21 Days of Prayer // The Lord's Prayer

If you realize that prayer is powerful, would you do me a favor and would you say amen?

I I gotta share this.

I gotta share three quick stories of how prayer is powerful.

We are finishing up this 21 days of prayer, and I have a friend, his name is Kenneth, he comes to the 845 service.

I'll say this.

This thing is talking over here to me.

We'll figure this out.

First of all, my friend Kenneth, he actually has a serious problem.

He is a Cowboys fan, so we need to pray for him.

But besides that, he actually, him and his wife have been praying for their son-in-law who has significant kidney failure and praying for a kidney match.

Well, just recently they were able to find a match, and in the last week, he had successful kidney transplant surgery, and it's on the road to recovery.

I was somebody else was sharing that they've been praying for their son who's been going through a very hard season and has been going on a certain path for their life that has been heartbreaking for their parent.

And their parents have been praying for their son, and just in the last seven days, this son has made two significant decisions to compl without going into detail for obvious reasons, to completely change the trajectory of his life.

Because a parent is begging God for his child.

There's another lady in our church.

She had an impossible bill that she had no idea how she was gonna pay for it.

You ever had a bill like that?

You're like, yes, every month of my life I do.

And miraculously, God provided, and the bill was paid in full.

Isn't that amazing?

We are seeing God answer prayer, and prayer is powerful because it's relational.

Prayer's powerful because it's relational.

And for some of us, we we talk about prayer, some of us we uh we just have a hard time with prayer for different reasons.

Like maybe you prayed and you're like nothing happened.

Maybe you prayed and you're like, is anybody listening?

And it could be that we have a misunderstanding about what prayer actually is, and our misunderstanding is limiting our understanding and our ability and our desire to pray and seek God.

See, some of us we think uh we think prayer is like calling customer service.

You ever call customer service?

It's like the worst thing, right?

Something's broken, so you call customer service to fix it.

You call customer service, press one for English, press two for Spanish.

I'm like, I just won't talk to somebody, right?

And once we get our problems fixed, we ain't talking to customer service until there's another problem.

And sometimes for some of us, that's what prayer is.

Prayer is well, it's customer service.

God, you gotta fix this problem.

Okay, it's good.

I'm good.

Oh, I got another problem.

I better go to I I better go to the house of God and go to a worship service again.

I better go to FCC this Sunday.

I better pray, pray.

God, God, oh, you fixed my problem.

I think it got better.

Oh, the the the the health diagnosis wasn't as bad.

We're good.

Okay, life is normal.

And here's what we need to understand, guys is that prayer is relational, it's not transactional.

If you've ever struggled with prayer, you're not alone.

In fact, the disciples in Matthew chapter 6 struggled with prayer, they didn't fully understand what prayer was, and what Jesus had to do, Jesus is a master.

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

He had to watch this, he had to deconstruct their view of prayer so he could reconstruct what prayer actually is.

And here's what I want to do for some of us today.

I want Jesus from Matthew 6 to deconstruct your view of prayer, that it's not customer service, it's not something we do out of a religious formal exercise, it's not something we do out of duty, it's not, I gotta say my prayers every single night.

No, no, no.

Watch this.

It's a relationship with the living God.

So Matthew chapter 6, verse number 5, Jesus is gonna deconstruct what prayer is.

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

And if you're ready for it, would you say amen?

This is what he says.

Matthew chapter 6, verse 5.

Matthew 6:5

He's gonna deconstruct their view of prayer.

They have this wrong view of it.

He says, Whenever you pray, whenever you pray, now there is an assumption here that if you are a follower of Jesus, you are going to pray.

Whenever you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, the Pharisees.

Because they love to pray standing in the synagogue, the place of worship, and on the street corners to be seen by people.

Truly, I tell you, they have their reward.

These are the same people we talked about last week.

That they they just wanted people to look at them and people to say, Wow, you're so holy.

Look at look at what you do, look at look at like you do all this stuff, you're amazing.

And these people, they would pray publicly so all the people could see them praying.

Now, here's a question for you for my Bible students in the room.

Is Jesus here saying that if you pray publicly, it is wrong to pray publicly?

Is he saying that?

Yes or no?

No.

No, he's not.

Some of y'all are hoping the answer was yes.

