Amen, well I had kind of an eventful week the last week.
We got back on Sunday, last Sunday late,
after a long day of travel.
I love flying two or three hours,
but I don't like flying four or five hours.
I end up standing in the aisle a lot,
just looking over people's shoulders, you know,
there's a weirdo on the airplane.
But we got back and then crashed for a little while.
Monday, I remembered that I needed to go to the dentist.
I had a temporary crown on one of my teeth,
and which, praise God, lasted the whole time in Guatemala.
That would have been weird to have that pop off.
But I was able to go in and got one put in.
I went with the all metal,
so I'm feeling a little piratey today, you know,
a little, if I smile.
But then, Tuesday was a full day,
and by the time I hit Wednesday, I was feeling sick.
Flu, a cold, something caught up to me,
and Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday,
and I'm just starting to feel a little bit better.
But you know, they say you're battling a flu,
or you're battling a sickness,
and in my case, it doesn't really look like
a whole lot of a battle.
It looks like me, kind of in a fetal position,
yelling to the other room,
Adrian, give me a sippy cup, I need another drink.
Can you bring me this?
There's no battle whatsoever.
It won.
But luckily, it's only for a short time,
and everyone adapts.
Oh, Dad, he's got the sniffles.
He'll be out for a little while.
And then I rebound a little bit.
But it's good to be here this morning,
and to be with our family, the church, you guys.
Just really, really,
as I really enjoyed our time in Guatemala,
but we were traveling all last Sunday,
and it's hard to miss a Sunday morning
with the family of God.
And so I'm glad to be here today,
and just excited to dive into the Word.
We've been going through a study on the Lord's Prayer,
and we've been breaking it down line by line.
We're gonna go ahead and say the Lord's Prayer together.
It'll be up here on the screen.
Why don't you just say it with me.
Our Father in heaven, your name be honored as holy.
Your kingdom come, your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And do not bring us into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.
Now a lot of people have grown up with that prayer.
In fact, it's probably the most well-known prayer,
even outside of the Christian faith.
Moms and dads have taught their kids that for a long time,
whether they're practicing Christians or not.
And yet one of the things I think
that's most misunderstood about it,
as we tend to think of prayers,
especially in the more liturgical fashions of church,
we tend to think of them as recitations
that what we just did there was the whole thing.
You recite it, and then you move on.
But what we're missing out of Jesus' teaching
is that he was giving us a pattern, not a performance.
He was giving us a pattern to follow, not a performance.
And it actually takes some deeper thinking
and examination of the Lord's Prayer
to understand the pattern that he was laying out,
the model, so that it can inform the way that we pray.
And that's what we've been looking at.
Now verse nine and 10 of the Lord's Prayer,
the first two and the one that we looked at last week
was nine and now we're diving into 10.
These are more than just the place to start.
I would say that these are foundational
for all acceptable prayer in the Christian faith.
Our verse nine and 10 of the Lord's Prayer.
Because it begins by teaching us about the nature
of our relationship with God, that God is our Father,
and as a Father we relate to him.
Now as humans, we've had all kinds of Father figures
in our life, and not all of them have been good.
And so that can really skew the way that we relate to God
if we bring all of that baggage and we say,
oh, I don't like fathers.
The one I had or the ones that I had
just weren't that very good.
But that's why when we understand Father,
we have to look at all of scripture to understand
what is a good Father in the first place.
Because when our fathers have failed us,
they failed us against some standard
that we were holding them to.
And I would say that that standard that we're holding them
to, if you trace it all the way back,
is the standard set forward in scripture for who God is.
The good, perfect Father that all of our fathers
in some way or shape or form failed to be.
But we begin with our relationship to God,
and God is our Father.
And where is God our Father?
Well, he's in heaven, and the one in heaven
has a much bigger, better perspective on the world
and the things happening in the world than you or I do.
We can only see what's right in front of us.
And so God, our Father who is in heaven,
who has total authority and dominion,
who has perfect wisdom and insight and oversight
of all things, that's where our prayers begin.
