Felt Needs Impel Us to Pray

Introduction: God's Word and the Privilege of Prayer

0:02 The following message was delivered on Sunday morning, February 7th, 1993, at the Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey. While walking into the building before the Sunday school hour, I happened to be holding the door for one of the little girls of one of our members and asked her if the snow reminded her of any text of scripture, and thankfully she did remember that text. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.

0:43 And there is another passage that we ought to think of whenever we see the snow and hear the rain upon the roof. It is God's wonderful word of promise that as the rain cometh down and the snow from heaven and returns not thither, but once again. It waters the earth and makes it bring forth and bud, and giveth seed to the sower and bread to the eater. So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth. It shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please,

1:23 and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. Let us take God's shalls. And make them the basis of our corporate plea that God will indeed bless the preaching of his word. Let us pray.

1:44 Father, we thank you that you speak to us in figures and images that touch us in our own real world. And as the snow blankets the earth, and as again and again you have watered the earth about us, and we have heard the rain pelting on the very roof of this building, O Lord, we hold you to your promise that as surely as the snow that covers the ground and the rain that comes down from heaven is not evaporated back into clouds to come down as snow or rain again until it has accomplished your purpose,

2:25 so, O God, we would hold you to your word that the preparation and prayer preceding this hour and then the delivery, of the fruit of that preparation, even your holy word, would prosper in the purposes for which you have sent it forth. O Lord, we hold you to your own word of promise, and may it please you to accomplish a work of saving mercy, of sanctifying grace and light in the hearts of your people in the preaching of this your holy word. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.

No Substitutes for God's Appointed Means of Grace

3:07 Now, I'm quite confident that most every one of you sitting here has, at one time or another, eaten a meal in some kind of a public eating establishment, whether the fast food variety a la Burger King or McDonald's or such, or whether in an elegant restaurant where, if you were a man, you had to wear a jacket and a tie. And in any public eating place, from the fast food variety to the more elegant restaurant, somewhere in that restaurant, usually on each table,

3:51 there will be found a container that holds little packets. And in those packets will either be found plain white sugar or some of the more popular sugar substitutes, such as sweet and low or equal. And...

4:11 if for one reason or another you choose to sweeten your coffee or your tea with one of those sugar substitutes, most who do so would agree that the substitute is quite effective in giving the sweet taste that you desire in your coffee or in your tea. And in that sense, it could be properly called an effective sugar substitute. However, according to the Scriptures, there are no effective substitutes for those activities, disciplines, and relationships

4:52 which God has appointed not to sweeten our lives, but to nourish us in the ways of His truth and of His grace. And it is this very truth which we are currently considering as we continue our examination of the Bible, as we continue our examination of the major principles of living the Christian life, those principles which, if understood properly, constitute a balanced New Testament teaching and expectation with reference to living the Christian life. And we are presently considering this fifth major principle,

5:34 namely, that there are no effective substitutes for the divinely appointed means of grace in living the Christian life. Now, in seeking to identify those means of grace appointed by God, I've suggested that we should consider them under two major groupings. First, the individual or private means of grace, and then secondly, the corporate or social means of grace. Foremost among the private means of grace is that of prayer.

Prayer as a Precious Privilege: The Compulsion of Felt Needs

6:11 And in seeking to open up this subject, we've examined the matter of the habit and the disposition of private prayer, first of all, as a clearly revealed duty. We know that secret prayer as habit and disposition is our duty from the express commands of the Lord and His apostles, from the assumption of the apostolic writers that the people of God will pray, and from the fact that the people of God have the Lord Jesus as their pattern in life. But now, for several Lord's Days, we've been considering this matter of the habit

6:55 and the disposition of personal or secret or private prayer, not from the standpoint of it being a clearly revealed duty, but we've been contemplating prayer as an unspeakably precious privilege. In so doing, we've looked at three lines of biblical evidence with respect to this privilege. We have seen that the work of Christ, past and present, secures the privilege of prayer. We have discovered that the gift of the Spirit inclines us to and assists us in the privilege of prayer.

7:37 And thirdly, that the promises of God allure and encourage us to avail ourselves of the privilege of prayer. Now today, we take up the fourth and final line of thought which enters into our consideration of prayer as an unspeakably precious privilege. And that fourth line of biblical truth is this, that the felt needs of every real Christian compel us to avail ourselves of the privilege of prayer.

