Prayer: So Much More with Pastor Lee Wong

Welcome to the MetaCurch Podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at MetaCurch.

And my hope is that today's podcast finds you at the perfect time in your life that God uses it to inspire and enlighten you.

I hope that you enjoy today's message.

Hey MetaCurch, I'm so thrilled.

Your pastor has invited me back again to serve you.

It's a privilege to encourage you.

As mentioned, my name is Lee.

I'm a friend of your MetaCurch team, and my aim in our time today is to help us better understand what God Himself, Jesus, taught about prayer.

And let me just say, I recognize that the idea of learning about prayer, it can sound so passive, it can sound so boring.

It might not sound as exciting as learning to improve our relationships or what the scriptures teach about social justice or politics or mental health.

And you're right.

Those are some fun and important topics to explore that we all need to learn about, but I contend that unless we first get prayer right, well, we would just be spinning our wheels learning about any other matter in life, no matter how important they are.

It's like what renowned theologian A.

W.

Tozer said.

He said, to desire life change or to desire world change, revival, and at the same time to neglect prayer, well, that's to wish one way and walk the other.

And so I believe the life change that we are all actually seeking that it starts with clearly understanding prayer.

And because Jesus was the physical, earthly embodiment of God, he's God revealed in human form, well then who better to learn about anything like prayer than from Jesus?

Now, I believe that if we understood about prayer what Jesus does, well, we would be enthusiastic to pray often.

And I believe if we understood what Jesus does about prayer, then we would live expectantly, expecting God to open up heaven and to reveal his truths to us.

And others would be eager to learn from us because they'll see prayer's transformative power in our lives.

And so, for these reasons, I want us all together to request from Jesus what one of his disciples requested.

And let's let that request be sort of our posture for our time together today.

That disciple said, and let us all say together, Lord, teach us to pray.

Jesus, we want to learn from you.

Now, how Jesus immediately responded to that request is where we're gonna pick up in our teaching today.

And if you understand Jesus' response, well then you'll see why he was motivated to pray so often.

And if you embrace what he taught, well then you too will be motivated to pray, which ultimately, as we heard a moment ago, will catalyze the change in your life that we all desire.

And so if you plan to follow along with me, turn to Luke's account about Jesus.

We're gonna be in the 11th section, so Luke chapter 11.

Luke 11 · chapter mention

And of course, before we begin, would you join me in asking God by his spirit to help us learn?

Heavenly Father, we're here gathered, and we thank you for the means and the resources to be able to do so.

We thank you for Metachurch and all the ways that they are impacting people's lives for your sake.

And Lord, right now we just ask that you would calm our racines if we have any distractions and help us be centered on whatever it is you want to speak to us.

We're listening for you.

We pray all these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And so, how did Jesus respond to his disciples' requests that revealed his motivation for praying?

And what did Jesus want you and what did he want me to understand about prayer that would motivate us to pray like he prayed?

Well, in his response to his disciples' requests, Jesus introduced for us a model, a template for prayer.

And many of you who grew up Catholic, you know Jesus' template as the Our Father Prayer or the Lord's Prayer.

And we're not gonna unpack that today.

Pastor Clayton taught y'all about that model prayer in a recent talk titled Prioritize.

So if you want to take a look at that, go back and check out the talk titled Poritize.

Now, for the sake of where we're going in our conversation today, though, we're gonna together recite that prayer that Luke recorded.

And before we recite that prayer together, it is important to note this.

First, the version of the model that we're gonna read together is from the Christian Standard Bible or the CSB Translation.

And the Global Bible Initiative, it named the CSB, as the optimal Bible translation for contemporary readability and linguistic precision.

So, in order to best serve you, my understanding is that the CSB is the official Bible translation of MetaCurch.

99% of the time, your teachers are gonna teach out of the CSB.

That's a great translation for you to purchase.

Now, secondly, it's important to note that while this model prayer might be ultra familiar for you and for me today, it's so familiar that many of us we're not even enthused by it and we're probably underwhelmed praying it.

