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Prayer is meant to be the bedrock of Christian life. Yet many struggle in this area. Today, Dr. Lai Pakwa, who is the principal of Bible Graduate School of Theology, shares with us on the fundamentals of prayer.

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Good morning to all of you. It's my pleasure to be here today again. I think it's been one year since I've uh came here to just worship with you. And even though I come from kind of a Bible Presbyterian background, I've always enjoyed Anglican liturgical services. This uh reminds me fondly of my time in Durham University when I joined an Anglican church for three years. So it's a pleasure to just go through liturgy with you. Well, um, as usual, I bring my greetings from the Biblical Graduate School of Theology. It's quite a mouthful, so uh always remember that it's the easier way to boys and girls study together, and you should be able to get that right. So, as mentioned, um, boys and girls study together because you've basically had one vision, which is God is the Lord of all creation, not only on our Sundays, but also from our Mondays to Saturdays, when you are working, writing emails, caring for patients, teaching your children. Um, God is there. Christ is with us, His Spirit is guiding us. And so every moment of that, therefore, is also a moment of prayer, a moment of discerning how God can guide all of us there. And um, it's there. Whether you are watching a movie, dancing also, uh, borroom dancing. How many of you actually go for ballroom dancing here? Um is it's quite something that some of our elderly do um after they retired in my church. So, anyway, um, Christ is there, he's everywhere. And so, because of that, it's important for us to learn to discern how to uh pray and connect with him more. Now, I um prayer, if you think about it, uh it's something that we do, uh, it's the whole of our Christian life. Right at the beginning, we pray uh the sinner's prayer for many of us. Um I come from I was trained by Campus Christian in NTU. I just realized one person that met there outside is probably of my generation, um, uh Bun Chin. Uh many of us here have been uh Christians for several decades, and so we have prayed for that amount of time, right? And we all agree that prayer is the arena, it's the space where we encounter God, um, where we know him deeper, where we deepen our spiritual lives. But if you ask ourselves what is prayer, um, and the and basically that would be the aim of today's sermon to help us to just have a refresher, to explore the biblical foundations of prayer. And what I'd like to do to tackle that is basically, first of all, to look at the who who is praying. Uh, who are we as prayers? And before examining the Lord's prayer and what he can teach us about prayer. I understand uh you it may have been announced uh that um next Saturday there will be a prayer workshop where we explore further how do we deepen ourselves in prayer through a series of prayer disciplines and how can we encounter Christ through that. Now, before that, let's just commit our time to God in prayer. Let's come to Christ together. Let's pray. Our dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for loving us so much that you sent us your only Son Jesus Christ to be born for us 2000 years ago and to live with us and then to suffer and die for our sins. Thank you most gloriously by the power of your spirits, that Jesus has risen from the dead, so that everyone who believes in him can be called a son and daughter of God, so that by his salvation we have access to you, Lord, not only as our God and creator, but as our Father. So, Lord, we thank you for this wonderful gift, and we ask that grant us your grace over the next few days that as we grow and deepen in our understanding and practice of prayer, we may have a deeper and better grasp of your love for us in Jesus Christ. And so in his name we pray. Amen. Now, when we speak of prayer, we often think of how people pray, how they address God. Um, if you are within the more older traditions, there is Jesus prayer that some of us pray, Lord Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me, sinner. And some of us, when we pray, we mumble, some of us we like to pray in groups, some of us like to pray in quiet. My whole point is that we are um there are there are different ways in which we enjoy prayer. But in order to do that, when we pray, we don't pray outside of the context of where we who we are, um, how we are informed. We pray with a mentality, this this is how someone should pray. And then we basically imitate that. So it's it's important, therefore, to therefore work out who we ask as prayers, and then to use that to inform us, and then also to correct some perceptions that we may have about prayer. And which is why I start off with this text called uh in Mark chapter 12. Well, we are very familiar with that, it's been read for us. It basically says Jesus telling everyone, the Lord our God is one, and therefore you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, with our strength also, and also to love our neighbor. Now, this is my favorite verse because it's basically summarized for us here uh the crux, the goal of a Christian life. And it is taking Deuteronomy 6, 4 to 5 and Leviticus and putting it together so that we always know when we love God, we must love our neighbor, we must love our neighbor, it is informed by the love of God. So these two must come together and cannot be separated. Um, sometimes we do separate that, and whenever that happens, trouble starts. But today we're just going to focus on loving the Lord our God with all our hearts, soul, and mind. And what does that mean? Well, I'd like