Good morning. Turning your Bibles to Psalm
Chapter 90. We're starting off the first
week of summer in a brand new series that we've called Ancient
Prayers Present Power. We're going to dive into a
number of the prayers that we find throughout Scripture and we
want to ask this, what can we learn from the prayers of those
who have come before us? How can our prayer lives be
deepened and changed when we dive into Scripture and see the
words that the Saints have preceded us, have prayed?
How can we move our prayers beyond what I would call please
and thank you prayers, right? A lot of our prayer life can
devolve into thank you, Lord, please do this.
And so how do we grow deeper in a prayer life?
How can we really encounter God through prayer?
And there's an amazing reality when we think about prayer.
Just think about this. If you're a follower of Jesus,
when you come into a moment of prayer, you get to come to your
Heavenly Father as a son or daughter of that father.
You're a kid coming to your dad. You get to talk to him about
what's going on in your life. You get to ask him for his help,
for his strength. But it's also a reality that
when we come to prayer, we come to the Almighty King of creation
and glory, the one we were just singing to, the one who is holy,
holy, holy, who is due all, all honor and praise and glory.
And both those things are true. They should affect us, that we
come in with a sense of relationship, but we also come
in with a sense of reverence and awe.
You know, prayer is the means by which hearts are changed.
Prayer is a means by which miracles are done and
accomplished. Prayer is a means by which the
power of the Creator God is let loose in His creation.
Martin Luther had this to say about prayer.
He said to be a Christian without prayer is no more
possible than to be alive without breathing.
Think about that. That prayer ought to be so
foundational to what it means for us as people of God.
That's like breathing for us Jesus disciples we're going to
see when we come to the fall here.
They come to Jesus and they say teach us to pray.
And they say that because just like for many of us in this
room, prayer doesn't always come naturally.
Your baby doesn't have to say teach me to breathe.
But we do need some teaching in the area of prayer to grow into
this. It's, it's unnatural and awkward
for all of us. I just want to let you know,
very few of us just immediately dive into prayer and it's, it
just flows. And so we want to learn today to
grow in prayer. We want to go deeper in prayer.
We want to pray prayers that would impact ourselves and
impact our world. And so if you're here today and,
and you want to see that happen, you want to move past wish lists
of prayer and the whole lives of prayer, that's what this summer
is going to be about. And we start today with someone
who, even if you're not a church person, even if you're not a
follower of Jesus, you don't know much about this Christian
anything. You're probably familiar with
the guy whose prayer we're going to read today.
He's a guy by the name of Moses. If you ever saw the animated
movie, I know it's old now because I'm old Prince of Egypt.
If you go back and you think about Charlton Heston and the 10
Commandments, this is the man who leads the people out of
Egypt. This is the guy who parts the
Red Sea. Well, God parts the Red Sea.
God uses Moses to do it. He's the guy who gets to go up
on the mountain to meet with God, like on the literal
mountaintop, spend days with him and receive the 10 commandments
and bring them down. He's also the guy who went went
from the mountaintop to having to wander around in the
wilderness with a bunch of grumbling, ungrateful people for
40 years. You can learn something from
somebody who's been on the literal and figurative
mountaintops and wandering in the wilderness.
Wherever you are in the room, you're probably somewhere
between those spaces. So we got something to learn
from Moses today. So let's look at Psalm 90.
Now a little little little Bible tidbit for you.
This is probably the oldest Psalm.
This is the Psalm of Moses, which dates it at somewhere in
the neighborhood of 3450 plus years old.
That's how old this prayer is, and yet I think it's going to
resonate and hope it's going to resonate deeply in your life.
Today in Canada, June 29th, 2025, hear the word of the Lord.
Lord, you've been our refuge in every generation, before the
mountains were born, before you gave birth to the earth and the
world, From eternity to eternity, you are God.
Let me ask you a question. How do you usually start your
prayers? I think I've shared this story
before, but growing up in church, we had a guy who our
family would often pick up and take to church.
His name was Ted Irwin. And, and, and Ted had some
intellectual and cognitive disabilities, but I loved it
whenever Ted would pray because Ted would always start like
this. Hey God, it's me, Teddy Irwin.
He always wanted to announce himself into the presence of
God, right. How do you start your prayers?
How do you engage with God in prayer?
