Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / March 26, 2017 | The 3 Greatest Habits - Speaking To The Ear Of God

Transcript

March 26, 2017 | The 3 Greatest Habits - Speaking To The Ear Of God · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
0:03
SPEAKER_00: Last night my son Craig and I were driving back with a few others from Kansas City.
0:11
SPEAKER_00: After the KU loss, the car was a little bit like a funeral home.
0:18
SPEAKER_00: About halfway back, uh Ruth Ann Schwartz said from the uh passenger side of the front seat, she said, Well, it's just a basketball game after all.
0:28
SPEAKER_00: So we pulled over and made her walk the rest of the way.
0:34
SPEAKER_00: Because we have our priorities straight.
0:41
SPEAKER_00: She's right, of course, there are things that are more important, and we want to talk about one of those today.
0:46
SPEAKER_00: So bow your head with me in a word of prayer, please, Heavenly Father.
0:51
SPEAKER_00: We uh come to you with many of us with a lot worse difficulties than um our team losing in a tournament.
1:03
SPEAKER_00: And we come to you to recognize that you are our father, and we thank you.
1:07
SPEAKER_00: We're so thankful that you allow us to call you father or papa.
1:10
SPEAKER_00: We just so appreciate the fact that you would care about us and look at us as family, as your children, and listen to us and pay attention to us as we sing.
1:27
SPEAKER_00: We have come, Lord, to sing to you.
1:29
SPEAKER_00: We do care for you, we wouldn't be here otherwise, and we've sung to you.
1:35
SPEAKER_00: We've appreciated the fact that you sent your son to die for us and that he rose again, and in his rising, we can rise even today out of our circumstances, out of our sin, out of our past, and become new people in Jesus Christ.
1:54
SPEAKER_00: We're so grateful.
1:56
SPEAKER_00: We're so grateful for that, and grateful for the fact that you care about our daily lives, and so, Lord, we think about how uh your glory and your honor and your praise and your splendor are why we're here.
2:13
SPEAKER_00: And um even the mundane things of life are things that you care about.
2:20
SPEAKER_00: And so we ask that we would honor, honor you this week, honor you this morning, that you'd give us clarity, me of expression, everyone of listening and hearing, so that we can hear what it is you would say to us this morning in Jesus' name.
2:33
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
2:35
SPEAKER_00: So we're talking in a series, we're in a series called The Three Greatest Habits, Three Greatest Habits.
2:41
SPEAKER_00: It started last week.
2:43
SPEAKER_00: I want to talk about one of those habits this morning.
2:49
SPEAKER_00: My love for archaeology dates back pretty clearly, I think, to when I was, I think, eight years old, and I was at a summer camp, Christian summer camp in um in Idaho.
3:00
SPEAKER_00: My father had taken his three oldest children, Rachel and me and Steve, with him.
3:05
SPEAKER_00: He had been invited to be the speaker that week at this uh teenage camp.
3:10
SPEAKER_00: And so we went out there and uh and in the evening after the evening service, he would bring us back.
3:18
SPEAKER_00: They'd given us a special cottage, and so he'd put us to bed.
3:21
SPEAKER_00: And then he'd sit over.
3:23
SPEAKER_00: He was sitting over on one side of the room, he'd brought a book with him, and he had a little light, and he was reading this book, and he got very excited about this book.
3:31
SPEAKER_00: This book was written by an archaeologist named Howard Carter.
3:35
SPEAKER_00: And Howard Carter was writing about the day, about his experience of opening up King Tut's tomb.
3:43
SPEAKER_00: And my dad got so excited about that book that each night, while we were lying in bed, he would read to us from that book this gripping story, Howard Carter's memoirs of how he had found and then finally opened up the tomb of King Tutankhamun, the boy king of about 1300 B.C.
4:04
SPEAKER_00: About the same time as Gideon was a judge in Israel, he was uh he was ruling in Egypt from age nine to nineteen.
4:13
SPEAKER_00: And so Howard Carter was writing about this.
4:16
SPEAKER_00: Everybody had thought, all the archaeologists, that every tomb of every Pharaoh had been looted down there in the Valley of the Kings, it's called, hundreds of miles south of Caira, out in the desert.
4:28
SPEAKER_00: It seems a godforsaken place.
4:31
SPEAKER_00: It's close to the Nile, but it's all sand and it's stone, and it's 90 degrees during the winter and 120 degrees during the summer, as some of you know because you've gone down there with me.
4:42
SPEAKER_00: And Howard Carter uh uh found something that made him and and the Mr.
4:48
SPEAKER_00: Moneybags, who was funding him back in England, made them think that there might be a tomb still undiscovered of a pharaoh that they hadn't known up till then.
4:58
SPEAKER_00: And so he dug, and he dug for one year, two years, three years, for seven years, and finally discovered some steps leading down into the ground, and they began clearing it away, and they came down to a sealed door, broke through that, found loads more rubble, spent more months clearing that away, and then came to a special sealed door.