8:17 The felt need or needs of every real Christian compel us to avail ourselves of the privilege of prayer. And what I am determined to prove from the Scriptures, is that even if prayer were not a Christian's clearly revealed duty, yet that which God has done in every Christian in making him a new creature, that work is of such a nature that it brings to the Christian felt needs which compel him to pray.

9:00 God's work of grace, while meeting some of the most deeply felt needs of the awakened soul, imparts other needs that will be the indwelling house companions of every Christian until he enters the presence of God by death or is ushered in at the coming of the Lord Jesus. Now while I openly acknowledge that the intensity of these felt needs varies and fluctuates in the life of every believer, and while freely confessing my own sense

9:43 of the fluctuation of these felt needs, I'm prepared to assert that there is no true Christian who is a stranger to these felt needs as part of the overall power of prayer. And that these needs do indeed drive him, they compel him to pray. And I want you to consider with me four such felt needs, and this list is far from exhaustive, but I believe will demonstrate to the conviction of anyone subject to the word of God

Felt Need 1: Intimate Communion with God

10:26 that these are the felt needs, not of a select few or the vast majority of, but of every single man or woman who knows anything of a supernatural work of grace in his heart. And it is these felt needs which compel a true believer to the habit and to the disposition of secret prayer. And the first is this, the felt need to experience intimate communion with God. The felt need to experience intimate communion with God.

11:09 One of the supreme blessings bestowed on all believers under the new covenant is the blessing of personal heart knowledge of the living God himself. If you will turn to the book of Hebrews with me, you will see one of the explicit statements with reference to this particular blessing being imparted to every single member of the new covenant community. In Hebrews chapter 8, the writer to the Hebrews, quoting from Jeremiah 31, writes in verse 8, For finding fault with them,

11:53 he saith, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. And he contrasts that covenant with the old covenant established at Sinai. And he says in this new covenant, this is what I will do. Verse 11, And they shall not teach every man his fellow citizen, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord.

12:29 For they shall all know me, from the least to the greatest of them. For I will be merciful to their iniquities, and their sins will I remember no more. Now here in this passage, among some of the dominant blessings of the new covenant, mentioned in Jeremiah 31, is this central blessing of the new covenant, that everyone who is brought to participate in its blessings, founded upon the once for all bloodletting of the Son of God, who said, This is the new covenant in my blood,

13:12 that blessing is nothing less than personal heart knowledge of an acquaintance with the living God. There need not be internal evangelism among the true members of that community. They need not say one to another, Know the Lord, for they shall all know me from the least unto the greatest. And while there is great diversity among the members of that community in terms of gift, in terms of talent, in terms of opportunity, etc.

13:49 There is no diversity in this from the least, from the most insignificant to the greatest, by whatever standard we measure the least and the greatest. This reality is the possession of every one of them. They shall know the Lord himself. They shall be introduced into heart communion with the living God.

14:14 And our Lord Jesus expressed this in a little different terminology, but nonetheless expressed it very clearly in his high priestly prayer in John 17. And verse 3. He is asking that he now be glorified. He affirms that the Father has given him authority over all flesh, to the end that he should actually confer eternal life upon all whom the Father had given him.

14:47 And then in verse 3 he tells us what is the essence of this eternal life. And this is life eternal, that they should have their sins pardoned and no longer fear hell. Now that is a glorious truth, but that is not what our Lord underlines. Nor does it say, and this is life eternal, that the burden of their sins will be lifted and they will have joy and peace, though that is indeed a blessed truth.

15:17 But our Lord says, and this is life eternal, that they should know thee, the only true God, and him whom thou didst serve, and even Jesus Christ. Here the very essence of eternal life, the life that Jesus has been given authority to confer upon all his people is described in terms of coming to a heart acquaintance with God and with his Son, Jesus Christ. Therefore it is not surprising when we turn to other portions of the New Testament to see the people of God described as those who have been effectually called

16:01 and introduced and brought into the experience of realized communion with God and with his Son. For example, in 1 Corinthians 1 in verse 9, Paul says, God is faithful by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. And here the very end of our effectual calling is described in terms of planting us into koinonia, into fellowship, into shared life with our Lord Jesus Christ. Again, in John's epistle that we are studying in our adult class,

16:45 and that study will be picked up again, God willing, in a few weeks, John tells us in 1 John chapter 1 that the end for which the gospel has been proclaimed, the gospel rooted in this actual hearing and seeing and touching of the word of life who is the Lord Jesus. 1 John 1 verse 3, That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you that ye also may have fellowship with us. Yea, and our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. Now surely these texts establish the point that there is no one who is truly converted

