From His Heart

Speaker 1

Although prayer is easy, there is a secret to it. And the devil will fight us to not know the secret and to not do what's necessary to connect with God. Why? Because the devil knows there's power in prayer. And the devil doesn't want you to pray. He doesn't want me to pray because the moment we start to really pray and we really connect with God, things start to move and things start to change in our lives and in our homes and in our community. Because prayer changes things.

What is the secret to answered prayer? Today we're going to look at two parables related to prayer found here in Luke chapter 11. Lord, teach us to pray, just as John also taught his disciples.

Speaker 2

When God seems silent to our prayers, we may tend to think, "What am I doing wrong?" Today on From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Shreve, he'll reveal the secret that may be keeping you from some great blessings today. We're so glad you join us on From His Heart, where Pastor Jeff is going to bring some biblical simplicity to what may seem like a complicated subject: prayer.

Today's lesson is the secret to answered prayer. Now, as we close out this month, remember to go online to receive the new nine-message series that we've been in all month called "When the Son of Man Comes." It's a study of Matthew 24 and 25. Our gift of thanks to you for your support this month of any amount. Thank you for helping us share God's Word around the world every day.

To find out more, go to fromhisheart.org. If you can, now open your Bible to the 11th chapter of the Gospel of Luke. Here's Pastor Jeff Shreve, who will surely begin to uncover the secret to answered prayer.

Speaker 1

You know, I was thinking about the last 100 years. Arguably one of the greatest inventions ever invented was the television. And you have these things, remote control. Well, now it's not just remote control for the television; it's several remotes. In my house, we have the TV remote, we have the cable remote, we have the Blu Ray, Netflix remote. We have all these remotes. And, you know, it's not super hard to figure out how to use these. But there is a trick to it, right? There is a secret. And if you don't use them right, if you hit the wrong button, you end up with this. You ever done that? It's like, yikes, I hit channel up, but it changed the channel on the TV. And the TV has to be on a certain channel for the cable to work. And now I got snow. And what do I do? You hit the wrong button. Okay, you can stop that now. I'm annoying, but you hit the wrong button. I mean, is that just in our house? Has anybody ever done that? Hit the wrong button? Have you ever gone over to somebody else's house and they have a different kind of TV, and you have, like, three or four remotes, and you're like, man, I think I could do a better job manning the space shuttle than figuring out how to get this? I was at a friend's house. I could never. I just finally had to say, well, forget it. I'm going to read a book. I can't turn the thing on to watch TV. It's not hard, but you have to know the secret.

You know how I know it's not hard? Because little kids learn how to use the TV, right? They have it figured out because they like TV. And so they're going, how do I use this? Because I want to watch what I want to watch. Prayer is a lot like the remotes with TV. It's not hard. But you have to know the secret to prayer in order to connect with God. And if you don't know the secret, if you don't know how to do it, all you get is snow. You're not connecting with Him. Now, all of us in here, if we're honest, we would say, you know, there are things I've prayed about, and I feel like it's just snow. I'm not getting an answer from God. Could it be that you don't know the secret to answered prayer? The disciples in Luke chapter 11 saw Jesus praying, as they often did, because Jesus would slip away and he would pray, and he would pray for a long time. He'd slip away while it was still dark and go and pray, probably an hour or two hours to start his day.

And it says in Luke 11:1, "And it came about that while he, Jesus, was praying in a certain place, after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, 'Lord, teach us to pray, just as John also taught his disciples.'" Lord, we want to know how to pray. We want to know how to do this thing. Lord, how do we work these things? How do we connect with the Father in prayer? Interesting. Jesus, the master communicator, the master teacher, the master preacher, has no record in Scripture where they ever said to him, "Lord, teach us to preach." But they did say, "Lord, teach us to pray."

Now, prayer is so key. One of the greatest gifts that God gives is the gift of prayer. The gift to connect with God Almighty. The gift to talk to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. This is why prayer is so critical. Because prayer links our nothingness with God's almightiness. And there is nothing, no legitimate need in your life, in my life, that can't be answered through prayer. Through prayer. There's such power in prayer. And although prayer is easy, there is a secret to it. The devil will fight us to not know the secret and to not do what's necessary to connect with God. Why? Because the devil knows there's power in prayer. And the devil doesn't want you to pray. He doesn't want me to pray. Because the moment we start to really pray and we really connect with God, things start to move and things start to change in our lives and in our homes and in our community. Because prayer changes things.

