Prayer is a Filter

Big Idea: Prayer is not a transactional mechanism through which we manipulate God but is instead a filter meant to change our hearts, our desire, our expectations, and affections. The prayers that most often get answered are the ones that start in Heaven.

ME:

Today our topic is prayer...

I told you guys a few weeks ago that there were three sermons in this series that I have been dreading since I knew we were going to be doing this series.

In just a move of sincere honesty and transparency, can I just open up today by telling you that I struggle with this topic. While I know that I’m not alone in this struggle, I also know that this ins’t the case for everyone.

My struggle with this topic actually comes from a statement that Jesus is going to make today in the Sermon on the Mount passage that we are going to cover. Here is the statement that gives me such issue:

“You Father knows what you need before you ask Him.”

I know Jesus meant that to be a comforting statement to His followers and we are going to talk about how it is supposed to be comforting but just on the surface, the implications of that statement give me serious issues around the topic of prayer.

WE:

Raise your hand if you’ve ever thought any of these things:

If God knows everything and has already heard this prayer, why bother?

If God knows what I am going to ask why not just answer preemptively and save us both the time?…it seems a little capricious on His part to make me say it anyways.

Every time I do pray, it always seems like the answer is no or not yet? Are those God’s only answers to prayers? If so why bother bringing my concerns or petitions to Him? Better said: “Does prayer actually DO anything because if God doesn’t change His mind and isn’t swayed in His thinking by people then whats the point if He is going to do what He is going to do anyways?”

I don’t ever seem to have the time to pray and before I know it, its the end of the day and I haven’t spoken to God all day. By that time it seems a little forced and I know God doesn’t want that so it seems better just to hold off to a time when I can come intentionally and focused and with time to devote to it.

Me and God aren’t in the best of places and I fear my prayer won’t reach any higher than the ceiling, or I just fear being alone that deep in my own thoughts (because of unoconfessed sin or doubts) and so we choose to avoid or drown out, or distract from being alone with our thoughts. Prayer is not the place you want to be if you are trying to avoid dealing with those issues.

All I seem to ever do is bring a laundry list of needs and complaints to God and I know that’s not how its supposed to work.

I just flat out don’t know how to pray. Maybe you fear that prayer is supposed to be an incredibly formal act and done a certain way with a certain posture or at certain times or how about this: with a certain level of sincerity that I just can’t seem to muster.

It has been so long since I have prayed that I feel embarrassed or ashamed. Its like that relative or friend that you never call but always seems to do a good job of keeping in contact with you and you actually feel really awkward reaching out. Maybe you feel like you need to be in a better place (reading my Bible, listening to Christian music again, or just living better) before I come to God in prayer again.

And finally, my prayers never seem to change anything and I’m just flat out tired of trying when God doesn’t seem to be listening or care. I feel like I’ve been burned by God in the past when I’ve put myself out there and got nothing in return.

If you’ve ever thought any of those things…like I have (how do you think I came up with that list)…then Jesus is going to speak a word of good news to you today. So let’s dive in to the Sermon on the Mount.

GOD:

Matthew 6:5 NASB95

“When you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full.

Matthew 6:6 NASB95

“But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.

Did any of you guys watch the movie War Room? Explain the movie briefly...

Man I thank God for movies like this that really emphasize the importance and power of prayer in our lives.

For Danielle, she doesn’t have a closet. She has a pile of notebooks and like 50 different colored pens. When she breaks that out and sits down in front of the fire with her headphones in, man I know she is meeting with the Father and there is not another moment when she is any more beautiful to me than that moment right there.

I don’t have a prayer closet…I have a prayer recliner. Explain...

I believe that Jesus would tell us that having those spaces that are sacred set apart places where we come into the presence of God are really good things. We are finite beings communicating to an infinite and unseen God and often times we are praying for realities that have not yet come to pass and so anything we can do…like setting apart some space or environment that helps us realize we are coming into the presence of the God of the universe is a really good thing.

But...

This wasn’t what the religious leaders of Jesus’ day were doing.

Explain the Pharisees, 18 prayers 3x’s a day, and COSTCO line bit...

