Download Transforming Lent - Prayer

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TRANSFORMING LENT – Prayer slide 1
6th March 2017 (8am/10am CC)
What are you hungry for?
Podcast on 5live: Flintoff, Savage & the Ping Pong Guy slide 2
 discussion on hunger in sport last week. Mathew Syed, former GB table tennis player, now journalist, author and broadcaster –
To be hungry you have to lack something. There needs to be a desire to find something you currently don’t have.
The secret of prayer is a hunger for God slide 3 wrote Thomas Merton (an American Catholic writer, theologian and mystic) – the will to
pray is the essence of prayer.
In other words, a hunger to know God and be known by God, or for a Facebook generation, to be ‘in a relationship with God’.
But I suspect for many of us we find prayer hard – hard to find time, hard to find a rhythm, hard to stay motivated, hard to keep going
when things gets tough. Maybe we can identify with Bishop Stephen Cottrell (Quote: p.1 in How to Pray)
There are thousands of books on prayer but I want to flag up 2 this morning I have found really helpful slide 4
1. How to Pray by Stephen Cottrell – I have borrowed heavily from this book in places for this talk
2. Prayer: Does it Make Any Difference by Philip Yancey
I will leave them at the back afterwards and if you would like to order one, write your name on the sheet and I will order this week.
During Lent, we are going to be following the diocesan Lent course ‘Transforming Prayer’ in our Life Groups, and on Sundays we will
explore the 6 tenets that undermine the diocesan vision, TCTL, beginning this morning with PRAYER.
The problem with prayer is that it is such a vast topic that it is hard to know where to begin, and of course, it has not been that long
since we taught on prayer when we also did the Prayer Course 2 summers ago.
So I want us to think this morning about how we can grow and nourish that hunger for God. Occasionally we might experience the
mountain tops of prayer, but most of us spend our lives in the foothills where prayer can be difficult and challenging.
 First of all we are going to look at the BENEFITS of pray – the ‘why’
 Then we will look at the MECHANICS of prayer – the ‘how to’
 Finally we will spend some time in prayer.
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A. The BENEFITS of prayer – the ‘why’ slide 5
1. Prayer transforms our relationship with God slide 6
Prayer is simply meeting with God - story of early days going out with Anna.
Being a Christian is like a love affair – we see how much God gives if Himself to us in love.
We are made for relationship with God. Within this relationship, we can flourish and become fully ourselves.
When we seek the heart of God in prayer, we are seeking the deepest joy of all, and the deepest fulfilment.
But like all r’ships, it needs to be worked at and it is through worship and prayer that the relationship is nurtured and sustained.
James 4:8 reminds us - Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.
2. Prayer transforms our relationships with others slide 7
e.g. Life Groups should be places where as we get to know one another, we can go deeper in sharing our lives, our joys and trials
3. Prayer transforms our world slide 8
It was Karl Barth who said to clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world
Quote Michael Ramsey, former AoC wrote the praying Christian draws inspiration form the world. Sometimes the ……will to pray
(pp.98-99 in How to Pray)
4. Prayer transforms our evangelism slide 9
Brother Roger of Taize – when the church becomes a house of prayer the people will come running slide 10
My youngest daughter has glow in the dark stars on her ceiling. If I don’t put the ceiling light on in her room, you would not know
they are there, but if I leave the light on for a short time, they glow long after the light has gone off.
When we pray, we are exposed to the light of Christ. But when we don’t prayer, our light dims and so does our confidence and
enthusiasm and obedience to the command to shine as lights in the world.
The early Church was born in prayer (Acts 1:14 and 2:42); the Acts of the Apostles shows how it sought guidance and strength for
its mission, and courage in persecution, by turning to God in prayer.
