Last week we asked, “Hey God, what do you want?” We basically looked at three reasons to why God wants us to pray. And we discovered three reasons of why we need to pray 1) He wants to be with us, 2) He wants to talk with us and 3) He wants us to love Him as much as He loves us. On top of these three reasons are thousands, upon thousands of other reasons but we are just going to start with those three. But to sum it all up we pray to God because we were created to Honor and Worship Him. But your question might not be why do we pray to him as much as it is how. You might know that prayer is important but you may feel as if it’s difficult to accomplish. You might feel that you ask God something or tell him something but you don’t hear anything in return. So today we are going to ask, “Hey God, why can’t I hear you?”
I feel this is a question a lot of us ask. Last Wednesday I was talking with my small group and someone asked, “How come in the Old Testament it seems as if God is standing right next to Noah, Abraham and Moses?” And that’s true you open up the bible to most stories in the Old Testament and the bible will say something like this:
Genesis 18:22 – While the two men walked on farther toward Sodom, the LORD remained standing before Abraham.
It says here in Genesis that God stayed standing before Abraham. So what does this mean? How come God appears before Abraham, Moses, and all the other characters from the first Testament? Is God tired of showing up? Are there too many people? What’s going on? Again, why can’t we hear God talking to us?
Well, there can be many reasons, like I said last week we live in a busy world, we are distracted a lot with sports, homework, friends and the Internet. Sometimes when we try to pray to God we grow weary, we doubt His ability to help us out because He doesn’t answer our prayers right away. Sometimes we don’t hear God because we lie to God and He doesn’t want to hear our lies. Basically the reason of why we don’t hear God calling to us, asking to be with us is because of how we pray.
Now for some of you this might be a new idea, you might have never known or heard that there are right ways and wrong ways to pray. So today we are going to find out why we can’t hear God. Today we are going to learn how to build a better relationship with God. And who better to explain this but Jesus.
Jesus liked to tell stories. With almost every single lesson or teaching that Jesus presented there was some sort of analogy or parable that went with it. These parables were used to teach us how to improve our conversation with God.
Let’s look it like this. Think about a baby learning how to talk. When a baby is born it isn’t able to speak clearly, the baby will make more gargle and spitting sounds than anything. But over time this baby listens to adults and learns how to talk. The baby practices making sounds, until it understands how to speak. The same goes with God. The first time you really speak to God you might stink, but over time as you listen to God and practice you will learn the right way to talk to God. But to be able to get to that point we need to practice:
1. We Need To Be Persistent
Jesus tells us this in the parable of the importunate friend:
Luke 11:5-9 – … “Suppose one of you has a friend to whom he goes at midnight and says, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, for a friend of mine has arrived at my house from a journey and I have nothing to offer him,’ and he says in reply from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked and my children and I are already in bed. I cannot get up to give you anything.’ I tell you, if he does not get up to give him the loaves because of their friendship, he will get up to give him whatever he needs because of his persistence.” And I tell you, ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.
Just as Jesus says here at the end of his parable, “Ask and you will receive.” If we seek out answers we will eventually find them. But remember Jesus also says that the neighbor received the loaves of bread because of his persistence. God hears everything and everybody, God’s not going to answer everyone’s prayers, but He will answer those that have faith in Him. God isn’t a help desk, He isn’t Google.com, He is someone who is going to give you what you want, just because you want it. He will give to those who ask, who believe, who have faith. When you talk with God persistently you get better at it and you show Him that you have faith in Him.
2610 Such is the power of prayer and of faith that does not doubt: “all things are possible to him who believes.” Jesus is as saddened by the “lack of faith” of his own neighbors and the “little faith” of his own disciples as he is struck with admiration at the great faith of the Roman centurion and the Canaanite woman.
And as it says in the Catechism you need to have faith that God is listening and will take care of you. You need to have faith that God will give you what you need. When you pray to God it shouldn’t be a wish list, where you hope He gives you what you want. When you pray to God it should be for what you need and God knows what you need.
But some of you might feel as if you pray all the time, but still don’t get answer from God. Some of you might feel as if you do pray for the things you need but you want them right away. We live in a world of instant, but we have to remember the reason we don’t get things right away is because we aren’t suppose to get them right away. When it comes to talking with God we must remember:
2. We Need to Be Patient with Faith
Okay so this might sound a little confusing, some of you might be wondering, “What does it mean to be patient with faith?” The parable Jesus uses to teach this lesson is with the importunate widow. In this parable Jesus explains how we will persevere with patience and faith.
Like the neighbor in the first parable the widow in this parable is persistent. The judge at first refuses to grant the widow’s request for justice. However, over time the judge in this story sees that the widow wants to persevere, that the widow has faith that the judge will deliver justices. Because the widow was persistent and had faith, the judge then gives her justice. And Jesus tells us:
Luke 18:7-8 -Will not God then secure the rights of his chosen ones who call out to him day and night? Will he be slow to answer them? I tell you, he will see to it that justice is done for them speedily.
