The scripture reading comes from Matthew, chapter 6.
Please follow along in your bulletins or on the screen.
And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites,
for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues
and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others.
Truly, I say to you, they have received a reward.
But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door
and pray to your Father who is in secret.
And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do,
for they think that they will be heard for their many words.
Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
Pray then like this.
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For if you forgive others their trespasses,
your heavenly Father will also forgive you.
But if you do not forgive others their trespasses,
neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
This is the word of God.
Thank you, Pui.
Welcome again.
My name is Chris.
I'm one of the leaders here.
If you don't know me, it's just exciting to welcome you this morning.
We're continuing in our series in the Sermon on the Mount.
And if you've been following along, Jesus has been saying,
He's not looking, God's not looking for us to have an outward religion in our lives.
He's looking not for a religion that just obeys the rules and does the right thing on the outside,
but he's looking for a religion from the heart.
And Kevin last week said,
outward religion leads to a situation like a parent who has told his child to sit at the dinner table for repeated attempts,
and finally manages to get them sitting down.
And the child then says to them,
I'm sitting down, but I'm standing up on the inside.
And Jesus says, religion like that is dead religion.
I want to transform your heart to love me from the inside out.
And so in Matthew 5, Jesus has been applying this principle of the heart to anger, to lust, to many areas in life.
And today he's going to come to the area of prayer.
And as we did when we looked at salt and light and evangelism,
we're actually going to camp out on the idea of prayer for the next four weeks.
Because this is, we want to really get deep into what Jesus is actually talking to us about.
Because this is important.
And so we're going to talk about prayer.
How many of you feel like you are good at praying?
Overwhelming response.
You know, I think that's where most of us are.
You know, Fiona and I, my wife and I, we pray usually just briefly before we go to bed.
And I remember one time I started praying.
And then I realized I was dozing off.
Only to hear myself at one point saying,
Father, would you bless Mickey Mouse?
I don't know why I was praying for Mickey Mouse.
But the whole thing is prayer is difficult.
You lose concentration.
You get distracted.
There's Facebook.
There's food.
There's sleep.
Whatever it is, it all seeks to draw us away from prayer.
And we live in an age where we've got to be productive.
And doesn't it feel like if you've got 15 emails to do right now,
or the choice to pray for the next 15 minutes,
what seems to be more productive?
Because prayer sometimes feels like you're not really doing anything.
And we also live in an age of entertainment where we have to have instant gratification.
So then you have a choice.
I either look at YouTube or I pray.
And YouTube normally wins, right, if we're honest.
And prayer is hard work because we want instant things.
If your prayers were answered within 30 seconds of you asking for them,
I reckon all of us would be constantly on our knees in prayer.
But it doesn't.
And so we don't pray as much as we should.
And the Bible continually calls us and says prayer is vital,
is totally about spiritual vitality.
It's like what oxygen is to breathing.
You may believe in your head that God loves you,
but you'll not experience the depth of his love
if you do not talk to him and pray.
You know, Jesus in this passage, he says,
when you pray, he didn't say if you pray.
Jesus says he expects Christians to pray.
But you know, in Hong Kong, we're like a diver
that's often starved of oxygen,
who's drowning and gasping for air,
seeking to find rest in our holidays, in yoga,
in meditation, in whatever,
when we don't realize that there is an oxygen tank available for us,
which is called prayer.
Tim Keller says this,
prayer is the only entryway into genuine self-knowledge.
It's also the main way we experience deep change,
the reordering of our loves.
Prayer is how God gives us so many
of the unimaginable things he has for us.
Indeed, prayer makes it safe for God to give us
many of the things we desire.
It's the way we know God.
It's the way we finally treat God as God.
Prayer is simply the key to everything we need to do
and be in life.
Wow.
So how's our prayer life?
Because if we're honest,
most of us actually feel a little bit guilty about prayer.
We know we should pray,
but we know that our hearts often choose other things
rather than spending time with the God of the universe.
And some of us,
if we're actually honest,
we're actually a little cynical
that prayer really makes any difference anyway.
Sometimes it feels like you're praying to the ceiling.
