“Prayer Lessons from Jesus”
Matthew 6:9-13

For several months now we have been engaged in an extended spiritual journey that has been grounded in prayer. We have sensed God’s invitation to get to know Him better and better through the deepening of our prayer lives both individually and corporately. And as great as it has been so far, I’m convinced that God has even greater blessings still in store for us.

Throughout this time, my personal prayer pilgrimage has led me to a variety of prayer resources and experiences that have stretched and expanded my own prayer life significantly.

--I’ve been assembling a prayer library and have been tremendously blessed as I’ve been reading about the prayer lives and lessons learned by other believers.

--I visited a church that has a prayer room staffed and open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year for anyone who would like to come and pray by themselves, with others or to have someone pray for them.

--In April, several of us attended the Pastor’s Prayer Conference at the Brooklyn Tabernacle in New York and I sensed there a powerful movement of God’s Spirit in me.

--I’ve also discovered an incredible array of prayer focused websites and I’ve gleaned a number of great ideas from them. We’ve now added a link to our church website that allows anyone visiting the site to submit a prayer request to us. Those requests are then forwarded to a team of people who not only pray for those requests but also send an email back to the person who sent the request to let them know that we’ve prayed for them and to offer them helpful scripture references related to their prayer concerns.
Within mere hours of adding that option to our website, we began to receive prayer requests from all kinds of people from all kinds of places. And the whole idea was born in me as I wandered to various prayer sites on the web. Now, let me quickly add that you need to be discerning as you wander on the web, because there are some genuinely strange ideas about prayer out there.

One of my favorite discoveries is a site that features a, “Prayer Lava Lamp.” You remember the Lava Lamps from the ‘60’s? Well, this site features a Prayer Lava Lamp that runs 24 hours a day. Here’s how it works. Using your mouse, you click on one of the ascending bubbles in the Lava Lamp. When you click on a bubble it stops so that you can type your prayer into the bubble. When you’ve finished composing your prayer, you then click on the bubble again and watch your prayer bubble rise upward to God. I gotta give ‘em an “A” for creativity.

I also have to confess that even though I’ve recently discovered an vast array of resources to broaden my prayer life, I continually return to my favorite prayer resource of all. We call it, “The Lord’s Prayer.” Jesus offered us this prayer as a model to teach us how we should pray. Some of you may remember that we worked our way through this prayer 5 years ago. As I was rereading it again this past week I realized that we didn’t even come close to exhausting it’s treasures. So, for the rest of the summer, we’re going to examine it again and see what God has to teach us this time. It’s found in Matthew 6:9-13. Let’s read it together.

“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.”

“This,” Jesus says at the beginning of verse 9, “is how you should pray.” Pray like this. His point is not that we always have to use these exact words every time we pray. He’s not offering us a magic formula. His point is that in this prayer we see a model of the kind of prayer that God delights in answering.

--This kind of prayer advances God’s purposes.

--This kind of prayer gives honor and glory to God.

--When we pray like this God grows in us the heart, the mind and the character of Christ.

“Oh, God, teach us to pray like this. Let the spirit of this prayer permeate all of our prayers.”

This morning, I want us to begin our extended look at this amazing prayer by focusing solely on the word, “Father.” Our Father. What an amazing way for people like us…just ordinary people…to address Almighty God. Our “Father.”

Let’s begin by thinking about what that word, “Father,” says about us and our beginning; about our origin. Before we were here our Father was here. You’ve probably noticed that children tend to arrive after their father. Before we existed, our Father existed. But far more important than the fact that we came into existence after God is the fact that we came into existence because of God. Think about that. Let that thought roll around in your mind for a moment.

You didn’t come up with the idea for you. You were God’s idea. He thought you up. You would not exist if your Father had not decided to bring you into existence. You are not a mistake and you are not an accident. You are the result of God’s purpose, God’s design and God’s will. You can trace your existence directly to your Father.

Acts 17:28 says it like this, “For in him we live and move and have our being.” When we pray, “Our Father,” we are acknowledging God as the foundation and source of our very existence. Does that matter? You bet it matters. It matters a bunch.

When your friends abandon you…or your parents let you know that you never quite measured up to their expectations…when your accomplishments seem trivial compared to everyone else’s…when the voices of those around you and the tape that plays over and over inside you leave you feeling insignificant and irrelevant…it’s important to remember who your Father is.

In Psalm 139:14 David says it like this, “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful…” And, folks, you are one of His works.
The opinions of those who would demean you and diminish you and discount you become irrelevant when you know who your Father is.

Do I care about what other people say about me? Sure, I do. I’m human like everyone else. I have the same feelings that you do. I like to be liked. I like to have others speak well of me and it hurts when they don’t. But, folks, I decided a long time ago that what God has to say about me is infinitely more important than what anyone else has to say about me. And my Father calls me His son. What’s more, I also decided that what God has to say about me is also infinitely more important than what I may say about myself at any given moment. And my Father calls me His son.