17:29 who is not brought into a heart acquaintance with the living God and with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. It lies at the very center of God's work of redemptive grace and mercy. Now it can be demonstrated that no man ever had a saving acquaintance with the Father and the Son who was not made hungry for an increasing heart knowledge of the God whom he's come to know in the initial actings of grace and the Savior into whose fellowship he was introduced

18:13 in the initial act of grace. Anyone who says, I know enough of God and of Christ to get me to heaven and that's all I desire is utterly self-deceived. He knows nothing of God and of Christ. For that knowledge that we experience on the threshold, though satisfying and is of such a nature as to fill us with joy unspeakable and full of glory, it also puts us on a lifetime quest to know that God more and to know that Savior more intimately.

18:52 And the greatest pain to the true child of God is the pain of either broken communion with his God, a season of God's hiding of his face, or a season of staleness in one's relationship to God and to the Lord Jesus Christ. You have marvelous expressions of this in many of the Psalms. I turn almost arbitrarily to two of them. In Psalm 42, we are taken, as it were, into the very echo chamber of the heart of David.

19:30 And here he cries out, as the heart, that is, the deer, panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? The psalmist here has been cut off from the public gathering with the people of God.

20:03 He remembers the joy that he had going with them in the special days of celebrating the goodness of God to his people. And he said it is nothing short of an internal spiritual experience that binds a counterpart in the sensation of physical thirst when the lips are parched and burning, when that young deer that has been running through the woods, is seeking out a place where it can plunge its dry and exhausted muzzle and drink deeply. He says, so my soul pants after God. Psalm 63 and verse 1

20:46 is a similar expression. Psalm 63 and verse 1. O God, thou art my God. You see, this is not a man who has any doubt that God is his God.

20:59 He knows that God is his God. Yet he says, earnestly will I seek thee. My soul thirsteth for thee. My flesh longs for thee in a dry and weary land where no water is.

21:13 So have I looked upon thee in the sanctuary to see thy power and thy glory. Because thy lovingkindness is better than life, my lips shall praise thee. Here is a man who knows God. And yet he says that I thirst.

21:30 And this thirst actually is expressed in terms of a physical yearning. My heart, my soul, and my flesh long for thee. Every true Christian can sing with Bernard of Clairvaux, Jesus, thou joy of loving hearts, thou fount of life, thou light of men. From the best-blessed earth in parts we turn unfilled to thee again.

22:03 We taste thee, O thou living bread, and long to feast upon thee still. We drink of thee the fountainhead and thirst from thee to fill. Our restless spirits yearn for thee. Where'er our changeful lot is cast, glad when thy grace is found.

22:31 By thy gracious smile we see, blessed when by faith we hold thee fast. He captured the essence of this teaching when the psalmist said in Psalm 34, 8, O taste and see that the Lord is good. Why did he not say, O feast and see? O drink to the full and see?

22:50 For he knew if men but tasted they would be on a lifetime thirst for more. O taste and see that the Lord is good. Now since the activity of prayer is called a drawing near to God, since the activity of prayer is likened to entrance into more intimate communion with our God, not in any way saying that communion with God cannot be experienced in the most mundane of circumstances, Scripture nonetheless says that prayer in a unique sense is a drawing near unto God. Our Lord said when we would pray

23:35 we are to enter into our closet and shut the door and pray to our Father in secret. He realized that more intimate, intensified communion and he himself exemplifies it. For though he prayed without ceasing and lived in the disposition of prayer, we read this morning, that it came to pass in a certain place, Jesus was praying and when he ceased, that is when he ceased from this concentrated exercise of secret prayer as a discipline through which he himself experienced more intimate, intensified

24:18 communion with his Father. And so for every true Christian, the felt need to experience intimate communion with God will indeed impel him to pray. And the person who says he is a Christian, who has come within the orbit of the blessings of the New Covenant, that he has come to know God, has been called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ, and has enough of God in his so-called initial conversion experience, and has no burning, pressured sense of need to deepen, to expand, to nurture, to cultivate,

25:03 to drink in the sheer delight of that intimate communion with God that is known in secret prayer, that person is a stranger to the grace of God. He knows nothing of what it is to truly know God. Listen to Spurgeon commenting on this very principle. He says, if our piety can live without God, it is not of divine creating.

