Ask the Pastors Season 8 Episode 2: "I’m new to Christianity; how can I learn to pray?"
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Welcome to Ask the Pastors, a segment of the West Hills podcast where you have the opportunity to ask your questions and receive biblically grounded pastorally sensitive answers from our pastoral staff. My name is Brian. I'm your host, one of the pastors, and joined by Pastor That. Hey, everyone. And our lead pastor Will. Yep.
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And I knew that we were recording and that the camera's on. I was aware of all that and I'm very prepared to podcast today. Let's do it.
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We're going to have part two from Emma from last week. She had a bunch of great questions. I had a section on prayer, so there's three questions that she sent to Pastor Will. And the first one was, what is your advice for starting and maintaining a strong prayer life?
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Is there going to be overlap between the three? I'm just wondering if we should try and take them one at a time. I don't know. What do you think?
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What do y'all think? Why don't we read all three? Read all three and then we'll see
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Where it goes.
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Okay. Great. Number two, what are some good ways to pray? And number three, how do I know if God has answered my prayers one way or the other?
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Yeah. Some great questions. I think the first two in particular could be pretty- Overlapping. A lot of overlap. Advice for starting maintaining a strong prayer life, some good ways to pray. Yeah. I think those are maybe different flavors of the same questions. You want to start?
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You're not going to give us your one sentence.
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So I only had ... When I tried to do that for her ... Well, I did it that started for her last week. I started a one sentence answer for all of these. There's 32 questions and they're all that important and big and-
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Deserving of more than.
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And good, deserving of more than one. And so I ended up only making it through like half, like 15 or 16 of them. So this was one of the categories, prayer. I made it through Bible, Christian life, I think salvation, West Hills, some of them. Yeah. So anyway, but I didn't get to the prayer or God. And so all I have to say, I haven't done my one sentence yet. Yeah. So I'm shooting from the
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Hip. Yeah.
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What do you want
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To say? Well, I'll start and I don't have a one sentence answer in some ways. I think of last week when we started with Bible reading in part with getting started with prayer is to just do it, to build a habit, build it into your rhythm of life. I would also just commend adding it as we said with Bible reading to your Bible reading. Use that as a way to start your Bible reading as a time of prayer of, Lord, may your spirit help reveal your truth to me that I might be changed more into the image of Jesus as a result of it. So in one sense, to begin your Bible reading and spiritual habits in that way with prayer. But more specifically, I think of other ways outside of just when you're reading your Bible or when you're reading meals or eating meals, not reading meals, eating meals.
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It's just to add that to part of whatever time allotted towards meeting with God. We sometimes use the Christian lingo of your quiet time with God in the morning is more than just reading your Bible, more just saying, reveal yourself to me and your word, but also spending time communing with God through conversation of prayer. And so to build that in towards your habit, whenever you want to interject, you can. I'm just going to keep riffing until you say something else.
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Well, no, I like that. On the first point about praying alongside your scripture, reading and study daily, I think one thing that occurs to me too is I'm sure you're going to get to that. It's like that that can be cyclical. Praying before you read for God to, like you said, illuminate your mind and heart to what he's speaking in his word and how he wants to apply it in your life. But then also coming out of reading scripture, praying as well, thanking him for his word, letting his word shape your prayers. How can I turn this passage, this chapter, this whatever that I've just read into a prayer? I mean, that's something just even in, for instance, family devotions. We're reading through the New Testament in a year, we hope, this year together as a family and wherever we stop the reading for the day, I'm going to pray for my kids and our family and try and latch onto something that some part
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Or parts of what we just read to pray that over them. God, would you help us to be like this blind man in terms of our utter dependency on you and faith in you to do what we cannot. Help us to not need to be that physically dependent blind before we become reliant on you. So just letting your prayers be shaped by God's word. And then that's the kind of thing that throughout the day, we talked about last week, meditation, memorization of God's word. And again, cyclical, like as God's bringing that passage or that verse or that truth to mind, it's just another opportunity for prayer. I like what you said about carving out specific times, maybe that maybe you do have a daily quiet time where you set aside, even if it's 10 or 15 or 30 minutes or an hour or whatever it is you can do in your stage of life to set aside time specifically for prayer and reading God's word time with him.
