John Samus is right. Life does have its losses
and its crosses, its sighs, and its tears. Those
are adversities. And all of us face adversities
from time to time of one kind or another. Sometimes
it comes in the way of physical disability or
injury. Other times, adversity comes in difficult
relationships that develop, a strain in a marriage.
Adversity can be in the form of infertility for
some, financial pressure for others, unemployment,
or persecution for one's faithful witness for
Jesus Christ. Adversity comes in many sizes and
many shapes and colors, and all of us All of
us know the meaning of adversities. Sometimes
we think we're the only ones who are going through
a certain experience when the fact is that at
any one time there are many in our congregation
going through very similar experiences. There
are times when you and I complain to God about
the hard times we're passing through. But that
was not the attitude of the Apostle Paul. even
during one of the most difficult, adverse experiences
of his whole life. As he wrote the book of Philippians,
where we're taking up our study today, he was
facing the most difficult point in his life up
till then. As he wrote this epistle, he was chained
to two Roman soldiers as he awaited a hearing
before Nero. already had been a prisoner for
perhaps up to three years. And not only that,
he had been a prisoner based upon trumped -up
charges. So here is a man whose whole life is
in high gear, chained, under house arrest, imprisoned,
when everything within him wanted to go out and
share the Gospel with people. It was a tough...
few years in the life of the Apostle Paul. A
terribly adverse set of circumstances and yet
in the midst of them, as this letter indicates,
Paul's outlook on life was one of triumph. The
secret of such an attitude is not our circumstances,
but Christ. As Paul says eventually in chapter
1, for me to live is Christ, he says. The living
of life is Christ. In other words, he's not living
in his own resources. He's living in the resources
of Christ. His triumph did not depend upon the
set of circumstances, but upon the Savior who
was Lord of those circumstances. He concludes
the book by saying, I can do all things through
Christ who strengthens me. And in this epistle,
the Apostle Paul exhorts the Church of Jesus
Christ to rejoice as you and I face our own set
of adversities. Whatever your adversity may be
today, you can experience joy. The joy of Jesus
Christ right in the midst of your troubles. In
the midst of your tears and your sighs. Your
crosses and your losses. You can know the joy
of Jesus Christ. Truly you can. How? How is that
possible? That is what the apostle writes about
in this book, it seems to me. Finding joy in
life's adversities. On the wall behind me you
see six words that basically give some to the
book. One Lord, one mind, one mission. In the
light of those truths represented by those words,
how can you and I find joy in the midst of the
adversities of our own lives? In the first place,
we find joy in the adversities of life by cultivating
a prayerful heart. That's what I want to talk
about today. In cultivating a prayerful heart,
you will find fellowship with God. And in that
fellowship, there will be a deep well of joy
in your life. Paul begins this book with a word
about the place that prayer occupied in his life.
Read the first paragraph along with me. It says,
Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus. to
all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi together
with the overseers and deacons. Time out for
just a moment, you will notice that although
this church was but a few years old, it was well
organized and established, both elders or overseers
and deacons had been appointed in the church,
were leading the church on in the midst of its
circumstances. Now, Paul continues, grace and
peace to you from God our Father and the Lord
Jesus Christ. I thank my God every time I remember
you. In fact, he says, in all my prayers for
all of you, I always pray with joy because of
your partnership in the gospel from the first
day until now. Being confident of this, that
he who began a good work in you will carry it
on to completion. until the day of Christ Jesus.
It is right for me to feel this way about all
of you, since I have you in my heart. For whether
I am in chains or defending and confirming the
gospel, all of you share in God's grace with
me. God can testify how I long for all of you
with the affection of Christ Jesus. And this
is my prayer. that your love may abound more
and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so
that you may be able to discern what is best
and may be pure and blameless until the day of
Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness
that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory
and praise of God. You clearly see that Paul
had cultivated a prayerful heart. That's important
for you and me as well, and I think many of us
realize that. In the recent survey that we conducted
as a church, help with personal devotions and
help with prayer life were the two top expressed
individual needs in that survey. especially among
those of us who are 44 years of age and younger.
