewed her and she just said, you know, I just decided 40 years ago, I'm just going to start doing this. And there are days that I get up and I absolutely don't want to do it, but I do it anyways. And it's just become a habit. It's just second nature. It's what I do. We should do the same in prayer. Fourthly, fourth thing that's a hindrance to prayer. One of Satan's wiliest tricks is to destroy the best by the good. Let me say that again. One of Satan's wiliest tricks is to destroy the best by the good. Business and other duties are good, but we are so filled with these that they crowd out and destroy the best of prayer." Once again, Ian Bound said, other duties become pressing and absorbing and crowd out prayer. Choked to death would be the coroner's verdict in many cases of dead praying. There are many good things that we do in the place of prayer. And I think that oftentimes we trick ourselves to squeeze prayer out of our life by saying, well, I'm doing other good things. I'm serving this brother or sister. I'm taking a meal. I'm taking care of my kid. And it's like all those things are valid things. Like who's going to stand up and say, well, that's stupid. You shouldn't do that. No, nobody's going to say that. But life is a collection of choices, is it not? And what we often have to decide is good, better, or best. And the question is, do you have prayer anywhere in your schedule? Finally, number five, we think that we have to speak the whole time in prayer. We think that we have to speak the whole time in prayer. What do I mean by this? I would say that one of the greatest, well, one of the biggest things that Christianity today, particularly Protestant Christianity, has lost is the spiritual discipline of meditation and prayer. The spiritual discipline of meditation and prayer. And I can demonstrate this by some of the looks I see on some of your faces right now, besides those who are sleeping. Some of you are like, meditation? What am I, a monk? But the fact of the matter is the Puritans, the Divines, the Church Fathers, some of even the greatest theologians in the medieval times would often talk about this thing called meditation. And meditation in prayer, think of it as a subcategory of prayer, is not so much you speaking to the Lord. But it's you meditating on what the Lord has done, is doing, and what you desire Him to do. And oftentimes, the grist for the mill, if you will, of your meditation is Scripture. And if you think I'm crazy, let me just read a few verses. You don't need to go there. But Psalm 63 5 through 7 the psalmist says my soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips when I remember you upon my bed and Meditate on you in the watches of the night for you have been my help and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy Psalm 77 12. I will ponder all your work and meditate on your mighty deeds You see, much of prayer I would submit to you, listen, is simply sitting in silence before the Lord. How often How often in your prayer time have you simply sat in silence before the Lord? One of the pivotal verses in the book of Habakkuk that I'm actually wrestling through right now is the last verse in chapter 2, Habakkuk 2.20, the Lord is in His holy temple, let all the earth be silent before Him. Kohelet in Ecclesiastes chapter 5, when you go to the house of the Lord, be careful. Let your words be few, because God is in heaven and you are on earth. I used to always think that meant, oh this is a justification for short prayer. I don't think that's what he's getting at. I think what he's getting, he's not saying don't pray, he's not even necessarily saying don't pray long, but what he's saying is don't forget meditation in your prayer. Don't forget, before you open your mouth in prayer, to consider and meditate upon who it is to whom you're praying. Think about that. Think about that. How often is it that we often rush into prayer in an informal way, as if God is our buddy, or worse yet, our boyfriend, and we could just rush in informally. No, there should be reverence and awe, and sometimes we have to prime the pump to get that reverence going on in our heart, and that's where meditation comes in. For what are we waiting for in silence? I will not say that we are waiting for God to audibly speak to us, but I do want to be balanced here. I will say we are waiting for God to speak to us. What do I mean by that? I mean waiting for God to speak to us through Scripture. either the scripture we have memorized in our heart or the scripture we read, or God may just impress upon our hearts conviction of sin in our meditation, or wisdom in our meditation, or insight in our meditation as we sit there and meditate. I would report to you that it is often through meditation that I, in my own life, have had those aha moments. It's often in meditation that I've had those aha moments where the Lord has shown me what maybe my wife has been trying to show me for a few days. and I haven't been able to see it or hear it, or what maybe some of you have been trying to show me for a few days, and I haven't been able to see it or hear it, but it's in meditation, not even necessarily meditating on Scripture, although Scripture is mixed up in there somewhere, but it's just sitting quietly before the Lord, and if I could paint a picture for you, trying to become putty in His hands, speaking anthropomorphically, putty in His hands that He can conform my soul, and my will, and my mind, and my emotions, and my disposition to His glory. That happens through meditation. And I would submit to you that if you don't have that in your prayer life, you may get frustrated because you think, if I'm praying, that means I'm talking the whole time, and I don't have anything to say, so I'm just gonna end right now. No, you don't have to end. What you can do is sit quietly and meditate upon the Lord. All right, that's all I have tonight. Five hindrances. May the Lord give us help to shore up those hindrances as we continue to pursue Him in prayer. All right, let's turn our attention now to a season of prayer.