Do you do you start with dear God, thank you and then you kind
of move into some thank you things and then you get to your
list of things that you really came to God for.
Maybe you just jump into the list.
Dear God, please. But look at how Moses starts,
right? We usually we get the God part
out of the way so we can get to the US part, but Moses gets to
the God part and just kind of sits there for a bit.
You're going to see this isn't going to be a recurring theme
over and over again in the prayers that we look at.
I think it has something to teach us today.
He starts with the character of God.
And if you don't take anything else from this morning, let me
encourage you that one way that could radically transform your
prayer life is to start your prayers dwelling on who God is
before you get to your stuff. One of one of the greatest
blessings of prayer is not just that we have a God who will help
us in our problems, but when we come to prayer, it can change
our perspective. I've got an image that I'm going
to put up on the screen. They're going to put up on the
screen back here behind me. I think I did forget to mention
that. Did we get the image?
No image. OK, scrap that.
We don't have an image this morning.
How many of you have seen one of those pictures where you look at
it one way, you see one thing, It could be the one I was going
to put up there. There's a, there's a classic
picture from the 1800s of, of a rabbit and and a duck.
And you look at it one way and depending on, on how you're
wired, your brain works, you'll look at and you'll see a rabbit
right away. But then as soon as someone
says, no, no, I see a duck. Don't you see the duck?
Just look over here. All the sudden you can't help
but see the duck. And now you're seeing two things
in one image because your perspective changes, your
perspective changes because what you are focusing on changes.
A change of perspective comes from a change of focus, and
changing that focus that changes our perspective can change
everything even when nothing actually changes, right?
Nothing changes in those photos when you look at them, and yet
everything changes in the way that you see them.
And I would say oftentimes our greatest need is not that God
would fix our problems, it's that he would fix our
perspective, right? And that comes through first
having our perspective change so that we would see God as he is.
I love songs like the songs we just sang, man.
Just it takes the vision that I have, the, the narrow scope that
I have off of me, and it places it on to someone so much bigger.
And here, that's exactly what Moses does.
He has a perspective. They get so much bigger because
he prays prayers that are rooted in God's permanence.
Lord, you've been our refuge in every generation.
How big is our God? How huge is he?
How permanent is he? Before the mountains were born?
Before you gave birth to the earth in the world.
He's so permanent. He's from eternity to eternity.
That's our God. He is all things forever.
So often when I'm coming to God in prayer, I don't know about
you be it's often because I feel overwhelmed by the size of a
problem that sits in front of me.
But when you start to have your eyes opened to the permanence
and the power and the preeminence of God, it's amazing
how big problems seem to get so much smaller.
I find all the time when I recognize how big my God is, my
problems don't seem nearly as big.
Some of us, we have an incredible gift to be able to
turn any molehill into a mountain.
Some of us today, I know in this room you're facing mountains,
man, you're like, you're at the base of the mountain.
It's a legit mountain, but God is the one who gave birth to the
mountains. That's nothing to our God.
That's the one that we're approaching when we come in
prayer to remind ourselves of that.
And he's not just some majestic out there over everything.
God, right? He's the one we get to come and
call ABBA Father. He's your dad.
If you're a follower of Jesus, you need an antidote to your
anxiety. Stop and remind yourself that
you are in the presence of the One who who has provided for and
been present with his people. As Moses says through every
generation. Lord, you've been our refuge in
every generation. Is your heart longing for peace?
It just it's, it's in chaos and upheaval because that's how your
life feels right now. Stop and remind yourself that
you're in the presence of a God who has been a refuge.
He's a space where you can find peace.
Here's my challenge for you in your prayer life.
Would you start by doing this before going to God to ask Him
for something? Spend some time with God
reflecting on the nature and the character of the God you're
about to ask this, this alone. This might change everything for
you in prayer. What I want to do throughout
this message, I want to take some time after each of these
sections and I'm just going to invite us to pray together.
Like I want us to actually do these things, not just talk
about these things. So I'm going to invite you to
bow your head right now, and I'm going to just give you a little
time here to pray to God and not to come with Him for things to
ask, but just to call out to Him, Lord.
Just. I recognize you're so big.
You're the one who created all things.
God, you are so much bigger than this struggle, this promise or
this problem, this circumstance that I'm facing right now.