Help with personal devotions and growing in prayer.
I would say help cultivating a prayer life are
the greatest felt needs that we have as a congregation.
And another question, two -thirds of the congregation
ask for help in being consistent in prayer. Again,
that was very strong. age group 44 years and
younger. And by the way, that represents seven
out of every ten people in our adult church,
44 years of age and younger. And even those of
us who are in the older group have expressed
a strong sense of need to cultivate a heart of
prayer. What does a heart of prayer look like?
What do we mean when we talk about a prayerful
heart. And how does that contribute to our joy
in the midst of adversities? It seems to me that
in this paragraph we've read the Apostle Paul
describes to us what a prayerful heart looks
like. In the first place he says a prayerful
heart is a grateful heart, verses three through
five. Paul saw something to be thankful for even
in the midst of the terrible circumstances in
which he found himself. And what he found to
be thankful for was the fellowship, the partnership
that he had in the Gospel with that Philippian
church. In his mind he goes all the way back
to the first day with them. He remembered arriving
in Philippi and on the Sabbath day going out
by the river and finding there a group of Jews
who were worshipping. Apparently there were not
enough of them in Philippi to build a synagogue.
And so they met under the open air out by the
river. And there Paul proclaimed Christ to those
people. And one of those who was in the midst
of the congregation on that first day was Lydia,
a businesswoman, a seller of purple dye and purple
cloth. And the scriptures say that the Lord opened
her heart to believe. And after the service was
over, she implored Paul and his party to come
to her house. She wanted to be their hostess
for as long as they were going to be in Philippi.
And Paul and his party felt a little awkward
about that, apparently, and deferred, and yet
she persisted and insisted. She said, if you
count me as a true believer, then you will come
to my house. And so they did. Paul looked back
upon those days with a lot of fond memories and
he says from the very first day until this very
day I Thank God for you and for that fellowship
that we have in the gospel In the midst of whatever
adversity may be in your life today you too can
find something for which to be grateful a prayerful
heart is a grateful heart. I remember the comment
of Matthew Henry when after he had been robbed,
he wrote some things in his diary. And among
them, he said, I am thankful that it was I who
was robbed and not I who robbed. That's pretty
good. You and I can always find something for
which to lift up our hands to God and say, Father,
I thank you Despite the pain that I am in today,
I give thanks to you for this. A prayerful heart
is a grateful heart. That's what it looks like.
What can you give God thanks for? You know it
is a thankful heart that's a happy heart. If
you want to find joy in your adversity, mine
deeply into your adversity and find in there
those golden nuggets for which you can say, Father,
thank you. for this. In doing that, you will
cultivate a prayerful heart. Secondly, he tells
us that a prayerful heart is a confident heart.
Paul's confinement did not limit God because
God knows no bounds. God treads the floor of
the fiery furnace. He enters the rooms, the doors
being shut. He comes to His exile on the island
and takes Him to heaven for a revelation of Jesus
Christ. The servants of God may be persecuted
and may be imprisoned, but God can never be bound.
God knows no confinement. Even though Paul cannot
be in Philippi, God is at work there. And He
says, I am confident that the very God who began
that work in you when we were with you is going
to continue His work. He's going to carry it
on right until the day of Jesus Christ when you
see Him face to face. And so in the midst of
His own confinement and adversity, the prayerful
heart of Paul is a confident heart. God is at
work. God is in Philippi. God is doing His thing
even though Paul is limited. Can you be confident
in God that way in your own confinement? In whatever
the chains are in your life, whatever the adversity
is that's blowing against you, do you see a God
who is bigger than your circumstances? A God
who is over all of it, in control. A prayerful
heart is a heart that is confident in God and
knows that God is at work this moment in the
life. And he is in your life. Believe that. A
prayerful heart is a confident heart. Thirdly,
I notice that a prayerful heart is an affectionate
heart. It's not uncommon for adversity in all
of us to shrink our concern for others. Do you
have the same tendency I do? When things get
tough in life, you become self -focused. I remember
a lady in our church in Kentucky who was dying
of brain cancer. And one day our senior pastor,
I was his associate, went in to see her. And
she was depressed. And when she looked up, she
saw him and she said, I'm having a pity party,
now leave. And then she laughed. A pity party
is the smallest party you can have, just yourself.
