Week 1: "Our Father in Heaven"

Good morning, everybody. I think I got to say good morning to most people earlier, but I just like to say good morning again. It is a good morning, right?

Yeah. I don’t think this is synonymous with my father-in-law. In fact, I’ve heard it a lot of places, but people would say something like this: “God is good—all the time. God is good.” I don’t know how much of that is a statement that we say and how much of that is a reality that we believe. But my hope is that we would be a community of people who come to know God. Jesus said, “This is eternal life, that you know the one true God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent.” When we have eternal life, we get to know God, and when we know God, we begin to understand that he really is good.

We’re going to talk about that a little bit this morning. We’re starting a new series called Lord, Teach Us to Pray, and we’re going to be looking at the Lord’s Prayer. That is for us a bit of an outline to help us have a better understanding of how we can communicate with God and how to listen to God as he communicates with us.

Utah Valley Church, we’re just regular people doing our best to trust and follow Jesus and help other people to trust and follow Jesus. We’re all in this together, and I think all of us could come with this same request: “Lord, teach us to pray.” That was the request that the disciples had, and they asked Jesus to teach them how to pray.

So I’m going to ask you to stand with me for a minute. From the old King James Version, we’re going to pray the Lord’s Prayer together. I say pray the Lord’s Prayer because we’re going to pray this together rather than say it together. But we will recite this together as a prayer. We’ll do this every week over the next six weeks, and we’re going to take the Lord’s Prayer and break it into six pieces to try to better understand how we can communicate with God and hear from God.

So let’s pray this together:

Our Father, which art in heaven,

hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,

on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread,

and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors,

and lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from evil,

for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory,

forever and ever. Amen.

Amen. You can be seated.

Now, I want to give you guys just a little bit of a side nugget on that. At Celebrate Recovery, in most of our small group gatherings after our main meeting, we close out with the Lord’s Prayer. Oftentimes, at least—I don’t know what the ladies do—but in our men’s small groups, when we’re finished, we’ll gather in a circle and we’ll hold hands and we’ll pray the Lord’s Prayer together.

Now, it’s become our tradition as a bunch of guys that when we get to that doxology—“For yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen”—like, we’re holding hands and we’re shaking it and we’re naming it. We’re proclaiming that. We’re proclaiming that truth and that reality.

Now, here’s a little side nugget. If you were to look at the original manuscript, if you could find it in the Gospel of Matthew, what you wouldn’t find is “For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.” It wouldn’t be there.

Now, here’s why. I’m just going to give you a little history nugget. Why is that in some translations of the Bible and not in others? Here’s why. Because what we found is the earliest manuscripts of the Greek New Testament—so the writings that were the closest to the original—didn’t have that little last phrase in it. But here’s what we do know: that the earliest Christians, the very first people who called themselves followers of Jesus, who gathered together in homes and broke bread together and had the Lord’s Supper together, when they would pray the Lord’s Prayer, when they got there to the end of that, they would together have this doxology. And a doxology, I mean, it’s a fancy word that just means a short hymn. And they would say that phrase together. That was the tradition of the early church.

And we know that because there was discovered a hundred years or so ago this awesome book called the Didache, which was a pastor’s manual written around 50 to 100 AD. And it was this instruction for church and church tradition and church practice and has all kinds of beautiful insight on how the early church worshiped and their practices and how they did communion and baptism and all these kinds of things. And in there, it says you should pray the Lord’s Prayer three times a day. Christians, it’s a good practice to pray the Lord’s Prayer three times a day. And in the Didache, it lists this doxology: “For yours is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.” And this is really kind of a rephrasing of 1 Chronicles 29:11. So there’s some homework for you. 1 Chronicles 29:11—go look at that.

So it was the practice of Christians to pray this prayer together and then say, “For yours is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.” So even though that wasn’t part of the original writing of scripture, it was part of the original tradition of Christians. And so some Bibles like the King James and others include that and others don’t. Just a little side nugget. Anybody know that? Is that first time information for some of you? Yeah. Okay, cool. Very cool.

So at our microchurch, which, by the way, if you’re looking for a place on Wednesday to come and hang out and be together with other Christians and be involved in God’s Word and some food and some prayer and some time together, come out to my house on the east end of town. Directions for all the microchurches are on the website. If you haven’t participated, we invite you out.

But at my microchurch, if I were to say, “Alright, who’s going to volunteer to pray today?” everybody jumps up, they’re kind of elbowing each other to get to the front of the line because everybody wants to be the one who voices the prayer at the end of our gathering, right? No, that’s not what happens. Usually, it’s kind of like everybody’s kind of ducking and looking away, hoping that they don’t get singled out or voluntold to do the closing prayer, because it can be kind of weird and awkward to have that dropped on you last minute.

Right now, we’re just going to talk together. This is time to be real this morning. Okay, that’s what church is about. Something that we always see here at UBC is you can’t grow from who you’re pretending to be. We can only grow from who we really are. So we’re going to come as we really are this morning. Right. We’re going to be real, open, and honest. That’s what I’m hoping we’ll experience today.