5:16
SPEAKER_00: A sealed door that had the insignia that read Tutankhamun on it.
5:22
SPEAKER_00: And they realized that inside this door there might be something special.
5:29
SPEAKER_00: And Howard Carter broke open a little spot above the door and shone in a little light, and he turned to the people around him and he said, All I can see is gold.
5:42
SPEAKER_00: And when they opened that door finally on February the 16th, 1923, they found what staggered their imagination.
5:50
SPEAKER_00: Even the casket alone of the boy king weighed 240 pounds of solid gold.
5:57
SPEAKER_00: It was still the greatest day in all of Egyptian archaeology.
6:01
SPEAKER_00: And for some reason I was reading about this recently, and it struck me that this is a lot like what I'm talking about, a lot like what I want us to discover, that it's as though the doorway to God is sealed for many of us, and he's on the other side of us, and we know that there are treasures unparalleled on the other side.
6:24
SPEAKER_00: Golden streets and and everything, just astounding, but we're not there.
6:28
SPEAKER_00: And so the question that I'm asking and trying to answer in these weeks is how do we experience God?
6:34
SPEAKER_00: How do we get in there?
6:35
SPEAKER_00: How do we get to know him, to share in his joy, and rest in his favor and receive gifts of his grace?
6:44
SPEAKER_00: I suggested that if you wanted to study a little deeper, you get a book by a young guy named David Mathis called Habits of Grace.
6:52
SPEAKER_00: And he says in this book, God has his regular channels, the means of grace, those well-worn pathways along which he is so often pleased to pass and pour out his goodness on those waiting expectantly.
7:08
SPEAKER_00: Last week I shared with you an illustration from the Old Testament that I thought a story that illustrated this.
7:15
SPEAKER_00: It's the story of the commander-in-chief of the armies of Syria.
7:20
SPEAKER_00: His name was Naaman, General Naaman, and he was so popular with his king of Syria that he was second in command, and so popular was he with his troops and even with the slaves in his own household that when he contracted the deadly disease of leprosy, that a little girl slave that he'd captured from Israel said, If only you would go, if only my master would go see the prophet Elisha, then perhaps he could be healed.
7:53
SPEAKER_00: He was so popular, in fact, in heaven, because of his integrity and honor, that it says the Bible tells us that God had allowed, had given him some victories.
8:02
SPEAKER_00: So anyway, this is how Naaman found himself in northern Israel at the doorway of Elisha, we said last week, and Elisha didn't let him in.
8:10
SPEAKER_00: Just sent out a message saying, Go and dunk yourself seven times in the Brown Jordan River, and you'll be healed.
8:18
SPEAKER_00: And Naaman said, It's ridiculous.
8:21
SPEAKER_00: It's crazy.
8:23
SPEAKER_00: We have better rivers back in Damascus.
8:27
SPEAKER_00: But his uh his attendant said, please, it's on the way back anyway.
8:32
SPEAKER_00: Wouldn't you please do it?
8:34
SPEAKER_00: And sure enough, what happened when Naaman dipped himself seven times in the Jordan River?
8:40
SPEAKER_00: He was healed.
8:43
SPEAKER_00: And the lesson that we drew from that is that you and I should get in the channel of God's blessing.
8:49
SPEAKER_00: That as the Jordan River flows out of three channels that come out of Mount Hermon, that snow-capped mountain above the clouds at the northern tip of Israel, so the Jordan River of God's blessing and favor and joy seems to come out of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit that comes out of heaven's mountain, and there is a channel.
9:12
SPEAKER_00: If we'll just get in that channel, I shared with you then the illustration, an illustration from the New Testament.
9:20
SPEAKER_00: A man as lowly as Naaman was noble.
9:25
SPEAKER_00: His name was Zacchaeus, a Jewish tax collector from Jericho.
9:29
SPEAKER_00: His problem was not physical, but emotional and spiritual.
9:33
SPEAKER_00: His problem was guilt and loneliness and theft and sin, and he wanted to get out of it.
9:39
SPEAKER_00: And so he heard that Jesus was coming.
9:42
SPEAKER_00: He decided he wanted nothing more than to see Jesus and hear Jesus.
9:48
SPEAKER_00: Problem being that he's only about five foot tall, and the average height was several inches taller.
9:54
SPEAKER_00: So he had to do something special.
9:57
SPEAKER_00: So he climbed up a sycamore tree to see Jesus, since he was about to pass that way.
10:03
SPEAKER_00: And he did see him.
10:05
SPEAKER_00: And then Jesus spoke to him, and he spoke back, and it changed his life, and we drew from that that you and I should put ourselves in the pathway of Jesus, if that's possible.
10:17
SPEAKER_00: I didn't mention to you last week one other guy who also lived in Jericho.
10:22
SPEAKER_00: We call him blind Bartimaeus, which was his problem, wasn't it?
10:29
SPEAKER_00: And Barnamae, we read in Luke chapter 18, was sitting by the road, which was the perfect place to be as Jesus was nearing Jericho.