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I think that's wonderful. I think in addition to that, building in prayer and you mentioned before meals, I think certain just set times throughout the day that I've, for me, have just become just, again, it's habit. It's habitual now where first thing in the morning, before I even get out of bed, I'm trying to train myself to ... I'm going immediately to God, to realize God the only ... I mean, thank you that you woke me up today. I was not a foregone conclusion. I could have just woken up in heaven with you, but you've given me another day here to enjoy my family, to enjoy this nice cozy bed that I'm about to have to crawl out of, but trusting that you've got something even better for me on the other side of it today. And would you lead me to it? So that, and then praying as we go back into bed and thanking him for this day and for sustaining me through it, and all the other prayers at the end of the
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Day when your head hits the bed, praying before meals, that's just set times that now you carved out praying as I'm brushing my teeth in the morning, at night, what else? You got nothing ... We never have anything better to do than to pray. That's better than using that time to scroll on social media or whatever is use those 90 seconds, two minutes to ... It's just another chance like, "Hey, I'm going to spend this time instead just thanking God for ... " I don't know. You think about biblically Paul's, well, and just all over scripture, this invitation to pray without ceasing, pray constantly. It's like, how do you do that? Well, obviously it can't all be the set aside quiet time, that kind of intentional ... I think there's a role and a need for that where it's like shutting out all the other distractions, but then obviously implied in what Paul's saying there is there has to be a way of praying while you parent, praying while you write a sermon, praying while you crunch numbers on a calculator for whatever you do at your real job.
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So prayer gets incorporated into every aspect of life. And again, I mean, you think about prayer as a conversation with God. That's what it is. It's talking with God, most simply, most basically. So I think one of the things you probably were going to say, because you and I both have said this before on this podcast and sermons and stuff is the book we read a couple years ago, I think it was the Soul Care book, but just
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That idea of praying out loud, which can be helpful in terms of making prayer, again, seem more tangible, more real, like remembering that prayer is not just a feeling or vibes or whatever the world's version of it, but it really is talking with and a relationship with God. Now, of course, God doesn't need us to say it out loud to know the scripture says he knows what's on our hearts before we even mention it. But for our sake, I do think there's something
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That can be helpful and helps our prayers be more focused and intentional when we do that and say that out loud. And again, there's times when it's appropriate to do that and times when it's not, when you've been praying for the opportunity to share the Lord with someone and then you're talking with them and maybe it is appropriate to stop and say, "Hey, can we pray together?" But maybe it's like that's going to freak them out and I'm just praying internally, "God, would you give me the words right now as I'm talking to this person who I've been asking you about? " I
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Would just on that note, with praying out loud, that has been one of probably the two most impactful things for my prayer life. Well, when we read that book, I'm like, "I've never done that before. I'm going to start doing that. " And that would be one. And the second would be, and this is also a plug for anyone at West Hills, the prayer team emails act as a secondary prompt for me to pray that I know on Mondays I'm going to go into my email and I'm going to see a list of all the prayer requests from the church that are submitted, as well as a section of our membership directory to pray through that those two, again, it's not supernatural, it's not anything apart from just here's two habits of praying out loud. I do that most often when I'm at home, reading at my quiet time with the Lord, as well as in the car, are the easiest ways for me to pray out loud.
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Oftentimes I spend in prayer and then when I come into the office, just the habit of I'm going to dedicate some time typically on Monday for going through the prayer list and praying through the prayer request from this last weekend, praying for the members and often trying my best to text people as I think of it and go through. And it takes time, but again, those two habits and rhythms have really helped me in my own prayer life.
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I like to do it in public, the most public places to pray as loud as I can so that just to freak people out. They look for the earbuds and then if they really listen, it's like, I don't think he's talking ... Is he talking to God? What is happening right now? No, I'm just kidding. I don't do that. Jesus actually said, "Don't do that. " He said, "Go in your prayer closet. Don't try and look like some super holy person." So I was kidding. Don't do that. Or maybe do. If you do it with the right heart, there's never a bad time to pray. There are probably bad ways to pray, but
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Certainly- We have examples of that in scripture
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As well. If you're doing it to be seen by others, if you're actually doing it to be loud and, "Hey, everybody look at me. " But again, nobody's going to do that today because in public and you're not going to be thought of as some holy person like the Cribes and Pharisees were back in Jesus' day, you're going to be thought of as a crazy person. But a couple other actual real thoughts that do occur to me, and I think I've mentioned this before too, is like I used to ... And fortunately this has been for a while now, years that I think I made this change where for a long time, I was in the habit like a lot of people of something comes up with someone and just saying, "Oh, I'll be praying for you. " And then I am just part of this as an administrative thing where it just wouldn't happen.
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I didn't think about it. The number of people that I lied to and told them, "I will pray for you, " and didn't is a cause for confession.
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But instead, just pray then and there. There's almost never a bad time again to ... When you see an opportunity to pray for someone else, certainly if they're specifically requesting it, but I mean, to me, I think it's one of the best evangelilism opportunities, open doors we have is to ask people, unbelievers, "How can I pray for you? " And again, thinking for how many of those people, is that the only person that's going to offer slash only person who's just perhaps in their life going to pray for them all year long or hopefully not in their lifetime, but I don't know. Who knows how many Christians this person knows, how many people this person has around them that may or may not be praying for them and just what a ministry that can be to somebody and just what an opportunity it can be for them to like, "Whoa, that was pretty much the coolest thing that happened to me today was somebody stopped me as I was serving them food at the restaurant if I'm a waiter or just whatever area of life that we overlapped and I had that opportunity to pray for them."
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I've never had or been a part of a situation where someone, like you mentioned at a restaurant where the person did not have something that you could pray about, even if it's about someone else or a family member or a friend or something, that there was always something that they can think of or just that I'd have more health and success.
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I had one guy somewhat recently here who did, who you could tell he was caught off guard by it and it was one of those rare, seemed like he wasn't super appreciative or whatever and uncomfortable by it. And so I said, "Hey, how can we be praying for you? " And he said, I was having lunch with a couple other pastors and he said, "Thank you, but no, nothing really comes to mind. Thank you. " And was kind of uncomfortable about it. But again, it's like, "What's the worst that happens?" Now he's forced to ... That's going to bug him the rest of the day. Of all his interactions with customers that day, that's going to be the one that he's going to be driving home just like bugged like, "That really bothered me.
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Why did he offer that? And why does it bug me that he offered that? " And God's going to ... I just trust God's going to use that to wrestle with that guy. So anyway, yeah, I think that can be a good thing, just using it as an invitation, but just that on the spot, let's pray now. I'm not going to delay and hope that I remember to pray for you later. Now that's not to say don't keep a prayer journal. I think that can be a helpful for folks who do a good job of sticking with that and using that. I have a prayer list that I do a horrible job of maintaining and upkeeping, but a better pastor and a better just Christian person would be real diligent about that and would be praying through that more regularly and checking back in with people, "Hey, I've been praying for this.
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How's that going? Just wanted to check you
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Out. " Yeah, we have one member, Louise, who every senior line, she comes up and says, "Any updates on any of these prayer requests that she writes them down in a notebook and brings it up and dates them. And just, do you know if there's any updates on these so that I know how to better prayer if the Lord has already answered that, which is just another reminder like, Hey, keep a list, notes app or whatever you may find helpful. I'll just add two maybe quick resources alongside with how to pray and get started. One, along the lines of what Will already mentioned of praying scripture, Don Whitney has a short 50 page book that's about praying the Bible and he uses the Psalms as a model for that of like, "Hey, here's how you pick the Psalm of the day," which I think it's just whatever the date is so that today's the 20th and then 10s for it, it might be something else.
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And then read through and he gives a suggestion of how to pray as well as there's a Puritan prayers collection called Valley of Vision. Again, I don't think there's anything extremely supernatural or special about reading through these prayers apart from, it's a way to help develop your prayer life and see how other people have prayed and use those. So those are just two quick resources, praying the Bible, Don Whitney, Valley Vision, Puritan prayers. I think also just outside of that, along the lines of like, not just resources or how to get into prayer, but like what is it we should be praying for? I think we have some models and scriptures of prayer, but I think the Lord's prayer gives us an example. One thing, like when I pray, just always praying our Father, like collectively for all who are present in doing that, but using the Lord's prayer as a way to model things that we pray for, starting with giving praise to God and before getting to any asking or sin temptation and that, as well as the model of acts where you start with adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication.
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I know for me, beginning out in my prayer journey, just lots of supplication. And I think there's a time and place for that, but- Yeah, asking
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God to supply my needs, our needs,
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Ask
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God for stuff, yeah.
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But more than that, and again, some of that's just as I grew in my faith of like, oh, I do kind of treat God as this vending machine in this guy, just asking him for things or bargaining with him, but instead of using it more of a relational connection that I am talking to my heavenly father and giving him the praise, recognizing who he is, confessing my own sin in ways that I've fallen short and giving things for what he already has supplied and then asking for things that I am desiring for him to supply. There's a couple of different acronyyms. I find acts perhaps one of the most just helpful, simple ones to remember. That's what I grew up on,
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Trying to teach my kids, adoration, adoring God, praising God for just who he is, confession, confessing our sins and our need for him, Thanksgiving, thanking him for all that he's done for us and all the blessings he brings into our lives. And then yeah, asking him to supply our continued needs. So yeah, I mean- That's good. Like you mentioned Jesus and the way he prayed and it's just reading back through Mark now in the beginning of the new year and the Bible in a year. And one thing that stands out is just how often Jesus is praying
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And just how, again, like the lines between life, like going through life and prayer are just so purposely, beautifully blurred for him where he'll just be in the middle of talking to somebody and all of a sudden be like, "I thank you, Father, that you have not chosen to reveal these things to the wise." And it's like, "Oh, now he's talking to God." And it's like my favorite character in one of my favorite movies, Braveheart, remember the crazy guy in Braveheart who's just like, "Oh my God told me he's going to slaughter up today." And everybody thinks he's crazy, but he's just constantly ... It's just like this ongoing conversation with him and the Almighty. And he'll look up and he'll just start praying. I'm like, "I think Jesus was kind of like that guy." I think Jesus was just, he'd just be walking through life and be talking and his disciples would be like, "Oh, you're talking to him again.
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Sorry, heavily." So I don't know. I think if some people define prayer as God consciousness, just like the awareness of God being here with us and present in all of life. And so if we were conscious of just how near and present God is and like right now in this room, would we really be talking to each other or a podcast versus talking to him? So it spills over, God consciousness spills over into prayer and talking with him. But anyway, we should at least spend a couple minutes on this last question of how do I know if God has answered my prayers one way or the other? Man, what do you guys think? I mean, sometimes it's clear, right? You pray for a job offer and you get an email, but other times it's not as clear. You pray for a spouse and somebody hits up your DMs like, "Well, is that the one?"
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So yeah, I think this is a question that arguably every Christian wrestles with at some point and whether it's a present wrestling or a past wrestling or a future wrestling, that what do you do when it feels less clear where it's not a yes or a no? And some of that's just a not now, not yet in awaiting. And I think some of it should inform the way that we pray. One quick trail and then I'll get back to it. We were talking about this in my D group the other day that praying and kind of like giving God an out in some way so that not finding myself disappointed if he doesn't answer the prayer of like, "Lord, if it's really near Will, please do this to me. " But it's really not that important. Not that we pray that, but that's the attitude behind the prayer so that if God doesn't answer the prayer the way that I want, like I don't have to wrestle with he didn't meet my expectation, now I really am struggling with it.
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Instead of praying expectantly that the Lord is already going to accomplish his will and that if something needs to change, it's my attitude or heart posture towards it. And so I would just add towards like prayers, you jokingly mentioned like praying for a spouse and someone sliding into your DMs and just asking the Lord that if this is not a part of his plan or in his will, that he would remove a certain desire or passion or give a certain stability, whether it is in a job situation of, Lord, I'm wrestling with whether or not I should be pursuing after another job, can you tangibly like help me feel more settled or comfortable or confident in this position or allow me to have this holy discontent so that it's clearer to me to go and pursue something else and also just sitting with that tension of also God using other people to help us in their wisdom, guide and direct that God does speak to us in certain capacities.
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And sometimes that's through other people of seeking wisdom from them about how we should respond in a certain situation and using the means that through which God has given us his word, his prayer, his people. And so asking others, like I've been praying for so long for the Lord to answer or work in this way and it seems as though nothing has happened and asking a fellow believer, most likely a more mature believer, someone who's further along like, "What do you think the Lord is trying to teach me or answer me in his response or lack of response in this prayer and using that as a way through which God may or may not answer your
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Prayer." That's all really good. The only thing that occurs to me that I want to add is trusting that to the extent that we are praying in line with what we know is
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God's will, right? So there's, I pray Emma might pray for a godly husband, a spouse, a partner, and it's like, well, we know that godly spouse marriage is a gift from God, it's a good gift, he delights to give to many of his children and non-children. And yet, is that his desire for you? Might be, might not be. Singleness is a good gift too, but there's other prayers, prayers for the salvation of a lost loved one, prayers for sanctification for me personally, for myself that I'm praying, and that there are prayers for opportunities to minister to someone, a witness to someone evangelized. So there's certain prayers like that that I would say, you You know, when we know it's a prayer that God has told us, I want to answer.
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There's
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No room for ambiguity here. I want your ... Is it first Thessalonians four? His will is our sanctification. I want you to be more sanctified, more like Jesus. I want you to go and make decision. I want you to go and proclaim the gospel to all creations. I am looking to give you opportunities to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judaism area, the end of the earth. In those cases, it's like if I'm reading Emma's question at face value, how do I know? Here I am at the bank talking to the teller and she opened up unexpectedly about the divorce she's going through. And how do I know if this is God's answer to my prayer that God would ... First thing in the morning, I pray, God, would you use me as a vessel for your gospel to share Christ with someone today? How do I know?
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Is this the person? It's like in that case, just believe. Just trust. Yeah, this is God answering that prayer because God's told you this is a prayer. I desperately want you to pray and want to answer for you. So you better believe, go ahead and just assume that that's me answering it. Same thing with my sanctification. Stuck in traffic. I'm getting impatient. The F words and the four letter words are coming. And it's like, wait a minute. God, I've been praying that you would grow me. Is this the way you want to do it? Is this grow me in patience?
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Could you show me another way?
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Is this you growing me in patience? It's like, just assume that yes, that is God's answer to your prayer for personal growth and sanctification is that traffic jam. So anyway, yeah, I don't know. So much more that could be said about that and digging deeper on all these, but that's a good start at
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Least. Absolutely. Yeah.
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Anything you want to add, Brian?
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That you mentioned the weekly prayer email. I wanted to confirm, can anybody sign up for that? There's a confidential
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One, then there's a- So there's a public one that goes out to anyone. Yeah, that's a good clarification. So any of the prayer requests that are marked public, that's what's getting sent out in that
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List. Yeah. And I think, is it linked in the newsletter? Is that right? At the bottom. Linked in
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The newsletter. Just click on that. Resources right
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There. Really helpful.
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A lot of resources if you take advantage of all that the prayer teams put together. So good.
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Yeah. If you make sure you get all
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Weekly- 365 days of prayer?
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Yep. If you make sure you get our weekly West Hills newsletter about what's coming up this Sunday and events on the calendar and da, da, da. It's embedded in there. The prayer team got their whole own distribution list email. You click here and signs you up and boom, you're ready to go.
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Yeah. And I would just lastly add, join a group. I would say life groups and D groups are some of the most helpful with knowing what's going on in people's hearts and lives and minds and sharing those requests, being known to each other, knowing that you're being prayed for by others in the group and you're shepherding elder. It's just really life giving. And if you're not in a group, I think you're missing out.
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I'm glad you mentioned
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That. On prayer with brothers and sisters in the church big time.
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I meant to mention that because again, prayer is about talking with ... It's a relationship with the Lord. Find others who've been in that relationship for longer. It's like our marriage mentorship. You want a stronger marriage. Find another married couple that's done it longer and just learn from them.
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You're not going to completely even learn from their mistakes too. But the same thing goes for prayer or Bible study or anything else. Find someone who has that relation and they're going to give me the opportunity to hear them pray out loud. And by the way, we should also say, in addition to our small groups, we have tons of different ... I don't even know about all of them, but we can find out and get you plugged into different prayer. I'm constantly hearing about, "Oh wait, you three ladies meet on Wednesday mornings to pray together? Cool. Okay." So I mean, we've got folks all over the place in our church that are constantly praying together that we would love to help get people connected for the purpose of prayer. That's
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Good. Well, that's it for this week's episode of Ask the Pastors. Remember that you can submit your questions by visiting the info bar at West Hills or by submitting them online through our website at www.westhillsstl.org. If you enjoyed this week's episode, hit the like buttons, subscribe, share it with a friend, leave us a review. Thanks so much for listening and we'll catch you right back here next week.