So…I think we see a couple of things in the contrast of these two pictures of prayer.

First:

Jesus just assumes His followers are going to pray.

But we also see that:

If we pray for any other reason than a desire for intimacy and relationship with the Father, our prayers go no higher than the ceiling.

This immediately introduces a serious problem for any living breathing human being. This is one of those motives that we talked about last week. And if you remember back we said that we can’t fake our motives.

In those moments I am focused. In those moments I have intentionally come into a place where I try to check my motives at the door and come to God with an honest and sincere heart. Those are amazing moments where I am fully aware that prayer is a relational act of two-way conversation between me and God. Maybe you have experienced this at some point in your walk with Jesus…I hope you have that sacred space that you meet with God. But if I’m just being completely honest…I don’t enter that space near as often as I would like or as often as I should. And so, what happens is that the rest of my prayers seem to fall flat in comparison to that. I don’t “feel” as effective in my prayers and often end up just saying...”why bother?”

Because at the end of the day…I can’t fake that desire for intimacy or relationship with the Father. If you are a normal human being, you will find that it’s almost impossible to change your motives or desires…to just turn that desire for relationship and intimacy with the Father on and off at a moments notice.

Here is the good news…

Jesus is going to spend the rest of this passage on prayer communicating some truths that actually have the power to change our motives. And the further good news is that we don’t need some special “sacred space” in order to participate in intimate conversation with the Father…it can happen just as easily at a stop light, waiting in line at the grocery store, or sitting at your desk in your office as it can in the inner room.

Jesus is going to show us that prayer isn’t a compulsory routine but a posture.

If you are taking notes, go ahead and write that statement down and we are going to explore it more here in just a moment. But first, Jesus isn’t finished addressing our motives yet…so a few more minutes before this becomes a feel good/encouraging sermon (pause for effect).

Jesus would go on to say:

Matthew 6:7–8 NASB95

“And when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words. “So do not be like them; for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him.

Do pagan prayer ritual…there were hundreds of different gods that effected every single aspect of nature and life. You had to pray to the right god and you had to do it in the right way in order for it to work. It was very formulaic and you had to get it right or else you stood the chance of incurring the wrath of that god. Your crops could die on the vine, there could be famine or pestillance or war, you could have relational trouble, financial trouble, etc.

Once a man was imprisoned by the emperor Domitian because at a public sacrifice he forgot to mention that Domitian (the god they were sacrificing to) was the son of Athene (a virgin goddess, 7.24). This pettiness, many people feared, was typical of deities. One had to invoke the gods with meticulous care so as not to offend them; but since the gods had completely different functions and domains of power under different names, one had to be sure to utter the right name to get the response one wanted. Here is an example of a pagan prayer with many words. A man named Lucius appeals to the “blessed queen of heaven…here is how he opens his prayer… “whether Thou be the Dame Ceres …; whether Thou be the celestial Venus …; or whether Thou be the sister of the god Phoebus …; or whether Thou be called terrible Proserpine.…” After each name, he gives a lengthy recital of the deeds and qualities of the goddess.

Jesus isn’t saying that our prayers can’t be long…in fact Jesus was seen praying all night long on more than one occasion.

No this act of using a lot of words, titles, and meaningless repition was a tool of manipulation they used to get what they wanted out of the gods.

Now, I know we probably aren’t guilty of praying to a bunch of capricious gods but are have we ever been guilty of using our prayers as a tool to simply manipulate God into giving us what we want?

Do we only go to God when we need something?

Do we view prayer as the handle to the the vending machine God in the sky? And so if we can just pray with the right attitude, using the right words, with enough sincerity then surely we will get what we are asking for.

Are we so devestated in the moments when God’s answer to our prayers is no that we loose faith, become angry with God, or do we think there is a problem with us and our faith in that moment? Has anyone been there? Maybe I just didn’t have enough faith…maybe I’m flawed and so if I were just better, living better, having more faith then God would have answered my prayer.