10:42
SPEAKER_00: And because he had positioned himself by the thoroughfare where Jesus was passing, he spoke to Jesus, Jesus spoke to him, and he was healed.
10:55
SPEAKER_00: Friends, position yourself in the path of grace.
11:03
SPEAKER_00: Yesterday morning I was reading a book on prayer, praying with Paul.
11:09
SPEAKER_00: It's a really good book.
11:11
SPEAKER_00: And it's just been republished.
11:14
SPEAKER_00: I was sitting in my prayer chair, which is sort of a nice easy chair.
11:19
SPEAKER_00: We don't want things to be too hard for prayer, and so nice easy chair, and I always swivel it around the second floor facing the window that looks out over the backyard, and a number of trees, and the foliage is wonderful at this time of year, so you can't see other houses.
11:36
SPEAKER_00: And as I was reading, I saw a movement out of the corner of my eye, and I looked out and I saw a red fox that we often hear but almost never see in that forest.
11:48
SPEAKER_00: Beautiful thing.
11:50
SPEAKER_00: Stopped right out there in the middle of the backyard and looked around, not seeing me, looking noble.
11:58
SPEAKER_00: And it walked on into the woods.
12:01
SPEAKER_00: And I thought of some of the people who do bird watching and animal watching, and I thought, you know, when you want to see something special, placement and positioning are everything.
12:11
SPEAKER_00: If I hadn't been sitting in that chair at that moment, at that spot, I wouldn't have seen that fox.
12:21
SPEAKER_00: And the same I think is true of experiencing God.
12:27
SPEAKER_00: As John Piper puts it, fight to walk in the paths where he has promised his blessings.
12:33
SPEAKER_00: And when we ask, where has he promised his blessings?
12:37
SPEAKER_00: What are those channels?
12:38
SPEAKER_00: What are those paths?
12:39
SPEAKER_00: We come up with three, three that are hinted at in the Bible, spoken of by theologians, the three main channels of grace, we could call them God's voice, God's ear, and God's body, better known as the word, prayer, and church.
12:56
SPEAKER_00: They're mentioned, by the way, in the early church in Acts chapter 2.
13:02
SPEAKER_00: The early Christians were continually devoting themselves to these three things: the Bible, fellowship with God's people, and prayer.
13:13
SPEAKER_00: And so what I'm telling you this month is that the three greatest habits that you can cultivate in life are listening to God's voice, speaking in God's ear, and meeting with God's people.
13:28
SPEAKER_00: Last week we took the first one, listening to God's voice, and we talked about the wonder of the fact that God would speak to us in his word.
13:37
SPEAKER_00: And I shared with you that God had spoken to me that previous week.
13:43
SPEAKER_00: I shared with you the scripture that he had done that in.
13:46
SPEAKER_00: And I urged you and manipulated you, twisted your arm to try to get you to join me and join the young adults in reading through the New Testament by Christmas.
13:56
SPEAKER_00: In your bulletin, there was this sheet called One Chapter a Day Bible Reading.
14:02
SPEAKER_00: I brought some extras for those of you who weren't here last week.
14:07
SPEAKER_00: And you'll find them by the door in the Molvane Building.
14:11
SPEAKER_00: They're right at the back by the window, and there in the back by the door at the College Avenue building.
14:18
SPEAKER_00: But what this is is a simple program adopted by the young adults to read through the New Testament between now and Christmas by reading one chapter a day from Monday through Saturday and taking Sunday off, for after all, it's the day of rest.
14:33
SPEAKER_00: Except that we're the Gospel of Mark behind them.
14:36
SPEAKER_00: They started before us, and so uh I suggest that you catch up by reading the Gospel of Mark on Sundays, or perhaps doing what I'm doing.
14:46
SPEAKER_00: I start John 1 was last Monday, and then I read Matthew 1 the same day, and John 2, Matthew 2, or Mark 2, and so forth.
14:55
SPEAKER_00: So if you've got one of these sheets, if you don't have one, get one from the office or somewhere in the auditorium.
15:02
SPEAKER_00: Please join us.
15:03
SPEAKER_00: Would you join us?
15:03
SPEAKER_00: How many of you are either planning to do this or are doing this already?
15:07
SPEAKER_00: Fantastic.
15:08
SPEAKER_00: That's great.
15:09
SPEAKER_00: So I hope it's I hope all those hands are racing College Avenue building as well.
15:14
SPEAKER_00: So anyway, uh at this point, uh we would have read through John 6 yesterday, and uh today is today is a day off.
15:24
SPEAKER_00: So if you're behind, catch up.
15:26
SPEAKER_00: So that's last week, and that's hearing God's voice.
15:29
SPEAKER_00: Today I want to talk to you in the time remaining about speaking in God's ear.
15:33
SPEAKER_00: Speaking in God's ear.
15:36
SPEAKER_00: There's a wonderful old um Negro spiritual that dates from Civil War days or perhaps before.
