Cultivating a Prayer life, 26th April 2026

This week Pastor Josh begins our series on Prayer called: When We Pray. He looks at Exodus 33 and how we can implement prayer into our lives on a regular basis. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:27

I just want to start this morning from reading a passage. We're going to look at Exodus chapter 33 together this morning. But I want to start by reading a a portion of scripture from Matthew chapter seven beginning in verse twenty-one. So if you have your Bible with you, I think it'll come up on the screen as well. So it should. Perfect. The next slide, if that's okay. Matthew chapter seven. We're going to start in verse 21. And it says this. Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day many will say to me, Lord, Lord, didn't we prophesy in your name, drive out demons in your name, and do many miracles in your name? Then I will announce to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you lawbreakers. I never knew you. I think you can't help as a Christian and read that and not find it a sobering passage to read. Jesus is saying there's a day coming where we'll stand before him. And there's a chance that he says to us, we say to him, Lord, Lord, look at all these things I've done in your name. Look at all those times. I told people I was a Christian. Look at all those times. I call myself a Christian. And he there's a chance he turns around and says, I never knew you. Depart from me. I never knew you. And it leads us into that question this morning that I really want to look at. Do we know him? Do we truly know him? Because that's what Jesus is getting at in this passage. Is there so many Christians today, people who call themselves Christians, who don't actually have that relationship with God? I think sometimes we do a great job of acting the part as a Christian. We know what to say, we know what to do, we know what to say to people when we come to church on a Sunday. But do we genuinely know God? Do we as a church know God and know his presence? For many of us, I think that verse is challenging because we feel like maybe that would be us. We do all these things in the name of God, we call ourselves Christians, but it's all meaningless if we don't cultivate that relationship between us and God. It's all meaningless if we don't actually know God. How do we know Him? How do we get to know Him? It's really simple. It's through prayer. I think sometimes we overcomplicate what prayer is, but really simply prayer is communication, it's conversation. Any relationship in life that you want to grow, how do you grow it? You spend time with the person, you talk to them, you you have conversations with them, you get to know each other, and it's the exact same with God. How can we expect to know God when we spend very little time with him? When we spend very little time in prayer, not necessarily praying just to get what we can out of God, but praying to know him, to build that relationship between us and him. How can we know how God feels about situations in our life? How can we know where we should go in life? How can we know what we should do with our life? How can we know how we should serve him if we don't spend time getting to know him? As we spend time in prayer, we grow that relationship naturally with God. We don't need to overcomplicate it. The more time you spend between you and God, the closer you will feel with him. How is your prayer life? I think maybe, maybe it's just me and my mentality. But I feel like everyone in this room probably thinks it could be better. If we're sitting here thinking it's perfect, then maybe might I suggest that it could be better. That's what I'm trying to get at this moment. There's areas in our life where we can improve our prayer lives, and we're going to look over the next coming weeks at what prayer really is. We've titled it When We Pray, and we're going to look at what happens individually and as a church when we pray. Because the heartbeat, the lifeline of any church, really, any Christian, is prayer. Without prayer, without getting to know God and His presence, this is just a community group. It's His presence that makes the difference. Getting to know Him that makes the difference. And so, really, what I want to say this morning is that we need to grow in our prayer lives. We need to grow that relationship individually and as a church with God. Being a Christian and prayer go hand in hand. But for many of us, we miss out on that opportunity of growing that relationship with God because we don't spend the time with Him in prayer. And then something happens in your life. Or maybe someone comes up to you knowing that you're a Christian says, Can you pray for so and so? And you don't know where to start or you don't know what to do because you're distant from Him. You feel distant from Him because you haven't spent that time in prayer. I don't want for anyone to stand in that judgment day and Jesus to say, Depart from me, I never knew you. Prayer is how we grow that relationship individually and communally as a church as well. And we're going to look at prayer over the coming weeks. The passage that we're going to focus on this morning is Exodus chapter 33. It won't appear on the screen. But if you have your Bibles or a Bible on your phone, feel free to turn to it. And it concentrates on Moses, Moses and the people of Israel. Moses knew God closely. He had that close relationship with God. At the end of the passage that we're going to read, Moses cries out to God and says, God, let me see your glory. What a bold prayer that is to come to the point to pray. He's saying, God, let me see you. God answered his prayer. Doesn't show him his face. He goes on and he says, No human can see my face and live. But he does reveal himself to Moses in a special way. And this doesn't just happen. But it comes from Moses having that deep relationship with God. And that same deep relationship that we're going to read about in Exodus, that Moses has with God, that connection that he has is on offer for us today. Jesus himself, in that passage in Matthew, he encourages us to have that relationship with God. He doesn't want us getting to that day and him having to say, I never knew you. And we'll see from this passage in Exodus really the building blocks of starting that journey of prayer, the