Our Father

Prayer is important for spiritual growth. But prayer is not hard. Prayer is not eloquent. Nor is prayer something to be paraded around. Prayer doesn’t have to be elaborate. Prayer just needs to get whatever you want to say, the way you want to communicate it, off your chest and into God’s ear. This week, we start a brand new series called “Red Letter Prayers.” In this series we’re going to look at the red letter prayers of Jesus. If you don’t’ know what I’m talking about, all you have to do is open up a bible and see that when Jesus talks, the letter are all red. So we’re going to look at the prayers Jesus prayed and apply them to our lives. The reason we’re going to do this is because there was a significant power that came from his prayers and we, in the 21^st century have lost that. I want you to recapture that power for your life, for my life and for the lives of the people around us because it’s an amazing power and amazing tool for us to have. So let’s pray and get started by looking at the first red letter prayer in our series: the “our father”. The premise of this series comes from a deep seeded desire for me to gain some type of spiritual breakthrough with my walk with God. What I mean by that is that we can all live life and feel very connected to God. We all pray, when we need to, but the type of prayer life that I want is a prayer life where when I talk to God on a whim—He answers in a way that I understand! This is my desire, not just for me, but for all of you as well. Because when we pray this way and receive this way, there is an awakening within us that happens that blows people, places and things out of the water. Case in point is the life of Jesus and more aptly the lives of the twelve disciples. When they walked and prayed things, they saw the blind see, the lame walk and the sick healed. There was more than once when they witnessed some crazy miracle because of their prayers to God and God heard and answered. Into the early days of the church, when things were still underground and before Constantine changed the game, it was the prayers of the early church fathers that fought the raids of the barbarians protecting their cities, and eventually finding peace to study and open universities for people to learn and gain education. Going into the middle ages or the dark ages, it was the prayers of the nurses and doctors that opened the doors to public health care during the plague. Moving closer into our time period, we have the civil rights movement, which wasn’t just a non-violent act of civil disobedience (aka peaceful rioting), it was a coordinated effort launched over a time of twenty to thirty years that involved prayer and God giving the demonstrators affirmation in acting against the government. This is the power of prayer that we lack in the 21^st century. It may be because we don’t have a sense of urgency anymore in our lives. Especially with the sequester going on. Our lives are relatively manageable despite it. But regardless the reason, we find ourselves seeing over and over in history that great acts, great movements, great spiritual breakthroughs happen when the prayer in our hearts, in our minds, and in our mouths become unleashed and pour out the power of God. Let’s go to Matthew 6:5-8. ⁵ “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. ⁶ But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. ⁷ “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. ⁸ Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.  The first thing we need to take away here is this: prayer is a private exercise. This means that prayer is not meant for you to showboat. Nor is it all that important that you be able to pray in public. You see, the power of prayer comes in the form of feeding you a reward from God, that is His response to us from our prayers. I’m not going to get into how God answers prayers or what happens when God doesn’t hear us. To me, that’s all filler and superfluous questions that somebody else needs to answer about prayer. Verse 5 and 6 clearly says that when we make prayer a private exercise, not for the eyeing public, but for the privacy and intimacy of the people praying, there is a reward. Check it out—prayer is not meant to be mimicked like that loud person talking on the phone in the train. That is not only obnoxious, but it gives you attention from other people that you are asking from God. Com’on man. Jesus says that there is a reward for exercising prayer privately, away from the limelight. I know for some there are measures of value in having people see you pray. I’m a professional Christian and people ask me all the time when I pray because they never see me pray. And I tell them, I write a QT every single day of the week, you telling me that I’m not praying? There’s more insight in those QTs than I am mentally capable of. That’s because I’m praying and God is giving me insight into the scriptures I’m reading. Let’s not kid ourselves. You know as well as I do that the QTs on the church’s web is way more than what