His saw goes after the telephone pole and begins to go to work.
And all you hear on the telephone line is a click.
And the young lady wonders what happened to the party on the other end.
If you're a parent of a teenager, you can identify with that.
A lot of us like to go away on vacation in order to get away from the telephone.
We want to get away from people for a while, though that's hard to do when you are one.
We like to be in isolation, at least for a little while.
But the fact is that most of us desire to communicate with others because God has made
us that way.
We are creatures who need to communicate with other creatures like ourselves.
And we are creatures who need to communicate with our Creator God.
We have that deep need within too.
When one trusts the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation, there is a wonderful communication
link that is established between himself and God.
But it is prayer which is the use of that communication link.
Prayer does not in itself establish a relationship with God.
There are people who say prayers who have no relationship with God.
But the fact is when one has a relationship with God through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ,
prayer is the use of that communication link.
Prayer is the divinely provided means for each of us to develop our relationship to
the eternal God.
Few of us frankly need more information regarding prayer.
What we need is inspiration.
We don't really need more preaching on prayer.
We need more practicing of prayer.
As we think about our memory verse for today, Colossians 4-2, I'd like for you to notice
with me three characteristics that ought to be practiced in our prayer life.
In the first place, prayer is to be practiced with devotion.
We are told here, devote yourselves to prayer.
To be a Christian is in its essence to have a relationship, a relationship with God.
A relationship can exist but be left undeveloped without communication that is.
And frankly it takes devotion to communication in order to develop a relationship.
You think of marriage in that regard.
Legally, marriage exists as soon as the marriage license has been signed by the appropriate
parties.
There is a relationship there.
That relationship however will be left undeveloped unless there is communication between the
husband and the wife.
And communication as all of us are learning takes time.
It takes transparency, meaning to be honest with one another.
And it takes a willingness to listen as well as to speak.
In fact, perhaps that is the key to being a good communicator, being a good listener.
There are some marriages hurting today that are stunted and undeveloped because husband
and wife have not yet learned to really communicate.
I can't stress how important it is for communication to be developed between the two of you so
that your relationship can develop.
Now if that is true of a marriage, how much more true is that of our relationship with
God?
It says here that our communication with God is to be a matter of definite devotion.
Devote yourselves to prayer.
This word means to adhere to, to persist in, to busy oneself with, to be busily engaged
in prayer.
And Paul writes to the Romans as he gives to them a list of important steps for their
growth.
One of them in Romans 12, 12 is be devoted to prayer, the same word.
Be yourself with prayer, he says.
And then the familiar verse at the end of Ephesians chapter 6, with all prayer and petition,
pray at all times in the Spirit and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance.
That word means devotion, the very same word as in Colossians.
With all devotion, pray in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Prayer for us is not a luxury, it is a necessity.
It is as necessary as food is to the body.
It is vital to the health of the inner man and the development of our relationship with
God depends upon our prayer life.
I repeat, you and I can have that relationship with God for that comes by simple faith, the
exercise of our faith in Jesus Christ for salvation.
But that relationship will never develop beyond mere infancy until we have learned to devote
ourselves to communicating with God, getting in touch with Him.
A growing Christian is a praying Christian and there are no exceptions to that principle.
A growing Christian is a praying Christian.
I am developing in my Christian life to the exact ratio that my prayer life is developing.
That's why we are told here with such strong terms, devote yourselves to prayer because
it is essential.
Prayer is to be practiced with devotion.
If I want to keep from becoming a stagnant Christian, then I must develop my prayer life.
If I want to move out of stagnancy and staleness in my Christian life, the secret to that is
developing my prayer life, devoting myself to prayer.
Then notice that we are to practice our prayer with diligence.
Be devoted to prayer, keeping alert in it, keeping alert in it, being vigilant or being
diligent.
All of those words are used in various translations.
Preachance differs from devotion in that this word implies a certain danger being present.
The word means be awake, be alert, be watchful.
What are the threats to our prayer experience against which we are to be alert and awake?
Let me just suggest to you two or three of them very quickly.
The final threat is that of carelessness.
A danger in any relationship, be it a friendship or marriage or a relationship at work with
your employer or employee.
A danger in any relationship is that of carelessness, beginning to take the other person for granted
to take for granted the privileges that you enjoy with that other person.
Jesus said to his disciples in Matthew 26, 41, in the Garden of Disseminy, latch, here's
the same word, latch, be vigilant, be diligent, be alert, disciples, and pray lest you fall
into temptation.
They took for granted that relationship with Jesus and fell asleep in the Garden of Disseminy.
The disciples were sleepy.
You and I need to be aware of spiritual drowsiness, of lethargy of spirit that arises out of carelessness.