foundations to lay so that you can begin that journey. Exodus chapter 33 that we're going to read. It sits right after one of Israel's lowest moments. It comes straight after the golden calf incident in Exodus chapter 32. Moses was up in Mount Sinai receiving the covenant from God, and the people, while they were down below, got fed up, and they thought, why don't we make an idol? And they started worshiping this idol and they got distracted of the whole purpose and reason that were there in the first place. And if you read Exodus chapter 32, you see that God's anger burns, judgment falls, and Moses prays and he intercedes on behalf of these people to God. And so when we arrive in Exodus chapter 33, the relationship between God and the people of Israel is strained. But Moses still has this deep, this strong relationship with God, and he's able to communicate with God and pray to him and plead on behalf of the people of Israel. And we'll see that as we read it. So I'm going to start in verse 7 of chapter 33, and we'll just read to the end. If you have it with you, we'll read together. It says this. Now Moses took a tent and pitched it outside the camp, at a distance from the camp. He called it the tent of meeting. Anyone who wanted to consult the Lord would go to the tent of meeting that was outside the camp. Whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people would stand up, each one at the door of his tent, and they would watch Moses until he entered the tent. When Moses entered the tent, the pillar of cloud would come down and remain at the entrance to the tent, and the Lord would speak with Moses. As all the people saw the pillar of cloud remaining at the entrance to the tent, they would stand up, then bow and worship, each one at the door of his tent. The Lord would speak with Moses face to face, just as a man speaks with his friend. Then Moses would return to the camp. His assistant, the young man, Joshua, son of none, would not leave the inside of the tent. Moses said to the Lord, Look, you have told me lead this people up, but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. You said, I know you by name, and you have also found favour with me. Now if I have indeed found favour with you, please teach me your ways, and I will know you, so that I may find favour with you. Now consider that this nation is your people. And he replied, My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest. If your presence does not go, Moses responded to him, Don't make us go up from here. How will it be known that I and your people have found favour with you unless you go with us? I and your people will be distinguished by this from all other people on the face of the earth. The Lord answered Moses, I will do this very thing you have asked, for you have found favour with me, and I know you by name. Then Moses said, Please let me see your glory. He said, I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim the name the Lord before you. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. But he added, You cannot see my face, for humans cannot see me and live. The Lord said, Here is a place near me, you are to stand on the rock, and when my glory passes by, I will put you in the crevice of the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will take my hand away and you will see my back, but my face will not be seen. Amen. Amen. In that passage what we see really there is foundations that we can take to start our prayer life. Even if you have a prayer life, these are good foundations to put in place to begin that journey. The first one is what we read in verse 7, and it's we need to set up our tent. Set up your tent. It says there in verse 7. Now Moses took a tent and set it up outside the camp, far away from the camp, and he called it the tent of meeting. Moses simply went outside the camp and set up a tent. And he would go out to that tent, and that was the place that he would meet with God. All the people knew that. Moses knew that, and God would meet with him there. Can I ask this morning? Where is your tent? Where or when do you meet with God? It's the first basic of a good prayer life. That you have carved out a place, you've carved out a time, a habit in your life to meet with God on a daily basis. As you read on in that chapter, you see how close Moses was with God. That happened in the tent of meeting. It happened because Moses had a place where he could meet with God. To a Christian, this time between you and God is crucial. Many Christians call it the secret place because of what Jesus says in Matthew chapter 6, when he says, When you pray, go into your private room, shut the door and pray to your father who is in secret, and your father who sees in secret will reward you. Jesus is saying that true prayer consists of a relationship between two, between you and God. The writer Franz Baker says this What will it profit us to have great gifts of public prayer if we have no knowledge of an intimate relationship with God? Indeed, no matter who we are, if we haven't personally learned what it is to pray, we will meet an unknown God after death. Again, Franz Baker is referring to that passage we started our time with. That we only get to know God through spending time with him in prayer. Where is your tent? Where is your tent set up? Is it still in the box? Do you have a personal relationship with God? Have you started that practice, that habit of carving out time and space in your life between you and God? Because Jesus says that it's a must. It's interesting that Jesus says to shut the door on this room or to shut the door of the tent. We're to shut the door on the busyness of this world, on the distractions that are around us, shut the door on the things that try and lead us away from that time with God. There's no mistaking what Jesus is trying to say. That it's crucial that us as Christians have this time, that we have this space and this time between us and God with no distractions. That's the first step. It's simple, but it's crucial. We need to set up our tents. Make space and time in your life for prayer. Carve it out. Create a habit out of it. Make it a priority. I know myself that if I don't make my prayer time of God a priority and a specific time in the day, then I'll go through my day and forget to do it. It's just how my brain works. Carve out that time. Make