Summary
Coming soon!
Transcript
October, can you believe it's October?
Oh man, it's too hot to be October. And I will complain about that until it's too cold for whatever date I then deem it too cold to be, because I'm from Oklahoma and that's what we do around here. Hey, my name's Jonathan. I'm the lead pastor here at Destiny Church. Really thankful that you are here. Hey, do this for me. Go ahead and stand with me to your feet. We're gonna stand for the reading of God's word this morning. We are starting a new series today talking about prayer and we're gonna be talking about prayer as a church all the way until we start our Advent series for Christmas and the end of November.
And so I'm really looking forward to it. But I just wanted to tell these words, kind of wash over us this morning and kind of set the tone and the request of our heart this morning. We're gonna be reading out of Luke chapter 11, verse one. It says this, one day,
Jesus was praying in a certain place.
When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray," just as John taught his disciples.
And he said to them, "When you pray, say, Father, how would be your name, your kingdom come? Give us each day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us and lead us not into temptation."
Let's pray this morning.
Father God, the cry of our heart this morning, the cry of my heart to be able to walk through in this season of the church is this request, this one request to you, Father.
Can you teach us how to pray?
Can we lay aside everything that we know about prayer,
everything that we've experienced to this point,
the good, the bad, and the ugly?
Lord, and lay that down and instead with a fresh invitation,
with a fresh request of you and your Holy Spirit,
teach us how to pray.
Teach us how to pray today
so that we can draw more closely
and more intimately into relationship with you,
so that we can know your heart and know you better,
so that we can show you and express your love and your goodness in every area of our lives.
It's in your Holy Name we pray, amen.
Amen, you may be seated, you may be seated.
All right, well, I'm excited about talking about prayer. I'm looking forward to these next couple of weeks. We've got several different things planned. We have a panel group discussion where we're gonna be answering some questions that some people have already submitted about prayer. We have just a lot of different things that I'm looking forward to about prayer. And here's the thing, prayer is an amazing subject, and prayer is one of the spiritual formation practices that we have established in the nine spiritual practices or spiritual disciplines that we study as a church and that we walk through corporately that we'd be under the classical spiritual practices. We talked about this a few series ago when we talked about spiritual formation. If you weren't here and you missed any of that, you can always go back and look at it. But prayer of all the classical spiritual disciplines is a little different. And the reason being is every other spiritual discipline that we talk about, whether that's fasting or silence, or solitude or Sabbath or generosity or any of the other ones, all of those are kind of a means to an end. The whole purpose of doing them and practicing them and participating in them is for the ability to come into closer relationship and communion and sharing with intimacy with God. And when you look at that by definition, that is exactly what prayer is. Prayer is our ability to communicate and to talk and to speak with God. And so prayer is less of a practice than the actual end desired result. But when we talk about the spiritual practice of prayer and the spiritual formation discipline of prayer, what we are talking about is within our lives, creating time and space that we can intentionally be with God so that we can partner with Him to do what we can't do on our own and allow Him to transform and change us from the inside out. And so it looks a little different. The process looks a little different. And here's why I think it's important.
The reason that I think it's important, and I'm not gonna ask anyone to raise their hand, and I'll just talk from a real first-person basis is many of us in the history of our time, if we're being really honest, we've maybe had a season or a long season or even a current season of struggling with prayer.
That prayer is hard.
That we know we're supposed to pray
because we're Christians.
So we should pray.
But we don't like to pray.
Or it's hard to pray.
Or it's disappointing to pray.
Or you hear other people pray and you're like, wow,
they're professional prayers.
I am not professional.
Like my wife says the most beautiful, elegant, profound, powerful prayers.
And mine usually sound like, bless this food, amen.
And here's the thing, we can sometimes intimidate ourselves into believing that I am not capable of praying
for many different reasons. Or my prayers are not heard because what I prayed for didn't come to pass.
Or I was disappointed.
Or I was hurt. And there's many different reasons that we can come to prayer differently. But the invitation for you, church family, that I'm challenging you to press in over these next several weeks,
is to take everything that you've experienced with prayer
and allow it just to sit separate.
And just like we invited the Holy Spirit into this process, is this thing of Jesus, can you teach me how to pray new?
Can you inspire me with something new? And listen, for some of you, you're like, great. Cause I've never been very good at it in the first place. And like, if you're there, like, man, I know exactly what that feels like. Some of you are already profoundly influential in the realm of prayer. Like you already have such a beautiful intimacy and the invitation still remains because I believe there's always a deeper intimacy that can come in prayer.
Always, always, always place to grow and always places to learn. And here's the last thing in like this idea. I feel like I am the least qualified person
to teach on prayer.
The least qualified person. I feel like there's so many other people in this room that have more experience, that have more knowledge, that have more understanding, that have more practice in this room than me, let alone outside of this room. I feel like I am the least qualified person because it is a journey, it's a walk. But the thing that I can tell you is, the thing that has brought me so much peace and so much excitement about this, is that I feel like God has a desired message for us as a church to walk through an understanding of this.
