Church Prayer

Today's scripture is Matthew 6, 7 through 15.

And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words.

Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

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.

Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly father will also forgive you.

But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will you for neither will your father forgive your trespasses.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Good morning.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

Looking forward to the sermon this morning.

Although to be frank, I I was uh uh just as much counting on not preaching this morning.

If we had a baby, I wouldn't be preaching.

If we didn't today, then I would be preaching, and you can tell because you can see me from where you're sitting, um, that no baby yet, but we're close, right?

Yeah, yeah, we're close.

Yeah.

All right, so let's uh uh let's let's pray for our gathering this morning.

Father in heaven, all things are in your hands, and uh you work everything according to the perfect counsel of your will.

Lord, we thank you for bringing us together.

We thank you that you have made us a people in your Son Jesus Christ, that you have adopted us that we might call you Father, that we might call one another brothers and sisters in Christ, that you have grafted us into the glory of your promises to be our God, that we might be your people, that you don't treat us according to our sins, but you treat us as though we have the very righteousness of Christ.

Lord, we thank you that you are present with us in our suffering and the difficulties that we face in this life.

We thank you that you've given us a hope to look forward to.

We pray that you would teach us how to live within the story that you've given us, how to understand what you've worked on the cross and participate in the glory that is to come.

Lord, would you do this by your spirit?

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Okay, so uh here's the deal.

I had a sermon, I wrote a sermon that was either going to be preached today or on the 20th of August.

And when we laid out these this sermon series, and by we I mean I, uh, I laid it out in this format where we were going to look at the these three categories at three different levels.

The three categories are prayer, generosity, and Sabbath.

And we're going to look at those three things at three different levels that we participate with them in.

And those are uh you personally, those are at the level of your family, and those are at the level of us as a church body.

Well, you're gonna have to think of this like a Christopher Nolan movie now because we're mixing up all of the order and category, and it's going to uh flow in a different way because uh here I am preaching uh a sermon that was designed for the 20th.

So uh today, although out of order, we're looking at a very important topic, which is how our church participates in prayer.

We've already talked about how we participate in prayer personally as an individual and how God calls us before his throne just as you yourself.

But there's these categories that the scriptures teach us to think in, which are not just you yourself and your personal devotion to the Lord, but you as a member of the body, in fact, us, the body of Christ.

And so to look at this and how we are to practice prayer, not just personally, but together as the body of Christ, we're looking at the very prayer that we say together each Sunday.

And that's one that we began this service, this week's service with, and one that we'll begin next week's service with, and that we began countless others before.

I'm sure they're countable, but I can't count very high.

And so countable sermons in the in the past that we've begun by looking at the Lord's prayer, the way that Jesus taught us to pray.

The Lord's Prayer is related twice in the Bible.

It's given to us in the Gospel of Matthew and in the Gospel of Luke.

There it's given to us in two different contexts.

And in Matthew, it's the Sermon on the Mount, which is a broad teaching to uh a gathered crowd.

In Luke, it's just to his disciples.

In Matthew, Jesus preaches it unprovoked.

In Luke, his disciples come to him and say, Would you teach us to pray?

Because John the Baptist disciples, not that we're comparing, but John the Baptist disciples uh were taught how to pray by John the Baptist, and we just didn't happen to notice that uh you hadn't taught us.

And uh, so he teaches them how to pray, and he teaches them uh a version very similar to what we see in Matthew of this, which is called the Lord's Prayer.

It is likely that Jesus taught this prayer a lot.

And what I want us to see is that this this prayer, the reason that we pray it on Sunday mornings, is it teaches us how to pray, not just as individuals, but as a people.

It gives us the very language to inhabit being the type of people that God calls us to be, which is not separate individuals.

Those aren't the types of pronouns that we see, but they're they're collective pronouns that we see in the Lord's Prayer.

Now we've got to grasp something, and this is a it's a hard way of thinking because we often think of the church, and we think of just any body of people in our culture, we think of them as uh uh I'll give you two words.

So emergent things are like where you get a you get a bunch of little individual things and you group you gather them together, and then when you name that gathering of individual things, then it's like uh an identity emerged.

