…your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. –Matthew 6:10 (NIV84)

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Many of us get caught up in praying for the wrong things as it relates to God’s will. We spend far too much time on praying to know whether we should retire or continue to work, whether we should go to a local college or go out of state, whether we should work at one place versus another, whether we should stay in for the evening or go out with friends, or whether we should go out for the track team or not.

It’s not that God doesn’t care about those things. We just have no way of knowing whether we have chosen to be in God’s will or not. There is no litmus test to know whether retiring or continuing to work was the will of God. We can’t say that if things go well it must have been the will of God and if things go poorly I must be out of the will of God. Adversity is as much a part of God’s will as prosperity.

While these things are honorable to pray for, and God does care about them, Jesus made it clear that we should pray for God’s will to be done on Earth. Instead of giving so much of your prayer time to things that cannot be measured, why not pray for those things that can be clearly identified as being in or out of God’s will?

You can know whether or not you are working in unity with other members of your church. You can know whether or not you are sharing God’s truth with those who have never heard it. You can know whether or not your speech is pure. You can know whether or not you are treating your spouse with respect. You can know whether or not you are generous in your giving. You can know whether or not you pray for your enemies. You can know whether or not you are showing love towards your neighbor.

Identify those things that are clearly defined to be in God’s will and pray that you heart and character will be in harmony with God’s heart and character.

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I don’t have time to pray and neither do you.

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As a matter of fact none of us have time to pray.  We are all busy people.  We have things that demand our time and our attention.  We have jobs or school that demand most of our time and attention.  We have children that need cared for.  We have relationships that bring us joy.  We have hobbies that help us disconnect from the stress of our busy schedules and from the job that takes so much of our time.  We have commitments to the church.  We have commitments to our children’s extracurricular activities.  We have unwanted emergencies that arise.  Water leaks, fires, cancer, heart attacks, broken arms, fender benders, behavioral issues at school, the boss isn’t happy, communication issues with our spouse, overdue bills, etc…

After all of that who has time to pray?  No one!

That’s why we have to make time to pray.  Anyone that has an effective prayer life carves out time to pray and makes it a priority during the day.  They schedule it just like an appointment on the calendar. 

If you don’t make time to pray you will never have time to pray.

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Do my actions affect how God responds to my prayers?

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Many of us are unaware of how our thoughts, attitudes, and actions affect our prayer life.  In I John 3:19-24 we see that the posture of our heart is a great indicator of how we should approach God in prayer.

If our hearts condemn us then we have no choice but to approach God with an attitude of repentance.  God knows what is in our heart and he shines a light on those things that do not line up with his character.  That in turn creates a stirring of guilt.  Which is not a bad thing as some propose.  Just like a child feels guilty when he knows he has broken the trust of his parents, we feel the same guilt when we come to realize we have broken the trust of our father in heaven.  This guilt is not a tool for suppression but an opportunity to recognize that God is greater than our hearts.  We can release our guilt by praying to God for his forgiveness.

  We cannot be fooled into thinking that we know how to pray or what to pray for if there is sin in our hearts.  But that doesn’t stop us from being angry with God when he doesn’t answer our prayers the way we think he should or when he doesn’t give us everything we ask for.  We can have no confidence in the presence of God if we have sin in our heart unless we are seeking forgiveness.

On the other hand, we can approach God with confidence to know he hears our prayers and will respond to those prayers if we live to keep God’s commandments and live to please him.  When we decide that we are going to believe in God and put our relationship with him above all else, and we decide that we are going to love those around us, it will change how we pray.  We will no longer pray selfish or self-centered prayers.  We will begin to pray prayers that reflect God’s character and his love for humanity.  Our obedience to God’s truth gives us a confidence to know that God will move on our behalf when our motives and actions line up with his.

If you are frustrated in your prayer life, perhaps its because you are not reflecting the heart of God in your prayers.  It may be worthwhile to evaluate your thoughts, attitudes, and actions.  Perhaps you have become complacent, critical, lazy, envious, prideful, hard hearted, angry, or any number of other things that do not reflect the character of God.  Perhaps you need to begin your next prayer with, “God forgive me…”

How have your actions affected your prayer life?

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Teenagers Speak.  Will We Listen?