That's why as a church,
we need to talk about prayer
for these next four weeks.
Because the whole spiritual vitality of Watermark
depends on it.
It depends.
If this church is to be a place
filled with God's power and his love and his presence,
presence,
both individually and corporately,
then prayer is the key
which opens the door to invite God
to come in in power to us.
So we're going to look at prayer today.
Are you ready?
Okay, three people.
Great.
So to get an understanding of prayer,
we need to understand what it is to pray rightly.
And to do that,
Jesus is going to show us how not to pray,
and then he's going to show us
how gospel praying reorients our prayers
to God, to others,
and to our need for him.
Okay?
So if you've got the passage with you,
we're just going to go through a little bit,
and we're really just going to go through
the first few verses together.
We're not going to do the whole thing today.
So how not to pray.
And when you pray,
Jesus says,
you must not be like the hypocrites,
for they love to stand and pray
in the synagogues and at the street corners,
that they may be seen by others.
Jesus says,
one of the wrong ways to pray
is to pray like a hypocrite.
A hypocrite literally means
someone who puts on a mask
in their lives.
Hypocrites are more worried
about what others think about them
than what God thinks about them.
You know, in Jewish culture at the time,
if you prayed beautiful, eloquent prayers,
everyone would be amazed
at how holy you were.
That had street cred.
And so the Pharisees,
the religious people,
they prayed long,
they prayed loud,
they prayed so everyone could see.
But their prayers were more about
what other people thought about them
than actually what God thought about them.
You know, I had a friend.
He was a great guy.
He was a godly guy.
But he would never pray in public.
In our community group,
he would never pray.
He'd serve,
he'd do anything else
except pray.
And one day I asked him about it
and he said,
I'm just not very good at praying.
He said,
my words kind of come out wrong
and everyone else
kind of prays these amazing prayers
and then I just feel like
I'll look stupid if I pray
because I don't know how to say it.
And I challenged him
because I asked him,
who's at the center of your idea about prayer?
Because it's how other people will see him.
You see, the Pharisees,
you can wear a mask,
you can be like a mask wearing prayer
by praying very eloquently
all the beautiful words.
Or you can be a mask wearing prayer
by not praying at all.
But the focus in both of them is the same.
You're both worried about
what everyone else will think
rather than what God will think.
Anyone like that?
And Jesus says to us
who struggle with that,
he says,
what you need to do
is to shut the door
and pray in a secret place.
What he doesn't mean
is that the only place you can pray
is in your room.
Because he's talking about
where your reward is in prayer.
Whose eyes count for you?
Is it God's or other people's?
That's what he's saying.
And so we need to be those
who learn how to shut the door in prayer.
So when we come to pray,
whether it's praying together
with other people
or by yourself,
you shut the door
so you actually stop thinking
about what everyone else is thinking.
You shut the door of other people.
Forget about that.
You shut the door
and forget about yourself,
about constructing beautiful sentences.
And then you focus on talking
to your heavenly father.
And others may overhear
and be encouraged by that.
But our focus is on his eyes,
not everyone else's.
That's the first wrong way to pray.
The second wrong way to pray,
and this really actually fills
a lot of Christian books on prayer,
is to think that prayer
is like a sales pitch.
Okay?
It's like God is your potential customer
and you've got to kind of
come up with the right technique
to persuade him
to get the deal
to give you what you want.
You know, the Gentiles
had this special kind of formula.
They kind of had magic words
that they would repeat many times,
kind of like abracadabra,
abracadabra, abracadabra.
And they would say that
and they thought
if they prayed long enough
or they prayed hard enough,
then their God
was surely going to listen to them.
You know, when Christian pray,
sometimes we can do
exactly the same thing.
Have you ever noticed
that Christians sometimes
change their tone of voice
when they start praying?
Kind of very holy.
And then sometimes, you know,
we start using a whole lot
of very spiritual kind of language
which you never use any other time.
And then there's other times
where some people say
you can only pray in Jesus' name
if you didn't say in Jesus' name
it's not a real prayer.
Or some others, it's like
you have to get very loud
and emotional
because the more emotional
and loud you are
then God's going to hear you more.
