Into a Deeper Fellowship with God

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Transcript:

Well, last Sunday night, I shared with you the story, just briefly, of a man in a church that I pastored a few years ago who just was never happy with what I preached, no matter what it was. And it wasn’t because I was preaching anything heretical, it was just he always had a different idea about what he thought I ought to be preaching. And I remember him coming to me one time and saying, why do you preach the gospel every Sunday morning?

you should preach something else we’ve got it already I thought do we because if you ever get tired of hearing about what Jesus did for you I can’t say for sure what’s in your heart but it makes me question whether or not you’ve accepted what Jesus did for you it’s like that song tell me the old old story no matter how many times I’ve heard it I’m hungering and thirsting to hear it like the rest. So eventually I moved on to preach something else. Not that I ever left off from preaching the gospel, but I went into some more topical things, and I spent a couple of months preaching on prayer on Sunday mornings. He came to me one day upset.

When are you going to stop preaching on prayer? When we do it right? I don’t know what answer you’re looking for here.

Well, you should preach the gospel because you’ve got people on Sunday mornings who need to be saved, and they don’t need to hear about prayer. Well, never mind the fact that I’m telling them about Jesus in every message on prayer, because everything about prayer has to come back to him. It’s only through him that we have access to the Father in the first place.

But he just was never contented with whatever I was going to preach. And, you know, I can’t say what the reason was because I don’t know. But I do know that it really rubbed him the wrong way, and I didn’t prolong the series for that reason.

and that was just a fun little added bonus. It rubbed him the wrong way that I spent so long preaching on prayer. But he wanted to know when were we going to move on to something else, and really, when we do it correctly, then we’ll go on to something else.

Prayer is so vitally important that we can’t ignore it. We can’t do it half-heartedly. We’ve got to understand what the Bible teaches about prayer because prayer is so vital. It’s one of the most important tools that we have as believers in Jesus Christ. It’s one of the most important tools that we have at our disposal, and yet it’s one of the most neglected and one of the most poorly used.

I was thinking this week about prayer and thought about the book Why Revival Tarries, which is one of my favorite books. It’s an old book by the great revival preacher Leonard Ravenhill. And there’s a chapter in there on prayer, and one of the things he writes, he says this, poverty-stricken as the church is today in many things, she’s most stricken here in the place of prayer.

We have many organizers, but few agonizers. Many players and payers, few prayers. Many singers, few clingers.

Lots of pastors, few wrestlers. Many fears, few tears. Much fashion, little passion.

Many interferers, few intercessors. Many riders, but few fighters. Failing here, we fail everywhere.

Folks, prayer is absolutely vital to our life as a church, to our life as individual Christians. We cannot do this on our own. We cannot, on our own, do the things that God has called us to do.

We cannot do it without taking hold of God in prayer and spending that time of fellowship with him, renewing that fellowship, renewing that power, and bringing our hearts and our wills continually in line with his own. Some time ago, I preached a message here on prayer and talked about Jesus taking time alone and aside to pray, and talked about how he was refreshed, how he was strengthened through those times of prayer. And I don’t know if anybody but me remembers this, but I ended the message by asking you, you know, if Jesus felt the need for that constant refreshing, and that constant rest, and that constant rejuvenation in times of prayer with the Father, what makes us think we can fare any better without it?

Folks, prayer is absolutely essential to our spiritual health, and it’s vital to our mission as Christians. I can tell the difference in when I’ve spent enough time praying and when I haven’t. You know, I can spend hours and hours and hours throughout the week crafting a message and studying and making sure I understand all the Greek and parse all the words and put all the concepts together and draw connections here and there and have it written out just so, just the way I want to say it.

And yet the message can fall completely flat if it’s not soaked in prayer. And yet on the other hand, there have been plenty of times where I haven’t had the time I’ve needed to prepare as I thought I ought to. And yet I’ve taken plenty of time that week to pray.

And the difference in the power of the message is there. And it’s not because, folks, we go to God simply asking for things. Although we’ll talk about that over the next few weeks too.

