Crossway did a survey and found that only 2% of believers
were very satisfied with their prayer life, 2%.
2% of believers were very satisfied with their prayer life.
The overwhelming majority had a moderate
to low satisfaction rating
when it came to their prayer life.
Can anyone in this room, humble enough,
be willing to admit that you would fall somewhere
between moderate to low satisfaction in your prayer life?
Thank you.
Everyone else must be in the 2%.
We're a lucky church.
See, we all know that prayer is important,
and if you are a believer,
you probably aren't gonna hear anything
that's radically new, like, you know,
like, hey, did you know that Christians
are supposed to pray?
And, you know, rock you back on your foot,
you know, like, on your butt, and like,
whoa, look, I didn't know that, I had no idea
Christians were supposed to pray.
We're not gonna be introducing any new concepts.
These are things that most of us,
if you've been around the church
or in the faith for any amount of time,
you know, if you haven't and you're just exploring,
then we're inviting you into this exploration with us.
But it does seem that there is a subtle
kind of background angst among believers,
among Christians, over the condition of their prayer life.
I would even say that that angst,
that background kind of noise,
that feeling of ugh over their prayer life,
is also accompanied with some sort of guilt and shame.
Yeah, I know I should pray more.
Yeah, I know I should be a man or woman of prayer.
And I'll be honest, I'm in the same boat.
I'm learning together with you guys,
if that's you and you have less than a stellar opinion
of your prayer life, how it goes, how deep you go with God,
the depth to which your prayer time goes,
the length, how satisfied you are
in your heart in meeting with God,
then you and I are on the same journey together.
Martin Luther, the great reformer, once said,
to be a Christian without prayer is no more possible
than to be alive without breathing.
And I would say that's probably true.
There are a whole lot of Christians
who are gasping for air and who are choking
on their prayerless lives.
So why go to prayer?
Is guilt and shame that we should just try harder
and be more spiritual?
Is that the motivation we need to go to prayer more?
And I would say no.
No, that's right.
Because the God of the universe and the maker
of all things that are seen and unseen,
he can hear my cry through the noise of the universe
and he can help me and he wants to
and he doesn't demand that I come all cleaned up first.
Yes, that is a good reason to go to prayer.
Shame and guilt are not gospel motivators.
There's no good news in you should do better, right?
But you know what are good gospel motivators?
Beauty and wonder.
When you're caught with something beautiful
or awestruck in wonder,
people do all kinds of crazy things.
No compelling them, they just do what they want.
Compelling them, they just do it.
Beauty and wonder.
I want you to listen to this Psalm, Psalm 34 verse 17.
And hear the beauty and the wonder in it.
The righteous cry out and the Lord hears
and rescues them from all their troubles.
The righteous cry out and the Lord hears
and rescues them from all their troubles.
But you might say, put the brakes on, there it is.
See, I'm not righteous.
So that verse doesn't apply to me.
I'm not righteous, so I can't claim that verse as true.
And right you are on your own, you are not righteous.
But as a believer, Christ is righteous.
And if you are in Christ, then you can stand before God
in the same place, in the same standing,
with the same status as Christ himself.
You can approach the throne of grace
with confidence, with boldness,
so that you may receive mercy and find grace
to help you in your time of need.
Are you weary?
Are you burdened?
Are you stressed out?
Are you anxious?
Are you sick?
Are you depressed?
Are you hopeless?
Do you feel like a failure?
None of these things would be worthy attitudes
or demeanors to approach a deity, would they?
You better bring your best.
You better get all dressed up and look nice before you come.
And I don't wanna hear about any of your problems.
I want you to come and honor me.
That's your standard, classic deity.
But you know what Jesus says?
You know what's so radically different about the gospel?
Are you weary?
Are you burdened?
Are you stressed out?
Are you anxious?
Are you depressed?
Do you feel like a failure?
Jesus says, come to me.
Come to me, all you who are weary.
Come to me, you who are burdened.
Come to me, you who feel like a failure.
And I will give you rest.
C.S. Lewis, one of my favorite authors,
said, I pray because I can't help myself.
I pray because I'm helpless.
I pray because the need flows out of me all the time,
waking and sleeping.
It doesn't change God, it changes me.
We're gonna be spending October and November
looking at the Lord's Prayer in Matthew chapter six.
But before we get to the model for prayer
that Jesus lays out for us, we must first examine
the heart of Jesus.
We must first examine the heart.
And if you've been on this journey with us
through Matthew or you know anything about Matthew,
that's where Jesus has been looking a lot.