Well, this model, it was completely shocking for Jesus' disciples to have heard.

Here's what I mean.

In the Jewish scriptures, our Old Testament, the title Father is used only 15 times.

And none of those times is God being addressed in a personal manner or even in prayer.

There is no known evidence in any known Jewish literature that God was ever addressed as Father prior to Jesus introducing that idea.

Jesus' disciples, therefore, they grew up mainly relating to God as if he was this like Star Wars villain to be unhealthily feared.

In his book, Praying Like the Jew Jesus, author Timothy Jones wrote this.

He said, in their prayers and in their public reading of Scripture, ancient Hebrews substituted Adonai or Supreme Master for the unspeakable, ineffable name of God.

And so the disciples, they didn't dare refer to God as anything other than supreme master or Adonai.

And approaching God any other way, it would have felt disrespectful.

And to call him father, well, that was completely out of the ordinary.

It was utterly shocking.

And now, with that other, utter shock in mind, let's now together read out loud Jesus' prayer, and it's gonna be displayed on the screen for you.

So here we go.

If you're listening via podcast, just listen intently on the count of three of y'all ready.

One, two, three.

Jesus told his disciples, and he told you and me whenever we pray to say this.

Y'all read it with me.

Father, your name be honored as holy, your kingdom come.

Give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins.

For we ourselves also forgive everyone in debt to us, and do not bring us into temptation.

Now, I imagine hearing Jesus teach this model for prayer, some of his disciples, they would have been overcome with fear, they would have been overcome with reluctance, and they would have thought, uh, yo, Jesus, are you sure we won't be struck dead if we pray in this manner?

And others would have thought, uh, Jesus, we can't pray that.

Don't you remember you called yourself the son of God?

You called God your father, and now all these religious leaders, they want to kill you.

And even if God doesn't strike us dead, well, surely these guys will come after our heads.

And then even others, they may have thought, that's it.

Like, that's the way you pray, Jesus?

It's so short.

Where's all the flowery words, and where's all the religious jargon?

Where are the Hebrew names that we use to butter up God?

I mean, this is so underwhelming.

We don't sound amazing.

It doesn't draw any attention to us.

And so, why would Jesus have prayed this simple and this jargon-free, suck-up-free way?

And why should any of us be motivated to pray like Jesus modeled?

Well, Jesus explained why he was motivated to pray in this simple relational way by telling a story and to help us understand everything that's implied in Jesus' story.

Well, I'm gonna tell you a modern idea modernized rendition of it.

And as I tell you this modern rendition of it, I want you to consider what you would think of me if you were the other person that's in this story.

All right, you're gonna consider what you think of me if you're the other person in this story.

So here's my rendition of Jesus' story that he told to his disciples that involves you and me.

So suppose it's around midnight, one cold winter night, and in my one-bedroom apartment, I'm snugly tucked under my down comforter, sound asleep, and I'm dreaming of being a professional basketball player on my all-time favorite team, the San Antonio Spurs.

It's my favorite dream to have.

And snuggled next to me is my baby girl, and next to her is my wife, and at our feet are our dogs all curled up, making our feet even warmer, and all is peaceful.

But then there's a pounding on our door, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

And suddenly our dogs are up and they're barking, and our baby is crying, and my wife and I were up, and we're startled, and our hearts are pounding, and like that Mr.

Krabs meme where everything is distorted.

We're trying to gather our senses.

And so I get up and I look through the peephole and I see it's my friend.

It's you.

And you're all flustered, and so I ask from behind the door, I say, What's the emergency?

And you say, Lee, I'm so embarrassed.

My friends just unexpectedly arrived at my place, and I have no food to offer them.

Can I please come in and rummage through your fridge and your pantry for some food?

I swear to you, I'll pay you back everything.

And I say to you, appalled, dude, you know how late it is?

You inconvenience me for this ridiculous request that you didn't plan for?

You're so inconsiderate.

You woke me up from my beauty sleep that you know that I need to function, and now my family's gonna have to go through this entire bedtime routine again, and that's gonna take forever.