Now emotion's good.
You should get excited about prayer.
But that's not what
actually makes God hear you.
God's not interested
in how great your presentation is.
You know, if a two-year-old child says
go toilet,
the parent doesn't stand back
and say
I'm not taking you anywhere
until your grammar improves.
No, they want to hear.
It says
your father already knows
what you need.
God calls us to pray
because he's inviting us
into relationship with himself.
Tim Keller again says this
the power of our prayers
lies not primarily
in our effort
and striving
or in any technique
but rather
in our knowledge of God.
Rather in our knowledge
of who we're praying to.
And so what you see
is in the Lord's Prayer
you'll see the first half
of the Lord's Prayer
is actually all focused
upwards on God.
You notice that?
It's about your name,
your kingdom,
your will.
And then the second half
is focused on us.
Our daily bread,
our sins,
lead us not,
deliver us.
You see the order
that he puts it in?
And what Jesus is doing
he's not giving a magic formula
to repeat.
He's looking internally
at our hearts
and he's wanting to reshape
not just our prayer list
but our loves
of who we want
the priority in our life.
Because prayer
is always a personal conversation
where we respond
to who God really is.
So we're going to focus
on the first line
of that prayer
and see how that reorients us
in our lives.
So here's my second point.
That's how not to pray.
We don't pray
by just praying to be seen.
We don't pray
by trying to get
a special technique
to God hear us.
But we pray,
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Our Father in heaven.
You know when you hear
the word Father,
I don't know what comes
into your minds.
I had a good Chinese friend
of mine say to me once,
My boss is like a father to me.
Every time I make a mistake,
he shouts at me
and points out
all the things
that I was doing wrong.
And I listened to that
and I thought,
that's not the image
I get of a father
when I hear that.
And so what I realized
is that we need
to understand
what Jesus means
by the word Father.
Otherwise,
we're going to project
our own fathers,
whether they're good or bad,
onto God
and we're going to miss
completely
what he wants to see
of who God truly is.
You see,
when Jesus was praying
Father
and calls us
to pray Father,
he's telling us
that God
is the source,
the sovereign source
of our life.
You see,
Deuteronomy 32,
6 says this,
Is he,
is God
not your Father
who created you,
who made you
and established you?
He's your maker.
He's your sustainer.
Every facet of your life
is in his hands.
He's sovereign.
That's why we pray to him,
not anyone else.
He's not like
our earthly father
because he's our father
in heaven.
What that means is
he sits at the control center
of the entire universe.
I don't know if you know
in the Old Testament,
kings were often called
the father
of the nation.
Sometimes they still are today.
But the kings
had the power
of life
and death
in their hands.
If someone said,
if they said
someone dies,
they died.
If they said
someone lives,
they lived.
They had power
and authority.
When we say
Father in heaven,
we're talking to the one
who has ultimate power
to determine
and to change lives
and to change everything
in this world.
We don't pray
because he's like
a therapist
who cannot really
change our situations
but it's just nice
to get things
off your chest.
Prayer is not a crutch
to make yourself
feel better.
No, in prayer,
we come before
the one who has
the resources
to make the global
autonomy tick,
the one who has
your marriage,
your singlehood,
your grades,
the conversation
you've got to have
with your boss
tomorrow
all in his hands.
And so when we pray,
we remind ourselves
that the source
of our life
isn't on getting
our to-do lists done.
It's not in getting
in our holidays.
The source of our real life
is God himself.
That's why we pray
our Father.
And you know,
if as a church
we don't pray,
we're also saying
functionally,
our hard work,
our organization,
all the other things,
the busyness that we do,
that's really where
our life comes from,
not God.
And do you know
in a church
that's the road
to spiritual death?
That's the diver
holding a breath
and refusing to put
on the oxygen mask.
But prayer recognizes
the sufficiency of God
in every situation.
That's the first thing
that prayer,
that Father means.
He's the sovereign source
of our life.
But it's not just that.
It also means
that he is the close
and personal.
He's not distant
and detached.
You know the word
Father in Aramaic,
which is what Jesus
would have spoken,
is the word
Abba.