to start off with um this the word hearts, which basically in Greek is called cardiac. That's the word that gave us cardiology, uh, which is the medicine of the hearts. Now, I do want to draw attention to the fact that oftentimes nowadays, when you speak of the heart, we speak of feelings, we speak of emotions. So we call our spouses sweet hearts and not sweet minds, right? Um sounds a bit strange. Um because we associate heart with affections. And therefore, we also speak of holistic education as training the heart and the hands and the head. This the way we feel, the way we do, the way we think. Now, I just want to draw attention to the fact that in the original Greek, it involves heart, emotion, heart emotion involves emotions, but also involves our thoughts, our purposes, our understanding. So a lot of what we associate with the mind, our conscience, our personality. So it's far more than just feeling emotions, but the whole of our personhood is there. So it's like the whole command center of our lives is involved in the heart. Okay, so that's the first thing. When when we are to pray as prayers and praying with the heart, our emotions are involved, but our personality is involved, our intellect is also involved. Our training, our disciplines are all involved. Now, the soul. Let's move on to the soul. The soul, the Greek word is piski, which gives us psychology. And for the Greeks, the soul is seen as the immortal, invisible aspect of our being. For Christians, when uh Mark uses it, most likely he uses it in a kind of Hebrew context, meaning he's referring in his back of his mind, really, the word nafesh, which means animating life. In Chinese, you have this word caution ming. So it is that thing that basically is your life. So maybe pray with your uh soul, it's praying with the whole of your life, not just the invisible part we talked about. Now, the next two words are more straightforward. Okay, praying with our mind, with our intellect, with our understanding, and praying with our strength, with our bodily strength, with our whole person. Now, I want to um highlight this and I've analyzed this in four different in its four different dimensions, because I want to say that oftentimes, depending on the tradition where you come from, well, particularly for my traditions as Presbyterians, we are too cognitive. We only pray with our minds, you know. Um, we don't engage the other aspects of who we are as persons. And now I just want to draw attention to all of us, whichever tradition we come from, um, when we pray, allow our intellect, allow our personality, allow our emotions, affections to come in. Okay? Um, that is so, so important. Because we are not just the mind, we're not just the heart, not just the body, we are everything integrated as one. So this is who we are as prayers. Okay? But what's the implication? Well, the first implication, at least for many of us, um, is that we I do want to talk about uh bringing our emotions and feelings and affections to God. Um by this I say that some of us think that we must be prim and proper when we come before God. No, we feel very angry, cannot tell God. When we uh feel very sad, also maybe we cannot tell God. But the reality is God knows it already. And more importantly, He wants us to bring those emotional stress, emotional struggles that we have to God, and also um joy. So when you're joyful, we pray to God with joy. But when we grieve, when we struggle, when we feel hurt, depressed, we can also bring that to God, to be honest with Him. Because this is who we are as prayers, and I'm so glad that um in the Psalms, you have a lot of examples of all these things. David overwhelmed um in Psalm 31. Okay, is it here? He basically says, Oh Lord, be gracious to me, I am in distress. My eye is wasted from grief. He's been crying and crying and crying, you know. So if uh no, if if Pastor Daniel comes in, he's been crying for the whole day, you feel that he's there's something real seriously wrong, right? Um uh we think that way, but David was quite happy to admit that no, I've been crying for the whole day, the whole eye almost fall out already because he's been crying for the whole day. My soul, my life is spent with sorrow, my years with sighing, my strength fails because of my own iniquity, my bones waste away. So we can pour out our hearts to God. Don't have to be prim and proper. You know, sometimes our society trains us too much to be prim and proper, but really to our God, He's the most intimate of persons with us. Pour out our hearts to Him. Okay, that's the first thing that we need to remember when we talk about praying to God with our affections. And the other one I do want to say is that sometimes God can lead through our emotions, our affections. What do I mean by this? Oftentimes people then say to us, no, don't be emotional, or if we can say to other people, no, um, or we talk about a colleague, the guy is too emotional. And we always say it not to praise the person, but to say it in a kind of negative context. But I do want to say that, well, if God has gifted up with the new human nature of being um affective, emotional, God must certainly be able to use that emotions to lead us closer into Him. Which is why in the prayer traditions, um, if we talk about consolation and desolations, um positive affections that lead us to faith, hope, and love in Christ, and negative affections, desolations that lead us away from him. And so discerning which emotions is working in our hearts and following which one is actually an important thing to learn. But to deny that is um that it's important, to deny its role in our spiritual growth is something that we need to avoid. That is something that comes from the enlightenment of uh philosophy