And that has to be in our mind and our heart
when we begin to pray an acceptable prayer.
And then last week, if you were here,
Nick, one of our servant leaders, filled the pulpit
and he talked about the first petition that takes place
in the Lord's Prayer.
It begins with our Father in heaven,
and then it says, your name be honored as holy.
Your name be honored as holy.
It's the first petition.
And one of the things that he pointed out is it's a request.
It's not merely a statement of worship.
You may have grown up thinking that was some way of saying,
praise Jesus or praise God, right?
Howl o'd be your name if you were
the old King James version, right?
Howl o'd be your name, as if that was a statement
of worship.
It's not a statement of worship.
It's actually the first petition,
the first request in the prayer.
And what is the first request that you're asking God
before you ask anything else,
before you ask for your needs or for him
to give you anything, what's the first thing you ask?
You ask that his name be honored as holy.
His name be honored as holy.
It's a call for God to act in a way
that brings reverence and esteem to his name,
ensuring that his holiness and his character
are respected and exalted above all else.
And this honor invokes recognizing God's infinite worth
and his infinite wisdom and power
and asking for his reputation to be seen as sacred
and set apart from all creation.
And by focusing on this as a foundational request
for all of our prayers, other requests then are placed
under the desire to see God's name exalted as holy.
And that impacts the way that we approach everything
in our prayer life.
Everything becomes subservient to your name
be honored as holy.
It changes things.
I think Nick said it's a key that unlocks
all kinds of power in prayer.
And I believe that, absolutely.
But today we're looking at the third
and the second and third petitions,
which are found in verse 10.
So your name be honored as holy,
and then there's a second petition
and a third petition, and together they make up
this first part of the Lord's Prayer.
Today we're looking at your kingdom come,
your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
So if you're taking notes
and you want a heading to write down,
the first thing I'll have you write down
is the kingdom of God.
We need to unpack what is the kingdom of God
if we're praying for the kingdom to come,
we need to understand it just a little bit better.
The word in Greek that was written in the original
translation of the New Testament
that translates to English kingdom
is used about 160 some times.
And it's not so much about the physical
geographical territory or boundaries
or even the subjects of a kingdom.
We tend to think of a kingdom
and we immediately think of a globe
and boundaries, borders of a nation, right?
Oh, it's the kingdom of X, Y or Z.
That's the kingdom.
Well, that's not what the word kingdom,
at least in the scripture in the Greek really means,
not primarily.
It's not so much about the physical, geographical
or the subjects even of the kingdom,
the people of the kingdom.
But first and foremost, the word kingdom
means rule and reign.
The rule and reign.
And the kingdom of God primarily means God's reign.
That's R-E-I-G-N.
If you're thinking of rain coming from the sky.
Okay, just side note.
Can't wait for the rain.
R-A-I-N, is that right?
Yeah.
Ha ha.
Can't wait for the rain,
but we're talking about the other rain.
God's reign, his authority and his rule.
And rather than a specific place or group of people,
in other words, the Bible talks about the kingdom,
it's talking about God actively ruling.
Not necessarily in a physical realm
or in some nation somewhere.
The kingdom of God.
And so sometimes you might even get, as a kid,
you might have thought of the kingdom of God
because Matthew uses this interchangeably.
He says, he'll use the word the kingdom of God
and then he'll say the kingdom of heaven.
The kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven.
And when you maybe read the kingdom of heaven,
you thought, oh heaven, the place that we go to
where we float on clouds, we shoot little arrows
and we frolic all day long, right?
That's heaven where we're going,
so the kingdom must be that place that we're going to.
But that's not it at all.
In fact, the word kingdom of heaven,
when Matthew uses that in his writings,
it's actually a Jewish way of writing
in order to not exhaustively use the word God.
They so revere the name and they so wanna stay away
from the line where they exhaustively use it
and use it in vain, that they start to substitute in
other words like heaven.