“Oh, Father, what a gift You’ve given me in inviting me to know You as my Father. You’ve not only given me life, but You’ve filled my life with meaning and value and purpose. Father, forgive me for listening to those who would demean Your wonderful work by demeaning me. Help me to live this day secure in the knowledge that I am my Father’s child.”

Do you suppose a prayer like that at the beginning of the day would have any impact the rest of your day? I think it might. I also think we’re beginning to see why Jesus said, “This is how you should pray.”

So, one of the reasons that it’s important for us to address God as, “our Father,” is because of what it says about our origin…about how we got here. It’s also important to address God as, “our Father,” because of what it says about our PURPOSE…about our reason for being here.

You see, the moment that I address God as, “Father,” I am affirming that my role in this relationship is the role of, “child.” We’re not peers. We’re not equals. We’re not buddies. He’s the Father in this relationship and I’m the child. What’s more, my position in this relationship will never change…I’ll always be the child. And the scriptures make it very clear that the primary responsibility of every child is to obey their parents.

That was a message that I picked up on very early in my home. I didn’t have to always understand my father. I didn’t have to always agree with my father. But it was clearly understood by all parties that I did have to obey him. That was the nature of our relationship.

And as I matured and accepted that responsibility I discovered something very interesting, even surprising—far from being burdensome, accepting the responsibility of obedience turned out to be incredibly liberating. As I lived in obedience within the boundaries that my father established for me, I found an incredible degree of freedom to live and enjoy my life to the fullest.

And the biblical mandate of obedience that is to govern our relationship with our earthly father is also to govern our relationship with our Heavenly Father. Our primary responsibility is to be obedient to our Father. That’s job #1. That’s our purpose. Today. Tomorrow. And every day after that. And our role model…our example…for this lifestyle of obedience is Jesus who said, in John 6:38, “I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me.”

And one of the great challenges that we face as children of our Father is the challenge of moving from resisting the call to obedience to embracing it.

--We can fight it. We can resist it. We can try to get around it. We can rebel against it. We can insist on doing things “our way” rather than our Father’s way and in the process, we will bring all manner of grief and hardship into our lives. How many of you would say that you’ve found that to be true?

--On the other hand, we can also embrace it. We can accept that our primary responsibility in this relationship with our Father is to walk in obedience with Him and in doing so we will discover that far from being burdensome, accepting the responsibility of obedience is actually incredibly liberating. As we live in obedience within the boundaries that our father has established and made clear for us in His word, we will find an incredible degree of freedom to live and enjoy our lives to the fullest. We’ll discover a depth of meaning and purpose for our lives that is thoroughly satisfying and fulfilling. And we’ll look back on those times when we were not walking in obedience to God…those times when we insisted on doing things our way rather than His way…and we’ll realize that we were settling for trinkets while God was offering us treasures.

“Oh, Father, what a gift You’ve given me in calling me to walk in obedience to You, my Father. You’ve freed me from a life lived in pursuit of lesser things. You’ve freed me from the destructive consequences of sin and self. You’ve filled my life with purpose and a passion for pleasing You and in this pursuit I am wholly and completely satisfied. I am overwhelmed with joy. Oh, Father, I’m so grateful to be Your child.”

Do you suppose a prayer like that at the beginning of the day would have any impact the rest of your day? I think it might. I also think we’re beginning to see why Jesus said, “This is how you should pray.”

So, calling God, “our Father,” speaks volumes about our origin and our purpose. It also speaks volumes about God’s heart. You see, if all I knew about God was that He was holy, just, mighty, the Creator and Sustainer of the universe—if that’s all I knew about God, I could certainly worship Him, but I don’t know that I could ever be comfortable approaching Him. But that’s not all that I know about God. He is holy and just and mighty. He is the Creator and Sustainer of the universe. And He’s also my Father. I’m his child. And one of the most precious privileges I have as a child is open access to my Father. It’s a precious privilege that our Father grants to each and every one of His children.

We can come to God in prayer any time for any reason and…
…know that we are welcome in His presence,
…know that He delights in our presence,
…know that He will listen with a Father’s heart,
…and know that He will always respond in a way that expresses His love for us and provides only what is best for us.

How can we know all of that? We know it because He is our Father.

“Oh, Father, what a gift You’ve given me in inviting me to know You as my Father. What a privilege to be welcome in Your presence. What a delight to come as a child and rest in my Father’s arms. What a comfort to trust in my Father’s provision for my every need. What a joy it is to receive my Father’s love and to offer mine in return.”

© Copyright 2007 Pastor Tom Marcum