25:34 If our piety can live without God, it is not of divine creating. It is but a dream. For if God had begotten it, it would wait upon him as the flowers wait upon the dew. The flowers wait upon the dew, so the newborn soul that has a heavenly birth turns to its God and waits for the distillation of his own grace and presence in that more intimate communion that is known only in the habit and in the disposition of secret prayer.

Felt Need 2: More Sanctifying Grace from God

26:13 Therefore, secret prayer as a privilege is not only a privilege secured by the work of Christ, a privilege to which we are inclined and in which we are assisted by the gift of the Spirit. It is not only a privilege to which we are allured and encouraged by the promises, but it is a privilege to which we are impelled and driven by our felt need. Felt need number one to experience intimate communion with God, but felt need number two is the felt need to seek more sanctifying grace from God.

26:56 The felt need to seek more sanctifying grace from God. Another of the great blessings bestowed by God under the new covenant is that of a new heart. A heart powerfully inclined to a life of obedience to God's law and conformity to God's Son. Again, turn to the book of Hebrews, this time to chapter 10.

27:23 And here, quoting again from Jeremiah 31, referring to the new covenant promise, the writer to the Hebrews says in verse 15, the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us, for after he had said, this is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws in their heart, and upon their mind also will I write them. God is using figurative language here, and he says, as in the parallel passage in Ezekiel 36, I will take out the heart of stone, I will give them a heart of flesh, I will place my spirit within them,

28:07 then God says, I'll put my laws in their heart, and upon their minds will I write them. What is he saying? He is saying, I will so transform them in the depths of their being, that from those who were governed by a principle of lawlessness and disobedience and insubordination to my law, Romans 8, 7, the carnal mind is enmity against God, it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be, I will so work in them that from the depths of their being there will be a positive inclination to obey me in terms of my revealed will. God is not saying that I will obliterate all objective standards

28:51 and every man will have an internal monitor to tell him right from wrong, absolutely not. When what God promised is our experience, then we can say with the psalmist, I delight to do thy will, O my God, yea, thy law is within my heart. Now where was the will of God revealed in his objective precepts? But what the psalmist is saying is that you have given me in the depths of my being an affinity to keep that law.

29:21 No longer am I dominated by the carnal mind that is enmity against God, but by the mind of the psalmist, by the spirit that has an affinity to be conformed to the law of God. And when God works that in us and grants his spirit to us, we are not long out of the womb of our spiritual birth with a heart yearning to be holy and to please and serve God. But we begin to discover the great realities that would oppose us in the outworking of those new desires. We begin to discover the reality of indwelling sin.

30:04 And some of us can remember how God, as it were, almost sheltered us from how powerful that commodity was in the early days of our Christian experience. When we can remember, as it were, almost floating into the place of prayer, finding those struggles with distracting thoughts in the place of prayer. If anyone had stuck Romans 7, verses 14 and following under our noses and said, that's you, we would have said, that's not me. And God wonderfully preserved us from feeling the full weight of what was there and got us established.

30:40 And I've spoken to not a few of you who have said the same thing. But before long, you join the rest of us mortals who say, I find then a law that to me who would do good, evil is present. For the good that I would, I do not. And the evil that I would not, that I do, oh wretched man that I am.

31:04 And while we have been given a new heart and God has placed His Spirit within us and from the depths of our being we are committed to a life of universal holiness, starting with the first motions and springs of motive and thought and desire and touching the farthest reaches of where we go and what we say and what we do. We find that at every point that we would do good, we find this contrary principle warring against the law of our minds and bringing us into captivity to that law that is in our flesh. And then we begin to understand Paul's words in Galatians 5, 17,

31:49 the flesh lusteth against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh. And these two are contrary, the one to the other, so that you cannot do the things that you would. And we realize that though we have in no way given up that standard of conformity to God's law, that desire to be made like His Son, to obey Him and please Him in all things, we find the reality of indwelling sin in the flesh. We soon find that there's a world system which though we've been delivered from its dominion over us and we have been brought into the kingdom of God's dear Son, it declares no truce with us, having lost one of its subjects.

32:34 It is determined to go after us and like a mighty whirlpool to suck us from the edges right down into the vortex and drown us in damnable worldliness. That's why Paul had to write in Romans 12 and verse 2, be not conformed to this world. Don't let this world squeeze you into its mold. It will, without consulting with you, exert its pressure.

