"The Place of Prayer in the Worship Service" Video Transcript

The Place of Prayer in the Worship Service

Welcome to the elements of worship. Beyond music. We looked at the place of Scripture last time now we're looking at the place of prayer in the worship service, First Thessalonians 5:16-18. Rejoice always pray, continually, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. Were in the service does prayer fit? Certainly prayer would fit in the opening. There are a lot of different ways to open a service. You can open it with song, you can welcome the people or you can just open with a word of prayer God, here we are together. We've come from different places. We've had different needs. Some of us are hurting, some of us are enthusiastic, some of us are depressed.

But we ask and invite your Holy Spirit to be with us. swearing so that we can give you praise, but that you can give us what we need as well. So feel yeah that something that invites the Holy Spirit, something that sets the stage for your, your service, certainly before the sermon, asking God to bless the sermon asking God for wisdom, asking God for clarity, that, that the Spirit of God would would be with the pastor's voice in his words that he he would speak what God wants him to speak or her to speak. And, and certainly a prayer for people's ears that people would be attentive, that they'd be able to receive the message. So basically, it's those two things, clarity, a word from God, but also that people could hear it. And then finally that we can apply it to our lives.

Before and or after. The offering offering is often a part of the worship service. It's a time that we give back or it's a time in some ways we're where we respond to the goodness of God or we, in a way, it's not just the giving of our money, it's the offering of ourselves. The money is just symbolic of all of that. Anywhere during the singing, I mean, if a song is offering praise to God, and then at the end of the song, if one of the song leaders wants to, you know, take some of the words that were just sung and then reiterate them in a prayer, that's certainly meaningful or sometimes song leader might start praying and then use the words of the next song as a way to introduce the next song. How can prayer be expressed?

Well, certainly, we use words That's probably the number one way people say something or they express themselves with their voice. Another way is through silence. inviting people to close their eyes and just remain silent. Contemplate God's goodness contemplate needs. Sometimes there's a way that people can express all their needs without saying it out loud. We're gonna just get take a couple minutes, I want you to think about needs or want you to take a couple of minutes. I want you to think about a person who needs your love. There are a lot of ways that you can use silence, or we're just going to be with you. We're just going to remain silent for the next five minutes and let God speak to you. Don't, don't clutter the silence with your words and with your thoughts. Try to just empty your mind and see what God might say to you. It's often an interesting thing.

A song, how can a prayer be expressed it can be expressed with songs there's a lot of songs that our prayers This is one I wrote long time ago it's forget which song Psalm it is nice wanted to remember the words from Psalm 42. There's a lot of Scripture that can be put to music we'll talk about that and the hover write a song part of our time together. So you can use song to express prayer, you can use drama. I haven't seen it too often I saw it once where a church took prayer requests. And then they had a drama team. People that were very good at just coming up with something right away. And that drama team actually acted out the prayer requests of the church. 

Pictures, you can have prayers for the world. And a picture can sort of set the stage you can take a picture of, of, you know, the global world and then have a prayer for the world and you can have a picture of your church family and pray for your family. You can have a picture of someone who is a shot in that that can't make it to church anymore and and then the whole congregation can pray for them. So pictures can enable people to perhaps pray more easily.

Well, who does the praying in a church? Certainly the pastor does and it's good to have the pastor pray. He's the leader and it's good for people to Hear the leader bring their needs intercessions before God, but also the worship leader, the worship leaders leading the worship the songs and to have a worship leader pray is certainly appropriate. And church leaders to honor church leaders, a church leader might not be the best person in terms of ability to pray. But that person is one of the leaders and to put them up front. Maybe they don't put the words together as well as someone else might. But people honor and respect that person and, and the words that the person uses in the prayer can still speak to people because of who that person is. Then you have gifted prayer people, people that just know how to say things in a way that enables other people to pray along with the prayer.