He uses it
in the Garden
of Gethsemane.
It's this very
personal word.
For a Jewish boy,
and actually,
if you ever see
Ethan running around
here,
he's a Jewish boy.
When he calls out
for his dad
and to come to him
from the other side
of the room,
do you know
what he says?
He says,
Abba.
And when he's
in trouble,
it's Abba.
When he's suffering,
Abba.
It's Abba.
And do you know
what happened?
His Abba,
even from the opposite
side of the room,
even if it may be noisy,
when he hears his voice,
do you know what?
His ears are tuned
to his son
because he's his Abba.
And so he comes to him
and he picks him up
and he walks with him.
You know,
Romans 8 says,
you have received,
if you're in Christ,
you have received
the spirit of adoption
as sons
by whom we cry
to the God of the universe,
Abba,
Father.
You know,
in prayer,
we come as the adopted children
of the one
who is sovereignly
over everything.
I don't know
if you realize
how incredible that is.
like,
if a stranger
walks into my parents' house,
goes up to the fridge
and starts trying
to help themselves
to some dessert
from the fridge,
do you know
what's going to happen?
They're going to either
experience the wrath
of my mom
or she's going to
call the police
because strangers
can't just walk in.
But if I,
as their son,
walk right into the house,
walk right up
to the fridge,
my mom will call out
to me from the back.
She'll say,
hey,
I left you some extra dessert
at the back of the fridge.
Help yourself.
How can I do that?
I can only do that
because I am a son.
I am part of the family.
I belong.
I have access.
You know,
no one gets
the president's ear
like their child does.
No one has access
like a son or a daughter
of the king does.
You know,
at the heart
of the gospel message
is the idea
that you and me
are just like
those hypocrites
and Gentiles
that we talked about
at the beginning.
We make life
all about ourselves
and we actually
have no right,
no access
into God's presence.
No human being,
listen to this,
no human being
has any right
to ever be heard
by God in prayer.
Did you know that?
We have no right
at all
because our performance
does not merit
an audience
with the king.
We don't have
righteousness enough
to enter.
Now,
God is so gracious
that sometimes
he allows the prayers
of non-believers
to kind of pass
through security
but actually
there's no right
for him to hear them
automatically.
But if you are
a believer
here in Christ,
what you have
is God
through Christ
coming to die
on the cross
for you,
he has made a way
that you have access
into his presence
like no one else does.
We say Christianity
is not a religion,
it's a relationship.
Right?
So where is that
relationship
with our Father
to be expressed?
In prayer.
Can I put it like this?
Jesus died for you
so that you can pray.
Jesus died for you
so that you can come in
and you can cry to God,
Abba,
and he will hear you.
That is not just a duty
that we have to do,
that is a privilege
of sons and daughters
of the living God.
Isn't that amazing?
But sometimes
we forget that,
right?
Which is why
practically before we pray,
Martin Lloyd-Jones,
he said this,
if you want to make
contact with God
and if you want to feel
his everlasting arms
around you,
before you pray,
put your hand
upon your mouth
for a moment.
Recollection.
Just stop for a moment
and remind yourself
of what you're about
to do.
We can put it
in a phrase.
Do you realize
the true essence
of prayer
is found
in the two words
in verse 9,
our Father.
So before you even
come to prayer,
remind yourself
of whose presence
you're coming into.
I'm coming into
the one
who controls
the universe.
I'm coming to
the one
who loves me
so much
that Christ died
that I could enter
into his presence
and I can come
with confidence
to the throne
of grace
to receive mercy
and grace
in my time of need.
Prayer reorients us
to the presence
of God
right in the midst
of our busyness.
Next,
prayer reorients us
to God.
Prayer reorients us
also to others.
You know,
did you notice
there are two words
in prayer
in the first line?
Our Father.
You notice
he didn't say
my Father,
right?
He said
our Father.
You see,
intrinsic
in the idea
of prayer
is that
when we pray
through Jesus
and that the Father
has made us
his children,
when he did that
he also made us
brothers and sisters.
He gave us
brothers and sisters
the church.
