How to Pray | Guest Speaker Scott Robbins | It Matters How You Live

Introduction: The Divine Timing of God

Hey, good morning. Welcome to church. This morning, Scott, a guy who has been a brother to me for many years, is going to share with us. He has been here before, so I do not want to have a long introduction.

But I do want to say that I have been thinking a lot lately. I go through these spaces in my life where I just ask questions about why I do all the things I do. Why do I wake up the way I wake up? Why do I go to bed the way I go to bed? Why do I work where I work? I just take this internal inventory of my life. A lot of times, nothing changes; I am just making sure that I am on the path that I feel the Lord wants. Sometimes I see things that I can tune up, dial in, complete, throw away, or add something new. As I was thinking about this season of my life, I noticed I do not have that schedule that just kind of happens.

I have been thinking a lot the last two weeks about why we do church the way we do church, and why this and why that—all the whys. I have heard from some different people and had some different conversations. I think, first off, that the Lord's timing is always really good. A few weeks back, I asked Scott to share because he has this wonderful message that fits in great with our series about "The Way"—how right believing leads to right action. When I thought about asking him, he told me this was the day he could come, and it all worked out for it to be today.

As I was thinking, praying, and talking to the Lord, one of the things I realized is that other people are starting to talk to me as well. When we reach that place where we feel a little bit of tension, a little bit of pressure, a little bit of unsettling, or a question of why our heads are down where we are, that is usually when the Lord has something really important to say. We are not just coasting through life, and we are not driving past the same street signs we see all the time or doing all the same stuff. Even if we are, we notice things we did not notice before.

I believe there is the gift of prophecy where people will prophesy, but then I also think there is the gift of the prophet from Ephesians, right? Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. I firmly believe in my heart that Scott is that prophet gift to the body of Christ. God's timing is good and right. I do not mean a prophet in the sense of all this nonsense you see on the internet where people prophesy. Not everybody on the internet is a terrible person, but the nature of the internet is that there is lots of room for error. I mean a prophet in the sense of the Old Testament style of prophet, where I think God really has something to say to us, to share with us, and He is sending someone to share that with us. Maybe it will pluck your heart in a place you did not expect, or maybe it will sound like a sermon everywhere else.

What I want to encourage you to do is let's just turn our hearts and our minds—everything we can turn—to the Lord. I know Scott's heart would not be that you would look to him for answers, but rather that he would say the things that God wants you to hear. I just want to encourage us to see what the Lord is up to. Maybe things change, maybe things stay the same and God reaffirms. Each of us is going to interact with the Lord a little bit differently today. So, Scott.

Understanding Prayer and Our Position as God's Child

Check, check. There we are. It is going to get hot real fast. This is for the online folks, yes? Wherever you are—where is the camera? Right there, okay. I always feel so strange, like I am in the Matrix or something, for those few people online. The online thing started for me when you guys remember that thing called COVID. The churches and staff at the time decided we were going to have to start doing this, and I was the guinea pig for it. It was weird but fun. Part of me gets this little sense of "here we go again" when I see a camera, but it is good to see people face to face. It really is.

I want to talk to you today about prayer and what it means to be God's child. I am a recovering pastor, which is why I wear hats and things like this, meaning I was in the Western church system for a long time. My hardwiring now, in doing marketplace ministry, is to be a part of the body and not feel like I am at work. When I get to teach or speak to any congregation, it is a massive honor to me, and I try to make it as familial as I can so that it does not feel pedagogical, where I am talking and you are just listening. I can see you; I am not a television, so I will interact as much as I can with you guys.

I am going to try to take information that is very long-winded and condense it into about forty minutes. I will try to be done right at noon. We'll see. If you start falling asleep, I do not care; the Holy Spirit can speak to you just as effectively. Just pray with me really quick. Let's see what God does, and we will start.

Lord, I love You so very much, and I thank You for Your Word. I thank You for the body, and I thank You for this expression of the body. You are so good, and Your steadfast love endures forever. I am incredibly honored today to speak to Your people. Lord, would You open our understanding up? Would You speak with clarity through me as Your vessel and as Your son, and allow me to encourage Your people as You see fit? I pray all of this in Your wonderful name, Jesus, our King. Amen.

A Revelatory Question on Campus

Prayer is always a major discussion among Christians. People ask, "How do you pray?" or say, "I don't like praying," "I don't pray well," or "I don't pray good". I hear so many things said about prayer. Years ago, when I was still on staff at Alliance Bible, I spent a lot of time at Baylor University with our undergrads and graduate students. This particular time, I was visiting Baylor and met with a freshman who was new to our congregation at the time. She was seeking, wanting to learn more about Jesus and His Word, and I love that stuff. I pray that God sends people into my life who want to know that. As we were sitting outside on a beautiful spring day, she asked, "Scott, what is prayer? How do I pray"?

