Matthew 6:9-13 | Spiritual Form: Prayer

intro

Hey y’all, how are you? How was break? everybody good?

Who did something cool for break?

Thats cool.

Anyways, question for you.

When you are listening to music what are you thinking about? Thinking about how it sounds? Beat, the lyrics, the melody, the hook, the chorus. Thinking about how it makes you feel right? Does some music pump you up, does some calm you down?

Does it sounds sad, does it sounds happy? Music makes you feel emotions right?

So why? Why do songs sound the way they sound? Anyone want to take a guess?

Now what if i told you you could scientifically analyze the music you listen to and it go oh I see why it sounds that way, who watched stranger things season 4? The Metallica song Master of Puppets, why does it sounds like that? It is written in a Harmonic minor. Tempo is fast, technique is down picking. We call it music theory, when you know it, you can listen to it and figure it out pretty quickly, you can grab your guitar and figure it out.

i know the majority of you might be lost at the moment, but there is ton of stuff like that, car guys, if your car is making noise, you can figure out why the car is doing what it is doing.

The reason i’m telling you about this stuff is when you you understand the principles behind how things work you can expand and create and become more proficient, you start you understand more, appreciate more, grow more in that area.

Who like to cook? There are flavors that work and don’t work. if you understand how flavors work together you can really create good stuff. of know how to make things taste better. If something is too spicy, add citrus, if something is bland, add fat, if something needs a pop add salt. you can create when you know the foundations.

So, anyways the reason I’m telling you this because tonight we are going to talk about something we all know of and do, but probably aren’t really sure what it is for, something we don’t talk about a ton because i think we take for granted that everyone knows how to pray or really what prayer is.

and on the surface we know what prayer is, you are talking to God or just asking God for things. Basic as it can be.

But prayer is not merely just that.

Prayer is just so much more, so I want to look at scripture tonight and try to look at what prayer is, explore how prayer work, and then, how do we pray.

So last time we were together we started look at spiritual formation, what does the Christian life produce, we talked about steadfastness, what that means. So in this we are talking about spiritual disciplines, and with disciplines they are a thing you can build and grow in, I don’t want to say you can get better at praying, but you can become a a steadfast prayer.

Anyways, that’s where i want us to be tonight, looking at prayer, looking at what is the basic functions and modes of prayer. What makes prayer, prayer?

Is Prayer important? - Context

So, thats where we are going to be tonight, looking at prayer. And to do that there is a ton of different scriptures we could us but for whaty we are doing I think Matthew 6 :9-13 is the best place to start.

So if you have a bible go ahead and flip over to Matt. 6:9. if you don’t have a bible throw a hand up and we will get you one. If you have one at home, bring it with you. If you don’t haver one at home take this one home.

Cool,

let me give you some context to what is going on here. Right before this passage

Jesus and disciples are in the temple and people are praying and some are praying loud, some are just praying to hear themselves talk, and Jesus uses this as a teaching moment.

He sees this says look around, look at how they are praying, this ain’t it

CS Lewis has a quote about philosophy where he says “good philosophy must exist, if for any reason, because bad philosophy exists.” and that is Jesus right here, he basiccly thinks, I gotta teach these boys how to pray.

I need to show them what is basic prayer.

One of the commentaries that I looked at for this called this, instead of the Lord’s prayer, this should be called the disciples prayer.

This was the prayer that Jesus gave His disciples.

Basically Jesus sees how people are praying.

He sees the Hypocrites, and says look, they like to do this loudly, for everyone to hear, they stand on the street corner, they want people to see how holy and spiritual they are.

If this was today, this is the people who quote them selves on social media. Ever seen that? had a guy i went to school with that would just say something and then act like it was a known quote.

It’d be like if i were like “Be the church” - Austin Ussery. Like that’s weird. That’s got Michael Scott vibes. cringy.

Jesus is saying don’t do that. You are just wanting people to see you, you get your reward here.

He tells them to pray in secret.

Then he sees how other people are praying. He sees the pagans just saying a bunch of compliments. What if you talked to your friends like this,

“You are so awesome” Thanks AD LIB KEEP GOING you the best, wow you are awesome, greatest ever.

That is what these guys are doing. The Pagans are basically butt kissing their gods. You know what I mean?

Ever had a class with the teachers pet? The suck up. Actually Mrs. Skinner, you forgot to take up last nights homework. Mr. Stewart, isn’t the test this friday?

This is say don’t suck up to the Lord.

