Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] You're listening to a live recording from Westside Church in Bend, Oregon. Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:06] Well, I get to talk about prayer today, and in this series, you've been talking about the posture of prayer as a new believer and thinking about prayer and how it can be awkward at times. I remember as a new Christian, I think I was 18 years old and I was at a youth college event thing in Eugene, and we were standing around with about eight of us, and somebody mentioned something and said, well, let's pray about it. And I'm thinking, okay, I'm new to this. And they all just immediately reached out and my hands got grabbed and I'm going, oh, okay. And then one guy across the way in this circle started praying, and I'm okay. And then the next one started praying to and then the next one. And I thought, oh, dear God, they're coming to me.
[00:01:04] It's going to be my turn. And just that panicked feeling, it was so awkward. I didn't want to look like an idiot, but I knew if I prayed, I would.
[00:01:14] And I thought, what kind of, what do I say? It's got to sound important, profound. And I got nothing. I got nothing. And it comes around and it was a short prayer, what they said. Amen.
[00:01:29] I agree. That was about all I had.
[00:01:32] We all naturally try to avoid awkward situations unless it's watching someone else in one that can be fairly pleasurable.
[00:01:43] So prayer sometimes is avoided so that we don't look foolish.
[00:01:48] When we do pray, we often do it in the face of fear or a crisis or a math test, you know, one of those things where break in case of emergency. Then I'll go ahead and try out a prayer, perhaps, or maybe it's in a dark time and it turns into more of a country song prayer. I pray for you that you would drive off a cliff, smite them, God.
[00:02:19] Another prayer motivator can be guidance.
[00:02:23] We want to know what to do next. How do we go about it? There's all kinds of ways out there in this world to gain some guidance, whether it's tarot cards or astrology or tea leaves or palm readers. Maybe as a Christian, you tried some different kinds of methods as well, because sometimes you don't know what to do. And so you do this. Oh, God, give me guidance in my marriage is hard. I don't know what to do. I don't know where to go from here. And so you open your Bible, you close your eyes, and you do that, and it says, so Lamech married two women.
[00:03:05] Well, Genesis 419 wasn't helpful at all because I don't think that's going to be very well received.
[00:03:13] The Bible is really clear about prayer and guidance and what brings inner peace. And Philippians four, it says this, don't worry about anything. Instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need and thank him for all he has done. Then you'll experience God's peace, which exceeds anything we can understand.
[00:03:34] His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.
[00:03:40] Pray about everything still. How do I do it and what do I pray? Fortunately, the disciples asked this question a couple thousand years ago. They went to him and they said, teach us how to pray, Lord. And Jesus gave them a model, a pattern. Today we call it the Lord's Prayer or the our father.
[00:04:01] I grew up Catholic and so I memorized the Lord's Prayer because I had to say it a lot following confession.
[00:04:11] I don't know if any of you, anybody that has some catholic experience. Yeah, okay. Quite a few. Well, you go to confession, the priest hears it, and then he kind of gives you what's called the penance, which is now you go and pray these prayers. And I was really good at it. I had to do a lot of them when I was done with confession, and I found that I could pray the Lord's Prayer in 6.4 seconds. I can pray the Lord's prayer faster than Usain Bolt can win the 100 meters. Okay, I'm good, I'm good. And that wasn't the point, though, although the memorization of that now is something I treasure. I'm so glad for that. And it was good to memorize something besides the theme song to the Beverly hillbillies.
[00:05:03] The Lord's prayer is really eight different phrases that guide us in connecting with God. And there's a circular pattern, often to the psalms, where you'll see there's praise to God and then there's maybe a lamentation, God, why?
[00:05:19] Or I don't understand, or help me in this area, you know, this kind of pattern. Then it ends again with praise to God. So I love that pattern because it's, you're awesome, God, now help me in my temptation, help me to trust you, to feed me, help me to connect. And then praise be to goddess, you're almighty. So it's okay to be honest, but also to remind yourself of who he is. And we're just going to look at one phrase today, the Lord's prayer, Matthew six. It says this. This then is how you should pray. Our father in heaven.
[00:06:02] That's where we're going to look at. I'm hoping to help you pray more freely, maybe even more effectively, perhaps more confidently.
[00:06:13] If you're new to church or you're new to prayer, that's just something that you kind of haven't really figured out yet.
[00:06:21] Maybe this will help give you a little peek behind the prayer curtain.