God hears our prayers and He will answer the prayers of those who have faith in him. He will talk with those that believe in Him. Do you want to know why in the Old Testament Noah, Abraham, Moses and all the other people could see and talk with God? They could talk with God because they believed in Him. They had faith that He could take care of them, they believed in God’s love and power. Because they had faith they were able to constantly talk to God, because they talked to God frequently they were able to build close and loving relationships with Him. But, they didn’t just talk to God they worshipped Him. They honored God. And when they were aware that God was with them they respected Him.
So if you want to be able to God, if you want to really with God you not only have to have faith in Him and talk with Him you need to respect His power and His love. And that’s why when we pray:
3. We Need To Be Humble
So what does it mean to be humble? Well Jesus uses yet another parable to describe what it means to be humble with God:
Luke 18:10-14 – “Two people went up to the temple area to pray; one was a Pharisee and the other was a tax collector. The Pharisee took up his position and spoke this prayer to himself, ‘O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity–greedy, dishonest, adulterous–or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, and I pay tithes on my whole income.’ But the tax collector stood off at a distance and would not even raise his eyes to heaven but beat his breast and prayed, ‘O God, be merciful to me a sinner.’ I tell you, the latter went home justified, not the former; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”
Basically what Jesus is telling us, “Don’t be a show off!” God doesn’t want you to compare yourself to others. God didn’t create anyone better than anyone else. He made us different, He gave each of us unique gifts, but God doesn’t want you to compare yourself to others. He doesn’t care if you think that you are a better Christian or Catholic than others. God wants you to be yourself, He wants you to be humble.
What does it mean to be humble? It means to be honest about yourself. The tax collector in this story was honest, he knew that he was a sinner. The Pharisee, wasn’t honest. The Pharisee might fast, tithe and he might not commit adultery or be greedy but he is still a sinner.
God wants a real conversation with us. You don’t show off to your best friends when you have a heart to heart, you tell them your mistakes, fears, hopes and dreams. That’s how prayer needs to be with God.
When you are humble with God you also show that you respect and love Him. You are showing Him that you want His advice, His help and His guidance. By being humble in the presence of God you are honoring Him.
Today we’ve learned how to pray, we’ve learned that you need to practice, have faith and treat God with respect. Jesus gives us many more examples on how to pray, in fact if it weren’t for Jesus we wouldn’t know how to pray to God. Now some of you might struggle with praying because you might think, “I don’t know what to pray about sometimes?” If that is the case don’t worry because Jesus taught us one prayer that we can always fall back on. That prayer is:
4. The Lord’s Prayer
I know most of you know this prayer, in fact we have said it here before. Some of you know it as the “Our Father”. When we feel as if we can’t start a conversation with God, when we feel as if we don’t know how to respond to God’s calling we can rely on the Lord’s prayer as well as so many other prayers that can be found in our Catholic faith. There is the Hail Mary, there are prayers to the saints, prayers for the sick, prayers for the poor, there are so many different prayers out there for us to use. But let’s just start with the Lord’s Prayer.
When Jesus introduced the Lord’s prayer he said:
Matthew 6:9 – This is how you are to pray…
Basically Jesus sums up how we are to pray in a few sentences. When we say Our Father who art in Heaven/Hallowed be thy name/Thy Kingdom come/Thy will be done/On earth as it is in heaven. We are humbling ourselves before God. We are saying God you are great, your awesome, everything you have made is great.
Then when we say, “Give us this day/ Our daily bread/ Forgive us our trespasses/ as we forgive those who trespass against us/And lead us not into temptation/But deliver us from evil.” We are putting our faith into God, we are asking God to give us daily strength, we are asking God to keep us safe from evil, we are asking God to forgive us and to remember to forgive others. Here we are asking God to help us be persistent and to remain faithful. The Lord’s prayer is the base of all prayer. This is what Jesus has taught us. So when you can’t just come up with a prayer from your mind, use the Lord’s prayer and say it with your heart. And when you pray don’t forget, don’t ever forget Jesus.
The catechism tells us:
2664 There is no other way of Christian prayer than Christ. Whether our prayer is communal or personal, vocal or interior, it has access to the Father only if we pray “in the name” of Jesus. The sacred humanity of Jesus is therefore the way by which the Holy Spirit teaches us to pray to God our Father.
What this means is when we pray we need to remember to pray “in the name of Jesus Christ”. The reason we do this is because Jesus taught us how to pray, Jesus taught us how to talk to God. You might come up with a prayer on your own, you might pray in a group or in your head and that’s great but remember to include Jesus because God’s not going to hear you unless you include His son. So tonight when you go to bed, or next time you pray remember to include Jesus. After all Jesus is the one who taught us.
This might sound like a lot of stuff to remember and it might seem intimidating, but don’t worry, God wants to be with you, He wants to talk with you and He wants you to love Him back. Really when it comes down to how you should pray remember that you need to just ask God, keep Him in the loop, tell Him what’s going on and remember He wants the real you, not someone who thinks they are perfect, He wants you. He created you in His image, therefore, in His eyes you are beautiful.