Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / September 30, 2018 | 4 Things . . . About God - God Loves To Give Us Things

Transcript

September 30, 2018 | 4 Things . . . About God - God Loves To Give Us Things · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever been misunderstood?
0:03
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe misrepresented?
0:05
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever had someone think they know who you are only to finally meet you and say, Oh, you're not at all like I thought you were?
0:12
SPEAKER_00: We've all at different times been labeled.
0:15
SPEAKER_00: We've all had things assumed about us that aren't true.
0:18
SPEAKER_00: And the truth is, we do this with God too.
0:21
SPEAKER_00: Millions of us go through life and we think we know all about God.
0:25
SPEAKER_00: We've heard of Jesus, we've heard of the Ten Commandments, we know most of the rules, but do we know who He truly is?
0:34
SPEAKER_00: Do we know what He's really like?
0:54
SPEAKER_01: Good morning.
0:57
SPEAKER_01: If you're in the Mulvaine building, welcome to Gotham Bible Church.
1:02
SPEAKER_01: We invited Bruce Wayne this morning.
1:04
SPEAKER_01: He said only if he could come in his disguise as a.
1:09
SPEAKER_01: So if you're in the cab building and you're allergic to bats, be happy.
1:14
SPEAKER_01: So um so we're in the series.
1:17
SPEAKER_01: In fact, this is the fourth and final of our uh September series.
1:22
SPEAKER_01: Four things I wish you knew about God.
1:25
SPEAKER_01: First one, uh, three weeks ago was I wish you knew that God knows better than you how to make you happy.
1:31
SPEAKER_01: Uh two weeks ago was um, I wish you knew that when you're forgiven, when God forgives you, you're really forgiven.
1:40
SPEAKER_01: Last week was a little bit of an outlier.
1:43
SPEAKER_01: It was, uh, I wish you knew that God's in the real estate business.
1:47
SPEAKER_01: One of my friends this week goes, uh where did that come from?
1:52
SPEAKER_01: So that was last week.
1:55
SPEAKER_01: This week, well, I'll tell you in a minute, but it is uh it has to do with prayer.
2:00
SPEAKER_01: I did a series on prayer a couple of years ago, and we looked at prayer from a number of different different angles, different perspectives, and so forth.
2:08
SPEAKER_01: Today, no, it's just one sort of a look based upon something that I would really I feel like even, well, you know, even mature Christians have forgotten maybe about God or don't think about God.
2:23
SPEAKER_01: And it really, my goal is that after hearing this message this morning, you sort of fall in love with God more, and and you'll pray more this week, and you'll pray with enjoyment, and you'll run to Him.
2:35
SPEAKER_01: So that's that's my goal.
2:36
SPEAKER_01: So uh let me start off with uh uh you know, the thing I'm gonna tell you about today really comes from a fallacy that I think that we think about God and I and as I was doing that, I think, uh, there's some other fallacies.
2:47
SPEAKER_01: So let me share with you four uh common fallacies I think that are spread around the world today about prayer, and I'll get through these quickly because the fourth one leads into my message.
2:59
SPEAKER_01: And the first common fallacy is the idea, the notion that God hates it when people suddenly pray extra hard when crisis comes.
3:11
SPEAKER_01: Right?
3:11
SPEAKER_01: Am I the only one who's ever heard people say, oh, they're only praying because they're in crisis, you know, their mother has cancer or something like that, you know, and can be critical of people who struggle with prayer, who don't pray all that much, right?
3:26
SPEAKER_01: Uh we're all there, who don't pray as much as they should.
3:29
SPEAKER_01: And then when some sort of a crisis or big need comes, you know, all of a sudden, you know, uh they're praying.
3:35
SPEAKER_01: My wife is up till two, three, even four o'clock this morning because her sister's car ran out of gas on a lonely highway in Texas, and you know, she's lost, and Melanie's trying to talk her through that for hour after hour.
3:46
SPEAKER_01: And I mean, there's a lot of prayer going up.
3:48
SPEAKER_01: That's what we do, you know, in crisis.
3:50
SPEAKER_01: But sometimes we can think, you know, God hates it when people do that.
3:54
SPEAKER_01: And my reply to that really quickly would simply be that, you know, when I look at Jesus' life, and and and the simplest answer to why we should pray and how we should pray is Jesus.
4:05
SPEAKER_01: Look at his life.
4:06
SPEAKER_01: He prayed.
4:07
SPEAKER_01: When I look at Jesus' life, I see that Jesus prayed extra hard every time he came to a crossroads.
4:14
SPEAKER_01: Every time Jesus came to something difficult or difficult decision or something like that, Jesus always prayed.
4:20
SPEAKER_01: For instance, the the day before he broke in public, before he went public, baptism sold, he prayed, went up in the mountains to pray.
4:27
SPEAKER_01: And then the the night before he was gonna choose his twelve disciples, you talk about a critical crossroads decision.
4:35
SPEAKER_01: Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, spent the night praying to God.
4:39
SPEAKER_01: And when morning came, he called his disciples, chose twelve of them, whom he designated apostles.
