Today, I will be speaking not so much about us talking too much but about what God wants us to say. We are going to learn how to pray. We are going to learn the kind of words and prayers that God delights in.

When I googled on the internet, “how many words are on the internet?” the answer was 3 trillion words! That’s a lot of words. Consider that the English language has only about 170,000 words and that 1 million is a thousand thousands and a billion is a thousand millions and a trillion is a thousand billions. And there are 3 of those trillions in words, well, that’s a lot of words even for a portagee!

We live in a world where words are plenty. There are so many words that we sometimes do not want to hear them already! I once took my family including our then young kids on a long road trip. After a few minutes they ofcourse asked the usual, “are we there, yet” question. I ofcourse cheerfully replied, “Not yet”. This sequence repeated itself every few minutes with my words getting tenser each time. As the kids kept on asking I felt my blood pressure rising and I soon began my Incredible Hulk transformation! The kids began kicking my seat. I finally exploded and yelled at them to be quiet or I would throw them out of the car! My wife cautioned me to be careful of what I was becoming. I wonder if God sometimes asks the same thing of us.

There was a farmer who had just picked up his new mail order bride in his mule pulled wagon. The mule suddenly refused to move. The farmer got out and told the mule, “That’s one.” The mule moved on.  A few minutes later, the mule stopped again.  The farmer again got out and told the mule, “That’s two.” The mule started moving again. Minutes went by and the mule stopped again.  The farmer got out and said, “That’s three” and then hit the mule over the head with a baseball bat. The new wife was appalled and said so. The farmer replied to her, “That’s one.”

Does God feel that way? Does he get mad at our words and how we pray? I look back at my prayers and sometimes feel that I should not have prayed at all because it seems my prayers were all about me and what I wanted. Words are cheap. But there are some words that God wants to hear. God delights ….

1.     When we PRAY CORRECTLY.

As the Bible says, "Where do all the fights and quarrels come from? They come from your desires for pleasure...You want things, but you cannot have them, so you are ready to kill; you strongly desire things ... so you quarrel and fight. You do not have what you want because ... when you ask ... your motives are bad; you ask for things to use for your own pleasures" (James 4:1-3). God delights when we pray correctly and unselfishly.

Too often, we pray not for the deliverance from sin but deliverance from the penalty of our sins. We also pray too much for more stuff and if we receive those things we simply ask or pray for more and more and more.

The disciples asked Jesus how to pray and He replied ,

"This, then, is how you should pray:
'Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.’”
^{(Matt. 6: 9-13)}

We should all be asking for the same thing.

I grew up with a Catholic background and so I knew all about Holy Days and tradition but felt that I did not really know about prayer. Later, I attended a Pentecostal prayer session and thought that maybe I would learn really how to pray there. But it seemed to me at the time that there was so much noise, words, emotions and volume that I could not compete and so I felt like a loser. But the reality is this, while we can pray for hours, the truth is that we need to hear more from Him – not the other way around. So…

·         Start by learning to LISTEN.

As little children, we learn to talk first but we really need to listen more. As it is written,
"Guard your steps as you go to the house of God and draw near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools ... Do not be hasty in word or impulsive in thought to bring up a matter in the presence of God ... therefore let your words be few" (Eccl. 5:1-2).

I once went on a retreat and went off by myself and asked God to still every voice but His. I then told Him that His servant was listening and wanted direction on various topics like my marriage, family, children, ministry and so on. As God spoke, I wrote. What I wrote then has become like my “10 Commandments” for my life to this day. It has become the core of my being.

So when you are close to God and clear headed ask God to give you direction on maybe 5 to 10 topics that are dear to you. Write them down and follow them and make sure that these are the things you will do and if nothing else, those are what you will be remembered for after you are gone.

Be sure to be close to God and clear headed when you do this so that when you are not close to God and/or not clear headed you can still refer back to what you have written and know that you can follow it with confidence even if you do not feel like it. Another way to pray correctly is to …

·        Check your MOTIVES.

