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Sermon Title: Prayer: moving from duty to delight
Scripture: Luke 5:12-16; Matthew 6:5-6

The 4 movements of Prayer:
Talking to God
Talking with God
Listening to God
Being with God


“Through bodily habits, your phone actually becomes a part of you. And you become trained to perceive the phone’s vibration as an incoming call or text due to your habits, when nothing is actually happening but your body misperceives similar sensations.”
(Psychology Today: “Phantom Vibration Syndrome” - Dr. Larry D. Rosen)

“We suffer from interior immigration.”
(“Prayer and Worship” - Dr. Douglas Steere)

“The reason we live in a culture that is increasingly without faith is not because science has somehow disproved the unprovable but because the white noise of secularism has removed the very stillness in which it might endure or be reborn. If churches came to realize that the greatest threat to faith today is not hedonism but distraction, perhaps they might begin to appeal anew to a frazzled digital generation.”
*(New York Magazine: “I used to be human” - Andrew Sullivan) *

Prayer is relaxing into God’s goodness”
(“The Holy Longing” - Father Ronald Rolheiser)

“To pray is to pay attention to the deepest thing I know.” *(Douglas Steere) *

“To pray is to descend with the mind into the heart and there to stand before the face of the Lord ever present, all seeing, within you.”
(Theophan the Recluse)

“Our adversary the devil majors in three things: noise, hurry and crowds. If he can keep us involved in muchness and manyness, he will rest satisfied.”
(“Celebration of Discipline” - Richard Foster)

Additional Notes:

Luke 5:12-16 (NIV)
12 While Jesus was in one of the towns, a man came along who was covered with leprosy.[a] When he saw Jesus, he fell with his face to the ground and begged him, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.”

13 Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” And immediately the leprosy left him.

14 Then Jesus ordered him, “Don’t tell anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them.”

15 Yet the news about him spread all the more, so that crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses. 16 But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.

Matthew 6:5-6 (NIV)
5 “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.