Prayer: Teach Them
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Does anybody in here know somebody that you have a really strong suspicion that they don’t pray very well or very much? Can everyone think of somebody? There are two ways you can approach it - three. You can ignore it. Please don’t. You can admonish them, exhort them. It has its place at times, or you can teach them. Set aside a morning, go over to their house, look up about fifteen scriptures on praying with them and talk about it. Give them some ideas. Tell them about your own experiences with prayer and the things that you’ve learned. “Lord, teach us to pray.” Isn’t that what the disciples said? “Teach us to pray.” It’s a taught thing.
Who’s taken the time to teach these people that you have in your mind how to pray? If the twelve needed to be taught, don’t you think they might need to be taught? So, good example, take the time to teach them to pray. Look at about ten scriptures with them, not only scriptures that teach about prayer like what we would refer to as the Lord’s prayer, but different things that Paul taught them to pray about specifically, different prayers in Daniel and Nehemiah of lengthy prayers, examples of prayer. Read those things with them. Extract the themes of that prayer, the heart behind that prayer. Impart to them the counsel of God on the subject of prayer. Take the time to do that.
Who’s taught them to pray? They need the help. Let’s build the ship, get the planks in place and then we can blow on it. You can exhort them - “You should pray more.” “Good! I want to! What does that mean? How do I do that? I’ll do it tomorrow and the next day and then my alarm won’t go off and that’ll be it.”
Let’s build something into their lives that’s indestructible, and then we can blow on it. There will be a ship there that can move because the foundation’s been laid in their lives of what prayer even is. They have the tools available to them. They can go back and reread those scriptures and be refreshed. The Holy Spirit can bring into remembrance that which they’ve forgotten, but he can’t bring into remembrance something that they don’t even know because no one has taught them. They can’t forget something that they’ve never heard. Make sure they’ve heard, so they have something to forget.
The other example was somebody that’s tossed to and fro. Think about it... “God, what do they need? What do they need?” They need hope! Well, let’s give some thought to this idea of hope. What does God say about hope? Let’s show them what God says about hope. Let’s sit down with them and discuss it and look at the various reasons why we have hope, the immutable, imponderable things that give us reason, the anchor for the soul of the promises of God. Not, “Don’t you know the promises of God? Have hope!” That’s an exhortation. You’re blowing on a sail and there’s no ship attached to it. It’s not going anywhere. Taking the time to teach, to look through with them the teachings of Jesus and Paul and Peter and John and Jude about this issue of hope and the foundational reason for our hope and then in the future we can say, “Hey, remember? Hope!” Then the ship can move, because it’s been built properly with the pitch of our love and the planks of the truths of God firmly fitted.
The same could obviously be true in a corporate setting too. To someone who is speaking that apparently has little hope, say, “Hey, is it alright if we take a few minutes to discuss this issue of hope?” Just lay out the reasons, the teachings about hope that you have pondered previously as you’ve seen it to be an important issue in God’s heart. If the greatest of these is love, if these three things remain - well, okay, I have a little bit of an idea of what love is, but of these three things - well, what is faith, what is hope? Who talks about hope? If it’s one of those three things that remain, well, what is that one?
Faith I understand some, and love I think I understand. I need to live in more of both of those, but I don’t know much about hope. Wonder what hope is? So, you dive into it for all it’s worth, extracting and mining the riches and somehow compiling these things for your own heart, asterisking them in your heart and mind and spirit and notepad, and it won’t be long before you hear of someone someplace in a gathering or elsewhere that needs to know what you just found out about hope. Let’s not be shy about that.