of the 17th to 18th century. So, to summarize, therefore, I'm not asking you to follow every single emotion, but I'm asking you to develop the ability to discern how your affections operate and how God uses that to guide us so that it leads us closer to Him and not away from Him. So basically, that's the first part of who we are as prayers. We are to love our whole God with our whole personality and affections, and I draw attention to the fact that listen to our affections, express that to in our prayer to God, but we also must develop the ability to discern how it leads us away or towards God. Now, the next thing is then we switch to how do we pray to God? Well, I use here uh a book that I like, Gordon Smith Teach Us to Pray. Um, I don't get uh any commission uh putting up there, but it's a nice, affordable book you can get on Amazon Kindle. But he walks through in this book uh the Lord's Prayer again, very refreshing. And the Lord's Prayer is probably one of the earliest prayers that we we pray as a Christian. In fact, if you look at church tradition as I teach in church history, um the apostle script, the Lord's Prayer are two things that every priest will make sure the congregation memorizes. Um that's because um 80-90% of the congregation up until the 19th century are probably illiterate. And therefore, if you want to guarantee that they remember something of the Christian faith, these are the two things that they need to memorize. And we are all familiar with the Lord's Prayer, and um, let me see here. Okay, let's pray that together. So, since I put it up, let's pray the Lord's Prayer together. Let's come to God. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Now give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Now, let me just unpack the Lord's Prayer and particularly to focus on the attitudes and the posture of prayer that we that it sort of assumes. The first is to focus on our Father. Now, when we check with friends, whether Christians, non-Christians, then we ask, where's God? Where's God now? Right? Some scientists say, you know, God doesn't exist. In fact, we are just one tiny small speck in this vast universe. Life is meaningless. But the Lord's Prayer reminds us that no, that's not true. Uh God is here. When we pray, we assume that He's not far away, but He's actually here with us. Now, our Muslim friends get this, so they speak of God as most compassionate, most merciful. And we can agree with this description, but as Christians, you want to say more, be there in Christ to say that He is also our Father. So, Father has shaped and understood through the intimate relationship between Jesus and His Father. Now, some of us, particularly Asian fathers, are not the most affectionate uh parents, but what we want to say is that when we call God Father, we are not projecting uh our perfections of our father to God. We are trying to say we are entering into the relationship that Jesus shared with his father, a kind of intimate love that we read about in the scriptures. And Jesus invites us to join him and call God Father. And this is a wonderful mystery where as we engage God as Father, we are praying in the spirit to him, and God leads us through his spirit to call him our father. Now, what are some insights about this privilege? Therefore, number one, we need to be careful sometimes. Um, and I've observed I myself sometimes make a mistake that when we when we pray to God, we sometimes use God the Father or the Lord as full stop, comma, you know uh we in our prayers, we father here, father there, not as addressing him as father, but using it as full stop. Um that's not uh appropriate. We need to be careful about that. Um so when we pray to God as our father, we need to be more intentional, okay? Um we are when we are intentional, that means we are not just mouthing, oh God is father, but really to reflect on the fact that we are entering into this privilege of calling God Father, just as Jesus is, and to realize that he is here with us. He's here when we are taking the train back on the MRT or when you are driving back. So to be intentional to develop that sense that God is present here with us. And this privilege of calling him father is one because Jesus has died for us. Now, all these things we know. So I'm calling us therefore to be intentional in remembering. Because if we don't do that, we are just going through motion, our prayers don't change us. So the first thing about intentionality is to uh about prayer is really intentionality to be attentive that God is really here with us. Now the next thing is hello beyond. Basically focusing on the purpose of our lives because as children of God, we are to honor God. And the implication, therefore, is our lives is not here to glorify and please ourselves, it's not to draw um attention to ourselves, it's not to um to live out the Singapore dream or the American dream, whatever that is. It's our life is basically called, when we are loved, called to love God, is to honor God's purposes, to seek his kingdom here as it is in heaven, in our societies, in our workplaces, not just in churches, not just when we attend rallies, Christian rallies. Okay, so what does that mean? Which means that when we are praying, we are and every moment of our lives as you walk, it's actually a prayer, if you think about that. When we are attuning our minds to God, attending that He's in our workplaces, it's prayer. So it's so what happens therefore when we do that is when we pray as the type of emails, uh, work on our Excel spreadsheets, as we sweep the floor, um, we are trying to glorify God in that way. Okay. Um now I'm not saying that we shouldn't plan. Uh we uh I'm not sure that when we are all focused on the purpose of God, we don't