And that leads to some challenges to prayer in a church service. Prayer is, is sort of a unique thing. It's different from the sermon. It's different from music. And there's some unique challenges to prayer in making it accessible to people, having people pay attention, enabling people to worship better. The first problem is we ask people to close their eyes. You know, a lot of people mid morning, you know what a typical service is, that's when they start getting sleepy, and then you invite them, please close your eyes, and we're gonna pray for 2 - 3 - 4 or five, maybe sometimes 10 minutes. And when people close their eyes, of course, the idea is we don't want you distracted by the things that you see, oh, you know, there's a squirrel and all of a sudden thinking about that. So you close your eyes. But the problem with closing your eyes, that's exactly what we do when we take a nap as well. And and we daydream and you start going off on a tangent. And we've just invited you to do it, and all of a sudden you're taking a snooze.

The second problem is prayer, unlike a sermon, or even a song, there's no real story. In the prayer. It's just items. And it almost doesn't matter what order the items are. So it's just a random set of things talked about in a prayer. And that's hard for people to follow. People have no trouble tell a following a story. When I was a teenager, I had a license. I had a Volkswagen VW bug. And the Volkswagen, if you remember, remember this car and had a very steep windshield, and I had played tennis with my brother. He was sitting next to me and we were driving home. And I was just driving along just you know, paying attention to the traffic and not thinking about much of anything. It was Friday. It was the weekend. And so I'm looking forward to the weekend. And as I'm driving along, all of a sudden on the windshield, Slack, this bug, just, I mean, his guts, everything. 

We're just cruising down the windshield. So, as I was driving along, and I was looking at the guts that were now on my windshield, I tried to think of it from the bugs point of view. You know, the bug was Friday, probably a long week of work. He's, you know, finally off, he's coming home, looking forward to the weekend. probably wondering what Ladybug is, you know, made for supper, you know, he's thinking about maybe it's Turkey and ham and he's thinking about the gravy is thinking about all the things he's going to do on the weekend and all of a sudden he's gone. He didn't have time to go, Oh, hold it. There's a car coming. It's gonna hit me. This is the end of my life. It's all over. You know, there's nothing, you know, no, he's in the middle of a sentence thinking about his weekend and he exists. And the next second he doesn't exist. And I remember thinking it's a crazy little story, but I remember thinking that's the way it is. If there's no God, you know, I was a teenager and I thought there is no God.

When I die, it's just like this bug. It's like this bug is gone. He's not sitting somewhere in some bug grade gone man what ah. That was really unfortunate that I got hit. I mean, I had so much Dilip No, he's, he's not anywhere. He's not thinking anything. He existed for a while, and now he just doesn't exist. And soon all those that ever knew him won't know he ever existed. And I thought if there's no God, that's the way it's for us. We live our lives, and we think there's meaning and purpose and and things are gonna last And then we're gone. And when we're gone is as if we never existed. And I tell you that, that just blew my mind away. And I thought, I thought to myself, then if life has meaning and purpose than that, there has to be this God. And if there is God, then I should find out what he's up to what he wants from me. 

So that's when I dedicated my life to God. Okay, so I tell this story. And you all listen to it. It's a crazy bug's story. And you all sit there on your computer and you listen to the whole thing. Because it's a story. The stories have this beginning, and then they have the middle, and then you always think they might go somewhere. I mean, isn't that true? I mean, you listen to someone telling a story, and they start telling the story, and you listen and so horrible story. You feel like wow, this story isn't very good, but you keep listening. Why? Because there might be a punch line. The story might go somewhere, and then you listen to the whole thing and then then it's done. And you're like, hold it. There was no punch line. This story didn't go anywhere. I waste my time listening The story but that's the way stories are we we can't help but listen to them now in a prayer.

There's no story. Oh, we're gonna praise God for while we're gonna thank God for a few things and we're gonna have this and then we have that it goes here that goes there. It's just this thing that goes on it sort of meanders all over. By the way, you know where the word meander comes from? It comes from the city of Ephesus Paul wrote a letter to the Ephesians and you go to emphasis today it's in present day Turkey. I've been there. You can stand in the theater 25,000 seat theater where people cry great as Diana of the Ephesians or Artemis of the Ephesians. One of the seven of the wonders of the world the Temple of Artemis was there. But as you're sitting in that theater, you can look out on the valley and there's a road that goes out into the valley. 

