Dynamic Relationship

Recite the Lord’s Prayer

Today we begin a new series on prayer called “Lord, Teach Us to Pray”.

Everyone prays. Even atheists admit to praying during a crisis. As the old saying goes, “there’s no atheists in foxholes.”

Christians - along with people of other faiths - pray. Yet many Christians often admit that they find their prayer life unsatisfying. Let’s be honest: it’s very hard to pursue a relationship with someone you can’t see. Last I checked, God is invisible! And so prayer can feel very hard. Is God listening?  Am I saying it right?  Does anything I pray really make any difference?

We all know that you cannot have a meaningful relationship with someone you never talk to.  If you never observed Julie and I talking to each other you might infer that we don’t have much of a marriage, even though we have a marriage license. A piece of paper does not a relationship make.

Neither does a baptism certificate. As important as it is to take that first step of faith, that alone does not guarantee a dynamic relationship with our Father. It seems that God is not satisfied with a relationship that is only about us going to heaven when we die. He has things he wants to show us, things he wants to do in us, and things he wants to do through us. And the starting point for all of that is prayer. I believe with all my heart that prayer is the beginning and end of all true discipleship.

I’ve subtitles this new series “Igniting your passion for prayer.”  What if we could wake up every day excited to pray? I think when we begin to understand why we should pray that this becomes a real possibility. The Prayer Course on Wednesday evening is going to address the issue of how to pray, using the Lord’s Prayer as a model - it’s not too late to attend btw. In this series we are going to look at why pray. Let’s ask Jesus the same question the disciples asked him. “Lord, teach us to pray…”

Luke 11:1-2

Before we talk about the first reason we should pray, there are a few things here we shouldn’t gloss over.

First, Jesus modeled prayer. It seems Jesus was always slipping off alone, late at night or early in the morning, to spend time with the Father. The Gospels are full of references to Jesus praying (Jesus prayed slide).

Second, Jesus assumed prayer. He assumed that those who followed him would follow his example of prayer. He said “when” you pray, not “if”.

Third, Jesus taught prayer. I think Jesus knew that prayer would be difficult for us. It’s interesting that this may be the only time the disciples ever asked Jesus to specifically teach them something. All the other ministry - healing the sick, casting out demons, declaring the good news of the kingdom - they learned to do by example. But when it came to prayer they wanted concrete teaching.

This still leaves us with the question, though, of “why pray?” Here’s the first reason I want to offer this morning: Prayer is the primary way we develop a dynamic relationship with God. You can do ministry for God, yet not know God. Jesus said that some people on the last day will say “Lord, Lord, didn’t we cast out demons in your name?” and he will say to them “depart from me, I never knew you.” You can fake ministry; you can’t fake relationship. And, hear me, more than any ministry you can perform, God wants you to know him. This is your highest ministry.

I want to just pull a couple of words out of the opening to the prayer we call the Lord’s prayer as we think about developing a dynamic relationship with God.

Father

First is the word, Father. The first thing we should understand is Prayer is all about relationship.

What did Jesus mean when he called God “Father”?

Not in terms of birth - God did not create Jesus; he is the eternal Son of God, the second Person of the Trinity.

Not in terms of hierarchy - while it is true that Jesus in his earthly life submitted to the Father, there is no rank among the Trinity. Jesus is not second place to the Father but is the same as the Father in glory. Jesus detractors understood this when he called God his Father, and they wanted to kill him because, in their words, John 10:33 “The Jews answered, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you, but for blasphemy, because you, though only a human being, are making yourself God.””

Jesus, and the rest of the NT, use Father/Son language to describe a relationship. That Jesus and the Father are in a dynamic, loving, self-giving relationship. God is Father because he loves the Son. He is Father because he is committed to the Son. He is Father because he will work all things to the glory and well-being of the Son.

Jesus calling God, Father, and teaching us to call him Father can be hard for some. There is such a thing as a “father wound”. Some of us here did not have the benefit of a loving relationship with their father. It was possibly even abusive. And so a natural reaction is to resist or run away from this image of God because the word for you is threatening. But I think Jesus wants to redeem fatherhood for you. That we should not judge Father God on the basis of our weak, human fathers, but instead we should judge our human fathers on the basis of Father God.