You know,
prayer can be done
in groups
or by yourself
but it's never
individualistic.
Do you know,
a church that doesn't pray
is a church
that doesn't love.
Do you know that?
Because if we do pray,
if you're like me,
my natural tendency
is actually
to be wrapped up
in myself
because my prayer
revealed my priorities
and most of my priorities
about me.
But when we say
our Father,
we're instantly reminded
of our responsibility
towards each other,
our brothers and sisters.
You know,
Hong Kong
is incredibly busy.
I get so distracted
by so many things.
I know I'm supposed
to love people
but when it comes
to pray,
I need to have
something
which will remind me
of how to pray
for people.
I need a prayer list.
I actually have
one on my phone.
So if I have a minute
waiting for the bus
or the MTI,
I can open it up
and I can see,
oh,
there's Archie
or there's Theo
or whoever it is
and I can pray for them.
And so when I start
to pray,
do you know what it does?
It actually reminds me
of them.
Most of the time
I forget about
everyone else
except me.
But you see,
what happens
is when you start
doing that,
then you think,
oh,
maybe I can send them
a text
and see how they're doing
and how can I pray for them.
And then when you send
them a text
and they tell you
about stuff that's
going on in your lives
then it gives you
an opportunity to think,
how can I love them?
How can I encourage them?
Maybe I can meet up
for them for coffee.
And when you do that,
then what happens is
you realize
very quickly
that you often
don't have the resources
to love them
as you should.
And so what it does
it fuels you
to pray for them again
because you realize
that only our sovereign
Abba who cares
for that person
has enough
to truly change
their life
and change
their circumstances.
And so what you see
is that prayer
is the fuel for love
and love
is the fuel for prayer
and it's this cycle.
And if we don't pray
for our church family
we won't love
our church family
with God's resources
as he calls us to.
You know,
when we don't pray
we just get centered
on our own little worlds,
our own little tiny
narrow little concerns
for others.
But a church
that is constantly praying
our Father
will radiate
God's Father's,
His fatherly love
and care
for each other.
Do you see?
Prayer orients us
not to just who God is.
It reorients us
to each other.
Thirdly,
prayer reorients us
to see
our own need
for God.
You know,
one of the problems
when we pray,
when Jesus says,
when you pray,
pray our Father,
what does that make us?
That makes us children,
right?
Generally.
Okay,
one person agrees.
Okay,
we might have to have
a conversation about this.
Yeah,
children.
Now,
just like we mentioned
about sheep
a few weeks ago,
the images
that Jesus uses
for human beings
are not flattering.
They're actually
about weakness
and humbleness
and dependence.
How much
we're in need.
Someone said it
like this,
helplessness
is the real secret
and the impelling
power of prayer.
Nothing so furthers
our prayer life
as the feeling
of our own helplessness.
Some of you know
what that's like.
Jesus knew
what that was like.
You know,
in John 5,
he says,
I can do nothing,
nothing by myself.
The Son can do
nothing by himself,
but only what I see
my Father doing.
The guy,
Paul Miller,
puts it like this.
He says,
if you had a 35-year-old man
who came and said
that to you,
I only do what I see
my dad doing,
you would think
he had some boundary
issues with his dad.
Right?
You'd think he needs
to get a little bit
of independence there,
probably.
Because that's just
like a child,
right?
But we're so adult
that we don't want
to be children.
We don't want
to feel helpless.
We don't want
to feel like
we can't do it.
We want to feel
like we're in control.
That's why we often
only pray
when we're desperate,
like before your exam
or before that job interview,
because you feel
helpless then,
right?
It's amazing
how your prayer life
just takes off
at those moments.
But if we're children,
and I'm going to embarrass
her this morning,
but we went to Turkey
last year with Rhoda.
And one of the things
that really struck me
during our trip
is that every while
we'd be looking for something
like a car park space.
And I'd be kind of,
I'd be stressing out
because someone just got
in that parking space
just before we get there.
I'm like, oh, that's just
the one we needed.
And Rhoda would be going,
help us, Father.
Help us, Father.
And I'd be going, oh,
like this.