Is not on the externals, but at the heart of the matter.
Matthew chapter six, beginning in verse five,
Jesus said, whenever you pray, you must not be like
the hypocrites because they pray, they love to pray,
standing in the synagogues and on the street corners
to be seen by people, truly I tell you,
they have their reward.
So Jesus begins by saying, whenever you pray,
and then you could stop right there
before that comment is, whenever you pray.
So whatever comes next is for you, the believer,
every time you pray, you need to listen to what comes next.
What comes next is important.
When we as disciples of Christ get to prayer,
there is a way that is acceptable
and there is a way that is not.
And he says, you must not be like who?
The hypocrites.
Hypocrites is this idea of play actors, stage actors.
Oftentimes they would put a mask on to take on
this superficial appearance of a thing or a person.
Not who they really were,
just who they were pretending to be.
And so he said, you must not be like the hypocrites,
they love to pray.
Now if you stopped right there, you would say,
well there's nothing wrong with that, loving to pray,
that sounds great.
Oh, they love to pray standing in the synagogues
and on the street corners.
So is Jesus condemning public prayer?
No, not at all.
When we see the street corner listed here,
I don't know about you, but I often think about that,
obnoxious person preaching on the corner,
torturing everyone who walks by.
But that's not what's in mind here.
Prayer was an integral part of the Jewish way of life.
Praying three times a day was standard.
Reciting the Shema in the evening and the morning
was regular practice.
They would do this in the synagogues,
the synagogues were kind of their house of worship,
their place of teaching and study.
And this might take place on a corner of a street.
If a Jewish man was unable to make it to the synagogue
or temple, at the appointed time he might stop and pray.
So Jesus was not saying public prayer is the issue,
it's what comes next, right?
It's what comes next, it's not whenever you pray,
you must not be like the hypocrites
because they love to pray, standing in the synagogues
and on the street corners to be seen by people.
To be seen by people, truly I tell you,
they have their reward.
Do you love to be noticed?
Do you love to be admired when you pray?
And some of you, your knee-jerk reaction is no,
actually I don't pray out loud
because I don't want to sound stupid.
I don't want to sound dumb so I just avoid praying.
I don't want to sound dumb so I just avoid
the whole practice all together.
And I would say in some ways you've fallen into
the same trap.
The root of pride is thinking more highly of yourself
or thinking on worthy thoughts,
that having a higher estimation of yourself
than you ought to have.
And humility isn't thinking less of yourself
but thinking of yourself less.
Not thinking less of yourself but thinking of yourself less.
So Jesus is saying that when you pray like the hypocrites,
you're not praying from a radiant, transformed inner life
but are instead putting on a mask
and pretending to be something you're not.
And it may or may not put on a great show for everyone else
but it does not impress God.
He isn't impressed with our play acting
as he reads our answers.
As he reads our anxious thoughts.
I wonder if they're impressed yet.
Did I just hear a quiet amen when I was praying?
Oh, oh, someone agrees with me.
Oh, my prayer's starting to connect.
I can feel people go, mm, mm, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I gotta get louder.
I gotta milk this prayer for all it's got.
Luke 18, there's a story of another look at me prayer.
A look at me prayer.
Hopefully none of us are look at me prayers
but there's an illustration that Jesus used
of a Pharisee and a tax collector
and he said this parable.
To some who trusted in themselves
that they were righteous and looked down on everyone else.
Two men went up to the temple to pray.
One a Pharisee, the other a tax collector.
The Pharisee was standing and praying
like this about himself.
Praying like this about himself.
God, I thank you that I'm not like other people,
greedy, unrighteous adulterers
or even like this tax collector over here.
I fast twice a week.
I give a tenth of everything I get
but the tax collector standing far off
would not even raise his eyes to heaven
but kept striking his chest and saying,
God have mercy on me, a sinner.
I tell you, this one went down to his house justified
rather than the other because everyone
who exalts himself will be humbled
but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.
Jesus in Matthew six is trying to show this very example.
There are two ways that you could approach him.
Look at me, look what I've brought.
Look at my words, the eloquence of my words.
Are you impressed, God?
I must impress you with all that I am and all that I say.
Or there's another way which is the way of the Lord.
Which is the way of the humble man who says,
I am coming and making a request of you
that you have no business, you have no business
giving into, you have no business bestowing on me.
I'm coming to you and asking for a sinner
that you would show mercy to me.
I'm coming, he stands out afar, he won't even go near
and he beats his chest.
He won't look up to heaven and says,
have mercy on me, a sinner.
And Jesus says, that's the man who walked away justified.
