Pray – “Personal Prayer”

“What do you want?” It’s the question we started this series with, and it’s the question we go back to today. It’s the best way to start the process of praying for someone else – what we call “intercessory prayer.” But prayer is also personal – what I ask God to do in my life – so we must answer the question honestly for ourselves as we encounter Jesus, in a way that is both humble and faith-building.

1. Prayer is Personal (Psalm 3:1-8; Philippians 4:6-7)
   
   • The book of Psalms is largely a collection of personal prayers – prayers that are honest, humble, and filled with raw emotion. Psalm 3 is a great example of that; the author is brutally transparent about his fear, anxiety, anger and desperation – and his ultimate hope in God.
   • Many of our own prayers are rooted in fear and anxiety. If we think about it, those are two different things: fear is present and specific, while anxiety is future and vague. Fear is seeing a car hurtling toward you and jumping out of the way at the last second, your heart racing wildly. Anxiety is the low-level worry about your own frailty that lingers for the rest of the day, even after the danger is past.
   • To overcome the lingering (persistent) anxiety in our lives, we tend to “turn up the volume” in order to drown out the “sound” – the sense that something might be wrong, that our lives aren’t as they should be. That “volume” might come in the form of overwork, or substance abuse, or frenetic busyness – because as soon as we slow down and “listen” anxiety creeps in and consumes us again.
   • The promise of Christ – and the promise of personal prayer to him – is that we can experience the benefit of fear without living in constant anxiety. It’s that we can bring our anxiety to him, and he promises to not just drown it out, but to remove it from us. As Paul wrote to the Philippians, Jesus will transform our anxiety into peace – if we’ll only bring it to him in honest, personal prayer.

1. What Happens When I Pray?
   
   • But prayer isn’t a magic formula by which, if we say just the right words, Jesus will fix our anxiety. Instead, it’s a regular practice that steadily transforms who we are, how we see the world, and how we relate to God himself. The story of the blind beggar (Bartimaeus) in Mark 10 gives us a beautiful picture of what personal prayer does and why it’s so powerful. In the story, we can see two things that happen to us when we pray honestly and persistently:
     
     1. We Encounter Jesus (Mark 10:46-50) – The first goal of personal prayer is simply to spend time with Jesus in order to encounter him in a personal way. As it turns out, knowing about Jesus isn’t the goal – knowing him through regular, intimate contact is what our faith is all about. That only happens through humble, honest, prayer – a “conversation” with him throughout our day.
     2. We Declare Our Faith Out Loud (Mark 10:51-52) – Jesus asked Bartimaeus the same question he asks us when we pray: “What do you want?” By trusting him with the answer to that question – by speaking it out loud in our prayers – we declare our real faith in the Master, the one who can truly give us what we want – who can take all of our anxiety and transform it into peace.

ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURE

These passages may provide additional insights related to the subject of this week’s message. All verses are NLT unless otherwise noted.

Psalm 55:22; Jeremiah 9:23-24; Matthew 6:31-34; John 14:27; 2 Timothy 1:7; 1 Peter 5:6-7

Video of the Week: The Lord’s Prayer by the Bible Project

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

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1. When you pray, which do you do more: pray for yourself, or pray for others?  Why do you think that is?

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2. In general, would you say that your personal prayers are mostly about “unloading” on God (as the psalmists often did) with your fears, worries, anger, etc. – or are they more about asking God to give you (or fix) specific things?  Explain your answer.

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3. The message made the point that fear and anxiety are two different things – and that fear is often a healthy (even “beneficial”) emotion, while persistent anxiety is unhealthy. In what ways might “fear” be beneficial in our lives?  

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4. Read Philippians 4:6-7 again. As you understand the process, how does “pray[ing] about everything” take us from a place of worry (anxiety) to a place of peace? What role does thankfulness play in that process?

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5. If you’re honest with yourself, would you say that you know Jesus (not just know about him) as intimately as you’d like to? Explain your answer.

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6. What practical steps can we take to develop an attitude of prayer in which – before we ask for anything – we’re enjoying a close, personal encounter with Jesus?

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