That is a threat to the prayer life.
The second threat to our prayer lives is worldliness.
My soul and yours are deadened by the love of the world.
By over exposure to it, we are made insensitive to the things of God.
To fill our hearts, our minds with the pursuit of money, the desire for things and possessing
them, a quest for pleasure, will absolutely kill your prayer life.
If you want to dull your spiritual walk with God, watch a lot of television, allow yourself
to be overexposed to the things, the loves, the pursuits, the motives, the goals of the
children of wrath around us, and you will cause your spiritual life to be hindered.
That is a threat to all of us, the threat of worldliness.
Be diligent in light of that.
There's a third threat against our prayer lives, and that is the threat of the adversary.
This word is actually a military word.
A sentry will be told, be diligent, be alert, be on the watch, don't go to sleep at your
post.
You and I have an adversary in Satan.
Peter uses the same language, but it says, be vigilant, be sober, for the devil like
a roaring lion, your adversary walks about seeking whom he may devour.
So we are to be diligent against our adversary.
I think that that probably is the heart of Paul's meaning here.
In the context, he goes on to say, pray with the same time for us as well, that God may
open up to us a door for the word, so that we may speak forth the mystery of Christ for
which I have also been imprisoned.
Paul has had some opposition.
The enemy has attacked him.
He's in prison, writing now to some churches, including the church of Colossae.
And he says, you pray for me under attack, that I will look for those doors of opportunity
to speak the word in the situation where I am.
There was a danger that Paul faced, and that was that he might not take the door of opportunity
because of Satan's opposition.
And so he prays and asks them to pray for him in this time of danger.
My friend, Satan would shut you down.
He has no desire for you to progress in your Christian life.
And believe me, he is capable of doing that.
He can shut you down faster than you can believe if you allow him to do it.
That's why our prayer life is to be practiced with diligence.
Practice of prayer is required if we're going to develop our relationship with God.
All of us today are hurting for the Chinese people who have desired freedom.
We are especially burdened and concerned for those leaders of that movement in China, and
in a special way, those who are Christians and who were the leaders of it.
There were a number of Christians, leading Christians in China, who were among the most
vocal in the cry for freedom.
And all of us suspect what that may well mean for them now, that that desire for freedom
has at least for the time being been crushed.
Perhaps you were moved, as I was, this past week by the news account of that one Chinese
young man who stood in front of a line of tanks and brought them to a halt.
Single-handedly, taking his life, putting everything on the line, he stood before that
line of tanks and the driver of the tank did not run over him.
He tried to turn to the right and the student stepped to his left.
And the driver tried to turn to the left and the student stepped back to the right and
finally climbed up onto the lead tank and stood on it, trying to speak to the driver
inside, telling him to turn around.
And then he got down off the tank and the tank tried to go again and the student stepped
in front of the tank again.
And finally, friends spared his life undoubtedly by actually taking him by the arms and pulling
him away.
My friend, it takes that kind of diligence to put a stop to our adversary.
It takes that kind of courage in prayer to bring our enemy to a halt.
I call upon all of us today in prayer to stand in the way of the adversary, that he may not
have his way.
Prayer is to be practiced with diligence.
And then finally, prayer is to be practiced with doxology.
Revoke yourselves to prayer keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving, writes
Paul.
The word thanksgiving is the origin of our English word, Eucharist.
The Greek word is Eucharista.
It comes from a combination of words meaning to give freely and well.
It is an expression of joy which is directed toward God.
The same word is used earlier here in the chapter, verse 15 of chapter 3.
He says, let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts to which indeed you were called in
one body and be thankful.
Again in verse 17, whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus,
giving thanks through him to God the Father.
Why is it that Paul emphasizes thanksgiving?
Why is it that he tells us to practice prayer with doxology, with an expression of thanks
being sent to God?
I'd like to suggest three reasons.
In the first place, because our natural tendency is to forget to be grateful.
Most of us are like the lepers who went away healed, but we do not come back to say thank
you to Jesus.
We do not have to train our children to be ungrateful doing.
We have to teach our children and remind ourselves to say thank you, to be grateful.
I believe he also tells us that we should practice prayer with thanksgiving because
that's always the appropriate attitude by which to address and come before such a gracious
and generous God as we have.
It's always appropriate for us to come before him with thanksgiving.
And finally, we should practice prayer with doxology because it suggests submission to
the will of God in however he chooses to respond to our prayers.
If we come before God with our petitions, with a grateful heart, that is saying, Lord,
here is my desire, here is my petition, and now your will be done and I will be a grateful
servant.
Prayer is to be practiced with devotion, with diligence, and with doxology.