focus on our corporate goals, our societal goals, or whatsoever. Um, these two things we must learn to align them and and make sure they are compatible. What I'm trying to say is that yes, companies, society may set goals and aspirations that um uh that may seem good, okay, which is why all of us will try our best to educate our children, uh send them to the best schools, you know, some people um some move their house very close to the school that they want. Um that is understandable. Some of them will tell that uh well, that's in some churches that I know, or uh parents behave in a way that's not very different from non-Christians. Oh, you must go if you are very good, become a doctor, if not a lawyer, if not this, not that. Um, we follow the kind of mindset that Singaporeans have. Now, the the when we follow the purposes of God in our prayer, we must, yes, on the one hand, attend to the fact that um in order to live well and flourish financially in Singapore, there are purposes that we can work towards. Uh their goals are similar as Singaporeans, but at the same time, God may have a different plan. Um, his purposes for us are broader than what Singaporeans define as success. So as we pray, we must work with that with our dynamics. Okay, um your son may be called to be an artist, may be called into the hospitality industry, may not be something that uh that that the society sees as successful. But as we attend to God, as we pray, He will work with us so that our sense of vocation, our sense of what is his purposes for our lives will be unfold to be greater than what our culture defines for us. So that's the important thing that I want to uh therefore say that when we pray, your kingdom come, we must allow God to work in us to broaden the sense of what we can do and not allow our culture defined it to be much narrower. There's a prayer that um okay, there's a prayer uh in the in an old ancient tradition, 500 years old, um, it basically says that in our everyday life, we must hold ourselves in balance before all the created gifts that God has given us. And so we should not fix our desires on health and sickness, wealth and poverty, success and failure, a long life or a short one. Because everything that we do, whether you are working, retired, studying, whether you do well at O levels or not so well at A levels, whether you are the senior management or whether you're just a technical manager or executive, whatsoever, everything has the potential of calling forth in us a deeper response to our life in God. So when we pray and seek your kingdom come, we are really seeking for the enlargement of God's purposes in our lives. Okay? And um, so something to think about, therefore, is when we pray is to discern between uh what is good and what's the better thing that God has called us to do. Sometimes not according to our culture, sometimes it is, um, but God has a plan that to lead us in a journey forward. Okay, now let's move on to our um daily bread. Now, when early Christians heard this, and you bear in mind most early Christians are poor, and most of them are living on daily wage, daily laborers. So you have seen a parable of laborers waiting for jobs and then uh the landowner coming to pick people for work. It's quite a common practice, even when you go to some developing countries like in India, that happens. And therefore, the scenario for us is in first century Christianity, Christians are very, very poor. And so for them, getting their daily bread is a concern for us, for them. Now, most Christians, uh most Singaporeans, uh, by the grace of God are not living in abject poverty. Um nevertheless, the prayer for daily bread is still a reminder that we have daily concerns. Sometimes many of us, uh some of us, um don't want to go to work because it's a toxic environment. So that is a daily concern. Some of us, uh the pursuit of daily bread is basically more energy for the day to take care of our children, uh, a sick loved one. Um sometimes is your work you have reached a stage that you don't feel that is meaningful, and so the daily bread is learning to seek meaning there. And so for us, um daily bread again is a call for us to be intentional, to be attentive to our needs, um, and then to commit that to God's, to focus on what we need every day, each day, but not to to grieve over what has happened yesterday, not to be fearful about what's going to come tomorrow, but really to focus on what God wants to give to us today, Sunday, um to just focus on what God will unfold before us and watch how He replies. Now, moving on, okay, forgive us our debts. Now, this is an interesting twist to our identity. On the one hand, we are children of God, we are adopted by God, our Father in Christ. On the other hand, we are also sinners in need of God's mercy. And the degree in which we understand this is reflected in our ability to forgive others. There are many of us who believe we are right, and therefore we go everywhere criticizing others. And if not careful, um, basically, this is a reflection of our spiritual lack of depth. Right? The more we understand God's forgiveness, the more we understand how messed up we are, the easier, the freer we are to forgive one another. Right? So we can't forgive, but oftentimes it is that dynamics as at work. Now, just not to say that sometimes people hurt us very deeply. Um spouse may have divorced us, betrayed us, our bosses backstabbed us, and struggling with that forgiveness is a reality. And we need to acknowledge that. But at the same time, we've got to hold that in balance with the fact that God has also forgiven us, and we need to learn to forgive others. Okay, so so something to think about to hold in balance when we can't forgive. The question to