[00:06:26] If you're a prayer warrior, perhaps this perspective, this framing of who God is willing to give you a greater sense of his presence in your prayer life. Our father, that simple phrase is one of the most liberating things that Jesus ever taught. He was exploding stereotypes that people had about God and he said, he's our father, suggesting a close personal relationship, caring relationship. Now I realize that for some today, the term father doesn't bring warm feelings, that you look back on your own experience with your human father or your human parent.
[00:07:13] And it's maybe the first thought is disappointment or anger, abandonment, maybe even abuse. Some people think, well, if God is like my father, no, thank you.
[00:07:26] No, thank you. I understand that. And then you hear about the grace of Goddesse. And my grandmother's name was grace. She was the meanest woman on the planet. And I've heard about, well, the grace of God. I thought, bummer for him.
[00:07:44] He has one too.
[00:07:47] So this idea of father was for me a bit of a struggle. As a new believer, I struggled with the idea that God was approachable, that he wanted to be with me, that he was inviting me, our father. So what kind of a God? Rather, what kind of a father is God?
[00:08:09] Well, the Bible shows us really clearly that he's for us and he's not against us. He wants us to come boldly and confidently to him, confident in his love for us.
[00:08:22] Often my resistance to the idea of father God, or even prayer in the idea that it's hard to get past this. Am I welcome? Am I good enough?
[00:08:37] Often that is rooted in pain that we've experienced some hurts, like God, where were you when she died?
[00:08:50] He left when I got that diagnosis, God, where were you then?
[00:08:58] Why pray to a God if he doesn't care?
[00:09:02] If our view of God is maybe that he is critical or angry, we'll tend to keep our distance. Don't you do that naturally. Someone is going to be angry and critical. You want to keep some distance.
[00:09:15] That's probably smart.
[00:09:18] And if we're not going to keep our distance, sometimes what we'll try to do is earn their love, be good enough, do everything right.
[00:09:30] You have this tension of truth and grace and he is truthful. And we can be a little fearful of that. We want a lot of grace. I want truth when it applies to you. I want grace when it applies to me. I think that we're not that different. But the trying harder just leads us into this guilt cycle because we can't pull it off.
[00:09:56] We're not going to be able to do this perfectly well. We can confidently pray to our father because, first of all, he's a loving father.
[00:10:05] He is a loving father. You can be confident of that. The Bible says this in psalms 103. He's like a father to us, tender and sympathetic to those who reverence him.
[00:10:17] God loves you.
[00:10:20] For some of you, it's. There's almost, I want to believe it, but I struggle sometimes with that. Does he really love me? Yes. He knows what you did last summer and he still loves you right now.
[00:10:36] If it's true, then I can come to God in prayer, assuming that he cares.
[00:10:45] One Peter five seven. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. Cast all your anxiety.
[00:10:55] Huh? What anxieties are you still holding on to today?
[00:11:00] What worries, fears are you still holding on to today?
[00:11:06] You know what that means? Means you're carrying them.
[00:11:10] You're the one carrying them.
[00:11:12] And we're to cast them on him.
[00:11:16] This word cast is not like going fishing where you cast it. This is what I often do in prayer. I cast it and then I reel it right back to me. Cause I need to worry about it until I'm sure he takes care of it.
[00:11:33] Cause, you know, I'm amazing.
[00:11:37] And I cast it again and then I reel it back in. This idea of casting is really, you're carrying something and you hand off the burden.
[00:11:48] It doesn't mean you hand off your responsibilities, your response, your points of obedience, perhaps, but it says, I'm going to entrust this to you.
[00:12:00] I'm going to let you carry this with me.
[00:12:04] Cast your anxiety on him.
[00:12:08] Trust him with that burden. He is a loving father. Jesus said this not long after he taught them to pray.
[00:12:16] So do not worry, saying, what shall we eat? Or what shall we wear? Your heavenly father knows that you need them.
[00:12:23] When I was talking with Ben and Evan about, you know, speaking here from time to time, I was whom I qualified. And Ben said, you know, all we need you to do is grow a beard and buy some skinny jeans. And so I wanted to fit in.
[00:12:52] Don't be worried about all your stuff. I'm going to stick to the notes from now on.
[00:13:00] He is acquainted with every detail of my life and yours. And he cares.
[00:13:08] Matter of fact, I want to look at some omnis that describe God's character.
[00:13:12] Our father is omniscient, which means he's all knowing. He knows all your stuff.
[00:13:19] He's acquainted with what you need. You don't have to worry about it, but pray about it.
[00:13:24] That's part of the casting, is the prayer.