Uh that's the only way that we think of categories.

Whereas there's other ways that other cultures have thought of categories, which is uh of people, which is that they emanate from above, that the unity actually comes down from the top.

So we think of it sociologically.

And sociology is this idea that when we gather groups of people together and we study them as collectives, then perhaps we can discern what happens to collective groups of people.

The assumption, I think, quite frankly, is absurd that people are less complicated when they're grouped together.

Uh that has not been my experience.

The church is is both.

The church is individuals which have this unity together among themselves because they they individually, you individually have agreement with the same thing.

We we have we say that this creed.

And so a sociologist would come in and say, Why are this why is this group of people together?

Well, I asked each one of them, and they all affirm the apostles' creed, and therefore they are brought together as a body.

But the Bible speaks of it in those terms as agreement, you know, how how beautiful it is when brothers dwell in unity, but also as emanation, which is that God makes us a people by sending his spirit down.

And so we are a part of something, something real, which God has made.

So that there's a sense in which collectively we are a whole new thing.

It's not just that you all individually agree, it's that there is this other category of thing that God has made.

One of the ways that the Bible describes this is by describing the body of the church as a temple.

You are a temple of living stones that are being built together.

The stones are being built and grown up together.

Paul wasn't, or Peter, nobody in the New Testament is afraid of mixing metaphors.

You are living stones being built together in a holy temple.

You're growing.

You know, stones don't do that, but they were probably right.

We're probably wrong.

Peter writes this in 1 Peter 2.5.

You yourselves, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

You're the temple.

Now, in understanding that the church is the temple of God, that it's not just individual agreement that makes you conform to the church, but it's the you it's this new thing that really exists that God made.

And here's the one that I want us to see this morning, because I want you to have confidence as a church to pray.

In 1 Kings 8:30, right after the completion of the building of the temple, Solomon consecrates the temple.

1 Kings 8:30

And he does so with this wonderful prayer of consecration, some of the most beautiful chapters in the Old Testament.

And after this prayer of consecration, the Spirit of God comes in and inhabits the temple.

Okay, you're the temple, remember?

So this is our expectation.

So the promises that God gave to the temple are ours now in Christ, the churches.

These belong to us.

So listen to this, what Solomon prays at the temple in 1 Kings chapter 8, verse 30.

1 Kings 8:30

He says, and listen, he's directing uh addressing God, and listen to the plea of your servant and of your people Israel, when they pray toward this place, and listen in heaven, your dwelling place, and when you hear, forgive.

The Lord promises that prayers directed to the temple, prayers that take place within the temple, his ears will always be open towards, his eyes will always be open to them.

And this promise belongs to us as the church.

Our prayers go up to God, as Peter says, like spiritual sacrifices.

You gather in the temple, and gathering in the temple to offer a sacrifice is just oh, it's a it's a cookout.

You know, you need to picture a bar when you picture it, you need to picture a barbecue in your mind, because there's uh there's butchers that are covered in bloody aprons from butchering, and then they cook food.

And I don't know if you've been to a barbecue, but it smells good.

This smell, I don't know why that was funny, but it maybe because it's like not worth saying, because it's so obvious.

But this smell goes up to the Lord.

That is the picture that the temple gives us.

And we are taught that our prayers are like this pleasing aroma, a spiritual sacrifice that goes up to the Lord and he receives with joy.

This is about the church.

Our prayers, said together, prayed in unity, because it's a unity that's been given to us, made in us, as the people that he has made us to be, called us to himself in Christ, are spiritual sacrifices that are offered up to the Lord and received with joy.

If you've ever wondered, is God listening?

Now, to let yourself go there might require a level of vulnerability and honesty with yourself that you you might not frequently go to, but have you considered when I'm praying, is God listening?

Is there anyone there?

Sometimes to avoid having to confront the fear of nobody being there is we'll we'll research and I mean there's probably not a uh I don't know, like productivity guru who wouldn't explain that, like, yeah, a practice of prayer, a healthy meditative practice of prayer is wonderful for your mental health.

You know, and so you might convince yourself, that's really what I'm doing here.

You know, I'm I'm I'm reframing my self-talk.