33:00 Don't let it be effectual. And we find the reality that there is a living, real, personal embodiment of all evil called the devil, who according to 1 Peter 5, 8, is now our adversary. He was not our adversary when we were his dupes and his lackeys, when we, according to Ephesians 2, 3, carried out his purposes and will. Or 2 Timothy chapter 2 and verse 26, having been taken captive by him unto his will, all was well.

33:34 But when we left his ranks to become the bond slaves of Christ, we were declared to be his enemies. And Peter says, he, like a roaring lion, walks out seeking whom he may devour. What happens in that context? The Christian has a felt need to seek more sanctifying grace from God.

33:59 A felt need, in the language of Matthew 26, 41, to watch and to pray, lest he enter into temptation. A felt need to pray, as we read this morning, lead us not into temptation. Why? Because temptation is to my remaining sin what glowing coals are to dry tinder.

34:27 What living spots, works are to a room full of natural gas. And we know there is that explosiveness and ignitability of our remaining sin. And we have a felt need to seek more sanctifying grace from God. We learn that we are called upon, according to Romans 8, 13, by the Spirit to put to death the deeds of the flesh.

34:55 We learn from 2 Corinthians 3, 18 that it's by the Spirit that we are transformed into the likeness of Christ from one stage of glory to another. We learn that if we are to manifest love and joy and peace and longsuffering and gentleness, goodness, faith and meekness and self-control, those things are the fruit of the Spirit. So what happens? We have a felt need to go to the throne of grace for everything from wisdom to discern Satan's devices.

35:29 Grace to withstand him steadfastly in the faith. We go to the throne of grace for greater supplies of the Spirit that we might be enabled to mortify the deeds of the flesh. We go to our exalted Christ that he would fill us with the Spirit that the ninefold fruit of the Spirit would be manifested in us. Secret or private prayer as habit and disposition will be the experience of every true child of God.

36:02 Why? Because every true child of God wants to be a holy man or a principle of commitment to universal holiness was implanted in him in his conversion. And I said at the outset that there are times when that desire is more intense than others. I know that.

36:25 I know the Bible teaches it. I know my own heart. But he whose life is a patterned divorce, a pattern devoid of the flesh. Just when you've got a financial problem or a physical problem, but to pray in secret when all the bills are paid and you're as healthy as an angel.

36:46 You've still got plenty of business at the throne of grace because of your indwelling sin, because of a seductive and bewitching world, because of a vicious and a power. And if you're sitting here and you claim to be a Christian and you have no such felt need, my friend, you are self-diseased. You're no more a Christian in this pulpit. And so I say that the privilege of prayer is a privilege to which we are not only invited by the work of Christ, to which we are inclined by the gift of the Spirit, to which we are drawn by the promises, but we're driven by our felt needs.

Felt Need 3: Express Gratitude to God

37:30 The need, first of all, as we have seen for more intimate communion with God. Secondly, the need for more sanctifying grace. Then thirdly, every true Christian is impelled to secret prayer by the felt need to express his gratitude to God. By the felt need to express his gratitude to God.

38:01 One of the dominant characteristics of the ungodly, according to Romans chapter 1, is the sin of ingratitude. In that chapter where Paul is describing in graphic detail what happens when men rule out God and worship and serve the creature more than the Creator, he says in Romans 1.21, because that knowing God they glorified Him not as God, neither gave thanks. Neither gave thanks, but became vain in their reasonings and their senseless heart was darkened.

38:39 As long as man is true to what he knows when he looks up at the heavens above him and sees the fingerprints of God smothering his handiwork in the sun and the moon and the stars and the galaxies, when man looks within to the microcosm of the way he is made, he sees God's fingerprints all over him. And even though he may not savingly know this God, there is a reflexive desire to prostrate oneself and give thanks. Oh God, I thank you. I'm not a worm, but a man.

39:14 A man made with the capacity to see in your handiwork your fingerprints and to go from the fingerprints of your work to think of how majestic and glorious a being you are, that you are a God of everlasting power and God-ness in your very being. You see, as long as man follows that instinct, he can never come up with theories that rule God out of his universe. So he's got to first of all well up and stop up the well of pressure. That's the term I want, to stop up the well of pressure to fall down and give thanks.

39:54 So when he stops giving thanks, now he can back off in a so-called scientific method, begin to, quote, objectively look at God's world. What nonsense. He's already subject put blinders on because everything he sees is smothered with the fingerprints of God and ought to prostrate him on his face in thanks. But ingratitude becomes the baseline of his impiety and his attempts to live a life detached from God and his law and his ways.