The idea of praying in public, praying in front of people scares you to death.

Some of you are like, Am I gonna pray in public?

Am I gonna say the wrong thing?

Am I gonna be praying?

Then all of a sudden, in the middle of that prayer, I'm gonna say, God bless this food.

Jesus isn't saying that because multiple times in scripture, people prayed in front of other people, and Jesus affirmed that.

The church people were praying together.

And I want to remind you when it comes to prayer, prayer is not about impressive words.

It's not about like, oh, like I just gotta say the exact right words.

No, no, it's not prayers.

Pray is about a humble heart that wants to talk to God.

And anybody can pray in front of people if you have a heart to talk to God.

And can I just say for some of us in the room, your next step in your faith is learning to pray in front of people.

Maybe it's your family at home, maybe it's before you share a meal at the dinner table, maybe it's on your serve team, maybe it's in your group.

And a step for you would be to learn to pray publicly out loud.

And I want to say, it's not about who's around you, it's just about the fact that you're talking to God.

Jesus says, Hey, when you pray, it's not just about people seeing you.

In fact, verse number six, he says, When you pray, go into your private room, shut your door, and pray to your father who's in secret.

If the only time you pray is to be seen by people, you're missing it, right?

And if the only time you pray is in front of people, but you don't have a private time of prayer, you got it wrong.

He says, Go in your private room, shut your door, make the kids be quiet.

No, I'm just kidding, that's not in there.

Turn off your iPhone.

Just kidding.

Pray to your father who's in secret, and your father who sees in secret will reward you.

And when you pray, don't babble like the Gentiles.

Gentiles, those who do not follow Jesus, since they imagine they'll be heard for their many words.

If I just say the same thing again and again and again, again, again, again, again, then God's gonna hear me.

No, no, no, no.

Don't be like them.

Because your father knows the things you need.

God knows what you need.

In fact, he knows the things that you need that you don't even realize that you need.

Jesus deconstructs this view of prayer.

He's like, prayer is not about being seen by people.

And then he's about to teach them what prayer is.

He's gonna rebuild this, he's gonna create a framework of like, this is what prayer is, and he's gonna teach us something that you might be familiar with, something called the Lord's Prayer.

Now, the Lord's Prayer is something that people memorize, and that's great.

But the Lord's prayer isn't just something to repeat, it's actually a window into how we relate to God.

Hey, some of us have the Lord's Prayer memorized because we were on a sports team back in the day.

It's like say the Lord's Prayer and then go on the field and knock those guys' heads off.

Some of us we have it memorized.

I could start it right now and you would pick up on it.

And here's the challenge, though.

This can actually be dangerous to know the Lord's prayer.

You say it's dangerous to know the Lord's prayer?

It can be because some of us know the words of the prayer, but we don't know the heart of the prayer.

We know the right words to say, but we have no idea how to relate to God and what this prayer is actually telling us.

And it could be that you know the words, but you haven't embraced the heart of the prayer.

And when you embrace the heart of the prayer, you'll see the power of the words in the prayer.

This is what he starts off in verse number nine saying.

He says, Therefore, you should pray like this.

Our, what's that word?

Our Father in heaven, your name be honored as holy.

When we pray, we are to come before God as a beloved child.

Number one, come before God as a beloved child.

Before you can ever come to God as a beloved child, there's something obvious that has to happen.

You have to become a child of God.

It says in John chapter 1, verse number 12, it says, But to all who received him, he gave them the right to be children of God.

John 1 · chapter mention

To those who, what's it say, those who believe in his name.

It doesn't say to those who know some things about church.

It doesn't say to those who know some things about God because the grandma taught them.

It doesn't say to those who are sitting in a church building at the 10 a.m.

service.

Hey guys, this morning I walked outside the house, I stood in the garage.

That didn't make me a car.

It says to those who believe, that means those who trust.

Trust in Christ.

You have to make the decision to trust in him for your salvation.

And when you believe in Christ, you can have full assurance that you're actually his child.

When some of you look at yourself, you think, yes, I've I've turned from my sin, I put my faith in Christ, but I don't feel like I'm God's child.

I kind of feel like like I'm a stepchild.

Like those people, those are like his real children, and God treasures them, but he just tolerates me.

He really loves them and he accepts them.

But I'm just kind of on the outside here.

