Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis - Joel Beeke - Lord Teach Us to Pray

Episode Date: August 10, 2023

Jonny Ardavanis is the Lead Pastor at Stonebridge Bible Church in Franklin, TN and the President of Dial In Ministries. He formerly served as the Dean of Campus Life at The Master’s University and as a Camp Director at Hume Lake Christian Camps. Jonny’s heart is to see people understand and love the Word of God and more so, to love the God of the Word. Jonny is married to Caity Jean and they have two precious daughters.Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis: Big Questions, Biblical Answers, is a series that seeks to provide biblical answers to some of the most prominent and fundamental questions regarding God, the Gospel, and the Bible.In this episode, Jonny Ardavanis sits down with Pastor and Professor Joel Beeke to discuss the necessity and nature of prayer. Dr. Beeke not only discusses the crucial component of prayer within the believers life, but details how believers practically should pray. Furthermore, Dr. Beeke responds to the the routine rebuttals: 1. Why should I pray if God already knows all my needs? 2. Why should I pray if God is sovereign?Dr. Beeke mentions his work on prayer which can be purchased here.Watch VideosVisit the Website Follow on InstagramFollow on Twitter

Hey guys, my name is Johnny Artavanis and this is Dial In. In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Joel Beeky and discuss with him the nature, content, and necessity of prayer. One of the things that Dr. Beeky will highlight in this episode is that praying is an essential component of communicating with God, meaning that he says there's a two-way street of communication with God that we hear from him through his word, and then we communicate and commune with him in prayer. And so it's so important for us to understand how we pray, when to pray, and even Dr. Beeky will answer some of the misconceptions that some people have regarding the subject of prayer. And I'm excited for you to hear it. Let's dial in. Dr. Beeky, thank you so much for sitting down. I have a lot of questions for

you, but I'd love to ask you initially why it's so important for Christians to develop the habit and discipline of prayer, why it's a great privilege, and how do we even cultivate that in our life, a life of prayer? What would you say? Yeah, well, it's great to be with you, Johnny. First thing is that people often don't realize the crucial role prayer plays in a Christian's life because they don't realize that communication with God is a two-way street. God communes with us through His Word, but we go back to Him through prayer. Can you imagine not praying, and it's a one-way communication street? It just doesn't work. There's no relationship. So that's why the Puritan William Bridge said, it's a mercy to pray even though you don't receive the mercy prayed for.

Because just having communion with God in prayer is a tremendous blessing. My dad used to say that having the freedom to pray is worth more than all the money in the world. It's priceless because communion with God is worth more than all the money in the world. It's priceless because communion with God is worth more than anything. So prayer is critical. And prayer is also, the old Puritans used to say, the breathing of the soul. It's the temperature of your own spiritual life. When you're backsliding as a Christian, you seldom pray except for the times when, well, you have your form prayers or you have your stated times of prayer. But a Christian ought to develop a prayer life where, yes, you have your stated times of prayer, but even as

you do things through the day, you're just constantly in this frame of mind of praying, just, Lord, help me here. Lord, guide me here. Show me thy way here. And so it's a relationship that is essential. You cannot have a close relationship with God without prayer. Now, how do you develop prayer life? Well, you develop this consciousness by the Holy Spirit in you that the Reformers were so good at that they called it incoram Deo, in the face of God. Every moment of my life, I'm living in the face of God. God is always here. God's in this room. God's right here, right now. So when I have that consciousness that He's always present and that I need him for everything, because without him I can do nothing, I'm going to have a continual revolving door kind of praying, and then I'm doing something,

I'm praying. Throughout the day. Yeah, throughout the day, yeah, yeah. So that, this is the way to pray. And secondly, let me say two more quick things. One is you want to pray in such a way that you're not saying the same thing all the time. So one way to help you do that is to first read the Bible carefully, even if it's just a few verses, then meditate on what you've read, and then use that meditation to have fodder for prayer. And you'll find that your prayer life will have a lot more diversity. So that's a helpful assistance to prayer. But also what helps in prayer is to remember who God is and who I am when I approach him. I'm just a poor sinner saved by grace. He's the God of the universe who's almighty

and who's kind and who loves to hear the voice of his children. So I come to prayer with just a tremendous sense of reverence and humble joy. And I come to my Father who's merciful to me in Jesus Christ. That's so helpful, Dr. Beacon. Maybe just if you would answer two common rebuttals for the necessity of prayer. One would be, what would you say to