And I feel so honored and privileged to be able to come and share this message. And so all of these things I'm talking about, there's never a place in this place where you should hang your head low, or feel like there's guilt, or feel like you haven't done anything, because pretty much everything I'm telling you, if it sounds like, oh man, this sounds like, it's something that I personally experienced, that I personally walked through. Because my relationship with prayer has had a long history. And my relationship with prayer has had ups and downs, and peaks and valleys, and miracles and disappointments, and heartache and joy, and everything in between.
And I still pray.
And I still pray.
And God continues to show up in new and miraculous and powerful ways. And so I look forward to this idea. And because here's the thing with prayer,
ultimately, we are just trying to have these moments in time
that we get to check in with God and have our spirit see God.
And to be able to establish this time, to establish this relationship,
to hear from Him and to be expressing within ourselves where we're at in honesty to God. And we're gonna look at all sorts of things over the next seven, eight, nine weeks that we go. I mean, we're gonna be looking not just at the idea like the theology or the understanding of prayer, which we'll definitely have plenty of that in biblical understanding of prayer. We'll definitely learn of methods and types of prayer that have happened throughout the history and that are in the biblical text, and also just in church tradition. But at the end of the day,
my desired goal for you, and for me, is that we walk closer with God in our daily life.
That we walk closer with God in our daily life. That is my desired goal for all of us when we walk through this. And so that being said, we're gonna look at almost like four layers or four styles or four dimensions of prayer. These are not like a hierarchy. These are not like a linear journey that you go through. Because prayer, like any spiritual formation, there may be some things that build upon each other as we're learning how to pray and as we learn how to walk through these processes. But what you realize in formation is there's no one path that fits all. And often what happens is all these things begin to accumulate and to come together, to work together for one specific desired outcome. But the language that we're gonna use and that we're gonna practice with in our spiritual formation practice, and we will be having a spiritual formation class and prayer that will start in November, which I'm really excited about. But we're gonna be looking at four different kinds of styles of prayer or journeys in prayer. Which is the first is talking to God.
The opportunity to talk to God. The second stage is talking with God.
The third stage is listening to God.
And the fourth stage is being with God.
Being with God. And we're gonna unpack what all those mean. We're gonna unpack what all those look like and how that we can walk through that. But we wanna address all these things. And I want you to understand, this is also a time and a place for you to be open and honest with yourself about how you feel about prayer.
Because often, because we feel like it is this holy thing, we feel like we can't ever be honest about how we feel. So we would never say publicly like, oh, I just sometimes feel like prayer's a duty.
Or prayer's a chore. Or prayer's an obligation. Or prayer's disappointment. We would never say that. We would never even be honest with ourselves because that sounds very unholy and unchristian if I say that God may strike me down.
And so what do we say about prayer? Like, oh, I love it.
I love when we pray.
I actually love when we hold hands and pray. That's my favorite part.
For some of you, there's no worse thing
than when we make you hold hands in church.
And guess what? I bet you in the next several weeks, we'll do it.
So sit by someone you like.
And if you're single,
that's all I'm gonna say.
Gotta think about that.
Sometimes we struggle when we pray
because it can feel boring.
We can make the excuse that we don't have time.
When we sit down to pray, we struggle to focus.
I started off thanking God for His goodness, and then I started making a to-do list of everything I had to get at Sam's.
Maybe I feel like instead of praying, I'm just kind of, I heard this quote, "Worrying in God's general direction."
(Congregation Laughing)
Or it feels like maybe we're just talking to ourselves or reading our wish list to the Santa in the sky.
Like that's how we feel sometimes in prayer.
And part of this is because we live in the most distracted, difficult place in time and history to be able to pray.
You have the most interruptions of any generation ever,
whether it's from your cell phone or from your TV, from other people, like you are constantly being interrupted, you are constantly being barbed, you constantly have different things that kind of go through, your attention span is less, and so between social media and internet and digital streaming, entertainment, noise pollution, urbanization, secularization, and obligations,
you're just busy,
and it's a struggle.
And if any of those things you hear, and you're sitting here thinking, "Gosh, that's me,
"and I'm in this room with all these "really great prayer warriors, and here I am, "I can't do it," that's not true.
You are not alone. If you struggle to pray,
whether historically or right now, you are not alone.
And if you're one who's on the opposite end of the spectrum, like you thrive in prayer, we have people, I know, I know we have people in this room who thrive in prayer, like they love it, guess what?
That's like this beautiful place to be. But if we realize, you are not alone, if you struggle in prayer, you are not alone.
And historically, you're not alone,
because prayer is complicated.
Prayer can sometimes look at something that we make it more difficult, because when we look at this chapter in Luke, and we're gonna be referencing Luke 11, and also combining it with Matthew chapter six for a couple reasons,
here's the thing. In Luke 11, which we already read this morning, the disciples asked Jesus this question, "Teach us to pray."