If you have made a commitment to trust Jesus Christ as your Savior, God has brought you
into a new relationship with himself, a relationship that can be described as a union between you
and Jesus.
As though he were a vine and you the branch, you share the same life essence with him.
To see that relationship with him grow, you must get in touch with God.
And prayer is the divinely provided means by which your relationship with God develops.
But there is a problem that all of us face and we need to address it honestly and transparently.
And that is the problem of busyness.
Busyness is perhaps the most dangerous enemy of one's growth as a Christian.
For we think ourselves too busy to pray.
I owe an illustration to Bill Hybels that I'm going to give you in which Bill said,
God has created us as it were to operate at 5,000 rpm's.
In the world in which we live however, most of us operate at 10,000 rpm.
That's why we're under so much stress.
And we wonder why we don't hear from God.
We wonder why God seems distant.
The answer is that God speaks to us at 500 rpm's.
Our need is to slow down to hear the voice of God.
We must slow down to pray.
Yes, it's possible to pray in a rush and all of us have from time to time.
My friend, you're kidding yourself if you think that your relationship with God is going
to develop by that kind of praying.
When we have to, we can pray on the run because we can pray anytime.
But the kind of prayer that produces development of our relationship with God is the kind that
is born out of periods of silence and reflection.
We need times built into our lives for solitude and quiet.
You say you don't understand my life.
Oh yes I do because I have one very similar to yours.
Life is busy.
Life is full of pressures and stress and we rev up our engines to meet all of that.
But unless we somehow find a way to idle back to 500 rpm's, we will pass through this life
and miss the essence of it because we will not have developed a relationship with God.
So we have a question, how do we get down to our idle speed?
How do we back off and find ourselves quiet enough to talk to God and to pray and then
to listen to Him?
I want to suggest a project for you.
I'm going to ask you to do this for just one week.
Frankly it is my sincere desire that you will want to go on and do it for the rest of your
life.
But I want to ask you to do this project for one week only.
And perhaps next Sunday evening we can have some time for sharing from some of you who
have followed through on this project to see how it went with you, what you may have learned
from it.
I want to give you a project that's called journaling.
That's a new word for some of you, in fact it's a new word for Webster's Dictionary.
What it simply means is to keep a journal.
If you look back at the lives of many of the great men and women of God through the centuries,
you will find that many of them practiced this spiritual discipline of keeping some
kind of a written record of their walk with God.
You say, well how do you journal?
What does it mean to keep a spiritual journal?
Well in the first place you're going to need a pen and something to write your journal
in.
I would suggest to you a notebook.
Now if you don't want to go out and invest in a notebook for a week, that's fine, get
some papers, put them together.
But this is the kind of notebook that I have.
So you need a pen and you need a notebook.
You're going to need to set aside each day approximately 20 to 30 minutes in order to
do this.
I don't know when that may be for you.
It may be that lunch is a place, there's a place where you can get away at work and be
quiet.
Lock yourself in a store room or in a store.
For most of us it probably will happen at home either in the morning or the evening.
Morning is a good time to do it.
A lot of people get up with a lot of energy in the morning and it's good to devote that
initial energy to God.
But some would prefer to wait till night.
The time is not important, the practice is what's important.
20 to 30 minutes.
When you have that time isolated in your mind, and I hope that even now you're able to focus
in on a possible time beginning tomorrow.
Once you've done that, the practice goes something like this.
And I say something like this because I'm going to suggest to you simply one way to
do it.
There are variations galore.
And you may find a better way for you and that's fine.
I'm going to share with you simply what I do.
And I picked it up from a very fine book called Too Busy Not to Pray by Bill Heidels.
If you would like to read a book this summer, we're encouraging you to do that.
Here's a book that will stretch you.
It will be interesting and fun to read.
Bill is very transparent.
He is the pastor of the Willow Creek Church in Chicago.
The intriguing title, Too Busy Not to Pray.
Another book, while I'm talking about books, that you might want to read and which talks
about journaling as well as a broader range of spiritual disciplines is one called Ordering
Your Private World by Gordon MacDonald.
I would encourage you to get either or both of these books and to make them part of your
reading list for the summer months in your adventure with God.
Now I'll go back to the journal, you would open it up to page one, put the date at the
top of it, and then for a few minutes reflect on what happened yesterday.
In other words, tomorrow we'll think about Sunday.
And as you reflect, begin to write down those things that impressed you about today.
Perhaps the things you accomplished, the people that you met, things that you learned, feelings
that you experienced, impressions left from yesterday that you believe God gave to your
heart, those kinds of things.
This is a period of reflection.
