Prayer in a Polluted World

Austin White · Tidal Church Moncton · October 30, 2022 · INdependence series

Austin White looks at Jesus' prayer in John 17 and the things that crowd out prayer today: busyness, technology, guilt and misconceptions. He offers simple ways to make prayer a priority, including making space, keeping a list, listening, and following the ACTS pattern.

More from Austin White · The INdependence series

Topics: Faith, Prayer, Discipleship

Transcript

[0:00] I'm gonna speak to you this morning from the title: Prayer in a Polluted World. Prayer in a polluted world. Now, you might be thinking, when we talk about the word pollution, might be saying, "Well, man, is Pastor Austin gonna get up here and talk about the importance of paper straws?" Paper straws. You don't want to know my thoughts on paper straws. Is he gonna talk about electric vehicles, renewable energy? Is he going to talk about Teslas? And I mean, it's cool as Tesla is. Maybe you remember from one of my previous sermons that Teslas are not my dream car, but my dream car is a vintage 2006 Toyota Corolla. Really nice. I know, really nice. I know. When I say prayer in a polluted world, what I want to talk to you about is we live in a climate that is busy, hectic and distracted, and it may be more difficult than ever for us to prioritize prayer.

[0:57] It is incredibly difficult in 2022, in this distracted world, for us to focus on prayer. Scientists, years and years ago, were asked to look into what they thought life would be like in the 21st century, and their prediction was, due to the rise of technology and automation, that we would only be working 20 hours a week and our lives would be more free than ever. 20 hours a week. Raise your hand if any of y'all are working 20 hours a week. My goodness, man. We live in a polluted and busy world.

[1:45] But here's the truth: here in 2022, here as a church, as Moncton Wesleyan, it's going to be more important than ever as our culture starts to go away from Jesus. Less people go to church. We have to respond through fervent prayer. We've got to prioritize prayer in our life. D. L. Moody said this. He said, "Every great movement of God can be traced back to a single praying, kneeling figure." Now, this is the exterior. This is what God wants to do through us. But how about what God wants to do in us? How does prayer change us from the inside out? William Carey says this: "Prayer, secret, fervent, believing prayer lies at the root of all personal godliness." We're in this series called INdependence about how we need to be in dependence of God, and I truly and genuinely believe that prayer is the beginning of our In its on God. Prayer is the beginning of the Christian life, and we see this in John chapter 17.

[2:51] That's going to be our scripture for today. Jesus is about to be arrested and crucified. So what does He do? He goes to His dependence on the Father, and He spends time in prayer here in John 17. This is the longest prayer that Jesus prayed that's recorded in the Gospels. We're not going to go through the full chapter, but I'd encourage you when you get home today to go through and read this beautiful, beautiful prayer from Jesus. So John chapter 17, we're gonna start in verse 20, but before we do that, let me go ahead and pray for us this morning. Father God, we thank You for this opportunity to open up Your word. Lord, it's not just a book full of wisdom. It's not just good advice, but it is a holy, living, active word that pierces to the heart. So, Holy Spirit, transform us. I ask that we would have an encounter with You, that it wouldn't just be my thoughts or my wisdom or worldly wisdom, but it would be wisdom and transformation through Your word. Help us to prioritize You. Help us to look like You, and help us to walk out of here different. Holy Spirit, You are welcome here. Speak to each and every single one of our hearts. We pray this in Your name. Amen. Amen. John chapter 17, starting in verse 20. This is the word of the Lord. "My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in Me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as You are in Me and I am in You. May they also be in Us, so that the world may believe that You have sent Me. I have given them glory that You gave Me, that they may be one as We are one: I in them and You in Me, so that they may be brought to complete unity." Can I pause there and say that in these divided times, when there's division, when there's conflict, it's even more important than ever for us as a church to be unified, realizing that

[4:52] we're on the same team, realizing that but by our love for one another, we get to show the love of Jesus to the world around us, so that they may be brought to complete unity. "Then the world will know that You sent Me and have loved them even as You have loved Me. Father, I want those You have given to Me to be with Me where I am, and to see My glory, the glory You of Me, because You loved Me before the creation of the world. Righteous Father, though the world does not know You, I know You, and they know that You have sent Me. I have made You known to them and will continue to make You known, in order that the love You have for Me may be in them and that I myself may be in them." So what I want to do is I want to start by talking about things that distract us from prayer, what contributes to this polluted world that makes it difficult for us to prioritize prayer in our lives. The first thing is this: time constraints. Time constraints. The great prophet Ferris Bueller once said, "Life moves pretty fast.