And heaven is just a substitute word for God.
So it's just another way of saying the kingdom of God.
The kingdom of God.
Now, heaven in our concept is the realm of God, right?
But it's the kingdom of God.
It's the place of his rule and his reign.
In Psalm 103, verse 19, the psalmist said,
the Lord has established his throne in the heavens
and his kingdom rules over all.
But this doesn't mean that God's kingdom is a place
ruling over all other places.
It means that it's God's power and authority
that extends out to everything.
So while God's reign creates a people and even a place,
the essence of the kingdom of God is God's active rule,
his authority.
And we might ask, why do we need this?
Why do we want God's active rule to come?
Why would we pray that?
Well, I don't know about you,
but have you seen how things are going around here?
The kingdom of this world ain't working out.
We just came back from Village of Hope.
The kingdom of this world has experienced
in the stories of these young ladies.
The kingdom of this world sells their daughter for food.
When I say sells, it's not just like sells
and then buys back.
Sells in order to be sexually assaulted
so that they can eat.
That's the kingdom of this world.
The kingdom of this world abuses one another.
The kingdom of this world is at one another's throats.
The kingdom of this world right now is in election season.
Get your piss forks and we're dividing the room
into red and blue, right?
No, please don't.
Let's not do that.
But that's what the kingdom of this world
riles us up and gets us at one another.
You saw this rile up.
In the story of the Bible, right after the fall of mankind
as they fell into sin, disobeying God's law,
that immediately, what's the next story?
Cain and Abel.
One acceptable sacrifice, one not.
I'm gonna kill you for it.
And then pretty soon, humanity spiraled out of control.
Why do we want this?
Why do we want the kingdom rule to come?
Because when the kingdom rule comes,
all the benefits of the kingdom come with it.
Perfect justice, perfect love, shalom, peace.
Peace like we've never experienced.
When the kingdom comes,
the characteristics of the kingdom come with it
and it breaks in.
And the things of this world,
the characteristics of this world began to be broken.
The things of this world began to be undone and overturned
and things are made right that are wrong.
And so we pray for the kingdom because we saw that.
Now, how do we know that?
Well, we know that because of Jesus when he showed up.
We know that when Jesus showed up,
the things that were wrong began to be made right.
Eyes that couldn't see were open for the first time.
Right?
Diseases that had inflicted someone from birth
to death.
And then in a moment, Lazarus, who had died,
was resurrected to life so that we might see,
oh, the kingdom, the kingdom,
God's active rule at work in our broken world.
In Matthew 12, Jesus said,
if I drive out demons by the spirit of God,
then the kingdom of God has come upon you.
And what Jesus is saying in Matthew 12
is that the kingdom of God is present
wherever God's power and authority are actively at work,
particularly through the spirit of God and his people,
as we'll see a little bit later.
When Jesus casts out demons,
he's demonstrating that God's reign, his kingdom,
remember God's rule and reign, his active rule and reign,
that's what kingdom means,
is breaking into the world in a new powerful way,
directly confronting and overthrowing the powers of evil.
Again, in Luke chapter 17, some Pharisees,
these are people who were really well-versed in the law,
the law of Moses, and they prided themselves
in being religious because they knew the law
and they, quote, did everything it commanded.
The Pharisees came to Jesus in Luke chapter 17,
and they say, hey, when's the kingdom going to come?
When's it gonna show up?
If you're the Messiah, if you're the king,
where's the kingdom?
And understandably, at least to how our minds think,
they thought of the kingdom as a physical kingdom,
that Jesus was gonna come, an army was gonna follow him,
they were gonna overthrow the Romans,
they were gonna recapture Israel,
and they were gonna set up a physical kingdom
with Jesus as king.
You know, the way things used to be
when David was on the throne, when Solomon was on the throne,
when's it going back to the way it used to be?
And Jesus responds to them and says,
the kingdom of God is not coming with something observable.
No one will say, see, hear, or there it is,
for you see the kingdom of God is in your midst.
