Learning from the Lord’s Prayer
Teach Us to Pray
Happy Mother's Day to all. um Now, of course, I have prepared a very special message for the mothers today, specifically tailored to the mothers. In fact, everyone else can stop listening. You'll see it now because they see we're doing the Lord's Prayer. And now I want to ask, do all the mothers pray? Yes? Sweet, there you go. See, tailored to you. Sorry, I didn't actually, I kind of did forget for the most part it was Mother's Day. But anyway, we all have something to learn. Beautiful. Let's begin by reading through the passage again. So starting from verse five, got a little bit extra on there. 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. But when you pray, go into your room, shut the door, and pray to your father who is in secret. And your father who sees in secret will reward you. When you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think they'll be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your father knows what you need before you ask him. So, let us begin in prayer. Father, you have given us this rich promise. Lord, you have shown us the way to pray. You have shown us that you hear us. Now, one quick, two quick, I don't know what you'd call them, notes before we start. One. I have some topics for this series that's meant to go for about six weeks. And because of how I've jumbled things around, I have a completely open slot and I have no idea what to preach. So, if anyone has any things about prayer they've ever wondered about, I would love to hear them. Because I'm running, well look, I could probably come up with something, but if you've got an idea, I would love to hear it. So, email me, text me, talk to me, do whatever you want. And then also, I want to preface this. We're going to talk today about how to pray. and I must very much preface, I am not an expert on prayer, if you couldn't figure that out already. I fall very far short. We were meant to do this series last year, but I felt so ill-equipped for it that I pushed it back a whole year. And what made me do it this time? It's not because I felt ready, I was just like, we may as well do it because I'll probably never be ready. And so, I hope you can understand that this comes from a place, not where I'm taking all of my wisdom and giving it to you, I'm reading God's wisdom and learning alongside you. Literally every single point I'm gonna give you today, I've actually failed to listen to every single one of them this morning. It's funny enough because I am still learning, just as you are. So anyway, let us begin. So this here now, it's not gonna be a step-by-step guide to a successful and effective prayer life. You're not finally gonna figure out there's not a silver bullet. But what we will cover is some ways that Jesus encourages us to pray. Some things that He has to teach us that we might gain more from our time with Him in prayer. This will not cover every aspect. People will have tips, structures, things that work for them. But here we are going to learn from what Jesus has to say to us. So four points. Pray as though He hears you. Our greatest request is the Kingdom of God. So our first point, pray as though He hears you. This was our first three verses before you jump into the Lord's Prayer, where He's talking about, don't pray like these people. And you see, He has two people in mind here. He calls them the hypocrites, they were the Pharisees, the religious leaders of the time. And what was their big error? said, look at them. They're sitting out there on the corner and they're declaring all their prayers. They're shouting as loud as they can. Why? So God hears them? No. So everyone can hear them. So people see, wow, my goodness, I wish I could pray that good. My goodness, I wish I prayed as long as He did, did the things He did. He is a truly righteous man. And so you see these Pharisees, they were like the markers of holiness within a society and so they define what true prayer looked like. And they were saying right there and then what is true prayer? It is to get up before many and pray very loudly. That is what true prayer looks like but we know it's just a means to stroke their pride and to make them feel holier than others. But then he goes on and he talks about the Gentiles as well. They had this practice, the Gentiles often, two different things they did. They would repeat chants over and over again. You know, like there are some songs I love and I'm not saying this is bad song, but you know, God, you're so good. God, you're so good. God, you're so good. And look, it's a good thing, but these guys would sit there for half an hour, hours just over and over and over and over again, because if I repeat it over and over again, God will hear me. Or they thought, if my prayer is eloquent enough, if my speech is worthy and I use many long words, then God will be impressed and He'll hear me. They had all these different ideas of what God wanted in prayer. Much of this really was just for show. It was just an appearance of righteousness, but is really asking the question, how does God want us to pray? What makes Him, sorry, what makes us acceptable? What makes Him hear our prayers? What is it? Now often, we're not thinking about why He does listen to us, often the thing in our minds is why doesn't He? And we have many lies that we believe. We think God will only listen to us if I'm living an obedient life, right? If I'm kind of got it all together, tick in the boxes, then He'll start listening to me, then He'll start answering my prayers. Sometimes we think it's because of some sin in our life, sometimes we think, well, my great grandfather was a Freemason or something, so therefore God doesn't listen to me. That's not true. Okay, nothing can separate you from the love of God as Romans 8 says, except if your uncle was a Mormon. No, I'm sorry. Nothing can separate you from the love of God. Or better yet, we simply just do not pray because we think to God we sound like a baboon. We think we just sound, He doesn't want to hear this. He doesn't care about this. So I'm just not going to talk to Him. These are all lies of the devil that distract us from the truth. The truth of the gospel. And what is it? James 5.16, this isn't the whole truth, we'll pull it out. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. So who are the ones that God listens to? Because it says they have powerful praise. That means they've got a straight line connection to heaven. They are the righteous people. Okay, well, those are the ones that do good things, right? Let us look at the Bible's definition of a good person, of a righteous person. It is not those who do enough good things. It is Habakkuk 2.4. The righteous shall live by faith. Okay? He is not saying that they shall live, they shall prosper, they shall succeed in all they do because they're good people. No one's good. Christians know this, we are sinners, we utterly fall short of God's standard. So how can we live? How can we have access to His throne? Faith. That and that alone. So you see, our righteousness, that which makes us righteous comes not through what we do, but through what we believe. What we believe about the Son of God who died on the cross for us. God listens to those who trust in the name of Jesus for salvation. That and that alone is what gets you into His throne. And so you see, that is why we pray in Jesus' name. Because we understand that we're not coming before Jesus with, hey, I'm Matt. Yes, I didn't actually read my Bible this morning. I guess I did because I technically read it out loud then. I've read my Bible this morning, you know. Here's the thing, no, no, no. I don't come in my name. I come in Jesus' name with His name tag on. So, every prayer that I utter, who does God hear it as coming from? Yes, he knows it's from me, but he hears it as though it is coming from the mouth of Jesus himself. That is the kind of righteousness I have because of my faith. I do not rely upon myself, but instead I say, Jesus, intercede for me. Take this to the throne for me. In your name, I pray. And so you see now, all of our prayers are offered up in faith, offered up. So it doesn't matter, the most elegant prayer, Spoken before a crowd of a thousand people, does no more, is no more effective than the most small and little humble prayer prayed in the heart of the most timid child. In the ears of God, exactly the same, because they are both offered up in faith. Prayers in front of a big crowd aren't a bad thing. So also prayers in the heart are not bad either, as long as they are both offered up with faith. His ears are open to all. those prayers. So now we go on. We come now to the actual Lord's Prayer that we know. So, our Father, He says, so pray then like this, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. So you have three requests here. Hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, and your will be done. now all these requests kind of focus in on one point. When you say, hallowed be your name, which is like, you know, we're making it holy, we're making it number one in our lives and we pray that it would be in the whole world, then the other two are kind of what follow on. So, we pray that in your name being holy, your kingdom would come and that your will would be done, right? On earth as it is in heaven, as it would be unhindered. No one would rebel against it, no one would reject. And so you see what we're doing in our prayers, this is the first thing that is right there, right as you jump into this prayer. It is a focus upon God's name being honored and treated as holy. It is a longing for a kingdom where none rebel against his will. And so this prayer is creating in us a deeper longing for the end of the age. it is creating in us a deeper urgency for the gospel. So, first thing, right, this prayer is not primarily praying for some golden age to come here and now, right? We pray, your kingdom come, right? Now look, in some ways, yes, God's kingdom does come in the reality of the church, but what we're really praying there is what it is prayed at the end of Revelation. After giving all those visions, what does John say? Lord, Lord Jesus, come quickly. Come quickly Lord Jesus. That's what he's saying. And so when we pray, your kingdom come, what we're asking is God, just work, do all your things, bring the plan to completion so that your kingdom might come. It is not first and foremost praying that his kingdom would come down here on earth and we'd have some prosperous church. It's actually asking first and foremost that he would bring all things completion so that his kingdom would come and dwell on earth at his second coming. so it's creating in us. We're just creating this longing, this desire because I want to be there. It's great if His Kingdom comes here and things are good here for the church, but what I really want is for Him to come, for Him to be here in person because that will be the end of the age and that is what I look forward to. But then of course, the prayer also turns our minds to the most important job of the church, right? Your Kingdom come, your will be done. How will His will be done, right? not talking about just the will, the things that He talks about up in heaven, we're talking about His will, His things He has revealed to us in Scripture. How are those things done? Through us, through the church. It is the spread of the gospel as we share it with others and it is also the discipling and the encouragement of one another as we grow in that gospel together, as His will is done in our lives. And so why are these, why is this first? Why is this the first thing He puts in His prayer. Because these objectives are the most important things to God. They encompass His end goal, which is that the fullness of His Kingdom would come here, would be here at the end of the age. And it is a prayer for the means through which that happens, which is that the gospel goes forth. That people are brought to faith and also that those people are matured and discipled. And now, This is really important to have at the start