Words of Jesus Podcast - How To Get What We Ask For When We Pray

Episode Date: July 15, 2022

If we pray for others to hear we have our reward (speaking to those listening); prayer with leaven considers "what people think", pray in secret, Father knows what you need; we don't know what we need, one thing to ask for daily revelations; daily read, The Lord's Prayer (Instructions for the disciples); Lord's Prayer in John 17, God in heaven, not omnipresent; name = nature (our understanding of who God is); God's name/nature is not to be tampered with; Don't ask for things not in God's nature; Baptism of death; Fruit of baptism (not instant) death of me - life in Christ; endure to the end.***Chapter 19: The Sermon on the Mount...And when you pray, you will not be as the hypocrites are for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But you, when you pray, enter into your closet, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly. But when you pray use not vain recitations, as the heathen do: for they think that they will be heard for their much speaking. Be not therefore like unto them: for your Father knows what things you need, before you ask him. After this manner therefore pray: Our Father who is in heaven, Hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us our daily bread, day by day. And forgive us our sin debts, for we also forgive everyone indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if you forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. Moreover when you fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces that they may appear unto men to fast. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But you, when you fast, anoint your head, and wash your face That you appear not unto men to fast, but unto your Father which is in secret: and your Father, which sees in secret, will reward you openly. Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust corrupts, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust corrupts, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. The light of the body is the eye: if therefore your eye were single, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye be evil, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you be darkness, how great is that darkness! No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what you will eat, or what you will drink; nor yet for your body, what you will put on. Is not the life more than food, and the body than clothes? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one inch unto his stature? And why take thought for clothes? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, What will we eat? Or, What will we drink? Or, With what will we be clothed? (For after all these things do the nations seek)

Think Red Ink Ministries presents The Words of Jesus Series with Don C. Harris Hello my friend, welcome once again. The Words of Jesus series continues, and we've been talking about the Sermon on the Mount. Absolutely packed with wisdom, packed with knowledge, packed with instruction. And in order to unpack it, it's going to take many days of your own meditation and reading. And I hope you involve yourself in that. Because this is so rich. If you could read the Sermon on the Mount

and not feel conviction or need within yourself to change, sorrow for the way you live, you're going to be in really, really good shape as far as a relationship to God. These things are very important. And so that's why we talk about these things. Let's get these things. Let's put Christ back in Christianity, shall we?

Last time we were talking about the idea of prayer and doing that in a private way and how dangerous it is i hope you understand but i wasn't just saying it's distasteful or that i don't like it or anything i want you to know that it's dangerous to do this uh it's it's dangerous to pray in public as if um you know as as if you're praying to god and in reality praying to other people, hoping that they will hear what you have to say. It's essentially the same thing as giving for people to see. And he says in both cases, verily you have your reward. Now this doesn't mean that you're rewarded for prayer or that even that you're rewarded for paying your tithes

or you're giving your offerings. This is a reward is essentially, you know, hell is your reward for being sinful. It doesn't sound like much of a reward, but that's what it is. This is the wages. This is wages that you're paid. The wages of sin is death. That's the reward. That's what comes at the end of a lifestyle lived that way. He's saying when he says you have your reward, you're getting done

what you want to get done, but you're tagging this with my name, which makes you part of the enemy camp, not a part of the Lord's camp. He does not need you to testify on his behalf or for him or to grab his hand in yours and stick a pin through his fingers and make him sign to whatever it is that you're doing now how do we do that well you know i i have lost wonderful fellowship with people over the years that are involved in christian media in one way or the other because I do insist that certain things be done. You'll notice that this broadcast does not mention offerings. We don't come on here and talk about

our needs and how much we owe. And if you don't give, we're going off the air and all the rest of that kind of thing. We just don't do that. And I've had friends of mine, seemingly close friends, you know, tell me that that's financial suicide. And of course it hasn't been. The Lord's blessed us just fine. We're doing just fine. And, you know, and I've had friends say, you can't tell people you're doing just fine. You know, they won't give. or you got to give them a little something you got to buy them a little trinket or you got to buy them a little something you know sell bibles sell something you know look for you the only thing i'm selling is jesus and his price tag is free that's all i'm that's all i got you know i'm under a mandate hereely you received, freely give. And you know what I say? Because I'm a slave is, yes sir,

Jesus isn't invited into my ministry. I'm invited into his. And so that's why we let him make the rules. But as we look at what Jesus is trying to warn us of is that the leaven of our lives, in other words, what we do in front of other people, this extends in so many different areas. We can't talk about them all inside of this show time constraints. You just can't. the idea that we have an obligation to witness to the world should make us try to be very very cautious about living in this area that we

call leaven. And that is that remember when Jesus said if you deny me before men I'll deny you before the Father. And if you confess me before men, then I'll confess you before the Father. This is confess and deny before all men. All men. Any man. and I'm afraid that it is our evaluation of another person that changes what we say or how we act or what we do in front of them.