And this is an interesting request,
because we're now 11 chapters in, and if you've read the book of Luke to this point, and you put it in the context of the story, a lot of things have happened. He's done miracles, he's done his teachings, he's opened blind eyes, he's cast out demons. He's done a lot of stuff. And what the disciples ask is not, "Teach us how to teach a great message, "teach us how to cast out demons, "teach us how to tell the future, "teach us how to prophesy, "teach us how to open blind eyes." They didn't ask any of that. Maybe they asked it separately, and they just didn't record it in the Bible. But what we have recorded in the Bible, as I said, teach us to pray.
Because what we realize is, in those 11 chapters, and what has happened to this point, is what the disciples have seen, is that Jesus has something very special about his prayer life.
So much so that the Bible records multiple times, it just in the book of Luke alone,
the intentionality of saying, "And Jesus went to pray." Listen to this, Luke chapter five, and five comes before 11. It says, "Luke this, "but Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed."
Luke chapter six, 12, "One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and he spent the night praying to God."
Luke chapter nine, verse 28, it says, "About eight days after Jesus said this, "he took Peter, James, and John with him, "and then they went up upon a mountain to pray."
Now, for us, we read this story, and in our modern age, where digital print is very cheap, we just say, "Yeah, they're just telling you the details. "Jesus prayed, Jesus prayed, Jesus prayed, Jesus prayed." But in the ancient context in which manuscripts were all handwritten, every word was valuable. Every word was important, which is why biblical literature is so dense, it's why it's so compact, it's why it's so everything. There's no sparing words because every stroke represented a lot of time, a lot of money. And so if just in this book, just in the gospel of Luke, we have multiple times where the author said, "I just really want you to know
"that Jesus took prayer really seriously,
"that Jesus loved to pray.
"Jesus would do it all night sometimes.
"He would do it alone. "He'd do it with others. "He'd do it on the mountaintop. "He would do it in the wilderness. "He would do it with friends. "He would try to ask people to say it like he did it. "Like Jesus loved to pray."
And so what the disciples figured out is that Jesus has something
that is not like what we have.
Because what we have to realize is these aren't people who are like, "I have no clue how to pray, God. "Jesus, will you tell me how to pray "'cause I've never prayed before." Like that would be a legitimate request. Some of you are in this room, I guarantee you, we have people in this room, who if you're being honest, you say, "I don't know if I've ever actually prayed before."
And that's okay. The invitation's gonna come.
Today can be your day. This week can be your week. This can be the last day you can say that for the rest of your life. And it can be the beginning of a whole new season and journey of prayer and experiencing something beautiful. But this was not the cultural context of the disciples. These disciples were Jewish people who grew up saying prayers, what we would consider liturgical prayers, prayers that were written out, that our ancestors said every single day
that they prayed every single day and in different seasons they had prayer and in different feasts and festivals they had different prayer. They already knew the mechanics of prayer. They prayed very regularly.
But despite that, they said, "Jesus,
something's different about how you pray.
"Something's different about how you engage
"with the creator of the universe
"and how it's expressed in your life.
So can you teach us how to pray?" And then you see in Luke chapter one, it also kinda goes and says, "Can you teach us how to pray like John taught his disciples?"
And we don't know exactly, this is talking about John the Baptist. We don't know exactly how John the Baptist taught his disciples or what it is, but they're like, "John had a prayer. Like there was something coming because he was the voice in the wilderness preparing the way for the one who was to come. Like he was preparing something, this idea. It may have been this repent for the kingdom is God mentality that he was able to create." But he said, "They kind of had this credo. They kind of had this battle cry, this thing that they said. Can you teach us something?
Can you teach us what gives you something special because you're doing something prayer and what they believe, the reason that he was able to heal the lame and cast out the demons and preach to the crowds and multiply the bread and do all the things, the result of it was because of the life of prayer that he lived.
So they said, "I don't need you to teach me how to do the thing. I need you to take me to the source.
And can you teach me how to pray?"
And when we look at what Jesus did, I think we can look at two different things. We can see what Jesus taught his disciples to pray
and how he taught them to pray. Because I think they're both really, really important in what we look at. And so we're actually going to jump from Luke and we're going to jump over to Matthew. Maybe you noticed when we read Luke earlier, it's the Lord's Prayer or in the Catholic tradition, they call it the Our Father Prayer.
And maybe you noticed the one in Luke is like a slightly abbreviated, slightly more choppy, slightly missing a couple of things version for what maybe you learned in Matthew, right? And I'm going to bring the one for Matthew for now for two reasons. One, because a lot of people will say in the original transcript that had it and they shortened it just because it was cheaper and that doesn't matter. But the real reason I'm going to do it is because I memorized the one in Matthew and I will just be tripping over the one and look over and over again. And so we're just going to go to the one in Matthew.
And because I'm in control of the slides, kind of.
That's it.
So here's what's interesting.
He teaches us this theology
of how we're supposed to come before God.
And it's maybe different than something. It's not just asking for something. It's not even just praise, right? Like he teaches us this way, this method.