But let’s just see by way of participation. How many of you, if I were to ask you to come up here and just voice a prayer, how many of you would just freak out and maybe run out the back door? Anybody? Most of you? Yeah. Alright. How many of you would be like, “I’d be willing to do it, but I’d be deathly terrified”? Right. So at some level, there’s an awkwardness or a fear when it comes to prayer. Why is it weird? Why is it a struggle? Why is it difficult?

And I want to take the first little portion of our time together this morning to kind of dive into trying to understand maybe a little bit of the psychology behind why prayer is difficult. Now, let’s be honest as well. Even on your own time, does anybody struggle to either stay focused in prayer or even know what to pray or how to pray when you’re quiet and on your own? So that’s most of us. So here’s what I know. We’re in the right place this morning, and these are the things that we’re going to be talking about over the next six weeks. We’re going to try to understand why is it difficult for me to pray, whether in public or in private. How does Jesus pray and how can we become a people who are involved in prayer and how prayer can be a regular part of our lives?

Now, I’m going to ask another question. How many of you feel like prayer is going to be an absolute essential part of your walk with Jesus? See, we’re all here, we’re all the right people in the right place at the right time because it is absolutely critical as followers of Jesus that we be people of prayer, that we’re engaged with God through prayer.

Now, in Luke chapter 11, which there’s another kind of abbreviated version of the Lord’s Prayer there, right? We’ve just read from the Gospel of Matthew, but there in the Gospel of Luke, his disciples, Jesus’s disciples, they witnessed Jesus praying. See, it says here in Luke 11:1, “Now Jesus was praying in a certain place. And when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray as John taught his disciples.’”

I think this is interesting for a couple of reasons, and I didn’t have this in my notes, but I find it curious that the master disciple maker, Jesus, is being asked by his disciples why they’re not getting what other disciples get. So it kind of tells me a couple things: that as people, we’re worried about what we’re missing out on rather than what we’re getting, rather than what we have. A lot of times we have the FOMO, the fear of missing out, right? And here’s Jesus’s disciples, they’re kind of wondering, “How come you didn’t teach us to pray? But John’s disciples are teaching. John’s teaching his disciples how to pray.” A little insight into the human heart, right? We’re always afraid we’re missing out on something.

But it also tells us that these disciples who were with Jesus every day had the same questions and concerns and the same fears and the same apprehensions about prayer that we have. And they were with Jesus every single day. So the fears, the apprehensions, the questions, the awkwardness that you experience regarding prayer, whether in person or in private, that’s normal, and that’s okay. And we’re going to work through this all together and we’re going to pray the same thing.

See, the disciples didn’t realize what they were doing, right? When they said, “Lord, teach us to pray,” you know what they were doing? They were praying, right? Think about that. The Word became flesh, the incarnate Creator. That’s who they were speaking to. And they were just asking him, “Teach us to pray.” And I think maybe this morning we could come with that same kind of posture and just kind of put our guard down for a minute and just come before the throne of Jesus and say, “Jesus, would you teach us to pray? Teach us how to communicate with you. Teach us how to hear from you. Teach us how to share our hearts with you. Help us work through that.”

So why is prayer difficult? Why is it a challenge for us? And I hope that we can just take a minute and do a bit of a diagnostic, maybe do some self-reflection. I’m going to walk through a handful of things that are either personal reasons why I’ve struggled with prayer or reasons why people in my family and my loved ones that I’ve heard voice that struggle with prayer or reasons why friends of mine or people who I have discipled in Jesus have struggled with prayer. Okay, some of these there’s a little bit of overlap in there. So understand that.

But here’s what I would ask you to do: maybe take some notes, jot a few things down. And if I miss something, which it’s inevitable that I will, if there’s a fear or an apprehension or a reason why you’ve struggled with prayer and I don’t include it, I want you to write that down. Or if you’re watching online, type that out on Facebook. If you’re watching on Facebook, include that in the chat. Maybe you’re watching on the church website. And if you are, there’s a chat feature there on the website. Just write down, “Hey, here’s why I struggle.” Alright. And we’re going to go through a list of a few things. This is in no way intended to be exhaustive. These are just a handful of things that have either been personal or these are things that people who I’ve discipled or friends of mine have reasons why they’ve struggled with prayer. And so hopefully this can be a diagnostic thing for us to just kind of look inside.

And here’s the first one. And like these are in no order. These are just random here. But the first reason is “I don’t know what to say.” Anybody feel that? I don’t know what to say. And these are listed online or should be listed behind me, too. Maybe you don’t know what to say when you pray. Maybe that’s your struggle. It’s like I come before God, but I have no idea what I’m supposed to even say when I do.