What is the secret to answered prayer? We're in a series on the parables, and today we're going to look at two parables related to prayer found here in Luke chapter 11. "Lord, teach us to pray, just as John also taught his disciples." Well, what does Jesus want to teach us about prayer? Three lessons. Lesson number one: God wants us to pray biblically. To pray biblically. You say, what does that mean, to pray biblically? Well, when Jesus was asked the question, "Lord, teach us to pray," his answer was the model prayer known in our day as the Lord's Prayer. Although it's not the Lord's Prayer that, "Hey, just pray this. This is what I always pray: Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name." It wasn't that deal. This is a model. When you pray, pray like this. Here is the structure of prayer. And the Lord gives that to them in this model prayer.

In the model, he starts it off this way: "Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Holy is your name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Now that "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven" is not recorded here in Luke; it's recorded in Matthew. But that's the model prayer. It speaks of God's will being done on earth. What does it mean to pray biblically? It means you pray according to the will of God. That's what it means. You know, sometimes people wonder, well, how come God's not answering my prayer? I've been praying and praying about this thing, whatever this thing might be. I've been praying about this, and God is not answering. You say, well, you ask yourself, is this thing that you're asking God for, is it according to the will of God?

Remember this: Prayer is not getting man's will on earth done in heaven. Prayer is getting God's will in heaven done on earth. God is not looking to you and to me to say, well, what do you will in this situation? Because I'm just going to do whatever you will. No, it's God's will that reigns supreme. And so when we pray according to what God wants to have happen, we see answers. Now, there are lots of things that God wants to have happen and see happen that don't happen. Why? Because we're not praying. And God doesn't understand why we don't pray. There's a lot that God wants to do in your life, in your marriage, in your family, in your business, in this church. He wants to do, but he says, "You have not."

Speaker 2

Why?

Speaker 1

Cause you ask not. And when you ask, you ask with wrong motives. And if you would get in on what I'm trying to do, and if your prayers would start to match up with my will, boom, all of a sudden, you would start to see answers. See, there's a great promise when you pray according to God's will. 1 John 5:14-15 states, "And this is the confidence which we have before him, that if we ask anything," you might want to circle that anything, "according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from him." Praying according to his will—boy, that catches the ear of God. That catches the attention of God; that catches the heart of God. Because all of a sudden, you're asking for something that God wants to see happen. And God says, "Oh, you're interested in that? I'm interested in that, too. Let's get together, pray according to the will of God."

And in order to pray according to his will, you have to pray using his word. You know, have you ever wondered about people that pray for hours? How in the world do you pray for hours? Isn't it hard to do, to pray for hours? I mean, people, especially when you first start out, somebody says, "Well, yeah, we're gonna have a prayer meeting. We're gonna pray for an hour." And you think, "My soul, pray for an hour." You know, I tried to pray when I first was a Christian. You know, you sit down to pray and you pray for your parents, and you pray for your family, and you pray for friends, and you kind of run out of things, and you're like, "Maybe I'll go through the phone book. I don't know what else to pray for," you know, and you pray for the soldiers and you pray for... and then you're kind of done. And you're like, "How would you pray for hours?" And how do your prayers have life so they're not just kind of like reading off a grocery list? Well, what about this, Lord, and this, Lord, this? You know how you pray and it has power and it has excitement? You pray the word of God; you pray what God says.

See, prayer is a conversation. It's a conversation that you have with God. When you pray, you talk to God. And then when you have a conversation with someone, that person talks back to you. If all prayer is, is you just reading off things and giving a monologue, then it's not really prayer because you're not really connecting with God. You're just throwing all this stuff out. Listen, God speaks back. And how does he speak back? He speaks back in his Word. That's how God speaks. He speaks through his Word. So this is what you do: you want to have an effective prayer life. You pray using the word of God. Go through the Psalms, find out how many times in the Psalms David is praying, and you pray those things as God speaks those to your heart. You pray those back to God. Why? Because God loves his Word and God wants to see things happen.