someone that said, I've tried to implement a habit of prayer in my life, but God doesn't answer my prayers or didn't answer my specific prayer, so I don't do that anymore. How would you respond pastorally to that type of person? Well, I would like to say this, that if you look at what you deserve, which is no answers permanently, we're all sinners, we all deserve hell. God is always answering us in one way or another, far beyond what we deserve, even when we can't see it. Doesn't mean he always answers every specific prayer right away, because sometimes he delays. But as Thomas Brooks said, his delays are not his denials. So what you've got to do when you feel

that way is you've got to say, that kind of argumentation is from the devil. And he's trying to discourage me from praying. I'm going to pray on, and I'm going to find that sweet spot in prayer that even if God doesn't answer me, I cannot but pray because I want communion with him. So it's like my wife, you know, women are that way more than men. Sometimes I sit down with my wife and she has some concerns she wants to raise or something she's struggling with. And sometimes we just talk and I draw her out and she says, thank you so much for talking to me. I said, oh, wait a minute. I was going to give you an answer. I was going to say, and she's just talking with you.

Just talking with you is already special. And and that's how I feel about God, just talking with him and telling him everything about me as if he knew nothing about me, yet knowing he knows everything about me. I'm boozing in my soul before God is a beautiful thing. So prayer isn't just supplications.

Prayer is adoration. Prayer is confession of sin. Prayer is thanksgiving and supplications. So three quarters of those four elements of prayer, you see, really aren't looking for answers. They're establishing this relationship of open communion with God. That's helpful. One of the other rebuttals I was going to ask that you've really answered in part, but I'll let you maybe add anything to it, is that people would sometimes say, well, if God is omniscient, what's the point in prayer at all?

If he already knows my every need and Psalm 139, he's hemmed me in behind and before, why would I need to pray? How would you respond to someone like that? Well, what they're missing in that kind of question is they're missing the understanding that God works out his decrees and his omniscience through means. And one of the primary means is prayer. So how many of the revivals in church history began with an effusion of prayer among the people of God. Probably 90% from what I've studied, God stirred up prayer, and then prayer was used by God to bring in revival. It's like one of the Puritans said this, you know, when Peter was released from the guards, angels released him. And he stood in front of the door, and Rhoda answered the door and was surprised to see Peter, but they had been praying

for him. And one of the Puritans said something like this, "'Twas the angel that released Peter, but it was prayer that fetched the angel. You know, this is God's means to fulfill his own will and to carry out his own omniscience. So prayer is an integral part of the whole process. Now, just lastly, let's say I'm someone listening and I understand and affirm the importance of prayer, but at this point in my life, I maybe say a quick prayer before bed and before meals. How would you just say practically I start to implement a biblical pattern of prayer in my life? What would you say?

Yeah, I would go back to what I hinted at before that the Puritan said meditation is the halfway house between scripture reading and prayer a lot of people when they start out to pray they're not familiar with praying to God very much and just seems like hard work and it can be hard work you it does take discipline you need to persevere in it but if you use the acts formula adoration confession Thanksgiving supplications and you even say a couple petitions in all four of those areas to start out. And then you go to Scripture, and you read a verse or two from Scripture. You meditate on it, and you pray. Read another verse or two, meditate, pray. Too

often today, you know, for edification purposes in public, we, you public, we pray for a while, then we read scripture for a while, and we preach for a while. But in private, you have the liberty to just go boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Reading, praying, reading, yeah. And that gives you more of a sense of flow to your prayer because you're building your prayers right off of scripture. So use that to discipline you and to grow. And don't expect to pray 20 minutes. You know, when you start out,

pray just one minute or even a half a minute, and then go back and read two more verses, meditate, and pray for another half a minute. I wrote two books on prayer, by the way. One is called Taking Hold of God in Prayer. And I look at the prayer life of some of the Reformers and Puritans. And then I try to wrap it up at the end of the book with a chapter of how to go about praying. And then I also wrote a book with my brother, actually, on developing a healthy prayer life. And I look at 35 different kinds of prayer in the Bible, like praying persistently. 35 types. Yeah.

Wow. Yeah. Well, good. So if you're listening or watching, what we'll do is we'll put the links to those books in the show notes so people can be benefited from those as I have already been by listening and reading you. So thank you once again. Thank you.