Or what about this: When we don’t get what we’ve asked for, do we ever try to go another route to take the thing we want apart from God? Like…well God if you aren’t going to give me what I am asking for, I will just go a different route. In that moment the reality is that our God has just become one amongst many gods that we will seek our fulfillment and needs from.

If you have ever found yourself in one of those places, Jesus would say that, in that moment, our motives are being revealed. That all of a sudden, prayer has become this litmus test for our motives.

Side note: This isn’t to say that we never ask God for things in our prayers in fact, Jesus has just told us that God already knows the things we need. We will get to how that works in a minute though.

So if prayer isnt the handle we pull on the great slot machine in the sky then what is the primary goal of prayer?

Jesus gives us the answer to that question in the last two sentences of the Lord’s prayer. Verses 14 and 15 act sort of like the key on the bottom of a map that shows us how we are to understand the whole Lord’s prayer.

Matthew 6:14–15 NASB95

“For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. “But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.

Just a sentence prior, Jesus tells his followers to pray “forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” And then Jesus offers us verses 14-15 as this sort of key to the map of how to understand the whole Lord’s prayer.

Here is the idea:

Is our forgiveness contingent on whether or not we forgive? No! Actually the Bible and even Jesus himself in many many many other passages make it clear that our forgiveness is not the result of anything that we do. Our forgiveness is contingent on God’s grace and mercy and on those alone.

Instead....Jesus would tell us that if we can somehow fail to extend forgiveness for those who have sinned against us, then we’ve actually not fully grasped what has been extended to us. If we don’t see ourselves correctly in relationship to Jesus…namely how broken and sinful we are and yet how willing Jesus was to pardon. That our sins were no more or no less costly to Jesus than that person who has sinned against us and yet Jesus died for both of us.

So this prayer becomes a realization that:

“If you’ve pardoned me and paid for my sins then I have to do the same for those around me. Because…guess what…you paid for their sins as well. And if you were willing to die for their sins, who am I to withhold forgiveness if I was once in the same boat as them?” Our ability to extend forgiveness (and I dont’ just mean that sometimes it is hard). I mean that if you are unwilling to and could actually care less about extending forgiveness then you haven’t truly experienced the forgiveness of Jesus in the first place…A failure to understand that is the only way we can withhold forgiveness from other.

So all of a sudden, this prayer for fogiveness is more than just a mere prayer that God would forgive our sins. It is rooted in this idea that if we have truly been forgiven, then we will also forgive those who owe a sin debt to us.

This model prayer becomes a lens through which we see God and realign our life in relationship to Him.

That realization that God will forgive us drives this simultaneous response in us to also forgive our debtors.

Clear as mud?

Yeah I figure probably so…that’s super heady philosophical and theological stuff.

Do the Danielle and “I’m not one of your troops” bit.

Restate previous slide...

And so when we come to see God as:

Father

As Holy

As King

As Provider

As Forgiver

And As Leader

It not only changes how we pray but what we pray for. It changes our motivations and desires. It changes our response to God’s answers. And ultimately, it changes the way we live our lives. And all of a sudden, our prayers begin to sound different. All of a sudden, prayer is connected with this great and transformative power that goes far beyond anything we simply want to get from God.

And so…Let’s look at this prayer:

Matthew 6:9 NASB95

“Pray, then, in this way: ‘Our Father who is in heaven, Hallowed be Your name.

This is a move from Distant Judge to Loving Father.

Some of us have this image of God as the cosmic, white-haired....

And yet Jesus offers us this lens by which to approach God by.

Question: Can just anyone barge into the kings throne room bit…?

Some of you winced and recoiled at that picture because...

And so I think, not just for you, but for all of us:

This is an invitation to go back to the Bible and understand what it means to see God as a loving heavenly father.

You see, I can bring anything to a father becaus the beginning assumption is that He loves me, cares for me, and at the end of the day, wants what is best for me. There are things I would be terrified to bring before a judge or a king whose first goal is to seek justice. I can bring even my wrong motives, my fears, my questions, my anger, and my confusion before a loving father and just be honest about them. A loving Father wants to walk with us in all of those because at the end of the day, He cares for us and wants us to experience peace and a fullness of life. It isn’t that He will forego justice or discipline becuase, at times, as hard as those things might be for us to understand or endure, the discipline of a perfect heavenly Father is for our benefit and is done out of love and our best interest.