And we'd be going
further along,
and then finally
we'd get into
like a car parking space
and we'd be going,
oh, it's so annoying.
It's like 200 meters away
from where we were before.
I can't believe it.
And she'd be going,
thank you, Father.
Thank you, Father.
Just kind of,
she was calm.
I was stressed.
And you know,
what I realized,
I realized how little
I pray as a child.
Because a child comes
to their father
about the most minute
details of their life.
They're bothering them
all the time.
That's why if you're parents,
you just get so annoyed
by like,
are we there yet?
Are we there yet?
You know,
that's what children are like.
But in their messiness
and in their self-centeredness,
they keep coming
to their parents,
to every little thing.
But I don't think
God would be that interested
in the little things.
I think he's,
I'm kind of more adult
than that.
And you know what adults do?
We do what men do
when they're driving
and they're lost.
And we don't want
to admit it.
We go,
oh, do you need help?
And we go,
no, I'm fine.
I'm going to fix this
by myself.
Thank you.
And then we kind of
desperately trying to make sure
we can navigate
our way all the way
to the end.
And you know,
in that process,
we're hardly the most loving,
kind, gracious people
on the way.
And even if we do make it
to the end,
we've been stressed
the whole way.
And isn't that exactly
like most of us
are in life?
That much of our stress
in Hong Kong
is due to us
trying to figure out
our lives
by ourselves.
The big things
and the little things.
Just look at your stress
over the last week
and then look at
your prayer life
and see if there isn't
a direct correlation
between your stress levels
and your prayerlessness.
Because we have
this oxygen tank
that God is wanting
to give us
and our whole city
is drowning
in stress
and anxiety
because it doesn't know
that we have a father,
an Abba,
who knows what we need,
who cares for us
and he wants to be present
with us
in the midst
of every little thing.
Whether it's even
you just can't find
your iPhone cable
or whether it's
you can't find
your car parking spot
or whether it's
your kids' education,
whatever it is,
he wants to be involved
in our lives
because he's our father.
The old hymn says,
Oh, what peace
we often forfeit.
Oh, what needless pains
we bear.
All because we do not
carry everything
to God in prayer.
Isn't that so true?
And so like with little children,
little children don't give up
until they get an answer.
Are we there yet
doesn't stop
until you're actually there.
But that's how
our father wants us
to pray to him
again and again.
And some of us
get disillusioned
because we've been waiting
a long time
for our prayers
to be answered.
And one of the things
that is amazing
in our prayer
is
can children pray
with selfish motives?
The answer is yes.
In fact,
we pray all the time
with kind of mixed motives.
So if you're waiting
to have a pure motive
before you pray
for something,
you're going to wait
a very long time.
but that's why
Jesus,
when he tells us to pray,
he puts this little
safety valve.
You know,
like on a gun,
you have a little safety catch
to stop it kind of just
causing chaos.
In the safety catch,
he says,
hallowed be your name.
Hallowed means holy.
It means may your name
be made holy.
May you be glorified
in my life.
So as children,
you come with any
kind of requests
and then with the safety valve
you say,
but Lord,
I want you to get glory
more than I even want
to get this thing.
With all of my life.
So it doesn't matter.
If you get more glory
from answering this immediately,
that's great, God.
I want you to do that.
Please do that right now.
But,
if you get even more glory,
by me having to wait
or you answering
in a different way,
then Father,
even though that's kind of
not exactly what I'd like
right now,
I know I can trust you
because I know
that you are my Abba.
And you love me more
than I can ever imagine.
Do you know,
sometimes God gets more glory
by making us wait.
You know,
I've had,
I've prayed for jobs
and got nothing
for month after month
after month.
And just as I was giving up hope,
totally out of the blue,
I received job offers
from jobs
I've never even applied for.
It's true.
And then,
you know,
it's only God
who's done it.
It's not my hard work.
He gets the glory.
Some of you
have had family members,
family members recently,
you've been praying
for years for them.
And you've wondered,
when could they ever come?
You've just got no hope
and then God has just
broken through
into their lives
and you've seen their lives
just turn around you
like it's only God.
Because then he gets the glory.
A good parent
will never give their children
everything they ask for.