Not the other one.
You don't have to impress, God.
Your prayer isn't acceptable on the basis
of how impressive it is.
Back in Psalm 34, the verse we read,
the very next part, after the verse that we read earlier,
says that the Lord is near to the brokenhearted
that he saves the crushed in spirit.
So the Lord hears the righteous man's prayers
and he delivers him from all the trouble
and the very next thing he says
is he's near to the brokenhearted
and he saves the crushed in spirit.
He saves the humble.
That must have something to do with being righteous
in God's eyes as we stand in Christ's righteousness.
But verse six, but when you pray,
go into your private room, shut your door
and pray to your father who is in secret
and your father who sees in secret will reward you.
Do the inner work.
Prayer is an inside out work, not an outside in.
Prayer is about communion with God,
fellowship, relationship with God.
Augustine said that prayer or true prayer
is nothing but love.
True prayer is nothing but love.
In fact, it's in the very language that Jesus said.
He said pray to your father, your father
who sees in secret will reward you.
It's that familial relational language,
how we're to relate to God.
Imagine there's two sources of light.
The first is that glow in the dark paint.
For some strange reason in our bathroom at our home,
we moved in and it wasn't until we turned off the lights
in the bathroom one evening that we realized
that someone had slathered the entire vanity mirror
surround with glow in the dark paint.
And so it's just like shining off the walls at you
and kind of splotchy looking and we're like,
what on earth?
You've probably seen it on a kid's toy
or maybe on those little stars
that people will stick on the ceiling.
The paint looks impressive in the dark,
but only for a little while, right?
The glow is entirely dependent on how much external light
it has absorbed.
It gets charged by whatever light hits it,
but eventually it fades as it gives off that energy.
Its radiance isn't really from within,
but it's something that's borrowed from another source.
And once that light is gone, the glow quickly diminishes.
It's an external show, it's bright at first
and then it fades because it lacks true sustained energy.
On the flip side, imagine a massive power
of a nuclear reactor generating light and energy,
not borrowed from an external source,
but releasing the power from within.
This type of energy is continuous and far more powerful
because it comes from deep inside.
It's sustained radiance, a light that doesn't flicker out
when the outside conditions change.
It is consistent and enduring.
And this is the difference between the kind of light
the hypocrites in Matthew six project versus the genuine
light that comes from communion with God.
The hypocrites are like glow in the dark paint,
publicly seeking attention and praise for their prayers,
feeding off external validation.
They shine for a moment when the spotlight is on them,
but their light is quickly fades
when they are not being seen.
Their prayers are fueled by the attention of others
and without the external light,
there is nothing left to sustain them.
But in contrast, the kind of inner life of prayer
that Jesus calls us into is like that nuclear powered energy.
It's deep and internal and powerful.
True prayer is not about what others see
or about borrowing light from the outside.
It's about cultivating an interior life with God.
It's about going into the secret place of your heart
and allowing the Holy Spirit to work within.
This produces a light that spills out naturally
even when no one is watching and it's not dependent
on the fleeting praises of others.
Some people are bound up like glow in the dark paint.
They only shine when they're praised
and it may not be about prayer,
it may be about anything in the Christian walk.
Did I do good?
Can you make me shine a little bit more?
I'm feeling dim.
The life that Jesus is saying is not outside in,
but inside out.
It's the life of God at work within the believer
that begins to radiate and this kind of radiance
is fueled by that authentic relationship with God.
It's consistent and sustaining
and a source of life and life change.
Another theologian said that prayer doesn't change God,
it changes us.
It deepens our fellowship with the Father
and helps us align our desires with his will.
I think that's often missed when we study prayer
we think about prayer as me going
to the great piggy bank in the sky
or the big vending machine in the sky
and popping my quarters in
and hoping God dispenses the goodies that I want.
But how many of us go to prayer and think and realize
that it's actually about fellowship with the Father
and aligning my will with his.
Aligning my will with his and fellowship with his
and fellowship with him.
That's the essence of prayer.
As we'll see in when we unfold the Lord's prayer.
And you can see that if that is true,
that it's about fellowship and aligning our desires
with his will, then this is absolutely vital
to the Christian life.
No substitute.
How could we even live out the Christian life
without a vibrant radiant life of prayer?
Is it even possible?
Martin Luther didn't seem to think so.
It's as essential as air is to being alive.
Then Jesus gives another example of what kind of prayer
is not acceptable to God.
In verse seven he said, when you pray,
don't babble like the Gentiles,
since they imagine they'll be heard for their many words.
