Author: Dave

“The Spirit and Prayer: Practice”
Jude 19-23
Nov 2, 2014
Rev. David Williams
Scripture: Jude 19-23
Sermon:
Introduction
	We’ve been talking, lately, about the how the Holy Spirit helps us pray.  Today we are going to look at another passage that talks about “praying in the Spirit” and then we’re going to spend some time doing just that.
	Now, why is it important that we spend time in prayer? Doesn’t God already know what we need?  Prayer is not just about bringing our needs to God. He does, in fact, already know what our needs are. In fact, he knows better than us what our needs are!  Spending time in prayer is not about informing God, but about God forming us.  In prayer, we build our relationship with God. Through prayer and through submitting to the Spirit in prayer, the Spirit works on us to be more like Christ.
	It’s about who you spend time with.  Imagine, for a moment, the effects that spending time with different people would have on you. [pics]  Suppose, for example, that you had breakfast with Barack Obama every morning for a year.  Do you think you would be more political after that year?  If you had lunch with Warren Buffet every day for year, you’d invest your money better. [pic] If you had coffee with the Pope every day for a year, you’d be more Catholic at the end of that year.  If you had dinner with Stephen Spielberg every day for a year, you’d probably watch more movies. [pic]
	What if you spent time with Jesus every day for a year?  Don’t you think that would make you more like Jesus?
***
	That’s why it’s important to spend time in prayer.  In prayer, when we pray in the Spirit and not just according to our own fallen desires and wills, we are shaped and conformed into the likeness of Christ.
Text
	Now, with that in mind, let’s take a look at our text.  Jude was written to Christians to warn them about false teachers and to help them know how best to deal, not only with false teachers, but with those who were being influenced by those false teachers.  That’s the context for Jude’s instructions to “build yourselves up in your most holy faith and pray in the Holy Spirit.”  In fact, the “and” here really is explanatory in Greek.  Literally, Jude says, “build yourselves up in your most holy faith by means of praying in the Holy Spirit.”  Building up our faith comes from praying in the Spirit. [Douglas Moo, 2 Peter and Jude, p. 284]
	Two more things I want to point out about this verse: The you is plural.  This is not an instruction to individuals to build up their faith in isolation by prayer in the Spirit by themselves. This is instruction to the believing community to build up their faith as a community through prayer as a community.
	Notice, as well, that this verse gives us all a responsibility to both build up our faith and pray in the Spirit. It is not just the job of the pastor to build up our faith for us.  It is our job, as a community, to build up our faith.  That means all you have a role to play in having your faith built up.  We can’t afford to sit back and expect it to be done for us.  In the same way, we all have a responsibility to learn how to pray in the Spirit and to guard our prayer lives to ensure that we are praying in the Spirit when we pray.
	What happens when we do this?  We remain in God’s love.  Now, some of you might say, “I have to pray for God to love me?!? Isn’t that contrary to being saved by grace?  Doesn’t God already love me?”  God already loves you.  God has loved you since before the foundation of the world.  God’s love for you will not change.  However, we can remove ourselves from God’s love.  That doesn’t mean we are no longer loved by God, it means we no longer reside within the sphere of his love, gaining all the benefits thereof. God is a gentleman. He won’t hold us against our will.  As a response to God’s love, we have an obligation to live obediently to him.  We have a role to play in living out our salvation.  We have an obligation to obedience and part of that obedience is building up our faith through prayer in the Spirit.
	Last, but not least, when we build up our faith through prayer in the Spirit, we not only remain in God’s love, but we also gain patience and perseverance to wait for Jesus to bring us eternal life.  In the early church, everybody expected Jesus would return within their own lifetimes.  Nobody expected it to take two thousand years!  As time went by, however, and Christians started dying, especially through persecution, the very practical question came up about when is Jesus going to return?  As the years went on, the apostles, like Paul and others, started to realize that Jesus’ plans were more elaborate and long term than they first thought.  In many of their letters, they had to encourage Christians to “hand in there” while they waited for Christ to return.  They had to help them understand how to live in the “in between times” between the victory of Christ over death at his crucifixion and resurrection and bringing that victory to full completion at his return and judgement of the world.  Praying in the Spirit is a significant component of learning how to endure the hardships of this world while we wait for Christ to return.
	The next two verses help us know how to reach out in support to those who have been led astray by false teachers.  We are to be merciful to those who doubt, just as Christ has been merciful to us in the preceding verse!  Some, when they hear false teaching, start to doubt what they believe.  We are to be merciful with them, winning them back gently, not harsh with them criticising their doubt.
	Others, however, have gone all the way over to the false teaching. These need to be dealt with more swiftly and surely. Jude says that these we are to “snatch from the fire.”  That is, we need to rescue them and do so quickly!
	The last group are the false teachers themselves. We are to deal with them with mercy, too, but also with appropriate fear or respect of the danger that they pose.  We are not to get sucked in by them or their teaching ourselves!
	These last two verses may not immediately seem to relate to prayer or praying in the Spirit. But, I think they do.  Why? Because part of prayer is intercession. We are to intercede for our brothers and sisters in Christ, especially those in danger of falling for false teaching.  Prayers of intercession are important for all Christians in danger, including those who have fallen away.  So I think this is completely appropriate to a conversation about prayer!
Prayer Practice
	So let’s get down to actually practicing prayer together as a community. Remember, our goal is to begin to build up our faith as a community through praying in the Spirit as a community.  We are going to put some structure into this prayer time to help guide us and give us some models or examples for our own prayer lives.
I)	First, as we’ve been talking about for a number of weeks, we need the Spirit to teach us our real need. We need the Spirit to teach us what to pray for and how to pray for it in the right attitude. We want the Spirit to work in our hearts, but what does that mean? Let me ask you, what are the different things that make up our heart?
	[wait for cue from me] Heart= mind, feelings, desires, will, imagination, preferences 
Please bow with me as we ask the Spirit to teach our hearts what to pray for and how to pray for it.
	Illumination of our minds: our unbelief, the problem of sin, what God would have us be like, what God would have us pray for
	Transformation of our wills and desires- strengthen our wills to do what we know is right, change our desires, killing the sinful ones and replacing them with a desire for things of you
	Purification of our imaginations
	Control of our feelings, that we not be overruled by them, but that we will allow them to inform us of what is happening in and around us, fill us with a holy passion for the lost, for justice, for your glory
	Teach us what to pray for, purify our hearts so that we will come to you humbly, in submission and childlike expectation for the good things you work in us and for us.