4:44
SPEAKER_01: Later on, when Jesus went up to the Mount of Transfiguration, it was gonna be a big deal.
4:48
SPEAKER_01: Elijah and Moses are gonna come and stand beside him, and he's gonna reveal, you know, the second coming, basically.
4:54
SPEAKER_01: It was a little snapshot of the second coming to Peter, James, and John.
4:57
SPEAKER_01: He prayed, prayed, prayed on that mountain.
5:00
SPEAKER_01: Or for instance, Garden of Gethsemane as Jesus is heading toward death.
5:04
SPEAKER_01: You talk about super intense prayer.
5:06
SPEAKER_01: So my point is simply this that if if you're and in fact, listen, if you're in an intense situation, if you're in a crisis situation right now, health-wise or in any other way, and you're not running to God in prayer, whoa, you are, unfortunately, you are a descendant of one of the good kings of Israel named King Asa, whose flame toward God sort of diminished.
5:29
SPEAKER_01: He got colder toward the end of his life, this good guy.
5:33
SPEAKER_01: And in 2 Chronicles 16, we read, in the 39th year of his reign, King Asa became diseased in his feet.
5:40
SPEAKER_01: His disease was severe, yet even in his disease, he didn't seek the Lord, only the physicians.
5:47
SPEAKER_01: And the Bible is saying, wow, if you don't rush to the Lord with extra intense prayer when you're in crisis, that that says something about you and it's not good.
5:57
SPEAKER_01: So, so the first uh common fallacy, God hates it when people suddenly pray extra hard when Christ comes, false.
6:02
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
6:03
SPEAKER_01: Common fallacy number two, forgive me for you know just the sloppy way I'm expressing these, it's not really theological, but it's God is cool with us praying constantly for people's physical health, but rarely for their spiritual health.
6:17
SPEAKER_01: What I'm talking about here is that most churches, even good churches, even our church, when we get together to pray, even at the end of like a small group time, we say, okay, time to pray.
6:26
SPEAKER_01: Normally what we've got in front of us is this list of requests, physical requests.
6:31
SPEAKER_01: Generally, physical health requests, sometimes for a job or other things, material requests.
6:36
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
6:36
SPEAKER_01: And we can go through a whole 20, 30, 40-minute prayer time without even once praying for a spiritual request.
6:44
SPEAKER_01: Is God cool with that?
6:46
SPEAKER_01: Well, the reason I don't think so, I mean, I think it's natural to pray for help things, okay?
6:50
SPEAKER_01: And it's also okay, it's permissible.
6:52
SPEAKER_01: God's fine with that.
6:53
SPEAKER_01: But when I look at the Bible, when I look at Paul, I mean, he rarely ever prays for a you know a physical request or material request.
7:05
SPEAKER_01: Lord, help them get out of poverty, or Lord, help help help them, you know, stop the persecution or whatever.
7:11
SPEAKER_01: In fact, typical of the way he begins all of his epistles is he begins by saying, and I pray for you, and here's what I pray for you.
7:19
SPEAKER_01: For instance, uh to the Colossians.
7:21
SPEAKER_01: He said, We've not ceased to pray for you, asking what?
7:24
SPEAKER_01: Asking that they'd be healthy, asking that the people who are poor would get, you know, no.
7:30
SPEAKER_01: He says, praying, asking you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit and every good work, increasing the knowledge of God.
7:47
SPEAKER_01: Listen, just an idea.
7:50
SPEAKER_01: When you start praying and you got that list of help things in front of you, why not try, at least in your own head, why not why not try to pray for every physical or material request?
8:01
SPEAKER_01: Why not try to pray a spiritual request as well?
8:03
SPEAKER_01: Something like this.
8:04
SPEAKER_01: Lord.
8:06
SPEAKER_01: You know, I pray that they would understand how much you love them.
8:08
SPEAKER_01: Lord, I pray that they would grow in you.
8:10
SPEAKER_01: Lord, I pray that they would see the needs of the world.
8:12
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, something like that.
8:13
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
8:14
SPEAKER_01: So common fallacy number two, God is cool with us praying constantly for peace and physical health, but rarely for their spiritual health.
8:20
SPEAKER_01: Common fallacy number three, God wants his children to ask for and confidently claim health, good health, and wealth in this life.
8:30
SPEAKER_01: Okay, and the and and the answer to this very modern notion, which is common on religious TV today, uh, but really common by the way, when you go over to Africa or South America, but especially Africa, this health and wealth gospel takes advantage, I think, of really poor people.
8:50
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, they just glom onto it like, oh wow, you know, there's magic, and I can get rich, and you know, all that stuff.
8:56
SPEAKER_01: And it's just sad.
8:57
SPEAKER_01: But the the best answer to this, I think, is the life of Jesus, who before he dies in the garden, he says, Lord, you know, please, I don't want to die.
9:07
SPEAKER_01: Take this cup from me, but yet not as I will, but thy will be done.
9:11
SPEAKER_01: And then he and then God took him to cross.
9:14
SPEAKER_01: And in fact, in Hebrews, it said God heard his cry and answered his prayer.
9:18
SPEAKER_01: Just not in this life.
9:19
SPEAKER_01: He resurrected him, right?
