SERMON OUTLINE:
Reason #1: It is hard to pray, because it means giving up control of your own life.
Reason #2: It is hard to pray, because we often doubt that God wants the best for us.
Reason #3: It is hard to pray, because God’s will sometimes involves suffering and pain
SERMON BODY:
• The Lord’s prayer as recorded in Mathew’s gospel;
• Is probably the most prayed prayer ever spoken;
• Just think how many times it was recited, sung or prayed;
• Throughout this country and around the world;
• Too many to number.
• Yet amazingly when you stop to analyse its content;
• It is a wonder anyone dare pray it all!
Ill:
• I cannot say OUR;
• If my religion has no room for others and their needs.
• I cannot say FATHER;
• If I do not demonstrate this relationship in my daily life.
• I cannot say WHO ART IN HEAVEN;
• If all my interests and pursuits are in earthly things.
• I cannot say HALLOWED BE THY NAME;
• If I, who am called by his name am not holy.
• I cannot say THY KINGDOM COME;
• If I am unwilling to give up my own sovereignty and accept the righteous reign of God.
• I cannot say THY WILL BE DONE;
• If I am unwilling or resentful of having it in my life.
I cannot say ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN;
• Unless I am truly ready to give myself to his service here and now.
• I cannot say GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD;
• Without expending honest effort for it or by ignoring the genuine needs of my fellow men.
• I cannot say FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES AS WE FORGIVE THOSE WHO TRESPASS AGAINST US if I continue to harbour a grudge against anyone.
• I cannot say LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION;
• If I deliberately choose to remain in a situation where I am likely to be tempted.
• I cannot say DELIVER US FROM EVIL;
• If I am not prepared to fight in the spiritual realm with the weapon of prayer.
• I cannot say THINE IS THE KINGDOM;
• If I do not give the King the disciplined obedience of a loyal subject.
• I cannot say THINE IS THE POWER;
• If I fear what my neighbours do or say to me.
• I cannot say THINE IS THE GLORY;
• If I am seeking my own glory first.
• I cannot say FOREVER;
• If I am anxious about each day's events.
• I cannot say AMEN;
• Unless I honestly say "Cost what it may, this is my prayer."
My title for this evening’s sermon is: ‘A hard prayer to pray!’
• As that last quotation reminded us, it is a very hard prayer to pray!
• We have reached the line in our studies that goes:
• “Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
• Quote: Sometimes we pray "Thy will be changed" rather than "Thy will be done."
• The basic difficulty we face when we pray, "Your will be done."
• Is we are implicitly asking that our wills be overturned.
• And many of us do not want our wills to be overturned.
Now if that part of the prayer wasn’t hard enough Jesus went on to say:
• That God’s will, might be done “on earth as it is in heaven.”
• And we know that God’s will is perfectly obeyed in heaven.
Ill: Psalm 103 verse 20
“Praise the LORD, you his angels,
you mighty ones who do his bidding,
who obey his word.”
God’s will is always being done in heaven.
• In heaven, God’s will is instantaneously done;
• In heaven, God’s will is completely done;
• In heaven, God’s will is joyfully done.
• In essence, Jesus asks us to pray that we might become a little more like the angels;
• Who always obey (and a little less like the demons who never obey).
• And when that happens, the earth will become a little more like heaven;
• A little more like the paradise God created earth to be.
Note:
• God’s will is rarely done on the earth.
• The population of planet earth is about 7 billion.
• The number of Christians around the world has nearly quadrupled in the last 100 years,
• From about 600 million in 1910 to more than 2 billion in 2010.
• Straight away that means 5 million people will not wake up and ask the true God;
• If they can follow his will for their lives on earth.
• And out of the 2 billion who claim Christianity as their religion;
• How many of them wake up and ask God;
• If they can follow his will for their lives on earth.
Ill:
• Because they don’t – we have to lock our houses and cars for fear of thieves;
• Because they don’t – we watch the news & see corruption & greed & power misused;
• Because they don’t – we can pick up a newspaper and we see individuals and nations;
• Procuring the effects of sin in their lives & actions.
