Transcription
You've heard me say this many times: Much prayer, much power. Little prayer in your life, little power. No prayer in your life, no power. Now, the truth is, if, if we were honest—if you're honest, if I'm honest—most of us, we're not very confident about prayer. In fact, prayer is confusing to most of us. I talked to a lot of men who go, "I don't know how to pray." And, and we find prayer to be very confusing and we're not confident in it. We, we say, "I, I don't know what to say. I don't know who to say it to. I don't know how to say it. I don't know what to pray. I don't even know if this thing works. I'm filled with doubt. I'm filled with confusion. You know, I'm filled with, um, uh, insecurities. I don't know how long to keep praying." And, and so most, most of us when we come to the idea of prayer, we go, "I don't get it. I know I'm supposed to pray, but I, I don't get it. And, and I don't, I don't enjoy it. I don't understand it." What I want to do is take the worry out of prayer for you. I want you to be able to go, "I am confident. I know how and what to pray." And you won't have that worry. You won't have that lack of confidence in your life.
Now, in Luke 11, Jesus' followers said, "Lord, teach us to pray." And then Jesus said, "Well," and here's where he starts: "When you pray, begin by saying, 'Our Father.' Begin by saying, 'Our Father in heaven.'" Now, we don't realize how shocking that statement was because up to this time in history, nobody called God Father. They called him a lot of other things. But Jesus said, "I'm here to tell you that when you pray, you are to call God father." And he says, "If you understand this, it's going to change the way you pray. You're going to pray much more confidently. You're not going to worry. You're not going to be so insecure about it." What Jesus is saying is prayer is not about words. Listen to me. It doesn't matter what words you say. You don't have to be eloquent. A guy who doesn't speak much to every anybody else, God's not expecting you to be very eloquent to him. Jesus says prayer is not about your words. It's about a relationship. And it's a very special kind of relationship, like a father to a child. It's to be intimate. It's to be loving. It's to be casual. Uh, it's to be no barriers. A little child doesn't walk into the presence of her father and wonder about how do I say this? A little child just walks in and says it in the best language they've got at that particular age and stage of life. And God is saying here prayer is not about words. It's about a relationship. So he says when you start, you start with our Father. He's saying to be confident in prayer, you got to have the right relationship idea in your mind. God is not some impersonal force. "May the force be with you." God is not some psychological or philosophical term: the, the unmoved mover, the, the ground of all of our beings, all of these phrases, the omnipotent, omnisient, unfeilling power, impersonal force. No, he says to pray, you got to realize God is your Father.
Now, if you're going to be confident in your prayer, listen to me. You got to use the name that God has chosen for himself. And God chose the name Father. You have a right to choose what you're called by. You were given a name by your parents, but when you grew up, if you wanted to shorten it or change it or whatever, you could. You have the right to be called by what you want to be called by. So, for instance, if your name is Lori, you don't like it if somebody calls you Laura or Lauren or Lorna or Loretta. That's not your name. Your name is Lori. And God says, "I want you to call me Father." Not, not mother, by the way, not mother. God is not your mother. God says, "I am your Father." Now, we know God tells us in the Bible that God has both male and female qualities. And the reason why there are two sexes on earth, male and female, is because God has both male and female qualities. And we were made in his image. And no one person has all the image of God. And the Bible says women need men and men need women. And that we need each other because together we project what God is really like. So God is a spirit. He's neither male nor female. But God has said, "I want you to call me Father." And he has a right to say you call me by what I want you to call me. And actually Jesus even takes it further as he goes into explaining this. He says, "I want you to call God Abba." Abba. And what Abba means is not even Father. It means Daddy. It's a term of endearment. It's a term of love. And God says when you pray, the first thing you got to get right is the relationship. You got to realize I'm not some CEO sitting up there in the sky waiting to judge your prayer. I'm your Abba. I'm your Daddy. And you can come to me in a loving, uh, gentle, trusting, intimate relationship like a little child. Come to God and say, "Daddy," that's what he says to do.