9:21
SPEAKER_01: So that's proof that God isn't guaranteeing health and wealth to anybody who asks with the right amount of seed faith or something like that.
9:30
SPEAKER_01: And you get to the book of Hebrews, chapter 11, you got all this list of all the great saints of the Old Testament.
9:35
SPEAKER_01: And it says, and they all died in faith, not having received the promises of health and wealth, right?
9:43
SPEAKER_01: But looking for the life to come, looking for that day when God will fulfill those promises.
9:48
SPEAKER_01: So uh, and and you're familiar with 2 Corinthians 12, where Paul has this thorn in the flesh, and he says, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, must never say to torment me.
9:59
SPEAKER_01: Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me, and he didn't.
10:03
SPEAKER_01: So, so listen, I'm just saying that this idea, which is really prevalent today, especially when you travel to poor communities in our country and in the world, God wants his children to ask for and commonly claim health and wealth in his life.
10:16
SPEAKER_01: I think that's false.
10:17
SPEAKER_01: Now, let me get to the fourth fallacy, which leads into my message about time.
10:22
SPEAKER_01: About time.
10:23
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
10:23
SPEAKER_01: Common fallacy number four constantly asking God for what we want is childish and irritating to him.
10:30
SPEAKER_01: After all, he knows what we need before we talk, before we ask.
10:34
SPEAKER_01: And that second sentence is, of course, is true because that's what Jesus said.
10:37
SPEAKER_01: Now, the first sentence is this idea, I think that we have, especially those of you who've been Christians for a while, you know, that I've graduated beyond that, that I really shouldn't.
10:48
SPEAKER_01: You know, think for a moment.
10:48
SPEAKER_01: Let me ask you this.
10:49
SPEAKER_01: Think for a moment of what you'd like to have happen.
10:56
SPEAKER_01: Do you ever ask God for that?
10:59
SPEAKER_01: So, anyway, I'm gonna suggest today that that's false.
11:02
SPEAKER_01: And and the thing I wish today that you knew about God is I wish you knew that God loves to give us things.
11:08
SPEAKER_01: Honest, you think last week was bad with God's in the real estate business, and you're gonna go, wow, my pastor turned Pentecostal today.
11:16
SPEAKER_01: So I wish you knew that God loves to give us things.
11:19
SPEAKER_01: So let me share with you two passages out of the Bible.
11:21
SPEAKER_01: I'll walk you through them and share with you some lessons, and I'll give you five lessons and we're done.
11:26
SPEAKER_01: All right?
11:27
SPEAKER_01: As Jesus and his disciples, Matthew 20, as Jesus and his disciples were leaving Jericho, Jericho, that large city, largest oasis in the world, uh, just northwest of the Dead Sea, the lowest spot on earth, okay, and so Jesus has come down from Galilee, you know, and crossed over into Jordan on the other side of the Jordan River, and then you cross over, you come to Jericho, and this is the last stop before you climb all the way up to Jerusalem.
11:52
SPEAKER_01: And the crowds are filled with pilgrims.
11:54
SPEAKER_01: It's Passover, okay, and Jesus has been in Jericho.
11:58
SPEAKER_01: He did the Zacchaeus thing we know with the short little guy on the tree and he and all this other stuff.
12:03
SPEAKER_01: So a large crowd is following him, and here are two blind men as he goes out of the city, clearly beggars.
12:09
SPEAKER_01: They're sitting by the roadside, and when they heard that Jesus is going by, they shouted, Lord, Son of David, have mercy on us.
12:21
SPEAKER_01: Now, one of the things uh Matthew wants to tweak us with, it's kind of funny here, is that is that these two blind guys can see better than almost anybody else, including Jesus' disciples.
12:35
SPEAKER_01: Spiritual sight-wise.
12:37
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
12:37
SPEAKER_01: They're blind, but they call him son of David, which is the most amazing three-word phrase, two, two words in Greek, for Jesus being the coming Messiah.
12:47
SPEAKER_01: They call him Son of David, which means he is the promised, long-awaited Messiah who's gonna save Israel, and we know save the whole world.
12:57
SPEAKER_01: And blind guys know that when just in the previous verses, the crowd certainly didn't know that, and not even Jesus' disciples all understood that.
13:05
SPEAKER_01: So that's one of the things they're tweaking us with here, that you can have, you can be blind physically and see clearer spiritually than other people.
13:13
SPEAKER_01: All right?
13:14
SPEAKER_01: Now, here's what's interesting.
13:15
SPEAKER_01: This is the heart of the passage for me.
13:17
SPEAKER_01: The crowd rebuked them and told them to be quiet.
13:22
SPEAKER_01: They shouted all the louder, Lord, have mercy on us.
13:26
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus stopped and he called them.
13:28
SPEAKER_01: What do you want me to do for you?
13:29
SPEAKER_01: He asked.
13:31
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus walked by you today.
13:33
SPEAKER_01: And you're sitting somewhere, and he said, What do you want me to do for you?
13:36
SPEAKER_01: What would you say?
13:37
SPEAKER_01: What would you say?