We need to scrub our hearts often because "All the ways of a man are clean in his own sight, but the Lord weighs the motives" (Prov. 16:2). God will seem to not hear us if our motives are wrong. Remember, no matter how long we have been Christians, our flesh still stinks. Our souls may be saved but our flesh will not be. That is why so many get into trouble. Our “flesh” self too often gets the best of us. We have to realize that our flesh is not subject to conversion but is subject to discipline. And it is easier to accept discipline when we are humble. That is why we need to be willing to be humble. Like the Bible says, "Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you" (James 4:10).

It’s like this. I can say that my wife keeps a clean house even though once in a while it gets dirty because she routinely and constantly cleans it so it is will not actually be dirty for long. Likewise, our heart may get dirty sometimes but we need to clean it immediately and often. So how do we clean our hearts?

2.     When we CONFESS courageously.

Remember, "...the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up, and if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him. Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much" (James 5:15-16). So confess your sins to one another. God will delight in this.

Our greatest weapon against the Devil is repentance not excuses. Jesus’ power intercedes for us and protects us when we repent. In other words, if we do not repent, it is only our human power that is fighting the Devil but when we repent, Jesus fights for us. It is like when I was a little kid and my older brother would come after me I would run to my mom for protection.

But confession does take courage. I once scolded someone very sternly and later I heard God tell me that I was too harsh and to apologize to that person. I struggled with that because I did not want to swallow my pride but I did and apologized and it was ok afterwards. We all have that stubborn pride in us and it becomes disguised as so many things like independence and strength. So God delights …

3.     When we ASK HUMBLY.

It is like God is watching for our humility as in this story. Tommy and his sister Sally visited Grandpa’s farm. Tommy accidentally killed Grandpa’s favorite duck and so he hid the body. But Sally knew and blackmailed him into being her slave for days and days. Tommy suffered and suffered and finally could not take it anymore so he confessed to Grandpa.  Grandpa said he already knew from the beginning. When Tommy asked why did he let the suffering go on for so long, Grandpa said that he wanted to see how long Tommy was going to let his sister run his life!

God is like that.  He already knows all the sins you have committed. He is watching to see how long the Devil is going to run your life. Remember, while confession requires courage, Jesus died so that we can have the power to overcome the Devil.

One of my spiritual barometers is whether I can ask for help from other people. That is an indication of my humility. The Bible instructs us to call on others; "Is anyone among you sick? Then he must call for the elders of the church and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick and the Lord will raise him up, and if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him" (James 5:14-15). If we are not above asking for help then it is a sign that we do not have too much pride. It is like they say; Moses wandered for 40 years in the desert because he had too much pride to ask for directions! Too much pride can disguise itself as self reliance but it can make you very lonely.

Fellowship can be defined as exchanging input between our brothers and sisters. God delights when we humbly and righteously ask for help. He will shower us with His blessings if we are courageous and humble but our pride can stop all that.

I remember once being so exhausted that I was no longer enthusiastic about my ministry. I only had enough energy to think about what to eat and television. But then God told me to ask my wife to pray for me.  But my pride told me though that I was the pastor, not her! I struggled but finally complied and asked my wife to do so.  Then the Lord told me to have her also lay her hands on me. Again I hesitated with pride. Finally, I kneeled before my humble little wife and she prayed for me. Something broke! The spirit of weariness instantly left me. My wife smiled but did not say “I told you so.”  Bless her and thank God that I let my pride go.

So remember, if you pray correctly, confess courageously and ask humbly, God can do great things in your life. And He will not say, “I told you so.”

God delights when we pray correctly and we start praying correctly when we learn to listen and we check our motives. He also delights when we confess courageously and ask humbly. If we do so, Jesus can intercede for us and will use His power to protect us from the Devil.

DISCUSSION SUGGESTIONS:

1. Why does God delight in us praying correctly?
2. How can you listen better?
3. What happened when your motives were impure in prayer?
4. How do you confess courageously?
5. How does your pride get in the way of God?
6. What does your pride disguise itself as in your life?