Sustain Your Prayer Life with Sleep

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | - Well, sometimes we find it hard to pray

00:00:06.200 | because we are under spiritual attack.

00:00:09.600 | And sometimes we find it hard to pray

00:00:11.280 | because we lack personal discipline.

00:00:14.160 | And in a 1988 sermon, Pastor John explained

00:00:16.620 | the physical side of prayerful alertness.

00:00:19.320 | That's one reason for sharing today's clip.

00:00:22.080 | The other reason is that two weeks ago,

00:00:23.520 | we were talking about wrestling and prayer back in ABJ 1795.

00:00:28.000 | And at the end of that episode,

00:00:29.100 | Pastor John threw in a little definition of prayer

00:00:32.040 | as being quote, a wartime walkie talkie.

00:00:35.520 | Prayer as a wartime walkie talkie.

00:00:38.620 | You might remember that from a couple of weeks ago.

00:00:40.200 | At the end of that episode,

00:00:41.160 | I mentioned that we had never really talked here

00:00:42.680 | on the podcast about that phrase,

00:00:44.000 | which is one of Pastor John's favorite metaphors for prayer.

00:00:47.580 | And today I wanna give you a glimpse

00:00:48.880 | into how he uses that metaphor.

00:00:50.460 | Prayer is not a domestic intercom to ring the butler.

00:00:54.880 | It's a wartime walkie talkie to connect us with the general.

00:00:58.680 | And Pastor John explains this really well

00:01:00.520 | in a sermon clip from 1988.

00:01:02.400 | Here he is.

00:01:03.240 | - Now, if you've been around Bethlehem a little while,

00:01:09.120 | you might have picked up that one of my favorite analogies

00:01:12.840 | of prayer is a wartime walkie talkie.

00:01:16.800 | And I like to contrast the wartime walkie talkie of prayer

00:01:20.760 | with the domestic intercom.

00:01:23.360 | And what I like to say is,

00:01:26.960 | one of the reasons that prayer malfunctions

00:01:31.480 | is because people take a wartime walkie talkie

00:01:35.040 | and try to turn it into a domestic intercom

00:01:38.980 | in which they ring up the butler

00:01:41.120 | to please bring another pillow to the den.

00:01:43.960 | Prayer was designed for the battlefield

00:01:48.700 | as a wartime walkie talkie,

00:01:51.440 | not to increase the pad of the saints

00:01:56.600 | through a domestic intercom.

00:01:58.880 | Now, keep that image in your mind

00:02:02.680 | as I read these verses again,

00:02:04.760 | and then I wanna paint a picture for you

00:02:07.000 | of the situation it looks to me like Paul is in.

00:02:10.260 | Continue steadfastly in prayer,

00:02:14.360 | being watchful in it with thanksgiving.

00:02:16.640 | Pray for us also that God may open a door for the word

00:02:21.000 | to declare the mystery of Christ

00:02:22.420 | on account of which I'm in prison,

00:02:24.620 | that I may make it clear as I ought to speak.

00:02:28.420 | Here's one way to picture what's going on here.

00:02:33.020 | Paul, Epiphras, Luke, Timothy, Aristarchus,

00:02:38.020 | that's the team mentioned in this book in other verses,

00:02:41.260 | kind of storm troopers,

00:02:44.400 | you could picture them as on the front lines.

00:02:46.780 | They have an assignment to penetrate

00:02:49.340 | the enemy line of Satan

00:02:50.860 | and to take captive for God,

00:02:54.140 | souls who are being blinded and held by Satan.

00:02:58.140 | They attempt to spearhead a breach through the enemy line

00:03:03.540 | and they hit a massive counterforce.

00:03:08.180 | The result, at least two of them,

00:03:11.020 | Aristarchus and Paul are in a prison camp.

00:03:14.340 | It looks as though the enemy has gotten

00:03:17.900 | a significant tactical victory,

00:03:22.860 | but Paul in the camp manages to scratch a note

00:03:27.860 | and smuggle it out of the camp to the soldiers

00:03:32.140 | who are not at this point on the front line.

00:03:35.220 | They're called Colossians back up country in the high ground

00:03:39.700 | and the note at this point simply says,

00:03:43.020 | "Use walkie talkie, call the commander,

00:03:48.020 | have him fire a missile, gives the coordinates

00:03:53.020 | and tell him to blow the door off of this prison

00:03:55.620 | and open a door for the word of God

00:04:00.180 | to go forward behind those lines

00:04:02.280 | and to rescue those people that we were after

00:04:04.780 | when we got waylaid here in this prison."