And I think the shift that we need to learn how to make here is maybe the shift from formality to intimacy. Like, what’s the right form to pray? And sometimes we get kind of hung up on that, right? Like, we get hung up on the formalities of prayer and we miss the intimacy that we’re actually supposed to experience with God through prayer. Maybe you grew up in an environment or experienced a religious environment where prayer was very structured. It was what appeared to be very reverent. There were specific phrases that you said a certain way in a certain order. And so you learn those very specific phrases or those very specific patterns of prayer. And now you’re going, “Do I am I supposed to do that now? Maybe that feels awkward to me. Is that the way I’m supposed to pray? Is there a new way to pray?” And I’m just really not sure what’s the right way to pray.

And here’s what I would say is this, that Christian prayer is intended to be honest. It’s just supposed to be real. It’s just supposed to be sincere. It’s like having an honest, open conversation with a loving father. Just a gentle, loving, compassionate father.

I got to spend a huge chunk of my day with my son, Noah, yesterday and we laughed together. We literally farted around like we just had fun. Right. And you can take that as literal as you want. We just had a good time together. I mean, we talked about everything. We just put everything aside and just open, just real. We went and caught some fish. And we just sat on the bank of a lake and just visited. And we talked about spiritual stuff. We talked about non-spiritual. We just talked about everything. It was just a conversation. It wasn’t awkward. It was natural. It wasn’t forced. It was spontaneous. And that’s how our conversation is supposed to be with God.

Romans 8:15: “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’” That word Abba is like this. It’s like saying “Papa” or “Daddy.” It’s this endearing, loving, affectionate term. And we come before God. We need to make this shift from this odd experience. And in some ways, it’s really about learning a new language that takes place in a close relationship.

There’s nothing wrong with formal prayers. And here’s what I mean by that. My kids and I, we often will pray a very ancient Roman Catholic early church prayer before meals. It’s the same prayer Christians have been praying forever in a very kind of routine, kind of very routine sounding way. And we pray it, we say it and we mean it. We do it just for fun. We’ll say it very monotone. I don’t know why we do that, but we do that just kind of a tradition. So there’s nothing wrong with that. But prayer is supposed to be this intimate relationship with God and the shift that we need to make is from formality to intimacy.

Another reason why I think it can feel awkward to pray is it feels distant or one sided. Prayer can often feel distant or one sided, like you’re the one having the conversation. You’re the one doing all the talking. But is there anybody responding? Am I just talking to something out there in the ether somewhere? Or is there a real conversation being had here? And I think the shift we need to make is from this idea of distant majesty to Abba Father. Right from this idea that God’s just somewhere distant to God is here and now and loving and present.

I think sometimes we approach prayer expecting kind of this majestic formal exchange or we wait for some sort of clear prompting. It’s like I prayed and I didn’t feel anything. Anybody ever been there? I prayed and I just I don’t know that I really got anything out of that. I don’t know if I really felt it. I don’t know if God really heard. I think he’s just kind of off in the distance somewhere. Some majestic being who doesn’t really respond. And I think biblical prayer invites us to cry “Abba Father.” And to come boldly to the throne of grace, to come into the prayer room with boldness and with courage. And because you are sons, God has sent the spirit of his son into our hearts crying, “Abba Father.”

Sometimes because there’s a lack of a dramatic response, we question if God’s close or not. Is God really present? Is he really listening? And I can promise you this, God is present and he is listening even when he seems silent, even when it’s quiet.

Another reason I think sometimes prayer feels awkward is it feels awkward or irreverent if I just talk normally. Like, I don’t know if I want to use some of the phrases and the trained, rehearsed ways of praying, because that doesn’t necessarily feel like myself. But if I don’t do that and I just try to talk normal, that might feel a little bit irreverent. Anybody struggle with that? Are the words I’m using just too plain, just too ordinary, just too real? Is it not reverent enough?

And I think the shift that we need to make here is a shift from ritual to relationship. From ritual to relationship. Many of us were trained to use a certain prayer language, a special language maybe, a certain posture for reverence. You have to hold your hands a certain way or fold your arms a certain way or kneel a certain way, whatever that might be. And so how do you, can you pray in another way? Is it okay to pray a different way?

Man, I just finished reading through the Psalms or most of the Psalms in my morning quiet time. I challenge you to do that because so many of them are prayers from King David. And you’ll find him writing these thoughts or just really journaling his heart to God, praying with the pen, so to speak, to God in so many different circumstances of his life. And there’s literally prayers that King David, who is a man after God’s own heart, who felt at times like the world was coming down on him, like everyone was against him. And in the midst of that emotion, he would literally say things like, “God, take their teeth and break them out, make them choke on their own vomit,” like stuff like that. Like he would just pray what he was feeling. He was honest with God. He was very, very real with God.

And I just I’ve experienced that in my own life where I just tried to pray such a like a formal proper prayer that I was really holding so much back from who I really am and what I was really feeling with God. I remember a time when I was first married and I had the service route job and I would get up at like three o’clock in the morning and I would drive from St. Louis, Missouri, almost to Chicago, and I would work a whole day servicing all of these customers all over the place. And it was like a long drive. It was like four and a half hours drive each way. Four and a half hours to drive to my first stop and then for my last stop home, four and a half. So I was spending like nine hours just driving plus a full day of work. It was awful. And it wasn’t every day. It was like every other week. I would do that one day every other week.

