The Church of Eleven22 - S01 E01 - Prayer

Episode Date: March 15, 2020

Prayer can feel complicated, but Jesus says it’s simply this: children reaching up to their good Father. In this episode Pastor Joby examines one of Jesus’s most profound and powerful teachings on prayer. “So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” — Luke 11:9

Well, howdy, Church of 1122. It's good to be with you this way. I am sitting on stage at what would be our 1122 service right now on Sunday. And God has just led me over these next four or five days to just do some devotions that will be available to you from God's Word each day. And so I haven't even prepared much. I just feel compelled to be able to just share God's word with you and maybe help shepherd you through this time that is crazy.

It's very confusing. We all expected to be at TPC this afternoon after being at church. I hope your online experience was incredible and fruitful. And I do know this, that any time we gather together, whether it's two or three people in a home or whether it's 10 or 12,000 in some of these incredible facilities that God has blessed us with, that God is present there. And so our new normal may just be a little different,

particularly over the next few weeks. And so our president has said that today would be a national day of prayer. And so I just wanted to share a little about how we as a church can be praying in this time. So if you've got your Bible, go to Luke chapter 11, and I want to just share some thoughts on what prayer is according to Jesus.

Luke 111 says, now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray as John taught his disciples. It's very interesting that Jesus had a certain place that he liked to pray. Also, it's interesting that the disciples would ask Jesus to teach them to prayer, to pray. I don't know that prayer is, it's just something that you just know how to do. Now, I do think that prayer is instinctual, just like a little kid reaches out to their parents when they're in need. I can tell you, regardless of what people believe about Jesus right now in our world, when people are sick and in need, they instinctually reach out to him. And so at the base level, that is prayer, but Jesus is going to answer his disciples with this teaching on how to pray. And he says to them, when you pray, pray like this.

and he starts it out this way. Father, hallowed be your name. Now, what you have to understand is that when Jesus starts out what we know as the Lord's Prayer with the words Father, it blew away all of the categories that these traditional Orthodox Jewish young men

would have had about Yahweh or Elohim or Adonai, these names for God. You see, they primarily understood God as sovereign, king, judge, maker, creator. And all of those things are absolutely true. And yet Jesus says, when you pray, the way you should pray is you start with this word, Abba or Father.

That God, almighty, maker of heaven and earth, judge, ruler, and king invites us to speak to him like he would speak to your dad. Now, this is something that Jesus had to teach his disciples, because when they prayed, they didn't pray that way. Most of the time when they prayed, they would pray, memorize prayers from the Old Testament. And there's nothing wrong with that. But there's just a deeper way to pray.

When we go to God, first and foremost, with the heart of a child, going to their dad and saying, Father. And the next, he says, hallowed me your name. I think what he's saying here is, everything else included in this prayer is going to be under the banner of glorifying the name of God. So before God, before I get to my request, which we're going to get to, and before I begin filling you in on all the information that I feel like you need to know,

which is a bit silly, but we tend to do that. I just want to acknowledge my relationship with you is that a father and child, and secondly, that you are sovereign and king, and everything that I'm asking for and everything that I am bringing, bringing to you and all of my cares and all of my concerns are essentially primarily about your name being hallowed. You see, oftentimes when we pray, it doesn't so much change our situation, but when we pray like Jesus taught us to pray, it for sure changes us in our situation. You see, we pray because we have an alignment issue. We pray not because God needs information from us,

we pray because we need to be re-aligned with God that our lives and our story would ultimately be about him and his glory. And so when Jesus teaches his disciples to pray, he said, this is how you start. He's your dad. And align yourself with him. He goes on to say, your kingdom come. I think this is just commentary on what it means for our lives to hallow his name. God, would you transform my heart?

God, whether you change the circumstances or not, would you change me so that I could be an instrument of your peace and your love and your justice and your gospel on this earth as it is in heaven? God, may the things of heaven a right relationship with you, may those things through me filter into this earth. And then he says, give us each day our daily bread and forgive us our sins. for we ourselves forgive who is indebted to us. In other words, Jesus may your grace and your forgiveness flow through us and out of us

to such a point where we begin to treat people the way you have treated us. And then he says, and lead us not into temptation. And then that's the Lord's Prayer. Now, the crazy thing about the Lord's Prayer is this. In the book of Matthew, when Jesus is instructing his disciples to pray,

He says, and when you pray, don't just do like rope, memorize prayers and don't go on and on and on so as to impress everybody. And so what we did as disciples, as Christians, as we took that teaching, and then we memorized the words that Jesus said, and then we repeat it over and over and over. And so I think then Jesus is going to share a couple of parables so that we can understand what the heart of prayer really is. And he says this. And he said to them, which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, him, friend, lend me three loaves. For a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him. Now, what you have to understand about this is that hospitality in the first century was of utmost importance. So this seems kind of like a random story to us. Like if one of my

neighbors came over to my house asking for a pop-tart at three o'clock in the morning, I'd either wouldn't answer the door, I'd call the police, because that would be, it'd be totally out of context. in this context, there was not a whole bunch of hotels or you know, you couldn't just go online and book a room. And so if you were traveling with your family and you got into a village and you needed somewhere to stay, if you knew somebody in that village, you just assumed because of the importance of hospitality, you could just go to their house, knock on the door and say, hey, man, we need to stay with you tonight. And if you could not host somebody and you could not feed them and give them something to drink, then people would look down on you like crazy.