00:04:06.880 | Now, the point so far is this,

00:04:13.540 | we're all soldiers and we're all on the battlefield.

00:04:18.060 | Some of us are in different places on the battlefield

00:04:21.340 | and some penetrating a front line

00:04:23.500 | can get into grave difficulty.

00:04:25.620 | And the job of the rest of the soldiers

00:04:29.460 | is to use the walkie talkie of prayer

00:04:33.120 | to call in air cover and firepower

00:04:38.020 | for those stormtroopers.

00:04:42.460 | We are crucial in evangelism indirectly through prayer.

00:04:47.460 | So here is what the text, verses two to four,

00:04:53.620 | answers for us indirect supporters.

00:04:58.220 | It answers how to pray and what to pray.

00:05:01.060 | It gives three answers to each of those questions.

00:05:03.380 | Let's look at them briefly.

00:05:05.140 | First of all, how to pray.

00:05:06.860 | Verse two, the first way is persistently.

00:05:11.340 | Verse two, continue steadfastly in prayer

00:05:15.220 | or your version might say, devote yourselves to prayer.

00:05:20.220 | Be persistent, continuous, devoted.

00:05:23.660 | Here's a way to illustrate this.

00:05:27.460 | Prayer is not like these new telephones that you can buy

00:05:32.460 | that don't have any cords.

00:05:35.340 | Our sons won one of these telephones

00:05:37.680 | by selling a lot of magazines.

00:05:39.600 | So we now have one of these Tweety Bird telephones

00:05:42.700 | and you can just pull the little aerial up,

00:05:45.380 | flick it on and walk around the house,

00:05:47.420 | talking, go out in the yard.

00:05:49.420 | Now, prayer is not like these telephones

00:05:53.220 | because as soon as you take that telephone off the hook

00:05:57.300 | and start using it, the power runs out of it.

00:06:01.500 | It starts getting weaker and weaker and weaker.

00:06:05.340 | And if you keep on using it, it's useless.

00:06:08.340 | You gotta stop using it.

00:06:09.780 | You gotta hang it up in order for it to get power again.

00:06:13.780 | Prayer is exactly the opposite.

00:06:17.100 | If you hang prayer up on the wall of your bedroom

00:06:19.500 | when you leave in the morning,

00:06:21.060 | it will be dead when you come home at night, very likely.

00:06:24.520 | But the best way to keep prayer powerful

00:06:27.220 | is to hook it like I got this little doohickey

00:06:29.360 | right on me here.

00:06:30.580 | See, that's hooked up to this.

00:06:32.280 | You just keep it hooked on your belt

00:06:34.280 | and make sure it stays on.

00:06:36.340 | I gotta flick this thing off between services

00:06:38.700 | or I've got no juice, the battery runs out.

00:06:41.060 | Prayer is just the opposite.

00:06:43.120 | You gotta keep it on

00:06:45.300 | because it gets more and more and more powerful

00:06:49.300 | the more you use it.

00:06:50.500 | I think that's what's meant by be persistent in prayer.

00:06:54.380 | It doesn't run out of juice.

00:06:56.940 | It's more and more effective as you devote yourself to it

00:07:00.860 | and continue in it.

00:07:03.020 | So when you're done in the morning,

00:07:04.900 | suppose you spend five minutes or 10 or 20 or 30 minutes

00:07:08.180 | in prayer in the morning,

00:07:09.780 | don't hang it up, hang it on right here

00:07:13.380 | and don't flick it off, flick it on.

00:07:15.660 | So there's a little red light showing

00:07:17.820 | and you can get beeps and a little tweety sound

00:07:20.440 | during the day from God

00:07:21.820 | and he can just listen to you

00:07:24.020 | anytime you wanna pick it up.

00:07:26.420 | Second way to pray after persistently is watchfully.

00:07:31.420 | You see that in verse two?

00:07:33.540 | Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it.

00:07:38.460 | Now, why do we need to be watchful and what does that mean?

00:07:42.380 | Satan, who is the enemy that we're against

00:07:46.620 | and who is holding people bondage

00:07:49.340 | knows how dangerous this walkie talkie is to his purposes.

00:07:54.020 | And so he will try to jam the airwaves

00:07:57.100 | so you can't get through.