I'm I'm engaging with a practice that will be helpful for my mental health.

I want you to put all that to the side.

Okay, we are being taught to think of prayer not as just something that that has benefits.

I want you to have no utilitarian thoughts.

I want you to go to your darkest, you know, most like teenager who just read Nietzsche, navel gazing place, and say, if God doesn't hear my prayers, I'm wasting my breath and all is futile.

And go there, now that we're here.

I want you to hear this promise.

God promised that his ears would never be closed to the prayers of the temple.

His eyes would be upon every prayer.

You are the temple.

The church is the temple.

He will miss none of them.

There's not a prayer that he doesn't hear.

We are not praying because there's some utilitarian helpfulness to us.

We are praying because our God is there and he promises to hear us.

So, what is it that we pray?

Well, and this section teaches us the posture of heart that we bring to our prayer.

And then Jesus gives us the very words themselves that we might pray.

And in the words themselves, in the Lord's prayer, which you probably have like, I bet you have the Lord's Prayer like 85% memorized.

And there's parts of it that are like debtors who have debts towards me, betwixt us, debts to be forgiven them and myself henceforth.

Okay.

And deliver us from evil.

Kingdom, power, glory.

I don't even know if that part's really in there.

Amen.

You know, it but you the this prayer is this prayer is probably baked into you at some level, with some probably still some fumbling, but at some level.

But I want you to see that in the pattern of this prayer.

I almost can't overstate it.

We are we are shown we are shown the pattern of of the whole of scripture.

And when you say this prayer, when we say it together as a church, you are being put in precisely your place in the story of God.

So I I think there's almost no question that you can come up with that you can't throw at this prayer, no real question, and have answered.

Who am I?

What is the meaning of my life?

How can I handle these these worries and problems that I'm that I'm faced with?

There's there's you can't go too high and cosmic with your questions, and and it makes it so that you cannot go too low and temporal and detailed with the issues that you're facing in your life.

It is it is absolutely comprehensive.

So let's first look at the heart that goes into prayer and then the prayer itself.

Matthew 6, verses 7 through 8.

Matthew 6:7–8

Jesus says, And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words.

Do not be like them.

For your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

So Jesus' first instruction with prayer is what not to do.

And it's don't heap up empty phrases.

You know, you can look at the Gentiles and the way that they pray, and it's just a heaping up of empty phrases.

I think the reason I want to talk about like prayer as helpful self-talk or as like a good mental health practice is because I want us to think of this phrase empty phrases as those things which we say that no other will hear.

We have a God who hears.

They cannot be empty when we are praying, understanding that God Himself hears them.

Jesus is saying, our prayers, the prayers that the way that you are taught to pray, the way that we pray to the true God, is not empty phrases like an incantation.

We are not learning the precise words or tones that we might summon his favor for us.

We are not having to adjust ourselves or posture ourselves in some sort of magical or particular way to elicit some sort of state before it within ourselves that we might find an audience with this God.

Instead, we know this that our Father knows exactly what we need even before we ask him.

Some of you now some of you have have fathers who you needed to contort yourself before you approached him.

And you needed to find some mode of appeasement, or you had to gauge yourself with where he was emotionally, and you had to come concoct some way of approaching this person so that you might have some shred of hope of eliciting what you desired from your father.

Your father in heaven is not like that.

Your father in heaven's ears are perfectly open to you.

You cannot inconvenience him.

He is perfectly attuned to your needs already, having not said them yet, he perfectly knows your needs.

Don't you see what Jesus is doing here?

He is he is He is teaching us that the way that we are to pray and the heart posture that we are to have when we go to pray comes from a clear recognition of who God is.

You should talk to him as he has shown himself to be to you.

And what is he like?

He is a loving father.

He knows your needs even before you ask him.

He requires no summoning to want to intervene and help in your circumstances.

He requires no coaxing or manipulation to desire to draw close to you.

So Jesus is saying, pray to him.

Don't pray to one that you that needs to be manipulated to help you.

Remember what he's like and talk as though you're talking to him.

Of course, there's there's uh prevention of hypocrisy here, what Jesus is what Jesus is saying.