God’s will is seldom done on the earth:
• Too many things that go on are obviously not God’s will.
• Abortion … drug abuse … people starving, racial prejudice … ethnic hatred;
• Muggings,…burglaries…rape…murder and corruption in high places.
• And if we made it personnel here tonight?
• How many of us have been honest and loving in our thoughts and actions?
• How many of us have gossiped or maligned somebody?
• How many of us have allowed the world in which we live to shape our thinking to life?
Now you know why the title for this evening’s sermon is: ‘A hard prayer to pray!’
• In some ways, “Your will be done” seems like the most hopeless of all prayer requests.
• Seldom do we mean it and seldom does it seem to be answered.
• I would suggest:
• That there are at least three reasons why we find it difficult to pray these words:
Reason #1: It is hard to pray, because it means giving up control of your own life.
• God has a will (or desire) for your life.
• But you also have a will (or desire) for your life.
• When you pray, “Your will be done,”
• You are asking that His will take precedence over yours.
• Only one will can be done at a time.
• Either God calls the shots or you call the shots.
• Either He is in control or you are in control.
ill:
• Gladys Aylward was born in London in 1902.
• Hollywood made a film based loosely on her life called 'the Inn of Eight Happiness'.
• She served God as a missionary in China,
• One of her ministries was to look after orphans.
• After a life-time of missionary service she said:
"I have not done what I wanted to;
I have not eaten what I wanted or worn what I would have chosen;
I have lived in a houses that I would not have looked at twice;
I longed for a husband and babies, and security and love, but God never gave them;
Instead he left me alone for 17 years with one book - a Chinese Bible.
I don't know anything about the latest novels, pictures and theatres.
I live in a rather out-dated world & I suppose you would say it is awful miserable isn't it?
Friend, I have been one of the happiest women who stepped this earth.
I have known the heaven opening and the blessing tumbling out".
• Gladys Aylward knew the reality of those words “Your will be done”;
• She practiced what she prayed and that is why God used her powerfully!
Reason #2: It is hard to pray, because we often doubt that God wants the best for us
• There is a second reason why this is a difficult prayer to pray.
• If the first reason one touches our will,
• This second one touches our mind.
• The first reason was practical;
• The second reason is theological.
• Oftentimes we’re scared that if we give God control of our lives,
• He’ll mess it up somehow.
• We wouldn’t say it that way, but that’s how we really feel.
Ill:
• Cast your mind back to Genesis chapter 3;
• When the devil tempted Eve.
• Instead of taking God at his word:
• Eve allowed Satan to bring doubt into her mind (vs 5).
• Suggesting to her that God was "holding out on them".
• That he was not wanting the best for her,
• Because he was keeping things from her.
Note: The devils 3 fold plan:
(a).
• The devil appeals to Eve’s intellect; he gets her to doubt God's trustworthiness;
• Verse 1b: "Did God say? Are you sure?"
• Then he cast doubt on the truth of his word;
• Verse 4: "You will not surely die?"
• The devil causes a conflict for the woman:
• Between her faith and trust in God and her common sense,
• And forces a wedge between them.
• He gets the woman to act independent of God.
(b). Then the devil gets Eve to desire with her heart (Verse 6a):
"When the woman SAW that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the EYE,
and also DESIRABLE for gaining wisdom".
• The devil appeals to her emotions:
• He temps through the eye gate,
• Jesus said (Matthew chapter 6 verse 22):
• "The eye is the lamp of the body".
(c). Then he gets Eve to disobey with her will (Vs 6b):
"She saw........ she took some and……… she ate.
She also gave some to her husband".
• Notice: There is no subtlety here,
• This is straight forward disobedience!
• It is a clear case of MY will be done NOT yours!
Until we believe our own theology that ‘God is good’:
• We will never truly pray, “Your will be done”;
• Because like Eve we will constantly believe the lie that God is holding out on us.