00:07:58.740 | He'll try to steal the unit so that you can't use it

00:08:03.580 | and he'll try to put you to sleep with some drug

00:08:06.900 | while you're talking on it.

00:08:08.980 | Now, how does he do those three things?

00:08:11.660 | He's the prince of the power of the air.

00:08:14.260 | Picture him now, he's just everywhere as it were,

00:08:16.940 | at least his influence is everywhere.

00:08:20.180 | And our airwaves gotta get to God

00:08:22.940 | through this walkie talkie of prayer

00:08:24.900 | and it's as though he can jam the airwaves

00:08:27.980 | by filling our atmosphere

00:08:31.500 | with an incredible number of non-essential things

00:08:36.500 | so that the atmosphere over our brain

00:08:40.460 | is so cluttered with insignificant

00:08:43.540 | and sometimes very worldly things

00:08:45.860 | that our little effort to send our signal up

00:08:48.500 | just goes click and doesn't even get through.

00:08:51.300 | And he's really good at cluttering your brain

00:08:54.860 | with non-essential airwaves

00:08:57.900 | that jam his or your desires to get through.

00:09:02.900 | How does he steal the unit?

00:09:04.820 | He steals the unit by tricking you into thinking it's broken

00:09:10.740 | so that you lay it down and walk away from it.

00:09:13.980 | And the third way, namely causing us to go to sleep

00:09:18.820 | with some drug as we talk.

00:09:23.580 | There are a lot of ways he does this.

00:09:25.340 | Let me tell you the most common way that he does this.

00:09:30.140 | Satan puts you to sleep in prayer

00:09:34.460 | most commonly by tricking you

00:09:37.660 | into staying up too late the night before.

00:09:40.100 | Now I think this is a real serious business here

00:09:43.660 | and I'm preaching to myself mainly.

00:09:45.420 | God designed you to need a certain amount of sleep.

00:09:50.260 | Most people are about the same,

00:09:51.980 | you might be a little different.

00:09:53.980 | If you don't get that amount of sleep,

00:09:55.340 | you get irritable and that's a sin

00:09:57.020 | and therefore not getting enough sleep

00:09:58.900 | is giving a foothold to the devil.

00:10:01.900 | It leads to depression.

00:10:04.260 | It leads to falling asleep during prayer.

00:10:09.220 | So when you start to fall asleep during prayer

00:10:11.420 | and you say, "Oh, gotta fight the fight here."

00:10:13.260 | Look, that fight was lost the night before.

00:10:17.380 | And the problem is we don't see the fight the night before.

00:10:21.780 | We don't recognize that when it's time to go to bed

00:10:25.300 | in order to get God's prescribed amount of sleep,

00:10:28.460 | we don't realize Satan is the one

00:10:31.140 | who's tricking us to watch another TV program.

00:10:33.860 | Satan is the one who's keeping us reading the book.

00:10:36.580 | Satan is the one who keeps us

00:10:38.020 | in the newspaper and the magazine.

00:10:39.620 | Satan is the one who keeps us out in the yard

00:10:42.020 | poking around or whatever.

00:10:44.060 | Because Satan knows if I can cut it back

00:10:46.940 | to six or five or four hours,

00:10:50.620 | I'll wreck their day.

00:10:51.740 | I'll wreck their day and make them useless for God

00:10:56.300 | and I will put them to sleep during prayer.

00:11:00.260 | Vigilance or watchfulness is the only answer that I know of.

00:11:05.780 | That is when the temptation comes to fight back

00:11:10.540 | with an awareness of what God has called you to do.

00:11:13.980 | Now, I don't know the last or final answer

00:11:16.660 | to why God designed human beings

00:11:19.180 | to be unconscious one third of their life.

00:11:22.620 | That's a great puzzle to me.

00:11:25.460 | But He did.

00:11:27.940 | I think it has to do with wanting to teach us

00:11:30.940 | that we are not God.

00:11:32.980 | I think sleep is the most humbling experience

00:11:35.700 | that anybody ever has.

00:11:37.140 | If there's any point in your life

00:11:38.660 | where you are utterly childlike and helpless,

00:11:41.060 | it's when you're unconscious in bed at night.

00:11:43.820 | And God designed you to go unconscious

00:11:47.180 | about a third of your life.

00:11:49.340 | Probably more than a third if you count

00:11:51.220 | how much you slept when you were a baby or a child.