I can't help you, go away.

But you don't.

You're so ashamed that you have nothing to offer your friends, that you keep pounding on my door, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, begging me.

And I eventually come to my senses.

I'm frustrated, and I think to myself, okay, man, you must really feel embarrassed that you don't have any food.

And also, I don't want my neighbors to think of me as a terrible person.

I don't want you to wake them up.

So let me just show you some compassion, some pity, and let you in to get some food, and then perhaps you're gonna leave me alone so I can go back to sleeping.

Now be real with me here.

If it took you begging me, and then me having pity on you in order for me to finally give in to your request, what kind of friend does that make me?

Would you really consider me a caring and dependable friend?

Let me tell you how I would answer that.

If you made me beg for something, and you only responded to my request out of pity, we sure ain't friends.

And I likely wouldn't ever go back to you to ask you for anything again.

Because I don't want to be belittled in that way.

And my guess is, my hope is the same is true for you.

The story that I told is of a depiction of a despicable friendship.

I hope none of your friends are like that with you.

And I hope you're disgusted by this story.

And this disgust that you might feel from this story, well, it would have been felt even more intensely by Jesus' disciples.

Remember this similar to the poor living conditions in modern-day Brazil's slums, Jesus' disciples, they lived in a sort of crowded cluster of houses in the outskirts of the city.

And because they were so poor and part of a collective, interdependent community, people were expected to help their friends whenever they reasonably could.

And so, in the story that I told, the one in need that's banging on the door, you, you're not the despicable person.

The person that would have been disgusting to Jesus' disciples in that story is me.

The one who won't eagerly help a friend.

And that intense disgust is exactly the feeling that Jesus sought to elicit from his disciples when he shared his version of the story.

Concerning that despicable friend, he said this.

He said, That friend will answer from the inside.

He doesn't even have the decency to open up the door, and he's gonna say, Don't bother me, you're a pain in my rear end.

The door's already locked, my children and I have gone to bed, and I can't get up to give you anything.

I don't have that ability.

I tell you, Jesus said, even though he won't get up and give him anything because he is a friend, yet because of his friend's shameless boldness, he will get up and give him as much as he needs.

Now, typically, when this portion of Jesus' story is taught, folks will often emphasize that if you want your prayers answered, well, you have to be persistent.

And maybe that's part of what Jesus is implying.

He's multidimensional when he teaches.

But more specifically, given the historical and the cultural context that we just discussed, and given what you all previously learned about prayer, that the Jews had persistently prayed three prayers, the same prayers every single day for centuries, yet we're still poor and yet we're still oppressed.

They knew about persistence.

So Jesus likely wasn't emphasizing persistence here.

No, Jesus was essentially saying to his disciples, and what he was saying to you and to me essentially is this look the reason that you are reluctant to pray the way that I have taught, simple and relational, is because you see God as that despicable friend.

You think God needs to be buttered up and that he needs to be begged.

And the reason I know that this is the primary emphasis is because Jesus soon after expanded on this idea.

And how Jesus elaborated on this idea of why we're not motivated to pray in a simple relational way is a lot like this.

So my almost two-year-old daughter, she has a severe peanut allergy.

And so, my family, we have removed all peanut products from our home.

And everywhere we go, we carry with us an epipin in case she has an accidental peanut exposure.

Because depending on the severity of that exposure, her reactions they can range anywhere from swelling and a rash and nausea all the way to her airways closing and consequently, even death.

Now, what I'm about to share, it may be triggering for some, and I hate that that's even a possibility.

And so let me in advance just say that if you are triggered by what I'm about to say, please don't do now.

Stick around for what Jesus hereafter says, because I promise you it gets better, he does say some encouraging things.

Now, back to my story.

Let's imagine one day my baby girl came to me hungry and she asked me for a sandwich.

And I, knowing her peanut allergy, I intentionally prepare for her a peanut butter sandwich.

And I watch her eat it.