You begin there and write at least a paragraph.
You may want to write as much as a page, but I would encourage you not to go beyond that.
I got a small notebook so that when I got my page filled up I'd have to stop.
You may want to abbreviate and say what if somebody gets a hold of it and reads it?
Well you keep it, or you don't want them to get a hold of it.
If you're going to put those kinds of things in here, I would encourage you to begin by
writing something about yesterday, at least a paragraph.
You know what will happen?
You'll find that once you have done that, the motor on your spirit will begin idling
back toward 500, but don't stop there.
Then turn to the back of the notebook.
You're going to become a Hebrew now.
And begin writing from the back toward the middle.
Now on the back page, again put down the date and write out your prayer.
But that will be tough for some of us.
For some who don't believe in writing out prayers.
I'm glad some people have down through the years because as I've read their records,
my heart's been blessed.
I challenge you to write down your prayer to God.
And again limit it to one page.
Put down the things you want to.
You may want to follow the axe acronym, ACTS.
Begin with a few statements of adoration, and then confession, and thanksgiving, and
supplication.
And follow that outline.
But write out your prayer.
And once you've done that, then get down on your knees and read it.
And as you read it, you may want to elaborate to God about what you've written.
You'll find the most remarkable thing.
Once you have written the page on reflection, and then the page on prayer, you will find
your RPM is very close to 500.
There's one more step.
And that is to be silent before God and listen to the voice of God.
You may want to ask God, what is there that you would like to do in my character?
And then just be quiet and listen and wait for those impressions to be laid upon your
mind that God would put there.
Or you may want to say, God, what is it you want to do in our family?
Or you may ask, Lord, how can I be more effective at work as your representative?
Well, Lord, what is your will for me in this situation?
So don't ask the questions that fast.
Separate the questions a bit and give a few seconds there, even a few minutes, to silently
wait on God.
Say, well, how do I know if those impressions that are laid upon me are from God or not?
Well, Bill Heidels gives some excellent suggestions about that.
But let me just give you three quick thoughts.
Number one, the impression should be consistent with the word of God.
God is not going to impress your heart with his still small voice by something that's
inconsistent with what he's put down in black and white.
Another suggestion is that that impression should be consistent with who you are, who
God has made you to be.
His still small voice is likely going to say something consistent with what God has made
you to be, the kind of person he's made you, the gifts he's given you.
If it's different, then you need to weigh that impression very carefully.
Another suggestion, does this impression lead me in the direction of becoming more of a
servant?
For if that impression that comes to my heart is grandiose and self-serving and self-promoting,
then I need to suspect it.
Those are just three quick thoughts.
But listen for the voice of God.
You say, well, what if God doesn't say anything?
He may not.
Don't worry about it.
Have you ever asked your wife a question and she said nothing to you?
Not because she's angry, but because she has really nothing to say?
Or your husband comes home and you say, well, how did your day go?
He says, it's fine.
That sums it up as far as he's concerned.
You want to hear a little more than that.
But it may be that God doesn't have an impression to put in your heart at that moment.
Will you take that project for one week and practice it in your life?
If you do that, I believe that you'll come back next Sunday a little bit of a different
person.
And if you will take this project and make it a regular practice in your life over months
and even years, you will find your life revolutionized and your relationship with God greatly developed.
I remember being in a busy city at one time and there was in the midst of that hubbub
and hassle of the city, a garden.
Just a small courtyard.
I was able to step into that courtyard and sit down and there within that courtyard,
within those walls, the noise was gone.
And there was a bird in there singing.
The flowers were blooming.
I want you to know that your prayer life is like a garden.
It's a garden that needs to be cultivated.
The weeds need to be ripped out.
The soil turned up.
Good seed planted.
But friend, if you will cultivate and develop that garden, it will be a place like no other
place on earth to you.
And Jesus will meet you there in that garden and you will find your relationship with Him
growing and developing.
I pray that that will be an experience for all of us.
Let's bow together now in prayer.
The old gospel song says, he speaks and the sound of his voice is so sweet.
The birds hushed their singing.
When was the last time that you heard that voice?
Because your heart was hushed long enough to hear it.
Will you in the closing second say, Lord, I want to follow through in this project this
week, give me the grace and strength and discipline to do it.
Will you make that commitment right now?
Lord Jesus, I pray that as a result of our prayer lives developing, we might grow and
find a new joy, a new beginning, a new excitement in our Christian experience because of it.
May that be true of every brother and sister here today.
Bless these days upcoming.
We pray this out of the sincerity of our hearts.
Amen.
We're going to sing together number 418.
John is going to lead us, so it is chorus number C, letter C on page 418, right in the
middle of the page.