“I’m having trouble praying. Can you help me?”

Steve Brown:
I’m having trouble praying. Can you help me? Yes, we can, on this edition of Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
This is Key Life dedicated to the message that the only people who get any better are those who know that if they don’t get any better, God will still love them anyway. That teaching raises a lot of questions, so here’s author and seminary professor Steve Brown, along with Pete Alwinson from ForgeBibleStudy.com with answers to the Bible that’ll make you free.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. Hey Pete.

Pete Alwinson:
I love it, good answer, good answer. We’ve been in trouble, so we know how to pray. We’ll talk about it.

Steve Brown:
That’s true, man. The scareder you are, the better you pray.

Pete Alwinson:
Oh man.

Steve Brown:
You know, that farmer that said to his son when they were in a, a tornado was coming at him in the field and he looked and his son was on his knees and he said, son, get up and run. A scared prayer ain’t worth nothing. Well, it is, he was wrong. He didn’t know what he was talking about. By the way, that’s Pete Alwinson. Check out ForgeTruth.com. And you ought check out from Forge, a podcast. It’s really an amazing thing and you’ll be glad and you can get the information on that website. By the way, Pete and I both love to hear your questions. You can call and record your question anytime, 24 7, just follow instructions when you call 1-800-KEY-LIFE and often we put your voice on the air. Or you can send your question to

Key Life Network
P.O. Box 5000
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in Canada, it’s

Key Life Canada
P.O. Box 28060
Waterloo, Ontario N2L 6J8

or you can e-mail your question to Key Life, [email protected] and if you can help us financially, please do. I don’t talk a lot about finances on this broadcast, but that doesn’t mean that we will turn your gift down. In fact, we’ll use your gift for the glory of God. So, if you can help us, please do, you can charge it on your credit card or include it in your envelope, and we’ll be faithful with it. If you can’t, we understand, say a prayer for this ministry and we will appreciate that too. I started to say more than the money, but I don’t believe that I’d rather have the money, but don’t send letters. I’m just kidding around. Pete, before this goes right down the tube, would you pray for us and then we’ll turn to some of these questions.

Pete Alwinson:
All right, let’s pray together. Oh Our Great God, we come to you, just so thankful that we can pray and we come to you because you are the Sovereign King of Heaven and Earth, and that our lives are in your hands and our lives are in good hands. You are gracious and kind and merciful. You know everything about us, and yet you love us. You know everything we’re capable of, and yet you sent Jesus to redeem us. You know how much worse we can be and yet by your Spirit, you oversee us, you hold us back from sin, you train us, you develop us, you open your word to us, and you use us in this world. And so Father, we praise you. Lord, we don’t have all the answers for everything, but we know you do. And so, we come to you and we ask that you’d give us hope and strength and peace, and even this week-end that as we meet with your people, you would lay out through your pastors and priests and teachers truth for us that will shape our lives for the coming week. We give you praise and honor and do ask, Lord now, that even with the many questions that we have, that Holy Spirit, you would be the one to come in and encourage and teach. So, we commit this time to you and this ministry as we pray these things in the strong name of our risen savior Jesus. Amen.

Steve Brown:
Hey Pete, let’s go to our phone lines first.

Caller 1:
I’m not good at praying and I don’t know how to pray, and I pray simple prayers. I don’t really know the word of God, but I know certain Scriptures, little Scriptures and how I could get more into my prayer life with God and reading because I have ADHD, which I don’t like to claim, but it’s hard for me to focus on reading.

Steve Brown:
He said, that was a fairly long question, and our producer, Jeremy, who goes to our phone lines and gets those, listened to the entire thing. He said, the basic question was, I have trouble praying. I’ve got this problem with focus. How can I pray better? What should I do? Which I think is a really good question, and I get it.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. What did you say? No, I got, yeah, you know, shiny things, shiny things. It’s really easy. We were talking about how easy it is for all of us to get distracted.

Steve Brown:
It really is.

Pete Alwinson:
So, I appreciate his honesty there.

Steve Brown:
And I, you know, I think sometimes, our prayer lives are bad because we feel so guilty about it, that we decide we’re going to set aside an hour. And we’re going to spend it with Jesus. And it’s going to change our lives. And after five minutes we’ve prayed the Lord’s Prayer four times. We’ve prayed for everybody we know and we got 55 minutes and we don’t know what to do with it. And it becomes a very unpleasant place and we, after a week of that, we don’t go there anymore. I think if we brought our expectations down a little bit lower and began at a place like that, it would be easier, even with somebody with ADD, what is it?

Pete Alwinson:
ADD, ADHD.

Steve Brown:
Whatever.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Attention deficit.