God doesn’t need you to only tell him He is the best. God isn’t up there waiting on a compliment from Austin, He’s not hoping to here only how great he is from Jacob.

Jesus tells the disciples, don’t try to be God’s pet looking for a belly rub, He’s called you to be His sons and daughters. Treat God as father, not pet owner.

Te Lord knows what you need, even before you ask Him.

Think about that for a second. God already knows what you need, before you ask Him. i know we haven’t gotten to the text yet, but think about that. What does that tell us about our lives?

One, God knows better than we do. Think about prayers you have prayed. God has answered those prayers. Even the prayer you think he hasn’t answered he has answered. No is an answer. You prayed for something, God answered No, you don’t need that. Sometimes what we ask for is not what God gives us because He knows hat we need before we even ask.

Second thing, how we order our lives matters. We get what we need through prayer. We get to join in through prayer. If we are going to carry out the mission, we need to include the mission giver.

So, Jesus has walked the disciples through how not to pray and then we find our selves in the passage tonight.

So if you are at Matthew 6:9-13 this where I would normally prayer for our time in the word.

But tonight, this passage is a prayer. So let’s read the passage, let’s pray the passage. Matthew 6:9-13 if you want to pray this with me, go for it.

Pray with me

Matthew 6:9–13 ESV

9 Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. 10 Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us this day our daily bread, 12 and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

Amen.

What is prayer?

Okay so why is this the basic prayer? Why is this what Jesus goes with?

Lets look at what prayer is in the first place. So what is prayer? Any one want to take a shot at that? What is prayer?

Okay. Cool. Yeah those are things you do in prayer and through prayer.

But what is it?

Tim Keller wrote a great book on prayer, if anyone wants it come talk to me but in it Tim says:

Prayer is both conversation and encounter with God. . . . We must know the awe of praising his glory, the intimacy of finding his grace, and the struggle of asking his help, all of which can lead us to know the spiritual reality of his presence.

Prayer is resting in the presence of God. Prayer is getting still before the Lord.

In resting in the presence of the Lord our desires start to change.

Look at what Jesus Payed.

He recognizes who God is, that God’s name has weight it has reverence, it demands awe and wonder as does the presence of the Lord.

Then he prays for the Kingdom to come and the will of God to be done.

How many of us pray in this way? or are our prayers normally, “Lord, help me out! Lord, let me do good on this test!” as you start the test. Sometimes that is the prayer, but when ew go to sit with God, do we start rattling off needs and wants or do we recognize we are sitting with the almighty? the King of the Universe, the creator of all things. He knows what we need. and what we need is Him.

Look at Paul, look at all of his prayers. In all of his prayers not once does Paul ask for a change in his circumstance or a change in friends circumstances. And Paul wrote a lot from prison, he was beat up all the time. Would have been perfectly normal for Paul to be like, He God, wanna get me out of this prison? How about I don’t get beat up this go around and I get to do the beating? What do you say?

He doesn’t pray like that, he prays like, “Lord give me you. Give me more of you.” Resting in the presence of God is what we need most in this life.

The Jesus prays, your will be done. He is halfway done with this prayer and has not asked anything for himself but has asked for the Will of God and His kingdom to come down. Your will — not my will — but your will be done.

So what do we see from this first half of this? God is in His proper place, our objectives are centered on the kingdom and our will is being shifted to His will.

That is what prayer does for us.

Have y’all seen a blacksmith make something? like a sword or something? He heats it up and then beats it with a hammer, shaping it, making it strong, molding the steel in to what the blacksmith wants it to be.

That’s prayer. Prayer is the hammer by which we are formed. Imagine you woke up every morning and the posture of your prayer was to say, Lord make my your will my will. Your will be done.

That’s what prayer is, it is where we are made more like christ, prayer is the beginning of a steadfast walk.

how does prayer work?

Okay let’s keep going. This is kinda where prayer get a little harder to understand. How does prayer work? Why should we pray? Like think about it, there are time that you are going to pray for God to do certain things. Heal someone, he may not, but you want to pray that, you may ask the Lord to protect you. Saw a lot of people during the pandemic to banish covid. actually watched someone pray that the spot we were in was a covid free place and that they banished covid from there. If it were that simple we should have called the CDC.

But there are legit times you are going to pray the Lord act in a way that you would like for Him to act. So how does that work? Is your prayers actually changing things or was god going to act in that certain way? Is prayer effective?