13:38
SPEAKER_01: Well, what maybe it's not even something you've told anybody else, but it's really, if there's one thing you'd like God to do for you, this is what you'd tell him.
13:46
SPEAKER_01: What is that?
13:49
SPEAKER_01: What do you want me to do for you?
13:50
SPEAKER_01: He asked.
13:51
SPEAKER_01: Lord, they answered, we want our sight.
13:52
SPEAKER_01: Duh.
13:53
SPEAKER_01: You know, Jesus had compassion on them.
13:55
SPEAKER_01: Contrast here, Jesus, compassion, crowd, no compassion.
14:00
SPEAKER_01: Jesus had compassion on them and touched their eyes.
14:02
SPEAKER_01: Immediately they received their sight and followed him.
14:07
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
14:08
SPEAKER_01: Now, I got a number, you know.
14:11
SPEAKER_01: There are some questions that this passage raises, right?
14:13
SPEAKER_01: There's some questions this passage raises, like, um, why do the crowd rebuke them?
14:19
SPEAKER_01: I mean, what you know.
14:22
SPEAKER_01: And a related question is, why do you sometimes tell yourself to shut up when you're tempted to go to God with a prayer request?
14:34
SPEAKER_01: I think sometimes we think that we think that that's childish.
14:38
SPEAKER_01: And maybe irritates him after all, he has a universe to run.
14:41
SPEAKER_01: And after all, he knows he knows what we need before we ask.
14:44
SPEAKER_01: After all, he can take care of stuff and he's sovereign, so why should we go to him?
14:48
SPEAKER_01: And uh or maybe it's our view of God.
14:50
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's our view of God that we see God a little bit like if you had a stern father or whatever, or or uh, you know, if there was a stern nun or a stern grandfather, whatever in your life, you go, okay.
15:03
SPEAKER_01: God's kind of like them.
15:04
SPEAKER_01: How dare you come ask me for things?
15:06
SPEAKER_01: I already know what you want.
15:08
SPEAKER_01: Quit bothering me.
15:08
SPEAKER_01: That's so trivial.
15:09
SPEAKER_01: That's so what you want is just so stupid.
15:12
SPEAKER_01: And um, wow.
15:16
SPEAKER_01: And we think that therefore, you know, God's sort of a killjoy, that he's that kind of a guy, that he's not the kind of a God who really likes to give us things.
15:26
SPEAKER_01: Or maybe we think, you know, we think uh uh like the guy I was talking to after first service, we think, uh we think, you know, why why how can I pray for that since I myself am the cause of that problem?
15:40
SPEAKER_01: You know, my lung cancer comes from my 30 years of smoking.
15:44
SPEAKER_01: Or the fact that that you know, the fact that I'm this overweight and have physical problems because I I don't watch what I eat and I don't exercise.
15:51
SPEAKER_01: Right?
15:51
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
15:52
SPEAKER_01: Where sometimes so much of our so many of our problems, of course, are self-caused, and then you go, well, I can't really talk to God about that because it's my fault.
16:00
SPEAKER_01: Since when?
16:01
SPEAKER_01: You know, we're all, you know, we sinned.
16:05
SPEAKER_01: We're you know, we are always the problem.
16:07
SPEAKER_01: And so I move you to this other to this other text in Matthew 7, 7 through 11.
16:12
SPEAKER_01: This is part of what's called the Sermon on the Mount, these three great chapters where Jesus says, Ask and it'll be given to you.
16:18
SPEAKER_01: Seek and you'll find knock and the door will be opened to you.
16:21
SPEAKER_01: And the aspect it's called, not the tense, but the aspect of the Greek verbs, is iterative, which means he's saying, Ask and keep on asking, and it'll be given to you.
16:30
SPEAKER_01: Seek and keep on seeking, and you'll find knock and keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you.
16:34
SPEAKER_01: For everyone who asks receives, he seeks, finds, and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.
16:40
SPEAKER_01: And then he continues, and here it is, who among you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone.
16:46
SPEAKER_01: Or if he asks for fish, will give him a snake.
16:51
SPEAKER_01: If you know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father in heaven give good things to those who ask?
16:58
SPEAKER_01: This is absolutely critical to the point I'm making this morning that you see that Jesus is deliberately making a connection between your relationship with your father and your relationship with your heavenly father.
17:11
SPEAKER_01: And I know that's a problem for you for you, for many of you.
17:15
SPEAKER_01: For some of you, especially.
17:17
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we all we all know women who cringe when they sit next to somebody who calls God father because they suffered abuse in their own life, and their view of father is permanently tainted, permanently tinged by that.
17:29
SPEAKER_01: But but many of us had fathers that were we would call inferior.
17:33
SPEAKER_01: I mean, first time I had a Wednesday morning some years ago, and it continues to this day, we call it men of success today, but it used to be called men's fraternity, and for the first couple of years it was all about our dads and the fact that we all, most of us had wounds because of our fathers, because they were distant or because they were cold, because they refused us, you know, when they didn't need to refuse us, things and so forth.
17:52
SPEAKER_01: So we all to some extent know what it's like to have a tainted view of what fatherhood is like, and yet Jesus doesn't hesitate.
17:59
SPEAKER_01: He says, I want you to think father, and I want you to call God father.