The first thing Jesus teaches us in this prayer is that God is our Father. And in doing so he invites us into the same dynamic relationship that he himself enjoys with the Father. Jesus wants you to know that God is your Father. That he loves you. That he is committed to your well-being. That he cares for you and will see you through every trial.

Where has a false image of fatherhood kept you from developing a deeper relationship with God? Or if it’s not due to a fatherhood image, what has kept you from growing closer to God. Spend a minute allowing the Holy Spirit to search your heart...

Hallow

The other word I want to draw out is “hallow”. That’s not a word we use very often. How would you work that into a conversation? “I really hallow the cornbread you made??”

To “hallow” is to treat something as holy. When we hallow God’s name, we are saying that we give honor and devotion to him because of his name, which is his reputation.

The second way that prayer grows dynamic relationship with the Father, Jesus teaches, is that Prayer develops trust.

This may seem like a sacrilegious question, but why does God want us to “hallow” him? Is he like Ramses in Nacho Libre who needs someone to stroke his ego? To ask it another way, is hallowing God for him or us?

While it is true that God is infinitely worthy of our praise - our hallowing of his name - he does not need this. He has no insecurities where he needs to be reminded how awesome he is. Rather, I think hallowing God’s name is for our benefit, because when we hallow God’s name we remind our soul who it is we are in relationship with.

One thing that would be fruitful for us all to learn is the various name of God found in the Bible. To give a few examples:

El Shaddai reminds us he is our Almighty One

El Elyon reminds us there is no one and nothing greater than Him

Yahweh Nissi reminds us that the Lord is our victory

Yahweh Raah that he is our shepherd

Yahweh Rapha that the Lord is our healer

Yahweh Roi that he is the God who sees us

Yahweh Jireh tells us the Lord is our provider

Yahweh Shalom that he is our peace-giver

Yahweh Sabaoth that he is the God of angel armies who will fight for us

Each of these names tells us something important about who God is for us. As we learn and reflect on his name - hallowing it - it reminds our soul who has our back. When the crap hits the fan - and it will - you don’t need hippie Jesus. You need the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.

The second thing Jesus tells us about prayer is that it grows our trust in the Lord, and this is necessary to developing a dynamic relationship with our Father.

What situation have you lost your trust in God for? Or where do you sense God calling you to greater trust?

Today, maybe God is calling you to place your trust in him for the first time. To accept his as your Lord, and receive his forgiveness and salvation. Or maybe God is calling you to take the next step of following him through baptism. I invite you to reach out to me (next steps slide).

Where is your chair?

We opened by reading that the Lord was praying in a “certain” place. Apparently there were special places the Lord liked to go to in order to pray. It seems that where we pray can make a difference. We’re told that at Pentecost, the Holy Spirit “filled the entire house where they were sitting.” Then something like tongues of fire rested on each of them, and then “all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit.” The order is interesting here. First, he filled the place, then he filled the people.

The ancient Celtic Christians understood that the Holy Spirit could saturate places as well as people. They called these “thin places” - places where heaven and earth can very near to each other. Your thin place could be a favorite chair, a bench at a park, your drive into work, or even the sanctuary of your bathroom, but each of us needs a thin place for regular prayer so that we can develop relationship with our Father. Even when we don’t want to pray, sometimes just showing up in our thin place makes it easier.

An advertising executive became a Christian. When asked about prayer he told his new pastor that he simply didn’t have time to add one more thing to his schedule. But his pastor pushed back, and told him that we usually make time for the things we really value. So this new believer went away and bought himself a nice rocking chair. Setting it at a window in his house, he began to get up 20 minutes earlier each day to sit in it, read the Bible, and pray. As he maintained this simple rhythm, his wife and colleagues began to notice that he was becoming less scattered, more peaceful, and kinder. The rocking chair was becoming his thin place.

Where is your thin place? Where is that “certain” place you can go to be alone with your Father? If you don’t have one, find one! God knows you and loves you, and he wants you to know him. At his death, the veil of the Temple - that curtain that separated the place of God’s presence from others - was torn in two, meaning that nothing can separate us from access to our loving Father. The first, and most important, reason we should pray is to develop a life-giving, life-sustaining relationship with our loving Father.

“Lord, teach us to pray...”