There’s nothing wrong with asking God for things. The difference is in the amount of time I’ve spent in the presence of God in prayer. Prayer is all about the relationship with God.

That’s where the power comes from. There’s no magic in the words we say. Sometimes we think, well, I’ve got to, I don’t know how to pray because I’ve got to say exactly the right words.

God’s not a, you know, God’s not a, God’s not a combination lock where we’ve got to get just the right configuration of numbers in there. get just the right words in there to unlock God and make him do what we want to do. There’s nothing magic about the words we pray.

What is powerful about prayer is that it’s us spending time in fellowship with our Father and our Creator. And if you take nothing else from this morning, let it be this, that the importance of prayer is in the relationship that we have with God. If you haven’t already, turn with me.

If you haven’t already done so, turn with me to Luke chapter 11. Luke chapter 11. And throughout this passage where Jesus teaches on prayer, we’re going to see that God is a father to us, to those who’ve trusted in Jesus Christ, to those who belong to him.

God is a father to us, and he desires to have the kind of close fellowship with us that a loving father should. He desires that we as his children should spend time with him. He desires that closeness.

Does God need us? Absolutely not. God exists and God is and God is God and always has been whether we were here or not.

He’s not reliant on us. He doesn’t depend on us. And yet God desires that close fellowship with us.

God doesn’t like it when his children neglect to spend time with him. So some of you may wish your kids or grandkids called more often. I believe that’s how God feels about it.

God wants that fellowship with us. Every night before the kids go to bed, we pray together and do hugs and kisses and send them to bed. Well, a couple nights this week, I noticed that Benjamin just went off to bed.

And after about the second time it happened, you know, my memory’s not great. So I thought maybe he did, the first night, maybe he did give me a hug and kiss, and I just forgot about it. The second night, I looked at Charlie.

I said, am I crazy? Did he not give me a hug and kiss? She said he didn’t do it to any of us.

And I called him back in and I said, what’s up with that? Did we do something? No.

So why didn’t you give anybody hugs and kisses? I don’t know. Do you not want to be part of our family anymore?

I do. Have you thought about showing us maybe that you care about us? And I realize it’s just such a simple thing.

But to me, it’s a reminder of the closeness. It’s our fellowship. Things are not right if I don’t get to give you a kiss on the head and tell you to be good before you go to bed.

All right? So he started back doing that. Okay?

God wants his children to spend time with him. God wants his children to be close to him. God wants his children to demonstrate that fellowship.

And one of the greatest ways we do that is by spending time with him in prayer. And so we come to verse 1 of Luke chapter 11. And it says, Now it came to pass, as he was praying, this is talking about Jesus, as Jesus was praying, in a certain place, when he ceased, that one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.

So he’s referring to John the Baptist and saying, you know, John the Baptist taught his disciples how to pray. We’d like you to teach us to pray. So what has happened is they have seen Jesus praying.

And there’s something incredibly different as we see this play out over and over through the Gospels. There’s something very different about the way Jesus prayed from the way others pray. You know, typically we’ll come to God and God, would you bless Aunt Myrtle?

She broke her foot, you know, and bless cousin Jim Bob. He’s having an operation. And Lord, I need some more money for this bill.

Thank you, Lord. Amen. You know, that’s a little bit of an exaggeration, but that tends to be our prayer list. We see something completely different with Jesus.

The amount of time, the amount of energy that he invests in just praising his Father and asking him for spiritual things, asking him for the things that he needs in order to fulfill the mission the Father has given him. And when we look at the comparison, we could easily mark it off and say, well, yeah, that’s Jesus. He’s the Son of God.

Naturally, he’s going to be better at this. Instead of saying, well, that’s Jesus. He’s better at this than we are, and so we can’t live up to that.

We should look at it and say, that’s Jesus, and that’s our model, and he clearly did it better, and that’s what we should aim for. We should aim to pray more like Jesus did. And the disciples, I think, saw this intimate fellowship, this close, intimate, personal relationship that Jesus had with the Father, and they wanted it too.