15:43
SPEAKER_00: We know it's at least before 1867.
15:46
SPEAKER_00: And it goes like this.
15:48
SPEAKER_00: Oh, sisters, let's go down, this slave song goes.
15:51
SPEAKER_00: Let's go down, come on down, oh sisters, let's go down, down in the river to pray.
15:57
SPEAKER_00: Oh brothers, let's go down, let's go down, come on down, oh brothers, let's go down, down in the river to pray, oh mothers, or oh fathers, oh mothers and oh sinners.
16:10
SPEAKER_00: I like those words because they remind me that when you go down to pray, you are always going down to the river of God's blessing.
16:23
SPEAKER_00: You are going down and standing in the river where God says, This is where I love to bless my people.
16:31
SPEAKER_00: In the reading of the word and in the speaking in my ear.
16:37
SPEAKER_00: Now, here's the problem, it seems to me.
16:42
SPEAKER_00: That if you're like me, and many of you are, you find it actually easier to read the word of God, to hear the voice of God, than to speak in the ear of God, than to pray.
16:55
SPEAKER_00: Is that right?
16:57
SPEAKER_00: It's different in the East.
16:58
SPEAKER_00: If you go to Korea, Africa, uh um, where are some of the other places I've been, man, those you sit in their prayer meetings and they just last and last.
17:07
SPEAKER_00: These people love to pray.
17:08
SPEAKER_00: Now, they may not read the Bible as much as we do, but it seems to be different in the West.
17:14
SPEAKER_00: West meaning America and Europe.
17:16
SPEAKER_00: In this book that I just mentioned to you, Donald Carson begins by saying, and Donald Carson has spoken here because he was one of my doctoral professors back in the 90s.
17:29
SPEAKER_00: What is both surprising and depressing, he says, is the sheer prayerlessness of the Western Church.
17:38
SPEAKER_00: It is surprising because it is out of step with the Bible, which tells us how to walk with God and how to be successful.
17:46
SPEAKER_00: It is depressing because, get this, it coexists with abounding Christian activity, which is true.
17:54
SPEAKER_00: Topeka Bible Church and other Western evangelical churches are so active, aren't we, in serving the Lord, which is a wonderful thing.
18:04
SPEAKER_00: But that somehow we would have many of us abandoned prayer or given up on prayer as a regular Christian activity.
18:13
SPEAKER_00: And we would stray far from the thoroughfare of prayer on which Jesus walks, is, he says, depressing.
18:21
SPEAKER_00: Now he does add a paragraph, which I'm going to throw in here because I know some of you experienced it with me.
18:28
SPEAKER_00: Some of you went to citywide prayer meetings or other things and found the same difficulty that I did, that there's a whole different kind of prayer going on today in some circles.
18:38
SPEAKER_00: Scarcely less disturbing, he says, is the enthusiastic praying in some circles that overflows with emotional release but is utterly uncontrolled by any thoughtful reflection on the prayers of Scripture.
18:56
SPEAKER_00: So here's the issue.
18:58
SPEAKER_00: We want to talk about prayer because we want to get to the place where God blesses us.
19:03
SPEAKER_00: So I want to get to a passage of Scripture and just whip through it.
19:07
SPEAKER_00: But first, let me give you six very practical tips.
19:10
SPEAKER_00: The first three have to are especially addressed to those of you, and I know there are many of you in this room who are good Christians, but you you pray less than 10 minutes a week, okay?
19:21
SPEAKER_00: You've just sort of, because you've tried it many times and it hasn't worked.
19:26
SPEAKER_00: First three tips are for you.
19:28
SPEAKER_00: Number one, get back in the game.
19:30
SPEAKER_00: I know you got off the bench, you got in the game, you've prayed many times in the past, but it's been unfruitful, unrewarding, boring, and so you've sort of stopped.
19:40
SPEAKER_00: You pray over meals, maybe utter a quick prayer before you go to bed at night, maybe shoot up a flare prayer when somebody cuts in front of you in traffic.
19:49
SPEAKER_00: But get back in the game.
19:51
SPEAKER_00: Okay, number two, set up your closet.
19:54
SPEAKER_00: Closet is a word that comes out of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus said, watch out, stop showing off in public prayers.
20:02
SPEAKER_00: Public prayers are important, but he said it's vitally important that you go into your closet, go into a secret place, and the Lord who sees in secret will reward you if you'll pray in a secret place.
20:17
SPEAKER_00: Now, for me, a closet just it's in the bedroom and it has a nice, easy chair that can swivel around and face the backyard.
20:24
SPEAKER_00: I need a, I'd like a window and I want a chair.
20:27
SPEAKER_00: Now, for some of you, all it may take is a clean desk.
20:30
SPEAKER_00: For my mother who had a dozen children, it was a real closet where she could get away from everybody.
20:36
SPEAKER_00: For some of you, it's your bedroom, and that's fine, but can I make a suggestion from poison little experience?