But I struggled back then because I had like sleep apnea really bad and I didn’t rest very well. So when I would get in the vehicle and drive, man, I was dangerous, man. I was worse than a drunk driver and I was sober. This is right after I had gotten sober. And I’m telling you, I would fall asleep at stoplights. It was terrible. Now, my sleep’s not only bad, but a short night’s sleep. And I was so frustrated trying to drive four and a half hours each way. That I just I remember this one particular time. Where I’m about an hour into my drive early in the morning, it’s about four thirty in the morning. And for whatever reason, something made me wake up and I looked and I was right on the back of a semi, like the bumper of my truck was just ready to just ram the back. I mean, I’m telling you, if it wasn’t touching, it was less than an inch away from slamming into the back of a semi on I-55 going towards Chicago. And I stopped. I pulled over and I started driving again and I was angry. I was angry because here’s this job and I have to work this job and I have no other option but to do what I’m doing.

And I began to pour out my heart to God. “God, why can’t you help me stay awake? I am so angry with this. Why can you not fix the situation? I’m so frustrated.” And I just I started shouting at God as terrible as that sounds, as disrespectful as that sounds. I got real with God. And in that moment, God started to calm my heart. And he started to speak to me and my shouting turned into thanks, turned into gratitude for the job I had and the new wife that I had and the new child that I was going to be having in a few months. And before long, I’m worshipping and singing and I’m praising and the sun’s coming up.

God can handle whatever you’ve got going on in your heart. He’s big enough to deal with your crap. And he’s big enough to change your heart through that process. We’ve got to learn to just lay it all out before God. And when you begin to pray with honesty and sincerity like David, you’ll begin to have breakthrough in your prayer life.

Matthew 6:7-8: “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard by their many words.” Like there’s no formula. You can’t use tricky or fancy words to get through to God. He sees right through that. He knows you’re full of it. What matters is when you’re real with God, when you’re sincere. He says, “Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” You can’t butter him up. He’s not butterable.

Early church believers and later the reformers practiced this idea that prayer was continual. That it’s all the time. That if God is present with us and in us, then our lives are open to him as a continual prayer before him. That we invite him into our thoughts, we invite him into our routines, we invite him into our lives. And that’s why First Thessalonians 5:17 can be real. We can pray without ceasing. It’s acknowledging and recognizing the power and the presence of God in us, with us and through us at all times. We don’t have to pretend. Sincerity matters. It’s a posture of the heart more than a set of words. We can speak to God as though he can handle our frustrations. We can speak to him as a loving parent who already knows our hearts.

Another reason that I think sometimes we struggle with prayer is because I feel unworthy or like I have to get clean first. I don’t know if I can just talk to God because I’m kind of filthy. I’ve got some sort of habit or some sort of sin in my life that I don’t know how to deal with and I haven’t maybe fully dealt with it yet. So how can I go talk to God when I’ve got this stuff that I need to clean up in my life? How do I talk to him? I feel awkward. I feel uneasy. I feel ashamed to come and talk to God because I feel like I’ve just got to get clean first.

And the shift that we need to make is a shift from performance to grace. See, we think we have to get clean to come to God, but the reality is we cannot get clean unless we come to God. This is how we get clean by stepping into the light of his presence. Because if you’re trying to get clean on your own, you’ll never become clean. It doesn’t work that way. It can’t work that way. If we could deal with our own sin, if we could purify our own sin, we wouldn’t need Jesus. And that’s the whole reason Jesus came. Amen. He came because he knows that we’re incapable of managing our own sin. And so we come sinning and all before him. And that’s where we experience purification because he has mercy for us, because he has grace for us. He welcomes us with open arms. “Please come to me,” he’s saying. No shame. Come confessing. Come truthful. Come honest. We can’t get clean apart from him. We’ve got to learn that.

That the way that we experience God’s cleansing or any cleansing possible is to come honestly and openly into his presence. And he invites us in that way. Invites us in. Hebrews 4:16 says, “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace.” This is God’s undeserved favor for us. God’s throne is full of favor for us that we do not deserve. That’s literally what that means. Isn’t that incredible? His throne, the very place that he sits with high authority of the cosmos is a throne that says, “You don’t deserve to come here, but I’m going to lavish my favor upon you anyway because I love you.” This is incredible. That’s what his throne is. It’s this throne of undeserved favor for us, the throne of grace. And he says, “Let us come in there boldly. Let us draw near to this throne.” Why? “That we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” We can come in with openness and honesty, with courage. We can come in without any shame, without any fear. We can run fully into the throne of God because it’s a throne of grace. And it’s there that we find mercy. That’s him withholding the punishment that we deserve and that we also find grace, which is his favor for us that we don’t deserve. That’s why we can run into his presence, because that is his throne.

Guys, if you don’t get that, you got to get it. This is the goodness of God. And see these disciples who were so far from perfect. Even them who were with Jesus every day, they came to Jesus saying, “Lord, teach us to pray.” And there they were freely asking the creator of the cosmos to help them learn to pray. And we can come to God the same way.