Steve Brown:
I’ve got that. We were talking about how we keep projects going more than one, so when you get bored with one, you can go to the next one. And Jeremy, our producer, who’s also a composer, he does a lot of the theme work for ESPN. But Jeremy says, he tells his wife, give me a list of things that I can do in 15 or 20 minutes and when I get bored with what I’m doing here in my studio, I’ll go do one of them and I’ll come back and I’ll be refreshed and things will go well. And there would be those who would say to Jeremy, are you crazy? Stay with it and get done what you’ve got to do, but the problem is he can’t get it done unless he takes a break occasionally. And we’re all like that.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Yeah. So it’s, it’s really true. I think what, one thing to keep in mind is that prayer is not a means to gain grace, it’s because we have been given grace. So it’s not a means of salvation. And so, don’t sweat it. But Jesus did, and he was asked by his disciples cause they’d see him sneak away. And then, how do we pray like you pray? Because we’re not with you, you’re alone. And so, he gave them the Lord’s Prayer and it really is a simple guide, short, sweet, you could pray that prayer but also use the outlines as a larger picture to pray.

Steve Brown:
And if you just used the prayer, you’ve done what you were supposed to do. So, you can rest in that, but again, I don’t think it’s an accident that Jesus gave a short prayer, nor an accident that he said, a lot of you guys think you’ll be heard by how many words you speak. And so, he gave them a short prayer, and that’s what I would suggest that you do, the person that asked the question. Instead of deciding that you’re going to be this major prayer warrior and change the world, why don’t you say, I’m going to give three minutes to Jesus and that’s all I’m going to give. Then I’m going to take two minutes and I’m going to read a chapter of the Bible and then until I feel the need for more, that’s what I’m going to do. And you’d be surprised.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s genius. That’s really the way we ought to do it. You know, and then, do that at the beginning of the day, and that starts a dialogue, so that by the time Paul got to the Thessalonians, he said, pray without ceasing. Well, once you start in the morning, then the dialogue can continue and you can just keep going back and forth. Don’t make a big deal out of it. Just make it a relational thing.

Steve Brown:
And it’s natural. We make such a religious thing out of it. You know, if you were to come in, and you and I both are men of prayer.

Pete Alwinson:
We do pray.

Steve Brown:
It makes you feel pious when you say that, but we are, we both get up early.

Pete Alwinson:
I need to.

Steve Brown:
Oh, me too. Jesus and coffee get me up in the morning. But you know, my prayer doesn’t sound like prayer sometimes. Sometimes I tell God what I think and what he did wrong. Sometimes I play solitaire, sometimes I just sit there and don’t say anything. Other times I’m on the floor, prostrate, telling, worshiping, but it’s that time. And I love that time because it’s the most honest place in my life. It’s the only one who knows everything about me and likes me anyway.

Pete Alwinson:
Oh, it’s amazing. We need that time. And there’s a great joy in remembering we’re his deeply beloved children in prayer.

Steve Brown:
So true, so true. Let me see, I’m trying to look down some of these questions. What does the Bible teach about spiritual gifts?

Pete Alwinson:
Well, that we have them. You know, like,

Steve Brown:
All right, I’ll go to the next one.

Pete Alwinson:
The next one. So, talents are what we’re born with, and spiritual gifts are what we’re born again with. And boy, in I Corinthians 12, Romans 12, Ephesians 4,5. You really see some good teaching on those gifts. They’re not the whole list, but we need these gifts and we get to minister to one another. What a privilege to be used by God the Holy Spirit.

Steve Brown:
And you see, you know, without all the teaching about it, you see it all the time operating in the church.

Pete Alwinson:
Absolutely.

Steve Brown:
You’ve got this woman who has this ability to hug people and make them feel better. And she doesn’t think of it as a spiritual gift. She just likes to hug people, especially people who are crying. And I’ve watched her do that over and over again. And I think, you know, that’s what a spiritual gift is. Something that simple. And then every time, when you were my pastor and you climbed into the pulpit. And every time my pastor now gets into the pulpit, I see a spiritual gift operating. So, you have, and one thing we have to say is that you have spiritual gifts. I don’t care who you are.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. You know, you’re a believer, you have them, find them and you’re necessary in the church. And that’s one of Paul’s big arguments, is that even though something doesn’t seem necessary, it is, every part of the body of Christ is significant.

Steve Brown:
What’s the best way to find out your spiritual gift?

Pete Alwinson:
I’d say, read those passages and then look around at needs and jump in and start trying.

Steve Brown:
And see what has legs. And if it has legs, it might be your gift. And from your brothers and sisters in Christ.

Pete Alwinson:
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I’m sure, right away when you started communicating the gospel, people said, you’ve got a gift, you need to use it.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. Well, no, they, they said, boy, you’ve got a good voice. And the history teacher said, you have to be careful what you say cause people are going to listen to you. But it was a lot later when I had something to say. And then the leaders in the church, said son, we believe you’re called to ministry and you should reach and you find out that way. We’re out of time. You going to come back next week?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah man. I’ll see you soon.

Steve Brown:
Okay, we’re out of here. Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.