How To Pray For Breakthrough

Welcome back to week two of our Breakthrough Disciplines series.  Today, we’re going to start with probably the most fundamental spiritual discipline.  A discipline that’s so easy a three year old can do it, but is so rich and powerful that we’re still growing in it even when we’ve been a follower of Jesus for 50 or more years – the spiritual discipline of prayer.  We’re going to talk about how to pray for breakthrough. 

I can imagine that some of our listeners can be a little uncomfortable when it comes to prayer.  If that’s you, I want to read a verse that may encourage you.  

Luke 11:1 – One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray”

Jesus’ own disciples, the men who followed him around, who were able to see his miracles first hand, who were able to hear his teaching, said, “Teach us to pray”.  It’s so encouraging to me that they were humble and honest.  They said, “Jesus, we don’t know how to pray.  Teach us.”  Maybe that’s you today.  Perhaps you’re thinking, I want to have breakthrough in my life from anxiety, anger, bitterness, depression, but if prayer is the answer, I’m not sure I even know how to pray.  Well, you’re in good company because even Jesus’s disciples weren’t sure how to pray – so this is relevant for you, and I think you’ll be encouraged. 

Schedule It 

Find a time and place that works for you. Start with 5 minutes a day and work towards longer times with God.

• We’re talking about the discipline of prayer.  This is prayer that is intentional and consistent. This isn’t just about lifting a prayer of desperation when you’re in a difficult situation.  God certainly listens to those prayers, but remember, we’re talking about the spiritual discipline of prayer. 

Mark 1:35 Before daybreak the next morning, Jesus got up and went out to an isolated place to pray.

Luke 6:12 One day soon afterward Jesus went up on a mountain to pray, and he prayed to God all night. 

• Several verses in the Bible that say, “as was his custom” when talking about Jesus and prayer.  This was a habit.  This was consistent.  Even Jesus had a time and place.  If he needed that, how much more do we need it? 
• When you hear start with 5 minutes some of you are probably thinking I already pray more than five minutes a day – that’s great. Some of you probably thought, “Five minutes, how am I going to concentrate in prayer for five minutes.”  
• Find a place that works for you.  For my wife, it’s at the kitchen table.  For me, it’s in my bedroom or in the upstairs office at the church.  Using the same place frequently helps your mind to settle in to the fact that this is where I pray.  Find a place that is free from distraction or at least where distractions are limited.  
• Find a time – put it on your calendar. I think there is something powerful in starting the day off in prayer.  Asking God for strength to get you through the day. Asking him to set divine appointments for you throughout the day where you get to help people pursue him.  But again, if you’re not a morning person, maybe you just quickly pray to give the day over to God and then spend more time in prayer in the afternoon or evening, or whenever you’re at your best.  Start small, especially if you’re new at this.  Give God this small sacrifice.  Schedule it and you’ll find over time you can start spending 10 minutes, 20 minutes, even an hour or longer in prayer.

PRAY 

Use music and scripture to get focused on God. Start by praising or thanking God before you ask him for things.  Using the PRAY acronym can help prevent your prayers from just becoming a wish list to God. 

Psalm 145:1-3I will exalt you, my God and King, and praise your name forever and ever.2 I will praise you every day;    yes, I will praise you forever.3 Great is the Lord! He is most worthy of praise! No one can measure his greatness.

• It’s so easy to make our prayer time just about us.  God, here is what I need or want.  Here is what is giving me anxiety.  Remember, prayer is conversation with God.  If the only time you talked with your spouse, children, or friends is when you were asking them to do something for you, what kind of relationship would that be? 
• PRAY acronym – Praise, Repent, Ask, Yield – Start with praise and thanksgiving.  Praise can be as simple as declaring things that are true about God – God you’re almighty.  God you’re omnipresent. God you’re gracious.  God you’re holy. Repent – confess your sins to God.  Ask him to search your heart and reveal sins you may have forgotten.  Ask – present your requests to God.  Yield – listen, ask God to reveal his desires for your life to you.  Ask him to help you discern his will for your life.  