Maybe another reason you might struggle is I expect a strong feeling or a clear answer, but I often get somebody experience that it’s like I come expecting to get something, but I don’t hear anything. I don’t hear anything. I’m expecting some sort of sensation, but it doesn’t happen. And the shift that we need to make is a shift from strong sensation to trusting communion.

Now, can we experience overwhelming sensations by the presence of God? Absolutely. I’m telling you, I’ve had chills that left me knowing that I was so full in the presence of God. It was undeniable. If you read through the Bible, there have been prophets who have questioned and wondered the same thing. “God, if you love me, where are you? If you’re listening to me, why can’t I hear you? Where are you, God?” I think of Elijah. God finally speaks to him. He says, “I come to you with a still, quiet voice.” And so many times our hearts are not postured in a place of reliance and calmness to where we can actually hear from him.

You ever been there? Somebody in your life where you’ve kind of repeatedly shared a truth with somebody that you love, and they keep asking the same question, but you’ve already told them the answer like 57 times and they just haven’t heard it? I don’t think we’re really any different with God sometimes. Sometimes we have to still our hearts enough to listen, to hear from him. And he wants us to make this shift from strong sensation to trusting communion. We don’t always have to get some sort of strong impulse or some sort of magical feeling or some sort of sparks and butterflies in the tummy. Biblical prayer focuses on relationships, persistence, and alignment with God’s will.

I think of it this way. Anybody been to a therapist? Okay, has anybody had a good experience by going to a therapist? Okay, a few less people. Alright, here’s what’s interesting about going to a therapist. If you have a good therapist, a good therapist is a good what? Good listener, right? And we go with the intention that the therapist is going to give us some information that’s going to help me fix my problems, right? Like secretly, deep down, that’s kind of our hope. We’re going to go to the therapist, I’m going to tell him or her what my problem is, and then they’re going to hopefully give me some tips on how to fix the problem. But what does a good therapist often do? A good therapist will often just ask another question and maybe ask another question and ask another question about that. And a good therapist probably doesn’t say a whole lot, does a whole lot more listening than talking.

I think the Holy Spirit is a good therapist. I think the Spirit of God is the ultimate therapist. In John 14:16-17, it says, “And I will ask the Father and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever. He is the Spirit of truth, and the world is unable to receive him because it does not see him or know him. But you do know him because he remains with you and will be in you.” The Spirit of God is a counselor, is a therapist who listens.

I can’t tell you how many times that I’ve had conversations with God where I didn’t really hear back from him. I wasn’t like hearing this audible voice or having this experience that I wanted to hear. But as I began to keep sharing and keep sharing, he would place another question on my heart and I would share and I would share and I would share. And before long, he would counsel me or guide me, maybe over the course of minutes, days, months, and at times even over a course of years to begin to understand on my own. Sometimes we learn things. Most of the times we learn things better when we’re led to discover that truth rather than be told that truth. Is that true for you? I mean, if you’ve raised kids, you know that’s true. You can tell your kids over and over again, “Hey, this, this, this, this, this.” But at some point when they become adults, they’re like, “Hey, guess what, Dad? Here’s what I figured out.” And you’re like, “Yeah, I think I told you that like a million times.” But they have to discover that on their own. And God in his goodness for us will counsel us in quietness to lead us to a place of discovery because he’s good. He doesn’t always talk out loud. He lets you keep rambling and lead you to a place of self-discovery. Can he and does he slap you up alongside the head sometime and put the big sign in front? Absolutely. I’ve experienced that before. I think it’s because I’m just so hard headed. Sometimes he just has to hit me with the big captain obvious thing, you know. But most of the time, it’s through the still quiet voice he leads me.

Teachers like Augustine remind believers that prayer shapes us even in seasons of dryness. Faith rests in God’s character, not in constant emotion.

Another reason, sometimes prayer feels like mechanical or like I’m just going through the motions. Kind of like a duty, just kind of going through the routine, just kind of part of the process. Fold your arms, bow your head, say the thing, you know, just. And I think the shift that we should begin to make in our own hearts and our own minds is this shift from duty to delight. From duty to delight.

We’re so quick to just repeat certain phrases that we’ve learned. And prayer can often feel like a task. Well, it’s my prayer time, so I’m going to say my prayers, you know, it’s just like another thing I need to check off the list, another duty to follow through on. But Christian prayer is a relationship, not a checklist. I think this is true for every relationship that we have. Married people. If communicating or speaking to your spouse is just something you do obligatory as a thing that you’ve got to check off your list, your relationship’s going to kind of suck. It’s not going to be a real relationship. I’m just checking it. Same with your kids, right? Like, and I fall into this with my kids because I work so much from home that they come and talk to me. And I’m just kind of like, “Oh yeah, I need to talk to my kid a little bit.” And so I kind of talk to him, but I’m kind of mentally checked out. But like a day yesterday with Noah, man, it was amazing. We were engaged with each other and just had really great, meaningful conversation without distraction. And I delighted in that conversation. It was beautiful. God invites us into that kind of conversation with him, where it’s not an obligation. It’s not a mark to check off a list. That it’s an experience that we get to have with God. It’s a relationship.

