Rick Warren - Talking to Your Heavenly Father - Part One

Hey, thanks for joining us today on Pastor Rick's Daily Hope.

We are so glad that you found us today. I've

got a question for you. Are you feeling stuck, like

maybe you've hit a wall and just nothing's moving forward. Well,

you're not alone and you're not without hope. You know,

the Bible is full of people who faced impossible situations

like Mary, Noah, Job, even the apostle Paul, and they

all experienced one thing that changed everything, a breakthrough from God.

So today Pastor Rick continues his series called Seeking God

for a Breakthrough. Rick's going to walk us through biblical

accounts of faith, prayer, and perseverance, reminding us that God

still moves in powerful ways whether you're in a season

of waiting or searching for hope.

This series offers.

Encouragement and biblical truth to help you keep going and

get the breakthrough you need. Okay, now here's Rick with

part one of a message called Talking to Your Heavenly Father.

Now.

I defined a couple weeks ago the word breakthrough as

when God does a miracle, when He miraculously solves an

unsolvable problem in your life that you have no control over.

There's some problems you can pray for, but you could

really have some input. You could use your own ingenuity

to solve those problems. But when God solves something that's unmanageable, uncontrollable,

you have nothing to do with it.

That's called a breakthrough.

And we all have different breakthroughs in different areas of

our lives. Now, I just want to say this at

the start. God did not bring you here during this

particular season when we're studying how to have a breakthrough

in your life by seeking God.

He didn't bring you.

Here to watch everybody else have their prayer be answered.

God brought you here because He wants to answer your prayer.

God wants to do a breakthrough in your life. If

He didn't want to do a breakthrough in your life,

believe me, you wouldn't be here. But God wants to

answer your prayer. He wants to have a breakthrough in

your life. Now, you know, when you look at the

life of Jesus, he chose twelve men to be his

interns or disciples or followers, and they followed him for

three and a half years. They saw Jesus do all

kinds of amazing things. He healed people, he did flat

out miracles, He calmed storms, He fed the five thousand

with a single launch. He did all kinds of miracles,

all kinds of healings. He raised people back to life,

people who died they saw this happen. He preached great sermons.

He was an amazing man of miracles because he was

obviously God in flesh. But when the disciples went to Jesus,

they never asked him, Lord, teach us how to preach.

We want to preach like you do. They never said

teach us how to teach. Never once in the Bible

of the Disciples. These interns of Jesus say, teach us

how to do miracles, teach us how to heal people,

teach us how to do the spectacular things in life,

teach us how to see you do great, great things.

But instead, the one thing they asked Jesus to teach

them was this.

Lord, teach us to pray.

Why, of all the things they could have asked Jesus

to teach them, after watching him for three and a

half years, they said, Lord, teach us to pray. Because

they realized that prayer was the secret power behind the healings,

behind the miracles, behind the spectacular behind the great teachings

behind the way he handled processes of life. If you

teach us Lord how to pray like you do. This

guy obviously prays in a very different way than we do,

then we're going to have the power of Jesus. You've

heard me say this many times. Much prayer, much power.

Little prayer in your life, little power. No prayer in

your life, no power. And so they said, Lord, teach

us how to pray. Now, the truth is, if we

were honest, if you're honest, if I'm most of us,

we're not very confident about prayer. In fact, prayer is

confusing to most of us. I talk to a lot

of men who got I don't know how to pray,

and we find prayer to be very confusing, and we're

not confident in it. We say, I don't know what

to say, I don't know who to say it to,

I don't know how to say it. I don't know

what to pray. I don't even know if this thing works.

I'm filled with doubt. I'm filled with confusion, you know,

I'm filled with insecurities. I don't know how long to

keep praying.

And so most of us, when we come to the

idea of prayer. I don't get it.

I know I'm supposed to pray, but I don't get it,

and I don't I don't enjoy it. I don't understand it.

What I want to do for just a couple minutes

in this service is take.

The worry out of prayer for you.

When you leave here at the end of the service,

I want you to be able to go. I am

confident I know how and what to pray, and you

won't have that worry. You won't have that lack of

confidence in your life.

Now.

In Luke chapter eleven, they're on the beginning of your notes.

Jesus' followers said, Lord, teach us to pray. And then

Jesus said, well, here's where he starts. When you pray,

begin by saying our Father, begin by saying our Father

in Heaven. Now we don't realize how shocking that statement was,

because up to this time in history, nobody called God Father.

They called him a lot of other things. But Jesus said,

I'm here to tell you that when you pray, you

were to call God Father. And he says, if you

understand this, it's gonna change the way you pray. You're

gonna pray much more confidently. You're not gonna worry. You're

not gonna be so insecure about it.

What Jesus is saying is, prayer is not about words.

