Teach us to Pray pt 1: Our Father

Luke 11. Matt 6:9.

INTRO

On halloween we dressed up in costumes and did evangelism at Cutting edge haunted house.

Miguel got to testify to a young man about his history in the gay life style.

“17 years ago, i dressed up as a sexy drag queen witch… today I’m dressed as a loving father.”

I’m telling that story because that’s the focus of the sermon today… The experiencing God as father.

Today, we’re in our Seeking initiative. We’re preparing for a season of increased prayer by learning about prayer and stirring up hunger for more.

The purpose of this sermon is to teach us another foundational element of prayer, which is that God is father,

I’m going to share at least one story that will stir our hunger for the possibilities.

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In Matt 6, jesus teaches his disciples to pray.

We’ll start in Matthew.

Matt 6:5 ““And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.”

Don’t pray in order to be seen by others.

Why? They receive their reward… their reward is apparently the adulation for being so holy.

Matt 6:6 “But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”

pray in secret… in order to be heard by your father in heaven.

Here’s a question, Jesus teaches us to pray privately.

But Jesus also prays publically, and the church all throughout acts prays publically.

How do you know if you’re praying publically for show or not?

If you’re praying alone also.

Regardless of how much we pray in public, we have to have private prayer lives.

Matt 6:7 ““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.”

Matt 6:8 “Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”

Don’t pray empty words.

Ironically, the very next 6 verses are often recited from memory in a way that CAN become empty.

Let’s say it from memory....

I was not raised in a house that knew and followed God, but at dinner sometimes we prayed the Lords prayer… to me it was an empty cluster of words I didn’t understand.

It’s okay to recite the Lord’s prayer.

But Jesus intended us to do more than simply recite that prayer.

We see jesus pray a few times and he doesn’t recite that prayer.

John 17. is an entire chapter of Jesus praying, and he doesn’t recite the prayer

Jesus went off and prayed all night… certainly he wasn’t reciting the Lord’s prayer over and over.

Instead, the Lord’s prayer gives us several TYPES of things to pray.

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Matt 6:9 “Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.”

My little brother thought it was “Howard be your name.”

We were just reciting something!

“hallowed be your name” is basically saying “God, make your name holy.”

Make it be holy to the world… make it be holy to me.

This type of prayer is to praise, glorify, adore the father.

We’ll come back to this type.

Matt 6:10 “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

Pray for the kingdom of God to manifest on the Earth.

I think the “high priestly prayer” In John 17 is mostly this kind of prayer

Matt 6:11 “Give us this day our daily bread,”

Pray for what you need, daily.

Supplication

Matt 6:12 “and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”

Confess and forgive.

Matt 6:13 “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

Ask for deliverance and protection.

Jesus told Peter that he has prayed for him that his strength may not fail.

Some Translations (KJV, NKJV, and NASB) AND the 1662 book of common prayer, and The really hip song we sang today... include the doxology at the end.

Matt 6:13b “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.”

The manuscripts that the ESV was written from don’t include this, but other manuscripts do.

I like it because it ends the prayer the same way it started… glorifying God.

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Here are the types of prayer:

Glorifying the father

Praying for the kingdom to come

Asking for what we need

Confessing and forgiving

Asking for protection and deliverance

At wellspring, we’ve covered the topic of confession and forgiveness.

I’m trying to get us to all believe that conviction is good because it leads you to that type of prayer.

All people everywhere who pray, automatically pray for what they need.

Asking for protection is another easy one because it implies that you get something you need.

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The two types of prayer that I want to spend the most time exploring are the first two: Glorifying the father, and praying for his kingdom.

We’re going to cover praying for his kingdom next week.

This week the foundational part of prayer that we’re looking at is glorifying the father.

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Matt 6:9 “...“Our Father in heaven, ...”

The first thing to point out is that Jesus says “our father.”

It implies community. Even when we’re praying alone, we’re supposed to consider each other.

But the real key is this one word “Father.”

He could have said to pray, “our king” “our master” “our creator” but he chooses the relationship of father because our heavenly father has fatherly affection for us.

There are million things to say about the relationship of father...

Some of us have great dads who loved us and trained us.

Some of us have less than great dads. Some of us have dad’s who damaged us by choosing selfishness over us.

Our earthly fathers have an ability to shape how we view our heavenly father.

Some of us think we’re damaged goods because of our earthly fathers.

I want to focus on experiencing God as father in a way that shapes how we view our earthly dads.

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To do that I want to share something that I learned years ago, that has always really stirred my heart

Bear with me ...

In grad school I took a class called Historical Linguistics.

