Praying Properly

Make sure your attitude and atmosphere are proper

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:18

Greetings and welcome to this current episode of Become a Competent Biblical Counselor. I'm Dr. Dave Jones, and today's episode is entitled Praying Properly. Praying Properly. So on one of our last broadcasts, we were talking about how to handle problems at home, particularly when they're with your spouse or your children or with your parents. Particularly also when one of those parties at home is himself or herself the problem. Somebody who's tied up in drugs or somebody who's in difficulty with drunkenness or homosexuality or whatever the problem may be, it's not the problem that we're concerned about so much in these broadcasts. We've talked about those matters on other broadcasts, and we'll continue to do so from various angles in the future. But what we're concerned about right now in this series of discussions on how to handle those problems and those people in your home, the people you must live with day by day who brings difficulties and heartache and sorrow to you. Last time we were trying to say that in order to do so, the first thing that you need is hope. The Bible encourages you, indeed urges you and commands you to be expectantly hopeful. First of all, we saw last time that there is hope for you. You can handle whatever that difficulty may shape up to be. First Corinthians 10 13 makes that very clear. We discussed that a bit last time where God says that no trial overtakes you except those which are common to other people. So you're not the only one who's ever had to face them, and others have faced these problems successfully with Christ. He goes on in that passage to say that God is faithful, and he will not allow you to be tested beyond that you are able to bear up under. That's a wonderful promise that God always suits the difficulty, no matter how serious it may seem, to where you are if you are his child, that that difficulty never gets beyond you, that it's always something that you can handle if you handle it in his way and his strength, according to his word. And then secondly, we saw that there is not only hope for you in the problem in handling it, but there is reason to hope for the counselee. Now we know that even the most serious problems according to 1 Corinthians 6, 9 to 11, drunkards, homosexuals, fornicators, adulterers, and so on, people who are in the most serious of life's difficulties, tangled up in these life-dominating problems, even those people can leave these things behind when the grace of God gets a hold of their lives. So you must not give up hope on your spouse or your parents or your children or whomever these close persons are in your home, in your family. You must continue to hope, and that's where we left off last time. The importance of hope, because hope leads to endurance, and without that hope, you will give up. You won't hang in there and you won't continue to do the things that God wants you to do. Now we want to discuss what God wants you to do when there's somebody like that in your home. The first thing, of course, that you already know about and that probably already are engaged in is to pray. We know plainly, according to James 5.16, that the effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much. Now God does not promise that he will answer all of your prayers your way or in your time. He does promise to answer all of his children's prayers. Sometimes his answer is no, but that's a perfectly acceptable answer. And at other times he says you're not ready for it, nor are the circumstances ready for it, nor am I ready for it. I'm not answering this prayer the way you want now. Sometimes he changes the answer. We want one kind of an answer, but he gives us an entirely different sort of answer, or a slightly different sort of answer. And then sometimes he gives us precisely what we ask for. And of course, it's dangerous to get precisely what we ask for at times. Sometimes we want something that we shouldn't want. But in this matter, praying for the salvation or for the change or the alteration of a loved one's life, we surely cannot be praying for something that we ought not to pray for. And so our prayer is valid as far as what we pray for. But we must go to God with the attitude that his will, not ours, must be done. There have been wives who have prayed all their lives for the husband's salvation, and yet those husbands have never come to know the Lord except at the funeral of the wife. But God answered the prayer. God answered it yes, but he didn't answer it in the time that the wife would have liked to have seen that answer. Now, of course, going to be with the Lord, seeing things as he sees them, understanding why God waited, willing to accept God's will now and understand what God's will later, that believer who has gone to be with God knows that this was best because all things that God does are best. Now the second thing you must do is to develop the right sort of atmosphere in the home. You see, if you have a highly critical attitude, if you have a miserable, gloomy attitude, if you have an attitude of impatience and criticism, you're only going to create more problems rather than solve them. A person who, let's say, is involved in drinking, when he comes home and gets a lot of criticism, a lot of nagging, and a lot of trouble at home, will only run away to drown those troubles in the bottle once more. Not that this of course is the fault necessarily of the person who criticizes. There could be constructive criticism at times, but it is the fault of the drunkard that he goes and tries to solve his problems in a way that doesn't solve it at all by running to the bottle. But if your criticism is other than constructive, if it's not truly helpful, if it doesn't turn to nagging and it does turn into carping criticism, or it does turn into impatience and all the rest of this, if the atmosphere in the home is not pleasant and not Christian and not cheerful and not positive, then the drunkard coming home will want to get away from that and will and very soon will be running off to his buddies and to the bottle again. You see, the atmosphere that you create in the home is altogether very important. In fact, if you have a comfortable home for your husband, let's say, and he comes home and recognizes how wonderful, how comfortable, how warm and wonderful it is to be at home, there's going to be a lot going on for trying to help him to move out of that sin, particularly if he's a believer who's caught in the sin. Even, however, if he isn't a believer, according to 1 Peter 3, the wife who lives this way in a quiet and peaceful manner, not nagging her husband, will do a lot toward winning him for Jesus Christ. So I think you need to work hard on developing the right kind of atmosphere, not only putting matters in God's hands, knowing that the effectual prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much, but realizing that you must be righteous when you pray, that the home must really conform to the will of God when you pray, that you can't ask God to bless through your life and through an answer to your prayers when you are unwilling to do things that are in harmony with those prayers. So look around your home today. Get yourself ready if your husband is going to come home tonight, get yourself ready for him. Figure out how to do some pleasant and really kindly and loving things for him. Figure out how to have an atmosphere with the children and with yourself that's going to be warm and congenial, one in which Christ is going to stand out as the head of his home, one in which he is going to protrude as the one that the husband must really grapple with rather than with you and your nastiness or the children and their problems. Why not go to work on creating the kind of atmosphere that is consistent with the prayer that you have so often uttered that God would save your husband or change his life? Let's talk to God about this matter right now. Lord, you know that there are wives and husbands and children and parents, all of whom have prayed, but they have not lived consistently with those prayers. Help, Lord, the righteous atmospheres and homes to develop around the people who pray, that their prayers may be effective because they are the prayers of righteous people. We ask in Christ's name. Amen.