40:27 But when God regenerates a man or woman and dethrones this sin and all of its allies, he imparts a disposition of gratitude and thankfulness to himself. Therefore, the man or woman whose sins are forgiven, who's been rescued from hell, who is enveloped in God's grace, who is enveloped in God's covenant faithfulness, must express his gratitude to God. He will have some of the disposition captured by the Psalmist in Psalm 103. Some of that disposition.

41:02 I'm not saying the same degree, but something in kind. Bless Jehovah, O my soul, and all that is within me. Bless His holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits.

41:24 Who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases, who redeemeth thy life from destruction, who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies, who satisfieth thy desire with good things, so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle. Then he goes on to extol various aspects of the goodness and mercy of God. Until, in a kind of frustration, he calls upon the whole created order in verses 20 to 22 to join him in this disposition of thankfulness. Bless Jehovah, ye His angels.

42:01 Think of it. A little creature on the dust barking orders to the angels. But I'm sure God loved it when He first penned it. Bless Jehovah, ye His angels that are mighty in strength, that fulfill His word, hearkening to the voice of His word.

42:16 Bless Jehovah, all ye His hosts, ye ministers of His that do His pleasure. Then in his frustration he calls out to the whole created order. Bless Jehovah, all ye His works in all places of His dominion and in God's universe. Bless Jehovah.

42:39 Then he turns it back inward upon himself and says this is nothing but the excess of poetic lysis unless my soul takes the lead in the praising and the blessing of God. The spirit of the renewed heart and therefore when we read turning back to Psalm 100 that we are to serve the Lord with gladness to come before His presence with singing to know that the Lord is God that He hath made us we are His to enter into His gates with thanksgiving and into His courts with praise to give thanks to Him and bless His name. There is a felt need to express our gratitude

43:24 and I remind you many of these psalms these is straight many times these psalms were penned amidst to His pressures but He took the fists and the foibles of His own subjective name of mind and said no matter what is being done to be my men no matter what may be the frame of my own soul God is God and He has cascaded down upon my head blessings be on the man and I remember that God is worthy to be praised. To be a true Christian there is a felt need to express gratitude to God.

44:08 Therefore secret prayer as habit and disposition will be the experience of the true child of God. He must go to God with prayers of praise and thanksgiving for all that He increasingly discovers God to be and for all that God increasingly does for Him in covenant faithfulness and in redemptive mercy. He learns something of the truth of Ephesians 5.20 be filled with the Spirit verse 18 and then the five channels of the Spirit filled heart are described in five parallel participles and the fifth one is giving thanks in everything.

Felt Need 4: Confess Utter Dependence Upon God

44:51 Do you have any felt need to express gratitude to God? You are a Christian you do and it is that felt need that will impel you. It will drive you to secret prayer. Then fourth and finally there is not only the felt need to experience intimate communion with God.

45:11 The felt need to obtain more sanctifying grace from God. The felt need to express gratitude to God but the felt need to confess His utter dependence upon God. The felt need to confess His utter dependence upon God. Again, one of the dominant characteristics of the unconverted man is his delusive notion that they can make it that he can make it on his own steam.

45:43 While Acts 17.25 informs him that it is in God that He lives and moves and has His being. Acts in the arrogant language of those words well known to many of us I am the captain the master of my own fate and the captain of my own soul. When God is pleased to turn us from darkness to light and from the power of Satan unto God the principle of the first beatitude becomes our experience.

46:15 There is significance in the order of those beatitudes. Notice in Matthew 5 and verse 3 when our Lord would open up the character traits of all the true sons and daughters of the kingdom here is where He begins Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven belongs only to such who have been brought to poverty of spirit. And what is poverty of spirit?

46:47 It is simply the recognition that I am nothing and have nothing and can do nothing of myself. That as a creature I owe my very existence to God's sovereign will as a creature I owe my present sanity to the sovereign will of God in Him I live and move and have my being and as a sinner God owes me nothing but damnation and hell. As a sinner God owes me nothing but the venting of His pure and righteous wrath and poverty of spirit is that inner disposition of the man who owns what he is a creature and owns what he is as a sinner

47:31 and when he comes to own that twin reality he has a principle of utter dependence upon God that must find a place to vent itself and that place is secret prayer. And isn't it interesting how the Lord weaves those together in the pattern of prayer we saw this morning? Our Lord sees no incongruity between this petition give us this day our daily breath. That's the language of dependence.

