Let’s ask for the help of the Lord one more time. We give thanks, O God, for Your Word and we pray now that You would give us ears to hear what You want to say, a heart to feel what You want us to feel, a mind to understand what You want us to understand, and a will to do whatever You want us to do. We pray for Your help. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Last week our focus was on the Word of God and this week our focus is on prayer. As I said last week, I think it’s good from time to time, especially at the beginning of the year, to be reminded of the basics of the Christian life and there are no two disciplines more fundamental than these disciplines of the Word and prayer.

We’re going to look at one text from Colossians in just a moment that deals with prayer, but unlike most of my sermons, this is going to have something of a topical flavor to it. We are going to look at these couple of verses, but beyond that, what I hope to do, and our time is short this morning, is give you a mini theology of prayer.

I’ll start with this from Martyn Lloyd-Jones. “There is nothing that tells the truth about us as Christian people so much as our prayer life. Everything we do in the Christian life is easier than prayer.” I find those two very challenging and humbling sentences. “There is nothing that tells the truth about Christians so much as their prayer life.”

Do you believe that? Prayer tells the truth about your faith in the power of God. It tells the truth about your relationship with God. Prayer tells the truth about our own sense of inadequacy or our feeling sense of competence before God. Prayer tells the truth about your love, your compassion, your fruitfulness, and your fight. We cannot rise much higher than our prayers.

Robert Murray M’Cheyne famously said, “What a man is on his knees before God, that he is. Nothing more.”

And I might add to it, nothing less.

Prayer tells the truth about us as Christians. Yes, we want to have and must have the right doctrinal truth. That’s exceedingly important. Yes, we must have the right sort of attitude and actions toward one another, but isn’t that humbling to consider, that prayer, almost more than anything, speaks to what we really believe, what we really love and cherish.

And Lloyd-Jones is also right when he says, “Everything we do in the Christian life is easier in prayer.”

So, in case that first sentence has you feeling like “I’m not even sure I am a Christian,” something always good to consider, but remember, this second statement: “Everything we do in the Christian life is easier than prayer.” I can tell you, as your pastor, I agree with that. Reading is easier than praying; it certainly is for me. Leading a Bible study for an hour is much easier than praying for an hour. Writing a sermon, at least for me, is much easier than it is to pray about a sermon on prayer. It’s easier to preach the sermon about prayer than to pray over the sermon that’s about prayer. Exercise is easier than prayer. Giving is easier than prayer. Singing worship songs is easier than prayer. Coming to church and Sunday school and youth group is easier than prayer. Prayer is hard. It’s frustrating, it can be humiliating; maybe that’s why there are so many commands that we ought to not give up in prayer.

There is nothing that tells the truth about us quite like our prayer lives.

I want you to turn your attention, if you’re not there already, to Colossians, chapter 4. Just two verses this morning, verses 12 and 13 of Colossians chapter 4: “Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ Jesus, greets you, always struggling on your behalf in his prayers, that you may stand mature and fully assured in all the will of God. For I bear him witness that he has worked hard for you and for those in Laodi...

Good morning again to all of you. I do hope you’re refreshed and encouraged from your Christmas holiday. My wife Pat and I received some good news ourselves this holiday—we found out that we’re expecting our fourth grandchild, a little, a little boy. But how we found out’s worth telling you. My precious daughter-in-law, for lack of time to make the traditional gender reveal cake, or so she tells me, came to our home in an extraordinary way to reveal the gender of the baby. She brought with her to our house for a family dinner ten eggs—five were dyed pink, five were dyed blue, nine of the ten eggs were hard-boiled, one of them was not. [laughter] And Pat was tasked to take each pink egg in a certain order and smack it against her head, [laughter] and I was tasked to do the same thing with the blue ones. [laughter] So when one of us smacked a single raw egg against our head, we would know the gender of our next grandchild, we were told. [laughter] I should say two things. First, smacking a hard-boiled egg against your head really does hurt [laughter], I don’t recommend it, and second, it took me four eggs to learn that we’re having a grandson. [laughter] I found this approach to revealing the gender of a child in the womb to be rather extraordinary. Perhaps it will catch on and become common, but Pat nor I saw that coming, and so for us it was an extraordinary experience.

And perhaps that’s a good segue to our sermon this morning titled “The Ordinary Christian Life.” We live in a time which to be called ordinary is not considered a compliment. In fact, it can be considered derogatory. Nearly everyone wants to be thought of as extraordinary.

Theologian Michael Horton speaks to this. Listen to what he says. “Ordinary has to be one of the loneliest words in our vocabulary today. Who wants to be a bumper sticker that announces to the neighborhood my child is an ordinary student at Bubbling Brook Elementary? Who wants to be that ordinary person who lives in an ordinary town? Is a member of an ordinary church, has ordinary friends, and works an ordinary job? Our life has to count. We have to leave our mark, have a legacy, and make a difference. We need to be radical disciples, taking our faith to a whole new level, and all this should be managed, measured, and maintained. We have” he says, “to live up to our Facebook profile.”

The quest to be extraordinary in the eyes of men is perhaps a desire we all have in our DNA as sinners. It can be exhausting and a futile quest. There is a sense, of course, in which we are extraordinary as creatures made in God’s image relative to the rest of creation.

Here’s how C.S. Lewis said it in his book “The Weight of Glory.” Perhaps you’ve heard this famous quote. “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, art, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors… Next to the blessed sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.”

But that isn’t what we’re speaking of this morning. Perhaps it’s because we’re made in God’s image and on that basis inherently, extraordinary creatures that we need to discuss how one lives the ordinary Christian life in order to make progress in becoming increasingly like Christ, who is extraordinary beyond measure. For the reality is that we’re also pitiful sinners. Our journey to be like our extraordinary Christ doesn’t begin in neutral. We begin with a great deficiency, for we are also extraordinary sinners.

There are a few things to say about the ordinary Christian life as the Bible speaks to it. First, that life is counter-cultural.