So this was a really, really big deal. So he's like, all right, who among you if a friend knocked on the door said, let me three loaves for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him, and he will answer from within, do not bother me. The door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed, and I cannot get up and give you anything. In other words, if you're in bed at night,

the way they would sleep in these little one room, houses is that usually the dad was sleep in the middle and all the family would sleep around him, mostly for warmth. He's like, so imagine somebody knocks on the door at night, you wake up, it's 3 o'clock in the morning, and your neighbor who didn't go to Costco and get enough bread, he needs bread, what would you want to do? You know that you would want to lay there and be like, bro, stop knocking on the door. You're going to wake up me and my entire family. And he says, and that I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence, he will rise and give him whatever he needs.

In other words, who of you has a friend if they came to your house and you were asleep and he had 10,000 reasons to not get up and give them what they asked for? But because the neighbor bangs and bangs and bangs and knocks and knocks and knocks and won't leave you alone, you could be coerced to get up and give him a piece of breath. Now, this is his teaching on prayer. And you may say, so, pastor, are you saying that God is like a sleepy father in heaven? And if we just aggravate him long enough, then and maybe then, he will give us what we want. Well, listen, every little kid on the planet knows at some point this works with your parents, doesn't it? I mean, eventually, they just gripe long enough. You're like, fine. And then you

give them what they asked for. Well, sometimes when Jesus would teach parables, parable just means like to lay alongside of. Sometimes when he would teach parables, he would teach a story and say, God is like this. But in this parable, he's saying, God is not like this. We find out from the last verse in this section that what Jesus is saying about God is this, if you who are an evil, selfish, self-centered dad. If you can be coerced to get up and answer someone's request, how much more does your loving heavenly father want to hear from you? This is why he continues and he says, and so I tell you, ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be open to you. for everyone who asks receives and to the one who seeks finds and to the one who knocks it will be open

and if you knew the Greek words here the tense of these words it's not just like ask one time what Jesus said is when you pray you got to ask and ask and keep on asking and when you pray you got to knock and knock and keep on knocking and when you pray you got to seek and seek and keep on seeking and for anyone who ask and ask and ask and seeks and seeks and knocks and knocks it will be open to you for everyone who asks receives and the one who seeks funds and the one who knocks it will be open now this was to describe the previous parable here's what he's saying and when in regards to prayer god says ask me again come on ask me again keep bringing that to me now again i've told you before if the words ask me again come out of my mouth at my house towards my kids it's not

good. It's more like ask me again. But God with his patience says, no, no, no, ask me again, ask me again, ask me again. Now you may look at this and you say, well, listen, I've been asking God for this same prayer request for years and he has not given it to me. And I would tell you that God answers every prayer. Sometimes with yes, sometimes with no, sometimes with not now. Tim Keller says that God answers your prayers the same way you would answer your prayers if you knew all that God knows. And so Jesus goes on to explain, and he gives another parable. And he says, what father among you, if his son ask for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent? Or if he asked for an egg, will give him a scorpion. If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children,

and how much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? So there's a lot here. First, he teaches, when you pray, start with our Father. And then the way he ends it, he's like, listen, dads, you know what this is about. You see, think about this. Who in the world can wake up a king at 3 o'clock in the morning and ask for a glass of water? Only that king's child. You see, when I'm in my house, especially when my kids were younger,

they had no problem walking into my bedroom and waking me up and saying, Dad, I'm thirsty. And you know what I did? I would get up and give them something to drink. And I didn't give them poison. No, no, no. I gave them something that was good for them. And we, in the same way, we have a Heavenly Father,

and he's a good dad, and he loves his kids. And right now we may be in a season where we ask why God, or maybe we know people that are sick, and we cry out to God and cry out to God and cry out to God. And because of the cross of Jesus Christ, what we can know is this, is that he's a good dad, and he demonstrated his love for us and this,

that while we were yet still sinners, that Christ died for us. And so not only did Christ die, but he was resurrected from the grave, and if he was willing to do that for us, then what would he hold back from us? And so we, as a church, we as sons and daughters of God,

when we pray we need to come to him as a heavenly father that knows best and loves us and we need to align our lives to him and say hallowed be your name your kingdom come god use me to bring your kingdom here you need to make our we need to make our request known to him for sure and ask and seek and not knowing that he is a good good father that loves to give good gifts to his kids So church, I just want to take a few minutes and pray. We need to pray for our leaders. We need to pray for the sick people around the world. We need to pray for the families of those that have lost loved ones.

We need to pray for doctors and nurses. We need to pray that God would rain down on us. He is the great physician, and every good and perfect gift comes from above. So whether God decides to stop this coronavirus supernaturally, glory to God. If he gives the right minds and medicine and technology for it to be stopped, praise God. And we need to pray for humility on our part. And we need to use this time as an opportunity to lean into him knowing that he will lean into us. So if you would, bow your heads and let's pray.

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallow would be your name. God, would you align our lives to your will and your ways and your work? God, I pray for the men and the women, the students, and the children of the Church of 1122. God, I pray against the spirit of fear, because you have not given us that. Lord, I pray that you would fill us up with the Holy Spirit. Lord, I pray that you would fill us with power and love and a sound mind. God, I thank you that preparation is not panic. Lord, I pray that we would keep our eyes wholly and solely fixed upon you and you alone.

God, we pray for our leaders, the leaders of this world, the leaders of this world, the leaders, of our nation that they would make well-informed decisions for the sake of your people, for all of the people. God, I pray for our local leaders here and around Jacksonville. God, I pray for the men and women in our church who economically this is affecting in significant ways. And Lord, I pray that we would fix our eyes wholly and solely on you and you alone. Trusting that you're a good, good father and you love your children. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you, church.