Listen to me.

It doesn't matter what words you say. You don't have

to be eloquent a guy who doesn't speak much to

anybody else. God's not expecting you to be very eloquent

to him. Jesus says, prayer is not about your words.

It's about a relationship. And it's a very special kind

of relationship. Like a father to a child. It's to

be intimate, it's to be loving, it's to be casual,

it's to be no barriers. A little child doesn't walk

into the presence of her father and wonder about how

do I say this? A little child just walks in

and says it in the best language they've got at

that particular age and stage of life. And God is

saying here, prayer is not about words. It's about a relationship.

So he says, when you start, you start with our Father.

He's saying, to be confident in prayer, you got to

have the right relationship idea in your mind. God is

not some impersonal force. May the force be with you.

God is not some psychological or philosophical term, the unmoved,

mover the ground of all of our beings, all of

these phrases, the omnipotent, omniscient, unfeeling power, impersonal force. Now,

he says, to pray, you got to realize God is

your father. Now, if you're going to be confident in

your prayer, listen to me. You got to use the

name that God has chosen for himself. And God chose

the name Father. You have a right to choose what

you're called by. You were given a name by your parents,

but when you grew up, if you wanted to shorten

it or change it or whatever you could. You have

the right to be called by what you want to

be called by. So, for instance, if your name is Laurie,

you don't like it as somebody calls you.

Laura or Lauren or Laura or Loretta. That's not your name.

Your name is Laurie. And God says, I want you

to call me Father, not mother.

By the way, not mother. God is not your mother.

God says, I am your father. Now we know. God

tells us in the Bible that God has both male

and female qualities and The reason why there are two

sexes on earth, male and female, is because God has

both male and female qualities, and we were made in

His image, and no one.

Person has all the image of God.

And the Bible says women need men and men need women,

and that we need each other because together we project

what God is really like.

So God is a spirit. He's neither male nor female.

But God has said I want you to call me father,

and he has a right to say you call me by.

What I want you to call me.

And actually Jesus even takes it further as he goes

into explaining this, he says, I want you to call

God abba Abba. Now that's not the Swedish rock group.

It's an air make term. Every child who's born in

the Middle East, the first word they learn is Ahba.

It means Papa, dad, Dad, It's like mama, something very

easy to say. And what abba means is not even father.

It means daddy. It's a term of endearment. It's a

term of love. And God says, when you pray, the

first thing you got to get right is the relationship.

You got to realize I'm not some CEO sitting up

there in the sky waiting to judge your prayer.

I'm your Abba, I'm your daddy, and.

You can come to me in a loving, gentle, trusting,

intimate relationship, like a little child, come to.

God and say, Daddy, that's what he says to do.

Now, I realize that this is a problem for some people,

because father is a negative term for some people. Maybe

your dad was distant, maybe your dad was demanding, Maybe

your dad was demoralizing. Maybe your dad was abusive. Maybe

your dad was absent in your life. And you have

a lot of bad memories about that term father. So

when you say, well, if God is like my father, no,

thanks God our father in heaven. But God, your heavenly father,

is unlike any father on earth. Now, there are good

fathers on earth. I had a good father. I hope

maybe you had a good dad. But every dad, including

me and those of you who are dads, we're flawed,

we're imperfect, we make mistakes. Your father in heaven is

absolutely perfect. He never loves you conditionally. He never loves

you one day and not the next. He's not inconsistent.

Some of you grew up with dad. She said, I

don't know if he's gonna hug me one day or

slug me on another day. But God is not like

your dad. God is unlike any father on earth. He's perfect.

He always loves you. He always knows everything about you.

He always understands you. My dad didn't always understand me.

Your dad didn't always understand you. I didn't always understand

my kids. But God knows what you think more than

you know what you think. And so we know that.

God says we're to call him father. What kind of

father is God? This is really important. If you understand this,

then prayer becomes very easy for you. God is a

caring father. He will never stop loving you. He doesn't

have bad days or good days. He is unconditionally loving

towards you. God is a caring father, is a close father.

Some of you had distant dads and you didn't see

if God is with you all the time, He's paying

attention to you all the time. He has the ability

to watch every move in your life. He knows every

hair on your head. The Bible says they're numbered by God.

He's caring, he's close, he's consistent. He's consistent. He's always

the same. He's not one way, this way and another

way another.

He is capable.

When I was a little kid, I used to say,

my daddy can do anything. When I grew up, I

realized he couldn't do everything. And when my kids were little,

they used to think I could do everything, and then

they grew up and realized that I couldn't.

I'm not capable in every area. But God is your.

Heavenly Father, is capable, and he's close, and he's consistent,

and he's committed, and he's competent, and he's caring. Now,

Jesus has a lot to say about prayer this morning.