That's cloak and dagger a little bit,
but the kingdom of God is not something that appears
with outward signs or physical boundaries.
In our election season, I'm sorry to let you down,
but the kingdom of God is not going to fly in
on Air Force One.
The Pharisees were expecting a visible political kingdom
to be established, but Jesus points to a different reality,
that the kingdom of God is already present among them.
They just can't see it or perceive it
because it's in an unexpected way.
How is the kingdom of God in their midst?
Well, the active rule and reign of God
is no longer relegated to a building like the temple
or to a land like the state of Israel,
but it is now centered in a person,
namely, the rule and reign, the active rule and reign of God
is wherever the presence of King Jesus is.
Where King Jesus is, the active rule and reign of God
is present.
And so when we pray, your kingdom come,
we're asking for God's active rule and reign
to break into our earthly reality.
There's another scripture many of you
are probably very familiar with.
Seek first the kingdom and his righteousness
and all these things.
What were all the things that he was talking about
right before that?
Anyone know?
Food, clothing, basic provisions.
Seek first the kingdom and his righteousness
and all these things will be added to you
or given to you.
Well, doesn't that sound a little bit familiar?
If you lay that over top of the Lord's prayer
and if you begin to understand that the kingdom
is not a physical place or some place that we go to
or some place that we have to migrate to,
but it's wherever the King's presence and power
is at work active, well, then it's seek the active
rule and reign of God.
Seek the active rule and reign of God in your life
and righteousness, what's righteousness?
Well, it's doing, it's an obedience, right?
It's through faith that Abraham believed and acted
and it was credited to him as righteousness.
Righteousness is obedience to God's will.
Faithful obedience to God's will,
that's the Lord's prayer.
Your kingdom come, your will be done.
Seek first the kingdom and all these things
that give us our daily bread, forgive us,
all these things will be added to you
if we seek the active power,
rule and reign of God in our lives.
We need ultimate justice, we need ultimate grace,
we need peace, we need the kingdom to break through
into our lives.
Some of you need the kingdom of God,
the active rule and reign to break through
into your marriage.
There's strife, there's a lack of peace,
there's something of the world that has crept
into your marriage or into your relationship
and what you need is the active rule and reign of God
to intervene, to break into that reality,
to change the way things are and the way that Christ
showing up on the scene changed everything,
undid the way things were, restored the kingdom in Shalom.
Some of us are anxious, anxious for where we will
get our provision or where we will lay our head
or what God is doing in our life or our families.
We need the kingdom, the active rule and reign of God
to enter in to that situation.
One key to understanding the kingdom of God
is realizing that it exists in what theologians
and Bible nerds have called the already but not yet,
the already but not yet state.
When Jesus came, he inaugurated the kingdom of God on earth.
He brought with him, he broke through, you can think of it
as this is the kingdom of the earth and the kingdom of God
was somewhere out here and he entered in,
they began to cross over as half circles crossing
and that little space was Jesus and he was bringing
in the kingdom and you had almost like a portal
to another world, to the rule of God beginning
to break free on earth.
But that was just the beginning because it didn't fully
engulf all things.
Not everything was set right.
We know that because we're 2000 years later
and many of us experience the brokenness
of this world, don't we?
And so we know that everything hasn't been set right
so where's the kingdom?
Well that's why we pray kingdom come
because there's a part of the kingdom that is already here
for those who are in Christ where the spirit of God
begins to live in them so the act of rule and reign
of Jesus is present in every single believer
and yet there's not a fulfillment or the totality
of that rule and reign has not yet fully been realized
and will only be realized when Christ the King returns.
When he returns he brings with him the totality
of his kingdom.
Because we don't just believe in a God who stepped down
from heaven and became man in the form of Jesus Christ
and walked to this earth and lived a perfect life
and died on the cross, was buried and by God's power
resurrected so that we might believe and have faith in him.
We don't just believe in that God who then ascended
to heaven, we believe in one that will come back.