48:04 Oh yes I have a job and I plan to earn my money oh no no no all of that could be brought to a grinding halt one head on and you could be a vegetable for the next thirty years. Oh God I'm dependent upon You to do what a man must do in his calling to earn a wage to purchase food and oh God I only ask for the grace to fulfill my role this day but without Your blessing it will come to naught. Lord You must give me this day bread for this day. That's a free rendering of the sense of the original give bread for this day on this day that's the language of dependence that's the exact opposite of the language in James

48:48 where he says go do now you that say tomorrow we'll go into such and such a city and buy and sell and get gain for a year we'll do this and that he says that's the arrogance of a man who hasn't owned what he is as a creature. Then we come praying forgive us our sins forgive us our debts we come owning the fact that we are still sinners and we still sin and it is that disposition of the creature and the sinner which in the human breast is described as poverty of spirit and God only dwells with such Isaiah 57 15 makes that very clear thus saith the high and the lofty one

49:32 that he habits eternity whose name is holy I dwell in the high and holy place with him that is of a contrite and humble spirit to revive the heart the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite humility contrition humility is the creature owning what he is contrition is the sinner owning what he is and what he's done and God only dwells with the humble and the contrite so who is the God you supposedly dwell with when you strut about with no felt need

50:13 I shall be safe God take your hand off me for a moment and I'd become a veritable beast that's true if you believe it you'll be in the secret place of prayer I say these four felt needs are part and parcel of the stuff of the heart of every true Christian therefore in my concluding application I want to ask you a very personal question and the question is this

Personal Application: Do These Needs Drive You to Prayer?

50:58 have I described your felt needs have I described your felt needs and do those needs drive you to the throne of grace not with the same intensity every day not without lapses and periods of backsliding not at times not at times with a dullness in which your very prayers become fuel for more repentance I know all of those but don't ask the question like you will in the day of judgment have those four felt needs as a pattern of your life driving you

51:42 to seek the face of God the felt need to experience intimate communion with God with what you know of God in the sanctuary at family worship in the fellowship of the saints there's a year as there is in the heart of every healthy marriage whatever a through marital intimacy in the midst of the children in the extended family and among mutual friends there is a yearning for the intimacy that is expressed in the sacred sanctuary of the closed bedroom door

52:26 and the man who says he's satisfied with what he knows of his wife in the living room in the mixed company of the family and extended family and has no desire for the level in the bedroom the woman wonders where is his heart and she has every ground is life eternal to know thee you have a felt need for intimate communion with God the kind that can only be known in the sacred place where you tell God things you wouldn't tell your wife your husband

53:11 an elder you tell God things that it's only fit for God to hear do you have a felt need to seek more sanctifying grace when's the last time you cried to God about that temper that irritability that absence of patience that absence of long suffering that absence of sensitivity to wife or husband when was the last time you husbands cried out oh God does Christ love the church sucking gross sometimes some of you told God that's what you are because that's what you are and said oh God help

53:53 when's the last time some of you wives said oh Lord left to myself I'm nothing but an independent stubborn insubmissive Jezebel for sanctifying grace to the throne of grace do you have a felt need to express gratitude to God that just can't be captured in any paraphrase of a song you know him in the Trinity hymn book some of them come close to being a conduit to vent your gratitude but you've got to tell him

54:35 in a tailor made way all the things for which you're thanked praise the history of your life and thank him for the night you were conceived that you weren't conceived of dog or a cow but a human being that he brought you safely out of the womb upheld you and nurtured you while you were yet obnoxious to him by your connection with Adam and by the lies you began to speak and no sooner were you out of your mother's womb and praise him for the mercy that preserved you until his grace arrested you praise him for the instruments he used for the means by which he brought you praise him for the grace that upheld you

55:19 and nurtured you and cherished you and bore with you do you do this I say it's instinctive in the heart of a true Christian if you have no felt need to express gratitude then you be an heir of heaven and a forgiven sinner if you have no felt need to confess utter dependence upon God have you ever been brought to poverty of spirit if you can't answer yes to these questions I want you to listen while I quote a brief section from two of the most searching sermons I've ever read touching this issue they're sermons preached by Jonathan Edwards

The Hypocrite's Prayerlessness vs. The True Convert's Increased Business at the Throne of Grace