He speaks earlier about don't pray on the street corners in order to be seen by others, because the reward that you're seeking there is being seen by others, and you'll get your reward.

You'll be seen by others.

And the end.

That'll be the end of that prayer.

That prayer's rewards.

What he's saying is pray to God as he has shown himself to be to you.

Pray to your true Father.

So that is the heart that we are to enter into our prayer with, trusting that God knows what we need before he asks him.

He desires to intervene.

He is patient and kind and gracious and unthinkably loving towards you.

So talk like you're talking to him.

Okay, now we're going to move through the prayer.

Now that our hearts are positioned.

We're going to move through the prayer and we're going to look at how in this prayer you take your positions in the whole story of creation.

Why do we say this together?

It's because when you say this, you're acting out the reality of the gospel.

We're acting out the reality of the gospel when we say this.

Okay, so the prayer begins.

Verse 9.

Jesus says, Pray then like this.

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

Let's say it together.

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

Why do we pray this as a church?

The church has prayed this together for millennia.

And you you may be thinking, you know, we shouldn't actually pray these same words over and over again, because isn't that just heaping up empty phrases?

We might think.

But this has become the pattern of the church's worship for millennia.

We see it early, and we even see it in church fathers' writings, early writings, with the benediction that we add on the end of it, which is for yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory, which is likely a benediction that was commonly used in church services from 1 Chronicles.

That's it, that's that we recite it with.

So we are speaking collectively to God as our Father.

There's this closeness that God has to us, and we say our Father.

Now, you see how that positions you to the Lord, this closeness and proximity to God, and then we say our and that positions you where you are in this play towards one another.

Because he's not just your father.

He's the father of the one who's sitting next to you and saying this together with you.

And so what does that mean about your relationship?

It means you're siblings.

It means that you're brought into this family.

So you see how in the scope of creation you're being positioned precisely where you are, and it doesn't end there, and we were only two words in.

It says, in heaven.

Okay, so we've got this proximity to the Lord and to one another.

I'm siblings now with these people, since I've said this by implication.

I am have this proximity and closeness to the Lord that He shows to me.

And then it says it's all very close and intimate, and then BAM, in heaven.

That's far.

Heaven is far away.

Which is the name of the EP I'm releasing later this week.

And there's there's a the transcendence of God is what is being thrust into our faces here.

And so don't you see there's like something like the whole gospel is here.

God, who is in heaven, radically transcendent, beyond anything you could possibly begin to comprehend or imagine, you call Father, and you don't say it alone, because he's brought you in with brothers and sisters.

We're we're four words in.

And we've it just by saying these words, God has positioned us on his cosmic stage, precisely where you belong.

Who am I?

What was I made for?

What it could I ever be satisfied or could I ever be known?

We're four words in, and we've got a pretty good hint at that.

At the answers to any of those questions.

This is why we pray this together.

We're becoming the people that were described as in this.

And then it's there's the first petition, which is hallowed be your name, that the name of the Lord might be holy.

What is the greatest hope that we could have as a people?

That we might relate to God as He really is, that all things in creation might consider that God deserves to be called God, that His goodness deserves to be honored, and that we might have the whole of our lives oriented towards the glorying in the goodness of God.

His name might be set apart from all other names.

This is our hope.

Where does that take place?

We've said our, so there's a sense in which you're involved, but you're not involved alone.

And so we get this like, Lord, would your name be set apart in my heart?

And would it be set apart in our hearts?

And it's unqualified, I think, because it's meant to hit all of these levels of existence, that it might be hallowed in every aspect of the world.

And it also implies, when we're praying, asking for his name to be hallowed, it implies there are lots of places where it isn't hallowed.

And so we're entering the story of the gospel.

We're being placed in this story where there's this hint of things are not as they should be.

And what is the ultimate reason for that?

It is that God is not considered as God in the places that he ought to be.

That we don't let him actually have dominion over our lives and over our hearts.

We prefer to be tossed around by the fears that we carry.

We'd prefer for him to not have a say in the in the off-limits conversations and among friends.

God is God.

Hallowed be your name.

The next petition is um kind of two, but it's really one idea.

