Praying The Purposes of God

This is the concluding sermon to our Week of Prayer…

Praying the Purposes of God

What have we experienced and learned this past week?
• A definition of prayer
• We come to God in Awe & Wonder
• We give God Glory because He shows us His glory.
• We come to God many ways; for instance, in stillness—silencio
• We come to God desiring His holiness:
o He is complete; we are not.
• He intends to complete us, to fill in the missing parts.
o He is righteous; we are not.
• He makes us righteous by his indwelling Holy Spirit.
• We pray in order to MEET WITH GOD, not merely to obtain the things we want.

Today, we complete our WEEK OF PRAYER.
What motivates prayer?
I. We pray according to our needs.
a. We were created to enjoy Him.
Gen. 3:8 They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day,
i. He is personal enough to want to meet our needs.
ii. He is powerful enough to meet our needs.
iii. He is wonderful enough to satisfy our deepest longings to enjoy Him, to know HIM.
b. We were created needy.
Our needs include the basics of life.
i. We have a short list of basic needs.
1Tim. 6:8 If we have food and covering, with these we shall be content.

Our need may turn us to God for help.
ii. We instinctively trust ourselves; Jesus teaches that we must learn to look to God to meet all our needs.
Matt. 6:11 ‘Give us this day our daily bread.

Our deepest needs require far more than food and clothing.
iii. We have greater needs than the physical ones.
Deut. 8:3 “He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord.

c. We were created by a need-meeting God.
i. His delight is to hear our request for help and mercy, to hear us say that only God can meet this need of ours.
ii. IT’s the way He is.

Is there no limit to what we might ask God to do or to give?
II. We pray according to the will of God.
a. We pray according to God’s will.
i. 1John 5:14 This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.
ii. John 14:13 “Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
iii. John 15:7 “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.

b. We pray according to God’s purpose.
i. He is God.
ii. His purpose is to highlight His own glory.
1. Is. 42:8 “I am the Lord, that is My name;
I will not give My glory to another,
Nor My praise to graven images.
2. Is. 66:18 ¶ “For I know their works and their thoughts; the time is coming to gather all nations and tongues. And they shall come and see My glory.

c. We pray according to God’s plan.
Sidney Greidanus:
Redemptive-Historical Progression:
God placed the first human pair in a beautiful garden, Paradise, “the garden of God,” where they could live in the presence of God. But the human Fall into sin led to disastrous consequences: God drove them out of the garden; the close communion with God was broken. Human sin resulted in such violence that proper development of human life and culture became impossible. God sent a great flood to cleanse the earth and make a new start with Noah, who built “an altar to the Lord” (8:20) to rededicate the cleansed earth to God. But humankind again defied God at Babel, resulting in God confusing their language and scattering them across the earth. Then God called Abram to leave his father’s house and its gods. God would make a new start with him in the land of Canaan, which was watered “like the garden of the Lord” (13:10). Canaan was to become another Paradise—a beachhead on earth for the kingdom of God.