Sunday message · Spiritual Habits series
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Message Summary
Pastor Phillip Santillan closes the Spiritual Habits series with the habit of prayer from Luke 11:1–10. Most of us want a vibrant spiritual life, he says, yet when we try to practice spiritual habits they can still feel like a mystery. He admits he sometimes feels guilty for not doing them enough, and when people confess they don’t feel like reading their Bible, he is tempted to answer, “Me too.” Guilt turns into confusion and eventually into seasons of spiritual emptiness.
Refueling spiritually can feel like stopping for gas: nobody enjoys it, Phil jokes. Yet spiritual habits are what God uses to make us more like Jesus and bring vibrancy to our spiritual lives, and many find prayer the hardest of them. Some fear sounding awkward in public prayer, but in everyday life many stop praying because God didn’t answer the way they thought he should, or things got worse. They often conclude that something is wrong with them.
In Luke 11, Jesus is praying when a disciple asks, “Lord, teach us to pray.” Jesus sums up what he had taught before: tell God he is great, put his kingdom above yours, and ask for what you need, whether daily bread, forgiveness or help against temptation. He could have taught them anything about prayer, Phil notes, yet he spends little time on how to pray and moves straight to what to do when God doesn’t seem to answer.
Jesus then tells of a man who knocks on a friend’s door at midnight to borrow bread for an unexpected guest. The friend, already in bed with his family, refuses, but finally gets up because of the man’s shameless persistence. That doesn’t make God a grumpy neighbor. God is not bothered by our persistence, Phil says, and sometimes he is moved by it. Ask, seek and knock are simply three ways of saying the same thing for emphasis: don’t stop.
Persistent prayer can move the heart of God, and it also changes us. God is not a cosmic vending machine and he doesn’t work on our timetable, but as we keep praying he may reveal something he wants to do in us, or show us that we have been asking for the wrong thing. Persistence also honors God, because it says we depend on him. So Phil asks whether there is anything we care about so passionately that we are willing to beat down the door of heaven for something wildly beyond our ability.
Phil prays every day for Clarity to become a people of hope and restoration to those in their everyday circles of influence. “I don’t want to spend my entire adult life saying prayers but never really praying,” he says. He invites everyone to find a time and a place to tell God how great he is, surrender their kingdom to his, look to him for what they need, and repent of sin. And don’t quit, because one day your prayers may move the heart of God, or God may use them to change yours.
