Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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Emotion Tone
Anger
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Analytical
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Openness
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Conscientiousness
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Extraversion
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Agreeableness
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An invitation to come
Jesus asking
Jesus surrendering completely: “Yet not what I will, but what you will” (14:36).
Jesus is real about his feelings, but they don’t control him, nor does he try to control God with them.
He doesn’t use his ability to communicate with his Father as a means of doing his own will.
He submits to the story that his Father is weaving in his life.
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Jesus is real about his feelings, but they don’t control him, nor does he try to control God with them.
He doesn’t use his ability to communicate with his Father as a means of doing his own will.
He submits to the story that his Father is weaving in his life.
Miller, Paul E.. A Praying Life.
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are in a similar situation when they face the heat of a blazing furnace.
They respond to Nebuchadnezzar’s command to bow before him with the identical balance of Jesus.
They tell the king, “Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king” ().
They avoid the cliff of Not Asking by boldly declaring that God would rescue them.
Then, in the next breath, they say, “But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods” (3:18).
While this sounds like a contradiction, these men are asking boldly and surrendering completely.
Like a parent whose toddler is about to wander off, Jesus is yelling, “My Father has a big heart.
He loves the details of your life.
Tell him what you need and he will do it for you.”
Jesus wants us to tap into the generous heart of his Father.
He wants us to lose all confidence in ourselves because “apart from [Jesus] you can do nothing”; he wants us to have complete confidence in him because “whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit” ().
All of Jesus’ teaching on prayer in the Gospels can be summarized with one word: ask.
His greatest concern is that our failure or reluctance to ask keeps us distant from God.
But that is not the only reason he tells us to ask anything.
God wants to give us good gifts.
He loves to give.
The name of Jesus gives my prayers royal access.
They get through.
Jesus isn’t just the Savior of my soul.
He’s also the Savior of my prayers.
My prayers come before the throne of God as the prayers of Jesus.
“Asking in Jesus’ name” isn’t another thing I have to get right so my prayers are perfect.
It is one more gift of God because my prayers are so imperfect.
One of the best ways to learn how to abide is to ask anything.
Jesus added the qualifier “abide in me” only once in the six times he told us to “ask anything.”
His primary concern was to get us into the game.
Start asking.
Don’t just ask for spiritual things or “good” things.
Tell God what you want.
Before you can abide, the real you has to meet the real God.
Ask anything.
If you are going to take Jesus’ offer of “ask anything” seriously, what is the first thing you have to do?
Any child will tell you.
Miller, Paul E.. A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World (p.
122).
The Navigators.
Kindle Edition.
Miller, Paul E.. A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World (pp.
117-118).
The Navigators.
Kindle Edition.
Miller, Paul E.. A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World (p.
117).
The Navigators.
Kindle Edition.
Paul Miller story:
In the Greek, “Give us this day our daily bread” () is an obscure expression that literally means “give us tomorrow’s bread today.”[1]
It hints at the abundance God wants to bring into our lives.
I suspect that your refrigerator or your checking account has “tomorrow’s bread” already there.
Just once in our life Jill and I didn’t have tomorrow’s bread today.
I was going to college full time and supporting our small family (our first daughter, Courtney, was a year old) with a part-time painting business.
It was New Year’s Day 1975, and we had run out of food, money, and work.
We’d sold our books, our jewelry, and our high-school rings.
So we sat down at our kitchen table and prayed for food.
The minute we finished praying, the phone rang.
It was a painting customer.
Could I come the next day?
The next day I not only told the customer about how she was an answer to prayer, but I asked her for an advance.
No sense getting too spiritual.
I was so struck by how immediately God answered our prayer that as I went to bed, I asked him for something bigger: God, would you change me?
I wasn’t even sure I was a Christian; at the very least, Christianity wasn’t working in my life.
I struggled with intellectual doubts.
The Bible felt stale.
It wasn’t just a low point—my whole life had been that way.
The next morning I woke up with a song in my heart and a hunger for his Word that has never left.
He changed me.
Miller, Paul E.. A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World (p.
117).
The Navigators.
Kindle Edition.
Miller, Paul E.. A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World (pp.
125-126).
The Navigators.
Kindle Edition.
Miller, Paul E.. A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World (p.
125).
The Navigators.
Kindle Edition.
Often our need for daily bread opens doors to deeper heart needs for real food.
The day after Jesus fed the five thousand, the crowds met him on the beach at Capernaum hungry for breakfast.
Jesus told them he had better food for them: “The bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world” ().
Miller, Paul E.. A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World (p.
126).
The Navigators.
Kindle Edition.
We also shy away from prayers like these because they invite God to rule our lives.
They make us vulnerable.
Like the crowds at Capernaum, we want breakfast, not soul food.
Left to ourselves, we want God to be a genie, not a person.
Scholars have pointed out that Jesus’ references to the kingdom are a subtle way of introducing himself as king.
When we pray the first petition of the Lord’s Prayer, “Your kingdom come,” we are saying, “King Jesus, rule my life.”
The heart is one of God’s biggest mission fields.
Miller, Paul E.. A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World (p.
127).
The Navigators.
Kindle Edition.
Oddly enough, we can also use prayer to keep God distant.
We do that by only talking to God and not to mature believers.
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