INTRODUCTION
• VIDEO CLIP
• SLIDE #1
• It is bound to happen sometime, it usually happens when we get into trouble. We are not sure where to turn for help; we feel helpless, powerless and lost.
• What do we do?
• Many times we turn to prayer.
• Do you think prayer meant something to those on Flight 93?
• People who call themselves Christians pray on a regular basis and people who do not consider themselves Christians do it also.
• According to a 2001 study by the Barna research group While 96% of devoted Christians pray in a given week, 72% of those who make no claim to Christ report that they have prayed in the past seven days.
• Why do people prayer? They do it because they believe it makes a difference.
• Prayer seems to be a part of the lives of many people.
• During Jesus’ day as we have stated before, prayer was an important part of the religious life of the people. For many people prayer became something it was not supposed to be, a ritual to be seen by other people.
• How many times have we given up on prayer because we did not think it would do any good? Is there anything we can do to make our prayer lives better and more fulfilling?
• Do you want to have a dynamic fulfilling prayer life? I believe that if we will listen to what Jesus has to say and take it to heart that our prayer lives will change.
• Do you want to have a solid prayer life? Do you want to successfully communicate with God? Let us look at what Jesus tells us on the subject of prayer.
• Successful communication with God will happen when we:
• SLIDE #2
SERMON
I. Embrace the appropriate attitudes (v5-8)
• Effective pray springs from proper attitudes.
• When our attitudes are not correct, it will hamper our prayer efforts.
• Let us turn to verses 5-6 to examine the first attitude we need to embrace.
• SLIDE #3
• Matthew 6:5-6 ( ESV ) “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 their 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.
• SLIDE #4
A. We need to embrace an attitude of intimacy (5-6)
• The first attitude Jesus deals with issue of intimacy with God.
• We covered this part of the text last week, but I want to briefly revisit this issue.
• Jesus was condemning the attitude of wanting to put on a show for people with our prayer life. Jesus told us that we are to pray in secret, in other words, we are praying to God, not to other people.
• Our desire should be to communicate our needs to the Father with whom we have a great love and respect for.
• We are to disclose or deepest desires to the Father because we know He cares.
• Those of you who are married, do you remember the excitement of getting the opportunity to speak with your then girl friend or boy friend? Much to the chagrin of my father, Robyn and I used to burn up the long distance lines to speak to each other. I used to find creative ways to get out of classes so that I could see her.
• When we were together, it was not for show nor was it a fake relationship.
• God does not want a show or a fake relationship; He wants an intimate relationship with us! God is not into casual relationships, He desires closeness!
• In verses 7-8 we see another attitude to embrace.
• SLIDE #5
• Matthew 6:7-8 ( ESV ) “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.
• SLIDE #6
B. An attitude of sincerity is important to God. (7-8)
• As we look at verse 7, Jesus warns us not to pray like the Pharisees, for public recognition (vv. 5-6), nor like the pagans, with “meaningless repetitions”, (vv. 7-8).
• What does it mean to pray with meaningless or vain repetition?
• It does not mean that we are not be persistent in our prayers because Jesus prayed the same prayer 3 times in the garden.
• Meaningless repetition seems to indicate reciting memorized prayers without thinking about what you are saying, or multiplying words, not for the sake of communicating anything thoughtful, but for lengthening the prayer in an attempt to gain God’s attention. Pagan incantations, for example, often used every imaginable name for the god they were invoking, hoping at least one of them would “stick.” This kind of flowery rhetoric, or even nonsense syllables, common in pagan magical incantations, doesn’t impress God.
• An example of this we have in 1 Kings 18:26: “They called on Baal from morning until noon, saying, O Baal, hear us!
• It is praying to God without giving though to what you are saying.
• It can be something as simple as saying, “forgive us for our sins” when we say this without really considering the sins that need to be forgiven.
• It is not necessarily the words we use, but the thought or lack thereof that goes into what we are saying.
• In the faith that I was raised, we were told to say x amount of a certain prayer when we sinned. The number of times we say a prayer is not important if we do not put thought behind what we are praying.
• It gets to be like when I used to (regularly) have to write things on the blackboard at school during recess or after school for the teacher. For some reason she would make me write things 100 times. I gave no thought to what I wrote, it was vain repetition.
• Jesus does not want heartless prayers. Do you want your loved one to speak to you without heart or thoughtlessly tell you that they love you?
• In verse 8, Jesus tells us that meaningless repetition does not catch God’s attention because He already knows what you need before you ask.
• That begs the question, “Why pray?”
• As a parent you know what your children need, do you just want to provide for then without any interaction, without any exchange of love for one another?
• One of God’s greatest desires is to have fellowship or a relationship with you. If He just provided for you without you ever asking, that would not happen because you would not know where the provision came from.
• Jesus is assuring His listeners that God knows their needs before they ask.
• Praying to Jesus is not like the two boys who were praying.