Even if I was trying to be just a trickster of a dad, I had her epipin on me and I was gonna inject her with it.

Let's call this what it is.

That's abuse and that's evil.

If she survived, surely she'd have been traumatized, and not just that, I'll have destroyed whatever trust she had in me, and she'd likely fear me, and she would be reluctant to ever again ask for me for anything, like another sandwich.

And at some point in her life, as she grew older, as she realized how abusive that was, she'd come to hate me.

And she'd like likely never want a relationship with me.

She would keep her children from me, and at best, our relationship would forever be strained.

And this idea that a child would not want anything to do with an abusive father is what else Jesus Jesus surfaced about why we're not motivated to pray the way that he did.

Jesus surfaced that his disciples believed that God wanted to harm them, or that he would do things to them that would not make them want to ever approach him again.

Jesus said it this way.

He said, What father among you?

If his son asks for a fish, we'll give him a snake instead of a fish.

Or if he asked for an egg, we'll give him a scorpion.

In other words, not even an imperfect and somewhat decent father like myself would ever do such a sadistic act.

Now, let's put together those two ideas that Jesus talked about with his disciples as to why they wouldn't be motivated to pray the way that he did.

Jesus was saying to them, in effect, look, the reason you'd be reluctant to pray, how I've modeled, is because you believe that God is a despicable friend who's inconvenienced and who needs his beauty sleep, who doesn't have strength, and he will reject your requests.

And he'll make you beg.

And the reason you believe or you won't pray in the manner is because you think God will only ever give in to what you need out of pity for you.

And the reason you won't pray how I pray is because you believe God is an immature trickster of a dad who gives you gag gifts and you would be disappointed by receiving them.

Or you see him as an abusive father who wants to harm you.

And if, like the disciples did, you two view God in any of these ways, listen, Jesus totally understands, I totally understand.

He wasn't being critical or judgmental about bringing this to light.

I'm not being critical or judgmental about bringing these views to light.

In fact, Jesus, for the first time in human history, introduced to the world who God actually was.

No one prior to Jesus' arrival had ever known what God was ever truly like until Jesus put God's attributes on display.

No one knows who the Father is except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son determines to reveal him.

And so, virtually, everyone in human history up to that point had a wrong view of God.

And if you have never studied in the gospel accounts what Jesus taught and how Jesus lived, you likely also have a wrong view of God, and it's no wonder why you wouldn't be motivated to pray like Jesus taught.

So, in the most gentle way to his disciples and to you and to me, Jesus, in effect, he was saying, look, if you want to understand prayer the way that I understand prayer, well then you've got to know God the way that I have known him.

You've got to know God the way that I have revealed him.

And so, for those of us who are still not too familiar with how Jesus revealed God and what God is like, what is a starting point for what we could believe about him?

What did Jesus know about the father that motivated him to pray?

Well, I believe the Holy Spirit recently gave me a glimpse of the answer to those questions.

Recently, I was separated from my almost two-year-old daughter for seven days.

It was the longest I'd been away from her since she was born.

And for me, it felt like an eternity.

And the entire time that she and I were physically apart, I longed to be with her once again.

She was constantly on my mind.

I was so distracted from work and from doing anything.

I was always wondering how she was doing and what she was doing.

And when she and I were finally reunited, she came up to me with arms open wide and she said to me what she always says to me when she wants me to pick her up.

She said, I carry me, Dad.

To which I said to her, What I always say to her, Daddy will always carry you anytime you ask.

She invited my presence and she trustingly rested in my arms.

That is, she received me.

And when she received me, I squeezed her tightly and I kissed her nonstop and I showered Zoe with all of my affections, and then we played, doing whatever it is that she wanted to do.

I didn't care what it was, just as long as we were together, and then I told my wife, we gotta go shopping, I gotta buy her things.

I don't care what it is, I just gotta give her stuff.

Meaning, Zoe found favor with her daddy.

And then being face to face, once again, I affirmed her saying, Daddy missed you so much.

He loves you so much.

You're daddy's baby girl.