18:04
SPEAKER_01: I like what I think the best way of dealing with that, the best counselor advice I've heard is was by a writer a hundred years ago named George McDonald, who advised a woman who said, I have a hard time calling God father because of you know my father, and he said, Okay, when you still need to call him father, but you need to fill that word with all that you missed, with all that was missing in your relationship with your father.
18:32
SPEAKER_01: And I assume that's what God wants us to do because many of us have have had issues with it.
18:36
SPEAKER_01: We didn't have a perfect father, and God's saying, I want you to call me father, I want you to see me as a good father who loves to give good gifts to his children, right?
18:47
SPEAKER_01: Which leads me to the first of my five points, and that is that clearly from Jesus' words here, prayer is a relationship.
18:56
SPEAKER_01: You go, yeah, duh, I know that.
18:58
SPEAKER_01: That's so obvious.
18:59
SPEAKER_01: I'm bored.
19:01
SPEAKER_01: Except that I'm sorry, it it if if if you get outside Christianity at all, you find out very quickly that prayer everywhere else in the world with other religions is not a relationship.
19:12
SPEAKER_01: It's a transaction or it's a manipulation.
19:17
SPEAKER_01: I mean, uh when I was in Kathmandu, capital of Nepal, you know, uh one of the great Buddhist sites, beautiful site in the world, is it's right right there in the city.
19:26
SPEAKER_01: There's this ancient mound, ancient hill.
19:29
SPEAKER_01: And you walk up there surrounded by 10,000 other pilgrims who are constantly flooding, you know, up this uh several hundred feet hill, and at the top there's a Buddhist temple, and then there are all of these elaborate and huge uh uh prayer wheels.
19:44
SPEAKER_01: They're shaped like rolling pins, maybe inlaid with precious stones or ancient carvings.
19:49
SPEAKER_01: These were really valuable and really cool and really large, and then they have uh, you know, they they have uh sort of a handle attached to this weighted cylinder, and you turn the handle a little bit and it's got gears, and so it really spins around fast.
20:02
SPEAKER_01: And it's got inside there, sticking out a little bit sometimes on in some of them.
20:07
SPEAKER_01: There was this ancient, it was this prayer written in ancient Nepali script.
20:12
SPEAKER_01: So obviously I couldn't read it.
20:14
SPEAKER_01: And but as you turn it, the view is that every time that cylinder turns, it sends up this prayer to God for you, because you're turning it.
20:24
SPEAKER_01: By the way, nowadays, tech savvy Buddhists oftentimes download uh prayers onto their hard drive, which operates at at uh, you know, which spins around at about 5,400 revolutions per minute.
20:37
SPEAKER_01: So it's it spins up.
20:39
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you're you are banging prayer to heaven big time.
20:42
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
20:43
SPEAKER_01: So, but and and in fact, outside the little gold domed temple up there is a priest who all day long, they'd take turns, sort of like uh Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, but priests would come out and constantly turning this, turning this prayer wheel.
20:55
SPEAKER_01: And the idea is sort of that God, you know, you can manipulate God this way, you can kind of control God this way.
21:01
SPEAKER_01: And then by the way, it's the same thing.
21:02
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you go to India, and I mean in the different in the different towns you go to.
21:06
SPEAKER_01: In India, sometimes you'll see flowers, sometimes you'll see food.
21:09
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I remember in Calcutta at a temple watching a goat with its neck getting slit and people dodging out of the spray of the blood and so forth, there's ways of sort of appeasing and manipulating, doing this transactions with God, that he'll answer my prayers if I act in a certain way, if I appease him.
21:28
SPEAKER_01: And it's similar in Japan, similar in Taiwan, even though these are some of the most educated countries in the world, there's this idea that prayer is sort of a magic talisman, that if I act in a certain way, that God, who is not a personal being, God's not a personal being.
21:43
SPEAKER_01: This is more like fate that I can sort of manipulate this and he can owe me.
21:48
SPEAKER_01: And and then you come to Christianity and and you read about Jesus and you go, wow, Jesus talked to his father as it was a relationship and told us to do the same thing.
21:58
SPEAKER_01: What kind of a relationship?
22:00
SPEAKER_01: Relationship, point number two is that prayer, it seems to me, is you talking with father.
22:05
SPEAKER_01: With father.
22:08
SPEAKER_01: A little story about the Bible study, which had sort of cruised to an end.
22:12
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if it was a Bible study or whatever, but they were gonna start praying.
22:16
SPEAKER_01: And so the leader of the study, you know, starts in, it's time to pray, and so he starts into this flowery theological, long, rambling type prayer.
22:25
SPEAKER_01: And I mean he's still in the introduction of this prayer, he's addressing God and so forth, and the old lady next to him leans over, puts her hand on his arm, and she says, uh, just call him father and ask him for something.
22:39
SPEAKER_01: You know, and that's kind of what I'm telling you today.
22:43
SPEAKER_01: And I know for some of you, you're going, that's too immature, that's where I was 10 years ago or 20 years ago.
22:48
SPEAKER_01: I'm grown past that now.
22:49
SPEAKER_01: And I'm saying, no, no, no, no.