Maybe you're here today and you say, "Jeff, I'm struggling so much with sexual immorality. I want to be pure, but I'm struggling. I'm struggling with pornography. I'm struggling with doing things with my girlfriend, my boyfriend that we're not supposed to do. Just living in guilt and shame. And I'm all the time trying to break out, but I keep getting sucked back into this." Hey, pray the will of God. This is 1 Thessalonians, chapter 4. This is the will of God, your sanctification, that is that you abstain from sexual immorality. Hey, you can have confidence when you pray to God for purity, that that's what God wants to do. He has said that's what he wants to do. So that's how you pray. You pray using... and you say, "God, you promised. And God, this is what you want for me." And this is the promise which we have before him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And God says, "You're praying about that. You want that in your life. I want that for you. And I'm going to come and answer your prayer, and I'm going to show you things you need to do in order for you to walk in purity." Pray biblically. God wants us to do that.

Second lesson: pray persistently. Pray persistently. Now, Jesus, after he tells the guys the model prayer and gives them the model prayer, then he goes into the first parable. And what you'll notice in this passage is that he gives a parable and then a strong theological principle. Then he gives another parable and a strong theological principle. Let's look in verse five. And he said to them, "Suppose one of you shall have a friend and shall go to him at midnight and say to him, 'Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine has come to me from a journey, and I have nothing to set before him.' And from inside he shall answer and say, 'Do not bother me. The door has already been shut, and my children and I are in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything.' I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence, he will get up and give him as much as he needs."

That's the parable. It's a very simple little parable, but it's so powerful. Now, in the parable, you got three friends. You got friend number one, friend number two, friend number three. Friend number one is on a journey, and he's traveling, and he's traveling at night. Or at least his journey took him through some of the night. People back then in that time in the world would travel a lot at night because it was cooler. So here's this guy. He's traveling at night, no cell phones, no way to contact the other person to tell him, "Hey, I'm coming." And so he arrives at his friend's house, knocks on the door, and friend number one comes over to friend number two's house, and it's midnight or somewhere around there, and he knocks on the door. He says, "Hey, I'm here. You're a friend from somewhere else, and I've been on a journey, and now I'm here, and let me in."

And see, hospitality is huge in this. At this time, there is no Motel 6 where they leave the light on for you, right? So you have to go; you have to have friends. Hospitality is huge and woven into the fabric of the Jewish community. They knew that you were supposed to take in a stranger, and especially if the stranger is somebody you know, he is your friend. And so when friend number one needs a place to stay and he comes and knocks on the door of friend number two, friend number two opens the door and receives him. Well, that was the right thing to do. That's the hospitable thing to do. But now he's got a problem because friend number one is both tired and hungry. He's been traveling. And friend number two looks in the cupboard, and the cupboard is bare. He doesn't have anything. They don't have refrigerators, so there's just nothing there.

And so he's like, "Hmm, what am I gonna do? I need to be a good host here, but I don't have anything to set before him." And so I have a dilemma. Either I'm gonna be a poor host and tell him, "I'm sorry, we don't have anything. Just go to bed and dream about food," or I'm going to be a poor neighbor because no one wants you coming over at midnight, right? And so he decides poor neighbor is better than poor host. So friend number two tells friend number one, "Here, come into my house, get yourself situated. I'm going to go get you something to eat." There's no 7-Eleven. There's no place to go except across the street to friend number three's house. It's midnight. Everybody's asleep at midnight in Israel because there's no electricity. So once the sun went down, you went down, and when the sun got up, you got up. There's not much to do at night. They would talk, they would read, they would go to bed.

So it's midnight. One-room house—that's what they lived in. So one-room house. And they would roll out mats, and they would sleep on mats, and the whole family would sleep on a mat. You wonder how they had more than one kid, but they would do that. And they're all sleeping, and the guy comes and, "Hey, friend, you always want to do that when you wake somebody up at midnight. Hey, friend, I need three loaves." Three loaves? What are you, a Quiznos? I mean, why do you need three loaves? When he asks for three loaves, think of pita bread. Think of it like a tortilla. It's his flatbread. And they would take this pita bread—it's probably about as big as your hand—and they would rub on their olive oil, or they would put on some kind of dates or figs or some kind of fruit spread, and you would eat that, and that would be three loaves. Would be enough for a meal for somebody. He says, "I need three loaves." And friend number three is like, "What? Who is that? Somebody at the door. What is this? Yeah, hey, it's me."

Speaker 2

It's me.