In verse 10, it says, Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

It's been ours, but now it's yours.

What is where where are we positioned in the in this story?

We are the ones who hope for the will of God to happen.

We are not the ones that hope for our own will to happen.

We are the people who see the will of our Father as the greatest possible thing that could take place.

And we want it to take place just as it does in heaven.

We desire for the will of God, for the kingdom of God to take place here on earth.

There's that same dynamic, you know, but it's been kind of inverted.

It's that we see in our Father in heaven.

There's this closeness that we have with our Father in this radical transcendence of God.

And here we see the radical transcendence of God's will.

And our desire is that that would take place on earth, that it would come close, and it would be a part of our experience, that we would be living in the kingdom of God.

Now, what is the kingdom?

What is the Lord's kingdom?

Well, it's simple.

It's where the Lord is king.

And where the Lord is king means that all things in that realm conform to his kingship and conform to his will and his rule.

So where does that take place?

Well, it's kind of the same as hallowed be thy name.

It takes place in basically everywhere you can possibly imagine.

You're thinking, I want the kingdom to rule in my heart.

I want all aspects of my heart to conform to this reality above all else, that Jesus is king.

I want this to take place in my family.

I want the rhythms and patterns of the life in my family and the way that my children experience the world and the way that my wife experiences our marriage to point to this reality that Christ is Lord, and He is the one who rules here.

And we think it is better to seek His will than to seek our will.

I want this to take place in my business and my place of work.

I want it to be clear that Lord, that Lord is King, Christ is Lord here, and that I am not someone who, when I come to work, I start uh worshiping the God of Mammon, and I'm willing to manipulate and hide and conceal and lie in order to arrive at whatever outcome that my business describes as highest.

Instead, I will honor the Lord because he is king here.

And so I will seek to serve him in the places that he sent me.

We have this hope for our neighborhood.

You know, I pray I pray this for Berkeley, this little northwest neighborhood of Denver.

Not a very big city, not a very big neighborhood.

I want Christ to be Lord here.

What does that mean for Christ to be Lord of a neighborhood?

It means that there's this, there's something like a collective sense that there's someone above us.

That Christ is the one who, when we gather together, he is the one who we want to be most honored in the way that we relate to one another.

So that we are a place where there's something like a culture.

What is culture?

It's the it's uh it's personality at scale.

And there's a there's a culture that is experienced where it's like there's these people seem to love me in ways that are not to get something from me, because they seem utterly satisfied in the one that they love more than me.

I don't know, I don't know how to draw a picture of what that culture would like, would look like, even how to videotape it, but but it sounds good.

Now, what would that look like for all of Denver?

What would that look like for all of Colorado, for the United States, for the whole world?

Wow, we are praying at a cosmic scale.

Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

We're praying it into all of the present realities that we face, where we see this does not look like Christ's rule.

The lordship of Christ is unproclaimed here.

And we look forward to the day when this will be certain, that the Lordship of Christ will make itself known at his second coming over the whole world, far as the curse is found.

His glory will cover the world as the waters cover the sea.

That's that Venn diagram is a circle.

Waters and sea, yeah, they are covered.

That is what we are praying when we pray, your kingdom come, your will be done.

We pray this as a people.

We hope it for our hearts, and we hope it for the whole of the world.

Now, this first half of the prayer, I hope you can see the scale is incredible.

Our hearts are being oriented towards God's will and him as Lord, and we're seeing who he is and how he relates to us with this closeness of Father and this transcendence of heaven.

With his will perfectly shown as it is in the heavens, being brought down to the whole earth, all aspects of creation.

Now, with this grandness that we've encountered with the first half of this prayer, your it gets just as small.

As big as it gets, that's how small this prayer gets.

It is utterly transcendent and imminent.

Lord, would your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven?

If you were writing that prayer, what line would come next?

It's the biggest thing you can imagine.

Well, when Jesus is writing this prayer, the line that comes next is give us this day our daily bread.

Lord, would your kingdom go across the whole world?

And um about today, I'm hungry.

I need food today.

Who is the God that you are praying to?

He is the Father who is in heaven, he is grander than you can possibly imagine and more concerned with the details of your life than you would if it weren't written down.