Matthew 6:9-13 Pray like this:Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy.10 May your Kingdom come soon.May your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.11 Give us today the food we need,[a]12 and forgive us our sins,  as we have forgiven those who sin against us.13 And don’t let us yield to temptation,[b] but rescue us from the evil one.

• When his disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, this is how he answered them.  I don’t think he’s talking about repeating these exact words every time we pray, although there is nothing wrong with reciting the Lord’s prayer.  This is a framework for prayer.  

Pray with Boldness

If your mind wanders when you pray, don’t panic. Let those thoughts help you focus on the things that need prayer. Pray with boldness and intent. God is not offended when we’re honest about what’s on our heart. 

• You might think that after being a Christian for almost 40 years and being in ministry full time that I would be really good at prayer.  But I actually feel that sometimes I’m really bad at prayer.  My prayer time is the only time when I think I might have ADHD.  Maybe you can relate.  I’ll be praying, “God, please help me to be more kind to my family.  Help me to be more patient.  Thank you for your provision in my life.  I’ve got to stop and get gas on my way into town.”  Wait, what?  Where did that come from?  Then I refocus, and it happens again 2 minutes later.  I have to think Peter was probably like that early on.  Jesus is teaching him to pray. He was probably, “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, squirrel.”  
• If you can relate, this might be the most practical tip you get today.  If your mind wanders, that doesn’t mean you’re not spiritual.  Maybe it means that should be the thing you need to be praying about.  Instead of saying, “I’m a terrible person because I keep thinking about how angry I am at so and so” Stop, and capture that thought.  Pray for that person.  Pray for God to give you a heart of forgiveness.  Or if your mind keeps wandering to all of the things on your to do list, ask God to help you keep first things first and to have an eternal perspective.  Ask him to grant you peace and wisdom as you try to prioritize the things you need to get done.  Don’t just put those thoughts away, but pray for that right now.  When you find your mind wandering, let that be a trigger. 
• If my mind keeps returning to a particular topic during prayer, it is probably an indication that this is the topic that is of most concern to me, and I need to talk to God about it.” The Life You’ve Always Wanted – John Ortberg 

Hebrews 4:14-16 So then, since we have a great High Priest who has entered heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to what we believe. 15 This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin. 16 So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most. 

• The author of Hebrews is referencing back to the Old Testament image of the priest who would walk with incredible fear and trembling into the Holy of Holies in the temple.  God’s temple was set up with several different courts and areas.  Some people could go into the outer courts.  Even fewer people could go into the inner courts.  But the holy of holies, the place where God’s spirit was said to dwell, could only be entered by one person, the high priest, and he could only enter it one day out of the year – the day of atonement.  He went in there to represent the people before God.  He walked in with fear and trembling because any misstep in the presence of God, and he was afraid it would be the end.  
• That’s the imagery the author of Hebrews is using here.  But look at what he says in the passage.  He says we have a great high priest – Jesus.  And Jesus didn’t enter the holy of holies, He entered heaven. He is the Son of God.  So because we have this great high priest who has gone before God on our behalf, who has been our mediator, we don’t have to be afraid. We can come boldly to the throne of our Glorious God!  We don’t have to walk in with fear and trembling like the High Priest did.  You can go boldly into the throne room of God because of Jesus! And you can tell God what’s on your heart.  You can tell him what you need, you can tell him your desires.  Don’t be afraid to tell God what you want.  He already knows, so be honest with him.  Some of you have not because you ask not.  Ask, and pray with boldness.  
• Now, I want to be careful here.  I’m not talking about a name it and claim it type of prayer life where we get to determine what we need or where we have control over God granting us all of the desires of our heart.  I’m not saying to boldly tell God you want a new Mercedes and that as long as you’re bold enough, you’ll get it.  Or even on a deeper level, I’m not saying that if a loved one has a terminal illness that if you just pray hard enough or with enough boldness that I can guarantee you they’re going to be healed.  But, whenever I pray for healing for someone I pray with boldness.  I ask God to bring healing, and I keep on asking him to bring healing until He let’s me know that it isn’t his will to bring healing.  
• Related to this idea of coming to God with boldness, don’t feel like you’re bugging God when you bring the little things to him.  Sometimes I think we’re ashamed of asking God to intervene in the little details of our life.  You can approach God with boldness in the details.  My wife is a great example to me in this.  She’s always lifting little things up to God.  When she can’t find her keys, she prays.  Just last week, when her contact lenses got delivered to the wrong house, she prayed.  She’s never timid about bringing the little things to God.  And God answers those prayers.  Seeing God answer those prayers often helps to build our faith when we’re praying about the bigger things.  I know God wants me to learn to pray with courage and to learn to pray with boldness.  That’s one side of the coin.  I want to make sure we talk about the other side of that same coin. 