So in Matthew chapter six, he says this,
this then is how you should pray.
And I just picture the disciples like, Jesus, we teach you how to pray.
And he's like, okay,
this is how you should pray. And I can see them just leaning in, anticipating what is he going to say?
What is he going to say?
And the first two words that come out of her mouth, actually there's one word in here,
where I am made, it's our Father.
Abba.
Now to you and I in this room, especially those who grew up in church,
there is nothing unusual about hearing this idea of our Father.
We read it, we sing about it.
You're a good, good Father. Like it's not a thing. Like we don't have any shock about it. We've embraced it.
We understand it.
But in the world of Jesus,
when he said, when you pray,
pray like this,
you could even translate, when you pray, repeat this,
Father,
right away, before he even gets to the rest of it,
this was revolutionary.
Because in all of the literature canon that we have in the Old Testament, and all the non-canonized writings, all the different things that the Jewish tradition wrote, there was never one recorded writing of addressing God as Father.
Creator of heaven and earth, most powerful, El Shaddai, Jehovah Jireh, all these different things, like all these different contexts and names. God had a lot of names, and a lot of characteristics, and a lot of things, but Father was not one of them.
And here's what's crazy.
He didn't just say, Father,
he said, our Father.
And invitation of not only should you address God as Father,
because of me, we all now have the same Father.
And before I even tell you what else to pray, or how to pray, or how to ask, or what to say, and everything else I'm gonna do, the first thing that you have to deal with, is the fact that you may have some baggage that has to be dealt with immediately in how you see God. On how you see God.
And when we say the Lord's Prayer, the first invitation is, how do you see God?
How do you see Him? Do you see Him as your Father?
Do you see Him like you saw your earthly father?
For some of us, that's like, yeah, that's pretty good.
For some of us, that was non-existent. For some of us, that was actually abusive.
For some of us, that was hurtful. Like, so how do we see this Father? Is God an angry God? Is He a judgmental God? Is He a punishing God? Is He a distant God? Is He one that withholds things? Who is this God? And what Jesus says in the most holy and intimate ways is that He is your heavenly Father.
And we know through more kinds of the one who will withhold no good thing for you. From you.
He's addressing the very thing that the enemy spoke to Adam and Eve at the original deception.
He's holding things back from you.
God is not a good Father. The reason He told you not to eat that is because He knew you would be like Him, and He keeps things from you. That's the type of God you're trying to serve is the one who keeps things from you. He keeps good things from you. And Adam and Eve believe the lies of the enemy and men and women have believed it ever since. And what God sent His Son to remind them places is that you need to see me the way that I actually am. And I will withhold no good things from you.
Because I'm your Father. Don't believe me. I just sent my beloved Son and He will die on your behalf.
If I won't spare even my Son, my only Son, what else will I not spare from you?
I will withhold no good things.
This was a shock.
The religious people would have hated it. There wasn't enough pomp. There wasn't enough honor. There wasn't enough glory. There wasn't enough praise. But He says, "Go before Him and say,
My Father."
My Father.
The way that my kids approach me.
And I'm not a perfect dad by any means.
When I come home from work or when I pick them up from school or whenever it is, as much as sometimes I wish they would,
they don't come to me and say, "Oh, benevolent, holy Father, from whom and who was and is and was and is to come and will be,
who set the eternal Son from the east to the west to all glory from now until forever. Amen and hallelujah, praise to your holy name.
May I have a granola bar?"
Now sometimes that'd be better than what I get.
They come to me and they approach me
as one who wants to provide for them,
who wants to give to them.
From my seven-year-old to my 17-year-old, it looks different, but it all involves snacks.
And they don't hesitate and they don't question.
And I'm a very flawed father compared to God.
So if our own children are willing to come and ask,
how much more so are we supposed to come to God? But for some of us, it means we have to change the way we saw our Father.
For some of us, it means we have to change the picture that we have. For some of us, it means we can't be picturing this guy who's throwing lightning bolts or the thing that who's cruel or distant. We have to change it and we have to say, okay, every day. And guess what? This is not something that changes. Oh yeah, I'm gonna see him as good. The reason that Jesus is saying, when you pray like this, and we're gonna talk about frequency and prayer life and prayer rhythm and all these things as we continue on, but the reason that sometimes we just repeat this is because for some of us, for some of us in the way that we need to be changed, it doesn't come from praying at once, it doesn't come up from praying at twice, it doesn't even come from three times, not even a week, but you need to reprogram your entire life and mindset and sometimes just daily, maybe multiple times a day, the early church did this prayer three times a day, that it was like, I need to remind myself that I have a heavenly father and he's good.
And he loves me and he's my father, he's my father.
The second line,
who art in heaven,
our father who art in heaven.
Now,
just like the first line
shook the original of the believers
and it's kind of commonplace to many of us,
the second line was very commonplace to them in understanding, but it may be whenever we unpack it, it'll shake you a little bit. Because when we first hear this, who art in heaven, most of our cosmology and the way that we've been taught in our understanding of heaven, it's like we're on earth, heaven exists somewhere in the sky, and God is in heaven and we are here and we are separated by much distance.