And it's so easy for us to fall into that, isn't
it? But a prayerful heart is an affectionate
heart. You see, prayer resists... that self -focusing
tendency all of us have. When we pray, we are
reminded there are other people going through
similar things that we're experiencing. Paul
was reminded of that. As he thought of those
Philippians and prayed for them, he was mindful
that they too were passing through a time of
affliction and suffering. There was this deep
well of emotion in Paul that is conveyed in his
words. He says, God can testify how I long for
all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.
No self -pity here. His heart is filled with
affection and prayer had caused that. It had
helped him keep his focus on others. They were
co -sharers with him in God's grace, he says.
That's the most intimate bond that one can have
to another. The most meaningful relationship
in existence is that relationship that we have
because of the bonds of the grace of God with
other people. The commonality that Paul had with
the Philippians in their trouble was nothing
compared to the commonality that they shared
in grace. It seems to me that actually adversity
ought to deepen our affection for others, not
diminish it. In fact, if you had an opportunity
in those years when people were persecuted in
the Eastern Bloc to visit them and their churches,
you would find there a people who loved each
other intensely. The adversity that they were
going through bonded their hearts even more closely
in the grace of God. They were co -sharers in
it. And as they prayed for their church and prayed
for one another, there was deep affection that
was there. and joy. There's not joy and self
-pity, but there is joy in caring for others
and praying for others and sharing God's grace
with them. A prayerful heart is an affectionate
heart. It can't help it be. You can't hate people
that you're praying for. You can't forget people
you're praying for. Indeed, you grow more affectionate
for them. And finally, a prayerful heart is a
perceptive heart, verses 9 through 11. Paul tells
us exactly how he prayed. Would you be comfortable
this morning if somehow God had tape recorded
your last prayer time and played it for all of
us to hear? How would you feel about that? You
say, well I can't even remember when that was.
Well, that may be a problem too. Suppose God
had recorded that last five minutes or 30 minutes
that you spent with Him and said, now I want
all of you to listen to how John prays. Here
it is. Click. Paul was not embarrassed to record
his prayer for the Philippians. He was very transparent
about it. He says, here is my prayer for you.
And basically Paul's prayer was one. He says,
I pray for your love. Love is the fountainhead
of all Christian graces. Out of love flows everything
else. He says, I pray for your love. That sense
of sacrifice. for the welfare of others that
God has put inside of you." He says, I want that
sense of sacrifice, that sense of sharing with
others, that generosity that God's put in your
heart. I want that, he says, to flood over your
lives. But he didn't want it to be flabby and
gullible and swampy. You say, you mean Christian
love can be gullible? Yes, it can. He says, I
want your love to flood over in knowledge and
insight. I want you to have a love that is empowered
by depth of knowledge and by real insight into
situations. Now, why does he pray that? He tells
us. He says so that you can discern on those
things that differ. What does he mean by that?
You've probably come to that place in your life
where you know that many of the decisions of
life are not between good and bad, but between
good and best. There are many good things in
life that you and I can be involved in. Many
good things that can be the objects of our love,
our sacrifice, our generosity. Paul says, I want
you to choose to invest yourselves in those things
that are the best. Not even the good, the best.
So you can see the difference between the two.
He says, I pray that your love will be empowered
with knowledge and insight. He says, when you
begin to live that way, making good decisions,
when you begin to invest your life based upon
what is best, then you will be pure and blameless
when Jesus comes for you. You will not give offense.
You will not be a stumbling block to other people.
You will not be offensive, worthy of blame, but
blameless. And He says you'll be pure. The word
there means sincere. The idea is to check it
by the light. When I was a little boy, my widowed
mother helped support our family by selling eggs
in Topeka, Kansas. We lived 25 miles out of the
city on the farm. We had about 100 chickens.