Would you just call it to God and just just claim this truth?
God, whatever I'm facing right now, it has an end date.
But with you, there is no end. God, my problems, they might be
big, but in comparison to you, they are as nothing.
God, you're, you're not just the place I go when things get hard.
You're my home and my refuge, the place where I'm safe.
Amen. Continue going on in in the
prayer of Moses here he says, you return mankind to the dust,
saying return descendants of Adam.
For in your sight, 1000 years are like yesterday that passes
by like a few hours of the night you end their lives.
They sleep. They are like grass that grows
in the morning. In the morning it sprouts and
grows and by evening it Withers and dries up.
Not only do we need to pray prayers of perspective that
focus on the permanence of God, but honestly, it's really
helpful to pray prayers where we spend some time reflecting on
our own finiteness, getting honest about that like this.
This prayer is incredibly stark in its contrast.
Moses starts with this recognition of a God who is from
eternity to eternity. Then he says in US, we're like
grass in the morning. In the morning, it sprouts up.
By the evening it has withered up and dried up and it's dead.
And, and this prayer in both of these aspects is so
countercultural because because we, we live in a, a culture in
the place where we live where nothing feels permanent, right?
I think that's why so many people feel so unmoored.
We struggle with anxiety and we struggle to have peace because
it just feels like there's nothing that we can count on
that that's steady, that will last.
My sister and brother-in-law just recently bought a farm and
as I was talking to him, he was telling me that the the
farmhouse dates to about 1850. And I thought, whoa, that's an
old house. Because I don't know if you know
this, but in our entire region there's maybe 20 buildings that
date to the 1850s and earlier in in this whole region of Waterloo
region, that's about the extent of the buildings that are around
from that time. Moses says to God, 1000 years is
like a day. I look at a house that's 175
years old and think that's so old.
It's literally about 3 lives of, of human lives.
We're going to talk about that in a second.
About 80 years plus 80 years gets you to 160.
So that plus 15 years, you go back and if you could track back
maybe into the third generation back somebody what's around.
And there were 20 homes in all of this that we now inhabit.
We live in a culture where nothing feels permanent.
Everything is changing. And yet the second thing that's
true is this. We live in this culture that
denies death. It acts as if life will last
forever. It it, it idolizes youth, right?
We, we're bombarded with ways and supplements and creams to
try and stay young and hold off the effects of aging.
We we try and live as if there will always be another tomorrow
to live for. And then in verse 10, Moses says
something that is as true right now, today as it was when he
said it. Our lives last 70 years or if we
are strong, 80 years. Because here's the truth.
The average life expectancy if you were born in Ontario and you
are a male is just shy of 80 years.
If you're a female, you maybe get an extra 4 in there.
That means like for me, I got more years probably in the
rearview mirror than I do looking out the front of the
car. If you are 60, you are not
middle-aged. You are three quarters dead.
That's what that means. Some of you right now you are
like wrapping up the school year.
Rachel prayed about that. I'm going to tell you you're
going to blink and school will be a wrap.
Some of you right now, you're in the diapers.
And daycare reality. I'm just a bit ahead of you on
that. College applications come real
quick. And I'm not trying.
I'm not trying to be morbid with us this morning.
I just want to be honest because we're not honest about this.
We pretend and we live in a fantasy world.
God is permanent. God is unchanging.
God is infinite. We and our lives on this earth,
they're finite, They're fragile. We see God for who he is and we
get honest and look in the mirror about who we are.
We stop with the wrinkle remover.
We see the wrinkles. It changes the way we pray
because because what you're going to see here in a minute is
acknowledging our predicament has the potential to lead us
into lives of much greater purpose.
Like how would your life be different today if you really
lived like life had an expiry date on it?
How would it change your life if in your prayers you regularly
reminded yourself that tomorrow is not a promise for you?
Do we spend 70 to 80 years here? But also 20 to 80 years that we
spend here have the potential to echo for eternity.
How would that change? What you pray for?
So let me, let me just. Take a time.
Let's take a time out here and let's pray.
Invite you again just. Not because when you close your
eyes, somehow you get closer to God, it just removes the
distractions. But I'm going to invite you to
just do that. And just acknowledge.
To God, hey, thank you for this gift of life.
It's not going to last forever. I I I I acknowledge that.
