Why do Christians Need to Pray?

1. 0:00Lord’s Day 45, why do Christians need to pray?
2. 0:16Because prayer is the most important part of the thankfulness God requires of us.
3. 0:20us and also because God will give his grace and Holy Spirit only to those who continually and with heartfelt longing ask God for these gifts and thank him
4. 0:32for them. And then we're asked question 117 how does God want us to pray so that he will listen to us?
5. 0:40We must pray from the heart to no other than the one true God, who has revealed himself to us in his word, asking for everything that he has commanded us to ask of him.
6. 0:52Second, we must fully recognize our need and misery, so that we humble ourselves in God's majestic presence.
7. 1:00Third, we must rest on this unshakable foundation.
8. 1:04Even though we do not deserve it, God will surely listen to our prayer because of Christ our Lord, as he has promised us in his word.
9. 1:15And then 118 says, or rather asks, what has God commanded us to ask ask of him.
10. 1:21Everything we need, spiritually and physically, as embraced in the prayer of Christ, our Lord himself taught us.
11. 1:30And then we have 119, what is that prayer?
12. 1:33And it is this, our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
13. 1:43Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.
14. 1:49And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
15. 1:54For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, amen.
16. 1:59So, Lord’s Day 45 is really the beginning of the end.
17. 2:05We've made our way through a number of different categories.
18. 2:08We've already entered into the section on gratitude and thanksgiving.
19. 2:13So, having worked through kind of the actions of the Ten Commandments, We come now to the adoration that is found in the life of prayer.
20. 2:26Prayer is one of those areas where all Christians struggle and all Christians have their challenges.
21. 2:32And in a very beautiful way, prayer is described about the It's about the adoration that we give to God. It's about the doxology that we offer up to him.
22. 2:45And it ends the catechism, in a sense you could say, with worship. That would probably be an oversimplification because all of it is prompting us to worship. It's all very personal and it's all very
23. 2:59devotional in that sense.
24. 3:03But it's ending us on a note of, now let's bring our worship and let's bring our praise and our adoration to our God and to our Father.
25. 3:12But it puts it in the context uniquely of thanksgiving.
26. 3:16It doesn't just talk about prayer as this that Christians do, but it's rather the gratitude that we express. It's not about so much getting from God as it is giving to God. To be sure, we can ask Him as the
27. 3:35Lord’s Day says, we can ask Him anything at any time anyplace. But in the context of that asking, it's about giving, giving praise to our God, because as
28. 3:51we'll see in the next Lord’s Day, he's our Father. Prayer in its most basic sense is communication. It's talking.
29. 3:59And that sense we kind of need to demystify what is prayer.
30. 4:03And prayer is simply communicating, talking with God.
31. 4:07And yet you need to say more than that.
32. 4:09You need to go further than that.
33. 4:12Because all creatures communicate.
34. 4:15Birds communicate. Animals communicate.
35. 4:19My dogs communicate and when you get the food out, right, they're talking to each other, but typically they're not communing.
36. 4:27Animals don't commune.
37. 4:29They communicate, but they don't commune.
38. 4:31In other words, uniquely, we as the crown of God's creation express love.
39. 4:39with words. We write poems, we sing songs, we say, "I love you." We say, "I need you."
40. 4:47My dogs, when they're talking to each other about food, aren't saying, "Are you okay?
41. 4:52Is everything, did you sleep well? How are things going? Been a little bit rough?
42. 4:55Kind of a bit hot out these days." Like, they're not thinking a lot.
43. 4:59in those terms.
44. 5:01They don't commune, but we as believers commune.
45. 5:07In many ways, it's taking them that burden off of us because I have heard in my ministry over the years, people will say, "Well, I don't know what to say to God.
46. 5:16I mean, what am I supposed to say?"
47. 5:19Commune with him.
48. 5:21Talk with him.
49. 5:23Be open with him.
50. 5:25Again, the final question and answer here before it gets into the reciting of the Lord's Prayer is, what are we supposed to ask?
51. 5:35Anything.
52. 5:37Everything.
53. 5:39commune with him. So my hope is that as you work through Lord’s Day 45, this is just a sampling of what you find and discover in this Lord’s Day, and that this will help you
54. 5:51go even further, deeper into the rich truths that open up when you dig into this beautiful gift that God's given to us called prayer.

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