Now, I realize that this is a problem for some people because father is a negative term for some people. Maybe your dad was distant. Maybe your dad was demanding. Maybe your dad was demoralizing. Maybe your dad was abusive. Maybe your dad was absent in your life. And you have a lot of bad memories about that term father. So when you say, "Well, if God is like my father, no thanks." God, our Father in heaven, but God, your heavenly Father is unlike any father on earth. Now, there are good fathers on earth. I had a good father. I hope maybe you had a good dad. But every dad, including me and those of you who are dads, we're flawed. We're imperfect. We make mistakes. Your Father in heaven is absolutely perfect. He never loves you conditionally. He never loves you, uh, one day and not the next. He's not inconsistent. Some of you grew up with dads. You say, "I don't know if he's going to hug me one day or slug me on another day." But God is not like your dad. God is unlike any father on earth. He's perfect. He always loves you. He always knows everything about you. He always understands you. My dad didn't always understand me. Your dad didn't always understand you. I didn't always understand my kids. But God knows what you think more than you know what you think. And so we know that God says we're to, to call him Father. What kind of Father is God? This is really important. If you understand this, then prayer becomes very easy for you. God is a caring Father. He will never stop loving you. He doesn't have bad days or good days. He is unconditionally loving toward you. God is a caring Father. God is a, is a, a close Father. Some of you had distant dads and you didn't see him very. God is with you all the time. He's paying attention to you all the time. He has the ability to watch every move in your life. He knows every hair on your head. The Bible says they're numbered by God. He's caring. He's close. He's, He's consistent. He's consistent. He's always the same. He's not one way this way and another way another. He is capable. When I was a little kid, I used to say, "My daddy can do anything." When I grew up, I realized he couldn't do everything. And when my kids were little, they used to think I could do everything. And then they grew up and realized that I, I couldn't. I'm not capable in every area. But God is. Your heavenly Father is capable and he's close and he's consistent and he's committed and he's competent and he's caring.
Now, Jesus has a lot to say about prayer. This morning, I want us to just look at one set of verses by Jesus, just five verses in the Sermon on the Mount. And in this five verses, Jesus gives us five reasons. Five reasons that you can always pray with confidence. No matter who you are. Did you hear that? No matter who you are, no matter what you've done, no matter what your religious background is. Jesus in this passage gives you the five reasons you can stop worrying about "I don't know how to pray" and how you can pray with confidence all the time. So you need to write this down. This will change your life. It'll change the whole way you look about prayer if you'll do it the way Jesus said. Now in Matthew chapter 7, verses 7 to 12, this is in Jesus' famous Sermon on the Mount. He says this up here on the screen: "Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be open to you." This is a promise. Now, by the way, uh, the verbs there, ask, seek, and knock, they're actually present participles. Jesus is actually saying there, "Keep on asking, keep on seeking. Keep on knocking." Don't just knock one time. If, if I told you, "Go over to that house and knock on the door and when you open it up, uh, when the door opens, they're going to give you a million dollars." You wouldn't walk up and go and walk away. No. If you knew a million dollars behind that, you'd start knocking and you'd keep knocking and you'd keep knocking until the door opened. So God says, "Keep on asking, keep on seeking, keep on knocking. Be persistent in your prayer. For anyone who asks will receive. That's a promise. Anyone who seeks will find and everyone who asks, uh, knocks, the door will be opened." And then Jesus says this, for example, "If your child asked you for some bread to eat, would any of you fathers give her a stone instead?" Obviously the answer is no. Of course not. "Or if your child asked you for some fish, would you put a snake on their plate?" The answer is obviously no. He, he's using this metaphor, this image of prayer is like a father and a child talking together. And he says this now, "Since even you as sinful, imperfect parents." I'm an imperfect parent. I don't always get it right. You're an imperfect parent. "As a sinful, imperfect parents, you guys know how to give good gifts to your children." Even though I'm often selfish, I'm often self-centered. Uh, I'm not perfect. I know how to give good gifts to my kids. But so do you. He says, "Even if you're an imperfect parent and you know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more does your good and perfect Father in heaven give only gifts that are good to those who ask him?" There's that image of parent and child. And then he says, "So," he concludes, "in every situation, always do to others what you would want them to do to you." You're familiar with this. This is called the golden rule. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Most of you didn't know that it's in the context of prayer. He's talking about prayer. "In every situation, always do to others what you would want them to do to you because this sums up all the commands and all the teachings in the Bible. All the law and the prophets is summed up in this. Treat other people the way you'd like to be treated." Now, in that passage there, he gives us five reasons you don't have to worry when you pray. You don't have to worry about what you say, where you say it, how you say it, how long you pray. You don't have to worry. You can be confident. Would you write these down? Number one, these will change your life.