I can't get to heaven, I can't see heaven, he is far apart, like he is far away from me.
So even though he may be my father,
he's in heaven and I'm on earth.
But that's not the way that the ancients viewed heaven.
In fact, the word that's used here, it can mean heaven and it does mean heaven. But heaven was not a place out in our solar system.
Heaven was the same thing where it talks about the sky, but it also is the same thing it talks about the air and the environment and all around you. A realm that you cannot see into, but that exists even in your very present state.
That is just as real as the physical world that you are in, the heavenly world is there, and just as real and just as present. But the air that is around you, the very breath that God breathed into Adam is still there. And so if you want to know where God is, he is in the very air that you breathe. He is in the environment, he is as close to you as the air that touches your skin, as the breath that goes into your lungs, as the oxygen that gets into your blood, he is fully with you.
He cannot be any closer than in heaven.
So your father who is in heaven, not distant,
but as close as humanly possible
to the very interior part of your very being,
who exists in reality as real as this table is here, the presence of God is equally as tangibly present in this moment and in this space. One is seen and one is unseen, but it doesn't mean that one is any more real, just like air cannot be seen, it is still present.
Our father who are in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Now I know you go around hallowing a lot of things in your daily life, so I don't need to explain this one, so we'll skip it.
Just kidding.
I know,
hallowed is another interesting word.
It's a worshipful term.
It means to revere or to respect the holiness,
the uniqueness,
the beauty,
the apartness.
I love this translation from N.T. Wright. He said this, "May you be worshiped by your whole creation. "May the whole cosmos resound with your praise. "May the whole world be freed from injustice, "disfigurement, sin, and death."
You see, as intimate and as personal and as close and as familial, our father is.
We also in the same moment, we remind ourselves
that he is the holy one,
that he is the creator of the heavens and the earth, that in him there is nothing but goodness and purity and kindness and righteousness, and that when we lay eyes on him, we are overwhelmed by the beauty and the splendor and the wonder of God. In Revelation, it talks about that whenever he was taken up into heaven and he saw the throne room of God and God was seated on his throne, and he said that there was two spiritual beings on either side that were angels, and it's really weird because it says they were totally covered with eyeballs, which is gross.
It says their fronts, their backs, their sides, their wings, all of them are covered with eyeballs, and if we drew that out, it would be the scariest, most nightmare-inducing picture that we could ever think.
But God created them with the purpose to be in the throne room of God, and he made them where all they could do from every angle is to be able to see.
And what they saw was God.
And when they saw God, the only thing that they could do
for all eternity is to sing, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come." On repeat forever because the more that you see God, that is all you can see.
Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come. We get to see what it is. Jesus came to bring light to the blind so that you could see God for who he really is, not the angry punisher, not the one who is unjust, not the one who's gonna short you, but the one who is holy above all else, who loves you like a father, who is as close to you as can be, and yet is the most powerful being on the entity and the entire cosmos.
And all of the things are subservient to him, that he is holy and he is good and he is righteous. And if you were able to see just a glimpse of his glory, you would sing his praise for the rest of your days because you would be so transfixed by how good he is. Holy, holy, holy, like this is their death, is their only, they're stuck. And he said, "I need to make you only eyeballs." Because even with that many eyeballs, you won't be able to see how holy I am.
We get to realize this process. We get to realize that often when we come to prayer in God, the reality that we've stepped out of is not the reality of who he is, but it's the reality of the world that we're living in.
So we are praying and we're coming to God based on the reality and the fallenness and the brokenness that we experience in everyday life.
But we get to remind ourselves, "Hey God,
before I pray,
before I continue,
after I've already said that I know you're my good father and I know how close you are to me despite what I'm seeing and experiencing around me,
can I remind myself that your reality is the true reality? And what I'm experiencing around me, though it feels very present, it is not the true reality that I live in.
It's not the true reality that I live in. So, hallowed be your name.
Holy be your name.
Do not allow me and my actions and my prayers and my decisions in the way I represent you. Ever bring dishonor to your name.
My whole goal is to bring glory to your name.
So let me live in your reality, not in my reality.
So our Father who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come,
thy will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
The thing that's important about this part is this dual realization and Jesus already referencing the tension that we experience today,
which is this idea of the now and the not yet,
that Jesus' kingdom is coming and Jesus' kingdom is in the process of coming, but Jesus' kingdom has still not yet come.
That you are freed from sin and that you are free from the power of sin and that you will one day be raised into the heavenly body. By that process, you will be raised in the heavenly body, but that process is still not completed. That there's a process that has started, that is in process and yet has still not happened and is still not complete. And that there's something happening that Jesus is saying you can pray for his kingdom to come and for his will to be done on earth here in the world and the realm that I live in, just like it is in the very presence where God exists.
That I want the heavenly reality to become the earthly reality. Now sometimes the way that I maybe read this when I was younger was like this place where I had like resignation, like, oh yeah, okay God, like I'm just like your thing, not my will, but your will, your thing, I'm just sorry.