Don't be like them because your Father knows
the things you need before you ask him.
Do you babble empty-phrased token prayers?
In this passage, if you're not familiar
with the term Gentiles, Gentiles refers
to the pagan, unbelieving nations around Israel.
They didn't pray to their deity
for fellowship with their deity.
They prayed to their deity for favors.
They didn't pray for fellowship to grow
in relationship with Dagon.
They prayed to Dagon to get favors from Dagon,
better crops, prosperity.
They would say these endless mantras and incantations
said in perfect order, you had to say them just right,
and repeated ad nauseum until they could finally
get through to their deity.
The prayers of the Gentiles.
I'll tell you, never have empty-phrased rote prayers
been ever more on display than for some folks
before they enjoy a good meal.
I think we need to sprinkle this meal
with a little prayer sprinkle to make sure
we don't choke on the chicken,
and to make sure we get another meal after this, right?
Or if you got anyone in your family
you go to Thanksgiving pretty soon.
Wow, that's crazy, Thanksgiving is pretty soon.
Anyone know, no one who's in here,
but anyone know someone who, every year they try
to make turkey, and every year that turkey is like leather.
It's like, you know, you know what I mean?
I may have had someone in my family
who could not make a turkey.
And so it's like, dear Lord, before I eat this shoe,
please make sure I don't choke on it.
I don't choke on it.
Okay, that was a genuine prayer, not an insincere one.
No, but we do these rote prayers.
Dear Lord, thank you for this day,
and thank you for this food.
We pray you bless the door of our bodies in Jesus' name,
amen.
That's literally my prayer.
Like, again, I'm on this journey with you.
I've got it memorized, I've got it down,
I know what to pray before a meal.
But that's not fellowship with God.
That's not sitting with the Father and saying,
oh, look at all the blessings you have poured on me.
Looking around the table at the people you are with
and seeing them as gifts from God and giving thanks,
boasting in the Lord for all that you have.
It's, dear Lord, thank you for this food.
Amen.
Let's eat.
No fellowship with God.
Or maybe it's in a small group or a Bible study.
Have you ever been in that situation
where there's something in you that said,
we should pray?
But you didn't really, like, it wasn't really,
there was an impulse,
but it wasn't really an impulse for fellowship.
It was like, somehow we've gotta sprinkle
that prayer stuff on this Bible study before we start,
otherwise we're not gonna get anything out of it.
That's praying like the Gentiles.
That's saying your mantra or your incantation
in the exact way to hope the deity hears you
and hope that he comes through for you,
to give you favor.
That's not fellowship.
That's not communion.
That's not relationship.
Imagine doing that with your spouse.
Many times these kind of prayers often flow from a heart
that doesn't fully believe that God is actually listening.
If you really believe God is listening and he is near,
would you talk to him that way?
Dear Lord, thank you for this food.
Thank you for this time.
Pray you bless everybody in Jesus' name, amen.
Would you talk to him that way?
Verse eight, your father knows the things you need
before you ask them.
Your father knows your needs.
You're not going to him to inform him of anything.
You're not going to him to inform him of your need.
You're not going to him to tell him about your bad day
or your depression,
and he's going, thank you so much for telling me.
I had no idea.
Jeez, that's rough.
No, he already knows.
He already knows, but he wants fellowship with you.
He wants you to tell.
He wants you to communicate.
He wants you to express how you feel in his presence.
And he wants you to learn to process all that
in the right way so that your desires and will
begin to align with his desires and will
so that you can start to see those circumstances and needs
in a whole different way, a transformed, radiant way.
The very things that for many people
become the darkness in their life,
the lack of shine in their life.
God, in proper relationship with God, in communion with God,
he can turn those to be the most radiant things
in your life.
The suffering that you went through,
the darkness that you went through
can become the brightest light of the gospel,
shining through you as you give glory and honor to God
because you processed it properly in the presence of God
and your desires began to align with his
through fellowship and communion with him.
I don't see how a Christian could live without that.
He certainly would be settling for a lesser form.
You notice in the Lord's Prayer, we'll get to it
in a little bit, but your will be done comes before give us.
Remember that, your will be done comes before give us.
I think a lot of people struggle with the thought of
am I really being heard?
Is God hearing my prayers?
A YouTuber, a YouTuber, a YouTuber,
a YouTuber, a sociologist guy wanted to do a study.
He wanted to look at folks who had deconstructing
their faith, who were abandoning the faith
and walking away from Jesus.
And he wanted to see when they went out,
these are particularly YouTubers or celebrities,
when they went out and they did public interviews,
what were the common themes that he could find
between most of them, why they were walking away,
why they were deconstructing.