Number one, the first thing God teaches us in this passage is that God promises to answer if I keep asking. God promises to answer if I keep asking. He says, "Keep on asking and you'll be given what you ask for. Keep on looking, seeking, and you'll find. Keep on knocking and the door will be open. For anyone who asks will receive, anyone who seeks will find. And everyone who asks, uh, knocks, the door will be open." Now, what's the difference between asking, seeking, and knocking? It's just three ways of saying the same thing. If you take in English the letter first letter of each word ask, seek and knock. What does that spell? Ask. Yeah, he's just saying ask three different ways. But what he's mean saying here is proximity to your heavenly Father makes a difference. Write this down. I'm not going to go into detail on it, but let me explain it to you. When I'm close to my father, I just ask. When I'm close to my father, I just ask. In other words, if I'm a little kid and I'm at home and my dad's sitting there in the living room and I have something I need from him, I don't write him a letter. I don't send him an email. I don't call him on the phone. If I'm close to my father, I just go, "Hey, Dad, I need" and then I ask. And when you're close to God, then all you need to do is just ask. Like a child asks the Father, "God, I need this. Daddy, Abba, I need this." When you're close to God, you just ask. But sometimes I, I'm not close to my father. And sometimes you're not close to God. And sometimes I have something I want to ask my dad. And as a little kid, I, I go, "Well, he's not here in the living room." So I have to go seek him. I go look in the backyard. "Is dad in the backyard? I want to ask question." No, he's not there. I want to go to the garage. "Is dad in the garage?" No, he's not there. "Is he in, uh, is he in his little study area, his office at home?" No, he's not there. "Is he at work?" If he's at work, I might have to call him. And when, when I'm distant from God, I have to do a little bit more than seeking asking. I have to seek him. I have to seek him. When I'm distant from God, when I'm when he's not close. And then sometimes my dad is behind a wall and I have to knock. And when a wall keeps me from seeing my father, I knock. When I when he's in the room with me, I just ask. When I don't know where God is, when I'm distant from God, I seek. And when there's a barrier between me and God, I, I knock. I, I knock. And so I want to ask as a little kid, my dad something and I look for him and I find out he's in his office, but the door is shut. What do I do? Do I just give up? No, I just go up and knock on the door. And, and dad goes, "Who is this?" "It's me, Dad." "Come on in." No, no problem. No hassle. I just knock. "Is it okay for me to come in?" "Yeah, come on in. Come on in." And so what is he saying by this? Listen very closely. It doesn't matter how close you are to God or how far away you are to God. God still wants you to ask. Listen to this. Some of you think, "I'm not worthy to ask God. I'm too far away from God right now." God says, "No, you can ask. You can seek. You can knock. Doesn't matter what the distance is. Doesn't matter whether you're close or far away. The very act of you asking is going to bring you closer. So, it's not like you got to clean up your life and then you can start asking God. He says just ask. No matter whether you're really close to me or you're trying to find me. Some of you are seekers. You're trying to find God or you're you there's a barrier between you and God. You know it. God says it doesn't matter. You can still ask. That will give you confidence. That'll give you confidence. Regardless of how close or far away you are, you can ask for anything in prayer. Now, he says there, "Ask and it will be given. Seek and you'll find. Knock and the door will be open." Sounds like I can just ask for anything. The answer is you can ask for anything. It doesn't mean God's going to give it. God always answers every prayer. Always. But he doesn't always say yes. He says you can always ask but there are some obvious qualifications. In other words, God has some things he wants you to understand about prayer. That leads us to the second reason that I can always pray with confidence. And it's this. Write this down.
