Message: Learning to Pray Again Bible Passage: Matthew 6:9-13 There are times prayer is a real struggle for me for various reasons. I m not always sure just what to pray for, what to say. Sometimes I don t feel like praying; sometimes, I outright avoid it. I easily lose focus in prayer. At times, I ve felt like I really didn t have a handle on why prayer is so important. I have often struggled with prayer. But this last week was different. God reinvigorated my heart for prayer. Maybe I should say that He taught me to pray again. I was away this last week on vacation. My family and I stayed for a week in a cottage on Frye Island, which is in the middle of Sebago Lake in southern Maine. It s a beautiful spot. Now, I ve got this weird thing that I love to do on vacation; I love to get up early in the morning and get outdoors! So, every morning, I got up early, and I went out to a secluded spot to enjoy the beauty of that lake and talk to God. I went to the same spot every morning; I actually took a picture of the very spot. [Show pic.] I had some meaningful times of prayer. Obviously, a setting like that helps a great deal! What helped most, though, was simply going back to Jesus most basic teaching about prayer, a simple prayer lesson recorded in Matthew 6. It is often called the Lord s Prayer. In reality, it is the Lord s teaching us how to pray. Many of you could say it by memory. "This, then, is how you should pray: " 'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, 10your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. 11Give us today our daily bread. 2Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. (Matthew 6:9-13 NIV)
I prayed that every morning this last week. Not the word-for-word prayer. I used it as a model, a template, something to prime the well for my praying. And as I did, God taught me to pray once again. So, I want to go back to that prayer this morning and tell you some things God taught me this last week on the bank of a lake in southern Maine. In the process, I want to encourage you to go back to these simple words of Jesus and let him teach you how to pray again. Here s the beauty of it. A lot of you already know the lesson by memory. You can start with the very first words of the prayer and reflect on their significance. It s exactly what I did. I started with Our Father. Now think about the significance of that. This may help. Many of you have had the experience of dating. Let s say you are a guy, and you have begun dating a gal. Now, you ve got to meet her father. What is one of the questions that you have/had? What am I supposed to call him? The question is deeper than what name he d like to be called; it is about how he sees the nature of the relationship. How does he want to relate to me? So, before you meet him, you want to know what he wants you to call him. You like this gal, and you don t want to mess this thing up. Let s say you start a new job and are getting ready to meet your boss for the first time. You want to clarify what he or she wants to be called. At core, however, it is not about titles; it is about what the nature of the relationship will be. So, what is the nature of the relationship and communication that God wants to have with us? Before you answer, consider just some of the names for God in the Bible. Lord God Almighty. Sovereign Lord. King. Creator. I Am. Savior. Strong Tower. Fortress. King of Kings. Lord of Lords. The Holy One. The Rock. That s just a sampling. Now, God could have chosen any one of these names to address Him in prayer, but He chose a different one: Father. This God Who is the King over all other kings, the God Who spoke a word and brought this universe into being, the One Who has never made one single mistake asks me to call him dad. As I sat on that rock each morning this week, and stared at the beautiful masterpiece of that lake and skyline that God made, I talked to Him like a Father. Now, our fathers aren t perfect, and some of us have had very difficult relationships with our fathers, but the Bible talks often of the kind of Father God is. He is a father who loves to give good things to His Kids. He is the Father Who would give His very life for His kids. He is the Father Who loves to be with His kids, Who seeks them out when they ve abused and insulted and neglected Him. He is the God Who loves to bring joy to his kids. I was reminded of the kind of dad God is through an unexpected source, my friend, Brad Wright. We went to Frye Island with Brad and his family. I ve had a chance to go on vacation with Brad and his family several times, and here s what I ve seen
in Brad. He absolutely loves to create a wonderful time for his kids. He s always asking if they want to go do something; He loves to be with them. He loves to create fun. He ll suggest some of the funniest and zaniest things, like the time this week we he took Justin out on the lake in a canoe, and said, Let s stand up as we re coming back in to shore. Mind you, this was with two foot waves coming in at the shore fed by 20 mph wind gusts. Naturally, as they approached the shore, everyone reached for their cameras. I thought you might enjoy seeing how Brad s idea worked out. [Show video.] Brad took pictures every single day, lots of them. And he would show them to us at night, bringing laughter and smiles and oohs and ahs. He just sat back and enjoyed his kids having fun. Brad reminded me of what God is like. So, this week, I talked to God like a father, like the God Who created an amazing corner of Maine for me and others to enjoy, like the God Who created water to sustain life and give hours of fun. I came to him in the belief that he wanted to talk to me more than I wanted to talk to Him. I talked to the God Who smiled as I enjoyed that fabulous morning view. I talked to Him about the stuff of my life the good, the bad, and the ugly. I thanked him for the kind of Dad that He is and has been to me. I didn t call him Sir; I called Him Dad. That s what He wants. But I could have called him Sir, and it is vital for me to remember Who my Dad really is. I think it s why we need to pray this thought: hallowed be your name. He is a father, but not just any father. He is the King of all kings, the Lord God Almighty. It is vital for us to remember Who He is and to honor Him as such. He is the set apart one. He is the One Who has no peers. No one is as powerful as God is. No one loves like He does. No one is more fair. When I would get to this Hallowed by your name part, I would just start reflecting on the ways in which He is like no other. Some mornings, I would celebrate His genius in creation. Another morning, as I watched strong winds whip across the lake, I honored the God Who is powerful, Who can t be tamed by mankind. I reflected on the God I can t control. A Father, yes! A pushover, no! Our father in heaven, hallowed be your name. What words come next? Your kingdom come, Your will be done. How do you pray that? What s that about? Here s how I prayed it, in so many words: God, may more and more people submit to you as the King of their lives; may more people acknowledge You as the amazing King and Father that you are. God s kingdom is a people, the people who have embraced him as King. To pray that His kingdom comes is to pray that His kingdom will grow in number, in people who embrace Him as King. So, some mornings, I prayed for our church, that God will help us help more people surrender their hearts to this grand and amazing God. Other mornings, I prayed for specific people to enter God s kingdom. In some ways, the your kingdom come prayer is pretty easy. The your will be done is not.