Psalm 37:4 says, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” Now, that’s a tricky verse, because we’ll often read that and you’ll go, “What are the desires of my heart? What are they?” If we’re going to be honest, most of the time, the desires of my heart aren’t good. They’re just not. I was thinking about this yesterday, talking with my son, we got up on the conversation of sobriety and different things, and I was thinking about like tobacco came up in the conversation. I was like, “Man, I could I would love to put a big old dip of Copenhagen in my mouth right now.” Like I was just thinking about that. I’ve been twenty six years off of this stuff, right? It would be so easy for me to fall back into that. If I didn’t know that there was something better. If I didn’t know there’s someone who is better. And when you begin to know God, when you begin to walk with the Lord, when you begin to experience his goodness, you’ll find yourself delighting in him. And what he does is he changes the desires of our heart. He causes us to want the things that he wants. And here’s what his word promises you. And I can attest to you that when you want what God wants, what God wants happens. He changes us when we find him for who he is and we begin to delight in him. He’s so good. He’s so good.

Another thing maybe we wrestle with is this idea that if I’m doing it wrong or if God’s listening, am I praying wrong? Is this repetitive? Is it the wrong way? Is that the right order? Did I say “in Jesus name amen” correctly? Did I phrase it the right way? Did I get the right postage on the letter? Right. Sometimes we think of it that way. Right. Did I structure it all right and get the stamp on the right spot? You know, like our minds will go there.

And I think we need to make the shift from self-reliance to Spirit-helped weakness. Move from this place of “I have to have this figured out and say it the right way” to “God, I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what I’m saying, but here’s what I do know. That you love me and you’re listening. You love me and you’re listening.”

Hey, listen. If you’ve got a newborn baby who can’t even speak. When that baby cries, I promise you that mother knows exactly what that baby’s saying. That mama instinctively knows this baby is wet. This baby’s poopy. This baby’s hungry. This baby’s bratty. This baby’s tired without saying a word, but just screaming at the top of their lungs. That mother knows exactly what that child is saying and what that baby’s feeling. Can I get an amen, mamas?

Here’s what I know about my God. Then when I don’t know what to say, when I can do nothing but cry, He knows exactly what I feel. He knows exactly who I am. He knows exactly where I’m coming from. He understands every single bit of it. And I don’t have to have the right words. I don’t have to have the right postage on the letter like he knows. He knows.

The Spirit of God helps us in the midst of our weakness, whether you’ve been walking with Jesus as a seasoned disciple for 96 years, or you’re a brand new infant in Christ, He knows. Romans 8:26 says, “In the same way the Spirit also helps us in our weakness, because we do not know what to pray for as we should, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.” And here’s what I find myself doing the longer I’ve walked with the Lord, is that I have less words and more groanings. I have less words and more, “God knows, only you know, God, because I don’t.” And He does. He does know. The Spirit of God in us intercedes for us with words that are deeper than anything that we could phrase. There’s things that happen in our hearts that have no words. Have you been to the Spirit of God? You’ve had trauma and trials and situations and experiences where you go, “I got nothing. I don’t know how to express the feelings and the thoughts and the emotions going through me right now,” but the Spirit of God does and the Spirit of God translates those into words that are deeper than the human language can express. And God understands. Praise God for that.

I think a common reason some of us struggle to pray out loud is this. “What are others going to think if I mess up?” What if I mess up? What if I were to come up on stage and offer a prayer and I flubbed it up? Like, what are people going to think of that? What are people going to think of me if I mess up on a prayer? Well, here’s the reality. You’re not praying to the people out there. And if you are, your prayer’s directed in the wrong place. I mean, that’s the reality of this. Like, there’s room to mess up because God understands. And there really is no mess up if we’re praying from the heart. And we’re not praying to each other. We’re praying for each other, right?

And we need to make this shift from self-conscious to humble honesty. I think some of the most incredible prayers that God hears, they don’t come from the mouth of a preacher. They don’t come from the mouth of some holy saint who seems like he knows the Bible so well and has it all together. They really come from the mouth of somebody who’s just raw, real, and honest with God and doesn’t really care what other people think because they know that they’re in communication with God Most High and they’re just baring their soul before God. Those are the prayers that God hears. Those are the ones that he kind of turns his ear towards and goes, “I understand that.”

You know what I’m talking about. If you’re a parent, your kids come to you with all kinds of fancy words and they’ll preface a question that they have with something else, and you’re going, “Yeah, I know where this is going.” We know, right? But when your child comes to you broken and honest and real, you’re going, “Okay, there’s no pretense here. I hear what you’re saying.” I mean, God hears the pretense. He hears those prayers too. But he responds differently to those prayers.