Does God modify His plans based on our prayers? Its a good question, can we change God’s mind? Any takers?

So let’s answer this question. How does prayer work, can we change God’s mind?

God is infinitely wise, which would mean, he knows best, we talked about that.

To Price LL and I are infinitely wise, we know what she needs before she asks for it, we know when she’s gonna be hungry, we know she doesn’t need to touch the hot coffee. We know better than her.

God is that way to us, He knows what is best. He doesn’t need our advice, he doesn’t need anything from us. He doesn’t need us to do anything. If he wanted to, he could bring about the kingdom all by himself, know need for us, if he wanted to, he could make believers out of non believers without missionaries, evangelism could be done by Him.

But it isn’t, He allows us a chance to join Him.

Prayer is that way, We are not going to change the ultimate purpose of his will, but through our prayers his will may be carried out in different ways.

Our Prayers are requests and he may grant them and he may not, but our prayers work in a way which he will us to carry out his ultimate will.

Look at the Not So Scary Grayberry Spectacular, its a big event, there was an ultimate vision and goal with that. One of the things that we wanted to happen was to get a ton of video of the event. You know what we did, we got Kennon and Blake to go around and video it, could I have done that? sure, but we wanted to include more people, would I have done it the way they did, prob not, that’s not my personality, but it got done, and the ultimate goal was brought about.

The Lord looks at us and says do this, join him, He will to certain degrees allow us to be us, as long as His ultimate will is the one being carried out, he allows us to join Him in His mission. He allow finite beings to join the eternal.

Through prayer we join Him in His mission of restoration and redemption of the world.

Let’s keep going.

How do we pray?

This might be the most practical thing tonight, How do we pray? We see what prayer is and isn’t, we have an idea of how prayer works, so how do we do it? How do we pray?

How do we do it?

Let’s look at the example of Jesus. Right before he gives us the Lord Prayer, Jesus tells us to go in to your room and lock the door in secret. Pray in secret, pray where no on e watching you.

So first thing we can glean from that is to get away by yourself. Might be your room, might be your car, somewhere without distractions. that is what Jesus is saying, be by yourself, go where no one is going to bother you because you aren’t doing this for them. This is for you to sit and be still before the Lord.

Then when you start to pray, do these things.

Remember who God is, acknowledge that God is God and that you aren’t this will keep you from making prayer about yourself. Prayer starts with God and having reverence for God.

Then, ask the Lord to make His will your will, ask the Lord to bend your will to His. To make you Christ like, to keep you holy. This is what will produce steadfastness, being made more like Christ everyday. Pray in a way that makes God the center and object of your prayers.

The, by Jesus example ask the Lord for what you need, and for Him to show you what you need. We may think we know what we need, but sometimes we get wants and needs mixed up. The Lord knows what we need, ask Him to show us.

Ask for today’s grace, not tmr, not next weeks but today’s grace. Prayer is a daily thing, treat it as such.

Then lastly ask the lord to keep us from sin and to forgive us from sin. Make us holy and hold us fast. The shortest prayer you can pray is “hold me fast”

Pray in this way, keeping God at the center of your prayers.

P2Christ

So, what do we do with this?

Well first off, start praying, and praying like this. This is the way Jesus instructs us to pray, “in this way.” This is going to require som discipline too, you may have to get up early or stay up later to pray in this way. It will take longer, it requires intentionality.

But pray. Prayer is the first step in the christian walk, do you want a steadfast walk with the Lord, pray. Pray in this way. Pray like this. In your prayers ask the Lord to give you discipline in your prayer life.

Take your bible with you, read through the Psalms, they are all prayers, pray through them. Use this way to pray to pray through the scriptures. and if you don’t know what to say, pray the Lord’s prayer. That is why we have it. That is Jesus’s prayer, it’ll do.

So if you are a follower of Christ, this passage is calling you to evaluate your prayer life. I know this might be a weak spot for some of you, it can be a weak spot for me. This passage is calling you to pray, to take prayer seriously, to start tonight or in the morning, Pray.

If you aren’t a follower of Christ or don’t know what you are, this passage is not going to make much sense to you, you don’t have a relationship with God, with Christ. Prayer wouldn’t make sense to you. But if you want one, Christ is here. Christ is took your place on the cross so that you could experience who He is, to have a relationship with the Almighty to be free from sin and death. Come to Christ, if you have any questions about Christ or following Christ come talk to me, talk to your friend talk to someone,

Come see christ as lord, come see Christ as king

let’s pray.