I want us to just look at one set of

verses by Jesus, just five verses in the Sermon on

the Mountain. And in this five verses, Jesus gives us

five reasons, five reasons that you can always pray with

confidence no matter who you are. Did you hear that

no matter who you are, no matter what you've done,

no matter what your religious background is. Jesus in this

passage gives you the five reasons you can stop worrying about.

I don't know how to pray and how you can

pray with confidence all the time, So you need to

write this down. This will change your life. It'll change

the whole way you look about prayer if you'll do

it the way Jesus said. Now in Matthew chapter seven,

verses seven to twelve. This is in Jesus' famous sermon

the Mountain. He says this up here on the screen,

Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and

you will find. Knock and the door will be open

to you.

This is a promise.

Now, by the way the verbs there, ask, seek, and knock,

they're actually present participles. Jesus is actually staying there. Keep

on asking, keep on seeking, keep on knocking. No, just

knock one time. If I told you go over to

that house and knock on the door, and when you

open it up, when the door opens, they're going to

give you a million dollars, you wouldn't walk up and

go and walk away. No, if you knew a million

dollars behind that, you'd start knocking, and you'd keep knocking,

and you'd keep knocking until the door opened. So God says,

keep on asking, keep on seeking, keep on knocking. Be

persistent in your prayer, for anyone who asks will receive.

That's a promise.

Anyone who seeks will find, and everyone who knocks the

door will be opened. And then Jesus says this, For example,

if your child ask you for some bread to eat,

would any of you fathers give her a stone? And said, obviously,

the answer is no, of course not. Or if your

child asked you for some fish, would you put a

snake on their plate?

The answer is obviously no. He's using this.

Metaphor, this image of prayers, like a father and a

child talking together, and he says this, Now, since even you,

as sinful imperfect parents, I'm an imperfect parent. I don't

always get it right. You're an imperfect parent. As a

sinful imperfect parents, I know how to give good gifts

to your children. Even though I'm often selfish, I'm off

in self centered, I'm not perfect. I know how to

give good gifts to my kids, and so do you.

He says.

Even if you're an imperfect parent and you know how

to give good gifts to your children, how much more

does your good and perfect father in Heaven give only

gifts that are good to those who ask him. There's

that image of parent and child, and then he says,

so he concludes, in every situation, always due to others,

what you would want them to do to you. You're

familiar with this. This is called the Golden rule. Doing

to others as you would have them doing to you.

Most of you didn't know that. It's in the context

of prayer. He's talking about prayer. In every situation. Always

do to others what you would want them to do

to you. Because this sums up all the commands and

all the teachings in the Bible, all the law and

the provinces is summed up in this.

Treat other people the way you'd like to be treated.

Now, in that passage there, he gives us five reasons.

You don't have to worry when you pray. You don't

have to worry about what you say, where you say it,

how you say it, how long you pray. You don't

have to worry. You could be confident. Would you write

these down? Number one?

These will change your life. Number one.

The first thing God teaches us in this passage is

that God promises to answer if I keep asking. God

promises to answer if I keep asking. He says, keep

on asking and you'll be given what you ask for.

Keep on looking seeking and you'll find Keep on knocking

and the door will be open for Anyone who asks

will receive, anyone who seeks will find, and everyone who

asks knocks.

The door will be open.

Now, what's the difference between asking, seeking, and knocking. It's

just three ways of say in the same thing. If

you take in English the letter first letter of each word, ask, seek,

and knock.

What does that's pat well? Ask?

Yeah, he's just saying ask three different ways. But what

he's me saying here is proximity to your heavenly Father

makes a difference. Write this down. I'm not going to

go into detail on it, but let me explain it

to you. When I'm close to my father, I just ask.

When I'm close to my father, I just ask. In

other words, if I'm a little kid and I'm at

home and my dad's sitting there in the living room

and I have something I need from him, I don't

write him a letter. I don't send him an email,

I don't call him on the phone. If I'm close

to my father, I just go, hey, Dad, I need

and then I ask. And when you're close to God,

then all you need to do is just ask, like

a child asks the father God, I need this, Daddy, Abbah,

I need this. When you're close to God, you just ask.

But sometimes I'm not close to my father, and sometimes

you're not close to God. And sometimes I have something

I want to ask my dad, And as a little kid,

I go, well, he's not here in the living room,

so I have to go seek him. I go look

in the backyard. His dad in the backyard. I want

to ask a questions. Now he's not there. I want

to go to the garage. His dad in the garage.

No he's not there.

Is he?

Is he in his little study area, his office at home?

No he's not there. Is he at work?

If he's at work, I might have to call him.

And when when I'm distant from God, I have to

do a little bit more than.

Seeking I ask him. I have to seek him.