And when they would produce well, we would sell
eggs to supplement her income as a grocery store
clerk. And we children had a part in preparing
the eggs. Of course, we gathered them at the
hen house. And then when it came time to go for
the selling, we had to check the eggs and clean
them. And we would get our paper together and
our wet cloths to wash the eggs. And the final
step was to check them by holding them up to
a light bulb to make sure that the inside was
what it's supposed to be. And I'm not going to
go any further detail than that. and to make
sure that the shell had no crack in it. Because
when the light shone through the shell, the cracks
were visible immediately. And you didn't want
to give a customer a cracked egg. Paul says,
I am praying that your love may be so discerning
that you will live and choose to make good decisions
in life. And the result of that is when you are
held up to the light at the second coming of
Christ, there will be no cracks in your life
made visible. Sometimes those cracks are invisible
to our eyes, but God knows when they're there,
and when that light shines, everyone's going
to see them. That's how Paul prayed. How do you
pray for people? So often our praying is limited
to physical and material things, and we need
to pray about those. But oh, that we would learn
to really be perceptive in praying. There have
been times when people have said I want you to
pray for this And I've not prayed for that I
prayed for something else in their lives Because
I just didn't sense in my heart that that that
was what God wanted You and I need to cultivate
a prayerful heart a prayerful heart is a perceptive
heart it learns how to pray that doesn't happen
overnight It comes with practice. Prayer is like
a muscle. It gets flabby unless it's exercised.
The more that you and I pray, the more perceptive
we will be in knowing how to pray for the people.
So that's what a prayerful heart is like. Oh,
that God would give us prayerful hearts. Because
it is when you and I have a prayerful heart,
as described here, that we will find joy in our
adversities. But how do we cultivate that kind
of heart? I'd like to suggest to you five ideas
this morning about how to cultivate a prayerful
heart in your own experience and walk with God
The first idea summarized in the word intention
intention The idea is that you and I must choose
to cultivate a prayerful heart. That is step
number one. It does not happen by accident. It
is not by chance. You and I develop prayerful
hearts as the result of a deliberate decision
on our part. There are very few people here that
would say, I don't like the idea of a prayerful
heart. Most of us would say, that's a great idea.
But if we're serious about it, step number one
is the intention to develop it. The decision
to do it. To say, I will by the grace of God
develop that kind of heart. It's an act of the
will. If we're serious about cultivating a prayerful
heart, it begins with intent to do so. David,
who experienced as much adversity as any of us,
in one occasion cried out and said, evening and
morning and at noon, I will cry unto God. What
was he saying? He said, I am intent on doing
this. I will cry unto God and I will do it three
times a day. In the evening, in the noon, and
at morning, I will cry unto God. There was intention.
on his part to do that. The reason that some
of us have never developed our prayer lives is
because we've lacked intention. We've liked the
idea. We've lacked the intent to do it. The second
idea I'd like to share with you is summarized
in the word integrity. If we're serious about
cultivating a prayerful heart, We must be a people
of integrity with God. There must be transparency
about us. We must keep short accounts with God.
When we allow unconfessed sin to accumulate in
our lives, it deadens the soul. So we need to
keep short accounts with God. There must be integrity
and wholeness about us. We must be open with
God about our struggles. Some people think that
if they told God what they're really struggling
with, God would reject them. Nothing could be
further from the truth. Do we actually think
God doesn't know what we struggle with? Do we
actually think that God doesn't know the thoughts
in our minds and our hearts and the temptations
that we face? He reads us completely. There's
nothing that surprises Him. Our need is to be
transparent about that and to tell God. To be
a people of integrity in prayer. The third idea
is summarized in the word information. We must
learn about God and come to know Him and make
that a priority in our lives so that we have
some understanding of this God that we're praying
to. We must gain information about prayer. We
can do that not only in reading the Bible, which
is where we start, but in reading books on prayer
by E .M. Bounds, who wrote many of the classics.