If your kingdom come is praying that people will acknowledge God and surrender to Him as King, then your will be done is praying that those people will live like it, people like me. Your will be done is personal. It is the prayer that those who call God Father and King will live like He is. So, I prayed that I would act like God knows more than I know, that God is wiser than I am, that His instructions are wise and good, whether I understand or like them. I asked God to help me do what He says is best. Sometimes, I got very specific. You know what s best about relationships. You know what s best about sexuality. You know what s best about using money. Your will be done. It is vitally important for me to acknowledge that I don t know it all, that I need help. It is healthy for me to surrender to an authority greater than myself. In fact, it is vital, which brings me to one part of the genius of this prayer. How many of you in this room are currently parents of infants or toddlers? Let me just say that I respect you a great deal. There are some wonderful things about those toddler years, but I am not ready to go back to them. What I recall about toddlers is this: there is no us and our and your in their small vocabularies. Their world is me and mine. The world revolves around them. The word you comes into play only when they want you to do something for them. You should be fixing me something to eat, or you should be fixing whatever is going wrong in my diaper. This is the bent of toddlers, but here s the kicker: this me bent doesn t go away as we get older. I know. To this day, I tend to live as if the world revolves around me. I tend to think about mostly me. What about you? If someone were to chart the thoughts in your brain and put them into categories (thoughts about God and what He wants, thoughts about others and what they want, and thoughts about you and what you want), which category would come in highest? By what percentage? For me, it might be: God 6, Others 12, Me 82 on a good day! This is where the genius of Jesus prayer model comes into play. There is no me or my or I in the entire prayer. There are, however, three Your s, four Our s, and four uses of us. Have you ever tried to pray like that I mean really? I m into the I s and me s when I pray. Frankly, I tend to think of prayer as one more way to get what I want. I think me almost constantly. God wants to change that; I need for God to change that. A key part of this prayer is to put God and other people back on the radar of my heart. It helps to re-order my priorities and values. This prayer is first about God; it puts Him in His rightful position. He is my Father. He created me. He is wise and good and powerful. He is to be honored and obeyed. His instructions should be followed. But this prayer is also about others. Look at the first two words: Our Father. The prayer is about God and about others. Here is what struck me as I prayed by the
lake this week. Sometimes, I talk to God as if I m an only child. Have you done that? We know God exists, and we value Him, but we ve lost sight of others. God has many children, and we need to pray that way. When we pray, we need to be reminded that we aren t the only ones that God is looking out for. We are part of a very large family. What I am asking God for will often have an impact on others. Sometimes, what I am asking God for might bring a loss for someone else. God is looking at the larger community, and He wants me to look at them too. It s not that it s wrong to pray about me; after all, when I m praying about us, I am including myself. The problem is that I tend to pray about me all the time; I need a counter to that. It is not wrong to pray my father, but I need a healthy dose of our father in my praying as well. Prayer is not just for me. It s for us. When I start praying like others exist, I begin living as if others exist. I think that s exactly what God wants to happen. This week, I started to build our into my praying a lot more. An interesting thing happened when I did that, particularly when I got to that part: Give us today our daily bread. I have often wondered why Jesus taught us to pray that way. I suspect a lot of Americans wonder about that. Why? Because we have plenty of food. You cannot believe all the food we took in boxes and coolers to Frye Island. I didn t need to ask God for food; we had more than we could possibly eat. That s when God nudged me. I m the God of many, not just you. Many people around the world don t have food. Pray for them. Pray like I taught you to pray: Give US our daily bread. And so I began to pray. God give us water in Rwanda. Give us food in Ethiopia. Give us homes in China. Give us medical supplies in Kenya. Give us livelihood in Indonesia. I started praying like the world is bigger than me, my city, my state, my country. And here is what it did in me. I thought: I ve got to find out more about what the needs are in the world around me so I can pray our more specifically. When I pray as if others exist, I begin to live as if others exist. If God had not taught me to pray give us today our daily bread, I would never have even thought of my brothers and sisters in Ethiopia or China or Indonesia. This week, God taught me to pray our. I hope that I never lose that from my praying and from my heart. It is my prayer that God uses the Lord s Prayer to reinvigorate your own heart for prayer. East Hampton Bible Church