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Well, this is our third and final week on the topic of prayer. Hopefully this isn’t the last time you will pray, but this is the last in our series on prayer. We started out with “what is prayer” and defined it as practicing the presence of God. Last week we talked about why we pray and how great a privilege it is for us to be able to pray to our creator, the creator of the universe. So after discussing what prayer is and why we do it, I thought it would be appropriate to talk about how we do it. How do we pray?

I’ll start out by telling you a story in my own discovery of how we are supposed to pray. As a child growing up at West Independence United Methodist Church, we had a somewhat unique practice. Instead of a pastoral prayer like we have here, the liturgist would just ask an individual from the congregation to pray. We were careful not to pick on newcomers or those who we knew would be uncomfortable with praying in front of everyone. Usually the liturgist asked before the service if it was ok to call on someone to pray. Well there was one man named Mr. Cole who was pretty elderly. He always sat in the pew with the headphones so he could hear what the pastor was saying. But I always loved it when Mr. Cole was called on to pray. I thought he was the greatest prayer I had ever heard! He was awesome!

First of all, Mr. Cole prayed in the King James version. Old English stuff. It sounded very holy and very cool. Second, the passion with which he prayed was amazing. There was this rise and fall in his voice, sometimes like he was almost shouting, and in the next sentence it was barely a whisper. He got really into it. Third, and most amazing of all to me still to this day, was that he prayed for things that I totally wouldn’t think of praying for. It was like everything was on his mind! One minute he’s praying for the sick, the next he’s praying for our political leaders, the next he’s thanking God for the mercy and grace of the cross, then he’s praying for peace in Israel. Mr. Cole could pray. He was awesome.

Well, one Sunday morning the liturgist, who happened to be my mom, neglected to ask me before the service if I would be the one to pray. And she just called on me. I was about 16, I had never been the prayer before. Mr. Cole was sitting two pews back. I hadn’t had time to think about what I was going to say or anything. So I froze for a second, then I started praying. And I don’t really remember all of it, but I’m pretty sure that it sounded something like this:

Dear God, uh, thank you for this day. We’re glad to be here in…thy home. We’d like…thou to be with our pastor today as he gives the message. Be with our president. In…thy name, amen.

You know…I never got asked to pray at that church again. I was pretty embarrassed after the service and I was a little upset with my mom, but more upset with myself for totally bombing on a prayer. Mr. Cole was sitting two rows behind me. It was just so embarrassing. And I told my mom that I probably had just prayed the worst prayer in the history of mankind. And she said, well that depends. Did you mean what you prayed? I said, yeah. And she said, then it doesn’t matter how well you said it. What matters is that you said it and God heard you.

In Matthew 6 Jesus is speaking about this same thing in the midst of the sermon on the mount. He says, when you pray don’t be like the hypocrites who love for people to hear them when they pray. They’ve already received their reward. But go to your room and shut the door and pray there, and your Father who sees what it in secret will reward you.

And when you are praying, don’t heap up a lot of empty words and phrases thinking that God will hear you because of your many words, because your Father knows what you need before you even ask him.

And it is directly following that that Jesus gives us the beautiful prayer that we pray every Sunday; the Lord’s prayer.

So when we are talking about how to pray, the first thing we have to do it to look at the two ways that Jesus tells us not to pray. First, he says don’t pray just so others can hear you. Now, there is a place for public prayer. It is a good and powerful thing for Christians to pray together. We are called to pray together and to gather together in prayer. What Jesus is speaking against is praying that isn’t really directed at God, but is meant for others to hear.

You know one place I see this where it makes me really sad? Annual conference. That’s the large gathering of all the pastors from our conference where we vote on policy stuff, and people are asked to come up to the microphone and pray all the time, and they aren’t all like this, but some of them just make me sick, because they aren’t praying, they are taking their opportunity in front of the microphone to raise their issues. “Gracious God, help us to vote wisely and pass issue 2 on our ballot.” You’re not praying to God, you are praying to be heard by your peers, and that’s wrong.

And you know I have to be careful of that every Sunday when I’m up here doing the pastoral prayer. I want to be praying to God, not praying in a way that you will enjoy hearing. You know, that was my downfall with Mr. Cole. I don’t know where his heart was, his prayers were most likely very sincere. But when he would pray I wasn’t just agreeing with him in prayer, I was listening and letting his prayers be my entertainment. Have you ever heard someone say, or said about someone, “Wow, they are a good prayer!” How do you know? What makes a good prayer? Prayers aren’t meant to be our entertainment or something that people necessarily enjoy listening to. They are meant to be what? Practicing the presence of God. If you hear someone pray and you feel the presence of God with them as they pray, then yes, I would say they are a good prayer. To me, that is the measure of a good prayer.