because the reality is, how many of you really have God's glory as a regular and one of your greatest prayer requests? Now, some of you may be really good at it. I know I'm not. I know I tend to slip back into the old habits because I'm quick to think of my old, I'm quick to think of my needs, my things. I jumped to the, give us today our daily bread and by the time I'm normally getting a bit distracted and I don't go any further than that one thing. You see, we think in just praying we are doing well and don't let me discourage you, praying is a good thing. But we tend to think like, man, I'm acing and small, like I prayed for 20 minutes, yeah, it was all requests about things I need, but I was praying for other people too. But did we truly consider what God wants? Because you see, we don't notice the sinful nature creeping back in, we don't notice the lies of the devil because he accepts something. He's like, all right, you're going to keep praying? I'm just going to make sure you don't pray about the things God really cares about. Because you see, this old us, this old self that we've talked about, that old sinful part of you, it is concerned with itself. So it's saying, okay, if you pray, I'm gonna make sure your prayers are only about you, only about the things that concern you and your life. But God wants us to be gripped by His glory, by His kingdom, by His gospel. And so He's encouraging us, make it first. Make it a part of our requests and do not forget it. And so now we go on to point three. Yeah. Where he says, give us this day our daily bread. So naturally, this is the part most of us skip to in our prayers. At least I do. This is where we bring our needs and our wants to God. Now, I did say in the last point that the reality is many of us are selfish. That we jump right to our needs, but... I do not want that to be a hindrance to the fact that we should bring everything to God. Just because we're selfish doesn't mean that we shouldn't be completely open and honest with God. We should go to the giver of all things with every request we can possibly imagine because he is happy to give. But there are two things that I want to talk about. Like I said, the point, pray about everything. So that's our first thing. Now, we often think that there are things that God doesn't care about. They're just too small. He's got bigger fish to fry, right? Stop concerning him with these little things. But is that really the truth of who God is? Notice what He actually asked them to pray for. Give us today our daily bread. Now, look, the reality is, yes, back in their day, they were a bit more reliant on bread than we are. Some of you probably eat bread like there's no tomorrow still, because it is pretty good, right? Vegemite, cheese, mmm, it's good. But you think about it even for a child, know, they sit in there, just all our breakfast that we have, right? It's such a simple thing. All of us live, like most of us aren't worried about where the next breakfast is gonna come from, right? So do we really need to keep praying about that? Is that really a most essential thing? Yes, it is. Because we don't wanna grow reliant upon ourselves thinking that, well, I've actually got this all together. Any moment God can take all your money and knock your legs out from underneath you and suddenly you will be wondering where the next meal is gonna come from, right? We are wholly dependent on Him. And so the reality is when He makes it such a small, just ask me for your daily bread, everything you need each day. He's saying, I care about those things. I actually care. Even look at this in Matthew 6 26. He says, at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. God cares about providing food for a tiny bird. I'm sorry, I don't care about birds that much. I care about me and what I'm going to eat, but yet God cares enough to feed that little bird. if He cares for that, He cares for every detail in my life. So you see, we are not to make distinctions saying, these are the things that God cares about, but I shouldn't pray about these things because God doesn't really care about those. He cares about everything. So pray to Him about it all. He wants to hear it. He genuinely does. Some people might get bored of you talking, God will never tire of you talking about the smallest and most insignificant thing. And then my second thing, I want you to pray often. Now, one of the most helpful things to do as Christian, particularly in your prayer life, is to bookend your day with prayer, right? In the morning and the evening. Very helpful thing to do. Very helpful, structured and granted. Some of you, like I've already said, are probably amazing at this. If the rest of you are like me, we're trying our best, all right? Often you get a bit tired at night and yeah, anyway, things happen. But I don't want to just leave with that because the reality is I don't think God has called us to simply just pray at the beginning and the end of the day. If we're doing that, great. That is awesome. If we're not, hey, God still loves us. Isn't that great too? But we are all working. But what I want to talk about today is spontaneous prayer. That prayer which is littered throughout the day, you we have different names for them. Popcorn, no, not popcorn prayers, sorry, arrow prayers. You know, you just shoot them up, right? Little prayer. Help me God, you know, I need a bit help in this. All these things that just, they're five seconds here and there, every little bit, just asking for help. Because you see, it's like this phone line that the reality is it's never on hold. You're just constantly using it, all the time, talking to God, every little thing. There was this prayer, not prayer, sorry, this quote that I heard a number of years ago that just, I just love it. It stuck with me for an age. It says this, I never prayed for more than 20 minutes, but I never meant... went 20 minutes without praying. And what it's talking about there is this idea that as we walk through the day, we just pray little bits here and there