You can get asked that question a thousand times and give a very general answer, but this particular time, the Lord, for whatever reason, gave me something that I knew in the moment was different. It was not like a lightning bolt, but as I said it, I remember thinking that it was revelatory for me. It got my attention, and then I realized I needed to go understand why I knew it was true. I had to show from Scripture how I knew it was true because it came out so naturally.

The Relational Cycle of P.R.A.Y.

This is what I told her: "The best way I can explain prayer is that it is positional first. It is the position you have in your heart before God—not literally your physical posture like being on your knees, standing, or lying on the floor, but the position that you occupy in Jesus. Because of that position, prayer is relational. Because of the position you have, you can relate to God; without that position, you cannot relate. Because you relate well with God, it is relational.

Through that relationship, you learn how to agree with God. As you agree with God, you learn His ways and you agree with Him more. The more you learn to agree with Him, the more you find you yearn for Him. When you yearn for Him, you become more excited about the fact that you are positionally in Jesus, and you rejoice over that. Because you are in that position in Jesus Christ, you want to relate more, so you relate more. Then you learn to agree more, and you yearn more."

Honestly, it is just a cycle. The more you yearn, the more you operate from your position, the more you relate, the more you agree, and the more you yearn. That is prayer.

She later told me during her senior year at Baylor—almost four years after that freshman conversation—that the interaction was used to save her life. She was actually on the verge of taking her life that day, which I did not know at the time. What God gave her and gave me that day profoundly changed my life, and I knew I had to study this deeply.

Time Under Tension in the Word

Just so you know, this is not a situation where I think God gave me something and I am going to immediately go write a book about it. This comes from stacks on stacks of journals—I almost brought them for you guys to see—of time spent with Jesus in His Word, writing, contemplating, and asking questions over the things He says and does. I have stacks on stacks of commentaries and personal notes. It did not come from just a passing thought; it came from a lot of time under tension with God in His Word, let's put it that way.

I do not like reading the Bible just for raw information or isolated facts. I think the Bible should be read for the narrative and the heart of the Author, who is God. The literal facts are tertiary; it is true because God speaks it, so I love to read it to know His heart. When you spend that much time with someone and He gives you a massive spiritual payload, you realize it came from that shared time, and you have to go hammer it out.

Today, I am going to give you a 30,000-foot flyover of this acronym, P.R.A.Y.: Position, Relationship, Agreement, and Yearning. When I have taught this at conferences or retreats, each session lasted an hour and ten minutes per letter. If I start speaking like an auctioneer with my northern Florida accent and you cannot understand me, I apologize in advance, as I am trying to get a lot of information out.

Jesus in Gethsemane: The Ultimate Model of P.R.A.Y.

I want to show you something from Mark chapter 14 that will get this ball rolling, specifically in verse 36. If you are familiar with the Gospel of Mark, the Passover has happened, the Lord's Supper is instituted, and Jesus reveals the betrayal that is coming. Then He goes into Gethsemane to pray. This is the prayer that Jesus prays before the Father: "Abba, Father, all things are possible for You. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, or what I want, but what You want."

"Abba, Father"—that is Position. He is affirming His position as the Son right out of the gate. He stands securely on the position that He is the beloved Son. Then He relates to Him by knowing who He is: "All things are possible for You ." He follows up that incredible statement of full obedience—having a 100% success rate with the Father in everything He has ever done—by stating what is true, and then He enters into agreement. He is saying, "My position is solid in You. I know who I am. I relate to You as my Father, and I agree with the fact that all things are possible for You ." That is the basis He lays before the Father.

Then He says, "Remove this cup from me ." This is the most volatile time in human existence. The entire point of Scripture where our existence was held in the balance is right here. This is a terrifying moment in history. The irony is that the disciples previously thought the most terrifying moment was when Jesus was asleep in the boat during the storm. They lost their minds and said, "Do You not care that we are perishing ?" Jesus was sleeping then, but during this moment in Gethsemane, they were legitimately on the precipice of perishing. If Jesus bails out on this, we are finished. If the Father responds to the Son by granting an escape—and the Son only does what the Father wants, and all His prayers are answered—we are done.

Jesus lays out a sentence: "All things are possible for You ." That is someone who knows how to relate and state what is true. He says, "Remove this cup from me," and as you let that sit for a minute, you realize we have to get to the next part of the prayer. The irony of the moment is that the disciples are sleeping. When they thought they were dying in the storm, they were awake and Jesus was sleeping. But now, when humanity is actually on the verge of perishing should the Father pull the plug, the disciples are sleeping while Jesus is interceding.