And it's a very dangerous practice and I think it's going to absolutely go nowhere except toward destruction. Now, he says to go into your closet and pray to your father, which is in secret, and your father that sees or hears in secret will reward you openly. Whatever openness you're looking for, whatever openness you're trying to cause by directing your words at people or whatever it is you're doing that is detestable to God can be accomplished in a way that you probably never thought of and that is that should you decide to be

private it is the Father who will make what you do public and you just don't want anything else but that. You don't want Madison Avenue to promote you. You want your father to promote you because he's essentially proud of you. And when you do go before the Lord and to ask him certain things, you should have in the back of your mind an understanding that the father

knows you have need of all these things jesus says he he knows you have what things you have need of before you ask him um all these things came about uh i i think in in compiling the gospels and and trying to put them in some kind of chronological order, I was putting together some of these conversations, and I happen to believe that this particular conversation came about because the disciples were asking Jesus, you know know john taught his disciples to pray you haven't done that why don't you teach us to pray and um i think that the lord's prayer as an answer to why haven't i taught you to pray which nobody ever considers um wow really they've've been with Jesus all this time and nobody taught them how to pray? I think that the whole Lord's Prayer

is essentially the Lord telling the disciples, nobody needs to teach you how to pray. You don't have to do that. You're full of the Spirit of God. Sure, John taught his disciples. John didn't come here as a supplier of the Holy Spirit either. I did. John had his ministry, I've got mine. But I think that Jesus is making it very clear. I'm thinking that he was asking, how do we ask the Lord

for stuff and actually get it? And because, you know, hey, that's what he's there for, right? Just to answer our prayers, heal our pussycats, and give us stuff. Okay, I'm being sarcastic and perhaps borderline sacrilegious, i'll tell you what that idea fits in a lot clearer and a lot squarer than the idea that we're praying because we care about our neighbor or that we want to worship god so jesus is starting this by saying now look your father already knows what you have need of.

You have one thing that you need to concern yourself with, and it's hardly a concern. What was it that he said in the Lord's Prayer was something that we should ask for? Our daily bread. I don't know for sure that he's even talking about bread made out of wheat or barley or rye or whatever they made it out of i don't know i don't know that for a fact because jesus made it so clear so abundantly clear in other places that he is the bread of life i am that bread that came down from heaven he says

so when we ask for our daily bread uh i don't know, I think it would behoove us more so to ask Him for our daily sustenance as far as what revelation the Lord has for us, our daily revelation, because that's what we're supposed to live by. What did David say when he was crying out to God? You know, I've desired your way, desired your righteousness, desired to be in the kingdom of god a child of god had desired your way more so than i have my necessary food perhaps that's why david was a man after god's own heart perhaps that's why david lived in the power that he lived

in you know and until we're able to do that until we're able to experience that i don't know i don't know where all this is uh is going to end up you know when all we have you know when he opens these this golden vial that is full of the prayers of the saints i really doubt that me praying for my pussycat's broken tail is going to be in that vial. I really doubt that. So what is in the vial? Well, it's going to be prayers that are going to be along these lines. Another label in our little book that I disagree with, and it's not just this little book, it's everywhere.

It's probably in your Bible. If you look at your Bible, some Bibles have titles before certain paragraphs, little subject titles that tell you what you're reading. And this is always called the Lord's Prayer. But this is not the Lord's Prayer at all. Matter of fact, the Lord's Prayer, if you want to look it up, is in John 17. That's where the Lord is praying. But here, these are instructions for the disciples. These are instructions, essentially, for anyone who wants to be a disciple.

And it starts out this way. Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. The beginning of this prayer sets in our mind in many different ways, not only in the way of hierarchy, but even in the way of physical location. You know, people say that God's in the trees, and he's in the puppy dogs, and he's in the puppy dogs and he's in the clouds and he's in this and that and the other thing. But the scriptures say that our Father's in heaven. And there's no reason to believe that

this whole idea of, haven't you ever heard of omnipresence? Yeah, I have and I don't necessarily agree with it. I'm sorry, I don't. I don't think god's everywhere at once that's santa claus this is we're talking about the the you know we're talking about the father of our lord jesus christ we're talking about yehovah jehovah you know he's in heaven this is where jesus said he was and i don't know of anybody more qualified to say so uh so we'll talk about omniscience omniscience omnipresence and omnipotence at another time but uh i think that all these things have to be considered i don't think that the nicene council has the right to throw a word