[5:58] If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it." How easy could it be for us as followers of Jesus to go through life at a lightning pace and forget one of the most important things that Jesus gave to us, which is communication with Him. How many times have you heard this statement? You ask somebody, "How are you doing lately?" And they say, "Oh, I'm so, what, busy, busy, busy, busy." It seems like this badge of honor that we wear around our necks, that we say we are busy. It seems to be our go- to thing to be, is busy, busy, busy. Scientists are actually saying this as they research social trends and research things that are going on in the world. They say that there is actually such a thing as action addiction. People are addicted to busyness. So number one is time constraints. Number two is this: technology interruptions.

[6:58] Technology interruptions. The average person gets 46 notific- ations a day. The average person also receives about 85 or more texts per day, even when the notifications are off. The texts continue. Do any of you remember this crazy thing before phones were super popular, about the mid-2000s and before? It was this wild concept called boredom. This was before phones. This was before technology was advanced as it is. When you went through the line and it was a long line, you didn't have your phone to pull out. When you didn't have anything to do at home, you couldn't just immediately gravitate towards your phone, towards technology.

[7:46] Boredom was a real thing, but now we are being constantly entertained, and I wonder if it's draining the life out of us. I wonder if this constant hit of dopamine when we pick up our phone, it's actually distracting us from these little moments sprinkled throughout your day where God wants to communicate with you. Are we missing these little whispers that God wants to give us to energize us, to direct us, to guide us throughout the day because we're constantly just going, "Here." We're constantly going, "Here." God wants to speak to us and through us, but sometimes technology interrupts us. Has anyone here watched the documentary The Social Dilemma? The Social Dilemma. It's on Netflix and I can't recommend it enough. I consistently throughout my time here as the youth pastor recommend it to teens. The bottom line is in this documentary, The Social Dilemma, it talks about the fact that billions and billions of dollars is spent every year by social media companies, by technology companies, to monopolize your attention. There's experts and marketing gurus around the world that are asking the question, "How can we get as much of their time as possible?" Because the truth is, even though these apps we use, even the social media platforms that we use, they're free because the product is us.

[9:16] They make money the more that they trap us and use our time. It's cliche, but I think the truth is that if the devil can't make you bad, he will make you busy. Will make you busy. Now I think that if an alien were to come down and they were to observe us and they were to look at the things that we spend our time and our attention and our love on, I think that they would come down and they might think that the phones that we have are the things that we worship. Because it doesn't, it even kind of look like we're praying when we're hunched over our phone and looking at it throughout the day. No, please don't walk away from this saying that Pastor Austin preached on aliens. That is not the takeaway here, but I think if somebody were to observe us and not know exactly what technology is, I think that they would think that that is the focus of our worship.

[10:14] So the first is time constraints, second is technology interruptions, the third is this: sometimes I think it's guilt that stops us from prayer. The news flash for us is that we're not all going to be like Mother Teresa, waking up at four in the morning to fervently pray for four hours before our day starts at work. Now, I'll go to illustration, I think, is if you want to start running, the worst thing you can do is to negatively compare yourself to those who are really into running and are further in the running journey. If you're struggling with running and just getting started and struggling to have a three kilometer run, the worst thing you can do is to go on social media and see that Pastor Mark ran a half marathon last Sunday. That's the worst thing you can do because it's going to discourage you, right? So the hope for us and the goal for us is we can't start our prayers with God with guilt. My fear is that if you feel guilty about your prayer life, that could be a barrier to you even getting started. God wants to meet you where you are at. You've got a Creator that wants to talk to you, that wants relationship with you, that wants you to start where you're at in your prayer life.

[11:36] The final thing that I think can stop us from prayer is this: misconceptions. Misconceptions. A hard question that I'd like to ask each and every single one of you is, do you see prayer as a chore instead of a way to connect with your Creator who desperately loves you? Do you have misconceptions about prayer? Are you approaching it with guilt? Do you have a misconception when it comes to what God wants from you in prayer? Do you approach it with the heart of thanksgiving, with the heart of expectation, or do you think that it's a chore? I remember a couple years ago when Jess and I had just come back from working and living in the States. And this was right at the very beginning of COVID. So when we arrived back in Canada, we had to spend two weeks in isolation after crossing the border.