And too many Christians sit around and think
that this world is all there is and they invest everything
into this world and they invest all their emotions,
all their strength, all their energy into this world
and when this world fails them,
that was your only shot, right?
You only get one life.
If you missed it, you didn't win the lottery,
you didn't hit all the things that you aimed for,
guess what?
No do-overs, this ain't a video game.
That's the sad reality of those who put all their stock
into this life and this world without realizing
that this is transient, this is temporary.
This is the in-between, this is the already but not yet.
We're in that in-between while we wait for Jesus
to appear again, to return and when he returns
he brings with him the totality of the kingdom.
All wrongs made right, all injustice is fixed,
all evil overcome.
In Revelation chapter 11, there's this song on that day,
it's Revelation chapter 11, there's been seven seals
in Revelation, you know, Revelation's just a crazy cool book
and I'm so glad I get to study it with some godly folks
at Campus Commons, thank you Krista,
for having me every day.
I get to get together with what, 10, 12 people,
something like that and we study the book of Revelations,
we've been in it for a while, we're into chapter 11
this week and as we're sitting there and I'm thinking
about this sermon and everything that we've been talking
about, we hit what is the seventh trumpet
and from the perspective that I approach Revelation,
I would be what was called like, again, Bible nerdy,
like all millennial and so we're in the church age
and we're awaiting Christ's return
and we're looking for him to come and when he comes,
he brings with him the kingdom of God
and the seventh trumpet is the end of all,
it's the sounding of the judgment of the world.
The king has come and all evil must be judged
in his presence and the righteous will be brought
into his kingdom and heaven erupts in this song
and these are the lyrics to the song.
The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom
of our Lord and his Christ and he will reign
forever and ever.
That's the day.
That's the money right there.
That's the day.
Everything made right.
The kingdom comes and so the already,
the access to the power, what the Bible calls are deposits
in Christ, the Holy Spirit, the act of rule and reign
at work within each believer and together as a church.
But that's not everywhere, right?
It begins to burst out little by little as we go out,
as we talk to people, as we let that part of our life shine
and reflect the glory and goodness of God.
The kingdom of God advances in these little places
and pockets in your workplace or at the coffee shop
or in your home, wherever you're at,
the kingdom of God begins to advance
as the act of rule and reign of God in your life
begins to come out and people see it
and they wonder what's going on,
what is this thing that's breaking into my reality?
But they're not yet when Christ comes.
And so to pray, to pray this prayer,
to pray the prayer, your kingdom come,
your kingdom come is to pray that through the witness
of the church, all those who believe in the name of Jesus
for salvation, that the witness of the church,
through it, more people would submit
to the rule and reign of Jesus.
When we pray your kingdom come, the already part of it
the already part is Lord, use us to bring your kingdom
that more people would submit to your rule and reign.
And the not yet part is Lord, wrap all this up,
let's get moving.
Maranatha, right?
Lord come, Lord come, wrap it up, if you've ever lost someone
that you really loved, you know that moment when time stops
and you've probably prayed something like that,
let's just wrap it up, I'm done, let's just wrap it up.
And he writes the biblical scholar and all around cool dude
because he talks with a British accent, he said when Jesus
told his followers to pray that God's kingdom would come,
he was not talking about people going to heaven,
rather he was talking about the rule of heaven
coming to earth.
That begins with us.
Taking notes, write down the will of God.
We're gonna jam through this,
the will of God.
This goes hand in hand with the other two petitions,
your name be honored as holy, your kingdom come
and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
To pray for God's will to be done is to pray
that God gets what he desires.
That God gets what he desires and the modern self
is diametrically opposed to what God wants.
I can tell you that.
The modern self prioritizes desire, comfort,
personal goals over any external authorities.
You don't have the right to tell me how to define
and shape my life, how to frame my life or what I pursue.
That's something that has to come from within.
This is the modern self.
The modern self says that's all originated
from the spark of light within that I created
out of nothing.