20:43
SPEAKER_00: Don't do it on the bed.
20:45
SPEAKER_00: Don't unless you have a lot more control than I do.
20:49
SPEAKER_00: It's so comfortable, especially not with a feather pillow.
20:52
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
20:53
SPEAKER_00: Number three, plan when you will pray.
20:55
SPEAKER_00: If you don't plan it, it won't happen.
20:57
SPEAKER_00: What I mean is you sort of need uh specific time to do it.
21:02
SPEAKER_00: Three, four years ago, I preached a series on prayer and tried to get all of you to pray seven minutes a day, and a number of you did it back then.
21:11
SPEAKER_00: And you sort of had to plan to do it.
21:13
SPEAKER_00: If you don't plan to do it, if you go, well, I'll just try to do it each day this week, it's not gonna work generally, unless you're far more disciplined than I am.
21:22
SPEAKER_00: Plan when you'll do it.
21:23
SPEAKER_00: Now, the other three tips are practical about what to do when you try to do it.
21:28
SPEAKER_00: Number one, start with the Bible, that is, hearing his voice.
21:33
SPEAKER_00: 150 years ago, a wonderful prayer man, prayer warrior named George Mueller, who ran an orphanage in England, uh, wrote one of his books on prayer.
21:42
SPEAKER_00: He said, for 10 years I tried starting with prayer.
21:45
SPEAKER_00: I tried praying fervently, I prayed on my knees, and he said, for 10 years I struggled, it didn't work, and then I realized, he said, that prayer is basically secondary.
21:55
SPEAKER_00: It's a response to the fact that God broke the silence by speaking frequently.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: So he said, from then on, and since I have started with the Bible, and I'll read the Bible, and then I move from there into prayer, and he says, I just suggest that.
22:10
SPEAKER_00: So I'm suggesting that you start with the Bible, because what I find is that as I read the Bible, there'll be a verse that sticks out, and I can jump from that verse right into prayer, and I pray that verse, and then I'm off and running.
22:23
SPEAKER_00: Some of you do the Acts program.
22:25
SPEAKER_00: I love the fact that my grandsons pray ACTS every night and figure out who's going to do each of those letters.
22:33
SPEAKER_00: Adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication.
22:37
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I adore you.
22:38
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I confess my sins.
22:39
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I thank you for what you've done for me.
22:42
SPEAKER_00: And Lord, I beg you, I supplicate you for these requests.
22:46
SPEAKER_00: And finally, if you're struggling, pray the Bible, pray verses out of the Bible, prayers out of the Bible, pray hymns.
22:54
SPEAKER_00: I often, you know, if I'm stuck and say in the adoration, I'll pray like one of the songs we sang this morning, or, oh Lord, my God, when I in awesome wonder, consider all the worlds thy hands have made.
23:06
SPEAKER_00: I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder, thy power throughout the universe displayed.
23:12
SPEAKER_00: Then sings, My soul, my Savior God to thee, how great thou art, how great thou art.
23:18
SPEAKER_00: So you sing the words of a hymn that you know or say them.
23:23
SPEAKER_00: Or then there's the Lord's Prayer.
23:26
SPEAKER_00: Now, uh, let me say something about the Lord's Prayer.
23:29
SPEAKER_00: Now, I still pray the Lord's Prayer two, three times a week, but uh the early church, there's a book called the Didache, which didn't get included in the New Testament, about 150 A.D., and it commanded all Christians to pray the Lord's Prayer by rote three times a day, morning and night.
23:48
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus didn't say when he gave the Lord's Prayer to the disciples, he did not say, This is what you should pray.
23:56
SPEAKER_00: He said, This is how you should pray.
24:01
SPEAKER_00: As though it were sort of a model.
24:04
SPEAKER_00: So I agree more with Martin Luther.
24:07
SPEAKER_00: Martin Luther taught his his followers, he said, pray the Lord's Prayer, but not the words of the Lord's Prayer.
24:15
SPEAKER_00: Sort of change those words every single day, and that way you're following the pattern of the Lord's Prayer.
24:21
SPEAKER_00: So that's often sort of what I do.
24:24
SPEAKER_00: Let me let me show you that.
24:25
SPEAKER_00: Let's take the Lord's Prayer.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: We'll just take five minutes on this.
24:28
SPEAKER_00: Let's start by saying the Lord's Prayer together.
24:31
SPEAKER_00: Are you ready?
24:31
SPEAKER_00: Go.
24:32
SPEAKER_00: Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
24:37
SPEAKER_00: Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
24:43
SPEAKER_00: Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.
24:51
SPEAKER_00: And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.
25:00
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
25:01
SPEAKER_00: I took liberties putting in sins instead of debts or trespasses.
25:05
SPEAKER_00: So something like that.
25:07
SPEAKER_00: Now, this prayer falls into a simple two-part pattern.
25:11
SPEAKER_00: The first half of this prayer and the first three petitions are you're praying to God about God.
25:18
SPEAKER_00: It's about Him, you.
