Sermon Notes on Prayer
By Pastor Schott

During Lent our Sunday sermons focused on the subject of prayer.  Here is a brief summary of the major points covered in those sermons.

Prayer Is Pouring Out Your Heart and Soul to God
•    First and foremost, prayer is NOT “asking” God for what we desire; rather, it is “talking with God” about what is on our hearts and minds.
•    Prayer is “conversation with God” and its purpose is to deepen our relationship with God.
•    If we think Prayer is first & foremost “asking,” then prayer becomes manipulative and our relationship with God distorted.

Prayer Is Shaped By Your View of God
•    Our understanding of and relationship with God shapes the way we pray.
•    In Jesus, God reveals himself to us as our loving parent and faithful friend who suffers for us.
•    We talk with God the way we would talk to our best friend: openly, freely, anywhere we can, about whatever is on our heart and mind.
•    As we talk with God in prayer, we come to know God more clearly and our relationship with God matures.

Prayer and Anxiety
•    Anxiety is not the reason we pray but praying is what we do with our anxiety and fear.
•    Talking with God about our anxieties helps us deal with them in some specific ways.
•    Verbalizing our anxieties to God helps to relieve us of them.  We can leave them in God’s hands instead of in our heads.
•    Talking with God about our anxieties helps us put them in perspective.
•    Praying with God helps move the focus from our fears to God’s goodness.
•    Being in a state of prayer literally changes our mental status and our physical condition.  
•    Prayer changes things - it changes us.

The essence of prayer is not so much the words on our lips but the attitude of our hearts.

Prayer and Asking God for What We Desire
•    Asking God for what we long for is an important part of prayer
•    Jesus encourages us to ask of God with total confidence
•    What does it mean when we do not get what we have asked God for in prayer? Keep in mind:
•    We are to trust in God’s goodness not our praying.
•    Prayer is not a “mechanism,” it is a relationship.
•    God is not a vending machine; God is our loving parent and faithful friend.
•    The God of whom we ask in prayer is not a royal genie who grants our wishes but a suffering savior who dies to save us.

Prayer and Hurt and Anger
•    Because God is our loving parent and faithful friend, we can say anything and everything to God.
•    In pouring out our heart and soul to God we also pour out our anger, sadness, and hurt.
•    When we pour out our negative emotions to God, we must also listen and pay attention to them.
•    Looking at what hurts us is the first step toward what can heal us
•    As we recognize our needs and hurts we come to know ourselves more truly and to recognize the needs and hurts of others.

Prayer and Submission to God’s Will
•    In his last mortal hours Jesus shows us how to pour out our hearts to God and then leave things in God’s hands
•    Jesus prays that he might be spared his suffering, but his final prayer is that God’s will, not his will, be done.
•    Praying “your will, not mine, be done,” is a hard prayer because we do not know if God’s will suits our wishes, but we trust it suits our welfare
•    Praying “your will, not mine, be done,” opens us to transformation because only God’s intentions, not our desires, will transform us
•    Jesus’ wish was to avoid the pain.  God’s will is resurrection!