A Good Church prays

Introduction

To say that a Good church prays would be like to say, a good person talks.

Of course, we would say, a good person talks. That is part of what it means to be a person.

Exactly. What does it mean to be a church? That we are in constant communication with God.

Have you ever had your body do something that you didn’t want it to do? Your legs didn’t move the way you wanted, your arms didn’t do what you wanted? I woke up the other night, out of a dead sleep with a massive charlie horse in my leg. It was like someone punched me awake. And it took a good few minutes for it to go away. My brain did not want it but my leg did not care. There was a disconnect between what I was thinking and what my body was doing.

This easily happens in the church.

We are given a helpful metaphor to what the church is supposed to be like. In 1 cor the church is called the body of Christ. We belong to Christ. We are His. He is the One in control, and we, as a body, follows.

But sometimes the body is like a major charlie horse. A pain, in other words. The church does not always function like the head of the body wants it to.

We tell ourselves we are connected, we tell others we are connected, but we have in some ways tried to remove the connection between body and head, because we think we can do it better.

Big Idea: Prayer is to learn to see how God sees, go where God goes, and act how He acts.

The sermon on the mount are not just good ideas, or tips for a better prayer life, they are understanding the fullness of possibility of a life with God.

Every time you pray, you make an exchange between the limited ways in which we experience life for the richness and fulness in which God offers us.

To pray at all is to trust that there are better things than we can currently see now. And each better thing ends in the person of Jesus.

Supporting point: God is already listening and attentive

Matthew 6:5–8 ESV

“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. 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. “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.

The entirety of the Lords’ prayer comes from a specific point in Jesus teaching. It comes out of being taught what to pray and how to pray.

He says, because people want to be seen by others and heard by others. People want to be seen doing good or doing religious good. This is the picture we are given by Jesus.

He tells us we don’t have to do that. We do not have to live our lives trying to get someone to look at us or see us or tell us that we are doing well or doing great.

The reason we don’t have to live that way, all the way before the Lord’s prayer is because, we find out, God already cares for us. HE is already listening. He is already paying attention.

We don’t have to look big or yell or get God’s attention. We already have it.

This is why we can pray the way Jesus tells us to.

Supporting Point: God is already caring for us

Matthew 6:9–10 ESV

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.

The way Jesus addresses God is important.

If you know Christ this morning. If you have placed your trust in Him then we are to respond to the beginning of this prayer.

Christ addresses God as Father.

It bears pointing out. Not as judge, not as customer service clerk. Not as concierge. But as Father.

And as a good father. We don’t all have the image of having a good father. But the way Jesus is talking about is that the God who we address is a good father.

Imagine all that is good about being a father and that is what JEsus is referring to.

To pray to the Father is

an invitation for us to enter into God’s space, not the other way around. He has everything equipped, prepared and ready.

When we pray we enter into the world that God has made. We work with the resources that God has offered. We make our way further up and farther in to see things as God intended them.

There is a great scene at the end of the last battle. There is a group escaping from an evil horde of people bent on destruction. They find a little shed, maybe something that only a few people could smush into. But they all enter in and there is plenty of room. More than enough room. Ample room. It is the beginning of the lesson of the economy of God. That the world God builds is always bigger than what we assume.

Lord Diggory, upon entering the shed says,

“Its inside is bigger than its outside.” “Yes,” said Queen Lucy. “In our world too, a Stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle

This is the lesson. When we pray we enter into that shed and realize it’s much bigger on the inside than the outside.

Maybe your praying for a relationship right now, or a person. Maybe your asking God about a specific situation.

Imagine one thing right now you have been praying for.

ANd then talk about it like you are talking to a good Father. What does a good dad want to say about that situation?

a Good dad has plenty of resources to offer and wisdom to share.

Then we we realize the inside is bigger than the outside, we ask for His reality to become ours,

Your kindom come

Your will be done

One earth as it already is in Heaven

When we ask that we ask that God would make what is true about Heaven to be true about earth.