But this isn’t just a move from distant judge to heavenly father..

This is also a move from god of our own making to Hallowed be Your Name.

Hallowed just means set apart or seperate.

The idea is that God is completely seperate and above us. This is not conflicting with the image of Father because…well…obivous question…but, do children create their parents? No children are the creation of their father and mother. We do not define who God is any more than a child is responsible for creating their parents.

God is not a God of our own making.

That may sound like something that doesn’t have much to do with us but the reality is that this has massive real world implications not just on how we pray but how we live our everyday lives.

Here is what I mean

Do children playing in the road bit...

If I am only a few years older than my children in the grand scheme of things with honestly, a fairly limited perspective and I make decisions that my children don’t understand and that they are sometimes confused or upset by because the answer wasn’t what it should have been…does that make me a bad father? Not at all. In fact it makes me a good father who actually cares a lot about my children.

Now…compare us with a God who has no beginning, or ending, who created every atom of my being, knows me better than I know myself, and sees my beginning and my end all simultaneously…do you perhaps think there are times when His answers are going to confuse or upset me? Does this make him a bad Father? No it actually makes Him a really good and loving Father…it just means I don’t or am incapable or don’t yet understand His reasoning.

In that moment, His hallowed name…the fact that He stands far and high above us in wisdom and nature and isn’t a god of our own making is a really good thing.

Becuase, what are the results if I were to let my children play in the road? Yeah…not good. And yet often times, we come to God asking the same thing and get upset when the answer is no and we don’t understand why it is no.

This lens greatly effects how we pray, what we pray for, and our response to God’s answer to our prayers.

As we recognize the reality of God’s hallowed name, immediately we are driven to pray:

Matthew 6:10 NASB95

‘Your kingdom come. Your will be done, On earth as it is in heaven.

This is a move from my kingdom and my will to God’s Kingdom and God’s will be done.

If God’s kingdom is where His rule and reign are affected perfectly and where goodness, and peace, and blessing abound, then how is God bringing that Kingdom to earth?

God is bringing His kingdom to earth when people choose to follow after Him so that His rule and His reign are affected perfectly in their hearts. When that happens, Jesus begins transforming our attitudes, actions, relationships, jobs, finances, parenting, our desires, our motivations, our measures of success, the things that give us joy, the things that break our hearts. God even cares for our physical bodies and the physical world around us and so through His followers submitting to Him, these things beging to change as well.

Question: Can two kingdoms exist in the same space? No.

So this is a realignment of my heart, my attitude, my actions, my relationship, and so on and so forth under the rule and reign of God. His is the true kingdom that will endure forever and yet…AND DON’T MISS THIS:

God will not compete with the building of our kingdom.

God only rules and reigns over those who willingly submit themselves to the leadership of the loving heavenly Father.

This lens is a return to what God is doing in us in bringing His rule and reign. This lens is also causing us to consider what God is doing through us to bring his kingdom in all of our lives, relationships, and even our physical space.

I once heard it said that the prayers that most often get answered are the ones that start in heaven. If you want to see God answer yes to something then pray for those things which God is already wanting to see through his kingdom coming to earth.

God isn’t just Father though. He isn’t just holy and he isn’t just king. Jesus would tell us that He is also provider when he says:

Matthew 6:11 NASB95

‘Give us this day our daily bread.

This is a move away from excess for tomorrow to bread for today.

Because God is a good Father who provides for His children, he gives us bread. Bread was the staple in most households and so Jesus is saying: Let me be your supply, sustenance and the one you go to first for satisfaction. Stop running towards things that won’t last and won’t sustain you and run towards Me Jesus would tells us.

I believe Jesus was drawing off of their own experiences because most people lived day to day on meager portions of bread, but I also believe Jesus was alluding to something in Israel’s history.