[12:30] So we're in these two weeks, and the first couple days are kind of fun. But any of you who had to isolate during COVID, you know that you start to get a little shack happy after a couple days. You don't know whether it's the COVID or just the isolation. Now, I called up one of my mentors, Dave Steeves, during these two weeks, and he asked me how it was going, and I think it was day seven or eight, and I said, "You know, I'm starting to get a little bit cooped up in here." And he stopped me and he said, "Austin, I think you have the wrong perspective. If I could have gone to you right after you got married to Jess and said, 'Hey, I want you guys to spend two weeks all by yourselves,' wouldn't you have been excited?"

[13:16] He reminded me that sometimes my perspective was wrong. My question for you is, are you neglecting the greatest gift that God has given us, which is communication with Him? Imagine if we were able to time travel and go back and talk to one of the disciples, and we shared what life was like in 2022 and how we were following Jesus, and maybe the disciples would say, "Okay, well, what does prayer look like for you? What temple do you go to to pray? What does it look like? What does it feel like?" And we'd be able to respond to the disciples and say, "Well, actually, everything has changed. We get to pray whenever we want and wherever we want." And they might say something like, "Wow, you must be praying all the time. This must be a huge part of what you do."

[14:07] But do we take it for granted? Do we take this beautiful gift of getting to talk to God for granted? Don Chapman has a great quote where he says, "Pray as you can, not as you can't." Maybe prayer for you looks like getting by yourself and listening to worship music and sitting in God's presence and thanking Him for who He is. Maybe prayer for others is turning off the secular music on your way into work and doing a guided prayer session through the YouVersion Bible app and listening to that as you drive. The beautiful thing is the YouVersion Bible app has guided prayers that you can go through each and every single day. The truth is that there are tons of different types of prayer specifically for your season and specifically for the way that God has wired you. There's contemplative prayer, there's accessory prayer, meditative prayer, singing prayer, intercessory prayer, praying through Scripture, prayer walks, group prayer, reading pre-written prayers from recently or from hundreds of years ago, praying through Scripture. There's all kinds of different ways.

[15:16] So prayer can be interrupted by time constraints, by technology, guilt, or misconceptions. And my question for you is, out of those four, is there one that really sticks out to you, one that you think you might be guilty of? For me, let me be very vulnerable with you, I think sometimes I can get wrapped up in the technology. As soon as I get a text, I have to respond immediately to it, or it's really easy for me to just immediately go, the technology. But the question for you is, what are the barriers and the things that stop you from prioritizing prayer in your life? We need to stay focused and truly. Have our priorities and our focus straight. So that being said, I want to talk about four ideas for each and every single one of us to make prayer a priority. Number one: make space.

[16:10] Turn your neighbor and tell them, make space. Luke 6:12 says this: "In those days Jesus went out to the mountain to pray. He spent the night in prayer to God." The truth is that if you are too busy to pray, then you're just plain too busy. You think that Jesus probably could have skipped a couple sessions of prayer, because I mean, He had spent eternity with God the Father. They were pretty close. They had spent eternity with one another. They were in harmony. Maybe He didn't need to spend that time. They were already in sync. But what did He do? He prioritized prayer through it all. We have got to make space for prayer. We've got to make space physically. I'd encourage you to find a specific place in your house, whether it's a prayer closet, whether it's a prayer chair, make a space that you dedicate to prayer, to praying to those around you, to seeking out the Lord, to praying for those that you love in your life. Not only should you make space physically, but you should make space mentally. How many of us have ever been talking to somebody and all of a sudden you can tell that they are not fully there with you? Their eyes start to glaze over, like some of your eyes are glazed over right now. I'm kidding.

[17:32] We've got to make space mentally. We've got to make sure that we're not just giving the leftovers to Jesus, but we are genuinely making space in our schedules. We're making space mentally, emotionally, and physically for prayer. I think I'm talking to somebody in this room that for you, you know that prayer has been a neglected portion of your life. And this is your moment to repent and say to God, I want to make space for You. And I promise you that as you pray to God, it will electrify your relationship with Him, that when we make prayer a priority, all of a sudden these little things that might seem like coincidences but absolutely are not, that God starts making differences in your life, that prayer is powerful. There's a great book by A. W.

[18:25] Tozer, who he's been a big inspiration in my life. It's called The Pursuit of God, and one of the things that he talks about in this book is he's saying the worst thing that we can do as Christians is to separate our spiritual life from the rest of our life. The truth is that prayer isn't this private thing that maybe you do once a day and then you go about living the rest of your life. Not only should you make space for prayer, but prayer should permeate everything that you do. For me, a couple years ago, I had a reminder on my phone that every morning, Galatians 5:22. I memorized that passage where it says, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control." And what I did is every single day, I prayed over that scripture, and it is absolutely incredible how God transformed that specific area of my life as I spent almost a year focused on praying that over myself.