Sorry I wanted something.
Forget about it.
I don't need it anyways.
But this part of the prayer is not a prayer of resignation.
This is the prayer of action.
This is the responsibility.
Because you are so close to me, God, and because I want to hallowed your name, I want your name to be made holy, you have placed me in a place only slightly below the angels and which that I can experience not just your goodness, but you have desired to partner with me to rule and reign in the invitation of being the one who translates the kingdom of God that is yet to come into the kingdom of earth that will be seen through his goodness. I get to be part of your goodness of bringing new creation here so that your goodness can be able to see in this reality, like I get to be part of the mission, not just the bystander that's like, oh, sorry, God, your will be done, that I get to pray because the thing that ultimately we're saying when we say your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven is that we believe that prayer has the power to change things.
(Congregation Applauding)
That prayer actually matters.
(Congregation Murmuring)
That God actually hears your prayer.
That resources from heaven are shifted to the kingdom of now when you go before the Father and ask.
Now that brings up a lot of questions and hardship,
none of which we will be able to fully answer ever completely, but none of them we will also avoid
because the problem is for being honest,
if you've had any experience in prayer and you've had any time in this journey, I'm sure that there's been a time where you've prayed for something and you have seen God come through in that prayer.
But if we're also being honest, I'm sure there's time that you prayed for something and he didn't come through,
at least not to you.
At least not to you.
And what that does, what disappointment often does for us is make us question,
well, do my prayers actually even matter?
Does prayer actually change anything or is God just gonna do what God's gonna do?
And there's plenty of people, there's plenty of people who have resigned to the idea, there's even just different denominations within the church who've resigned to the idea that God's sovereignty, which is understandable by man, makes it where it doesn't actually matter what I pray because God is going to do whatever God does and me doing my thing doesn't matter and the result is that I'm just not gonna pray
because it doesn't change anything.
And unfortunately, some of us, I can't speak for you, but for me, the reason that sometimes I will fall into that place is because it's easier for me not to pray and not to ask because then I'm not gonna be disappointed.
But Jesus and what the rest of the New Testament authors say is like, whatever you lose in heaven will be loosed in earth, that you can boldly come into the throne room of grace and ask and seek and knock and it will be given into you and that there is something that happens and although you will never experience every one of your prayers being answered, it's not gonna happen.
doesn't mean that you stop praying.
I have seen God do the miraculous through prayer.
I have personally experienced miracles in my body in which something that was broken is healed. I've laid hands on someone and watched them miraculously be healed. I have seen the power of God move
in ways that are too good to ever be, and the expression of God's goodness and seeing his goodness is one of the most powerful things, but I have also experienced praying for a son who's not been healed.
I've also prayed for life to come back into bodies that never came.
I've prayed for marriages to be restored that are broken
and that's hard.
And what we find ourselves at the place is asking,
why God?
Why then and not now?
Why then and not now?
And here's the beautiful thing.
Many of them.
I will never understand fully why.
Some of them I will.
Some of them I maybe even will see come to pass later.
And in a different way.
Because as much as I may think I know what's best, if the rest of my life has taught me anything, I don't know what's best.
But if I truly believe what Jesus says,
I can ask.
I can come in the name of Jesus and I can ask
because I have a father who loves me.
And I can keep asking. And I can keep asking and I can keep pressing in and I can keep interceding and I can keep beseeching the goodness of God and I can keep believing for a miracle even up to the point because sometimes I can look around and say, where is the miracle? But often when you press into these questions and you're not afraid to talk to God about what you're walking through and the disappointments that you experience and the hurt that you're holding and as opposed to saying, I can only say these really beautiful things to God. When you allow yourself to realize that when I understand who he is and how he is and what he's doing and what he wants to walk through and what he wants me to experience on this earth, then I can fully go to God with all of my disappointment and all of my shame and all of my brokenness and all of my rejection and he is not gonna cast me far because he is my father who says no matter what, you are my son and I'm as close to as you can be and I'm as holy as powerful as everything and you can see the kingdom of God now and yet you may still not get what you want
and at some point I can say, I trust you.
That's really hard.
That's really hard.
But I trust you.
Trust you.
I trust if you want that healed, you'll heal it.
Trust if you want that restored, you'll restore it. I'll trust that even if it died, you can bring it back to life
and I'm not gonna stop asking you because you're good to me.
You're good to me
and you've shown up too many times
for me to ever question that.
You're good to me.
Last thing.
Because that's what he told us to pray. And we'll continue in the prayer, we'll continue talking. We're not gonna stop in the middle. We'll get to the bread later. You know I won't skip the bread.
Bread and trees, bread and trees.
But I want you to notice
when the disciples said, "Teach us to pray." He said, "Repeat this."
And he speaks to God's character, he speaks to his closeness, he speaks to the power, he speaks to the kingdom, he speaks to all these things.