As we ascend the throne and take on our own God likeness
to say we self-determine everything,
our lives are the product of whatever we want them to be.
And this is opposed to the kind of gospel
that Jesus brought where he came
and he modeled for a self-denial.
Self-denial and submission to God's will.
And that's what we're gonna do.
Submission to God's will over his own will
or any other will.
Obedience to God.
Surrender of control.
That's a tough one, man.
And along with that, sacrifice.
Now you and I sometimes will deceive ourselves.
We'll be like, man, I sacrifice all the time.
Like I sacrifice that one thing that I want
so that I can get that other thing that I want.
I'm really good at sacrificing that one thing
for the other thing.
No.
Talking about laying down your life.
Laying down all, putting it all on the line.
That's the kind of model that Jesus gave us.
And so when we talk about the will of God
and we say your will be done,
there's two facets to God's will
and the first one I'll go really quickly through
because really there's not much we can do about it.
It's called the sovereign will of God
and the sovereign will of God,
that's his will, his purpose,
his ultimate unchanging purpose for the world.
That includes the creation, the fall of mankind,
redemption and restoration.
This is a plan that God had in his own wisdom
before any of us were around.
He didn't ask any of us what we thought about it.
He didn't consult with us.
He didn't ask for our pros and cons.
He didn't consult us for our wisdom
or what we thought about it.
And he's gonna steer that ship across the bay
into the port right on time, whether you like it or not.
That's God's sovereign will.
Any God with lesser than that is no God at all.
It's just a God in competition with other gods, right?
This God gets that prime place, the sovereign will.
But there's another kind of will that God has.
It's another facet of his will and that's his moral will
and this is what God desires for his people or his creation,
how they are to live in order to reflect his character
and his holiness.
His desire for us, how we ought to live
in order to reflect his character and his holiness.
And you know that one can definitely be thwarted.
We oftentimes want him to consult with us on that one.
We oftentimes take his word when his word is plain as day
as whatever that guy's name is.
I can't think of, Soren is his first name,
but he has a statement where more or less it says,
hey, numbskulls, Christians, we oftentimes pretend
like we don't understand what God's word is asking us.
But in truth, we understand it perfectly.
We just don't wanna do it.
We just, so we all go, I don't understand.
There must be some Greek word that I need to study
really deeply to understand that scripture, right?
We know.
And in his moral will, God is asking us
or he's preparing us or he's working in us
in order that we might become a reflection of his character
and his holiness on this earth,
so that this earth might catch a glimpse
of what heaven is like.
That's where his will comes in.
What his will for us is not just some,
again, if you import a whole lot of your upbringing
or the way that you were treated and how you were raised
or the way that you think things ought to be done,
you might hear the will of God
or the things that God wants you to do
and you go, oh man, that's a law, that's restrictions,
that's like having a curfew,
I don't want anything to do with that.
But if you understand his name as holy is prime
and you understand that his will is in order for us
to best reflect his divine character and holiness
on this world and so that heaven can be brought down
to earth a little bit at a time through each one of us,
in heaven there's no resistance to his desire,
no resistance to God's desire and no counter force
that works against what he wants,
but on earth it's a different story, isn't it?
To pray, our Father in heaven,
your name be honored as holy, your kingdom come,
your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
It's to pray for God to act in a way
that brings himself maximal glory and honor
to break into our world and flood it with his rule and reign
and to see it, see to it that he gets
what he desires out of it,
to see to it that he gets what he desires
out of his creation.
And so you know how he answers those prayers?
He answers those prayers by God acting in a way in us
to bring him maximal glory.
He answers those prayers by God's kingdom
and his rule and reign breaking into our lives
so that we are more and more submitted to Jesus.
And he accomplishes that by having us let go of our will,
teaching us and training us and by his spirit empowering us
to lay aside our will and our self-centeredness
and our pursuit to make our name great
and to build our own kingdom.
And to exercise our will and get our desires.
He helps us to wean off of the world
so that we are all about his name, his kingdom, his will.