When they’re saying, Lord, teach us to pray, notice he doesn’t say, Lord, teach us how to pray. He’s not saying, Lord, give us, what words should we use? Should we fold our hands or should we kneel?

Should we lay face down on the floor? He’s not saying that. He’s saying, Lord, teach us to pray.

Help us pray like you pray. And I don’t know if you’ve ever seen people who are like this, that they pray even when they pray in a group of people. It’s not stilted.

It’s not artificial. They pray like they’re talking to God like he’s sitting right next to them and like they do this all the time. Have you ever heard anybody pray like that? Like they and God are just like this.

I’ve known a few people like this that they pray and it’s like we’re right there and God is literally sitting across the table from them. And they’re talking to somebody they know. a lot of times people pray out loud in public and it sounds like they’re talking to somebody they’ve met a couple times at a party there are people though that I’ve met that it sounds like they know God when they pray to him and if you’ve ever heard somebody pray like that I don’t know about you but it’s something I look at and I say I want that I want to pray like they pray how irresistible would it be for them to be in the presence of God the Son and see him communing with God the Father through prayer, how irresistible would it be that they would look at him and say, we want to pray like that.

And so they see not just the power, not the words, but they see the closeness of the relationship between the Father and the Son. And they say, Lord, teach us to pray. And yes, they refer here to John.

John the Baptist had his disciples. He had taught them how to pray, but they wanted to learn from Jesus. If this was just about John the Baptist and his six secrets to powerful prayer, they would have gone to, and they wanted to know that, they would have gone to John the Baptist or one of his disciples and said, tell us what John taught about prayer and let’s do that.

But they weren’t necessarily interested in learning what John had had to say about prayer. They wanted to know what Jesus had to say about prayer. They weren’t looking to pray like John the Baptist. They wanted to pray like Jesus.

For us, that should be the goal as well, to pray like Jesus. This was one of the greatest requests, folks, that they could have possibly made. Because what they were asking was for Jesus to show them how to have this closer fellowship with the Father, this deeper fellowship with the Father, like Jesus had and like God had created them to have.

They were literally asking Jesus to show them how to have the thing that God had made them to have. And so we see in verse, starting in verse 2, Jesus’ answer. So he said to them, when you pray, say, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us day by day our daily bread and forgive us our sins. For we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us, and do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

Now, this is not the only time that Jesus taught on prayer. This is apparently not even the only time that Jesus gave them these instructions in prayer. And it’s a shorter version.

It’s not a contradiction. It’s just sometimes you have two witnesses to a car wreck. One witness is going to remember details.

The other doesn’t. Doesn’t mean there’s a contradiction. But Matthew records a few more details of this model prayer than Luke does.

And that’s probably the one you’re more familiar with. Is the version from Matthew chapter 6. Our Father who 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. Amen. There are a few details from that prayer that are not recorded in Luke’s.

Also, if the wording is a little different, if you’re confused there because some of the words are different, I’m reading to you today out of Luke chapter 11 from the New King James Version, where I memorized the Lord’s Prayer from the King James Version when I was a child. So some of the words are a little different between the two versions of the prayer. But that’s the explanation for it.

So Jesus responds by giving them this model prayer. And he’s not saying there’s anything magic about the words. Because sometimes people will act as though if I just repeat this prayer, then somehow I’m doing some kind of religious thing that’s going to get me closer to God.

Repeating the words of a prayer without any heart behind it, without any meaning behind it, gets you nowhere with God. As a matter of fact, when Jesus was teaching on prayer in the book of Matthew, he told them don’t do vain repetitions. Don’t just say things.

Don’t just say words. They need to come from the heart and they need to mean something. If you pray from your heart the exact words of the Lord’s Prayer and you mean it and you mean it and you understand everything you’re saying, you mean it, that’s really the prayer of your heart, there’s nothing wrong with praying those exact words.