Provision and forgiveness, he speaks to this. But notice he didn't say,
"Hey,
just say whatever you want, whenever you want, however you want."
He could have said that and I actually don't think there's anything wrong with that.
But I think what's interesting
is that Jesus gave them a prayer that he said, "I want you to say this regularly."
The theological term we use and you've probably heard this growing up, if you've grown up in the church is a liturgy,
a pre-written prayer. It's not your words, in this case it's Jesus's words.
I want you to say these words and I want them to be the prayer of your heart.
And maybe you grew up like me. I grew up, and this is great, I grew up in the charismatic church.
And the way that we grew up, the way that I was thinking about liturgy was, and I don't want to offend anyone, I'm just telling you my experience. The way I grew up with liturgy is that they're stupid.
(Laughing)
Like don't do liturgy.
Why would you pray someone else's words?
God gave you your own words, pray your own words.
Liturgy is silly.
And denominations who do liturgy is just silly.
Do your own words.
And I want you to, I mean, I can't hear if you, like I mean no offense by that, but that is how I grew up.
And that represented dead religion
and dead context of prayer.
And I grew up a long time believing that to be true.
And then all of a sudden,
I start realizing like, oh,
well,
the Lord's Prayer, that's a liturgy.
When I quote scripture,
that's a liturgy.
When I pray Psalms,
that's a liturgy.
And then I recently had a revelation that when I was listening to something else and studying for the series, I was like, oh.
Because a liturgy is a pre-written thing in which people can pray and they can say together that proclaims the goodness of God who speaks to his character, who he is, to how close he is to his power, and to the thing that he would like to see done in our lives, just like this Lord Prayer is. And it's written by man, but inspired by the Holy Spirit, and it's said together in community, it's said as an individual. And all of a sudden, I thought, man,
I was like, I don't think I'd go to a church where liturgy was a big part of it. And then someone asked this question, which is, what do you think praise and worship is?
What do you think it is when we come and we sing songs together? And which we're all saying the exact same words at the exact same time, and that are specifically picked and specifically designed to be able to speak to the character of God, to be able to speak to how close you, to be able to speak to the power that he has in your life, to be able to speak to creation and provision, to be able to speak to who you are and your character. And so that when we say I'm no longer a slave to fear, but I'm a child of God, I'm not just the one saying it, I'm saying it with everyone else who's in this room, and I'm singing it in this song. And there was this great quote from Augustine that says that when you sing a prayer, you pray twice.
(Gentle Music)
And that is why corporate worship is so powerful because we are coming together and we are connecting ourselves to the saints and we are praying a prayer in unison and opening up this spiritual realm, the heavens of God around us and proclaiming the goodness of who he is and the identity of who we are and what we're doing. And we are creating a liturgical moment that the saints come together to push back the gates of hell and to bring the kingdom of God into this place. And we step into Eden right here in this room.
(Congregation Applauding)
And then you leave and it's just an empty bat cave again.
If you grew up like me in which liturgy was like this, like, ooh, don't do it, I wanna challenge you.
Liturgy can be beautiful.
For many, liturgy is this starting place of I don't know how to pray.
And God says, pray like this,
pray like this.
Examples of the Lord's Prayer, praying into the Psalms, quoting scripture, singing songs. There's great liturgy books.
There's one that I really like called Every Moment Holy.
I can only endorse volume one because I haven't been confident enough to buy volume two yet.
So there's even apps now
that help guide the liturgy in your life. There's one called Hallo and Lectio 365. There's things that you can participate in that are all things with this goal of being able to create a daily prayer rhythm.
And liturgy is this opportunity that we can use it. We can use it when we're learning. We can use it when we're traveling. We can use it when we're tired. We can use it when I'm sick and I don't know what to pray, when I have no words, when I feel far from God. I can use this pre-written idea, this pre-scripted thing, and I can make it the very outcry of my heart.
And here's the limitations to these. They can sometimes feel unpersonal,
unauthentic. They can feel like they're intellectual.
But here's the thing I know.
I can look at my wife
and I can say some of the most important words that I can ever say to her and they can be the most impactful words
when I look at her and I say, "I love you."
And when I slow down and I take the time to make eye contact
and I look right in her face and I make sure that she's looking at me and we're looking at each other and I say three very simple words and I mean them from the very depth of who I am and I say, "I love you."
And there's very few things in the entire world that can be more powerful in the relationship of what I can say to her in that moment.
But I can also say those exact three words
when I'm busy, distracted,
leaving, going and they have very little meaning at all in our relationship anymore
because it's actually not the words.
It's the intention of the heart
and the place that you put yourself in in the moment.
so when it comes down to even these liturgies, you can just go ahead and spout them off and you can just say them and you just do it and like it is something
or you can use them as God.
This is the outcry of my heart.
This is how I need to connect because I don't know how to pray anymore. So I'm going to the Psalm or I'm going to the scripture and I'm saying things like, "The Lord is my shepherd. "I shall not want because I'm really wanting right now "and I need you to be the one who guides me "because I feel like I'm in the valley "of the shadow of death and I'm afraid "but your word says I will fear no evil "because your rod and your staff, they comfort me "and even in that time I can see that I am safe "not because of my environment "but because you are with me.