If Jesus hadn't have said it, you wouldn't have believed how close he would get to you, how deep his care is for you.

Give us this day our daily bread.

The heavens are his throne, the earth is his footstool, his ways are not our ways, his thoughts are higher than our thoughts.

David says, These things are too wonderful for me, I cannot attain them.

You are not eternal in the heavens.

Whenever any of us meet each other, we're always just in, you know, one day or another.

Today happens to be this day.

Try and get out of it.

You're always just in a day.

That's the type of thing that you are.

How utterly small.

You're just in today.

And where do your needs take place?

They always take place in just one day or another.

Would God become so small that he might come down into a day, this day, and see the needs that you have in this day and desire to meet them.

Well, we know that he is concerned in that way.

He teaches you to talk to him as though he is concerned with your daily bread.

You cannot pray this prayer unless you have a sense of what is God like.

He is eternal in the heavens and concerned with your daily bread.

There's something about days and grace.

The Lord seems to dispense his grace on a daily basis.

And he says, Don't stretch beyond the day, as though you could.

But instead, I will meet you in the concerns that this day has.

He says elsewhere in the sermon, do not be concerned for tomorrow, for tomorrow has enough worries of its own.

At the central verse in Lamentations, it says, Your grace is new every morning.

We are taught to pray for our daily bread.

In order to meet with the transcendent God of the universe, you do not need to learn how to expansively stretch yourself to contain all things.

He meets you in the day.

So where do you meet God?

Right here.

He even meets you in your needs.

This is how deep God will go.

You know, he goes to you, not in your strength, as though you're able to rise up to him, but in your needs.

He comes down to you.

I don't have enough money.

I don't have enough time.

I don't have enough emotional capacity to handle this sort of thing.

I don't have all of those things that you don't have.

He gives you what you need for the day.

He promises to.

He tells you to ask him.

Do you see how you're being positioned on the stage?

We are the needy creatures in this story.

So let's pray it together.

I intended to do this throughout the whole thing, but we've already missed a couple.

So we'll just pick it back up again.

Give us this day our daily bread.

Let's say it together.

Give us this day our daily bread.

No one stands out as one out of need who doesn't have any need.

We say it together.

That's who we are in the story.

It tells us who God is.

He is the one who is concerned with our daily needs.

All right.

He reaches down into time and into your needs.

If you think he couldn't go any lower, just keep listening.

In Matthew 6, verse 12, the prayer continues and says, And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

Matthew 6:12

We are the people who need to be forgiven.

Jesus is teaching his disciples and us how to pray generically for all time, you know, for the course of this age.

And in each one, he includes pray that you would be forgiven.

Jesus is anticipating that you are praying as a sinner in need of forgiveness.

He is not asking you to position yourself.

As though you are one who has no sin.

He is not waiting for you to be so utterly clean before him that you might earn his ear.

He teaches you to pray as a sinner and ask for his forgiveness.

What does that tell us about where we are in this story?

This is a story of our sin and God's forgiveness, of our need and God's provision.

And here is the first part of the prayer that gives us something to do because he's teaching us what type of people are we.

If we are a forgiven people, which he is asking us to act like and understand that we are, that we are sinners who have been forgiven, then what type of people will we be?

We will be ones who forgive.

We will be a group of people who, even when we sin against one another, what is it that holds us together and allows us to forgive?

We consider, I've been forgiven of so much.

Our Lord in heaven has forgiven me of so much.

Of course, I can forgive those who have sinned against me.

I can forgive the debts of those who have withheld from me.

He goes down into our needs.

He goes down into our sin.

He goes out into the future in this next part.

Let's read that together.

Matthew 6.12, and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.

Ready?

And forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.

That's the hardest one to say because we all grew up learning it differently.

Matthew 6.13, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

Let's say it together.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

You've been forgiven.

Great.

We're done, aren't we?

No, there's more life to live.

And what type of thing will you be when you go out to live this more life?

What type of thing, what are we like when we're together?

We're vulnerable.

And there's more temptation coming.

And our hearts will desire the temptations that come and they'll want to participate in them.