every day to God. And I think this is why, I'm not saying it's easy, trust me, I forget. But I think it is incredibly helpful because what does it actually do? It mirrors what a true relationship is like. Okay, any of you ever... if you have a significant other or just someone that you care about and you're go spend the day with them. So you're gonna go spend the day with your wife. Do you say, well, honey, I've set aside about a half an hour in the morning and a half an hour in the evening. We can talk during then, other than we're not just not gonna talk. Don't wanna hear from you, sorry. I know we're spending the day together, but let's spend the day in silence. There may be some husbands that say that, you shouldn't, right? The reality is that if you're going to spend a day together, you talk. You don't just sit there and say nothing. You enjoy one another's presence and part of that is talking. And so you see, God is sitting there. He's happy and ready to be invited into every moment of our lives. He's happy to spend the day with you. So will we invite Him in? You see, the reality, all of us have plans for the day, but rarely do those go according to plan. You might be able to pray for everything that you expect is gonna come. Things will happen during the day you don't expect. And so what are we to do in those moments? We pray. Little arrow prayers up to God. We ask Him to intervene in every little twist in our day. Now again, this isn't to the detriment of intentional time spent with God. If we don't invest in the intentional time, you probably won't invest in spontaneous, right? It is helpful to have structured prayer. It is often the fertile ground from which spontaneous prayer springs. Because the reality is if we pray much, it is often easy to pray more. If we pray little, it will be very hard to pray at all. So we need to invite Him into every moment. Just try it. You could just have a prayer that you copy and paste, you know? God, go before me. God, help me. God, come with me into this. Just say that. Every, I don't know, whatever. Just make it your own, but invite Him into it. and He will do amazing things because that is what our God does. And so now, our final point as we draw towards the end, I realize I'm not doing the forgive our debts as we have forgiven our debtors. We talked a fair bit about confession last week. If you want to know that point, confess your sins. Covered? Good. All right. Now to verse 13. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. So, This is always an interesting one because people say, that mean God leads us into temptation? No. And if you actually recognized, think three out of four of my points were technically in the kids talk. What does he mean when he's saying, I'm going to lead you not to temptation? Exactly what I showed the kids there. He's like a shepherd leading his sheep. It's not saying he's leading us into temptation, saying we're sheep and we're helpless. We're probably the ones that are going to lead into temptation, walk into temptation. So he leads us away from it because he knows he's like, you're not going to be able to handle that. Let's go to this way. Right? And so you see, he steers us away. He is the shepherd over our lives. And so we are asking him in this moment, keep us from places of temptation. And if we are led there, like I was led to Marnie, she's not evil, but you know, the obstacle in the way, the one I had to watch out for, we ask that he would deliver us from that evil. And so two things in this point. We must acknowledge truth about the Christian life, right? There is an enemy. There are things that oppose us. As Christians, we are at war. We walk through battles every day. There are things that seek to take our attention away from God, away from the things that He wished for us to do. I really like it. Some translations are really helpful in that they translate it not just deliver us from evil, but deliver us from the evil one, which is still a valid translation. As in, it's recognizing There is an enemy, there are spiritual things out there that are actually opposed to you. They don't like you, they hate you because you are for God. You love Him instead of the things that they are about, the things of the world. And so you understand that every day you step out, you step into a battlefield. But you see, going through a day without prayer is like what? You imagine you're there in World War I, you're in the middle of the trenches, right? And you go out and you say, I've got my gun. But I'm like, I don't need those bullets, what would I need that for? Useless. You've rendered your weapon useless. And that is what we do with prayer. We often go out into the day being like, I think I got this. But you don't pray. You might have all the Bible verses memorized. It doesn't matter. You need to pray to Him. Because you realize even boring days are days when the devil is attacking you, right? You're cleaning the house, he's out to get you. You're working all day, he's out to get you. You're out camping, enjoying a nice holiday, he's still out to get you. Every moment of the day. And so this leads to the next, probably the more important part, our role in this fight. Who is the one who keeps us from temptation? Who's the one that delivers us? God, right? It's not you sitting there praying to God, man God I really feel like I got it today. I think I'm actually gonna be able to make it through this one. No. What we must accept in this prayer as we pray it is we are accepting a fact that we are not sufficient in and of ourselves to keep ourselves from sinning or being led astray. You could be the strongest Christian in the world. You don't pray, you're not going to make it through the day without sinning. Granted, we don't make it through any day without sinning. But you will be led astray if you don't depend on God. So this prayer is actually an admittance that we are weak, that we can't do it on our own. We have to run to Him who is actually sufficient to keep us. But you see, your pride's gonna