Thy Will Be Done

Pray with humility and submission. Learn to listen to God, and be ready to hear what’s on his heart.

Matthew 26:39 He went on a little farther and bowed with his face to the ground, praying, “My Father! If it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me.  Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.” 

• Jesus modeled this in the garden the night he was arrested.  He was praying so intently and so boldly that he was sweating drops of blood.  He poured out his heart to the father, but he yielded. 
• I want you to look at the first part of that prayer: My Father! If it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me.  Do you think Jesus prayed this timidly?  Just before this verse, Jesus told his disciples “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful,even to the point of death”.  Do you think someone whose soul is sorrowful to the point of death lifts up a timid prayer?  Of course not, if you’ve ever been in a desperate situation where you were sorrowful to the point of death, I’ll bet your prayer wasn’t timid.  He said, “My Father! If there is any way possible that this cup of suffering can be taken from me, this cup of your wrath, of your fury, please take it from me.”  Yet, I want your will to be done, not mine.  You know, the bible doesn’t tell us how much time passed between those two sentences.  Was it a second?  Was it 30 seconds, 3 minutes, longer?  I don’t know, but I know all of creation held its breath as Jesus, being fully God but also fully man,  wrestled with the consequences of submitting to the Father’s will.  God’s redemptive plan, that He set in place before the foundations of the world, hung in the balance in that space between me and yet.  
• I just said a few minutes ago that we need to learn to pray with boldness and be honest with God about what’s on our heart – and we should.  But what’s going to happen over time as you learn this discipline of prayer is you’re going to discover that prayer is really more about listening to God.  Prayer connects us to Jesus.  So when we’re just learning to pray, a lot of our prayer is coming boldly to God about what is on our heart.  The more we get to know God and the more we experience real relationship with him – his patience, his kindness, his goodness – The more we want to know what is on his heart.  We begin to boldly approach him to find out what is on his heart.  That only happens when we listen.  It happens when we come to God with a humble heart.  With an attitude that recognizes, He’s God and I am not.  A submitted, listening heart says to God, “ I want you more than anything else”. A submitted, listening heart rests in the truth of  Psalm 37:4 which says, “Delight yourself in the LORD, and He will give you the desires of your heart” 

Two Way Conversation 

As we develop this discipline of prayer, our conversations with God will begin to look more like conversations with others that we love. 

• I know for me, one of the reasons prayer can be difficult is I don’t hear the audible voice of God.  If I physically heard God speaking to me in my prayer time, I would do it so much more.  I have found, though, that when my time is consistent I do hear from him.  I”ll read a verse in the Bible that has a direct connection to something I’ve been praying about – That’s God talking to me.  I’ll get a nudge from the Holy Spirit to reach out to that person I’ve been praying for.  I’ll get a sense of peace over a decision I need to make that I’ve been praying about.  And when I do hear from him in those ways, it gets me excited to continue in this spiritual discipline of prayer.