And I'm just hoping I could I could like get out of the stepchildren zone and get into like the real children's zone.

Can I just say there is no stepchildren with God and regular children with God?

All are children of God, those who believe in his name.

And if you are a child of God, you are loved and you are forgiven and you are accepted, no matter what.

You might be in a place right now in your life where you're confused about that.

And he's a great dad.

He loves his son, he provides for a son, and his son is on the spectrum.

And the other day, his son ran to my car and said, Nate, I want to go home with you.

Now, in that moment, I had zero desire at any moment.

I have no desire to be a kidnapper.

So I said, No, like, go to your dad's car.

He says, Nate, I want to go home with you.

I want you to be my dad.

Like, I'm like, no, you don't want me to be your dad.

You do not.

He said, I want to go to your house and play with toys.

I'm like, I don't have toys.

I have chores.

I have chores.

And his dad over there is like, come on, let's go home.

I have dinner.

Come on, let's go.

And the little guy was just standing in front of my driver's door.

Was not letting me into my own car.

So I picked up the kid and I I'm just kidding.

I didn't do that.

I had some of y'all though.

The dad is over here.

Dad's like, come on, he wouldn't come.

So the dad walked all the way across the parking lot, grabs his hand, and says, Come on, we're going home.

And even though the little boy was confused and a little stubborn, his dad was still his dad.

And you might be at a place where you're confused about God and where you stand with God.

But if your faith is in Jesus Christ alone for your salvation, you are a child of God.

And the idea of being a child of God, the idea of God being our father can be difficult for some of us because of our earthly father.

Some of us have had an earthly father that was not present, that was absent, that was angry.

And I empathize with you.

And I also want to remind you that God is a loving father, and God is the embodiment of what an earthly father is supposed to be.

I want to read Psalm 103 about the character of God the Father, and I want it to sink down into our souls because this shows the character in the heart of God and the heart of what an earthly father should be.

This is what it says in Psalm 103, verse 8.

Psalms 103:8

It says, The Lord is compassionate and gracious.

He's slow to and abounding in love.

This is who he is.

I cussed at that guy.

I'm no confidence comes from knowing the father's heart towards you, knowing what it means to be his child.

And when we pray, prayer is about relationship.

And if God is our father, if we have the relationship with him, how should we approach him?

Number two, this is what we do.

We come before God with respect.

In other translations, it says, Hallowed be your name.

Here's what that means: it means we're not flippant with God.

It's not like, hey, like me and the man upstairs, like, we good, bro.

Like the man upstairs, like, yeah, it's just like whatever.

We're on speaking terms right now.

No, no.

Like, we come before him with respect.

He is the creator, you are the creation.

He is the provider, you are the one in need.

He is self-sufficient.

No matter what you think, bro, you ain't self-sufficient.

He is holy.

So we come before him with respect.

Verse number 10.

Your kingdom come.

Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

When we pray, what do we do?

We we we come before him as his beloved children.

We honor him.

We come before him with respect.

And then we ask for his kingdom to come and his will to be done.

When John the Baptist came to was on the earth and he saw Jesus, he said this.

He said, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven, kingdom of God pointing at Jesus has come.

He said the word, look, repent, turn away.

How's that?

For a lack of a feel-good message.

Repent.

Because the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God is at hand.

Jesus would teach about the kingdom of God all the time.

He would say, He would say, on this earth it's this, but in my kingdom.

He would say, Seek first the kingdom.

What does that mean?

This is the kingdom of God in a nutshell.

The kingdom of God, the kingdom of God is the place where God reigns, God rules, and God's purposes are being accomplished.

When Jesus came to the earth, he established the kingdom.

But his kingdom will not be fully experienced and fully realized until he returns as a conquering king, and every tongue bows before him, and every tongue confesses that he is Lord.

That's when it will be fully realized.

But he brought his kingdom to this earth.

Let me explain this.

Maybe this will help us understand this.

This kingdom idea.

I'm gonna show a picture of somebody on the screen.

And when you see the picture, I want you to shout out his name.

You ready?

Show the picture.

Walt Disney.

How many of you knew that, Walt Disney?

How many had no idea who that was?

Somebody thought that was my grandpa.

No, that was not my grandpa, okay.

Until you check your bank account.

You got a Disneyland?