25:20
SPEAKER_00: Hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, right?
25:24
SPEAKER_00: And then the last half of the prayer, and petitions four, five, and six, are prayers to God about ourselves.
25:31
SPEAKER_00: Give us our daily bread, forgive us our sins, lead us not into temptation.
25:37
SPEAKER_00: Got that?
25:38
SPEAKER_00: So when you start out your prayer, if you're going to follow this pattern, make sure that the first part of your prayer is about God.
25:47
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
25:48
SPEAKER_00: And maybe that you follow that it's about his person, hallowed be thy name, his program, and his purpose.
25:57
SPEAKER_00: So you start off with, as I did in my prayer with you a little while ago, Lord, thanks that we can call you father.
26:04
SPEAKER_00: Or sometimes I say Papa, because Abba, remember Jesus called his father Abba, Abba Father.
26:11
SPEAKER_00: And Paul tells you that.
26:12
SPEAKER_00: Now, now you've never, you know, just telling you the way it really is.
26:17
SPEAKER_00: Here, um, father is a little bit stiff.
26:20
SPEAKER_00: Daddy is a little too familiar for this Greek word Abba, but Papa is sort of right in the middle.
26:27
SPEAKER_00: And I love that word Papa for a number of reasons, but so that's why calling him Papa, I think, conveys beautifully what Jesus was saying we should do when we talk to the Father.
26:38
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, isn't it fascinating that none of the great saints of the Old Testament, not Abraham, not Joseph, not Moses, not David, not Daniel, ever prayed to God calling him Papa or Father.
26:52
SPEAKER_00: That only happened when Jesus came to earth.
26:56
SPEAKER_00: And over 270 times in the New Testament, we're told to call him Papa or Father.
27:03
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that a wonderful privilege?
27:05
SPEAKER_00: So talk to him about his person, his name, then talk about his program.
27:10
SPEAKER_00: I mean, just say, even if you just say, Lord, I'm so happy that history, history has a destination, that you're bringing your kingdom, you're gonna bring your Messiah, you're gonna set him up in Israel.
27:19
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we really need a good king.
27:21
SPEAKER_00: We need a good leader.
27:22
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Lord.
27:23
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna bring your kingdom to earth.
27:25
SPEAKER_00: And then you go with thy will.
27:26
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I want your will to be done in my life.
27:29
SPEAKER_00: I'm looking forward to it being done across the earth because I know that's the purpose of this whole thing, that you bring, that you bring your will on earth.
27:37
SPEAKER_00: And it's not my will, Lord, that I want done.
27:40
SPEAKER_00: It's your will that I want done.
27:43
SPEAKER_00: This is not my way of imposing my will on you, God, or bending your will to mine, but I want to subordinate my will to yours the same way Jesus said at Gethsemane, thy will be done.
27:57
SPEAKER_00: So then you've prayed to God about God.
27:59
SPEAKER_00: Now you move to praying to God about yourself.
28:02
SPEAKER_00: And so and so you have these very interesting three requests: daily bread, sins, and deliver us from evil.
28:10
SPEAKER_00: First one has to do with provision, second with pardon, and the final one with protection from evil.
28:18
SPEAKER_00: Now, the problem is that the first one seems irrelevant, the second one's quite unpleasant, and the third prayer is really rather reluctant.
28:27
SPEAKER_00: For example, the irrelevant prayer for provision, give us this day our daily bread.
28:32
SPEAKER_00: Which of us needs to pray for daily bread?
28:35
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we have a bag of it out there that Panares gives us every week, and that if you're short of daily bread, grab a loaf, right?
28:42
SPEAKER_00: And most of us have a couple of loaves in the freezer.
28:46
SPEAKER_00: And so it really doesn't feel relevant.
28:50
SPEAKER_00: And it feels rather insignificant, right?
28:52
SPEAKER_00: After praying, Thy will be done, I'm going to pray for daily bread.
28:57
SPEAKER_00: Well, this is telling us really some amazing stuff, isn't it?
29:01
SPEAKER_00: That number one, that God cares about me and my body.
29:06
SPEAKER_00: Insignificant little me, and he cares.
29:08
SPEAKER_00: And second, that he's the God of the mundane, things that we think of that are way beneath them.
29:15
SPEAKER_00: And third, that that we depend on him for everything, and he wants us to sense that.
29:22
SPEAKER_00: Martin Lloyd Jones, the great old British preacher, was right when he gushed, isn't this one of the most wonderful things in the whole of Scripture?
29:31
SPEAKER_00: That the God who's the creator and sustainer of the universe, the God who's forming his eternal kingdom, and he will usher it in at the end, the God to whom the nations are as but the small dust of the balance, that such a God should be prepared to consider your little needs and mine, even down to the minutest details in this matter of daily bread?
29:50
SPEAKER_00: He goes straight from thy will be done on earth as is in heaven to give us this day or daily bread.
29:55
SPEAKER_00: But that's the way of God who cares about sparrows and every hair on your head.
