Below are some notes and thoughts I jotted down while listening to the sermon Desperation: Do We Need Him? by David Platt. It was an excellent sermon about prayer and made me realize how much I truly underestimate the power of praying to the Almighty God.
Why do we pray?
1. To express the depth of our need before God.
Why is Jesus always praying?
When you look at Jesus' ministry in the Gospels, what did he do as a man that was apart from His Father actually doing that through Him? Absolutely nothing. There is not one thing that Jesus did on His own. It was all in dependence on the Father
If Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, said that He can do nothing by himself, who are we to think that there is anything in our lives that we can do on our own?
Our conviction in prayer- We can do NOTHING without God.
What was fundamental in the early church has become supplemental in the contemporary church.
Is prayer in your life fundamental or supplemental?
2. To explore the mystery of intimacy with God.
People tend to think that the main purpose of prayer is to ask God for stuff, for help, for protection.
This could be why so many of us have stopped praying as much, because when nothing happens or nothing changes, what's the point in praying or not praying? We try it, unsure if it is going to work or not. How we have learned to pray misses out on what it's really all about.
When praying, we need to be desperate for someone, not something. What if God has fashioned this whole thing called prayer for you to ultimately enjoy Him and to feast on His goodness, grace, and mercy personally. What if there's something mysterious that happens in these moments that transcends anything else that could happen in our lives.
The most important thing in the world is your personal intimate relationship with Jesus. Everything in our lives flows from this one thing.
We need to set aside a time. Intimacy just can't happen when we are running from here to there.
We need to go to a place. This is why we see Jesus setting aside a time, even going to a solitary place. Going to a place where you can be alone with God, undisturbed, without distraction, will revolutionize your life because there is an award from the Father in that place that can't be found anywhere else.....intimacy with Him.
3. To experience the power of being used by God.
If God knows everything and is in control of everything and if His plan is going to be accomplished....why do we need to pray?
God's sovereignty also means that He has ordained prayer to be a means through which He shows His power and His glory most clearly to His people. He has designed it to where you and I are apart of His whole plan. He designed it to where we get the help and He gets the glory.
In the end.....if all we take away from this is that we need to pray more.....that we are going to strive to become a woman of prayer, then we are no different from any other religion. We live in a world where everybody prays.
There is no power in prayer. The power of people who connect with the living God almighty is unstoppable.
We need to pray like we can do nothing without God's intervention.