II) Praise: Another aspect of prayer that we saw last week was praise.  I think we too often forget to fill our prayers with praise for God for who he is!  The Psalms are a great way to learn how to praise God.  So I’ve chosen Psalm 30 for us to pray through together today.	
Psalm 30[a]
A psalm. A song. For the dedication of the temple.[b] Of David.

1 I will exalt you, Lord,
    for you lifted me out of the depths
    and did not let my enemies gloat over me.
2 Lord my God, I called to you for help,
    and you healed me.
3 You, Lord, brought me up from the realm of the dead;
    you spared me from going down to the pit.
4 Sing the praises of the Lord, you his faithful people;
    praise his holy name.
5 For his anger lasts only a moment,
    but his favor lasts a lifetime;
weeping may stay for the night,
    but rejoicing comes in the morning.
6 When I felt secure, I said,
    “I will never be shaken.”
7 Lord, when you favored me,
    you made my royal mountain[c] stand firm;
but when you hid your face,
    I was dismayed.
8 To you, Lord, I called;
    to the Lord I cried for mercy:
9 “What is gained if I am silenced,
    if I go down to the pit?
Will the dust praise you?
    Will it proclaim your faithfulness?
10 Hear, Lord, and be merciful to me;
    Lord, be my help.”
11 You turned my wailing into dancing;
    you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy,
12 that my heart may sing your praises and not be silent.
    Lord my God, I will praise you forever.

III) Thanksgiving	We are also to give thanks to God for what he has done.  We praise him for his character and thank him for his actions.  Often these two overlap because his actions demonstrate his character, and that can be seen in Psalms like the one we just read. But I want to be specific today. I want us to give examples of things we are thankful to God for.

IV) Listening One of the things in our passage in Jude was having patience to wait for the mercy of Jesus to bring us eternal life.  We are not good at waiting. We are an impatient people. We are also a noisy people.  We are uncomfortable with silence.  But we have to be silent if we are to hear, especially if we are to hear from God.  So I want us to spend some time in silent meditation together.  When I say meditation, I don’t mean “eastern meditation” in which we seek to empty ourselves.  I mean biblical meditation. I want us to be still and know God, to listen for him, to say to him, “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening,” and then to actually listen.  Let’s bow and seek to be filled with the Spirit and to hear from our God.

V) Intercession Having praised and thanked God, having listened for God, it is now appropriate to come to God and ask him to intercede in our world.  Specifically, today, we are going to pray for God’s intercession in the lives of people we know who are far from God.  I recently heard a story about George Muller, who it is estimated looked after over ten thousand orphans over the course of his lifetime in a network of orphanages. The story I heard had nothing to do with orphans, though.  Muller was a man of prayer.  When he got married, he and his wife decided to depend on God for everything through prayer.  Muller gave up his small salary as a pastor and they began to pray for all their needs and never asked anybody for help.  
In 1844, Muller also began to pray for 5 people he knew who were far from God.  After 18 months of praying for these five men by name every day, the first of them came to know Christ.  After 5 years, the second was converted.  After 6 years the third came to know Christ.  The fourth came to know Christ after 25 years.  After 52 years of prayer, the fifth man still had not come to know Christ!  Muller died and the man had not yet come to know the Lord. But before Muller was buried, the man had been converted!
	I want you to think right now about 5 people you know who are far from God.  I want us to pray for each of them silently.  Then I will commit them to Christ’s care and together we will “lift them up in the light of grace and ask God to do in them what only he can do.”

VI) All the saints: Last, but not least, I want to pray for our brothers and sisters around the world.  I want us to remember to pray for Christians enduring persecution. I want to remember Christians who are suffering sickness.  I want to pray for Christians who are cold and hungry.  I want to pray for Christians who are doing well, too, for they need protection.  Lastly, I want to pray for the leaders of our church. (Elders, ministry leaders, me.)

Thank you for praying with me today. I hope it was instructive and helpful for you. Our to do this week is to pray, daily, for the five people we named during our time of intercession.  Amen.