30:00
SPEAKER_00: And not only does he care deeply about you, but he's the God of these mundane little things.
30:06
SPEAKER_00: One book entitled The God of the Mundane, or when I was visiting my daughter in Canada, she was recommending a book she was reading called Subtitle Laundry, Liturgy, and Women's Work.
30:20
SPEAKER_00: And as I read it, this one line caught my attention.
30:24
SPEAKER_00: The ordinary activities, Kathleen Norris wrote, I find most compatible with prayer are walking, baking bread, and doing laundry.
30:36
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
30:37
SPEAKER_00: God is the God of the mundane, and he wants us to depend on him for everything.
30:44
SPEAKER_00: Well, then comes a sort of an unpleasant prayer for pardon because we're supposed to remember our sins and ask his forgiveness for them.
30:52
SPEAKER_00: And there is that line immediately following the prayer where he says, if we don't forgive other people when they sin against us, God says, can ask me all you want, but I'm not going to forgive you from your sins, which makes us wonder, does that mean we're going to hell?
31:10
SPEAKER_00: And it's a good reminder to us that our relationship with God can never be broken, that kind of eternal forgiveness.
31:18
SPEAKER_00: But there is a daily fellowship with God that can be broken by sin.
31:25
SPEAKER_00: So we confess it.
31:26
SPEAKER_00: And if we do, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
31:33
SPEAKER_00: 1 John 1.9.
31:35
SPEAKER_00: But how can I expect God to do mercifully for me what I callously refuse to do for my brother?
31:45
SPEAKER_00: And then finally comes these personal prayers, comes the reluctant prayer for protection.
31:51
SPEAKER_00: And I and I say it's reluctant because let's be honest, some of us kind of enjoy the temptations of this world.
32:00
SPEAKER_00: But he tells us to say, lead us not into temptation.
32:03
SPEAKER_00: In other words, just the opposite.
32:05
SPEAKER_00: Please push us far away.
32:08
SPEAKER_00: When I am weak, Lord, keep the temptation far away.
32:12
SPEAKER_00: And when the temptation is close, make me strong.
32:16
SPEAKER_00: So that's the pattern of the Lord's Prayer, our Father which art in heaven, thy name, thy kingdom, thy will, pray about God first, and then pray about your stuff.
32:26
SPEAKER_00: Now I want to sort of close or draw it to an end with four QA's, very practical question and answers.
32:32
SPEAKER_00: One, what should blow your mind about this whole topic?
32:37
SPEAKER_00: Well, the answer is that I have the ear of God.
32:44
SPEAKER_00: We hear the voices of a lot of important people, of presidents and prime ministers and kings, you can hear them every day on television, but we don't have the ear of any of those important people.
32:58
SPEAKER_00: But isn't it astounding that not only can we hear the voice of God in his word, but he stoops over and bends down, desperately hoping to hear us talk to him.
33:14
SPEAKER_00: And he listens.
33:16
SPEAKER_00: Astounding that I have the ear of God.
33:19
SPEAKER_00: Second, why is this stuff so important, this closet prayer so important?
33:25
SPEAKER_00: Tim Keller's answer is the infallible test of spiritual integrity, Jesus says, is your private prayer life.
33:33
SPEAKER_00: Others like J.I.
33:34
SPEAKER_00: Packer call it the measure, the true measure of your spiritual life.
33:40
SPEAKER_00: That's a little convicting.
33:41
SPEAKER_00: So we'll move on.
33:42
SPEAKER_00: Third question: what's the purpose?
33:44
SPEAKER_00: What's the goal of this whole thing anyway?
33:46
SPEAKER_00: C.S.
33:47
SPEAKER_00: Lewis may have the best answer to that.
33:50
SPEAKER_00: Where he says prayer in the sense of petition, asking for things, it's a small part of it.
33:56
SPEAKER_00: Confession and penitence are its threshold.
33:59
SPEAKER_00: That's, I'm sorry.
34:01
SPEAKER_00: Adoration is the sanctuary, but the presence and vision and enjoyment of God is the bread and wine.
34:07
SPEAKER_00: And what he's saying there is that we don't primarily pray to get things from God.
34:13
SPEAKER_00: We primarily pray to get God Himself.
34:18
SPEAKER_00: And he does.
34:19
SPEAKER_00: He flows right down to those people who pray.
34:22
SPEAKER_00: We may not feel it.
34:24
SPEAKER_00: Prayer may remain for us a struggle, but he promises that if we'll just stick to it and do it, he'll walk that way and he'll share himself with us.
34:36
SPEAKER_00: Final question is this is the most practical one.
34:40
SPEAKER_00: What to do about mental drift?
34:43
SPEAKER_00: Does anyone else get distracted in prayer?
34:47
SPEAKER_00: I mean, for me, it honestly goes like this.
34:51
SPEAKER_00: For some reason, the first line's always the same.
34:53
SPEAKER_00: Lord, thank you for this day.