The Israelites lived for forty years in the desert and they constantly lived one day away from starving to death or dying of dehydration and yet God sustained them. God was giving them a forty-year object lesson as they wandered the wilderness that only He can provide in a way that ultimately sustains us.

Straight talk…that terrifies us and is completely countercultural to everything we experience. We live in a world of scarcity where we believe it is completely up to us to make ends meet. We have to save for tomorow and store up as much as possible so that we never go without. We are the sole provider of our needs and so to give up control of that to a God we cannot see is the hardest thing many of us will ever wrestle with and yet Jesus would tell us that that is the safest place to be.

I think we see this in Jesus’ interactions with the woman at the well. She is struggling to find significance and satisfaction through her relationships. And Jesus, very lovingly and very kindly, asks her how’s that going for you? The answer was evident in the fact that she was on husband number five and that the man she was living with wasn’t even her husband.

Jesus is telling her that that source of significance and satisfaction she was seeking through men, human relationships, and marriage doesn’t fill the void in us. Much like her trip to the well that day when she met Jesus…there would come a day…maybe a year from then maybe five years from then but certainly at some point, whe would be thirsty again and be seeking out another relationship to fill the God given desire for acceptance, love, and relationship. But…those men and those relationships had left her with an unquenchable thirst that she could not satisfy no matter how many new relationships she entered into. And here is where this thing goes way beyond mere bread or physical sustenance.

Check this out church...Jesus turns and offers himself as the living water that ultimately satisfies. Jesus is telling her that what she has been seeking in satisfaction through her relationships with men and religion is something that can only truly be satisfied in a relationship with Him. Please hear me in this…this is about so much more than our physical needs! Often, our search for physical needs are the least of our problems.

It is our search for significance and acceptance that drives us to a better than other’s mentality and yet Jesus would say you are so significant to me that I came and died for you. If you have decided to follow Jesus then you have been adopted as a child of the king of the universe…it doesn’t get more significant or accepted than that. It is our desire to be truly known that drives us into the arms of lesser lovers, harmful relationships, and toxic friendships of co-dependency.

It can also drive us to withdraw and become isolated and lonely and judgmental or cynical of others. Jesus would say that he knows us better than we even know ourselves and that he is the friend that sticks closer than a brother and if our desire to be known is satisfied in him then it allows us to enter into our human relationships fully satisfied without needs or ulterior motives. We can approach people without the propensity for co-dependency or seeking fulfillment that would actually open ourselves up to deep hurt by others.

It is the desire for success and that feeling that what we do matters. Apart from an identity rooted in Jesus, this drives us to all sorts of harmful places as we seek to be successful…not just to us but to those around us. We begin to see people as a means to an end and through manipulation, we will use them for our personal gain. Jesus has already spoken to this need when He told us to pray for God’s kingdom to be known.

When we see our jobs as our provider instead of God then we are prone to workahalism and easily turn to a scarcity mentality. If we do this then not only do we often fail to be generous, but we will fail to see our job as the sacred mission field that God has given us to bring His kingdom to earth.

The reality is that the kingdom of God is coming on earth. This kingdom is the pinnacle of everything we want as humans and the good news is that God desires to partner with us to make that kingdom a reality. That kingdom will endure for eternity and there is no higher calling and no greater success than being part of bringing that kingdom to earth in the here and now. When we approach our view of success through this lens, all of a sudden people aren’t a resource to be manipulated for our purposes but are seen as creatures created in the image of God that He came and died for. Our greatest measure of success is helping people wake up to this reality of the amazing purpose and identity that God created them to fulfill.

This lens helps us move in submission to ask for what God wants to give us. Jesus would say to ask and it shall be given, seek an you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you. That Jesus wants to give us the wildest desires of our heart. And so this prayer for our daily bread becomes the lens through which our heart sees and desires those things which our Father already knows we need and wants to give us.

And so God is Father, he is holy, he is King, his is provider, but he is also forgiver.

Matthew 6:12 NASB95

‘And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

I’m not going to spend any time on this one because we’ve already been here other than to say:

This is a move from debtor to forgiven forgiver.