space and time for him in your life. Because it's in that time that we begin to get to know God, that we grow that relationship. So, firstly, we need to set up our tent. Secondly, we need to cultivate closeness. Cultivate closeness. You'll see in verse 11 it says this. The Lord spoke with Moses face to face, just as a man speaks with his friend. That tells me Moses was close with God. Moses didn't actually see God face to face. This was a turn of phrase that was used. God himself says later in the chapter that we read that no human can see his face and live because of the glory that he beholds. But what this phrase is telling us is that there's a contrast between how Moses spoke to God and how other people spoke to God. Moses heard God clearly, he heard him plainly. He spoke to him as he was his friend. There was a closeness to their relationship. It was not distant in the slightest. There was an intimacy there, there was an accessibility there. And we can have that. We can have that with God, with the creator of this universe. But we need to cultivate it. We need to work on it. Cultivate simply means to prepare, it's a farming term for preparing the soil for the crops to grow. We need to prepare the soil of our lives to grow that relationship with God. We need to cultivate that closeness. It doesn't happen overnight. And it doesn't just happen, but we need to cultivate it and make it grow. If you look at the life of Moses up to this point, you see how he cultivated that closeness. Moses before God, you see moments of self-doubt between him and God. You see moments of fear in front of God. You see moments of him showing God his anger and his frustration. Moses doesn't once try to hide who he is before God. There's an honesty there, a realness between Moses and God. The people that you are closest to in this life are the people that you're your real self around. There's no facade, there's no pretense. They truly know who you really are. And that's the thing with God. He knows our every thought before we even think it. He knows the number of hairs on your head. And yet, so often, in prayer or just in front of God in general, we try to put up a pretense. Come before God, pretending to be something that we're not. We feel like we've got to be clean enough, right enough, good enough to come before God in prayer. How we cultivate a closeness to God like Moses is to spend time in prayer. But that time is wasted if we're not honest before God in that time. He wants our honesty. Bring him your burdens, bring him your worries, your fears, your doubts, your anger, your regrets. Bring him your joy, your happiness, your excitement, your passions. Because he can handle all of it. Don't start praying prayers that would never actually come out of your mouth. Pretending to be someone and something that you're not. Everyone in this room will pray to God differently. The way we speak is different to one another. The way we feel today is different to how someone else feels. Bring that to God and be honest in front of Him. How honest are you with God? We need to tear down that pretense to cultivate a closeness. We need to set up our tents, create space and time for God. Cultivate a closeness. Be real with him. Grow that space for that soil so that God can grow close to us. Thirdly, this morning. Don't move without him. Don't move without him. Also, I've just noticed, I think this is the third week in the row, all my points have been number one. Don't know what's going on there. But don't move without him. There's a moment in Exodus chapter 33 where everything seems to hang in the balance. The next step is right in front of them. God says that he'll send them forward. However, he also says that he will not go with them in the same way. Moses says in verse 15, If your presence does not go, Moses said to him, Don't make us go up from here. In other words, Moses has said to God, I'm not taking one more step if you are not in it. And here's the weight of that. Moses would have rather stayed in the wilderness with God than step into the promised land without him. And that's challenging for me because I think it contrasts a lot with how we live our lives. Because we become comfortable as Christians moving forward without ever asking whether God is truly with us in it. We build, we plan, we strategize, we preach, we serve, and we never stop to ask ourselves is his presence actually leading this? Or am I just managing it myself? Moses isn't impressed by the destination of God, isn't there? What in your life would look different if you stopped to ask the question, is God actually in this? Or am I just managing it myself? What are you doing in your life? What are you involved in? What habits do you have? What traditions do you take part in? Is it an addiction that you have? What in your life is going on? And if you were to stop and ask yourself, is God actually in this? What would have to change? Moses isn't captivated by this promise if it comes at the cost of God's presence. And that exposes something in us. Because often what we want is what God can give us, more than actually wanting God Himself. If we're honest. We want the breakthrough, the growth, the answer prayer, and there's nothing wrong with that. But Moses shows us a different posture and This prayer. He says, God, if you're not in that, I don't want it. And he goes even further. In verse 16, he says, What else will distinguish me and your people from all other people on the face of the earth apart from your presence? In other words, he's saying, What actually makes us different? Because it's not the land that you're telling us to go into. It's not the law that we have, it's not the territory that we have, it's not the traditions that we take part in. What makes us different is your presence. That's the defining mark of God's people. And just as that was true then, it's true today. It's not how talented we are, it's not how big we are as a church, it's not the excellence, our influence, but it's his presence that's the defining mark of us as Christians. Without his presence, Moses knew Israel then was just another nation. Without God's presence, this church is just an organization. And that's the tension that we sit in as Christians. Because are we content with activity, with busyness, without his presence? Are we satisfied with momentum but without