22:51
SPEAKER_01: No, God loves that.
22:53
SPEAKER_01: You haven't grown past it.
22:54
SPEAKER_01: He wants us to call us, call him Abba.
22:57
SPEAKER_01: And it's not, don't call him Abba, comma, father.
23:00
SPEAKER_01: It's Abba, which means in Aramaic, Papa.
23:03
SPEAKER_01: You know, call him Papa, call him father.
23:06
SPEAKER_01: And so address him that way and treat him, think of him as you pray, as your daddy, as your Abba, as your Papa, as your father.
23:15
SPEAKER_01: Prayer is you just call him Papa and ask him for something.
23:22
SPEAKER_01: That's what he wants.
23:24
SPEAKER_01: He invites you to do that.
23:26
SPEAKER_01: He begs for you to do that.
23:27
SPEAKER_01: Prayer is sitting down and talking with your father.
23:31
SPEAKER_01: If you never sat down, if your father wasn't the kind, he'd ever sit down and have a conversation with you, if he was too distant.
23:39
SPEAKER_01: You know, you can do that with your heavenly father.
23:41
SPEAKER_01: Now notice this is this is all pretty new.
23:43
SPEAKER_01: In the New Testament, in the Old Testament, you talk to the average Jew about prayer.
23:47
SPEAKER_01: The average Jew would say, well, that's what the king does, or that's what the priest does, and he has these special, beautiful prayers.
23:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, in the Old Testament, a few times God was called our Father, but not one person in the Old Testament ever addressed God as Father.
24:00
SPEAKER_01: Move to the New Testament, Jesus addresses him as Father 170 times.
24:05
SPEAKER_01: No wonder the disciples go, wow, this is new.
24:08
SPEAKER_01: Teach us to pray.
24:09
SPEAKER_01: We love that.
24:10
SPEAKER_01: It was a brand new idea in the New Testament, this personal relationship where God is my father.
24:16
SPEAKER_01: I can come to him like a father and I can ask him for things.
24:20
SPEAKER_01: Right?
24:22
SPEAKER_01: So, which leads to um third point, fathers love to give good things to their children.
24:29
SPEAKER_01: They do, honest.
24:31
SPEAKER_01: I mean, even if your dad didn't.
24:32
SPEAKER_01: You know, fathers do.
24:33
SPEAKER_01: They love that.
24:34
SPEAKER_01: As Jesus said, we read this verse already.
24:36
SPEAKER_01: If you then, though you are evil, meaning you're self-centered, and yet you know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father, who's you centered in heaven, how much more will he give good gifts to those who ask him?
24:49
SPEAKER_01: And Paul says in 1 Timothy, the living God gives us richly all things to enjoy.
24:54
SPEAKER_01: Father loves to give us stuff.
24:56
SPEAKER_01: And then David, Psalm 84, the Lord God is our son and shield.
25:00
SPEAKER_01: He gives us grace and glory.
25:01
SPEAKER_01: The Lord will withhold no good thing from those who do what is right.
25:06
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 84, 11.
25:07
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus, brother James says, every good gift and perfect gift is from above.
25:12
SPEAKER_01: And then we have Jabez in the Old Testament going, God, you know, you may say no, but here's what I want.
25:18
SPEAKER_01: By the way, that's a great way to pray.
25:20
SPEAKER_01: God, you know, maybe I'm just gonna tell you what I want, because I know you love me and you're my dad.
25:26
SPEAKER_01: Oh, Jabez says.
25:28
SPEAKER_01: And it says his name means pain.
25:30
SPEAKER_01: And it says, Oh, that you'd bless me and enlarge my territory.
25:34
SPEAKER_01: Let your hand be with me and keep me from pain or harm so that I'll be free from pain.
25:38
SPEAKER_01: And God granted his request and called him noble.
25:41
SPEAKER_01: Because God loves to give us good things.
25:46
SPEAKER_01: God loves to give us good things.
25:52
SPEAKER_01: Now it's a little bit, I was talking with a guy this week, and I was talking with him about this, and he's got several children.
25:57
SPEAKER_01: He says, you know, when we go to the toy store, when we go to, you know, the grocery store or whatever, I don't like it, you know, when I have to pull them to the checkout line because they're grabbing for the candy.
26:07
SPEAKER_01: Daddy, daddy, give us, give us candy, give us candy, candy.
26:09
SPEAKER_01: You can go into the toy store, and you know, and they're always there plucking stuff, you know, throwing it in the, you know, they they want stuff.
26:15
SPEAKER_01: So, and in fact, uh, what was it this week?
26:17
SPEAKER_01: It was uh Wednesday, maybe it was Thursday.
26:21
SPEAKER_01: So I was here early for Bible study across the street at the cab building, and so everybody left, and I go outside, and then uh two kids from the neighborhood come through.
26:30
SPEAKER_01: They're walking over here to school, they're going a little early, it's eight o'clock, they're going a little early to get breakfast.
26:35
SPEAKER_01: But they're kind of running late, but they wanted to stand and talk to me.
26:38
SPEAKER_01: Which is fine, a little boy who's six and his sister who's nine.