[19:23] How could God change your life through prayer? We've got to make space. Number two: make a list. Make a list. Colossians 1:9 says this. Paul is writing to the church in Colossae. He says, "For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of His will through all wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives." Paul said that he was consistently praying for that church. How cool would it be if you had a prayer list of things you were consistently praying over? I'm very thankful that pilots have a checklist of things to do before they take off. I wouldn't be super encouraged or feel super safe if the pilot just said, "Ah, what are we gonna do today? Let's think off the top of my head. What's the safety checklist that I have to go through?" The reason why pilots have a checklist is because this is a life or death scenario where they've got to make sure that they do their due diligence and go through all the steps that they need to go through.

[20:29] I would also say that prayer is a life or death circumstance, that you've got to make sure that you have a list and areas that you're praying through, things that matter to you, things that matter to the heart of God. Can I just say this, that your workplace would be transformed forever if you listed your co-workers and prayed for them on a daily or weekly basis. You have no idea. Absolutely, you have no idea what God wants to do through you, through prayer, if you specifically prayed for your co-workers, prayed for your family, prayed over your situation, prayed over what you're struggling with right now. Make a list. One of the things that's so cool here at Moncton Wesleyan is not only do we have a prayer team that meets throughout the week that comes up after the services, but we have a prayer chain. So when somebody sends a prayer request, it actually goes out to this entire group of prayer warriors through email, and I'd encourage you, if you want to be a part of that prayer chain, if you want to be a part of that prayer email, you can just reach out to us via email or Facebook or whatever and see if you can be a part of that, because prayer absolutely changes things.

[21:39] Number one: make space. Number two: make a list. And then number three is be attentive. Be attentive. We're getting close to the end here. So turn to your neighbor and say, be attentive. Make sure they're awake over there. Be a sense of John 8:47. It says this: "Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear Him is that you are not of God." There's a great story about Mother Teresa. A CBS anchor named Dan Rather once asked Mother Teresa what she said during her prayers. She answered, "I listen." I listen. Sometimes in my prayers, all that I'll do is I'll get down and I'll say to God, Holy Spirit, You are welcome here. What do You have to say to me?

[22:30] And whether it's after a minute or two or five or ten, I just feel this little nudge from God of what He has for me for that day. My question for you is, are you listening? Are you putting away the distractions? Are you showing up and making space mentally and physically for God for Him to speak to you and have those gentle whispers? A prayer and a goal for us today as Christians is to pause and say to God, help me this week to pause and hear Your voice. It could be the most life-changing thing to hear God's voice. But here's the challenge for us, church. When we hear from God, what He says will never contradict His word. So my encouragement for you is to make sure that you are memorizing and soaking your life in scripture, so that when God does speak to you, you can test what you believe that you are hearing by and through His word.

[23:31] The final thing that's critical for us to make prayer a priority is have a plan. Proverbs 16:3 says, "Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and He will establish your plans." I've heard it said before that if you don't have a target, if you don't have a goal, it doesn't matter what you do. You'll always hit that target. We need to have a plan when it comes to prayer. When will we do it? Where will we do it? Do we have a list? What is our plan? A helpful acronym for prayer is this: ACTS. A ACTS. What I want to do is I want to unpack this acronym over these last couple of minutes. There's a great quote from J. C. Ryle where he says, "A holy believer is a walking sermon. A holy believer is a walking sermon." This is where the rubber hits the road. This is where I hope we won't just talk the talk, but we will walk the walk. So what does ACTS stand for? A is adoration. Turn to your neighbor and say, "Adoration."

[24:35] Adoration. Psalm 96:2-4 says, "Sing to the Lord, praise His name. Proclaim His salvation day after day. Declare His glory among the nations, His marvelous deeds among all peoples. For great is the Lord and most worthy of praise. He is to be feared above all gods." Here is who God is. Let me list the attributes of God. How cool would it be, instead of having a vending machine prayer where we just go straight to what we want or need from God, we start with adoration and of saying, God, thank You for who You are. Thank You for how incredible You are. Here are a couple things that God is. God is loving, more loving than we can even comprehend. Nothing that you do can make God love you any less or any more. God is loving. God is faithful. God is powerful and mighty. God is just and in control. God is compassionate and full of grace. God is good.

[25:32] God is holy. God is forgiving. Merciful. God is our refuge and our help. God is with us no matter what. How cool would it be, church, if we started off our prayers by saying, God, thank You for how good You are. We have no idea of when we shift our focus from the things of this world onto His Word and who He is, that all of a sudden our earthly troubles start to melt away. A is adoration. C is confession. C is confession. James 5:16 says, "Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective." Sometimes our sins are what are holding us in bondage and guilt and what keeps us from a dialogue with God.