That road used to go to the river named meander. But that river is nowhere near this entry. we're nowhere near efficency like five miles away down the valley. Because this river it keeps changing. It's called the meander River. And that's where we get the word meander. It moves around, by the way, you see what I just did, I just all of a sudden went off into a story that has nothing to do with anything. And you still listen. So story we can listen to but prayer is this random meandering thing. And so people have a hard time paying attention. It's not like a you know, a sermon, a sermon. You know, here's the problem. What is this text about Jesus? Jesus said seven words on the cross, the most significant event in all human history. And he said seven things. What's up things did you say? One of them?

Was I thirst. I mean, really, Jesus? seven words, seven things you said from the most significant event in human history. And one of them is I thirst. What does that mean? What's this about? Well, today in our sermon, we're gonna try to figure out what Jesus was talking about. Are you interested? Is he there's a there's a problem in the sermon. Trying to figure out this thing. We did some research, we have to look at some background and and you're hanging with me cuz you're interested in finding the answer this, you know, we have a problem. And we're going to try this and we're going to look here, we're going to go here, and you're going to go with me because you want to solve this problem. But in prayer, there's no problem. It's just these random things that we talk about. So it's harder for people to pay attention. Here's some ways to meet the challenges to prayer in a church service. 

Number one, keep your prayer short. You can ask people to close their eyes and, and and sort of meander around with all these different things. Don't go on For 10 - 15 minutes, you're asking a lot of people. Number two, stay on one topic at a time. If you're going to do some praise, then stay on praise for a while, you're going to do some thanks and stay on thanks for while like here's our topic for a while, and then we're going to do some supplication, we're going to ask God for certain things and keep them sort of close to each other so that people can kind of go Okay, we're here. Now we're here. And now we're here. Number three, remember that the prayer that you're offering in a church service is representive prayer. It's not prayer for everything.

people pray in their homes, they pray individually, they pray as husband and wife. There's prayers going all over the place that people pray for specific things in their small group and they know each other and they can get real intimate in their prayers. On Sunday. It's more of a representative prayer. There's a lot of us that are hurting today. But if I take the time to mention every single person that's hurting, you know, this percepts becoming a big small group. Some of that is for the small group. some pitfalls to avoid in prayer in the worship service, preaching in prayer. Sometimes when we pray, we go Lord, you know, as you say in your word that we should be mindful when we see others and all of a sudden you're giving a sermon, you're supposed to be talking to God. And all of a sudden, now you're talking to the people around you're and you're trying to say certain things to them, but you're using prayer to do it.

Or gossip in prayer, you know, so please pray for Linda. She's back on cocaine, and there's a problem. You know, it's okay to pray for Linda and her cocaine problem. But if people are hearing about this problem for the very first time in your prayer, you know, it's like what? You know that their reaction is, you know, not going to be prayer. The reaction is they have to process this whole thing. If you're going to pray about things, pray about things that they've already discovered and find out found out, either in the announcements or in some other way. Number three, to showy in prayer, you know, some people pray, and they have all these nice words to sort of start the prayer, they, and then they, you know, they use all big theological words, and then they take the prayer up, and they fly the plane around, and then they bring it into a nice landing, and they have all these doxologies and things and, and that's fine. 

But what it does is intimidate other people in terms of prayer. You know, a lot of people don't pray in public. And the reason they don't pray in public is because the people that they heard, pray, use all these things, and it's like this complicated thing. Purpose of prayer and the worship service is to communicate to God. Okay, we're speaking to God. Number two, the prayer in the world worship services, the culmination of all the prayers of all the members throughout the week. Okay, it's not the substitute prayer. Some people, you know, this is the only time they pray is the prayer at church is the one prayer for the whole week. The prayer at the worship service needs to be the combination of all the prayers that people have been offering all week long. Every day has been a wife, families getting together and praying. And you know, if there's some way that you can symbolically do that, you know, for for a while in our church, we had people fill out a prayer journal, and we had them take their journal to church. And when we prayed in front of church, we had people hold up their prayer journal, and, Lord, as everyone holds up these prayers, there's filled with things that are in in these journals and we lift all of these things to you. 