26:42
SPEAKER_01: And and they hadn't eaten breakfast, and I'm saying, you better go over there and get your it was a brown cake that we're gonna get that morning.
26:50
SPEAKER_01: And do you have coffee?
26:53
SPEAKER_01: They start asking me for stuff.
26:55
SPEAKER_01: And I said, You don't drink coffee.
26:57
SPEAKER_01: Little six-year-old boy, I do too.
26:59
SPEAKER_01: I like coffee.
27:01
SPEAKER_01: You shouldn't.
27:03
SPEAKER_01: Nine-year-old, I like coffee, but he likes it even more.
27:06
SPEAKER_01: Do you have any coffee?
27:06
SPEAKER_01: I said, I'm sorry.
27:09
SPEAKER_01: But we drank it all, and it takes too long for me to fix it.
27:11
SPEAKER_01: Okay, how about candy?
27:12
SPEAKER_01: Give us candy, you know.
27:13
SPEAKER_01: So they're asking me for all the stuff, and then the bell rings over here at school, so then they're late.
27:18
SPEAKER_01: And so now you've got to give us something because we're hungry, we missed breakfast.
27:21
SPEAKER_01: So I give them candy bars, and um, you know.
27:26
SPEAKER_01: Um so, but I mean, you know, it's a deal where you're going, I love, you know, you love them, but they're not asking for really good things.
27:36
SPEAKER_01: Not a six-year-old asks for coffee and candy at 8 a.m.
27:38
SPEAKER_01: in the morning.
27:39
SPEAKER_01: It's not really a good thing.
27:41
SPEAKER_01: And but every parent knows what that's like.
27:43
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you have you know, you have kids, and your your kids expect everything from you.
27:47
SPEAKER_01: They expect you to wake them up in the morning, expect you to clean their room, you know, make their bed, feed them breakfast, drive them to school or drive them places, and once in a while they'll say thank you, but they have no understanding, can't hold a really intelligent conversation with you, but that's the way children are.
28:03
SPEAKER_01: And somehow, if we're not careful, we can think I don't want to be like that child.
28:07
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to be so immature.
28:09
SPEAKER_01: And God says, I don't care.
28:11
SPEAKER_01: Ask me for stuff.
28:12
SPEAKER_01: Now, I prefer for you to ask me for good stuff.
28:14
SPEAKER_01: It was so funny that uh several days ago we have a grandson who asked us for something good.
28:20
SPEAKER_01: Uh Melody brought home a letter that our nine-year-old grandson had put on her desk at work.
28:24
SPEAKER_01: She's head of school over here, and he's a student at school, and you can't read this, but I'll read it to you.
28:29
SPEAKER_01: He cared nine-year-old, and he wrote out this long letter, dear Grammy, and here's his request.
28:35
SPEAKER_01: So I have two soccer games, the 29th of September, and I was one, that's yesterday.
28:40
SPEAKER_01: I was wondering if you and Papa would be able to come to them.
28:43
SPEAKER_01: The first game is at 12 o'clock, and the second one is at 1.30.
28:46
SPEAKER_01: They're pretty close together.
28:47
SPEAKER_01: So after the first game ends, I'd have to stay at Sunflower and practice for 30 minutes before the game as usual.
28:52
SPEAKER_01: But you could go get lunch or something because you don't have to be there 30 minutes early.
28:57
SPEAKER_01: So I was just one wanting you and Papa to be able to come.
29:01
SPEAKER_01: But if you can't, it doesn't matter.
29:03
SPEAKER_01: I still have a weekend-long tournament at Sunflower that I'll talk to you about a different time by Judah.
29:08
SPEAKER_01: So, um, so how many of you think that Melody and I made it to those games yesterday?
29:14
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
29:14
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
29:15
SPEAKER_01: You know, you you love you love to answer yes, you know, when your kids are going to ask you stuff, but especially when they ask you for good things.
29:25
SPEAKER_01: Because that that's that's the way God's made us.
29:28
SPEAKER_01: Now, um, sometimes, let's be honest, God will sometimes say no, because no actually is a bigger yes, right?
29:41
SPEAKER_01: You've been thankful for unanswered prayer.
29:43
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yes, for some.
29:44
SPEAKER_01: I mean, for instance, one of the great early illustrations of the Christian world is Monica praying for her son Augustine in North Africa.
29:50
SPEAKER_01: Augustine, one of the great theologians of the church, and she prayed for him for the first 18 years of his life because he was indulging in sensuality and he was so secular, he was getting into different philosophies and so forth.
30:01
SPEAKER_01: And then he told her one day, he knew she'd hate this, he told her she's gonna get on a boat and he was gonna travel and go live in Rome.
30:07
SPEAKER_01: Rome, the wicked Rome.
30:08
SPEAKER_01: I mean, Babylon, Las Vegas, whatever you call it.
30:11
SPEAKER_01: So, so, and she prays, and she stayed up all night praying that he wouldn't go to Rome.
30:17
SPEAKER_01: He told her he wouldn't, but then he deceived her, got on a boat, sailed away to Rome.
30:20
SPEAKER_01: However, he trusted Christ as a savior on the boat to Rome.