It's like a different world.

They don't have employees.

They have cast members.

They don't have parts of the park, they have lands.

Ooh.

And I will say though, they do have one of the greatest rides on earth.

You know the ride I'm talking about, right?

Space Mountain.

That's exactly right.

I'm talking about Space Mountain.

That's exactly you were in the A45 service, weren't you?

Space how many of you would say Space Mountain?

Amazing ride?

Oh yes, 100%.

Space Mountain.

You go to Disneyland, they got all this stuff.

Now growing up.

My sister would go to the Disney store at a wonderful, amazing place we affectionately call the Fairfield Mall.

She'd go to the store, and the store was like a small teensy little piece of what it would be like to go to a Disney store in the kingdom of Disneyland.

You go to the Disney store and they got the music, they got the costumes, they got the crazy high prices.

Some of you remember the Disney store.

And the Disney store was a small well embodiment of the bigger kingdom.

And what followers of Jesus are supposed to be is an embodiment of God's kingdom and bringing God's kingdom down to this earth.

In fact, when you trusted Christ as your savior, you became a child of the kingdom of God, where God reigns, where God rules, where God's purposes are being fulfilled.

So in my life, my life should be an embodiment of what does the world look like when God is reigning and God is ruling and God's purposes are being fulfilled.

This is what it says in Colossians chapter 1, verse number 13.

Colossians 1 · chapter mention

He has rescued us from the domain of darkness, the world, the darkness of the world, and transferred us into the kingdom.

There is a time where somebody asked Jesus, Where's the kingdom?

In Luke 17, Jesus said, No one will say, See here or there.

For you see, the kingdom of God is in your midst.

It's within you.

So as children of the kingdom, we are to show what does it look like where God reigns, where God rules, and God's purposes are being fulfilled.

So for these things to happen, we have to live out kingdom values.

So what are the values of the kingdom of God?

And the values of the kingdom of God are completely different than the values of the kingdom of this world.

So if God is reigning and God is ruling in my life and God's purposes are being fulfilled, I'm pursuing those.

People are gonna look at my life from the world and they're gonna say, You are completely different than these people over here.

Why?

Because I am living by kingdom values, because God is reigning and God is ruling, and I'm living for God's purposes to be fulfilled in my life.

What are some of those kingdom values?

I'm so glad that you asked.

I'm gonna tell you right now.

We should live a life of we should live a life that values serving others instead of a life that values being served by others.

We should live a life that values humility and faithfulness instead of living a life that is valuing power and position.

We should live lives that value being financially generous, looking how can I give, versus valuing what can I get.

Kingdom value.

We should value having compassion on all people.

And let me stop for a second.

Let's just talk.

Because we all watch the news, a lot of us have social media, we know what's going on in the world right now.

I don't know if we fully understand that our social media feeds and the news that we're seeing, what they often are using is emotional manipulation.

Emotional manipulation.

You say, not my side, my side's right.

You've been manipulated emotionally.

On this other side, on this other side, they're trying to do the same thing.

And here's what's happening: they're trying to get us riled up, right?

Rather than us being able to say, okay, what's the truth?

Like, what's actually happening happening?

Like, what's the principle here?

They don't want us to do that.

It's emotional manipulation.

So you will think those people over there, whoever those people are over there, they're your enemy, they're the problem.

Your side's the good side, you're the good guys, they're the bad guys.

Guess what?

Their side's doing the exact same thing.

So we're outraged at those people, and we're outraged at these people.

And it's like, can we just have a compassionate conversation with empathy towards all people?

Compassion is a kingdom value that sadly followers of Jesus do not have because we value sides more than we value people.

Yeah, I have compassion towards you as long as you agree exactly what I agree with about ice.

And if you don't, you're part of the problem.

Because our social media feeds are echo chambers.

So all we have is all the people that agree with us, that think like us, that do everything just like we do, and we double like it and we share it, and we haven't even asked ourselves hard questions and says what's actually happening here.

By the way, both sides.

So no matter where you are, you can be mad.

And this is the kingdom value.

Some of y'all are like, man, I didn't know this was gonna happen today.

A kingdom values compassion, and we need more of it.

We need more of it.

And children of the kingdom of God are going to value what God values.