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Last week I had the opportunity to be a part of an online conference called Groundswell.  The premise of the conference was to let teenagers from all across the country and across multiple denominations speak into the lives of pastors and church leaders.  To share their unique perspective on what the church is doing, is failing to do, and what it needs to start doing in order to capture the hearts of this generation of teens and young adults.

As I get older I will need to be more intentional about listening to the voices of the generations that follow me.  The way they do life will be and is much different than the way I did life at their age.  I will need to be attentive if I want to figure out how to share an unchangeable message with an ever changing world.

Below are the notes and thoughts that I jotted down.  Let me know what you think.

Notes From Groundswell Online Conference

1) Build younger- mentor

2) Methodology can become an idol

3) Don’t water down the gospel. It will offend some people, but don’t water it down to get more people.

4) Kids are hungry. They just need someone to step out and invite them.

5) Most misunderstood about this generation: this generation is totally helpless.

6) We have to know God and learn who he is before we can follow him.

7) People are not coming to learn how to deal with situations. They could google that. They want to know about God.

Church needs to change. Most churches in a city are the same.

9) How a sermon is given matters- presentation.

10) Allow younger people to serve.

11) Young people do things differently- not incorrectly- just differently.

12) Kids don’t have a lot of positive role models.

13) They (teens) feel like church isn’t a lot of fun.

14) Not enough opportunities for teenagers to volunteer or plug in outside of the youth ministry.

15) Pastors should practice what they preach.

16) Pastor should be transparent with their struggles. It would be nice to know that they are real people too.

17) You are never too young to help out.

18) I want someone (an adult) to have a relationship with me.

Rick Warren

· Teenagers are the church now

· The stage (Sunday morning presentation) should be ethnically and age diverse

· #1 factor for determining success in a child is a caring adult in their life. Doesn’t have to be a parent.

Most impactful thing church has done

· Raised up leaders that want to do life with me

· Letting me know it is okay to not be okay

What discourages people in your school

· Disunity among churches

· Hypocrisy in behavior

What should the church do over the next 5-10 years?

· Open doors to pray, volunteer, etc… other than Sunday.

· Sacrifice- go out of their way to bring people indoors

· Stability- less turnover- consistency

Hot Topics

· From surface conversations to deep questions

· Think more, know more, teach deeper things

· Politics- church is not a political movement

What should stay- anchor points

· The gospel is what we are for

· Relationships are important

Ideal Mentor

· Down to earth, honest, real, love on me more and point me to Jesus

· Give me biblical answers

· Finds a way to relate, seeks to give good advice

What should the church start/stop doing?

· Stop thinking coolness will win people over

· Start listening and talking

· Challenge us, expect more, stop watering down expectations

· I need to be accepted even if I’m not like you. Be interested in me, not about what you are doing.

How has pastor invested?

· Transparent & relatable

· Cares about next generation- takes a week to preach to youth

· Honest about struggles

· Encourages this generation- I believe in you

· Gives time regularly to next generation

Cultural Issues

· Porn & technology

· Stop sweeping issues under the rug

o End of world

o Homosexuality

o Any awkward topic

· Sexuality

How to address these issues

· Straight from pulpit

· Church needs to be realest place in the world

· Youth platform (youth meetings)- we are not too young to deal with issues

· Teens to talk about issues in social circles

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I don’t have time to pray.

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Prayer is no different than anything else.  If it is important to you then you will make time.  If it is not, then time will always seem to slip through your fingers.  The most important thing you can do is to determine that prayer has value and that it is going to take priority over other things in your life.

You do not have time to do everything that you want to do.  You must come to terms with that.  If you are finding that you don’t have enough time for prayer, then there is a good chance that you have have determined that the other things you are doing are more valuable in your life.

In my home we have chores for our children.  I would like to say that my children always understand their role as a family member and they give priority to the things they need to do, but that is not always the case.  When my children are confronted with something they do not want to do, regardless of the reason, then they latch onto every distraction they can to draw them away from what they should be doing.  The same will be true in your prayer life.  If you do not determine that prayer is valuable and decide that it must take priority then you will latch onto the many distractions that come your way every day.

So…

The most important thing you can do to create the necessary time for prayer is to assign it value and give it priority.  The best way to do that is to engage in prayer for a period of time. 