I have to seek him when I'm distant from God,

when I'm when he's not close. And then sometimes my

dad is behind a wall and I have to knock.

And when a wall keeps me from seeing my father,

I knock. When I when he's in the room with me,

I just ask. When I don't know where God is,

when I'm distant from God, I seek. And when there's

a barrier between me and God, I knock. I knock,

and so I want to ask as a little kid,

my dad's something, and I look for him and I

find now he's in his office, but the door is shut.

What do I do do I just give up? No,

I just go up and knock on the door, and

Dad goes, who is this? It's me, Dad, Come on in, No,

no problem, no hassle, I just knock.

Is it okay for me to come in?

Yeah, come on in, Come on in. And So what

is he saying by this? Listen very closely. It doesn't

matter how close you are to God or how far

away you are to God.

God still wants you to ask. Listen to this. Some

of you think I'm not worthy to ask God. I'm

too far away from God. Right now? God says, no,

you can ask. You can see if you can knock.

Doesn't matter what the distance is, doesn't matter whether you're

closer or far away.

The very act of you asking is going to bring

you closer.

So it's not like you got to clean up your

life and then you can start asking God, he says,

just ask, no matter whether you're really close to Me

or you're trying to find me. Some of you are seekers.

You're trying to find God, or you're there's a barrier

between you.

And God and you know it.

God says it doesn't matter. You can still ask that

will give you confidence. That'll give you a confidence regardless

of how close and far away you are.

You can ask for anything in prayer.

I am so grateful for that message by Rick, and

I hope you are too. And now here's Rick to

tell you how you can partner with Daily Hope to

take the word of God to the world.

Today.

I'd like to read a testimony that really blessed me.

It shows how even when you make mistakes, God's faithful

to forgive you, and that He's always working in your

life to bring about everything together for good in your life.

Not everything is good in your life, but God works

at all for good in your life. Now, this is

from a man who says he's a recovering addict, and

this is part of his story that starts when he

listened to a Daily Hope podcast. Here's why he wrote

Paster Rick. A couple months ago, I started a twelve

step program. In working the steps and in turning my

addiction over to God, I searched out many sources for

Daily inspirational daily devotionals, daily meditations to help me reconnect

with the Lord as a support for the progress in

my recovery. Now, in what just seemed to be a

random chance, seemed to be I just came across your

Daily Hope podcast and I blindly just picked a message

from early July. I'm sure a lot of other people

have done that too.

Well.

The very first one I listened to was on Roman seven,

which is all about why do I do the wrong

things that I don't want to do when I know

it's wrong? And what makes me do that? I can't

believe that was the first one you listened to. Well,

knock me over with a feather. It was a bolt

of lightning that I needed to hear, and it was

followed by tears of joy because the very next podcast,

of course, was Roman's eight, which is the solution to

my dilemma. That's right, folks. Roman seven explains the mess

we're in. Roman's eighty explains how to get out of it.

He says, Rick, it was like a smack on the

head by divine intervention. So I joined a small group

and I haven't missed a week since, and I love it,

and I have a weekly Bible study with a close

friend who graciously offered to help me, and I subscribe

to your daily devotional email, and I've continued to listen

to your podcast when I go for my morning walk.

He says, the spiritual growth that I've achieved in a

relatively short period of time is really nothing short of remarkable.

It's a miracle and it's a blessing, and it's helped

me turn my life around. I now understand why God

allowed me to suffer through all my addiction and that

the path to recovery is through Jesus Christ. From the

bottom of my heart, Rick, thank you for all you

do through him. Well wow, wow, wow. This testimony is

a powerful reminder of how God can take everything in

our lives, the mistakes, the sins, the failures, the hurts,

the bad decisions, even destructive habits, and guess what, God

can even bring good out of them. The Bible says

in all things God works for the good of those

who love him. It doesn't say all things are good,

because not all things are good, But in all things

God is working for the good of those.

Who love him. That's Romans eight twenty eight.

Now this story is a beautiful example of Romans eight

twenty eight and that truth listen very closely. No matter

what we've done. I'll say it again, no matter what

we've done, we're never outside of God's master plan for

our lives. Your life is not random. In this case,

God led somebody to Daily Hope podcast just at the

right moment, exactly what he needed.

Now.

God could have used any method. He could have used

any person, he could have used any podcasts, but God

in this instance, chose to use Daily Hope. You know, friends,

it's because of your support, your prayers, and your giving

that we're able to make Daily Hope Bible teaching available

to over thirty five million people every month. So thank you,

thanks a lot. I mean this from the bottom of

my heart. Thank you for your support. This man who

was a recovering addict was helped because you. You cared

enough to support this ministry. So let me just say

it again. I don't ever get tired of saying it.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

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We hope you'll join us next time as we look

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