at us and say this is what it means and you need to incorporate this into your vocabulary and into your religion i don't think they have the right to do that and frankly i don't i just i just don't we'll talk about all these things as time goes by but where is our father he's in heaven that's what my lord jesus said and then he says hallowed be thy name. I think that a lot of times we, in our vernacular, we understand what name means. I know what name means. That's not a hard word to define. I know what name means. And well, I don't know that you do. Because there was a time

when, I mean even in America you know in the days when a man's word was his bond, those kind of things there was a time when a man's name was more than Bob Smith. Bob, when you said Bob Smith all of a sudden people get this kind of a, you know, maybe a shadowy, maybe a, could be crystal clear, I don't know. But they get an idea of who that is. And that's what names actually evoke within us, is our understanding of who they are.

The name of God would be better defined, not necessarily the moniker that he gets embroidered on his uniform. It's not YHVH or YWVH, or some people like to say that God said his name is I am. There's a lot of people that have all different kinds of ideas about the name of God. But that moniker is not what he's talking about when he says, well, I'm sure it's included, but i'm saying that mainly when it says that you know that hallowed be thy name man this is this is an honoring of god for who he is he's god he's sovereign he's all powerful he's almighty he doesn't need us he's our supplier he's he's the one that is uh to whom we can we can call upon and

upon him we can call and um and there's just a a host of manifestations as far as we're concerned as christians that are all encompassed in his name hallowowed be thy name is that his name, his nature, is not to be sullied, it's not to be tampered with, it's not to be touched by human hands. Anything that man can touch he can destroy. And so perhaps as mankind became worse and worse and worse, he hid his name from us. You know, he never even told us his name until Moses.

He told Moses, nobody's ever known me by my name. This is my name, by the way, but nobody's ever known me by that name. You know what that name was? I am? No, sorry, that's Sunday school literature. What's the scriptures say? His name's Jehovah. You know what that name was? I am? No, sorry, that's Sunday school literature. What's the scriptures say? His name's Jehovah.

His name is Jehovah. But more so, it is his nature that is not to be tampered with. He gives us his name, the Tetragrammaton. We've had so much fun with that for the last 6,000, well, I guess it's been 3,500 years, but we've had so much fun with that for the last 6,000, well I guess it's been 3,500 years, but we've had so much fun with that. We've got so many different pronunciations and different ways of spelling it and we got Hebrew and square Hebrew and paleo Hebrew and in the Greek it's this and in Latin it's this and we've done with just four letters. We've gone crazy with four letters. But when you talk about His nature, man, we tamper with that all the time. The friends

of Job who visited Him in His time of need were tampering with God's name. Tampering with His name. The second commandment teaches us that His name is holy and and it's i i know there's just a lot of people that you know that attach that to you know what we call him and they try to protect his name and the way it's spelled the way it's said and the way it's written and you know they they go crazy uh with it then you've got other people that that don't honor it at all i don't i don't understand somebody that would have a coffee

shop named uh jehovah java i don't understand that but nevertheless we got people that don't care got people that care too much and they and and as you look at it you find out they still don't know what they're talking about because god's name is his nature and this is true with christ as well um and this is why when we're baptized in the name of jesus you're not baptized in whatever name falls out of the preacher's mouth that's dunking you into the water. That's not being baptized in his name. No, it's not. I don't care what you've been told. You can't just say the name of Jesus when you're being baptized and it says that you're being baptized in the name of Jesus. Or

Jehovah, or Jehovah, or Yeshua, or Joshua, or Yes or Joshua or Yesu or whatever name that you want to pick, it doesn't mean that you're being baptized in that name. Just because you said it, if, you know, and I know that when people pray, they would dare stop a prayer without saying, in the name of Jesus Christ we pray.

Why in the name of Jesus Christ we pray. Why do you do that? Well, he says we're supposed to pray in his name and saying it makes it so just saying in his name that makes it so well yeah well can we pray for cocaine in his name well we would do that are you telling me that everything that everybody prays in Jesus' name is his will and within his nature, within his purview, within his desire and his will? Well, no. Do you think they said in the name of Jesus at the end of their prayer? I guarantee you they did.