I acknowledge that. My time on this earth is in
limited supply. That although I.
Can do whatever I want to do to try and deny that reality or to
increase the length of my days. Father, you alone will determine
the length of the days that will make up my life.
Amen. That's the light and airy part
compared to what comes next. I I.
Was reading that some. Of you who travelled with us
through Ecclesiastes. I was like, oh man, I just put
us in Ecclesiastes Part 2. Listen to this for we're
consumed by. Your anger.
We're terrified by your. Wrath.
You have set our. Iniquities before us, our secret
sins in the light of your presence all of our days ebb
away under your wrath. We end our years like a sigh.
Our lives last. 70 years, or if we're strong, 80 years.
And even the best of them are struggle and sorrow.
Indeed, they pass quickly and we fly away.
You understand? Who understands the power of
your anger, Your wrath matches the fear that is due you.
It's one thing to. Pray prayers that recognize your
finiteness. It's another thing to pray
prayers that recognize your fallenness.
We need to pray prayers. That are honest about our sin.
We live. In a world where everything
feels temporary, we live in a world where we live as if life
is not temporary. We also live in a culture that
could probably best be described if we were to take honest
evaluation of it as entitled. And this is not a.
Generational thing. I'm not picking on any
generation. All of us live this way.
We breathe in the air of rights while neglecting things called
responsibilities. We conflate.
Needs with wants all the time in Western culture.
It's why it's so good to get out of the bubble of Western culture
if you get the opportunity. The other day.
Just my own personal like I I'm here with you.
I live in this culture. I fall into this all the time.
The other day I am sitting out by the pool and.
I'm starting to get. Really grumbly because the Wi-Fi
isn't working well. Let me repeat.
That I was outside in a on a beautiful sunny day by the pool
and my spirit was getting grumbly because the Wi-Fi wasn't
working Well, I have a home with a yard and a pool and.
This thing. Called Wi-Fi that if you had
told me 30 years ago would exist, I would have just not
believed that was a thing that could be.
If I got hot. And I was bothered I could jump
in the pool and instead I just started to complain about the
Wi-Fi. I didn't actually.
Need a change in my circumstances.
In that moment, I needed a change in my heart.
I needed a perspective change. I need an attitude change.
Moses reminds himself in this prayer.
Of this we are owed nothing. But God's wrath, it's not the
perspective. We come at things with that's
not our natural perspective. But that's where.
Moses goes to he's got the eternal, the infinite, the all
powerful God. He's holy, He's without sin.
He is the one, as we sang, who is worthy of all praise and
honor and glory. And then we've got us sinners
undeserving of anything but judgement.
Yeah. Our days are full of sorrow and
struggle often times. If you had a year, like if this
past year for you was no sorrow, no struggle, come talk to me.
I would love to know how you got through an entire year with no
sorrow, no struggle. And those stink.
But what we actually deserve, what we're entitled to, is
death. That's that's the.
Story of Scripture that from Genesis 3/4 when sin enters the
picture, sin brings death. If you're a Sinner, you deserve
death. Those are my words.
It's the words of scriptures, the words of Paul.
That we are. All of us sinners.
And the wages? Of that sin is death.
It's Romans 620. Three if you want to go market
somewhere. But yet our.
Natural posture when we encounter anything in this world
that is uncomfortable. Sorrow, struggle.
Rough is I don't deserve this. Why is this happening to me?
And I get it. Sorrow and struggle stink, but
the reason we come at it with I don't deserve this is because we
don't actually know what we're entitled to.
I'm entitled to death. I'm entitled to punishment.
I'm entitled to the wrath of God.
Moses recognizes this. He brace it.
He. Approaches.
God with reverence rather than entitlement, with confession.
God, you, you. See my even my secret sins, You
know them. We live.
In a culture of entitlement and excuses.
We live in a. Place where we blame others and
accuse God all the time. I want to tell.
You this this is really important.
Spiritual. Maturity can only come when we
stop blaming and start confessing.
You will never. Grow up until you own up.
That's true for all. Of us.
God does not. Owe you?
You didn't do. Anything to deserve anything
from him except his wrath. So we need to spend.
Some time confessing and being honest about our state in front
of God and even confessing our entitlement when we come to Him
and we feel like he's to blame for all my troubles.