The second thing that kind of feeds into the first is that Jesus says when we pray, we shouldn’t heap up a bunch of meaningless words when we pray. How often do we do that? I’ll tell you, this is another stumbling block for me. I don’t mind admitting that. It is very tempting for me when I pray here on Sunday mornings, or when I’m asked to pray almost everywhere else I go, especially at mealtimes, it is very tempting for me to pray some long eloquent prayer. But why? Especially at meal times. Has anyone ever been at a meal where the grace beforehand was like 15 minutes long? Nothing bothers me more! Jesus says that God knows our hearts before we even utter a word, right? So when we pray, why would we say more than what is truly on our hearts?

So Sunday mornings I could stand before you and I could pray a long, eloquently worded prayer. I could do that. It would be beautiful to listen to. Poetic even. But that’s not what God wants. He doesn’t want me to entertain you, and he doesn’t want me to say more than what is on my heart. So if any of you ever go home and say, “Man, that kid we have for a preacher is a lousy prayer,” that’s fine by me, because guess what: I’m not praying to you. I’m praying to my God.

So how do we pray? How do we pray?...You know, I could give you a lot of really great and unique ideas here. I could tell you about praying the scriptures, especially the psalms. I could tell you about taking prayer walks or praying the names of God or a whole list of other things. All those are good, but they aren’t really very practical for every day life. I want to talk about your basic, every-day prayer. Because I think basic, every-day prayer is scary for some of us. And it’s neglected by too many of us. It is my hope and my prayer that each and every person here develops a prayer life, meaning each of us spends time every day in prayer.

First, I want to tell you that there is no set amount of time that you have to pray to have fulfilled your prayer requirements for the day. A lot of people will set a goal of like 15 minutes to pray, and that’s great, if you can stay focused and have something to say to God for 15 minutes. I hear people tell me things like, “I spend 2 hours a day on my knees in prayer!” And I’ll say, “Wow! You must have a lot of issues!”

Here’s my rule on the amount of time you pray: the amount of time your pray should directly equal to the amount of stuff you need to pray about.

So then you might say, well how do I know what I need to pray about? We need to pray about more than just what we want, right? Prayer is more than just asking God for stuff. So what else do we pray about? I’m going to give you a great acronym to help you remember what to pray about. If you remember this, or write it down, or whatever, it can greatly help your prayer life. Some of you may have learned this way back when you were little kids in Sunday School, but if you haven’t, then here it is for you today. To pray, you just needs to remember ACTS. A-C-T-S. ACTS. Like the book of the Bible.

The A in Acts stands for adoration. When you begin your prayers, begin with adoration. Basically, worship. How amazing God is. How in awe you are of the opportunity to be in the presence of God. If you notice, this is how the Lord’s prayer starts out, right? “Our Father…hallowed by your name.” Basically, your are holy. You are righteous. So we start our prayers with worship.

The C in Acts stands for confession. Confession. You can’t come to God with a dirty heart. We have to confess our sins before God before we can do anything else. We can’t skip over this part, and we can’t just say, “Gee, I can’t recall sinning recently.” God knows what we’ve done. God knows when we’ve sinned. The apostle John writes, “If we claim we are without sin, then we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us.” We have to make repentance a part of our prayer through confession.

The T in Acts stands for Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving. At this point in the prayer we need to remember thank God for what he has done for us in answering previous prayer, what he has done for us without our asking, and most of all thank God for who he is and what he did for us through Jesus on the cross. If you want to hear more about prayers of thanksgiving, then I’ll see you tonight at Salem at 7:00 pm. There will be cookies, too.

Finally, the S stands for supplication. Supplication. That’s a fancy church word for asking for stuff. This is the part where you bring your requests before God. Whether it is for a thing you need, something someone else needs, or whatever. This is the part where we cast our burdens before God and he hears us and answers our prayers.

So that’s ACTS: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication. Write that down somewhere and use it to pray daily. Worship and adore God, confess your sins, give Him thanks for all He has done, and ask him for the needs of your heart. It doesn’t have to be wordy. It doesn’t have to “sound right.” It just has to be sincere. Your prayers don’t have to sound a certain way. Just pray like you are talking to your best friend, because you are, aren’t you?

As we go into our closing song, Be Thou My Vision, I think that’s an appropriate way to think of prayer. Let God be your vision. Let God lead your prayer. Be sincere. Prayer is you and God. It’s practicing the presence of God. And I think God, more than anything, wants us to just “be ourselves” with him, because he created us and he likes who we are already without trying to be something else. You don’t have to pray like Mr. Cole. Just pray like you. Amen.

Van Buren United Methodist Church

Van Buren, Ohio

Pastor Dan Metzger