I can do on my own. We need to make prayer a private discipline so that we can receive the reward of prayer (v6). Second thing about prayer: Get to the point. This was a problem in Jesus’ day. This is a problem today. Let me give you an example of how this is a problem. Have you ever been so hungry that you can hear your stomach and the person whose leading prayer goes on for half an hour, not blessing the food, but blessing the chicken farmer who raised the chicken and then in between each and every word, he/she adds the phrase, “umm… God, Holy Father… ? Yeah. I say that as a joke, but there are some people out there who just want to pray nonsense. Jesus says cut that out, “don’t be like them. He says, verse 9. ⁹ Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. ¹⁰ Your kingdom come, your will be done,     on earth as it is in heaven. ¹¹ Give us this day our daily bread, ¹² and forgive us our debts,     as we also have forgiven our debtors. ¹³ And lead us not into temptation,     but deliver us from evil. I want to focus on verse 10. The reason I want to go over verse 10 in the Lord’s Prayer is because this is the power of prayer that we need to harness and understand. You see, verse 9 is just an introduction that addresses the prayer to God. Verse 11 and 13 asks God to get us through a single day in the day and life of you or me. I don’t want to downplay the importance of getting through a single day of our own lives by the grace and mercy of God, but that’s something we know and be aware of without having to spend thirty minutes of preaching on a Sunday about. Like if you’re not thankful for having food in your stomach, so much food that you have to go to the gym to make sure your stomach doesn’t explode, well then, you’re just kind of dumb. Yes, I said it. More than the food piece, which I know most of you can’t even get over right now, is the temptation piece. Then there’s the evil piece. I’d be a liar if I said there was no temptation. Even the most boring life has temptation to do something against our personal integrity. You know I’m right. We have everybody and their mom, our mom’s leading us into temptation, so we ask God to lead us away from it. It’s simple. Then because it’s me against the world, the evil, evil world we ask God to deliver us from it because you know there’s a bloodsucking ambulance chasing lawyer that’s looking to sue you for something that has nothing to do with you because he/she is racist and can’t tell your people groups apart. I know, I’m not lying. So we ask God to deliver us from that evil. I don’t want to down play that, but I want you recognize that this is something we may be doing unconsciously or subconsciously because it’s always burning in the back of our minds, keeping us awake at night. I call this maintenance and personally, I believe that we don’t even need to teach this part because everybody knows how to do this part, even if you don’t’ believe in God. The part that needs to be taught is verse 10. “Your kingdom come, and your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” The significance of this verse is heavy. This verse is asking God to rock the world as we know it and bring heaven to earth. This part of the prayer teaches us two things. The first of which is that this earth, for some people may be the closest place they will ever get to heaven; and the opposite that for others this earth may be the closest place to hell that they’ll ever get to you. I say that because if we’re not actively praying, “God bring heaven here on earth, because life is hell,” then we’re not really understand the gravity of this prayer or of the nature of sin in our lives. Secondly, what I want to point out is this, the “will of God” while Jesus isn’t so specific, is clear: in heaven, there is a sanctification that goes on which makes man holy before God. The will of God, that is bring heaven here on earth, has nothing to do with hospitals, civil rights, good public policies, education, marriage, etc, and so forth. What I’m saying is that we sometimes confuse the “will of God” for my own will and pleasure. That ain’t it. The “will of God” that is, His bringing heaven to earth is realized in verse 12. “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” His will is that we be reconciled to Him. That is what makes heaven on earth. When we reconcile to him, we naturally reconcile to other people. When we reconcile with other people and therefore also God because He is the reason for reconciliation, then our world changes. Let’s look at verses 14 and 15: ¹⁴ For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you,¹⁵ but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. Jesus knows this. He prays this in the Lord’s Prayer. He is teaching the disciples to pray this because when we’re cleaving to “our father who is in heaven” we’re asking to be reconciled to Him. We reconcile to Him in the reconciliation of ourselves with people around us. That is the will of God. This is the power of prayer that we learn in the “Our Father.”