So are they praying in the name of Jesus simply by saying so? No, absolutely not. If saying in Jesus' name makes praying in Jesus' name, then how do we gather in his name? He said, gather in my name. How do you do that do that well most people pray when they have the meeting they pray in jesus name that makes them gathered in his name no it doesn't i know i know you wish it did but it doesn't it's gathering in his nature it's asking in his nature whatsoever you in my name, the Father will give it to you. Is that true? Have you found that to be true, my friend? Have you found that anything you ask the Father and you stick in Jesus' name, I pray at the end, have you found that everything you ask for,

you get? Like Jesus promised. Is that your experience? it's not mine so can we decide right here and now that perhaps we're doing something wrong perhaps we need to gather in his name what would that what would that mean to gather in the nature of, in what he stands for, his will, his way, his words, what he understands the father to be, what he understands you to be. What would be foremost in that understanding? Would it not be the commandments of God? Would it not be the sovereignty of his own father, the godship and lordship and headship of the father are not only over jesus but over us you look people gather all kinds of people why did he say two or three of you gathered

why did he say that well you know what he's doing that for for you folks who go to church and you look around and you see you know two or three hundred people in here well it only has to be two or three doesn't have to be two or three hundred but i would say that within two or three hundred there might be two or three that understand what i'm talking about here they wouldn't dare pray for something outside the nature of christ no they wouldn't dare and so they're praying in his name they're being baptized in his name how do you be baptized in the nature of christ this is to be immersed

in christ this is to this is to die to yourself i have people all the time ask me to baptize them no no no first of all where do you get the idea that that there's a third party involved it's you and god has nothing to do with me you don't need a preacher or a priest or a rabbi or anybody else to push you under the water you want to be baptized go get baptized if that's what you want but i guarantee you what you're going to get is wet. The idea is to be baptized in his spirit. Paul says there's one faith, one baptism. Well, which one is it? Water or spirit? John says, I baptize with water, but there comes one after me. There's that contrasting conjunction again, isn't it? There, I baptize with water and there comes one after me that's going to baptize with both

water and the Spirit. Really? Is that what he said? No, he didn't. I baptize with water. There's one coming after me that's going to baptize with the Spirit. Something's going to change. Something is changing. People say, do you believe you have to be baptized to be saved? Absolutely. Baptized in water? No, that's not the question. You have to be baptized in the Spirit of God. Absolutely. Well, brother, what do you feel like is the proper way to be baptized? Well, here we go.

He's talking about water. So we're talking about water. We're talking about ponds. We're talking about rivers. We're talking about creeks. Salt about ponds talking about rivers talking about creeks salt water fresh water chlorinated water can you get baptized in this women pool do you go frontwards into the water do you go backwards into the water make sure you get all your hair wet make sure you spread your little fingers under there and work that water under

your fingernails make sure you're look it just goes that crazy. What's the proper way to be baptized? I'll tell you. Go under the water. Stay there. See, it's all about death. It's all about us dying to ourselves. That's proper baptism. To go under and never come back. Paul says that, he says, I am dead in Christ. Nevertheless, I live. But, it's not me. It's Christ that liveth in me.

Who loved me and gave himself for me. You know, who's got a testimony of baptism like that? just the apostle paul is there more can i get a witness you see what we have to do is be baptized in his nature when you come out it's not you anymore it's him this is baptism by the spirit of god and it needs to be sought by every christian you think you got it because you speak in tongues? That's not the fruit of the baptism of the Spirit. You think you did it because now you're a prophet or a prophetess? You prophesy?

You interpret tongues? That's not a sign of being baptized by the Spirit of God. Baptized into Christ? No, baptism into Christ has one sign, one symbol that proves it to the entire world. And that's the death of you. And what emerges from you is the life of Jesus Christ. I know all this stuff is all ethereal and kind of spooky sounding to anybody that's never heard it.

But you know what it's going to come down to? It's going to come down to you wanting to serve God, you deciding to keep His commandments, you deciding to live like Jesus told you to live, deny yourself, take up your cross, be willing to die for what you believe, and follow Christ. That's salvation, friend.

Well, it will be. And don't look for some magical lightning bolt transformation. It's not going to happen. It's he that endures to the end shall be saved. I'm not trying to take away hope. I'm trying to give you some hope that the goofy Christian lives that we claim are real and don't work, I'm telling you why they don't. They're just littered with bad theology and bad doctrine and no Bible reading and bad preaching and bad songs and bad company of people that call themselves believers. And you just add it all together and you know what you get?

First whatever church on the corner with the tallest steeple and you know what you get? First whatever church on the corner with the tallest steeple. That's what you get. Come on, folks. It's time to take this stuff seriously. It's also time to go. Sorry about that. Write to me.

I'd love to hear from you if you have questions or comments. All right, time for us to go now. We'll see you next time for more on the words of Jesus. Until then, think ready. Bye-bye. you've been listening to don c harris of think red ink ministries ThinkRedInc.com. That's ThinkRedInc.com. Join us again for the next episode in the Words of Jesus series. you