• Until we truly believe that God has our best interests at heart,
• We might say the words;
• But we will not experience the reality of those words; “Your will be done”.
Reason #3: It is hard to pray, because God’s will sometimes involves suffering and pain
Ill:
• In Matthew chapter 26 verses 36-46
• It was late at night;
• Jesus was in one of his favourite places – the olive groves in the Garden of Gethsemane.
• Leaving Peter, James, and John behind,
• He gets alone and starts to pray,
• In fact he wrestles, he struggles, he grapples in prayer with what is about to happen.
Note: The name Gethsemane means "oil press" a place of crushing!'
• Even today there are ancient olive trees in Gethsemane,
• Although certainly not the ones that were there in Jesus' day.
• The olives from these tress would have been picked and put into the press for their oil.
• What a picture of suffering!
• So Jesus himself would also go through the "oil press" a place of crushing!'
• And taste our judgment for us.
Remember that Jesus fully knew what lay before Him:
• Yet He still went to the garden of Gethsemane;
• He was not concerned about his own personal safety of comfort;
• But rather in doing the Father's will
Quote:
• Eden was the garden of disobedience and sin;
• Gethsemane was the garden of obedience and submission;
• And heaven shall be the eternal garden of delight and satisfaction.
Quote: Matthew chapter 26 Verse 42:
“Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done”.
• The cup represented the suffering that Jesus would endure
• And the separation from the Father that He would experience on the cross.
• Matthew tells us that Jesus prayed this prayer three times;
• (chapter 26 verse 39, verse 42 & verse 44)
• That surely testifies to the enormity of the task he was facing.
• Remember not just the physical sufferings of crucifixion;
• But also the spiritual sufferings (ill: 1 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 17).
To "drink the cup" means to go through a particular experience good or bad;
• We use a similar expression: "not my cup of tea";
• Meaning: saying no to a certain course of action.
• To "drink the cup"
• Means accepting, a particular type of experience;
Jesus was able to accept the cup because it was given to Him from the Father's hand.
• Since it was God the Father who had mixed and measured the contents of the cup,
• Jesus knew He had nothing to fear.
• This is a good lesson to us:
• We need never fear the cups that the Father hands to us.
• We need never fear what is in the cup;
• Because the Father has prepared it for us in love.
• We may suffer short-term pain and heartbreak,
• But He will eventually transform that heart-break, that suffering into glory.
Quote:
“Out of the dark forbidding soil
The pure white lilies grow.
Out of the black and murky clouds,
Descends the stainless snow.
Out of the crawling earth-bound worm
A butterfly is born.
Out of the sombre shrouded night,
Behold! A golden morn!
Out of the pain and stress of life,
The peace of God pours down.
Out of the nails—the spear—the cross,
Redemption—and a crown!”
My title for this evening’s sermon is: ‘A hard prayer to pray!’
• Notice I said “Hard” and not “Impossible”.
• We can of course pray this prayer and mean it;
• But to do so I would suggest we need always to remember two things.
FIRST: Like Jesus we need to believe in the wisdom of God.
• That is God knows what is best for us in life;
• Therefore we need to let him lead us and guide us in ‘Paths of righteousness”
• “He guides me along right paths, bringing honour to his name”.
SECOND: Like Jesus we need to believe in the love of God.
• That is that God cares!
• He has our best interest at heart.
• That is why the first words of this prayer should not be forgotten “Our Father”
• One of my favourite quotes of Jesus comes in the preceding words;
• After he taught this prayer in Luke’s gospel (chapter 11 verses 11-13);
“Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead?
Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?
If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
Praying ‘Thy will be done’:
• Comes out of a realisation:
• God knows what is best.
• God loves me.
SERMON OUTLINE:
Reason #1: It is hard to pray, because it means giving up control of your own life.
Reason #2: It is hard to pray, because we often doubt that God wants the best for us.
Reason #3: It is hard to pray, because God’s will sometimes involves suffering and pain
SERMON BODY:
