Learning How to Worship: An Application

I invite you to take your Bibles and turn with me to 1 Thessalonians and chapter 5. And if you would care to use one of the Bibles that you’ll find in the pews around you, then you’ll find this reading on page 837. I also commend to you the bulletin that you have received on your arrival. And there’s a section there for making a note of something that may have struck you or something that you would like to retain for further thought and application. We provide that for your benefit. We hope that you’ll find it useful.

First Thessalonians 5:16. Paul writes,

“Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.

“Do not put out the Spirit’s fire; do not treat prophecies with contempt. Test everything. Hold on to the good. Avoid every kind of evil.

“May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.”

Thanks be to God for his Word.

Now, let us spend a moment in silent prayer, and then I’ll lead you in prayer as we turn to the Word of the Lord together:

And so, our gracious God, we come with expectant hearts, believing that you will speak to us through your Word, not simply to increase our knowledge but to change our lives. And we do pray that you will find in our hearts those who are quick and ready to respond, whose hearts will be open to your truth and whose feet will be ready to run in the pathway of obedience. For we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Since 1 Thessalonians 5:12, we have been dealing with Paul’s closing instructions to the church. And he has been providing for them various practical pointers in relation to significant elements of what it means for God’s people to live together. And in verse 12 and following, he deals with the whole issue of respect for leadership. And then, in verse 14 and following, he deals with the matter of what it means to live in fellowship. And now, in verse 16 and following, he is providing instruction as to the nature of what worship amongst the people of God is to be all about.

Those of you who were present last time may recall that we said if our worship is to be in the manner in which God intends, then three things need to be true for each of us.

Number one: we need to be spiritually alive. It is impossible for dead people to sing, and it is impossible for those who are spiritually dead, who have never been awakened to their need of a Savior by the Spirit of God and the truth of God’s Word, to be quickened and enabled to sing God’s praise from their hearts. And that is why it is so important that we understand what it means to be, in Christ, a new creation, where the old things are gone and the new things have come.[1] And the reason why some people find worship to be such a difficulty, why they find themselves to be observers rather than participants, why they cannot fully appreciate what may be going on around them may be traced to the fact that in certain cases, the reason is quite simply, albeit quite painfully, the fact that the individual is spiritually dead. And no amount of manufacturing, no amount of manipulation, no amount of encouragement or cajoling will be able to get genuine praise out from dead bodies.

Secondly, we said that it was imperative that those who know Christ would need, then, to be spiritually assisted. And we dealt with the fact that the Word of God is to dwell in us richly, and the Spirit of God is to dwell in us richly. We saw in Colossians Paul using the Word of God—indwelling Word resulting in “psalms, [and] hymns and spiritual songs”[2]—and in Ephesians 5 him referring to the Spirit of God in essentially the same way.[3] And we need to note that, as has been said before, where you have all Word and no Spirit, the people tend to dry up; where you have all Spirit and no Word, the people tend to blow up; and where you have both the Spirit and the Word, then people tend to grow up. And it is to this issue of growth in our understanding of worship that we were trying to give attention. Spiritually assisted.

And then, thirdly, we said that it was imperative that God’s people were spiritually active, “making the most of every opportunity,”[4] determining that we will seize the chance which has now been afforded us to contribute to the experience of corporate praise.

Now, once you take those principles and apply them within the framework of God’s people, it has to mean something, and it has to have a point of focus. And it is to this that we now turn in these straightforward phrases here that begin in verse 16. One is immediately and quite forcibly struck by the ordinary nature of them: “Be joyful; be prayerful; be thankful.” Is that it? Well, it’s not all of it, but it is a significant part of it. And it is to this issue of joy and prayer and genuine thankfulness that we now give our attention.

May I just say as well, in going into this issue of joy, that we are not here talking about some kind of mode of worship being equal to joy and another one being equal to gloominess? It may be possible for one to miscommunicate or for one to misinterpret what’s being said in referencing something like this. There are some people for whom spontaneity is everything, and spontaneity rules supreme over the essential biblical principle of doing everything “decently and in order.”[5] There are others who are so concerned to do everything “decently and in order” that they have got it as orderly as a graveyard. And most nice graveyards are very orderly and very quiet, and there is little prospect of life or animation emerging from them. And so you tend to, in talking with the people of God, find that they are, on the one hand, consumed with the notion of a kind of carnival atmosphere or, at the other end of the pendulum swing, a kind of crematorium experience. And those who are into what I might refer to as sort of crematorium worship are very wary of the carnival crowd, and the carnival people can’t understand what in the world happened to the these folks in the crematorium.

And furthermore, what they tend to do is they tend to say that the freedom over here is directly opposed to the form over here and that freedom and form are mutually exclusive. Well, freedom and form are not mutually exclusive. I mean, there’s tremendous freedom in a golf swing, but it’s directly related to form. There is freedom within the form. The form actually provides freedom. So the issue is not a false antithesis between structure and no structure, nor is it right to say that the Holy Spirit is the friend of freedom and the enemy of form, or, depending on where you’re coming from, that he is the friend of form and the enemy of freedom. Those are false antitheses. But the issue is that whatever the structure and whatever the level of freedom, there is to be joy always, dependent prayer, and a genuine experience of thankfulness.

“Be Joyful Always”

So, let’s look at these in turn, then. First of all, “Be joyful always.”

That may just hit you like a two-by-four in the front of the head because of the way your Sunday has already begun. The people around you are already giving you gentle nudges because as they think about the early hours of the day spent in your presence, the first word that came to mind was not j-o-y. It may have been another word, but it was not joy. And already, you’re feeling somewhat put upon by this opening phrase. Well, I want to remind you always: I didn’t write this book. I just tell you what’s in it. All right? You’re not dealing with me; I’m being dealt with by it. We are being dealt with by it.

So, the Word says we’re going to “be joyful always.” What does that mean? Well, probably the best place to cross-reference it is in the Old Testament, in the book of Psalms, because the psalmist makes it very clear that joy is to be the overflow of the people of God. And I’d like just to reference one or two psalms with you this morning for our edification.

Psalm 5:9, speaking of the wicked: “Not a word from their mouth can be trusted; their heart is [full of] destruction.” And then in verse 11, speaking of the righteous—Psalm 5:11:

But let all who take refuge in you be glad;
 let them ever sing for joy.
Spread your protection over them,
 that those who love your name may rejoice in you.

So, in the space of just a few words, you have a “joy,” a “rejoice,” and a “glad.” You don’t have to be too brilliant to recognize the fact that the protection and the provision of the Lord for his people, says the psalmist, has as one of its key dimensions of expression a genuine, heartfelt, truth-informed, Spirit-inspired joyfulness—something that wells up from within the heart of the child of God.

Now, in Psalm 95:1, which those of you who come from an Episcopalian or an Anglican background will recognize as the Venite, you have what is used in the liturgical form of worship there regularly Sunday by Sunday. And it’s very helpfully done. Psalm 95:1:

Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord;
 let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.
Let us come before him with thanksgiving
 and extol him with music and with song.

Now, you’ll notice as we go through this that this is not a call to happiness—some superficial, external thing, as if somehow or another, happiness for the Christian was a faucet that you could turn on or turn off. “Don’t worry, be happy.”[6] “Okay, let’s get it off the worry side and turn it on to the happy side.” There’s an Australian that I met in the last few days, and Australians have got these great phrases, you know—“G’day mate” and all that stuff. “Now that’s a knife.” They’ve got all those kind of phrases. But as I was walking away from the guy, he said to me—he said, “No worries, mate.” “No worries, mate.” “No worries, mate”—as if somehow or another, saying “No worries, mate” meant that you had no worries! What he’s really saying is “I hope that you are not living with worry”—which is a nice greeting, you know, because we don’t want to be living in worry. But it’s not sufficient just to say, “No worries, mate; be joyful,” and then, as a result of that, we turn off the worry section, turn on the joy section. It doesn’t work like that in my life; I don’t know if it works like that in yours.

This is not a call to superficial happiness. This is not something that emerges from circumstances that then, because the externals are so wonderful, we say, “Oh, well, it is a nice day.”

What a day for a daydreaming,
What a day for a daydreaming boy.
And I’ve been lost in a sweet dream,
Dreaming about my bundle of joy.

And when you think about taking a walk outside…[7]

And so on. And you say, “Oh, well, it’s really nice, you know: radio on, playing music, something to look forward to, no school tomorrow. Fantastic! This is joy.” No, that’s external things that can make you happy. Because the fact of the matter is, all those things can go away, and suddenly, if all we’re dealing with is the faucet of happiness, we have nothing left. That’s why we’ve got to go looking for another thing, another filler, another something to pick us up. That’s not Christian joy. That is not what the Bible is referring to here.

Psalm 100. You turn over one page. Psalm 100:1: “Shout for joy to the Lord.” Why does it say “Shout”? Because you’re supposed to shout.

I guarantee you, the first person that shouts in here, somebody’s going to come up to him and go, “Hey, cut that out, would you? There’s no shouting in here. We don’t shout in here.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I don’t know why not, but we don’t shout in here.”

“Well, the psalmist says, ‘Shout.’”

“But we don’t shout.”

“Okay, fine.”

Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth.
 Worship the Lord with gladness;
 come before him with joyful songs.

Now, you see, it is essential that our worship is marked by reverence, that it is marked by awe, that it is marked by humility, that it is marked by an understanding of the fact that it all begins with God and his glory and not me, and my relationships, and myself, and my needs, and my preoccupations. But I mustn’t use sort of awe and reverence and humble silence as a cover-up for creating something that is just unforgivably gloomy and tediously boring. And it is possible for us to so approach the issues of corporate worship that if you think about it, the adjectives that come to mind to describe the event that is taking place or has just taken place, you know, are not necessarily adjectives of joy, gladness, light, splendor, extolling—you know, those kind of things.

Robert Louis Stevenson, who wrote a number of novels, you may remember, wrote in his diary in Edinburgh on one occasion and made the entry in the evening of a Sunday, “I have been to Church to-day, and [I] am not depressed[!]”[8] Exclamation mark. It was so notable for him, because he had so assumed that his experience of corporate worship would be such a downer for him, that that was the general standard of things, that when he went one day, and he came out, and he said, “Hey, that was pretty good,” so he wrote it in his diary. You can go find it: “I have been to Church to-day, and [I] am not depressed[!]” Exclamation mark. Why? Because he entered into some kind of experience of joy.

I mustn’t use awe and reverence and humble silence as a cover-up for creating something that is just unforgivably gloomy and tediously boring.

Psalm 34:1: “I will [bless] the Lord at all times; his praise will always be on my lips.” Where do you think Paul got this little phrase, “Be joyful always”? He was brought up in a good Jewish home. He was brought up with all the psalms and the songs. He was brought up with synagogue worship. He knew what it was for the leader of the worship to call the people of God to extol the Lord. And now, as he’s found the reality of God in the person of Jesus Christ, he takes the same framework, the same phraseology, and he says, “Come on, now, be joyful always.”

Now, if you turn forward into the New Testament, into Galatians 5, let me remind you that joy is not something that we hang on from the outside like a Christmas ornament, but joy is something that it is produced from the inside as a result of the ministry of the Spirit of God. Galatians 5:22: “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” Now, every so often, I meet people who say, “Yeah, well, I know the fruit of the Spirit is all those things, but I thought that it was like you selected three that you liked—and, you know, I have selected three of these that I’m working on, and the rest someone else is going to have to pick up.” No. These are like the leafs of an orange. When you peel an orange and all the leafs fall open, there’s love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and so on, and the Spirit of God is in the business of making us full-orbed Christians, producing all the leafs. Now, all the leafs will not necessarily be there to the same degree and at the same level of intensity at all times in our lives, and sometimes we need a little bit of encouragement in one than in the other—and not least of all, it would seem, in the area of Christian joy.

Now, there’s great liberation in this. Because the Spirit of God is calling us to expressions, to activities, of joyfulness not that we then produce as a result of trying to muster ourselves up to it but as a result of the Spirit of God within our lives. So we’re able to say, “Lord Jesus, I thank you that you have given me your Spirit to dwell within my life. And although, frankly, I feel pretty disappointed as a result of the way that business has gone this week, although that I am dreadfully discouraged over the relationships that are personally in my life—either in the absence of a good one because I’m single or in the presence of a bad one because my marriage is less than it should be—or that I am frustrated by this or I’m frustrated by that, I thank you, Lord Jesus, that you have given the Spirit of God to live within my life so that irrespective of the externals, I can know solid joy and lasting treasure.”

That’s what Newton was writing about: “Fading is the worldling’s pleasure, all his boasted pomp and show.” You see these tremendous Hollywood sets that they create, you know, for the Grammys or the Oscars or whatever else it is—tremendous amount of money spent on them, fantastic with all the lights and the creation of the event. Behind it, it looks like nothing on earth. And when all the house lights are turned back on and they finally begin to dismantle it all, there’s just this dreadful feeling of emptiness and letdown. Moments before, the limousines were there. Moments before, the people who were successful were there. The desirable people were there. Now they’ve all gone. Where? Well, they’ve all gone to another fix in another place.

Fading is the worldling’s pleasure, ….
[But] solid joys and lasting treasure
None but Zion’s children know.[9]

You see, there’s a big difference, last evening, between the old [hums the Atlanta Braves tomahawk chop chant]—right?—and the three hundred that were over in the section with the sounds of silence. Now, tonight, things may be reversed, hopefully. And then this will be stopped, and something else will be started, but it’s all external.

They phoned me from the newspaper to say, “Should we pray for the Indians to win? Would you please give a comment on praying for the Indians to win the World Series?” I said, “No, thank you. I won’t.” Because the fact of the matter is that the Christians who are playing in the World Series on either side, no matter how passionate they are about victory—and they’re passionate!—if you get the chance to talk with them, they’ll tell you that this will come, and this will go, but there is a solid joy, there is a lasting treasure, which they have found in the Lord Jesus Christ. And as a result of having been made spiritually alive, they have another song to sing, and they have another praise to offer.

This comes again in the Old Testament, in a wonderful prophetic passage in Isaiah 35. We used to sing it as a song in the late ’60s, early ’70s. You may remember it. Speaking of the joy of the redeemed, it says at the end of Isaiah 35:9,

Only the redeemed will [be on this path],
 and the ransomed of the Lord will return.
They will enter Zion with singing;
 everlasting joy will crown their heads.
Gladness and joy will overtake them,
 and sorrow and sighing will flee away.

This is a picture of the redeemed.

Remember the song went

Therefore the redeemed of the Lord shall return,
And come with singing unto Zion;
And everlasting joy [will] be upon their head[s].

They [will] obtain gladness and joy;
And sorrow and mourning [will] flee away.

Therefore, the redeemed of the Lord [will] return
And come with singing unto Zion,
And everlasting joy [will] be upon their head[s].[10]

Because of the essential truths of the gospel.

Praise, my soul, the King of heaven;
To his feet thy tribute bring;
Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven,
Who like [thee] his praise should sing?[11]

The hymn writer is speaking to his soul. He’s saying, “Come on, soul! I know you’re disappointed by this. I know the circumstances are not the way you intended. I know there is frustration here. I know there is heartache there. But listen: you’ve been ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven. Don’t you think you should be singing God’s praise? Don’t you think there should at least be the half of a smile on the corners of your mouth, for goodness’ sake?”

But you see, when I use those words for the non-Christian, for the unbeliever, for the agnostic, for the person who’s walked in here this morning, says, “You know, I think I’ll give religion a little try; I think I’ll go in and see if I can get into it, see if I can get something from it,” and I say to you, you know, “Who like you should sing his praise—ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven?” you say, “Hey, time out! I don’t know what one of those words means!” I’m glad you’re honest enough to admit it, and in our prayer room at the end of the service, we’d like to meet with you and explain to you what every one of those words means. And if you come to understand what they mean and why they are so important, I can introduce you to the most joyful experience you ever had in your life. I’ll introduce you to solid joy and lasting treasure. I’ll provide for you, from the Word of God, something that cannot be quenched and can never be taken away. There is no success you will ever achieve, no place you will ever go, nothing you will ever buy, anything you will ever own that will be able to take the place of the dimension of solid joy in the reality of the person of Jesus Christ.

And for those of us who name the name of Jesus Christ, may we be forgiven for looking the exact same as the agnostic who sits beside us and singing as poorly as the unbeliever who came to find out what’s going on! Do you think he’s ever going to nudge you and say, “Hey! Tell me about the solid joy!” There’s not a chance. He might find out about it sooner and come and try and evangelize you. He’d go in the prayer room, come back out, get back in his row, get a dozen Christians, say, “Hey, let me tell you about solid joy and lasting treasure.” Say, “Hey, we know about that. Keep your voice down, would you? Quit giving me that joyful stuff.”

It is going to be your theology which provides you with a basis of solid joy, not your perception of what is going on around you.

Now, do you understand what the Word of God is saying here, dear ones? This isn’t superficiality. This is not, you know, trying to conjure up stuff. Yes, there’s pain. Yes, there’s sadness. Some of you this morning are in deep sadness. I know that. So really, it would be a dreadful chronicle of despair, it would be the apex of insensitivity, if what I was suggesting from the Word of God was some kind of back-slapping, easygoing, pump-yourself-up dimension of superficial happiness. It isn’t that. Because through the tears, and through the disappointment, and through the heartache, you’re trying to lay hold on this:

God moves in a mysterious way,
His wonders to perform. …

Judge not the Lord by feeble [strength],
But trust him for his grace;
Behind a frowning providence,
He hides a smiling face.[12]

And all that you can see this morning is apparently a “frowning providence,” and therefore, it is going to be your theology which provides you with a basis of solid joy, not your perception of what is going on around you.

Well, Paul—and I must move on—Paul, in Romans 14, addressing the believers who were arguing about some things that were of secondary importance—whether you could eat food that had been offered to idols, or whether it was unclean, or clean, or whatever it was… You know, “Should we be doing this? Should we be doing that?”—important questions, but not, you know, the essence of the thing. Not the main thing. Not the plain thing. Important, but not crucial. And he’s in the midst of dealing with all of this, and addressing the issue: “Some of you are weak, and others of you are strong.”[13] And then, in verse 17, it’s almost as though he just sort of gets frustrated and bursts out with it. In the middle, he says, “[Listen,] the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking.” And we could fill that in with all kinds of words, you know: “The kingdom of God is not a matter of our little preoccupations.” “But [it is a matter] of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” “Joy in the Holy Spirit.” The hymn writer says,

Joyful, joyful, we adore thee,
God of glory, [God] of love.
Hearts unfold like flowers before thee.[14]

I find that phrase very challenging as I pondered it this week.

The Puritans used to ask one another, in the context of keeping each other accountable, a number of questions. They didn’t just, in accountability groups, simply say, you know, like, “How are you doing?” “Fine. And how are you doing?” “Well, I’m doing fine.” “Well, that’s good. We’re both fine. Let’s pray, and let’s go.”

They used to ask these questions. Number one: “Since last we were together, have you faced temptation? And if you have faced temptation and been successful, tell me your pathway to victory. If you have faced temptation and succumbed to it, tell me, have you asked for forgiveness and repented?” Thirdly: “Since last we were together, has your heart been strangely warmed?”

Now, even the question is almost an anachronism, isn’t it? Because I could just hear children going—I can hear them doing it over lunch: “Has your heart been strangely warmed?” You know, I know the way that things can be responded to. But the point is simply this: Remember when you thought of your girlfriend, and you knew you were going to see her, like, at eight o’clock? And it was just kind of like, inside of you, it went, “Yes! Yes!” Twenty-seven years ago today, I met this thirteen-year-old girl called Susan, with blue eyes, and still my heart is strangely warmed. Further back, I met Jesus. And “to Jesus every day I find my heart is closer drawn.”[15] He’s the Lily of the Valley.[16] He’s the Bright and Morning Star.[17] He’s the best.

You’re my all, you’re the best,
You’re my joy, my righteousness,
And I love you, Lord.[18]

That’s the song, you see. That’s the expression.

“Pray Continually”

Well, we better go on to prayer. “Joyful always; pray continually.” “Pray continually.”

Now, Paul could give this exhortation because he was a great pray-er. Time and again in his letters, you hear him saying, “You know, I prayed for you regularly,” “I remember you day and night in my prayers,”[19] “I pray for you with tears,”[20] and so on. And I want to tell you this morning that of all the things in my Christian life, the hardest thing to do is pray, both privately and publicly and consistently. To pray. I have little doubt that it is an expression—as I’m sure you would be able to identify with—it is an expression of spiritual warfare. Because the weapons of our warfare, which bring down the strongholds of the Evil One,[21] are prayer and the preaching of the Word of God. And the devil is unafraid of prayerless preaching, ’cause he’s not interested in people just talking. It doesn’t matter to him. It’s like water off a duck’s back. It makes no gain for the kingdom. People may be impressed by it. They may give accolades for it. They may even laugh at it or do whatever it is with it. But the devil doesn’t care, because he’s not afraid of prayerless preaching.

And so it is that it is possible for us to believe that we can do more on our feet when we’re talking than we can do on our knees when we’re silent. And when we think of our church and of our worship and of our witness—when we think of Parkside Church, if we may think in particular terms for just a moment—it is imperative, loved ones, that we get serious about this phrase “Pray continually.” It’s a humble church that lives in dependent prayer. It’s a church that understands that we could never have put ourselves in this position that prays. It’s a church that is not self-sufficient that prays—that it knows that all that it has and all that it is and all of its gifting and all of its opportunity is God-ordained.

Prayer should not be thought of simply in terms of stating a few petitions in a pattern of words with our eyes closed in a certain posture. When you talk to people about prayer, so often they want to talk to you about posture: “Well, I mean, are you supposed to close your eyes?” The children always want to know, “Why do we have to close our eyes when we’re praying?” Someone else says, “Well, why don’t we pray standing up?” Well, we don’t. “Or kneeling down, or falling on our faces, or…” And there are a whole variety of postures in prayer in the Old Testament.

But the issue isn’t posture. The issue’s this: People come to me, and they say things like “Would you say a prayer for me?” Do they ever say that to you? “Would you say a prayer for me?” I know what they mean by that, but the answer is no. I may try and pray for you, but I won’t “say a prayer” for you. How do you “say a prayer”? You can pray, but it’s different from “saying a prayer.” And sometimes when we “say a prayer,” we may pray; and sometimes when we pray, we may not “say a prayer”; and half the time when we say a prayer, it’s got nothing to do with prayer at all.

Children’s song in Scotland:

I often say my prayers,
But do I [really] pray?
And do the [feelings] of my heart
Go with the words I say?

I [might] as well [bow] down
And worship gods of stone
As offer to the living God
A prayer of words alone.[22]

So when this speaks about praying “continually,” it’s talking about attitude. It’s talking about heart. It’s talking about dependence. It’s talking about communion. It’s talking about fellowship. It’s talking about the whole seedbed of the church of God—that the people of God are to be praying continually. It doesn’t mean that they’re stopping all the time at street corners and saying prayers like the Pharisees, but it does mean that our hearts are always prayerful, so that no matter where we go, no matter what we’re doing, we are in communion with God. Psalm 139: “If I take the wings of the morning and fly to the uppermost parts of the earth, you’re there. If I make my bed in the depths, you’re there. You know when I sit down; you know when I stand up. You know the words in my mouth before I even speak them.”[23] All the time in communion with God and the Lord Jesus Christ. Prayer is fellowship with God. Prayer is the realization of the presence of our Father.

Those of you who still have your dads, don’t you love to talk with your dad? Those of you who no longer have your dad, tell me that there isn’t hardly a week goes by that you wish that you could pick up the phone and call him. You know, not necessarily… It could be the strangest thing. You just saw something as you drove past, and you said, “Man, I got to call my dad and tell him that.” No big deal! “I got to call my dad and ask him that. Got to call my father. I just want to hear his voice.”

Prayer is fellowship with God. Prayer is the realization of the presence of our Father.

Now, that’s the whole point. That’s what it means to become a Christian. Romans chapter 8: the Spirit of God indwells our lives and enables us to cry out to God, “Abba, Father.” “For you did[n’t] receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear,” he says in verse 15,

but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.

Now, let’s kind of take that apart for just a moment. You wake up in the morning—whether it’s Sunday morning or any other morning—you wake up, and immediately, your life forms up in front of you like the Matterhorn down at the end of your bed, and things you have to do, and places you have to go, and projects you have to complete, and concerns that you have, and anxieties, and all these other things. Friendships that are fractured: someone’s not speaking to you at school. Your boss is a pain in the tonsils, and you know you’ve got to spend the whole day driving to Detroit with him. What are you going to do?

I’ll tell you what I do: I just lie in my bed and say, “Hey, Dad, Father… Father, I need you today, more than I needed you yesterday. I want you to know I love you. I want you to know I thank you for sending Jesus to die for me. I want to thank you that you’ve even put the Spirit in my heart; otherwise, I would wake up this morning without any thought for you.” But I’ve woken up this morning, and I’m thinking of my Father. Why? Because he is my Father. The Spirit of God testifies with my Spirit that I am a child of God. Do you know that? Or are you just in externalized religion—form, structure, externals, saying prayers, singing songs? Or are you in a dependent, prayerful relationship with your heavenly Father?

You see, these exhortations are only compelling, they are only possible in response, when we are one in the Lord Jesus Christ. “Prayer,” says the hymn writer again, “is the soul’s sincere desire, uttered or unexpressed.”[24]

Now, if the people of God are to pray continually, what are they going to pray about? Because that’s one of the things. What am I supposed to pray about if I’m supposed to pray continually? Well, he answers that in Philippians 4. In the Living Bible paraphrase of it, it comes out perfectly—you know, in Philippians 4: “Rejoice in the Lord always: and again I say, Rejoice. … Be [anxious] for nothing; but in every thing [with] prayer and supplication … let your requests be made known unto God.”[25] Kenneth Taylor, in The Living Bible, paraphrases it “Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything.”[26] So, okay, now we’ve got everything to go at. So I can pray about everything. Well, what should I pray about in relationship to the people of God? Well, let’s start with “everything” and break it out.

I mean, think about it: In the average church, how do you get prayed for? You have to crash your car, go in a hospital for surgery, or lose your job. Then they’ll pray for you. Apart from that, you don’t have much chance of getting prayed for. So if you want to get prayed for at Parkside, crash your car, lose your job, or go in for surgery. Otherwise, you’re on your own, Charlie; thanks for coming.

Shouldn’t be that way. We should be genuinely praying for one another consistently, taking the book… People say, “Well, I can’t pray for somebody I don’t know.” That’s bogus. Yes, you can. You might not be able to pray in the same way for someone that you do know, but you can still pray for somebody you don’t know. You should start with the people you do know, and then we’ll work out from there. Pray for the leaders of the church. Pray for the worship of the church. Pray when you walk into the church, for the worship service. Pray for the guy when he’s preaching. I know many of you do. Some of you of you are praying, “Lord, help him to stop. Help him to finish when he’s done.”

So put a little thing together. Get a loose-leaf book, and start your own prayer diary. Do it Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, or do it A through Z in the alphabet. Do it month by month or week by week. Put something together, and then determine what you’re going to do. Find a place, find a priority, and find a plan. Do you have a place where you pray every day? Do you have a place? “There’s a place where I can go.”[27] Do you have a place where you pray? People said, “You know what?” Would your kids know where to find you at a certain time of the day, ’cause you’re always praying? See, you never have a prayerful church unless you have prayerful individuals. That’s why it starts individually and then expresses itself corporately.

Pray for the church in the world. You say, “Well, I don’t know much about the church in the world.” Then find out. Before you know where you are, you’ve got about seven or eight countries in the world that are the focus of your prayers. And then, you see, as the church starts to pray for the issues of the kingdom of God throughout the world, it’s saved from nationalism, for a start, and it also then begins to understand that the fields are white for harvest,[28] and so then we can start praying kingdom prayers: “Lord Jesus, Lord of the harvest, send out laborers into the harvest.”[29] So we pray, “And now, Lord, I’m looking around the rows here, and I’m looking for export models from Parkside Church.” We’re looking for people that we can export for the needs of the world. We want to pray continually about this. We want to pray for the church throughout the world, that it would adhere to the truth of God’s Word. We want to pray for leadership. We want to pray for holiness in the church, for unity in the church, for its mission. We want to pray for widows, the fatherless, the oppressed, the prisoner, the hungry, the homeless, and the sick.

Look at Luke 18. And we’re going to wrap this up here. We can’t go on to thankfulness. We’ll do that next time. Just want you to notice the opening phrase. You can read the parable on your own. “Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.”[30] As we’ve said many times before, we can do more than pray after we’ve prayed, but we can’t do more than pray until we’ve prayed.[31] And I say to you again, here is one of the great challenges for us as a church.

But I do want to guarantee you one thing on the strength of God’s Word: that our worship will be twice as meaningful emerging from the hearts of a praying congregation; that the same messages will have a far greater impact bolstered by the lives of a praying congregation; that the impact of evangelism in our communities will make great dents for the kingdom of God if we’ll take seriously the call to really pray.

Let us pray. Say the Lord’s Prayer together:

Our Father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
And forgive us our debts
As we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil,
For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.

Father, we want to learn how to pray, we want to learn how to rejoice, we want to learn how to live with uncomplaining, thankful hearts. In our weakness, you have made us strong, and in our poverty, you have made us rich. And we ought to genuinely thank you. We long that our lives would open like flowers to you—that something of the reality and fervor that marks our preoccupations with things that are transient might lay hold of our desires to praise your great and glorious name.

We pray, Lord, that we may be alive, that we might be assisted, and that we might be active. We pray that we may not misunderstand your Word and assume somehow or another that by external frames and manipulative procedures we can lay hold upon these great and precious truths, but rather that our feet may go down deep into the soil of your great grace, and that we may draw water from the wells of salvation, and that our lips may declare your praise. We praise you this morning for the joy of family life, for the blessings of human friendship, for the encouragement of the days that have passed. And we thank you, Lord, for your sustaining grace, without which none of us would have made it safely to this morning.

O Lord, we pray that you will open our eyes and help us to see the world in need of this kind of joy in the reality of what it means to know forgiveness of sin and the power of God within a life. And we pray that we may be known for joy. Would it be that people wanted to come and park their cars in the car park to hear the shouts of joy and the reality of praise that emerge from the people of God in this building. Grant that our exuberance may be framed with decency and in order. Grant that our desire for decency and “in order” may not erode our genuine exuberance.

Hear us, O God, as we pray for the days that await us in this week—that in our goings out and coming in, in school, in work, at home, in all of our relationships that we may live for you, Lord Jesus Christ. We want to give thanks to you with sincere hearts. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

[1] See 2 Corinthians 5:17.

[2] Colossians 3:16 (NIV 1984).

[3] See Ephesians 5:18–19.

[4] Ephesians 5:16 (NIV 1984).

[5] 1 Corinthians 14:40 (KJV).

[6] Bobby McFerrin, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” (1988).

[7] John Sebastian, “Daydream” (1966). Lyrics lightly altered.

[8] Robert Louis Stevenson, quoted in William Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew, vol. 1, Chapters 1 to 10, The New Daily Study Bible (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1956), 117.

[9] John Newton, “Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken” (1779).

[10] Ruth Lake, “Therefore the Redeemed of the Lord” (1972). See also Isaiah 51:11 (KJV).

[11] Henry Francis Lyte, “Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven” (1834).

[12] William Cowper, “God Moves in a Mysterious Way” (1774).

[13] See Romans 14:1–2.

[14] Henry Van Dyke, “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee” (1907).

[15] William Clark Martin, “Still Sweeter Every Day” (1899).

[16] See Song of Solomon 2:1.

[17] See Revelation 22:16.

[18] Graham Kendrick, “Knowing You” (1993).

[19] 2 Timothy 1:3 (paraphrased).

[20] Acts 20:31 (paraphrased).

[21] See 2 Corinthians 10:4.

[22] John Burton, “I Often Say My Prayers.”

[23] Psalm 139:2, 4, 8–10 (paraphrased).

[24] James Montgomery, “Prayer Is the Soul’s Sincere Desire” (1818).

[25] Philippians 4:4, 6 (KJV).

[26] Philippians 4:6 (TLB).

[27] Paul McCartney and John Lennon, “There’s a Place” (1963).

[28] See John 4:35.

[29] See Matthew 9:38; Luke 10:2.

[30] Luke 18:1 (NIV 1984).

[31] S. D. Gordon, Quiet Talks on Prayer (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1904), 16.