Pastor's Note

  Awakened To Prayer

This week is actually our second week in our brand-new sermon series called, “Awakened to Grace.” This is a series that will invite our church to begin the new year by rediscovering the simple, transformative practices that open us to God’s presence: Sabbath, Prayer, Service, Silence, Scripture, and Fasting. My prayer is that by preaching on and practicing these six spiritual disciplines, our hearts will be awakened to God’s grace, and we can experience His power and presence in very real and tangible ways this year.

Last week I preached on the spiritual discipline of Sabbath and this week I will be preaching on the spiritual discipline of prayer. When it comes to prayer, a lot of us do not know where to begin or we feel like we aren’t good at praying or we are too distracted or we would rather not dive too deep into our emotions, feelings, and vulnerabilities. Maybe for others of us, we get frustrated saying the same prayer over and over and over again and God just doesn’t seem to be listening to or answering us. Maybe for even others of us, we really just do not even see the point of praying. If God already knows everything, then what good are my prayers? The question we are faced with today is this: how do we pray, especially when we are faced with all these obstacles? 

It turns out Jesus had a thing or two to say about prayer. In Luke 11 and Matthew 6, Jesus teaches His disciples the Lord’s Prayer and the main point He makes to the disciples is this: prayer is not about repeating rote, memorized things that are meaningless to you and that are not connecting you to your Heavenly Father. Prayer is not that. Rather, the essence of prayer is intimacy. It’s about being in relationship and connected with our living Savior, Jesus Christ. Prayer is not about God granting us every single request and need that we present to Him. Often, when we pray, it doesn’t so much change our situation, but when we pray like Jesus taught us to pray, it for sure changes us in our situation. We pray because we have an alignment issue. We pray, not because God needs information from us, but because we need to be realigned with God. We pray so our lives and our stories will ultimately be about Him and His glory. 

The great theologian C.S. Lewis said this about prayer: “I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God. It changes me.” Prayer is one of the necessary practices, one of the essential spiritual disciplines we can choose to awaken us to God's grace. May the gift of prayer increase in our lives, in our church, and in our world. There may be nothing more important in this new year of 2026 than some new prayer warriors.