If you're parents,
you know that is true.
But God gives us
everything that we would pray for
if we knew everything
that he knows.
And so,
the opposite of a praying church
is a self-reliant,
busy planning,
organizing church
with lots of programs
and just prays for God
to bless our plans.
But it doesn't have
a desperate sense
of our own need
of God as his children.
Tim Keller said this,
to fail to pray
is not to merely
break some religious rule.
It is a failure
to treat God as God.
It is a sin
against his glory.
It is to say,
I don't need you.
But our Abba
wants us to come to him
with everything
of our lives.
For our church,
for us individually.
if we see
what Christ
in the gospel
has done
for us
to make his children,
what would that mean
for us as watermark
if we started praying
as children
of our Father,
not as hypocrites,
not as Gentiles?
Well,
I think many of us
struggle in prayer
as we've seen.
Many of us feel like
we actually really,
if we're honest,
we don't have any real desire
to pray.
We've tried
and it just didn't seem
to work
and so we've given up.
There's plenty of other things
we want to do.
And so I think
the place where we need
to start as a church
is actually to repent
of our prayerlessness.
It's actually to come
and say,
God,
we've been self-sufficient.
It's actually to say,
I think I've been religious
in my praying.
Maybe I've prayed,
but I haven't prayed
with you as my Father.
I've prayed with you
as my genie
just to get stuff from you.
That God has called us
into relationship
with himself,
but I've just wanted
his stuff
and I haven't wanted him.
And so we start
by asking God
to make us desperate
for him.
God,
let us want you
more than I even want
that job offer
or whatever else it is.
Change my heart.
That's where we start
in prayer.
That's where I want us
to start this morning.
And then I think
we make a plan to pray.
This is the final thing.
Don Carson said,
the facts remains
that unless we plan
to pray,
we will not pray.
The reason we pray
so little
is that we do not
plan to pray.
Wise planning
will ensure
that we devote ourselves
to prayer often,
even if for brief periods.
It is better to pray
often with brevity
than rarely at length.
I know that's true.
If you don't plan
your prayer,
you have all the greatest
intentions in the world
to pray,
but it never happens.
I know that is so true.
There are so many,
there's so many great
YouTube videos out there
to distract you.
But that's why
as a church,
at 10.05,
on a Sunday morning,
we have a time
where we come together
to pray.
It's not just something
we do because we're Christians
and Christians should pray.
This is oxygen tank time.
This is spiritual vitality time.
This is awaken the dead bones
and bring us to lifetime.
This is the time
where we say,
God, we need you.
We need your spirit
to awaken us.
We will not have
your spirit's presence
as you want to bring it
unless you come
in your power.
So we're asking Abba,
thank you for this privilege
we can pray.
Now please come
and be manifested amongst us.
So come and join us
at 10.05.
It may mean you wake up early,
but that's okay.
And in your own life,
set a time to pray.
Read scripture.
Remind yourself
of whose presence
you're entering.
The one who loves you so much
that he died
that you could enter.
And remember,
above all,
Jesus died
that you could say,
our Father,
our Abba
in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Let us pray that
as a church.
Let's pray.
Abba, Father.
Father, we just admit
that sometimes prayer,
we find prayer difficult.
Sometimes our hearts
are just,
we kind of know
we should pray,
but we kind of don't,
and then we feel guilty
that we should,
but that never motivates us
to come to you.
Show us how amazing
your generosity is
towards us.
Show us that you are
both the one
who is all sufficient
for us,
but you are the one
who is so tender
and close to us.
Show us that you're
at Abba.
I pray as a church
that you'd help us
to be a church
that prays.
A church that knows
our need of you.
A church that's going
to love each other
by praying
for each other regularly.
A church that doesn't
just plan all the other
things in our lives,
the things that we find
important in our lives,
and forgets to plan
to pray,
to pray for each other,
to pray for your kingdom,
to pray for those around us,
to pray with our children,
to pray, Lord,
because we know
we need you.
Would you just fill us
again with your spirit?
Would you open our eyes
to see the privilege
that it is
to pray to you?
In Jesus' name,
Amen.