No, there were no troubles on this earth until human scent.
We own the troubles of this earth.
So let's spend some. Time in confession and prayer.
Father, Yes, we come. To you we got problems.
We've got sorrows. We've got struggles.
And yes, we we do want to. Come to you and ask you to enter
into those and to fix our problems.
But before you do that. Would you show us?
Our sin. Would you show us?
Where we are contributing. To the issues that.
We keep on walking through. Would you open our?
Eyes to our own culpability and responsibility.
Father, would you remind? Us that what we need more than
anything else is not a change of circumstance, but first and
foremost a change in our hearts. We are prone to.
Rebellion. We're prone to do what we want
to do. We're prone to ignore your
teaching and ignore your commands, and then wonder why it
all goes wrong. We're so quick to.
Miss all the ways that you have blessed us and been gracious to
us while we get caught up with all the things that we think we
deserve. We confess that.
Amen. When you do all this, it leads
to a hinge point. And here's the hinge point,
verse 12. Teach us to number.
Our days carefully so that we may develop wisdom in our
hearts. When you get perspective, it
changes what you pray for. And we?
Start to pray prayers for lives of purpose, not just for the
resolution of problems. When we see who God.
Is when we see who we are, When our perspective is changed, our
prayers get changed. If God.
And the things of God last forever.
And if my days on this earth are finite and of limited supply.
That should affect how? I pray.
It should lead me to pray prayers like this.
God, would you, would you show me how to live my life in such a
way that the things I live for outlast my life?
I want to speak. Specifically to young adults.
Don't. Live like you have forever.
I don't know how we got. To this place where it's
normative. To say that.
That you can just kind of take your 20s off from life.
And waste a. Decade.
Now, I'm not saying. Listen, you don't have to have
everything figured out. Nobody in this room has
everything figured out. You don't have to get it all
together, but you need to live for something.
Playing video games. In your parents basement rent
free is not living for something.
Don't waste. Your life in your 20s.
You don't get to. Claim those 10 years back later.
Life. Is like a coin you can.
Spend it. Any way you wish, but once you
spend it, it's spent. You don't get it back.
That's true for all of us. Whatever age you're at, redeem
the time. Make the time matter.
Do things that matter. Pray prayers that matter.
Wisdom is about. How we use the knowledge we have
in such a way that it changes the way we live.
It's it's, it's, it's about praying this prayer.
God, I I. I know these realities, these
truths of of your permanence and my fight, nightness and my
fallenness. Help.
Me to have those truths not just be truths that I know in here,
but that affect how I live out there.
So yes. Pray that God would help you in
your circumstances. But.
Also that he would help you to live with meaning and purpose no
matter your circumstances. You can't know.
How many days that you have? But you can.
Ask God to help you make all your days matter.
How would it? Change your prayer if every
morning when you woke up, your prayer was Teach me to number
today. As if today.
Is the last day I got help me to live in such a way that today
matters for all the days of eternity.
Sometimes. Actually, the answer to that
prayer is simply to pray for others.
Do you know? That last Sunday we had.
The awesome privilege of seeing 18 people get baptized, which
was fantastic, but what some of you may not know is that a
number of those people who got baptized on that day where
people that I know, people in this church have been praying
for by name, some of them for years.
Those prayers helped to change things for eternity.
I guarantee you. Every single person who got
baptized up here a lot had somebody praying for them and
that they were an answer to somebody's prayer.
EM Bound said. Prayers outlive the lives of
those who uttered them. They outlive a generation.
They outlive an age, they outlive a world.
Sometimes the answer what can I do with my day that would be
meaningful for all eternity is pray.
DL Moody said every great movement of God can be traced to
a kneeling figure. Praying this prayer.
Remembering this reality, it'll help us live with more urgency,
with more gratitude, with more focus on what really matters.
And so here's my prayer prompt for us.
Let's pray God help us to live lives of purpose.
Help us to live. Lives that matter teach us to
have. Wisdom to.
Know how to spend our lives, our days, however many days they are
on, the things that will outlive our days that are eternal.
Help me to know God. Help me to know what's eternal
and what's just noise. Because, Father, we.
Don't want to live for the noise, we want to live for what
matters. We ask this.
Out in Jesus name, Amen. So we pray for.