But praying those exact words does nothing for you. If there’s no heart behind it, if there’s no desire for fellowship with God, if you don’t understand the words you’re saying, if you don’t mean the words you’re saying, it does nothing for you. Folks, there is no magic formula for getting closer to God.

Jesus was here giving them an example of some of the things that they should be praying for. when he told them to pray in this manner. He didn’t say these exact words.

He said in this manner, pray. And in both of these accounts, in both of these accounts, what Matthew records from the Sermon on the Mount in chapter 6 and what Luke records in chapter 11 from this moment along the side of the road where Jesus has been praying, along the side of the road, I think I’m getting confused with another story. It just says in verse 1, at a certain place.

He doesn’t tell us what certain place. He just says at a certain place. In both of these prayers, in both of these accounts, Jesus gives us some principles, and I’m not going to go through the whole Lord’s Prayer this morning.

I could do a whole series on the Lord’s Prayer. But he gives us some principles to pray for. In both of these prayers, he tells us to call out to the Father.

It starts by addressing him. Prayer is not to just whoever. Prayer is directed toward the Father, God the Father, the first person of the Trinity.

By the way, it’s not wrong to pray to the other members of the Trinity either. We see examples of that in Scripture. But he’s saying to address the Father here.

Call out to God. Know who you’re talking to. I wish I could remember which preacher it was that I listened to that I heard talk about this this week, but he was talking about the difference between conservative churches and liberal churches.

And folks, he’s not talking about politics. You can have a conservative theology and still be a political liberal and vice versa. He’s talking in theological terms, people who believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, people who believe in salvation by grace alone through faith alone, who believe in the substitutionary atonement on the cross that Jesus died to pay for our sins in full, versus liberal churches that often will try to suck some of the supernatural elements out of Scripture and reduce it just to Jesus being a good man, teaching good moral lessons, all right?

And this preacher said that one of the big differences between conservative churches and liberal churches is that oftentimes, not all the time, but oftentimes in liberal churches, prayer becomes sort of just an exercise that we use to cope. with life. It becomes something about there’s something for us calming in the words.

Whereas he says in conservative churches we hear people talking to somebody that they really believe exists. Prayer is not just putting words out there in the universe, folks. Jesus says call on the Father.

What he’s saying here is we need to know who we’re talking to. And we need to recognize him for who he is. I remember when I was in college not that many years ago but enough years ago that the culture has completely changed I don’t think this is a thing anymore but I remember people walking around the the ou campus with shirts with pictures of george w bush that said w is my homeboy or whoever whoever else on the other I even saw people with pictures of jesus on their t-shirts that said jesus is my homeboy and that bothered me.

You know, hey, on one hand, they’re thinking about Jesus. That’s good. That’s not often heard necessarily on this campus.

But on the other hand, he’s not just your homeboy. I’m not even 100% sure what that term means, all right? I’ve lived a very sheltered life.

I know it means like your friend, your buddy. I don’t, it’s not a term I’ve ever used. Okay, God is not just our buddy.

God’s not just one of the guys, all right? our Father who is in heaven hallowed holy is your name Jesus is reminding us know who you’re talking to prayer is not just saying words and putting them out there in the universe we are talking to the God who created us so he tells us to call out to our Father he tells us in this model prayer we learn that we should praise him as part of prayer have you ever thought about prayer as an opportunity as a vehicle to spend time praising God? Oftentimes we think about praise as, oh, we’re going to go sing some songs and clap our hands and it’s going to be upbeat.

You can praise God in prayer. When you’re talking about hallowed be thy name, God, even your name is holy. You are so holy.

You are so righteous. You are so set apart and different from us that God, even your name deserves respect. When we’re finding reasons to talk to God and express our thankfulness and sometimes our amazement at how great He is by nature, that is praise.

So we’re called on to praise Him. And folks, we’re told to ask Him for things. Not just stuff we want.

Not just stuff that would be nice. But we’re told to ask him for the things that are most important, the things that we need as we serve him. Now, wait a minute, preacher.