And in my life, if my life, if I'm valuing something different, God is not reigning, and God is not ruling, and God's purposes are not something I'm pursuing in my life.

And what the church is supposed to be is an embassy of God's kingdom.

So people come here and they experience what life looks like when God is reigning, when God is ruling.

People come in there like, why do you guys love each other so much?

Because when God is reigning, we love each other, even if we're a little different from each other.

Even if we got a couple Seahawks fans in the room.

Pray for wrong.

Right?

This is what God looks like when we're reigning.

And when God's reigning, and it says this, we're to pray for his kingdom to come, we're to pray for his will to be done.

How do we how do we know what God's will is?

Well, we know God's will from God's word.

So here so here's what's happening for a lot of us in our lives is our Bibles, our our Bibles are closed, and our all of our apps are open.

I'm not talking about the Bible app either.

So our apps are open to all these different things, and we're it's TikTok, it's Insta, it's Facebook, it's whatever it is.

We're like, I don't even know what God wants.

I don't even know.

Like, what am I supposed to do?

Like, how it says pray for God's will to be done.

How do I know?

Guys, all you gotta do is just like there's like a button.

I mean, I don't even know where it's at, but just kidding.

Where we're where where we turn it off and we open this.

So now I know what God's desires are.

So now what I'm doing is I'm praying for people to come to faith in Christ because that's God's desires.

I'm praying for people to take steps of growth in their faith because that's what God desires.

I'm praying, I'm praying for God to unify as church because that's what God desires.

We pray for God's will, for God's will to be done.

And can I say, pray for God's will as shown clearly in scripture.

Pray over your family, pray over your friends, and do not pray apologetically, pray unapologetically, no matter where they are, no matter how hard their hearts are, because God can change their lives.

We pray for God's will.

Verse 11, it says this: it says, pray for our daily bread.

Give us today our daily bread and the carb lovers in the room.

Y'all they're like, amen to that.

Now, some of you are trying to watch your carbs.

Don't worry, Jesus is not talking about your sourdough bread.

He's talking about our everyday needs.

And here's what we do, number four, we ask for our needs, verse 11.

Our practical needs, our emotional needs, our financial needs.

Just ask.

Whatever your needs are, ask for them.

Verse 12, he says, forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.

It's me, I'm agreeing with God about my sin.

I'm saying, Lord, man, if this is wrong, I just want to come in agreement with you.

Verse 13, it says, Do not bring us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

Lastly, number five, when we pray, we admit our sin and we ask God to overcome temptation.

Temptation to live outside of your ways, Lord, and in your design.

I want to overcome that.

And God wants to work in our lives through prayer, but we need to ask.

A while ago, I wrap up with this.

A while ago, I had a fully functioning washer.

And it's a pretty good idea to use your washer.

Because if you don't use your washer and you wear dirty clothes, you're gonna stink.

So I had an eye, I I I uh I had this fully functioning washer, and the problem was is my washer to plug it in, it had a three-prong to plug into the wall, right?

Outlet in the wall.

The problem was when I went to plug it in, it had the outlet looked like this, similar to this.

That's frustrating.

You know, so I had a couple options.

One, I could have said, ah, who needs a washer?

Then none of you would have wanted to be around me because I would smell all the time.

This is a good option.

Or I could say, or I could I could go to the laundromat.

You know, somebody do that, that's tough.

Done that before, I'm like, I don't do that.

Or I could have said, or what I did is like, okay, I I gotta get the right outlet so I can plug this into the wall so my fully functioning washer can actually work.

Because my fully functioning washer is not going to function fully if it's not plugged into the right source.

Some of us in our lives, we're trying to plug into the wrong source, and our source is our strength, our source is our ability, our source is our knowledge, our source is our self-righteousness, our source is all of these things.

And we're wondering why we're struggling.

But if we would plug in and connect to God, we can function how God intended us to function.

So, how do we do this?

And I'm gonna give us time to do this together.

This is what we do: we come before God as his child.

We come before God with respect.

You can put all those on the screen already.

We ask for his kingdom to come and his will to be done.

We ask for our needs, and we admit our sin and ask to overcome temptation.

Which of these five do we need to do?

We do.

And right now, I want to give us a chance to do all of them, or a chance to maybe pray specifically about one of them.

Why?

So we can be connected to God.

Let's all bow our heads.