So that the prayer Sunday is sort of encouraging of the prayer during the week and that's number three. It's an example that the prayer on Sundays an example To inspire each member to pray in their own lives. Well what kind of formats Can you sort of use in a church service and that the same formats can then be used in small groups and youth groups and in people's homes? A real popular one is acts A stands for adoration We praise you God for your greatness your your love for us Your mercy all the attributes of God. C his for confession We are sorry for you know not being good representatives of your love. We had opportunities to share and we did you know all the things that we're sorry for. T for Thanksgiving, we thank you God for your goodness, we thank you for your provision. We thank you for the ability to come together here. So all the things that we're thankful for. S for supplication now we ask God for things with several members in the hospital. 

We pray to them goes well we pray that you, you know, help each of our families and some of our marriages are struggling. And so these are the things that we're not asking for God. Now, you can take this x thing, and you can use them in your small groups. You can use them in your personal life, your marriage and your family. And what we've done in our church is we, you know, for a couple months, we said, let's use the acts. So everyone in the church is using the acts and then on Sunday, the one leading the prayer uses it too. And so models to everyone, this is what we're doing. And so some people take a few weeks to catch on, you know, you can't just tell people in the congregation look, we're doing this and then they automatically do it by the by the next day, they forgotten. So then the next Sunday, they're reminded again, and the next Sunday, they're reminded again, and the next Sunday, they're reminded again, the purpose of the acts prayer and the worship service, what is it to communicate to God? Number two, the culmination of all the prayers of all the members throughout the week. Number three, an example to inspire are each member to pray in their own life.

Another prayer format is the Lord's Prayer. Jesus said, this is an example of a prayer. So why don't we use it? Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. So the first part Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name Halloween is really our mayor name be holy, it's it's a it's it's offering praise to God. So what you could do is just start out the prayer Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. We praise you God, for your goodness, for your love for your mercy. You know, and again, it's all the attributes of God. And then when you're finished with that, you know, prayer prays that you go to the next line, Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is never.

And now, this is the part where we offer our lives to God, we ask God to take control of our families, our marriages, our work, our attitudes. And we go to the next section, Give us this day, our daily bread, our needs, what what, you know, what needs do we have now in this church? in our church, we're doing a whole renovation thing and people are volunteering, so we might pray for that. Next part, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. So this is the prayer of confession. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. These are prayers for a preservation and for safety and those kinds of concerns. And then we end with praise For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. So now that Lord's Prayer It can be done on Sunday, but then the people use it in their homes and in their small groups and, and it gets reinforced every Sunday for a couple of months. And people finally figure it out. And they start getting a habit of not just prayer on Sunday, but a prayer on Sunday, that covers the whole week. 

So again, the purpose of the Lord's Prayer in the worship service is to communicate to God to be the culmination of the prayers of all the members throughout the week, and an example to inspire each member to pray in their own lives. Now, one more SEVEN CONNECTIONS, you can use this as a format starts out with PERSONAL What are my personal concerns and personal needs? MARRIAGE so now you're praying for the marriages in your family, or in your congregation and then FAMILY , and then your small group or your friends or your support system? And finally, your CHURCH and then the KINGDOM? You know, we're concerned not just about our own church, but what God is doing all over the world. And then finally the WORLD that is not connected to Christ. And and this can be used in once again it can be used in your church service can be used in your small groups and in your homes. And then they sort of reinforce each other. And again, the purpose of the seven connections, prayer and the worship service is to communicate to God to be the combination of all the prayers of all the members throughout the week, and an example to expire each member to pray in their own life. Thank you