I think together these two verses, nine and 10,
is properly understood and believed and lived out
will radically change your entire life.
I said this to the first service,
I'll say it again here,
at the second service, this teaching on the Lord's Prayer,
I think it's properly understood and meditated on
and really, really dug into.
And that's gonna take a whole lot of work
from you away from here.
We can like, we can salt a little bit here,
but we can't make the main course.
We're just adding a little flavor to it.
You gotta go and dig in, you gotta go and pray,
you gotta go and read the scripture
and meditate on each line of it
to understand what the Lord is willing to do.
And I think I'm gonna go on and go into the second line
of it to understand what the Lord is wanting
to speak to you, but I think this series and this teaching
could have the most radical effect on our body
in a congregation that we've seen of anything
that we've taught so far or looked at.
Because this reorients every one of our lives
around something completely different
than this world once had reoriented around.
This reorients our lives around God's glory.
You know what happens in the past in history
that the Lord had made a short-lived
and hahaha cost.
is because the kingdom of God was so alive
and ripe within them that they had to spill it out
in some way that the kingdom, God's act of rule and reign
moved their life to quit jobs and move to Guatemala.
And for the first few years, not even have the license
to do the work that they came down there to do.
When we went and visited those homes
and delivered those food packages,
those were the people they had connected to
before they got the license to do the home,
to care for the kids, because they couldn't just sit around.
And so they decided to go door to door
and hook up with other ministries
and try to provide food and care for the neighbors.
Should we pray for the sick?
Should we pray for our jobs?
Should we pray for difficult relationships?
Yes, we should cast all our cares on Jesus.
But you know that you don't have to be a born again believer
to want sick people to get better.
You don't have to be a born again believer
to want to get married to the right person.
And you don't have to be a born again believer
to want to get that job,
or want help getting out of a tricky situation.
Those are prayers absolutely necessary,
but they're not uniquely born again believer prayers.
But you know these three petitions,
your name be honored as holy, your kingdom come,
your will be done.
These will move your prayers into kingdom prayers.
These will move you into distinctively Christian prayers.
God's name honored, his kingdom come, his will be done.
I'm gonna ask the worship team to come.
They're gonna close us out in a song
as we do communion in just a moment.
I think the effects of these prayers, well,
they're gonna be powerful and effective
because the world should see the Christian community
and see what heaven is like.
How we treat those who are on the inside,
how we treat those who are on the outside,
how we care for the least of this world,
how we are radical truth tellers
and how we are radical grace givers,
and how we honor those who are on the outside,
how we care for the least of this world,
how we are radical grace givers,
and how we honor God's name as holy.
One thing that I'll point out before
we go into our time of communion,
notice something that Jesus doesn't teach his disciples
about prayer.
And maybe some of you have struggled with this.
You struggled with how long do I pray?
I should pray more.
I should pray more often.
You know that Jesus doesn't teach his disciples
how long to pray?
He doesn't say five minutes, he doesn't say 10 minutes,
he doesn't say two hours.
You know what else he doesn't teach his disciples to do?
He doesn't tell them how to feel when they pray.
How many of you guys have ever been praying
and you're like, I just don't feel it today?
Doesn't teach on that.
Doesn't spill any ink telling us
how we're supposed to feel when we pray.
You know what he does?
Does tell us only what we should pray for.
What we should pray for.
And that may be a two minute prayer,
that may be a five minute prayer,
that may be a prayer with no words,
just sobbing tears,
but your heart reaching out to your father God in heaven.
That may be all kinds of prayers.
See it releases the legalism of like,
oh, well, Christian prayer is 20 minutes a day,
every day and proper devotions in the morning.
No, Christian prayer is our father in heaven.
Your name be honored as holy first.
Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth
as it is in heaven.
It is our duty to bring forth in our lives
the fruits of grace and of holiness,
that men may see what the kingdom of God is
and what they may become if they yield themselves
to the dominion of the savior.