therefore for us to attend to is to ask ourselves, why so? Um do I really understand how messed up I am? Um, how tempted I am, how proud I am, and and as we attend to our own sins and our own weaknesses, that opens up space for us to forgive other people. Okay, and now the verse goes on to say, lead us not into temptation. Now, God doesn't tempt us, but what Christ is saying here is still that our temptation is real. And so attentiveness in prayer is to be aware of how we are tempted. Uh, the problem of studying doctoral degrees and PhDs and so on, or being professionals in our fields is that we become very precise in criticizing other people. No, not agaga, but very precise, very sharp one. No. Um uh I've been sitting, oftentimes sitting in the pills, and whenever the preacher preaches and starts referring to church history, that's when I will hold myself back and keep quiet. Because mostly they get it wrong and I cannot criticize. Now, the point, therefore, is that we are always tempted, um, particularly in areas where we are good at the better you are in something, the more easier is it for us to criticize the person. Right? Uh you don't any of you have this problem? Or is it just me? Right? So it's a double-edged sword. The better you are in something, the more critical we are also of that because our standards are very different, right? So I never I tell my wife I never criticize her food or anybody's food because I can't cook. Right? Uh so it's it's like that. So our temptations are real. Uh, don't fool ourselves. Uh be open about that. And the and the real the reality is as as much as we know our temptations, if we pray and struggle with that, it makes us humble people. But that actually makes us more effective and safe leaders uh that we can trust. Anyone who goes around knows, always giving you instruction, you should do this, you should do that. Um not aware of why this person is always so critical. Therefore, pride is lingering around, not aware of all that. Nobody wants to trust this person as a leader. If you want to be an effective leader in your own sphere of influence, developing a sense of our sins, a sense of our struggles and our temptation will make us very safe leaders to work with. I think that's important. So let me just sum up. Therefore, we are we begin with Mark 12 when we revisit a very familiar commandment, loving God with all our heart, soul, and mind. And the point I want to make there is to give weight, attend to our affections, our emotions, our personality, bring that to God. Don't deny that. If we struggle, tell God we struggle. It is okay, one. Don't believe me, read through the Psalms, David, really give it out to God. No, some of the Psalms are actually quite violent. There's one to say that so angry, you want to, you curse and wanted the enemy's babies to be smashed against the head. No, it's something very embarrassing to preach. And I think some of those of us who are preachers prefer to avoid that sermon text. But it's there because God wants us to be robust and to really uh face up to our emotions, bring it before Him. So it's okay to show our affections. Number two, we return to the Lord's Prayer, where the reminder there is basically to attend to God's guidance in our lives, to attend to our temptations, to attend to the need to forgive, and to attend that we are called here in our very short period of life not to pursue the Singapore dream, not to pursue the standards that our bosses have, but to pursue what God needs for us. And to the extent that it aligns with what our culture, our bosses say, um good for us, but sometimes it doesn't align. And but yet it's okay. God will lead us through to help us to navigate those ambiguities. So, all this may still sound very abstract, but I want to give you another picture about prayer. When we come to God in prayer, and this picture is this. What is prayer? Prayer is just sitting there with a loved one, like a friend, like a spouse, like your child, that you can speak freely, you can joke, you know, be relaxed, chill, right? You know that you are fully accepted. But yet at the same time, when the person speaks to listen attentively, you know, not checking your phones and all those things. Um to attend to each other, to enjoy each other. That's all to it, right? So when I'm coming on the MIT, it's a long trip from Beauty World, you know, downtown line, north south line. Um, just to remind ourselves that God is there, and that's it. No, uh, yes, I'm very embarrassed, forgot to pray for quite a long time, several hours. Uh but it's okay. Uh, God is not there always pointing at us. He's like the prodigal son's father. Every time we turn back, he's going to welcome us back. So remember to turn back. Remember that he's here with us and just to enjoy his presence with us. So let's pray and come to him again. Let's seek Jesus. Our dear Lord Jesus Christ, thank you for loving us so much more than we can ever imagine. Sometimes we are embarrassed because we didn't do our quiet time, forgot our prayers, scope vulgar language, whatever. But you have died for all this. And so help us to have the courage to turn to you, to turn like the prodigal son to the father, always turning, knowing that you will run first to us because you love us so much. And may that love motivate us to have that courage to walk to you, to pray boldly, to share our inner life with you, and to enjoy the presence and your love. So have mercy on us, in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

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We pray that you've been ministered to by the Word of God today. If you'd like to know more about Eastern Christian Church, please visit our website at yccanglican.com. Have a blessed day.