There’s a story in the Gospel of Luke where Jesus is talking about somebody who knows how to pray the right words, who has it all together, that knows how to pray in public without messing up, right? One of those kind of guys. The guy that knows how to string the words together in the right order and make it sound eloquent and beautiful and awe-inspiring and impress people. And so he tells this parable in Luke chapter 18. He also told this parable to someone who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, right? The guy who knew how to pray the prayers, right? Who had all the right words and treated others with contempt. “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.” Well, just so you know, the Pharisee is the guy that knows how to pray. He’s the guy that has his life in order. He’s the guy that has his finances in order. He’s the guy that has his family in order. He’s the guy that lives up on the bench, you know, in the nicer house. He’s the guy that kind of gets to pray at the city council meetings and all the things. He’s that guy. And then there’s the tax collector. Who’s that? I mean, he’s probably not that different than the bartender or the guy doing tattoos across the street.

And the Pharisee standing by himself prayed thus, “Oh God, I thank you that I’m not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all that I get.” But the tax collector standing far off would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast saying, “God, be merciful to me a sinner.” I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled and the one who humbles himself will be exalted. Let that be the word of God to us today.

See, we all struggle with prayer. Even the disciples who walked with Jesus needed teaching. Our struggle is in the very place where Jesus meets us. He meets us right here in the middle of our struggle.

So Jesus said pray then like this in Matthew 6:9. “Our Father in heaven.” Our Father in heaven. It’s literally like saying sky daddy. Daddy in the sky. I know that sounds not very reverent, but that’s more a literal rendering of what that means. But what does it mean for God to be in the sky, for the father to be in the sky? Well, biblically speaking, the skies or the heavens are a way of imagining God’s universal power and presence that is high above all things. And it’s in God’s realm that God rules as king and that he’s always been the master and the ruler and the authority of all things everywhere. When you understand “Father in heaven,” this idea of heaven means that he has been and has ruled as the king of all things everywhere all the time. That’s the idea there.

And so just really quickly, prayer is a conversation with the sovereign king over all creation. This is unbelievable. This is unbelievable. That we get to talk to, communicate with us little tiny peasants here in Spanish Fork. We get to talk to the creator of the cosmos, the sovereign king over all creation. This is an absolute mind-blowing privilege that we get to openly and honestly communicate with the Almighty.

But notice that he doesn’t have us address him as ruler. He doesn’t have us address him this way. He has us address him as a compassionate, interested, and loving father. That brings me to my next point that the king over all creation is a kind, loving, and compassionate daddy.

Some of you may have had daddy issues. Maybe you still have daddy issues. A dad who is maybe absent, angry, disinterested, abusive, whatever character defect your father may have had. We have this tendency to see God that way. To see God through the lens of our earthly father. That is a very common thing. Our imperfect father distorts our view of a perfect heavenly father. But rather than seeing God through the lens of our earthly father, we should look at our earthly father through the lens of our perfect heavenly father. So your father may have been distant. He may have been absent. He may have been critical. He may have been abusive. But our daddy in heaven is none of those things. He’s attentive. He’s near. He’s gentle. He’s loving. He’s kind. He’s present. He’s loving.

Anybody here like to talk to strangers? How about this? Anybody here feel awkward talking to strangers? Just not super comfortable with new people, right? You start off with a hi. And you ease your way into a conversation. It takes time to get to know people. But the more time you spend, the more conversation you spend with somebody, the better you get to know them, the easier the conversation becomes. And as you spend time with God, as you engage him through his word, you get to know him. See, the better that you get to know God, the easier the conversation becomes.

See, when you were born, you weren’t literally born into God’s family. You were born again into God’s family. You were adopted into Christ at whatever point you came to know him. You had a portion of your life where God wasn’t that loving father figure to you who you knew. And so you’re in a relationship where you’re beginning to know him. We were adopted into the family of God through Jesus Christ. And so we don’t start off just automatically knowing everything there is to know about God and having this amazing relationship with God. Because why? A relationship takes time to build. It takes time to grow.

My family and I, we’ve, over the years, we’ve taken in kids who, not always kids, sometimes adults, but people who were in polygamous communities and they had been kicked out, and they needed a place to live either transitionally or for long term. And I remember we had this boy named Bobby living with us. And Bobby had grown up in a very religious, controlling, polygamous cult. And everything was dictated for you, even to which hand you wiped your backside with, like everything in life. How you pray, your posture for prayer, all of this stuff. So now he’s in our house and he’s just trying to figure everything out. He’s like, “Man, this is different. This is a different way of like hanging out with God and like church and all that kind of like, everything was so new to him.” He was like, “So you don’t have to fold your arms when you pray?” I was like, “Well, you can, that’s perfectly fine. But no, you don’t have to fold your arms when you pray. We can pray a lot of different ways.” And so “Do you want to do something different?” And he’s like, “Yeah,” because he just wanted to do something that was completely different than everything that he was made to do before. In other words, he’s just trying to do something completely different than everything that he was made to do before. In other words, he’s beginning to experience a relationship with God because he wanted one, not a form of relationship with God because he had to. Does that make sense?