I'm so proud of you and who you're becoming.

That is, I opened the floodgates of my heart to reassure who she is and who she is to me, and the immense love that I poured out to my daughter when she received me.

It's a glimpse of what Jesus understood that you would experience, that I would experience from our heavenly father when we invite him and his involvement in our lives.

You see, because Jesus knows our Heavenly Father, he understood prayer from our Father's perspective.

I mean, think about this for just a moment.

My guess is when you think about prayer, you, like I often do, you think of it from a very human perspective.

And you might be seeing it as asking and seeking and knocking, actions that we have to take and words that we have to say.

But stop for just a moment and consider prayer from our heavenly father's perspective.

From our father's perspective, prayer is God's opportunity to carry you, to carry you through difficult times.

From our father's perspective, prayer is his opportunity to shower you with his affection.

Prayer from our father's perspective is his opportunity to pour out his heart and affirm you.

And so Jesus redefined prayer for us as receiving and finding and opening.

He redefined it as a relationship that we get to experience.

And this is why he was so motivated to pray.

He revealed his motivation this way.

He said, For everyone who asks, receives, he emphasized, receives.

And the one who seeks finds, he emphasized, finds.

And the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

And just to ensure that we we clearly understand prayer from the Father's perspective, as God's desire to shower us in his affections and to open his heart with affirmations, Jesus reiterated his motivation a fourth time.

And when Jesus repeats himself, you gotta pay attention.

He said, if you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit, give himself to those who ask?

Listen, prayer as Jesus modeled for us is much like a child putting up their hand saying, Carry me, Dad.

It's not about buttering up or begging a supreme leader.

Prayer, as Jesus modeled, is allowing our Father to reveal to us his heart for us.

Let me say that again.

Prayer, as Jesus modeled, is allowing our Father to reveal to us his heart for us.

It's allowing him to be our Father.

And that's exactly what I'm challenging us to do.

In order that we would be motivated to pray like Jesus was motivated to pray, and in order for us to experience the life change that we all want, I'm challenging us to rethink how we view prayer.

Instead of approaching prayer from our human perspective as actions to do and words to say, as simply seeking and knocking, let's consider prayer from the Father's perspective, as his opportunity to reveal to us his heart for us to pour out onto us his affections.

Now, here's what that looks like for me.

For a few years I've been attempting to, like Jesus taught, focus on addressing God by just one title, Father.

And instead of persistently asking and seeking and knocking to a supreme master that I have to butter up and beg with names like Adonai or Elohim or Jehovah Nisi or Jehovah Rapha or anything like that, I simply just ask, Father.

And then every morning, like my daughter with her raised harm, raised arms did for me to pick her up.

I raise up my arms like I want to be carried, and I simply say, Father, I invite you to reveal to me your heart for me.

Or I'll say, Father, today, carry me.

And then I rest in silence and I allow God by his spirit to shower me with his affections and with his affirmations, and ultimately I just try to say less so that I receive more of what our Father wants to reveal to me, so that I receive more of him.

Now, you might find this best to do before you get out of bed while you're still in bed, or maybe as you're getting ready, you might have a whole bunch of little ones.

So perhaps the only time you get is while you're in the shower and the water is just hitting you, or maybe as you're drinking your morning cup of coffee, or while you're in your car on your way to work, or maybe it's whenever you're on a bathroom break at work, or whenever you find a moment, just simply carve out time to receive.

And I believe that praying like Jesus taught to a father that we invite to carry us and to reveal his heart to us, not to a supreme master that we have to beg and butter up.

I believe that that is going to be the catalyst for change that we are all seeking, just like it was the catalyst for change in Jesus' disciple, Peter.

Luke's account tells us that Peter, he was a loudmouth racist, but when he prayed like Jesus taught, and when he allowed our Father to reveal his heart to him, Peter's heart changed.

Peter became more gentle and he became more accepting.

In fact, the racial reckoning that we're seeing in our world today, in our country, it can be traced back to Jesus teaching his disciples to pray, Father.