God? Would we keep going if he stepped back? Moses wouldn't. He draws a line and he says, We don't move without you. And we can adopt that prayer in our lives too, to value God's presence above progress, to prioritize his nearness above outcomes, to refuse to settle for anything less than God Himself. I'm not saying we shouldn't be looking for progress or we shouldn't be looking for answer to prayer. But his presence should come first. If that progress comes at a cost of his presence, we shouldn't want it. And that's what Moses is saying. What would it look like this morning for you to pause and say, God, if you're not in this, I don't want it. For anything in your life. If you're not in this, I don't want it. We need to set up our tents, create space and time to pray to God, grow that relationship, cultivate a closeness, put in the work, be honest before God. We don't move without him. If his presence isn't in it, we don't want it. And then lastly, this morning, we can learn to pray boldly. It says there in verse 18. Then Moses said, Please, God, let me see your glory. Moses has already asked for a lot up to this point. Most of us would probably stop there and be happy with that. Play it safe, be grateful, thank God, and move on. Moses doesn't stop there. In verse 18, he says, Please let me see your glory. It's not a small prayer, it's not a safe prayer. But it's a bold prayer. It's a risky prayer. It's an unthinkable request to ask the God of heaven, of all creation, let me see you. God, would you reveal yourself to me in your fullness? And what's striking is as we read that chapter, God answers his prayer. I think often we shrink in our prayers to what feels reasonable. We pray for maybe what feels safe, what feels appropriate, what feels manageable. Moses again shows a different way. He prays out of that relationship that he has with God. He prays out of his hunger and his desire to know God more. Because bold prayers don't come from arrogance, but they come from intimacy, they come from closeness. Moses isn't a stranger making demands to God. But he's been in his tent, he's been cultivating that closeness. He's told God, I'm not moving without your presence. So when he says, God, show me your glory, he's not overstepping the mark, but he's leaning in to what God has in store for him. And that's the invitation for us. We can lean in to what God has in this life for us. Stop holding back in our prayers. When was the last time you asked God for something that only he could do? A miracle? A move of God in your life, in your family's life, in your church's life. We worship the God of the impossible. And yet often we limit our prayers at things we could probably do ourselves. Moses shows us the example that we're to pray boldly. Ask God to move in impossible ways in our lives that we don't have to hold back. Over this next number of weeks, we're going to be looking more at prayer. But to start with this morning, I think these are the foundations for a healthy, strong prayer life that we can put into our lives on a daily basis. We need to set up our tent. Create space in your life for God to grow in that relationship. Cultivate that closeness. Be honest before him. Take away the walls between you and God and be honest. He already knows what you're thinking before you think it. But he wants our honesty. So we can be real with him and grow with him. Don't move without him. If he's not in it, we don't want it. We desire his presence first and foremost. And then lastly, pray boldly. Ask to see God's glory in your life. Ask to see him move in your life in ways that are unimaginable, ways that are impossible. Because that is the God that we worship. I heard this week that a church without prayer is like an army without weapons. And so really this morning I want to encourage us all to pray, to lean into what God has for us in prayer. Over the course of this week on our social media, we have prayers lined up to go out to help on that journey if you would like to take part in that. If you think, you know what, I'd like to pray, but maybe I don't know where to start. We're going to put some prayers up online that you can pray in your own time, and then hopefully that would lead into spending more time in prayer. We also meet twice a week in the church to pray. A church without prayer is like an army without weapons. This world needs Christians who pray. This world to see God move, we need to cry out for Him and pray boldly. We would love it if you were able to join us for these prayer meetings. It's Tuesday at 1 and Sunday, I think it's actually at 10.15 to about 10.45. We go into that back room there and pray before the service. But everyone is welcome at these. Even if you just want to come and see what it's like. No one's going to force you to pray on the spot. No one's going to force you to do anything you're not comfortable with. But it's spending that time leaning into what God has for us. We're setting up our tents and saying, God, we want your presence in this place. We want to see your glory in our life and in the church's life. And so we're going to pray boldly for you to move. Hopefully, that's some help this morning to setting up a prayer life. We'll continue looking at prayer over the next number of weeks, but for now, just as the worship team come back up front, let us pray together. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you and we're grateful that we have the ability to pray to you, Lord, that you are the creator of this universe. You are the one who has created all of us, and yet we can grow in our relationship with you. Lord, we thank you for your closeness, for your nearness. We thank you that your presence goes before us and yet is with us at the same time. Lord, help us to set up our tents. Help us to create spaces and times in our life, a habit of prayer where we can grow in that closeness to you. Lord, help us to be honest before you in our prayer lives. Help us to take away the facades or the walls that we've put up. Lord, help us to know what your presence in our life looks like. So that we know where in our life it isn't. And we know that if you're not in it, Father, we don't want it. Lord, in this morning, we pray for every person in here, Lord, for every situation in here. That we would see your glory. That we would see you move in ways unimaginable to us. Amen.