30:25
SPEAKER_01: And he used to say years later that God answered her one prayer no so that he could answer the rest of her prayers in life, yes.
30:34
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes you know how you pray and you don't get it, but that's sometimes because God knows better.
30:40
SPEAKER_01: And the no he gives you is actually a bigger yes.
30:44
SPEAKER_01: Number four, some things are given only to those who ask.
30:48
SPEAKER_01: James 4, sorry to tell you this, but you don't have sometimes because you don't ask.
30:53
SPEAKER_01: Disciples said, How come we couldn't cast that out?
30:55
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus said, It's because you didn't pray.
31:01
SPEAKER_01: The Bible is really clear that most of the great things that happened in the Bible, from Abraham having a child to the Exodus to crossing the Red Sea to conquering the Philistines, the Syrians, and Babylonians, to building the temple, to even the coming of the Messiah, was an answer to prayer.
31:17
SPEAKER_01: That God loves to answer prayer, that some things only happen because we pray.
31:26
SPEAKER_01: But you know what?
31:27
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna say it once more.
31:29
SPEAKER_01: We who are grown-up Christians think, okay, the Father, may I have prayers, may I have this, may I have that, the request prayers, those are baby prayers.
31:36
SPEAKER_01: The grown-up, a little bit longer prayers, those are the contemplative, meditative, I love you, Lord, prayers.
31:42
SPEAKER_01: He likes those better, and the prayers he likes most are the not my will but thine be done prayers, the submission prayers.
31:48
SPEAKER_01: I'm telling you this morning, it doesn't work that way.
31:51
SPEAKER_01: He likes all three prayers, including the Father, may I prayers.
31:59
SPEAKER_01: Which leads me to conclude: so prayer really does change things.
32:06
SPEAKER_01: It really does change things.
32:09
SPEAKER_01: Prayer is the power, said the Calvinist from South Africa, Andrew Murray 100 years ago, prayer is the power by which things happen which otherwise would not happen.
32:20
SPEAKER_01: I've gone.
32:23
SPEAKER_01: I've traveled to a lot of interesting places.
32:25
SPEAKER_01: I've traveled to some countries where Christians are horribly persecuted.
32:29
SPEAKER_01: And I'm mentioning here Syria, Pakistan, Nepal.
32:37
SPEAKER_01: One afternoon in Sudan, a place of persecution.
32:41
SPEAKER_01: My brother says, You've got to talk with this man.
32:43
SPEAKER_01: I've asked him to come and talk with you.
32:45
SPEAKER_01: Late 40s, but he looks older than that by far.
32:48
SPEAKER_01: So see this man coming.
32:50
SPEAKER_01: He can hardly walk.
32:51
SPEAKER_01: He's hobbling over to me.
32:54
SPEAKER_01: We sit down.
32:55
SPEAKER_01: We have the greatest afternoon in talking.
32:57
SPEAKER_01: He's the most godly man.
32:58
SPEAKER_01: He tells me the story of how the previous year he watched his family get murdered by the Muslim terrorists coming from the north.
33:08
SPEAKER_01: How they beat him until they thought he was dead.
33:11
SPEAKER_01: How he rose out of his coma.
33:15
SPEAKER_01: And I'm just so touched by his whole story.
33:18
SPEAKER_01: And I say to this guy, wow, what can I do for you?
33:24
SPEAKER_01: What can my church do for you?
33:27
SPEAKER_01: He's so happy.
33:29
SPEAKER_01: He says, I tell you, you can do something.
33:31
SPEAKER_01: You can pray.
33:33
SPEAKER_01: You can ask your church to pray.
33:37
SPEAKER_01: And I caught myself just before I said, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
33:40
SPEAKER_01: What can we really do for you?
33:43
SPEAKER_01: I'm so glad I didn't say something so stupid.
33:48
SPEAKER_01: Because this man firmly believes that prayer changes things, that prayer is the access, the doorway by which he has the most powerful weapon in the world against persecution, against any kind of suffering, because he has this is the God of having his father who loves him.
34:05
SPEAKER_01: And if we'll just pray, just talk to God, that's the best thing we can possibly do.
34:09
SPEAKER_01: And this is the answer I've heard every place I've gone.
34:11
SPEAKER_01: When you talk to persecuted, needy Christians, and you're thinking, well, you know, they need money, they need help, they need deliverance from persecution, and they always just ask for prayer.
34:23
SPEAKER_01: So I'm here to tell you today, our father in heaven, our Papa in heaven takes great delight in giving his children good things.
34:33
SPEAKER_01: So ask him.
34:37
SPEAKER_01: Just ask him.
34:38
SPEAKER_01: I wish you knew how much God loves to give us good things.
34:48
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray, and then I'm gonna have Jeremiah sing for you.
34:51
SPEAKER_01: Heavenly Father, so glad we can say, Heavenly Father, that we can call you Papa and Father, and that you don't mind, no matter how old we are in the faith, you don't mind.
35:04
SPEAKER_01: Us just calling you by name and telling you what we really want, because you love to give us things.
35:11
SPEAKER_01: In Jesus' name.
35:13
SPEAKER_01: Amen.