come in saying, dude, you actually got this under control. You're gonna handle this today. And now you may not actually think that, but the reality is that's what we do when we don't pray. In case you didn't know, that's a really dumb idea. Foolishness. We'd ask for guidance and protection, excepting we are weak. before we actually show our weakness, before we actually fall. And so it is our daily test, the first test of every day. Do you think you can make it through this day and handle it on your own? I hope not. But you see, that is the first test of our day and it is revealed by whether we pray or not. because we show our dependence upon God when we pray. And so, bringing, wrapping it all up. As I'm sure you've guessed, there's things I've missed. As I'm sure you've guessed, because I've already told you, I do not have it all together, I do not have all the tips and the advice, I am a baby when it comes to the discipline of prayer. I am an infant. And so, I would recommend, I know some of you don't like reading, but if you're gonna read one book, oh damn it, I just realized I didn't actually bring it down from the house. I... There will be some books up the back soon that I've brought. Three copies that I put up the back there. I would encourage you, because I'm not an expert, go to someone who has a bit better grasp on it. These three books that I've got, Tim Keller, written by Tim Keller, called Catchy Title, Prayer. You'll like that one. Again, if you want to know more, I would encourage you. I'll put them up. They'll be there next week. Feel free to take them. They'll just be in the library. Use them as you wish. Anyway, going on from there. Hands up if you think your prayer life sucks. Yep, probably a fair chunk. Some of you are probably aceing it and that's great. We need some of those people. Good. That means you've got good motivation to change, hopefully. Now, I want you to understand a great prayer life doesn't mean I pray, I get up at 4 a.m. and pray for four hours every day, because I know I so need God. If you're gonna do that, awesome, please do. But that isn't necessarily what makes a great prayer life. It isn't meaning that every prayer gets answered. It means knowing God is near us and that He hears us. That is what a great prayer life is. It is walking with God and just knowing He's here. Not because I can feel Him necessarily, but because you know the promises of the gospel. I believe in faith and He said nothing can separate me from Him. It doesn't matter how much sin, doesn't matter what stands in the way, nothing can separate me from Him. So He is here and He hears me. Always. whatever I offer up in faith, He hears. And so now, as we take this journey together, as all of us will inevitably seek to hopefully improve our prayer lives to some degree, there's always improvement to be had. It's not saying, oh, we're going to finish this series and everyone's just going to be acing it. You may take nothing from this and you might go and listen to this series three years from now. I don't know. God's got your plan. He's got it figured out. And understand, there's going to be difficult seasons, difficult circumstances, things that will hinder our prayer life. One of the most, it was funny as I was doing the research for this series, one of the most discouraging quotes I read, which was in the book that I just recommend there, was it's about Tim Keller's own journey with prayer, how he's gone through it over a number of years while he's dead now. But anyway, this was what he says at the start of the book as he sought to improve his own prayer life. He says, the changes took some time to bear fruit, but after sustaining these practices for two years, I began to have some breakthroughs. I have never read something more discouraging in my life. But the reality is, prayer is hard. I don't have any silver bullet that's going to change that. But I talked about last week that there is the greatest battle that we face in this because the devil opposes us so greatly because there is a great reward on the other side. At least take note of in the quote, he did have breakthrough. It may have taken two years, I pray that it will not take you guys two years. I pray it doesn't take me that long. But we will be rewarded. He promises that all those who seek Him will be rewarded. There's actual power in prayer. But like he says later on in the Sermon on the Mount, ask, seek, knock. And when you've done that, knock a bit more because you will receive the answer to your prayers. Just keep going. And it is possible for all of us to have great prayer lives. They'll all look different, but it's possible for all of us because God resides in us. and in all those who believe in His Son. So, as we wrap up now, we'll finish in prayer and then we'll go into a time of communion. Father, Your name is holy. Above all other names, Lord, it shall be holy in our lives. We ask that we would esteem it above all things. Father, we ask that Your kingdom would come, that it would come quickly. Lord, we are tired of this world, we are tired of what it offers. Lord, being in a world without sin is just not worth it. So would you bring your plan to completion? Would you bring in the full number of your people? that you may come, that you may draw and hit us, that we may dwell in your presence, that we may see you with our own two eyes, that our faith may be made sight. Father, Lord, would your will be done in this earth and with the day come where all will bow the knee before you and confess that you are Lord. Father, would you provide for us our every need? Give us today our daily bread. Be with us in every moment, Lord. Let us pray to you often. Let us pray about everything. There's nothing too small for you. Lord, forgive us our sins. We are in desperate need of your forgiveness. So would you forgive us now? And Lord, lead us not into temptation, but Father, as we go out into this week, deliver us from evil. Father, the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours now and forever. Amen.