[00:13:29] He is a loving father. We can also confidently pray to our father because he's a consistent father.
[00:13:38] God is dependable, reliable, entirely worthy of your trust. James one seven. Every good and perfect gift coming down from the father who does not change, like shifting shadows.
[00:13:51] There is no such thing as a human parent. You didn't have one, and you are not one. But God is.
[00:14:00] The good news that he's never moody.
[00:14:03] It's not. How's it gonna be today?
[00:14:06] Is he angry? God is consistent, even when I'm inconsistent. Two Timothy two. If we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot disown himself.
[00:14:18] He loves you 100% right now.
[00:14:23] He's all in on his love for you right now, and he was yesterday, and he will be tomorrow 100%. He is so into you.
[00:14:34] He loves you so completely.
[00:14:37] We have to be confident of that in order to boldly come before this throne of grace.
[00:14:46] Psalms 59 says, my God is changeless in his love for me.
[00:14:51] It never shifts. My dad was an occasionally employed alcoholic, and so as a grade schooler, when I would come home, I would immediately take the temperature of the house.
[00:15:04] Not the thermostat, the emotional temperature.
[00:15:08] Is it safe here?
[00:15:11] Sometimes. Maybe feels okay. Sometimes you could feel the chill of the tension.
[00:15:18] Most often, nobody home. He wasn't there.
[00:15:22] Father. God is always home.
[00:15:24] He's always loving. He's absolutely consistent in his love for you.
[00:15:30] And we can confidently pray to our father because he's a present father.
[00:15:36] He's omnipresent everywhere, all the time, not bound by space or time.
[00:15:43] You can count on that.
[00:15:46] He's nearby when you need him. He's available, accessible. Acts 17.
[00:15:50] God did this, meaning he came close so people would reach out for him and find him. Though he is not far from any of us.
[00:16:01] You see, Jesus is right there. You may feel at times that you're miles from God. He is always just a half turn away.
[00:16:13] He's always, always right there.
[00:16:17] Psalms 145. The Lord is near to all who live perfectly, who call on him. Sometimes I say, well, I talk to people. I just don't know how to pray. I said, well, it's interesting because you just talked to me.
[00:16:34] The fact that you can do this.
[00:16:38] Says that you can pray. It's talking.
[00:16:42] Talking honestly.
[00:16:44] God is never too busy for me and he's sympathetic to my hurts and my needs.
[00:16:52] I don't know if you have worked through or working through a parent wound in your life, but I know this. Learning to trust my father.
[00:17:05] Sometimes I have to get beyond my earthly father because God, my father, is good. And he's good all the time.
[00:17:17] Jesus went on to tell the disciples in Matthew seven what they could expect from the father. If you know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him?
[00:17:34] There's a Bible word.
[00:17:37] It's called abba. It's not just a swedish rock band.
[00:17:43] It's two of you are familiar with that. That's good.
[00:17:49] It's actually an aramaic word that means daddy.
[00:17:55] It's an endearing, terminal. It's an intimate kind of term.
[00:18:03] When we were living in Kirkland, our neighbor across the street, they were a jewish family. And when their preschooler would see daddy roll in, she would come running out yelling, abba, abba, abba, abba. And you know what? She was confident of an embrace.
[00:18:22] She was confident that she would be received. That's what this Abba thing is about.
[00:18:30] A verse you can look up on your own sometime. In Romans 815, this term, Abba father is mentioned in relationship to the spirit's work of adoption.
[00:18:42] You see, adoption means that you've been chosen, that it's a deliberate act.
[00:18:50] God has chosen you. He has sought you out and chosen you. But in order to wrap up the paperwork, you have to accept the adoption.
[00:19:03] You have to say yes to the adoption.
[00:19:07] He's not forcing it. He's inviting us.
[00:19:11] When my granddaughter was, I think she was about six or seven years old, they were living in Seattle. We were in San Diego, went to pick them up at the airport.
[00:19:23] And she's an extrovert. And they were coming down the escalator to baggage claim. And I could see that she was looking. She was already ahead of her parents, looking for us, scanning. And I was able to move down to the bottom of the escalator. And she's looking over me and over me. And she's now coming down. She's about, I don't know, ten, eight steps up and she sees me and she just dives.
[00:19:55] And as she's coming, I just.
[00:19:58] No, I didn't do that. I didn't.
[00:20:01] No way.
[00:20:03] No way. I made sure that I grabbed her. That is what you can expect.
[00:20:11] All who call on him, you can expect that God is not going well.
[00:20:17] Been a while.