This lens effects the way we see our sin. And the way we see our sin and need for forgiveness effects the way we extend forgiveness to others. This right view of God as forgiver is necessary to almost every aspect of our relationship with other people.

We aren’t better than anyone else. We are in need of the same forgiveness and should extend the same forgiveness that Jesus has extended to us. It isn’t just forgiveness though. This effects our assessment of value that we put on every other human being. That every person is a beautiful, valuable, image bearer of God and each individual is so special that Jesus came and died for them.

As we see ourselves and subsequently other people through this lens, it effects our generosity, our words, our kindness, our willingness to sacrifice for the sake of others, our love, our compassion, and ultimately it effects our willingness to show the love of Jesus to them.

So…one last time let’s recap. God is a good father. God is holy and completely seperate from us. God is a good king bringing his kingdom to earth through the hearts of his people. God is the provider and everything we have…even the next breath you take has been given and is sustained by him. God is also the forgiver that has forgiven you and every other human being on earth in a move that showed each and every persons intrinsic value to the father. And finally, God is our leader.

Matthew 6:13 NASB95

‘And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.’

This is a move from the hero in our own story to the damsel in distress.

Deep down this is a cry for God’s protection.

I wasn’t aware that God led us into temptation…I thought that was the devils job. You can substitute that word temptation for the word test. It’s the idea that God wouldn’t give us more than we can handle if we are willing to lean into His leadership in that situation.

I have said this before, but I am one step away from stupid at any given moment. Here’s the picture…I often think I can handle things that I really can’t.

The prayer is this: God please don’t let me go near those things. Help me have an accurate view of my sinful nature because it is when we have a wrong or imbalanced view of our sin nature and what we are capable of handling under our own strength that Satan is there waiting like a lion in the tall grass to pounce on me and drag me back into sin.

So this becomes a lens through which we realign our actions under God’s leadership.

It is the idea that where he has led me in this moment, in this trial, in this discipline, in this test of faith is right where He wants me and is the thing that He is using to accomplish His purposes in my life. It is the fire through which God is refining me and my character into something more precious than Gold.

As we re-align our vision under this, all of a sudden, the difficult situations, the difficult decisions, and painful circumstances, the unanwsered question, the confusion, the take on a meaning and give way to purpose and maturity.

Here is the deal…we don’t always know what those purposes are and for some of us, that is a difficult tension to hold.

We don’t know why we lost that job. We don’t understand where we went wrong and why our children have gone off the rails. We don’t understand why our spouse would choose to do or say that incredibly hurtful thing, we don’t understand why we are getting hit again and again and again financially. We don’t understand why us. Why me?

In those moments we have to return back to this view of our trials and have faith that God is doing something great in our life that will one day be revealed. If we can learn to live in this tension having faith in this, then it will keep us from living according to our own wisdom…something that Satan is more than capable of using to drag us down into sinful patterns or behaviors.

(Do the…not everything is a test by God…there are some horrible things that happen to us in this life. Not its just that we understand that everything, even in the worst of circumstances, God hasn’t lost control of the wheel).

Now everything closes out with this statement:

For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

This is the closing tone of the prayer. For us…as we consider these words I think it is best to see these words as a question for us to contemplate. This is our target statement this week:

Whose kingdom are we building, whose power do we rely on, and whose glory are we seeking as we approach God?

If we fail to come to God with this template of prayer then we will inevitably be building our own kingdom and God promised us all the way back in the garden of eden that the end result of that kingdom is always futility, frustrated efforts, broken relationships, wrong motives, hatred, and ultimately death.

And so like I stated at the beginning of this sermon.

Prayer is not about going through this compulsory routine but a posture of the heart.

And so this model prayer, although it is something we can pray word for word, is actually more about the relationship with the Father that it is inviting us into.

I used this example the last time we talke…a lot of people just pray this prayer verbatim…now there is no problem with that as long as we are doing it with a heart reaching for true intimacy with the Father…do blues rift

And so I want to invite you to stand and pray this prayer with me as we close things out this morning.

Do notecard thing:

God, today I choose to move from____________ into ________________.

Seeing you as a distant judge into a loving father.