Luke told us the Father revealed his heart to Peter and it catalyzed the change that we are experiencing in our world.

Peter said, God has shown me that I must not call any person impure or unclean.

Now I truly understand that God doesn't show favoritism, but in every nation, the person who reveres him and does what is right is acceptable to him.

Peter's heart was changed when the Father revealed to him his heart for all of us, his children.

And when we pray like Jesus taught and allow our Father to carry us and to reveal his heart, not only will you experience the change that Peter experienced and that our world is right now experiencing, but I believe that our Father will forever change the trajectory of your life just like he did for Sam.

Listen to Sam's story.

And really, through our salvation is where uh the Lord brought an answer to our prayer to rebuild our marriage.

That was a catalyst for us to continue a prayer life.

I had been at the university for like 25 years, and uh we got a new vice president.

They needed to hire someone that was gonna advise her on finances because she was a lawyer and a PhD, and that was an area that she wanted more help on.

She advertised that job at the national level, so she was really looking for someone very top-notch.

And so I said, Lord, you know, if this is really where you want me to be, then this is gonna have to change, and they're gonna have to come and ask me to take the job because I'm not going to apply for it.

And I went in and sat down and said, I have a proposition for you.

I want to offer you this job that I have, and I'm changing it to suit you, right?

This was a national search.

You're required to search nationally for these executive level positions, right?

I never interviewed with anybody.

The interview process is excruciating all day.

You've got eight or nine interviews with the entire world, right?

It's really something I did not do a single thing.

When she proposed the job to me sitting in the chair, she said, Do you need time to think about this?

It was like mind-boggling.

And uh, you know, I knew it was the Lord, and I took it right there on the spot.

And that to me had quite an impact because the Lord had to change the job, right?

He avoided all the work that has to go into doing all of that.

They gave me this humongous race, which changed our life forever after.

And um I really didn't have to do anything to get it.

So then a couple of years later, this person who hired me moved on to be VP at UT Austin.

And so she recommended that I take over as the interim to the president.

So he did.

Uh okay, then they did a national search.

And then he said about a week later, he he was thinking about this filling this job, and he said, What am I thinking?

Sam has been in this job a year and he's done a wonderful job.

So he called me up and said, I'm just gonna make you the vice president.

Now, because we have all these rules about executive level positions, I have to write a letter to the chancellor of the UT system, right?

And say why I'm gonna hire you and that I'm not going to even do another search, right?

So he sent it up, and guess what?

They approved it.

They said, okay, fine, go ahead, make me VP.

Never interviewed for the job with anybody, right?

Went through any process or or or anything else.

It was it was the same situation pretty much as the other position.

So I knew it was the Lord.

I said, Lord, I know you're guiding me in this, and I know this is where you have put me.

To me, the biggest thing that I've learned from this whole process has been that it's really not what you want.

You need to reach a point in your life where you trust God that what He wants for you is even better than what you can imagine for yourself.

Our Father, who gives good gifts, so much more than any of us human parents can ever even consider giving, he changed the trajectory of Sam's life.

And that all started many, many years ago when Sam was in a very difficult place and he cried out, Father, carry us.

And so, brothers and sisters, may you this week focus on allowing our Father to reveal his heart for you, to you.

Consider prayer from the Father's perspective, something that we allow him to do, not so much the asking and the seeking and the knocking words that we have to say or actions that we have to do, but just saying Father.

And I believe God will change your life and you will be motivated to pray like Jesus taught.

Would you pray with me?

Heavenly Father, we thank you for Jesus' model, we thank you for his teachings, we thank you that he revealed to us just how much you care for us and how much you want to do for us, that you want to give so much more than we could ever even consider.

And so, Lord, over this next week, I especially I just pray, God, that uh the folks of MetaCurch that they would have an encounter with you that would be so supernatural, so revealing of your heart that their lives, the trajectory of their lives will forever be changed.

So, Lord, we thank you.

We love you, we pray all this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thanks so much for listening to the message today.

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Man, I love you guys, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.