56:03 based upon Job 27 10 with reference to the hypocrite he says will he always call upon God and he entitled the two sermons hypocrites deficient in the duty of seeking God in secret prayer and listen to his searching words if you value your souls dear people listen I'm not up here I'm not up here earning a paycheck I'm trying to get blood off my hands it may be yours listen listen listen how is a life in great measure prayerless consistent with a holy life to lead a holy life is to lead a life devoted to God a life of worshipping and serving God a life consecrated to the service of God but how does he lead

56:47 such a life who does not so much as maintain the duty of prayer how can such a man be said to walk by the Spirit and to be a servant of the Most High a holy life is a life of faith the life that true Christians live in the world they live by faith in the Son of God but who can believe that that man lives by faith who lives without prayer which is the natural expression of faith prayer is as natural an expression of faith as breathing is of life and to say a man lives a life of faith and yet lives a prayerless life is every whit as inconsistent and incredible as if to say that a man lives without breathing

57:29 a prayerless life is so far from being holy that it is a profane life he that lives so lives like a heathen who calls not on God's name he that lives a prayerless life lives without God in the world but now listen as he goes deeper more searching when a hypocrite has had his false conversion his wants are in his sense of things already supplied in his judgment his desires are already answered so he finds no further business at the throne of grace the need of which he was sensible is the need to escape hell and now that he's converted and is safe from hell he has no further needs at the throne of grace

58:14 and Edwards goes on to say every time he hears this every time he hears a sermon on prayer he'll pray just enough to get back his assurance that he must be a Christian and as soon as he gets that back he leaves off praying why? listen carefully now he says it is because he has never known what the true convert knows his work is not done but he still finds a great work to do and great needs to be supplied he sees himself still to be a poor empty helpless creature and that he still stands in great and continuous need of God's help he's aware that without God he can do nothing

58:58 a false conversion makes a man in his own eyes self-sufficient and he quotes Revelation 3 thou sayest thou art rich and priests with goods have need of nothing and knowest not that thou art poor and miserable and wretched and blind and naked a true convert is sensible that his grace is very imperfect he's very far from having all that he desires instead of that by conversion are begotten in him new desires which he never had before he finds in himself holy appetites a hunger and a thirsting after righteousness a longing after more acquaintance and communion with God so that he hath business enough still at the throne of grace

59:41 yea his business there instead of being diminished is rather increased my friends I ask you from the time of your so-called conversion has your business at the throne of grace and the consciousness of the business to be done there increased if not I fear for the state of your soul I fear for the state of your soul but for those of you who by the grace of God can say yes with all of my ups and downs and my blowing hot and cold and my inconstancy at the throne of grace I bless God that there is within my breast this morning a felt need for communion with God

Exhortation to Prayer and Concluding Prayer

60:26 a felt need for more sanctifying grace from God a felt need to express my gratitude to God and a felt need to confess my utter dependence upon God for you I close with the exhortation of a beautiful hymn by Joseph Hart that reads as follows prayer was appointed to convey the blessings God designs for us the blessings God designs to give long as they live should Christians pray for only while they pray they live the Christian's heart his prayer indicts he speaks as prompted from within the Spirit his petition writes

61:10 and Christ receives and gives it in and wilt thou still in silence lie when Christ stands waiting for thy prayer thou hast a friend on high arise and try thine interest there if pain afflict or wrongs oppress if cares distract or fears dismay if guilt deject if sin distress the remedies before thee pray his prayer supports the soul that's weak though thought be broken language lame pray if thou canst or canst not speak but pray with faith

61:54 in Jesus name depend on him thou canst not fail make all thy wants and wishes known fear not his merits must prevail ask what thou wilt it shall be done may we by the grace of God be marked as those who are not only confident of the privilege of prayer resting in the arms of God but by the objective work of Christ past and present not only inclined and assisted by the gift of the Spirit allured and encouraged by the promises impelled

62:37 by those needs that are the result of God's work of grace in our hearts let us pray our Father how we thank you for this wonderful privilege of calling upon you as our God we are ashamed that we have so often despised and disdained so dearly bought forgive us oh forgive us of the sin of prayerlessness of thanklessness of ingratitude

63:22 of careless ease when our needs have been so great but our awareness of those needs has been so truncated oh Lord take your word and use it to expose those who may be self deceived in this place who know nothing of any pattern of real dealings with you in the secret place oh God may today be the day when such dealings begin and for your true people stir us all up oh God that we may be more conscious of our need and more frequent at the throne of grace to have those needs met out of the fullness that is in Christ

64:07 seal your word to our hearts we pray and may your blessing continue upon us in this your day for Jesus sake we ask it