Or Oswald Chambers. Or in a more contemporary
mode, the book by Bill Hybels. Too busy not to
pray, I think. is a very practical primer on
prayer. And don't forget to read biographies
of people, men and women of prayer. One of which
would be the story of George Mueller and there
are others. Gain information about what it means
to pray. If you and I are going to cultivate
a prayerful heart, we need the insight and the
counsel of others so that we can develop more
quickly. And we must come to know the God that
we're praying to. The fourth idea on how to cultivate
a prayerful heart can be summarized in the word
inspection. If we're really serious about cultivating
this kind of heart, then we need to learn to
inspect our lives for God's fingerprints. A few
years ago when we went through the spiritual
adventure together, we called it, I Spies. Remember
that? We looked for those times in our lives
when we spied God intervening on our behalf.
So often we missed those. And so if we're serious
about cultivating a prayerful heart, it involves
inspection. Watching for God to be at work in
our lives. Watching for Him. And finally, if
we're serious about cultivating a prayerful heart,
it involves intimacy. The idea is here to develop
a sense of God's nearness and God's dearness.
So that prayer becomes a conversation with a
friend. So often we look upon prayer as being
that which punctuates a day. We go through the
day oblivious to God and suddenly now it's time
to pray. And then we go on again oblivious to
God. When in fact what real prayer is, is learning
to converse with God through the course of the
day's activities. And we may pause here and there
and speak to God about this or that, but prayer
is a conversation because we're intimate with
God. We're walking with God. The only way to
be intimate with someone is to spend time with
them. Not just the 15 minutes set aside in the
morning or the evening, but throughout the day.
I want that. I believe many of you do as well.
David was a man, as I said, who knew a lot of
adversity. I remember one occasion when Saul
was seeking his life, David fled south into the
area of Philistia and he went to the city of
Gath. Now why he went there, I do not understand
because Gath was the home turf of Goliath, whom
he had killed. And if there was any man who was
infamous to those people, it was David who had
killed their hero. And yet he went to the city
of Gath, and he was recognized. And they began
to watch him, and David knew that he was in trouble,
and he was fearful. And so he began to feign
madness. He went to the city gates, and he would
claw against the wood. And he allowed his saliva
to run down his beard to look like he was crazy.
So when the word finally came to the king of
the city, of that city state, and he was told
what David was acting like, he said, don't you
think I have enough crazy people around me already?
Don't bother me with him. And David had his opportunity,
and he escaped and got out of the city. In reflection
of that experience, he wrote Psalm 34. Sometime
in your own time, read Psalm 34 in light of those
five ideas I just shared with you and see how
they're interwoven, that Psalm. David cultivated
a prayerful heart and therefore God said, he
is a man after my own heart. That's the kind
of a woman, that's the kind of a man God wants
you to be. If we are ever going to find joy in
our life's adversities, and many of us this morning
are going through some kind of trouble, it begins
here by cultivating a prayerful heart. Someone
has written, prayer is a golden river at whose
brink some die of thirst. while others kneel
and drink. Would you bow with me, please? A golden
river is before you, child of God, even in the
midst of the darkest days of your life, where
the most painful experience you've been through,
a golden river, flows at your feet. If you wish,
you can die of thirst standing there right beside
it. Your soul can shrivel up. You can begin to
doubt God. You can enter into depression and
discouragement. You can wander spiritually. Or
you can kneel and you can drink of that river
that God has provided and find in it comfort
and joy in the midst of your adversity. How I
pray that you will do the latter. That you will
today choose to cultivate a heart of prayer so
that you can experience joy in your adversity.
If that is your desire today, to cultivate that
kind of heart, I'm going to ask you to indicate
that to God just by an uplifted hand. And say,
God, that is the kind of heart I want, a heart
of prayer. That's many hands, mine included.
I want that kind of heart. Well, if we want it,
we can have it. But we have to cultivate it.
Father, help us to do that. May it not only seem
like a good idea, at the end of this service.
But may it be the intent of our hearts to cultivate
it. May we employ every means of grace that you've
given us to become men and women of prayer. In
Jesus' name, Amen.