Then He expresses the Yearning: "But I don't yearn for what I want; I yearn for what You want ." This is the beloved Son of God, who understands His position perfectly, asking for something. This is the exact temptation that Satan intended for Him: "If You are the Son of God, just use Your power to get out of this jam. If You really are His beloved, eternally existing Son ." Essentially, Satan had never seen the Son in the flesh before this season; this was the first time. When Satan tempted Him, he was saying, "Just do what You have always done. Take what You are ." But Christ emptied Himself of that divine prerogative and authority to be fully submissive to the Father, just as a son should be.

The Toddler Paradigm & The Holy Spirit’s Intercession

How you relate to God positionally speaking means you learn who he is in relationship. You spend time with him, but there's a role in this and Paul actually describes it in Romans 8. I'm not going to read the entire text, but I'm going to summarize it for you: it is essentially this—put to death the things that are in you because if you are of the Spirit, then everything else is dead. If you live by the Spirit, you cannot live by the flesh. So here is what you get; here is the actual role of the relationship: put to death the deeds of the body, and make disciples.

You are holy. You are not merely trying to be holy; you are holy, so you must live as a holy being. What is your charge? Oh, it is to make disciples of all nations, to truly know God in his Word and to do it. That is it. As you step into that reality, you begin to agree with God on his terms. The deeper level of a relationship requires that you actually have a lot of those terms hammered out.

To illustrate how this works, consider my youngest son. Who intercedes for him every single time he tries to talk to me? His mother does. I am his father, and my wife intercedes for him especially because she is the comforter; she is with him all the time. In this scenario, my wife functions exactly how God the Holy Spirit functions. She is always interpreting for him. The Scripture says that the Spirit intercedes with groanings too deep for words.

When my son is in a room and he is just making noise, crying out, "Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn," my wife looks over and says, "Oh, that is so precious! Did you hear what he just said?" And I look back at her and say, "Honestly, I just heard a bunch of noise." But she replies, "No, he is telling you that he wants to go fishing, and he is reminding you that green is his favorite color." And I am left standing there thinking, Wow, is that really what you heard from that noise?

But guess what? I listen to her interpretation, and I go to him. Why do I go to him in the morning the very moment he cries out from his crib? You guys know why? It is not because he has performed well; it is because he is my son. I do not love him in order for him to become my son; I love him because he is my son. The sonship completely precedes the love. I cannot have that specific love without the relationship already being established. This is one of the most unique, defining features of God in his very being as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Paul says to the Roman church in his magnum opus, the letter to the Romans: "Oh, guys, if you live by the Spirit of God, you are a child of God." And if you are a child of God, you have the Spirit, and the very reason you are saved is so that we can boldly cry out, "Abba, Father!"

The Surfing Analogy & The Dynamics of Spiritual Power

Let me give you another illustration to tie this all back together for you. Think about a massive wave pool, or surfing in the ocean. If you know how the pool works, you notice a clear pattern. Everyone who is completely new to surfing sees the massive wave coming, and they immediately start paddling or running away from it because it absolutely terrifies them. But everyone who is highly experienced and good at surfing—those who are seasoned—they see that exact same wave, and they start paddling directly towards it. Why do they do that? Because they deeply understand the harnessing of that power.

When you are surfing, you are not actually controlling the wave. Technically speaking, the wave is completely controlling you. But what you must do is unify yourself with it. You have to seat yourself and completely unify yourself with its momentum. In that position, you reflect on the moment, but you also reflect the raw energy of the wave itself. You cannot just go hog wild doing whatever you want on a wave, because the wave will instantly wipe you out if you do not respect its nature.

This is exactly what it means to operate in spiritual power, because that is who I am in Christ. When I align myself with the Spirit's momentum, I can feel God's intense joy over me. I can hear the Father saying, "You are my beloved son. In you, I am well pleased. Now, swing for the fences."

God tells us: "Be specific when you talk to me. Do not worry about the channel of interpretation; I will nail it perfectly." When you pray in this manner, you will always get exactly what you need. Sometimes you will get what you want, but you will always, always get what you need. Which means if you receive a hard, clear "no" from God, it is simply because you are acting like a toddler at best, and you may be fighting against yourself in a way that leads to death. But that is entirely okay. He is not angry with you. He just looks down, smiles gently, and says, "Hey, let's take a quick break. Let's pray."

Concluding Prayer

Lord Jesus, thank you so much for your goodness. Thank you so deeply for your perfect life, for your sacrificial death, for your victorious resurrection, for your glorious ascension, and for your life right now as you sit enthroned at the right hand of the Father, actively interceding for us. Lord, you are so incredibly good. And I thank you that you have securely placed us in this position of sonship. May we walk out of here today living, relating, agreeing, and yearning from that reality. In your wonderful name, Jesus, our King, amen.