Speaker 1

It's friend number two. I need three loaves. He's like, what do you got? You got the munchies? You got a midnight snack? What are you doing over there? I'm not giving you three loaves. He goes, yeah, four. Friend. Friend number one has come and he's visiting me, and I need to post him. And so I don't have any bread, and so I'm coming to you. I'm kind of sharing the joy of this being awakened at night. And so I need three loaves. He's like, hey, we're already down for the night. I've closed the door. We've closed down shop. You're not getting. No. But then he gives it to him, right? He ends up giving it to him. Not because he's his friend, the Lord says, because he's persistent. Because he's persistent.

Now, I want you to see in this parable, this is a parable of contrasts. And a lot of the things about the friend are not true of God. Although in this parable with the three friends, friend number one represents a need. Everyone in this room, we have needs. Different needs, but we all have needs. So friend number one is the need. Hungry traveler coming. Friend number two represents you and me. We're the guy with the need on our hands. And friend number three represents God, the one who meets the need.

But now watch this. God is not like friend number three in several areas. First of all, God is never asleep when you call. Never. You call on God. He's not asleep. You're not. Hey, Lord. Wake up, Lord. No, not with God. The Bible says in Psalm 121 that the Lord never sleeps and he never slumbers. God sits on the throne of the universe, and he never gets tired, and he never takes a break and he never clocks out. He's 24/7. He is watching everything. A sparrow doesn't fall to the ground, except God sees it and God allows it. God knows everything that's going on all the time. Now, we sleep and we get tired, but God doesn't. So God's not like friend number three because friend number three was shut up for the night. God never does that.

Secondly, God's not like friend number three because he's not bothered when you call. Did you see what he says in verse 7? Do not bother me. That word bother means to trouble me, to pain me, to weary me. Why are you knocking on my door, pal? Well, it's midnight and you're bothering me. I mean, we're not bothering God. He wants us to come, and when we don't come, he doesn't understand it. In Psalm 116, the Psalmist says this: because he has inclined his ear to me, therefore I will call upon him as long as I live. Because God says, hey, I want you to come over. Then I'm going to come over and I'm going to talk to God as long as I live. He wants me to call Him. I'm going to call him as long as I live. So God's not asleep, God's not bothered. And God is never reluctant when you call.

Speaker 2

You're listening to From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Shreve, and as we've learned, God is certainly not bothered even by what we may consider the small needs or desires that may cause us some hesitation in bringing them before Him. He wants you and me to bring all our petitions to Him, all of them. Nothing is too small and nothing is too large for our big God.

Pastor Jeff's message today is called the Secret to Answered Prayer, and you can listen to it again online anytime at fromhisheart.org. Click the listen link, and when you're there, you can also download the free PDF booklet called Unveiling the Mystery of Prayer. For that, go to fromhisheart.org and click the free Stuff link now.

All this month, we've been hearing messages from Pastor Jeff's new series, When the Son of Man, a Study of Matthew 24:25. Lessons in this series about the end times include the prophetic signs of the end times, the abomination of desolation, if you miss the rapture, watchful and wise, the most misunderstood parable, and more. In this series, you'll discover the sobering prophecies that Jesus gave about the end times, the significance of this pivotal event, and its connection to the coming great Tribulation.

This series is our gift of thanks to you for your support of From His Heart this month of any amount, and you can get the entire series—nearly eight hours of teaching—on USB flash drive, CDs, DVDs, or MP3 digital download. All you have to do is make that gift of any amount. This month, you'll be joining From His Heart's mission to impact lives around the world for the Kingdom of God.

Call 866-40-BIBLE (866-40-BIBLE) or go online to fromhisheart.org to make your gift and request the series When the Son of Man Comes. Together, we're helping people get to the truth so they can prepare their hearts and the hearts of their loved ones for Jesus' return.

Time's gone for today. I'm Larry Nobles, trusting the program has been a blessing to you today and that you'll join us again on Thursday for part two of the message, the Secret to Answered Prayer. Here's just some of what's to come.

Speaker 1

Some people say, well, you know, I don't want to bother God with this need that I have because it's so small and God is so huge. And well, what in your life is big to God? I mean, if your wife is having a baby, is that big to God? No, nothing is big to God.

You're a pimple on a flea compared to God. So you can't have a problem. You can have a problem that's big to you, but everything in your life is small to God.

So you can bring the small things to God. You can come to him. He's not reluctant to help you from his heart.

Speaker 2

Is the listener supported Broadcast Ministry of Dr. Jeff Shreve speaking the truth in love to a lost and a hurting world. Remember, no matter what, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. Find out more@fromisheart.org.