34:54
SPEAKER_00: And then I go, thank you for being such a great God.
35:00
SPEAKER_00: I can't believe I lost my watch.
35:03
SPEAKER_00: Where is that thing?
35:04
SPEAKER_00: You know, and then I go, no, back to business, back to business.
35:07
SPEAKER_00: Okay, and then I go, Lord, I mean, thank you so much for thank thanks.
35:12
SPEAKER_00: I love uh thanks for my family.
35:14
SPEAKER_00: I love my family.
35:15
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for Melody and the children and the grandkids and so forth.
35:19
SPEAKER_00: And I mean, really, and the and Lord, I pray for them, their physical health, I pray for their spiritual health, I'll pray that the children will grow up loving to go to church.
35:30
SPEAKER_00: Wow, I preached a bad sermon last Sunday.
35:33
SPEAKER_00: Man, I can't believe that I was so weak.
35:35
SPEAKER_00: Church was just anyway.
35:36
SPEAKER_00: Oh, stop it.
35:38
SPEAKER_00: Then I sort of go back in, you know, move into praying for missions, Lord.
35:41
SPEAKER_00: I pray for Haiti Lifeline, I pray for Trash Mountain, those poor people over there, so many of them are hungry.
35:46
SPEAKER_00: I wonder what I'm gonna have for lunch today.
35:48
SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean, it's just anybody else like that?
35:51
SPEAKER_00: It's just maddening, you know.
35:55
SPEAKER_00: And I'm constantly using an electric prod to get myself back into it.
36:00
SPEAKER_00: Now, I'll tell you some things that I do do that really help.
36:03
SPEAKER_00: One thing I do is I pray out loud.
36:04
SPEAKER_00: Anybody else here pray out loud?
36:06
SPEAKER_00: We're talking about the private prayer, so yeah, it really helps.
36:09
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes, you know, you can walk around, you know, to keep awake and to pray.
36:15
SPEAKER_00: And then some people keep, I have a prayer list, I don't always consult it, but uh you keep prayer.
36:20
SPEAKER_00: So I used to keep a prayer journal.
36:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that really worked.
36:25
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I mean it's so neurotic, you know, I'd spend 29 minutes carefully writing the prayer journal and one minute praying.
36:32
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was just uh, and so, but but there are things that can help you, like I mentioned before, praying the scripture, praying prayers of scripture, using songs that you know, right?
36:42
SPEAKER_00: You following the pattern of the Lord's Prayer, even praying the Lord's Prayer, things like that.
36:46
SPEAKER_00: So those things will help, but I'll tell you something that helped me so much with this thing distractions.
36:51
SPEAKER_00: I have this whole these shelves of devotional books and prayer books, and I grabbed one by a priest who lived like X hundred years ago, named Francis de Sales, and he says something about it that really has comforted and helped me.
37:07
SPEAKER_00: He says this if the heart wanders or is distracted, bring it back to the point quite gently.
37:15
SPEAKER_00: I bring it back, like I said, with a cattle prod, and replace it tenderly in its master's presence.
37:22
SPEAKER_00: And here comes the line.
37:24
SPEAKER_00: And even if you did nothing during the whole of your hour but bring your heart back and place it again in our Lord's presence, though it went away, every time you brought it back, your hour would be very well employed.
37:40
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that something?
37:42
SPEAKER_00: Listen, friends, the great people of the earth today are the people who pray.
37:46
SPEAKER_00: I don't mean, said Gordon, Gordon Conwell seminary, I don't mean those who talk about prayer, nor those who say they believe in prayer, nor yet those who can explain about prayer.
37:58
SPEAKER_00: I mean those people who take time to pray.
38:04
SPEAKER_00: Somebody put me onto a song not long ago that I've been listening to all week.
38:09
SPEAKER_00: I just love it.
38:10
SPEAKER_00: And it's by someone named Jordan Feliz, and it goes a couple of the lines go like this.
38:18
SPEAKER_00: I know a place where we can go to lay the troubles down, eating your soul.
38:24
SPEAKER_00: I know a place where mercy flows.
38:27
SPEAKER_00: We're going down to the river, down to the river, down to the river to pray.
38:35
SPEAKER_00: When you do go down to pray, you're going down to the river.
38:42
SPEAKER_00: You're going down to the river of God's favor and God's blessing and God's joy.
38:49
SPEAKER_00: Bow your head with me.
38:50
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we thank you.
38:52
SPEAKER_00: What a friend we have in Jesus.
38:56
SPEAKER_00: What a privilege it is to carry everything to you in prayer.
39:05
SPEAKER_00: Oh, what peace we often forfeit.
39:07
SPEAKER_00: Oh, a needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry everything to you in prayer.
39:17
SPEAKER_00: Father, give us the strength, the grace, by your spirit this week.
39:24
SPEAKER_00: To open your word and hear your voice, and then to speak back into your listening ear.
39:34
SPEAKER_00: Jesus' name we pray.