If you are praying about something on earth the good news is you can apply that prayer.

Your kingdom come

your will be done

in attleboro as it is in Heaven

in my family as it is in Heaven

in the heart of my friend.

What is on earth that you want to see made more like heaven?

Supporting Point: Prayer allows us to encounter God in our daily lives

Matthew 6:11 ESV

Give us this day our daily bread,

The Lord’s prayer doesn’t only deal with the goodness of our Father who is God or from understanding God’s resources, it is praying into the details of the day.

To pray the Lord’s prayer is to take on God’s whole world

but it is also to deal with the toast you had for breakfast.

Prayer is ideal. It is also applicable.

The Lord’s prayer reveals that we have normal, daily, specific needs that need to be met.

So if you have ever been hungry before, then prayer is a good place to begin.

If you have ever felt need before, prayer is a good place to begin

But to really pray, even to pray the Lord’s prayer is to respond to the fact that we have real need. And we live in a world that has real need. We don’t escape it and are called to live into it. Prayer becomes a response.

To say, Give us today our daily bread is to admit that

1- we have real needs, specific needs, like lunch

and

2- those needs have to be met.

God is not some distant absentee parent that we rarely get to see and doesn’t care whether we eat or not. God cares about the mundane and normal daily things like lunch.

When Christ teaches us to pray He is teaching us to trust God for heaven to shape the earth but also to trust that He is providing for us in the normal everyday activities.

This means that every lunch, every snack. Every small daily action, is a chance to encounter God.

Give us today our daily bread is the simple request for enough. Lord Can you provide for us enough for today.

Sometimes we don’t feel like we ever have enough. Lord give us today our daily bread

Sometimes we feel overwhelmed. We have too much.

Lord Give us today our daily bread.

Would you provide enough for me,

for us, as crazy as this sounds, the issue is not too little. it’s too much.

Praying to encounter God in the daily things is praying for Him to provide enough

Prayer allows us to encounter God and to see what His world is like but it also demands action.

Prayer allows us to act with Christ in the world.

Matthew 6:12–13 ESV

and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

In case we misunderstand, we can’t pray the Lords prayer without reflecting on our own lives. The prayer assumes that we are acting as well.

To pray as a Christian, to pray the Lord’s prayer is to reject the simplistic offer of

“thoughts and prayers.”

To pray as a Christian, and to pray the Lord’s prayer, is to accept that we have a part to play.

Prayer is dangerous because it is the call to lean in and over until we fall into it. We often just want to kind of observe from the sides, not getting too close.

But the Lord’s prayer, and Jesus teaches us about prayer that it is normative and even essential that we get involved.

Lord, Jesus tells us to ask, forgive us of our debts.

Just like, Jesus states, we have forgiven those who have sinned against us.

We have often used prayer as a shield, but it is more like a catapult.

TO pray is to be launched into the world to be a part God’s world in the real world.

Praying people are not people cloistered up alone in rooms all day.

Praying people are in the world, interacting with others as God’s people, representing and living what God is like the in the world.

Prayer starts sometimes with a whisper but it will end with a shout because we are called to act within it.

Application

There are a number of places we can be this morning.

In any case, the call is to enter into God’s world through prayer. To understand who He is and what He is doing.

we have a prayer team that meets every Wednesday at noon. Join them

You can receive prayer after the service if you would like

But maybe you just want to start praying the Lords prayer.

Begin in the morning, pray it slowly throughout the day. DOn’t just rush into it.

take it line by line, pray back your thoughts and your life into it.

Prayer doesn’t have to be rushed. It doesn’t have to stop and start.

Pray it as you brush your teeth

as you eat

as you gather with family

as you drive

as you get cut off

as you work

as you sleep.

Let’s spend a couple moments entering into God’s world, praying back His prayer.

Christ shield me today Against wounding Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left, Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me, Christ in the eye that sees me, Christ in the ear that hears me.

I arise today Through the mighty strength Of the Lord of creation.