And they'll want to abandon our Father and to no longer see the goodness of God and what He offers to us.

So, Lord, we need your continued protection even after this great deliverance of your forgiveness.

We need you to continue through time with us as a people that our very hearts might be protected so that we don't fall in to the temptations that come.

And we are vulnerable because we are in a dangerous world full of real evil.

And that evil is something that we cannot just defeat on our own.

We need the deliverance of the Lord.

How deep does this prayer go?

How small and close, how deep and far away from the heavenly throne.

Does this prayer go?

But even to right up against evil itself.

We are positioned in the story.

And when we position ourselves rightly, orient ourselves as this prayer orients us, then we are acting as we truly are the people of God.

And we are honoring God by saying these words.

We are inhabiting the relational place that God calls us to inhabit.

Which is that he is God.

We are his creatures.

What is he?

We are needy sinners, tempted, and vulnerable to evil.

What is he?

A loving father who will go to, who will leave his heavenly throne and go to the deepest depths that we might be rescued by him.

In this prayer, when we say it together as a church, we are being the people of God.

He is being our God.

We are being his people.

One way to say this prayer, and isn't it amazing that Jesus is the one who taught us to pray this way?

He is the Lord who left the heavens to go to the deepest depths of sin and evil, that we, that he might be close to us and that we might be brought close to him.

So we pray the Lord's prayer together.

Now, two things.

How do you start doing this?

How do we start praying together as a church?

Every prayer that we pray as a church is derivative of this in some way, because you're asking for some need, which will be met on a daily basis.

We're seeking the glory of his kingdom to come.

We're desiring our hearts to be more conformed into who he desires us to be, that our that our sins might be forgiven, that we might be delivered from evil and no longer so susceptible to the temptations of the world.

Everything that you can think of to pray is is in here somehow.

So how do we pray?

As a church, we begin each service with this prayer.

This is going about to get wildly pragmatic.

Come into the auditorium in time to pray it with us.

Let's pray it together.

Let's say our Father together.

And let's consider that he's really hearing when we say it.

Next is come pray together with your church on a monthly basis at the car's house.

We have a monthly prayer night that you can come and pray with us at the car's house.

We learn to be the people that God calls us to be in this prayer.

And lastly, share your requests with one another and pray for each other.

Hold up the prayer requests of your church to the Lord.

I want you to develop a deep prayer FOMO.

It's fear of missing out for those of you that don't know acronyms.

Now, the the deep prayer FOMO is this you hear something good, or you hear something bad in someone in a friend's life that resolved itself.

And when you hear that story, I want you to think, oh man, I wish I had prayed for that.

Because then my joy would be made complete right now.

I want you to have this sense that you don't want to miss out on the joy of anything that the Lord is doing in your church.

And so you'll pray for it.

There's incredible joy available to us here.

It's one of the reasons that Jesus tells us to pray in his name, so that our joy might be made complete.

So let's do that for one another.

All right.

My watch is telling me that it's time to stand.

So, which doesn't make sense.

All right.

Uh I it is too late for a question.

So if if you text in a question, just come and ask me right afterwards.

But let's look at what Paul wrote before we take communion.

Paul writes this, he says, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you.

That the Lord Jesus, on the night when he was betrayed, took bread.

And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way he also took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

As we say this prayer together, and as we learn to pray for one another and with one another, we are acknowledging this reality that ours is the God who listens.

He listens because of the depth of his love towards us.

How do we know the depth of his love towards us?

Because he left his throne in the heavens, and he came down and drank a bitter cup, that we might drink a cup of wine, of celebration, that he broke hard bread, that his body might be broken and we might receive a meal that meets us daily to be revived by him, that we might pray to that God and be the people who are formed by that God.

Holy Father, I pray that you would bless this meal, Lord, that you would work in our hearts to be able to participate in the reality of the story that you have placed us in, that we might get more comfortable with these collective pronouns that you teach us to inhabit as a church.

Lord, would you unwind the individualistic ways of thinking that that we that are just so intuitive for us in our culture and that we might learn to consider ourselves as not just ourselves, but as a people.

And Lord, would you let us learn to look forward to your answered prayer for one another?

Lord, we lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.