I would suggest that now is a good time to start.  You could commit to pray for the next several weeks leading up to Easter (Sunday, April 8).  Choose a place and a time that you will regularly set aside for prayer.  Then begin a conversation with God.  Let him know your struggles, express your frustrations, thank him for the good things in your life, ask him questions, be quiet and listen, talk to him about your friends and family, cry with him if you are hurting, or share your hopes and dreams with him.  But don’t quit before Easter.  Give yourself enough time to evaluate how prayer is impacting your life.

Here are a couple of do’s and don’ts:

1. At the end of this commitment of prayer, don’t ask, “Did I get what I asked for.”  Prayer is not about receiving what we want.  It is about growing closer to God.
2. Do ask yourself, “Did the other things in my life fall apart because I took time out of my day to pray?”
3. Don’t try and pray marathon prayers.  Try 10-15 minutes each day.  At this point consistency is most important.
4. Do ask yourself, “How am I or my life different on the other side of my commitment?”

I believe that if you will commit to seeking God on a regular basis, you will be more aware of his presence and that will lead you to want to be in his presence more.

Here is a good starting point for your first day of prayer:

Dear God, I haven’t really prayed regularly and I’m not sure I understand it, but I am making time to talk with you over the next several weeks.  I would like to start by…

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We have become a culture that is addicted to noise and distraction.

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The more advanced our technology gets the more we create devices that give us better and faster access to the world around us.  We are connected more frequently to information, movies, music, hobbies, co-workers, school mates, our favorite businesses, and the list goes on and on.

Here is what an article published by the New York Times says about our children and technology:

Those ages 8 to 18 spend more than seven and a half hours a day with such devices, compared with less than six and a half hours five years ago, when the study was last conducted. And that does not count the hour and a half that

youths spend texting, or the half-hour they talk on their cell phones.

While most of the young people in the study got good grades, 47 percent of the heaviest media users — those who consumed at least 16 hours a day — had mostly C’s or lower, compared with 23 percent of those who typically consumed media three hours a day or less. The heaviest media users were also more likely than the lightest users to report that they were bored or sad, or that they got into trouble, did not get along well with their parents and were not happy at school.

Some of those studied were exposed to 16 hours of devices/media in a single day.  With that kind of intrusion it is no wonder that the mere mention of the word silence makes most of us squirm in our seats.  This is the conclusion that Henri Nouwen comes to in his book The Way of the Heart.

Over the last decade we have been inundated by a torrent of words. Wherever we go we’re surrounded by words: words softly whispered, loudly proclaimed, angrily screamed; words spoken, recited, or sung; words on records, in books, on walls, in the sky; words in many sounds, many colors, many forms; words to be heard, read, seen, glanced at; words which flicker on and off, move slowly, dance, jump, wiggle. Words, words, words! They form the floor, walls, and ceiling of our existence.

Recently I was driving through Los Angeles, and suddenly I had the strange sensation of driving through a huge dictionary. Wherever I looked there were words trying to take my eyes from the road. They said, “Use me, take me, by me, drink me, smell me, touch me, kiss me, sleep with me.” In such a world who can maintain respect for words?

One of our main problems is that in this chatty society, silence has become a very fearful thing. For most people, silence creates itchiness and nervousness. Many experience silence not as full and rich, but as empty and hollow. For them silence is like a gaping abyss which can swallow them up. As soon as the minister says during a worship service, “Let us be silent for a few moments,” people tend to become restless and preoccupied with only one thought: “When will this be over?”

–Henri Nouwen, The Way of the Heart

The only way to keep from being swept away by the growing current of technology and innovation is to make a conscious choice to walk away from it regularly.  Unfortunately, to many of us, spending long periods of time in silence and solitude will be the equivalent of being in hell.  To overcome our addiction to noise and distraction we will need to focus on consistency for shorter periods of time.  We must build to staying  in our quietness until all that remains is the unfiltered voice of God.

Here is what I have learned.  The more I pray, the more I am aware of God’s presence.  And… The more of his presence I want.  Spending short periods of time in an environment free of noise and outside intrusion is much better than spending a hour in a crowded cafeteria.  Mainly because it gives God on opportunity to speak freely and for us to hear clearly. 

What begins as an uncomfortable setting that begs for something to knock at the door and break the boredom is transformed into a rich and refreshing retreat for the soul.

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