• Two young boys were spending the night at their grandparents. At bedtime, the two boys knelt beside their beds to say their prayers when the youngest one began praying at the top of his lungs. For my birthday, I PRAY FOR A NEW BICYCLE...I PRAY FOR A X-BOX, I PRAY FOR A NEW TRANSFORMER. His older brother leaned over and said, "Why are you shouting your prayers? God isn’t hard of hearing?" His little brother replied, "No, but Grandma is."
• We are to pray so as to genuinely communicate with God and to lay our needs before him.
• Successful communication with God will happen when we:
• SLIDE #7
II. Employ the essentials.
• The first thing that we will see in verse nine before we get into the essential elements of prayer is that Jesus DOES NOT say, when you pray, PRAY THIS PRAYER.
• Jesus says, “Pray then in this WAY.”
• Jesus is giving us a pattern to follow, not necessarily words to repeat. He is not giving us a magic potion that will solve all of our woes if we repeat the prayer enough.
• It seems to be our nature to go through the motions of something that we do all the time. We can do it in our prayer, in our song service or even communion if we are not careful.
• Let’s turn to verses 9-10
• SLIDE #8
• Matthew 6:9-10 ( ESV ) 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.
• It is essential we:
• SLIDE #9
• Understand WHO God is (9-10)
• One of the first elements of a fulfilling prayer life is understanding WHO God is.
• Notice that Jesus calls God “our Father”. The Prayer in verse 9 begins with reminding us that all prayer is grounded in our relationship with the Father. “Our Father”
• You can come to the Father if you belong to Him and expect that HE will hear you. (USE GOING TO DAD ILLUSTRATION VS GOING TO ANOTHER PERSONS FATHER)
• Jesus goes on to say that our Father is in heaven- The God that we pray to resides in heaven. He is not some figment of our imagination; He is the creator of the heavens and the earth. We are not.
• Hallowed by His name. This means that the God we claim to be our Father is a holy God. In Leviticus 11:44 God says that He is Holy. 1 Peter 1:16 reminds us that we are to be holy because God is holy! Hallowed means holy.
• In verse 10, we are told that because of the closeness that we have with God and because we know that His will for us is the best and that we want His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.
• When we pray this we are not only expressing our hope that God’s will be done, but that we will be active participants in the ushering in of His will upon earth.
• We understand that God is the best thing for a person and we want God to be a part of all of our lives.
• When we understand who we are praying to, it can add excitement to our prayer lives. Can you imagine being able to go to the most powerful person in the world with your needs? Would you go to the person with no expectations? Would you go to them with a sense of excitement?
• I remember when I was a kid around Christmas time. I would boldly and expectantly go to see Santa Claus down town to give him my wish list. I was excited because I thought Santa could deliver the goods. (My 20’s)
• It is essential we also:
• SLIDE #10
• Understand who WE are (and our need for God)
• When we start to pray we should get a real sense of who we are and who God is.
• If we really understand who God is it helps us to understand how undeserving we are of God’s grace.
• Knowing who runs the show is important!
• If we do not understand who God is and who we are, we will not bother to ask of Him. We need to know we NEED HIM!
• Jesus will share something that will help us to understand our need for Him
• SLIDE #11
• Matthew 6:11-13 ( ESV ) 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.
• It is essential we:
• SLIDE #12
• Make our requests known to Him (11-13)
• We need for our daily provision.
• Daily provision (Daily bread)
• Jesus tells us we should ask God for our daily provision.
• We are to ask Him for what we need to make through the day. If we do not think that we need God, we will not ask of Him.
• We are to ask with gladness.
• We need to confess our sins so we can receive forgiveness (12)
• Forgive us our debts as WE have ALSO forgiven our debtors!
• This is a reflection of our awareness of our personal failures.
• This element of the model pray can only happen if we understand that our God is holy and that when we sin, we sin again God. We have to understand our need for forgiveness.
• Help with dealing with temptation (13)
• LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION BUT DELIVER US FROM EVIL.
• God does not tempt us to evil. (James 1:13)
• When we face temptation and trials, God gives us what we need to be able to endure it. 1 Corinthians 10:13
• We are seeking divine protection from factors that could destroy our eternity!
• We are asking God to help keep us from falling prey to the enticement to sin from the evil one.
• Let us finish with verses 14-15
• SLIDE #13
• Matthew 6:14-15 ( ESV ) 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.
• It is essential we:
• SLIDE #14
D. Appreciate WHAT God has done for us! (14-15)
• Appreciating our own forgiveness should lead to our forgiving others.
• In verses 14 and 15 we are told that if we forgive, God will forgive, if we do not, then God will not.
• Why is this element in the model prayer?
• Our God is a God of forgiveness. When we realize how much God has forgiven us, then we cannot help but forgive other people.
CONCLUSION
• Prayer is all about an awareness of the great God that we serve. It is all about realizing who we are and who God is.
• Sometimes we can be so ho hum about prayer, but when we get that way we are forgetting the wonderful gift that God has given to us.
• God has given us a wonderful gift.
• Jesus gives us a wonderful model of prayer to follow. Jesus did not give us a magic potion to recite; He wants us to pray from the heart.
• Do not neglect the great gift that God has given to us. Pray daily, pray all the time!