00:11:54.060 | You just gotta own up to that and stop trying to be God.

00:11:59.220 | I do anyway.

00:12:01.300 | The third way we are to pray besides persistently

00:12:05.660 | and watchfully is thankfully.

00:12:09.660 | Continue steadfastly in prayer, it says,

00:12:12.100 | being watchful in it with thanksgiving.

00:12:15.780 | Now, in case the wartime analogy

00:12:18.020 | makes you jittery,

00:12:20.180 | suppose this wartime talk that I'm using

00:12:22.420 | causes you to think in terms of,

00:12:23.780 | oh, it just means you're biting your nails

00:12:25.540 | and your heart is thumping and your hands are sweating.

00:12:27.340 | This is an awful view of the Christian life.

00:12:30.580 | Well, that would be an awful view of the Christian life.

00:12:32.780 | So this word is added to get rid of that image.

00:12:37.780 | If that's what wartime signifies to you

00:12:40.780 | rather than the thrill of conquest,

00:12:43.660 | then thanksgiving is added here

00:12:46.500 | to mellow things out a little bit.

00:12:48.420 | We ought, as we call in the headquarters

00:12:54.460 | to guide us through the minefields of temptation

00:12:58.940 | and to give us the firepower we need

00:13:01.620 | and to blast doors off the hinges in our lives,

00:13:05.140 | we ought to mingle with all of our requests,

00:13:08.860 | sentences like this.

00:13:10.620 | The missile hit right on target, sir.

00:13:14.180 | Thank you.

00:13:15.380 | The door was blown off its hinges, sir.

00:13:18.020 | Thank you.

00:13:19.260 | We're heading out in full force, sir.

00:13:21.980 | Thank you.

00:13:23.380 | The arm of Aristarchus has been healed, sir.

00:13:26.660 | Thank you.

00:13:27.540 | We're coming in, sir, with 20 captives.

00:13:30.620 | Thank you.

00:13:31.460 | You see, the battle belongs to the Lord.

00:13:37.820 | All the crucial engagements with Satan

00:13:40.620 | in the wilderness, in Gethsemane,

00:13:43.820 | on the cross, at the empty tomb,

00:13:46.060 | every one of them were triumphantly won by Jesus Christ.

00:13:51.060 | We do not fight one single battle

00:13:54.820 | with the mindset that we are going to be losers in the end.

00:13:59.780 | We fight all of our battles knowing that in Jesus Christ,

00:14:03.980 | we will win and therefore gratitude

00:14:07.100 | ought to ring through this walkie talkie all the time.

00:14:12.420 | If it doesn't, something will malfunction

00:14:15.700 | in the walkie talkie.

00:14:16.900 | It has this little sensor in there that begins to click

00:14:20.500 | when there's not enough gratitude going through.

00:14:23.820 | That's the answer to the question,

00:14:27.100 | how to pray as supporters of stormtroopers.

00:14:32.100 | Paradigm shaping definition of prayer here.

00:14:35.780 | One of the reasons we feel so weak in our prayer lives

00:14:38.180 | is that we have tried to make a domestic intercom

00:14:40.740 | out of a wartime walkie talkie, end quote.

00:14:44.100 | So such a great clip.

00:14:46.220 | This clip is from John Piper's May 29th, 1988 sermon titled

00:14:50.260 | Walk in Wisdom Toward Those Outside.

00:14:53.220 | The whole thing is available right now at desiringgod.org.

00:14:56.660 | If you have a sermon clip to share, email me.

00:14:58.420 | Give me your name, hometown, the sermon title,

00:15:01.260 | the timestamp of where the clip happens in the audio

00:15:03.220 | and make a note of what stands out to you.

00:15:04.740 | Put the word clip in the subject line of an email

00:15:06.500 | and send it to me at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.

00:15:09.700 | That's an email address, askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.

00:15:13.340 | Well, Friday we return with Pastor John

00:15:16.540 | and we will all return to 2 Thessalonians.

00:15:19.580 | Who is this mysterious man of lawlessness

00:15:22.740 | who appears in chapter two?

00:15:25.660 | We'll find out on Friday.

00:15:26.780 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

00:15:28.100 | We'll see you then.

00:15:29.060 | (upbeat music)

00:15:31.660 | (upbeat music)

00:15:34.260 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Sustain Your Prayer Life with Sleep

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