Summary & Key points
This is a sermon about the importance of establishing daily habits of prayer and Bible reading. Ps Elisha emphasizes four key anchor habits for the church: prayer, Bible reading, financial stewardship, and relationships.
Prayer as an Anchor Habit:
- Prayer is more than a task; it's a habit, a virtue, and a lifestyle.
- The speaker encourages making prayer a consistent habit to stay connected to God's purposes.
- The importance of approaching prayer with the right attitude: being real, relaxed, and revealing before God.
- Quiet time combines daily Bible reading and prayer.
- It should be viewed as giving devotion to God, not just doing devotions.
- The speaker recommends setting aside 15 minutes each morning for quiet time.
- Choose a specific time and place for your quiet time.
- Gather necessary resources like a Bible and a notebook.
- Begin with a minute of relaxation, followed by reading, reflecting, and writing down thoughts from the scripture.
- Spend the final few minutes in prayer, making requests known to God.
- Address common barriers like distraction and spiritual dryness.
- Emphasize the importance of consistency and not getting discouraged if you miss a day.
- Start the quiet time by focusing on God and not rushing through it.
- Engage with scripture and reflect on it deeply.
- Share insights from your quiet time with others to build a supportive community.
Habit to is prayer, one of four anchor habits I’m asking for the church, for all of us. Four anchor habits. Let’s start with Romans chapter 12 verse 2, sorry, Romans 12:2. He says, base your happiness on the Hope in Christ, on your hope in Christ. We can base our happiness on so many other things, but base our happiness in the hope that we have in Christ. When trials come, endure them patiently, steadfastly maintain the habit of prayer. Prayer is not a task; prayer is more than that. It’s a habit, a virtue, a lifestyle. So, it’s a habit of prayer. How do we work this? Some of us have been Christians for a long time, some of us just got to know the Lord, some of us for a few years, but you realize our prayer habit, our prayer life can fluctuate, is that not true? I know mine does in different ways. I’m not hot all the time with God. There are times that I need to work at it again. Some of us, when we got to know the Lord, the excitement of reading the word, praying, and then with challenges that come in life, different issues, sometimes we get comfortable, sometimes we get disappointed, we get dejected for various reasons, and then it begins to taper off. Then prayer is a chore. Pray, pray again. The husband will say, “I go to work, you pray,” but the wife also works. So, prayer then takes a backseat, and we lose this anchor in life. We lose the anchor of the word, and soon our hearts get so disconnected from the purposes of God and the life of God. We just go on this automatic mode without growing and maturing. We thought about this whole scripture about the one year growing, bearing fruit in different parts of our lives, and that’s what we are working at.
So how, if my prayer life is not doing that well, or I’ve lost that desire, I’ve lost that consistency, how can we revitalize? Remember, this is not about feeling condemned; that is never from God. The issue is not condemnation. The issue is, “Hey, I really want to take hold of God again.” Amen? That’s the whole target here as well, to stir this up again. Simple instructions from God’s word. We’re going to look at Matthew 6 now. Let me read that for you. Matthew 6: “And when you pray, not if you pray, and when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep babbling on like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” Amen.
I want to give you three steps to awaken the prayer habit and then six steps from The Lord’s Prayer on how we can pray daily. Everybody good with that? Okay. Three steps on how we can revitalize. This is what Jesus gives us, not so much my ideas, to revitalize. He gives us this model prayer, how to pray. We do that every week at the end of the service; we read The Lord’s Prayer together. So how do we approach revitalizing our prayer life? Number one is very critical, isn’t it? Approach prayer with the right attitude because my attitude is everything, isn’t it? All this life coaches, these gurus who want to motivate you, they say attitude is everything. Your altitude is determined by your attitude. Fine, whatever they may say, but attitude is everything.
Three attitudes. Number one, be real. Be real. We don’t want to fake it with God. Often when I meet young people, and now every Friday I have a group that meets in my office as well, I say, “I don’t want right answers, just give me honest answers,” because we all know how to give the right answers. But when we give the honest answer, we also allow God to work on our hearts. Matthew 6:5 says this: “When you pray, don’t be like the hypocrites who love to pray publicly on street corners in the synagogues where everybody can see.” There are two things we need to avoid in prayer. We don’t have to impress God. That’s your blank there. We don’t have to impress God. The second thing is, we don’t have to impress others. Prayer is personal, prayer is from the heart. So whether it’s in broken English, difficult Malay, whatever the language you pray in, it’s not about impressing anyone. Take that burden off yourself. God is not waiting there to be impressed by sentence structure and how well we can speak. Not at all. He is after the heart. Amen? He is after the heart. So these are the things we avoid right from the beginning: you don’t have to impress God, you don’t have to impress anyone.
The second thing we need to do is be relaxed. It sounds very cool, very relaxed. It says, “But when you pray, go away by yourself, shut the door behind you and pray to your Father in private. Then your Father, who sees everything, will reward you.” Prayer is enjoyable. Be relaxed, but don’t relax so much it becomes a very quiet time. So that’s not the idea here. The Bible tells us that, yes, we pray with people, but this personal time with the Lord, we go away from the noise, from everything, say, “God, I want to engage you.” The sense of being with God, the audience of one. And the third thing is, be revealing. What do I mean by that? Matthew 6:7-8