Stephen Cottrell remarks in his book – we need to become a church that glows in the dark……when we begin to radiate the love of
God, other people will start taking the Christian faith seriously. If we have no encounter with God, then we have nothing to show
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others and nothing to share with others. In other words, we cannot share what we have not got. Our lives will be indistinguishable
from other peoples, other than we attend church on a Sunday morning. Our faith will appear to be nothing more than our own
chosen leisure pursuit. Prayer will make the difference. It will make the difference because it will be about putting God at the centre
of our life. It will make a difference because it will be a crucial first step in seeing faith as a day to day lived reality.
The Christian faith – certain things about God and the world that we believe in – will become the Christian life – a whole new way of
living the whole of life.
5. Prayer transforms us slide 11
When we pray, it allows God to do so much through us. Paul prayed for the Ephesians that God would open their eyes and hearts to
see and know how blessed they were by God.
When we pray, it allows us to become the people God created us to be, rather than the person society, our peers or the world
persuades us we should be.
The clearest example of this is the apostle Peter who was utterly transformed, and reflected the light and glory of Christ to others
post-resurrection. How did this happen? He placed JC at the centre of his life. This was only possible through prayer.
B. The MECHANICS of PRAYER – the ‘how to’ slide 12
For more detail, I recommend Stephen Cottrell’s book – ‘How to Pray’. He identifies 10 golden rules slide 13
1. Start. The hardest thing about prayer is the beginning. It is just like learning to walk – you need to take the first step. So just start.
Your longing for God, and your wanting to pray, are the beginning of a relationship that can grow and grow.
2. Invite the HS to teach you to pray. You learn to pray by praying (Elizabeth Obbard)
3. Find time to pray – set aside special times.
4. Find people/someone to pray with – we need each other’s support.
5. Build prayer into the rhythm of life.
6. Make your home a place of prayer.
7. Find a way, place and posture of praying that works for you. There is no right or wrong way e.g. Fletchers revision styles.
Explore different ways. Listen as well as speak. Give thanks as well as requests. ACTS – first monthy prayer initiative.
8. Don’t look for results.
9. Make your life a prayer.
10. Don’t give up when it gets hard. Trying to pray is praying, and God is present even in darkness.
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C. IN SUMMARY slide 14
 It is not the quantity of prayer that matters, neither is it eloquence. It is the eager longing, the hunger of our heart. We want
to spend time with him, even if we struggle getting that sorted, and we want to be in relationship with Him.
 Prayer is not an art to be mastered, but a way into an ever-deepening experience of the love of God through our lives, as
we allow him to meet us and shape us (Ralph Townsend).
 Prayer is much more than a discipline – it is about making the whole of our life an offering of praise to God. We do this by
developing regular & appropriate patterns of prayer and the fruits of this will be lives that radiate the love of God (Cottrell).
We are going to spend some time in pray now. We are going to begin in silence – don’t rush in with a list.
Here are three suggestions – feel free to choose or ignore.
1. Ask God to give you a hunger for intimacy with God and for God. St Augustine of Hippo prayed - “My God, set me on fire”.
2. Ask God to help you make your life a prayer, that you might live the whoel of your life in communion with Him.
3. You might want to begin with praising God – that’s adoration. If you feel you have failed God, admit your failings and ask
for His forgiveness – that’s confession. Thank God for His grace, love and mercy, for one another just like Paul gave
thanks for the Ephesians in our Bible reading this morning – that’s thanksgiving. Then bring what is on your heart – that’s
supplication. Allow the HS to lead you and minister to you.
We will then say the Lord’s Prayer together, before turning to pray with someone next to you. If you prefer sitting in silence,
then that’s fine but it is good to be able to pray with and for one another, even in silence.
I’m going to begin this first period of prayer with a prayer called the Prayer of Preparation, or as it is described in the BCP, the
Collect for Purity (p.43). It is a prayer of preparation to receive Jesus.
 Quiet Prayer slides 15-18
 The Lord’s Prayer – shows us what pray is all about, it sums up the faith we profess. It gives us a definition for prayer –
relationship with God for the world.
 Shared Prayer
 We close with the Grace which is often used to close times of prayer – May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of
God, and the fellowship of the HS be with us all evermore. Amen.