"And you prepare a table before me "in the presence of my enemy. "You anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows. "So surely goodness and mercy will follow me "all the days of my life "and I will dwell in the shadow of the most high."
And that is now my heart's cry to my father who's in heaven, whose name is holy.
And a little bit of heaven gets to come down into my heart.
When I don't know what to pray, I get to take the time.
To invite these words to be my words.
And then to remember, these are not just my words. This was the cry of David.
And my words are now united with his words and the millions of believers who've come before me who've said the same thing in their time of adversity and fear and chaos and yet the same God that got them through it is the one who can get me through it. And I'm uniting myself to the saints and now my prayer goes before the heavens in this powerful, profound chorus of who got it.
There's nothing wrong with praying your own words. We're gonna talk about that later. I just don't have enough time. Unless you guys wanna stay for another couple hours. Didn't think so.
We'll get to it. Cause it's also very powerful. It's the next thing Jesus teaches.
Sometimes we need to orient ourselves.
(Soft Piano Music)
Sometimes we need to create a habit. Sometimes we need to create a place. So here, I have a challenge for you.
A thing that I'm wanting you to work. Because you see, the practice of prayer
is not a practice that we try to master.
It's the process in which we become mastered by God.
(Soft Piano Music)
And my desire for you,
it's the same thing that Jesus said in John chapter 17, verse 21, this last scripture for the day. It says that all of them may be one. Father, just as you are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us. So the world may believe that you have sent me.
My desire is for you to be in unity with God.
And rhythm with his words too.
And so I have an opportunity for you.
Something that I would love for you to consider and to think about how can I incorporate this, which is how can you establish in your life
a daily prayer rhythm?
A daily prayer rhythm.
And listen, there's no right, there's no wrong, there's tons of different things. Ronald Ruhiser has this quote, it says there's no bad way to pray and no single starting point for prayer. The spiritual masters offer one non-negotiable rule. You have to show up for prayer and show up regularly. Everything else is negotiable and respect for your unique circumstances.
What does your prayer rhythm look like?
And I mean starting, don't pray how you, I love the saying that we talked about, don't give what you don't have, give what you have. I'm not telling you pray the way you think you should pray. I'm saying pray where you're at today. And if your prayer right now is at zero, praise God.
Tomorrow it can be at one.
That's 100% increase.
And I love that.
God loves it too.
God looks at growth.
That's what he desires. He's in the multiplication.
What does a daily prayer routine look like? It may be very simple.
It may be very simple. It may be as simple as before you get out of bed,
memorize and repeat one prayer, one liturgy.
Whatever means something to you.
I shared this a couple weeks in the morning. I've been doing this for I don't know how long, several months now, maybe half a year, that every morning with rare exception that something happens and I have to fly out of bed due to usually children related issues.
Before my feet hit the ground,
I have three liturgies that I say. I say the Lord's prayer.
Sometimes I just say it. Sometimes I dwell on every word.
I say Psalms 23.
And I give a pledge of my pledge of allegiance every morning, which is here, O Israel, the Lord is your God, the Lord your God is one and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength and you should love your neighbor as yourself. And
And then I get up.
And it's not the only time I pray,
but it's my starting place.
And it's my daily place of start.
And God has been expanding me. God has been growing me. God has been doing things and challenging me in prayers and ways that I've not done it. But my question for you, wherever you're at, what does a daily prayer routine look like?
Maybe it's five minutes in the morning.
Maybe it's two minutes of silence.
Maybe it's in your car ride. Maybe it's right before you go to bed. Maybe it's at noontime, just taking two minutes from what you're doing.
Maybe it's more, maybe it's like, I don't know where you're at, but what is a daily rhythm that you can invite God into this Holy Spirit? And at first you may say, I don't know, it feels a little forced. It feels a little, listen,
put your heart into this place. It's like, God, I want to learn to hear your voice.
I want to know you. I want to be known by you.
And I want to start creating this routine.
And you start small, you start right where you're at.
And I'm telling you,
He will meet you there.
I'm not telling you He will answer your prayer.
Because that's beyond me to be able to tell you, what I am telling you is He will meet you there.
Right where you're at, in that place.
Stand with me as we pray today, church.
Father, you're so good.
Lord, as we leave this place and we begin to seek
the rhythm in our lives in which we can pray and spend time with you, most importantly, beyond my words, beyond what we shared today,
again, we come to you, Jesus.
Teach us how to pray.
Show me where to start today.
And then guide me on this journey for the rest of my life.
It's in your holy name we pray.
Amen and amen.
Hey, listen, church, if you need prayer, if you're here today and you need prayer, our prayer team is gonna be down front. They would love to pray with you for anything that you have going on. Next week's gonna be incredible. You don't want to miss it. We love you very much. Have a great rest of your Sunday. We will see you there.