And he went into it thinking that the prevailing thought
was that they wanted to sin.
They had sins they wanted to do, God wouldn't allow it,
they needed to cut God off so they could go do the sinning.
Right?
And of course, we don't know the heart,
so we can't know for sure, and people represent
all kinds of things with their mouth,
but he did find it very interesting that after
doing the survey of those who had deconstructed,
what he found, the number one reason for them
was that they were deconstructing, leaving the faith
and cutting God off because of unanswered prayers.
For whatever idea or concept of prayer they had,
they had kept a list of all the times that God,
internal list, of all the times that God had not answered
their prayers, and this built up to a point where they said,
I don't have any need for a God who doesn't answer my prayers
the way that I want them to.
And what you have there is you have a will
that's not being submitted to the Lord
and not conformed to his desires and wills,
and then it's trying to interpret the very work of God
and the hand of God, trying to understand the wisdom
of God without the relationship with God,
and there's no way to do that.
You can't process the things you're going through
or the pains that you have or the hurts
or the blind spots or the darkness in your life,
be it depression or feeling like a failure,
you can't process those properly unless you have
fellowship with God, and you can't have fellowship
with God unless you pray, and you can't pray
like the Gentiles, that's not fellowship,
and you can't pray like the hypocrites,
that's not fellowship, there's a way to pray
that draws you in and changes everything.
Gentiles pray to an unknown and unknowable God.
Christians pray to a Father.
And Jesus focuses us in on this in this passage here.
Timothy Keller once made this observation of this passage,
he said, the litmus test for whether or not
you are a spiritual hypocrite or not,
the litmus test for whether you are a hypocritical Christian,
Jesus does not jump to whether or not
you're sexually promiscuous.
So some of us would go, if you're sexually promiscuous,
that means you're a hypocrite, right there,
that's the one, you cross that boundary,
you're definitely a hypocrite.
But Jesus doesn't jump to sexual promiscuity,
he doesn't jump to theft, he doesn't jump to murder,
he says the litmus test for whether or not
you're a spiritual hypocrite or not is your prayer life.
It's your prayer life.
And he says, because it's the only part of your relationship
with God that is completely private.
Sure, it finds its way out, but it starts here.
And I know, that's a heavy word,
it was a heavy word for me to hear.
It's like, oh, spiritual hypocrite.
God's inviting us into something else.
He's inviting us into that fellowship and relationship,
and it takes knowing where you're at
for you to be able to begin to know where to go.
For you to be able to begin to know where to go.
So how should we pray?
I'm closing with this.
Jesus gives us a model in the Lord's Prayer,
I'll have the worship team come on up while I'm doing this.
Jesus gives us a model in the Lord's Prayer.
The Lord's Prayer is a pattern, not a performance.
Everyone say pattern.
Pattern.
Not a performance.
This is going to be important.
We're going to say the Lord's Prayer eight times,
we did one today and seven more in the coming weeks,
in order to get that pattern driven into our hearts
so we begin to understand it.
But you have to know that it's a pattern, not a performance.
The Lord's Prayer could easily become
one of those Gentile prayers.
Where if I say the Lord's Prayer and I walk out the door,
my day is good, I had my communion with God.
I asked him for his favor to give me the things that I need,
and he made me feel better so I don't need God anymore.
The Lord's Prayer is an invitation into a pattern
of thinking and a pattern of relating to God
that we all need.
It's a pattern, not a performance.
And Jesus teaches us that prayer is acceptable to God
when and only when our attitudes, our thoughts,
and our desires expressed fit the pattern.
When our attitudes and our thoughts and our desires
expressed fit the pattern, then they're acceptable to the Lord.
There's prayer forms that are not acceptable
and there's attitudes and thoughts and desires
that can conform to a pattern
that is pleasing and acceptable to God the Father.
The scholar N.T. Wright said,
the point of the Lord's Prayer is not just
that we should say it,
but that we should learn it as the language
of our heart and life.
That's our goal, to learn it as the language
of our heart and life.
We're going to be breaking down this pattern,
phrase by phrase, sometimes word by word,
over the next seven weeks.
And so I'll close this question.
Are you ready to come to Jesus as the disciples did
in the Luke version of the Lord's Prayer,
the disciples come to Jesus and they ask Him something.
They say, Lord, teach us how to pray.
Everyone say, Lord, teach us how to pray.
That's a great prayer.
Lord, teach us how to pray.
And the Lord taught them this pattern and model
we call the Lord's Prayer.