[00:20:20] Oh, you must be in trouble.
[00:20:23] Got some issues. Okay, I understand.
[00:20:27] Whatever.
[00:20:29] No, he's there.
[00:20:32] That's who he really is.
[00:20:35] And if you have some. Some ideas about God that are different than that, or you feel different than that, there are times when you need to tell your feelings to go to hell, because that's where they originated. But they've originated often in very real pain.
[00:20:57] Let God paint an accurate picture of who he is in your own heart and mind.
[00:21:03] Abba. Father, he's not an apathetic creator who just did all this wounded up and then walked away.
[00:21:11] He's present, not an impersonal power.
[00:21:16] Psalms 34. The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. If you've ever felt like giving up on you, be assured that God has not given up on you.
[00:21:28] And you might say, hey, I've messed up. I could never be where God intends me to be. You can be in the center of God's will from this point forward.
[00:21:38] You may have just completely jacked up back there, but you can begin again. That's grace.
[00:21:46] That's the beauty of this thing we've walked into, is you can begin again. Well, will it look different if I had done things differently back there? Yeah, probably.
[00:21:56] But God will say to you, I'll lead you from this point forward.
[00:22:01] That is why I love this invitation that we've been given of relationship with his father. He draws near to us, and finally, we can confidently pray to our father, because he's a powerful father.
[00:22:17] Matter of fact, the omni here is. He's omnipotent, all powerful, absolutely capable, nothing beyond his ability. Luke 137. For no word from God will ever fail. You can trust what he has said. If he has promised it, it will happen. It might not happen in your timeline, it will occur because he's.
[00:22:47] Because he's faithful.
[00:22:49] You know, when my kids would ask me questions sometimes, dad, how far is the moon from the earth? And I'd look over and say, well, it's 327,422 miles.
[00:23:04] And for all you astronomy nerds, I know that's not right, but I made stuff up and then told them, daddy knows everything.
[00:23:16] And then the Internet came and ruined it for all of us.
[00:23:21] You probably thought at one point in your life your dad could do anything.
[00:23:26] But then you grew up and realized that he can't.
[00:23:29] His limited wisdom, resources, energy.
[00:23:35] But our father is limitless.
[00:23:38] He's omnipotent. There's no end to his resources, his wisdom, or his energy or his love.
[00:23:50] Ephesians three.
[00:23:52] Now, glory be to God, who by his mighty power at work within us, is able to do more than we would ever dare to ask or even dream of, infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts or hopes. Wow.
[00:24:11] But, Mike, the stuff I've done. Yeah, but add God at work within you, it completely changes the equation.
[00:24:21] He doesn't overpower us with this father demand.
[00:24:30] He created everyone. But if God is our father, the choice is yours and mine. And it's not just a one time choice. I'm continually there to invite him in that it's not a one and done.
[00:24:47] I have to come and say, I got to offload. I have to cast last night. I've been writing this for a while, this talk today and last night. There's some stuff going on with a couple of family members right now. And I found myself laying in bed, not able to go to sleep, worrying. I'm going, well, this is great. Now I'm going to teach everyone how not to do what I'm doing.
[00:25:18] And so I laid there and I.
[00:25:21] I did it again.
[00:25:23] I did this. But I've been reeling it in all day.
[00:25:27] Lord, I trust you with the outcome.
[00:25:30] I trust you with this outcome.
[00:25:35] He invites us into this loving, confident relationship. In mark 14, Jesus is praying in the garden before his arrest.
[00:25:45] He says, abba, father, everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but you will.
[00:25:54] You know, the really hard stuff is when you're in the middle of the really hard stuff, and yet you choose to trust.
[00:26:02] My pastor when I received Christ was a guy named Roy Hicks Junior, and he used to say this, my responsibility is obedience. He's responsible for the outcome.
[00:26:17] But I want to control the outcome. I love to control the outcome, but I found I'm not very good at controlling the outcome. And I end up seeing his outcomes even when it was confusing, when I didn't like it.
[00:26:34] But I see that he's good all the time. Every time in this garden moment, he was under such stress. The Bible says that he sweat blood.
[00:26:46] That's intense. Deliver me, Father.
[00:26:50] But I trust you for the outcome.
[00:26:57] Are you carrying any stress?
[00:27:00] Did you come in with some worries that you've been holding on to? Has there maybe been a feeling of distance from goddess?
[00:27:12] Choose to trust Abba.
[00:27:15] Trust him with the outcomes, even. Especially the ones that are completely beyond your control.