God will never give me anything that's unhelpful. Now, this is going to help you build confidence because you don't often know what to pray. You go, "I don't know if this is good for me or not." God will never give me anything that's unhelpful. He will not give you everything you want because not everything you want would be helpful. And in verse n, he says, "If your child, remember this, a father-daughter, father-son relationship. If your child asked you for some bread to eat, would any of you fathers give her a stone instead?" The obvious is of course not. Of course God would not do that to you and you wouldn't do it to your child. If your child came in and said, "Mommy, I'm hungry." You would say, "Oh, here, have a have a stone. Eat a rock." By the way, this is humor in the Bible, you guys. It's okay to laugh at this. This is Hebrew humor. Humor by exaggeration. Jesus has several laugh lines in the Sermon on the Mount, and this is one of them. He's going, "It's ridiculous to think that a mother or father, if they came and asked you for some food, you said, 'Well, here, bite a rock.'" No, he, he, he wouldn't do that. Now, if you ask God for something good, he's saying here, God is never going to give you something bad. He's never going to give you something bad. If you ask for something worthwhile, "I want some bread." He's not going to give you something worthless. He will never give you anything worthless. By the way, the opposite is true of this, too. If you ask for something good, God will never, never give you anything bad for your life. But the opposite is also true. If you ask for something bad, God's not going to give you that either. Why? Because God is a good, loving God. He knows what you need better than you do. He knows what will make you happy more than you do. He knows your life more than you do. He understands what makes you tick, what will make you fulfilled, what will give your life meaning and significance more than you do. So, both are true. You ask for good, he's not going to give you bad. And if you ask for bad, he's not going to give you bad because he is a loving God. He'll never give me anything that is unhelpful. Now, why is that good news to you? It means I don't have to censor my prayers. A lot of times we feel incompetent or unconfident about prayer because go, "I don't know if I should really be praying for this." I'm saying, "God, I'd really like to marry that person, but what if they're the wrong person?" or "God, I'd really like to have that job, but what if it was the wrong job for me?" God says, "It doesn't matter what you pray because I'm the one who's going to decide if it's good or not, not you. You don't have to know figure out if the prayer is a good one or not. Just ask." You can ask for anything. You can even ask for bad stuff. It's okay. Because as a child, a child might say, "Hey, Daddy, could I drink this bottle of Clorox?" And you say, "No." Okay. "Daddy, can I have I'm four years old. Can I have the keys to the car?" Know a and God knows what you don't know. So he says just don't worry about whether your c request is a good one or a bad one. You don't have to worry about that. Just ask whatever you want. I'll figure it out. It's on me. It's my burden. I will never give you something that is unhelpful. God will sort it out. That's a great stress reliever in prayer. Now the third reason he says, uh, we can pray with confidence. He says, "First, uh, God promises to answer if I keep asking. Second, God will never give me anything that's unhelpful." That's confidence. The third reason I can always pray with confidence is God will never give me anything that could harm me.
Now, he's taking it a deeper step. Not just something that's unhelpful, but God says, "I'm not, I would never give you anything that would harm you or hurt you." As I said, if I, I pray, you know, "Can I drink this poison?" No. The parents say, "No, no, you can't." In verse 10, he says, "If your child asked for some fish, hey dad, can I have some fish sticks? Can I get a McDonald's fish sandwich? Would you put a snake on their plate?" That's humor. That's exaggeration there. And no parent, no loving parent would do that. What's he saying here? A snake's a little different than a rock. A snake can be dangerous. In fact, sometimes a snake could be deadly. Sometimes you might ask for something that's actually dangerous in your life. Or you might ask for something that would actually be deadly and incredibly destructive in your life. God says, "It doesn't matter. Just go ahead and ask because I will never give you anything that's deadly or destructive. I'll figure it out. I'll sort it out. I'll, I'll sort it out. You don't have to worry. I, I will take care of it. I'm never going to give you anything that hurt you." That gives me confidence. When I don't know, "Should I pray for this or not? I don't know if this is the right thing or not." God just says, "Go ahead and ask. I'll figure it out. You don't have to. You can be confident." Now, here's the fourth reason we can always pray with confidence. God will only give me what's best for me. He says that in the next verse, "God will only give me what's best for me." That gives me a lot of confidence when I pray.
And in verse 11, he says this. Um, "Now since even you as a sinful, imperfect parent know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more does your perfect, good and perfect Father in heaven give only gifts that are good to those who ask him?" Now this gives me a lot of confidence in praying too. In the first place, you need to understand God is not a slot, slot machine where you put in the prayer and you pull the lever and you get whatever the slot, slot machine gives you. A slot machine gives you can give you bad stuff or a vending machine, even better illustration. You put money in a vending machine, pull the lever and, and you're going to get stuff that has carcinogens in it and stuff that could harm you. God is not a vending machine. In fact, I've noticed that in vending machines, it never vending machines never have the best stuff. God will only give you the best. If you've ever had a donut in a vending machine, it's not nearly as good as another kind of donut. Or if you've ever had a sandwich in a vending machine, is it the best sandwich you've ever had? No. God is not a vending machine. He will only give you what's best for you. He says that. And by the way, God is not your genie. Some people treat prayer like the Aladdin's lamp and you know you rub the Aladdin's lamp and the genie comes out and, and God says, "Your wish is my command." No, you don't. God doesn't serve you. You serve him. God is not your butler. God is not your genie. God is not your vending machine. God is not your servant. You are God's servant. He said, "Well, well then why should I even ask?" Because he is your Father. He's not your vending machine. But he is your Father and he loves you more than you even love yourself. And God says, "I am your loving heavenly Father and I'm waiting to answer your prayers and I'm wanting to answer your prayers." So why are you all nervous about praying? He's just your Father in heaven. You don't have to say fancy words. "God, I need this." That's a good enough prayer. And God will, will sort it all out. And I will never give you. He says, "What's what's not best for you?" Now, have you noticed of these first four things why you can be confident in prayer, none of them have to do with you. When he says, "God says, I'll answer." All you just keep asking, okay? All I got to do is ask. There's no no big deal about that. God will never give me something that is unhelpful. God will never give me something that is harmful. And God will always only give me the best. None of those have to do with me. So why am I worried about my prayer? I just all I do as a little child, I just ask God, "I need this." If it's a good request, I'll get it. If it's another request, I'll get it in a different way. If it's a if it's a bad request, God is not going to give it because he's good and loving and kind. Now, there's one more reason that I can always pray with confidence, and it's this.