Prayers that are rooting God's permanence.
We pray for prayers that are honest about our finiteness,
about our fallenness. They lead us.
Towards purpose and finally this pray prayers that call out for
God's mercy and grace. Love how he ends this.
Lord, Lord, how long? Turn have.
Compassion on your servants. Satisfy us in the.
Morning with your faithful love so that we may shout with joy.
Be glad all our days. See, now we're getting to the
praying for the things. Now we're getting to the praying
for the problems, because now we're in the spot where we can
pray for them properly. Make us rejoice for as many days
as you have humbled us, for as many years as we have seen
adversity. Let your work be seen by your
servants and your splendor by their children.
Let the favor of the Lord our God be honest.
That's usually where we start. But.
It is a great place to finish. Establish.
For us, the work of our hands establish the work of our hands.
God, you are permanent. Would you take our temporary
work of us finite beings, and would you establish it so it
lasts and matters? This is a gospel.
Centered prayer. Yes, we are finite and fragile
and fallen, but man, God, you are full of mercy.
God. God doesn't.
Just want you to survive this life.
He. Wants to.
Establish the work of your hands.
It is absolutely true. The God owes me and he owes you
nothing, that the wages of sin is death.
But that's not how that verse ends.
The wages of. Sin is death, but the gift of
God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord, because
our God is holy. And and.
Completely within his rights to to judge us.
But he's gracious and he's good, and he's merciful, and he's
given us Jesus. Even when.
Your life is a mess because of the choices that you have made.
God loves you and He is full of grace towards you.
Even in a mid. In the middle of the of the
world, in the middle of life, if you're in the middle of the
moment that is full of sorrow and struggle because of sin, God
himself comes down in the person of Jesus to satisfy the wrath of
God so that you can be free from sin.
Our life. On this Earth will end.
But what we do? With God, through His power, by
his presence, and through His grace, will last forever.
Start asking God. For more than survival when you
pray. Ask him to save.
And satisfy you if you've never come to a point where you have
prayed the very first prayer, the prayer that undergirds all
other prayers, which is God. I am finite and fallen and
broken and I'm a Sinner who deserves your wrath.
That's what I'm entitled to. But I believe.
In a Jesus who paid for that wrath on the cross, and I trust
in him. And because I believe.
That he died and rose again. I too will be risen to new life
with Christ. That's the starting point.
That's the salvation prayer. That's the call that cries out,
that unleashes all the other prayers, a call out for His
mercy, grace and forgiveness, and a recognition that the wrath
of God has been paid by Jesus. For your sake, let's take some
moments and pray here. First, I would just.
If you're in that spot. You're not sure where?
You stand with God. You've come to the point of
recognition. I am a Sinner.
I do have a. Problem.
I am falling. I know this life's going to end,
but I don't know what comes after this life.
You can call. Out to God today and just simply
say this God. I'm.
A Sinner. I know I deserve death because
of my sin. But thank you for.
Sending your son to die on the cross in my place to save me.
And because of that. I want to receive the life that
is offered through Him. I'm done with my sin and I'm
turning towards you and. When you pray.
That prayer the Lord answers every time, all the time,
affirmatively yes, and welcomes you into His family as a dearly
loved child of God. For those of you.
Who are children? The Most High King you know
Jesus as Lord and Savior. You can pray this.
God. Satisfy me.
You've saved me, but would you satisfy me?
And would you establish the work of my hands?
Make this life matter. Make it last for.
Something that will last well beyond me.
Amen. So we conclude, how do you pray?
Like Moses, How do we grow in prayer?
Start with God's character. Be honest about your finiteness
and your fallenness. Ask for wisdom.
So that you can live for what matters.
And then call out. To God for His grace and mercy.
Church, let's not just. Pray more, let's pray more
deeply, and let's close in prayer.
Father, You have given us the gift of Your Word.
You have given us. This beautiful gift of the
prayer of Moses to be an encouragement and instruction to
us as to how we can grow deeper in our prayers.
And Father, I pray that you would take some of these lessons
that we can learn through Moses. Apply them to our.
Lives so that our lives are changed, not just our problems,
but our perspective. We want to encounter you.
Deeply in prayer, I pray. That you meet us.
Not only today, but in all the days that follow, in Jesus name,
Amen.