He’s like, “I get to have a relationship with God and it’s not mandated and I could come to God freely, absolutely.” He starts asking questions. Because sometimes we’d hold, “You can hold hands to pray?” “Yeah, you can hold hands.” I said, “We can even raise our hands to pray.” He’s like, “You can raise your hands to pray?” I’m like, “Yes, you can raise your hands to pray.” So I’m like, “Why don’t we do that right now?” So we’re all around our dinner table and we all stand up and we all just raise our hands like this and we just all pray. “God, thank you for hearing us. Thank you that you’re with us. Thank you that we can raise our hands to you, that you find us and you pick us up right where we’re at. Thank you, God, for that.” And we prayed. Bobby had a little MP3 player and he found Christian worship music and Bobby had his chores like everybody else. And when Bobby’s chores were in the kitchen out in the public, here would be Bobby walking around with his washcloth in this hand and his spray bottle in this hand and he’d be singing worship songs and spraying and wiping and raising his hands praying and I’ll just never forget how God got a hold of Bobby’s heart and gave him the freedom to freely worship and to freely come before him as he began to get to know God. That conversation became real.

The last thing I want to just say is this, that prayer is a family event. You notice he doesn’t teach us to pray, “My God in heaven.” He teaches us to pray, “Our Father.” Is he my daddy? Absolutely. And the relationship that I have with him is very real. It’s very personal. It’s very one on one. But he wants to also have a relationship with all of us because he’s our father. He’s our father. We are in this family and we are in this together. It’s our relationship with God, not just my relationship with God. That’s why we pray with each other. That’s why we pray for each other. It’s not just intended to only be a solitary thing that you do with God, but something that we get to experience together with God because he’s our father.

Now I just want to leave you with a quick discipleship tip that I would encourage you to do and it’s just this: this week pray the opening “Our Father” with your spouse or with someone that you’re discipling and just pray this. Somebody that you’re walking with, maybe it’s your wife or your husband, grab them by the hand and just pray. You could pray the whole Lord’s Prayer together. Or you could ask them this, ask them what makes it hard to approach God as a father? What makes it hard to approach God like we should as a loving, kind, gentle, attentive father? Have that conversation. And then just pray together. Stretch yourself just a little bit.

I have some pretty early memories of prayer. When I was maybe three years old, I would go and start staying the night at my grandparents’ house. And as a little kid, I would sleep out on my grandma’s big blue sofa out in her living room. And I can remember as like a little three-year-old kid hearing my grandpa with his deep, rich, gravelly voice. I could hear just like rumbling going on in their bedroom. And I was curious as a little kid, what is he, it sounded very one-sided, like I didn’t hear my grandma talking back to him. I just heard mumbling, just his voice, and I could never make out the words. And then when I got older, my oldest uncle had moved out of the house and my grandma and grandpa moved their bedroom to the upstairs. And they had this big staircase that came down. This big staircase that came down, wide staircase. And I could hear my grandpa’s voice. And I could understand what he was saying. I could hear the words that he was saying. And I would listen because sometimes he would say my name. As a little seven or eight-year-old kid, sometimes he would say my name because he was talking to God for me. And he would talk to God about his cows that were sick. He would talk to God about the dry land and the moisture that we needed. He would thank God for his goodness. He would pray for the challenges that we knew we were going to face tomorrow. And he was just up there having a conversation with God next to my grandma. And he was talking to God like he actually knew him. I want what my grandpa figured out.

See, because he wouldn’t have spoken to him, he wouldn’t ask for those things if he didn’t believe that he was the creator of the cosmos who had everything under his authority. He would have never asked those bold things of somebody who was impotent or incapable. But he asked audacious things because he knew that God was who he says he is. But he also knew that he was kind and compassionate and loving and that he gave his ear to him. He spoke as though God really listened. As though the more he conversed with God, the more natural the conversation became. And he always prayed right there with my grandma every single night.

I’m going to ask you to stand. Kneel if you want. I don’t care. I’m going to raise my hands. I would encourage you to do the same. Maybe if it’s uncomfortable for you, just push yourself a little bit. Let’s raise our hands together. Whether you have words to say or you’re relying on groanings that come from the Holy Spirit on your behalf, can we just pray together this morning with hands raised to God? Like a kid who just needs to be picked up, God, we come to you.

I just want to thank you that we can come before you. You are the ruler of all things. We come with absolutely nothing. And yet you are everywhere and you have control over everything. It does feel to us like this world’s falling apart and things are coming unraveled, God. But you do have all things under your control and you’re going to make all things right. And we just come trusting you that way. We come the best that we know how, believing that you are attentive, that you are a loving, gracious, and gentle God, full of compassion and mercy and loving kindness. And so we just lift our hands before you, just expecting that you will pick us up where we are right now. God, we don’t always know what to say. We don’t know how to say it. But God, we’re going to try. We’re going to start talking. We’re going to start listening because we want to know you. We want to get to know you. So here we are, together as a family, just asking you with sincere and honest hearts, Lord, teach us to pray through Christ. Amen.