You can see which languages are related by looking at cognates.

foot - foos

nose - naze -

But there are a few types of words in every language that you might get tricked by if you’re not careful: Mom and dad.

papa - baba - aba - abu

momma - ama - oma - ema

You’d think all the languages are related because they all use strikingly similar words for mom and dad.

Why do so many languages use basically the same sounds for mom and dad?

The reason is kind of amazing: Those are the first sounds that babies are able to make.

All human babies, regardless of the language they end up speaking, start out making the same sets of sounds.

And those sounds become the words for mom and dad in basically every language in the world.

Why?

The parents are hovering over their baby just looking at it, watching every move, loving their baby and longing for their baby to acknowledge them and interact with them.

So as as soon as the baby makes it’s first sounds “ba ba” the father excitedly says “that’s me. she’s talking to me. I’m baba!”

At this point, the father is not teaching the child or correcting, or training… the father is just desperate to be in a relationship with the child.

That’s fatherly affection.

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Authority to name

There’s a principle in scripture that the one in authority names everything else.

God had authority over Adam and named him.

God gave Adam authority over everything else, so he named it.

Parents have authority to name their children

But the parent is so eager for a relationship with the child that they joyfully give authority to the baby to name them.

Here’s a really interesting clue that shows us that God the father is the exact same way...

Romans 8:15 “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!””

That’s “papa” that’s “daddy”

The Holy Spirit knows all things and fully knows the heart of the father.

Whatever he cries through you is the most appropriate, accurate way God the father wants to be addressed.

And he uses the word “abba”

In Aramaic is Abba.

In Arabic it’s Abu

In English is Papa or even daddy.

God chooses to be called by the name that the babies make up.

Why?

Mt 21:16 “...have you never read, “ ‘Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise’?””

Because he’s hovering over his children, watching us with affection and anticipation, Eager for a relationship with us.

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Today, I want us to experience the love of the Father.

Many of us have father wounds that may take time to heal, but that healing can go really quickly if the spirit of God is in us crying Abba father.

Some of you need to pray “God I want to know you as Abba/papa/daddy.”

We’ve been trained not to be that intimate with God.

If that’s awkward, i want you to know it’s NOT because of the bible.

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Before we pray there’s one rather enormous problem… the second part of that verse.

Matt 6:9 “... hallowed be your name.”

God is our abba father. but he’s also holy.

We’ve talked about God’s Holiness before…

if you went into his presence with impurity, you died.

There’s another verse and concept I want us to consider to set us up for the final story I want to share.

The verse comes from Rev.

John has a vision of God on the throne and it’s glorious to see, but it’s also glorious to hear.

Revelation 4:2 “At once I was in the Spirit, and behold, a throne stood in heaven, with one seated on the throne.”

Revelation 4:3 “And he who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian, and around the throne was a rainbow that had the appearance of an emerald.”

Revelation 4:4 “Around the throne were twenty-four thrones, and seated on the thrones were twenty-four elders, clothed in white garments, with golden crowns on their heads.”

Revelation 4:5 “From the throne came flashes of lightning, and rumblings and peals of thunder, ...,”

You can feel the rumblings of his glory.

But we can call him abba, papa, daddy. How?

It’s not because he’s a cuddly teady bear

It’s not because he’s safe.

He loved us enough to send his son.

Jesus lived the perfect life and earned the right to enter his father’s presence.

He died and rose from the dead to free us from sin and death.

And Jesus said he will be in us and we will be in him.

When we’re in him, we can come confidently into the presence of the Father also.

The foundational piece we need to learn is that

God is a holy God who made a way for us to know him as abba father.

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I wanted to share a story that is similar to many others that I’ve told, but it has one super interesting part of it that needs to be told.

The story comes from northern Canada.

A community was given to drunkeness and sexual immorality.

And they had a particularly dark epidemic of child abuse and suicide.

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again the church began to pray.

again, the Holy Spirit began to convict people all across the area and people began to repent of sin, be freed from drug and alcohol abuse

The whole community decided together to get rid of all of their dirty movies, books, magazines, and music.

They had a public bonfire where they burn an estimated 100k worth of stuff.

[show bon fire pic]

Afterward, things started to get way better everywhere, but a place called Pond Inlet saw what you would call backsliding.

People began to slip into sin again even in the middle of this outpouring.

The people called a special meeting to pray and seek God… and something strange happened.

[show Pond Inlet video]

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I hope that stirs hunger for the possibilities of what could happen if we pray.

I don’t know that the room will ever shake, but that’s not the point.

We are in a society with rampant suicide, sexual immorality, drunkenness, drug abuse.

Outrage and hatred

This generation is actually called the fatherless generation.

We are a wounded people… we feel like orphans… we have deep father wounds

We need to experience God as Abba father.

Let’s pray.