[26:21] This past spring, I had the great opportunity to go and get some pastoral training in London, England. And there was a great pastor who was sharing the importance of connecting with God and confession of our sins. He shared that his two young boys, one of whom is four, the other which is two, they were playing with him and they had some toys, and all of a sudden, let's call the four-year-old Brandon, all of a sudden as Brandon was playing with this toy, his brother, the two- year-old, grabbed the toy away from him. And what did Brandon do? He did what four-year-olds sometimes do, and he just slapped him on the wrist. And all of a sudden the dad said, "No, Brandon, you can't do that." As a four-year-old, you might be able to get away with slapping two-year-olds, but if you continue to do that in your adolescence, or as an adult, you're gonna go to jail. So that's just not going to work. Okay, we're gonna break that habit right here, right now. But this innocent and fun playtime, what happened is when the father rebuked the son for what he had done, this beautiful playtime was interrupted because after he reprimanded his son, Brandon went to the corner and wouldn't even look at his dad.

[27:32] I think the truth for us is sometimes we're similar. When we sin, when we know we've done wrong, instead of realizing that God's love for us is unchanging and we can confess to Him and He forgives our sin, what we do is we walk away from Him. We've got to make sure that we confess our sins, that we own up to what we've done, that these things aren't a barrier to connecting with God. A is adoration, C is confession, T is thanksgiving. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 says this: "Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." Sometimes when I pray, I just like to start by saying, "God, thank You so much for breath in my lungs.

[28:21] Thank You for what a beautiful day it is, that I get another day to serve You, to get to enjoy this breath in my lungs." Psalm 3:5 says, "I lie down and sleep; I wake again because the Lord sustains me." Church, when's the last time we woke up, took a deep breath, and started our morning by saying, "God, thank You for another day. Thank You for another day"? Isn't it a lot easier to, instead of waking up and starting with prayer, it's easy to just roll over, check our phone, go on Facebook, and see what Aunt Martha had for dinner last night. You know, it's just so much easier, right? It's so much easier to go to that place. But what if we started with thanksgiving? I think that all of a sudden that would transform our attitudes and our minds and our emotions when we start with thanksgiving.

[29:14] Finally, the S in ACTS stands for supplication. Supplication means this: to ask humbly and earnestly. This is when we get to take our requests to God. We start with adoration. We continue with confession. The second last thing is thanksgiving, and then finally, once our hearts are ready, once our minds are ready, we go before God. There's a great, awesome promise in Philippians 4:6-8. "Do not be anxious about anything. Some of you need to hear that today. Do not be anxious about anything. But in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think of these things."

[30:24] Church, the truth is that we get to choose, we get to choose to worry or we get to choose to pray. I can say the best thing that you can do is to make space and a place for prayer. Someone needs to hear this this morning, that God genuinely listens to you and answers when you pray. Psalm 139:4 says, "Before a word was even on my tongue, You, O Lord, know it completely." God answers all of our prayers, but listen, sometimes we don't quite like the answer. When we ask God for something, the response will be yes, no, or wait. What if we became a church that was defined by how we pray? Let me remind you of the quote that we started with, which is this: every great movement of God can be traced back to a single praying, kneeling figure.

[31:21] Church, we know that God's not done with Moncton Westland. We know that the best is yet to come. We know that God wants to use us to impact the city, that God wants to transform marriages. He wants to heal addictions. He wants to bring more people to Celebrate Recovery. He wants to continue to grow this church so that we can impact this city for Jesus, but it has to start with prayer. Before we can see an outward revival, before we can see a movement of God, we need to have a movement of prayer, church. What if we got all about prayer? Because when we pray, when we seek His face, we will experience His power, His glory, and His transformation in this church, in our lives, in this city. Let me go ahead and pray for us. Father God, I pray that we would be defined by prayer.

[32:11] Lord, we wouldn't just theoretically believe in it. We wouldn't just hear about it. We wouldn't just walk out of this church being the exact same as when we walked in, but, Lord, we would focus on You through prayer. We would have a plan. We would have a list. We would make space. Lord, help us to follow ACTS. Help us to adore You, help us to confess, to approach You with thanksgiving, to have supplication and ask You for our needs. Holy Spirit, transform us. Help us to be a people marked by prayer. Lord, we need You. Oh, we need You. Help us to show it by being a people of prayer.