God wants me to give to others what I want to get. God wants me to give to others what I want to get myself. Now, this is the golden rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." And many people know that golden rule, but they don't realize it's actually connected to prayer. Verse 12. "So, in every situation, always do to others what you would want them to do for you. This sums up all the commands and all the teachings in the Bible." Now, what that doesn't sound like it has anything to do with prayer, but it does. Why? Have you ever had been asked by somebody, "Would you pray for me?" Probably. And you go, "Okay, they asked me to pray for them. What do I pray?" I have no idea what to pray. When somebody comes up to me, and I get asked all the time, "Pastor Rick, will you pray for me?" I'm going, "I don't know what to pray for them." What do you pray for somebody when they ask you to pray for them? Here's what you do. You pray whatever you would like people to pray for you. That's it. That's it. Would you like to have safety and security and success in your life? Yes. Then pray for safety and security and success in other people's life. Would you like the financial blessing of God in your life? Yes. Then pray for the financial blessing of God in other people's life. Would you like to have a healthy body? Yes. Then pray for the healthy body of other people. Would you like to have a better use of your time? Yes. Then pray for other people to use their time in the best way. Whatever you want God to do for you, he says, "I want you to do it to other people." And God says, "The way I treat you as my loving child, I'm your heavenly Father. That's the way I expect you to treat everybody else." God wants you to treat other people the way he treats you. And when you pray for other people, what do you pray? You pray what you'd like to have prayed for you. Then you know instantly what to pray for people. What would I like to have in that situation? Guy says to you, "My wife just walked out on me." What would you want people to pray for you? Well, you pray that for others. See how simple this is? And, and, and, and God wants you to treat others the way he treats you when you pray. Now, why is this important? Because God doesn't want you to be selfish. I told you that in, um, the book of Job, it's in chapter 42:10. In fact, it's up here on the screen. It says this, "After Job prayed for his friends, the Lord restored his fortunes. In fact, the Lord gave him twice as much as before." Remember the story of Job? He was the wealthiest man in the world. And one day, he literally lost it all. His all of his children were killed. His business collapsed. His crops were burned, he lost his home, he lost his health, he got a terrible disease and it was miserable. And at the end of that book, it doesn't say when Job prayed for himself, God heard him. It says when Job began to pray for his friends, God said, "Oh, okay. You're ready now." God is looking for you to be unselfish. The more selfish you are, the more God's going to say, "Well, you got a little more grown up to do." But when you begin to pray for other people's breakthrough, guess what's going to happen in your life? Your breakthrough.
Let's bow our heads. Would you say, "God, I'm, I'm sorry that I've been nervous about prayer. I, I, I've been confused. I've had doubts about it. I haven't understood it. So, I didn't even know how to pray. That I thank you, Jesus, for these five things that you promise to answer if I just keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking. Thank you that no matter what my relationship is to you, whether I'm close or distant or there's a even a barrier, you want me to ask and seek and knock. Thank you, God, that you're never going to give me something that's unhelpful. You're never going to give me something that's harmful. You're never going to answer a request that's a wrong request that's not going to make me what I really want in life. Thank you that you'll only give me what's best for me so I can relax and I don't have to worry about is this an okay request, that I can literally ask for anything and you'll do the sorting out. Lord, that's such a great relief, a tension reliever. And Lord, I ask you to help me to give away what I want to receive. Help me to give away what I want to receive so that you may teach me not just your blessings, but to teach me to be more like Jesus Christ." You've never invited Jesus into your life. Say, "Jesus Christ, come into my life. Make yourself real to me. I want to get to know you. I want to learn to trust you and love you. I want to learn to talk to you all the time. And I humbly ask this, my Father in heaven, in Jesus' name. Amen.