Are you saying there are some things that are too little for God to care about? That’s not what I’m saying. No, there are little things that we’ll take to God repeatedly, and we’re putting it in God’s hands, and then something big will come up, And we start thinking about what do I need to do?

How can I fix this? How can I carry this massive load on my shoulders and fix it? And Jesus says, go to God about the things that are most important.

He says, give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts. So from the little mundane concerns of this life, like what am I going to eat next, to the big massive concerns, how can I be sure my sins are forgiven? We’re talking about everything from the mundane cares of day-to-day life to the big questions of eternity, we can take those things to God in prayer, and we can ask Him for the things that we need as we serve Him.

And over the next few weeks, we’re going to look in depth at some of the things the Bible says that we can and should ask Him for. We’re going to learn about some of the spiritual things we should be asking Him for. We’re going to learn, too, that it’s okay to ask God for material things when we do so in the right spirit.

They don’t leave from here and say, oh, well, I can pray for a new Ferrari. Is there a fancier car? I don’t know.

I’m not a car guy. I’m going to go ask God for a new Ferrari or a new private jet because I want it. And it’s okay to ask for those things.

Not talking about using prayer as a formula to get rich here. Okay. But it is okay to ask God for things.

If we ask in the right spirit and with the right motivation, it’s okay to ask God for things. Over the next few weeks, we’re going to explore some of the reasons why we should pray, some of the ways how we should pray, some of the things we should pray for, maybe some of the things we should not pray for. And we’re going to look at what Scripture says about each of these.

But for today, I really just want to focus in on Jesus’ answer. When his disciples asked him, Lord, teach us to pray. Because he gave him this model prayer.

Here’s some things you should pray for. But there was more to his answer than this. He didn’t just stop teaching about prayer after verse 4.

Let’s look at verse 5. And he said to them, which of you shall have a friend? and go to him at midnight and say to him, Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine has come to me on his journey, and I have nothing to set before him.

And he will answer from within and say, Do not trouble me, the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot rise and give to you. I say to you that though he will not rise and give to you, excuse me, he will not rise and give to him because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence, he will rise and give him as many as he needs.

So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and it will be opened to you.

For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks, it will be opened. So he goes on to give them some more explanation on prayer. It’s not just, here are some things you pray for in the model prayer.

He doesn’t just explain to them how to pray. He doesn’t just explain to them how to pray. He teaches them the reasons why they should want to pray.

And let me tell you, I believe this is half the battle. If we can get over thinking, I don’t need to, I’ve got it all under control, or prayer’s hard, or prayer’s boring, if we can get over all those things, And if we can start to desire prayer, if we can start to desire that daily time with God, that’s half the battle. If we will desire prayer, then we’ll pray better.

Because the things we want to do, the things we’re passionate about, we tend to get better at, right? Right? I found that to be true.

I used to play baseball with the neighborhood kids growing up. I didn’t care about baseball. I never got better at it.

All right, but there are things that I did care about that I got better at. And if we come to desire prayer, we’ll do everything we can to learn how to pray better. We’ll find ourselves scouring and searching God’s Word to learn how to pray better.

And so he begins to give them reasons why they should want to pray. And he starts out with this story, this little story, about a man who needs some bread because a friend has shown up on a journey at his house, and he needs something to be able to feed him because in their culture the worst thing that could be said about you was that you were unhospitable to company. You were supposed to roll out the red carpet if even a stranger showed up at your door and put them up and feed them and lavish blessings on them as though the king had just shown up at your house.

And the worst thing they could say about you is that you hadn’t done that. And so in this story, the man is desperate because somebody’s shown up and I have nothing to feed him. What am I going to do?

There’s going to be talk. My life is over. And so it’s a world we don’t even understand.

But he goes next door to his friend. In the middle of the night, after the guy shows up, he goes over to his friend, and he bangs on the door and says, Open up, I need to borrow three loaves of bread. And it’s really not that unreasonable a request. I mean, we’re not even talking three big loaves of bread here, I don’t think.

They oftentimes used unleavened bread. So basically, we’re talking about three pitas. Not a lot of food he’s asking here for.

So he’s banging on the door and he says, open up, open up my friend, I need food, somebody’s come and I have nothing to give them. And the man whose door he’s banging on says, go away, it’s midnight, I’m in bed, you’re going to wake up the kids, go away, go away. I can tell you that would probably be my response too, if my neighbors came banging on my door at midnight.

I might not even be that polite. I told you it’s a world we don’t understand but he bangs on the door and he says go away and Jesus said I’m going to tell you this friend who wouldn’t get up out of bed and wake up everybody in the house just to go and give his friend the bread so he could take care of somebody else who stopped by the neighbor bread so that he could take care of somebody who stopped by if he wouldn’t do it just for the reason that he’s his friend he’ll do it because he’s persistent. He’ll do it just because he’s persistent.

Any of you who have ever had kids probably understand this principle. As much as I never want to admit it, sometimes whining does work. Not very often.

Charlie and I are pretty stubborn. Whining does not get your way, but especially with Charlie right now, because he’s still pretty young to understand what we’ve told him. Sometimes I’m saying, no, you can’t have your milk right now.

Scream, scream, scream. No, you can’t have your milk right now. You have to wait until bedtime.

Scream, scream, scream. No, you can’t have your milk right now. Scream, scream, scream.

It hits that pitch where your eardrum vibrates just so where it’s painful and. . .

Fine! Have all the milk you want. I don’t care.

We’ll get you a cow if you’ll just be quiet. All right? Can you tell I speak from experience here?

This comes from the heart. This is a nightly struggle. Sometimes the whining does work.

And Jesus said, if he won’t get out of bed just because he’s your friend, he’ll eventually get out of bed because he’s annoyed with the pounding. And he says, in the same way, go to the Father and ask, and it’ll be given to you. And seek, and you’ll find it.

And knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives. And he who seeks, finds.

And to him who knocks, it will be opened. Okay, this is not a blanket promise that if I go and pray to God for a Mercedes, that he’s going to give it to me. His teaching on prayer always comes with a few qualifications.

Namely, that we’re praying according to the Father’s will. But if we’re praying according to the Father’s will, and we pray for something, he’s going to answer. And he’s going to give it to us.

We can trust that he will take care of us. Now, even a friend and a neighbor who’s unwilling to help us may eventually give in if we’re persistent in asking. And even more so, God is willing to answer those who are persistent in prayer.

Now, that doesn’t mean that we have to nag God to get him to do anything. I don’t want you to take that away from the story. This is an analogy, but it’s not a.

. . everything in there doesn’t apply.

It doesn’t mean that we have to nag God to get him to do anything. Sometimes God does things in his own time. Well, always God does things in his own time, but sometimes it’s not our timetable.

But he always has a reason for it, even when we don’t understand. This week, I think it was Monday night, Charla came to me and said, there’s a nest of yellow jackets hanging down in the doorway that Benjamin uses to let the dog in and out of the garage. Can you take care of that?

Sure, I’ll take care of that. A little while later, she says, are you going to do something about the yellow jackets? Yeah, I’ve got it under control.

Of course, I haven’t moved from where I was sitting. I’ve got it under control. I’ll have to go get stuff tomorrow.

Okay. She didn’t realize Ace closes at 6 o’clock, and it was like 9 o’clock, and I’m in my jammies. I’m not going to Walmart.

I know everybody else goes to Walmart in their jammies, but not me. So I said, I’ll go to Ace in the morning. So I went to Ace that morning, Tuesday morning, and I got some spray for the bugs.

Got home and realized I’d had spray there the whole time. but I didn’t know that. I went and got the spray Tuesday morning.

She says, have you done anything about those yellow jackets? No, but I will. A few hours later, have you done any, are you going to do anything about the yellow jackets?

Okay, Charlotte, you’re supposed to spray them at night. Well, why do you spray them at night? Because they’re less active and they’re all home, so it kills all of them, and they don’t sting you as much.

So it took her, it took about 24 hours fro