Shamelessly Persistent

jesus and his disciples went onto the villages around caesarea philippi on the way. He asked them who do people say I am? They replied. Some say john the baptist, others say elijah and still others, one of the prophets. But what about you? Who do you say? I am? Amen. Welcome. Good morning. If you’re on the live stream, welcome If you’re here in the room, welcome. Um, you reminded me Chloe of what I interaction I had with my daughter this week. I was at my son’s basketball practice and I turned to my five year old daughter. I said, maya, do you want to go with me to the daddy daughter dance? And she looked at me like this is like we’ll see. So I don’t, I don’t know what’s gonna happen, but I’m hoping I can woo my five year old to join me. So dad’s come on down, it’ll be fun. We’ll have a good time. It won’t be a long, long night. It’ll be a little power hour of hanging out. I don’t know what dances we’re going to do with five year olds in whatever age, some of you have a multiple daughters. So you have to work cut out for you. But we’ll figure it out. Welcome. Thank you for coming. I’m also reminded of uh, I was thinking of this message this morning, this passage and I was thinking, it reminded me of a conference I went to when I, when I first became a pastor, I got invited to multiple little conferences. Big conferences, Small conferences. I was the new shiny object in our old network of churches and I’ve since then retired thinking I’m not that big of a deal and I enjoy spending my time with you and Lincoln in this church. But there’s just one conference I got invited to. Whereas like 3000 people at the conference and then they had these breakout sessions where they had uh, junior speakers speaking at the breakout sessions and I was one of those newer preacher speakers at those sessions and you got a little blurb and you got a little bio. Um, and then you would be fishing for Those 3000 people had to go somewhere and they would go to your session. Maybe if your wife helped you write a creative enough blurb in bio. And so I feel like this is one of those things where if you had a choice, you would not pick this session if you had a choice unless I was slated up against how to suffer. Well how to share your faith, how to give money, how to, how to endure under persecution. If those were my competition, I would, I would get some of you. But, but this is not a topic we enjoy speaking on. Just to be honest, every time I speak on this subject and I think it’s probably a dozen or more, probably two dozen sermons I’ve given on this subject my entire life. I feel like a a cold wet legalistic blanket we slip on has a congregation and that’s not my desire. I understand this is not a strength of ours, some of your flipping head trying to find work. This is not a strength of ours as a church, as christians as people. But regardless of gifting or current strength, this is the reality of the kingdom of Heaven. This is what jesus has for us as people and we need to grow and it’s okay to grow. And so in light of that tough, bleak mountain we’re gonna climb today as we work through this topic, will you bow your heads with me? And let’s let’s pray God, I thank you for the word of God. Thank you for those passages that we give out of our strength. And there’s passages, we look at out of our weaknesses as christians and this might be a passage that is the strength of brothers and sisters in this room. This might be a passage. That is a weakness of brothers and sisters in this room. Ultimately, we all don’t measure up and we all fail. We all need you, jesus. We need your gospel. We need your help to accomplish anything that is in the bible. I pray. We as individuals would do business with you and we as a, as a congregation, as a church would do business with you, business with you as we look to these passages, Lord, we love you, We need you make your name grates in our hearts, make your name great in our city. Just use this Lord at whatever capacity you see fit as a congregation as a group of people. We commit this prayer to you, jesus name. We pray amen today. We’re looking at the Lord’s prayer. This has been called the Lord’s prayer for 2000 some years. This is probably one of those passages in the bible that you will be familiar with from sunday school or some other context in your life. You’ve heard these words before and so we’re gonna work through it. It should more accurately be called the disciples prayer. It’s how jesus tells his disciples to pray, but we’re not gonna fight 2000 years of church history. This is the Lord’s prayer. We’re looking at luke 11 1 through 13 today. And so as you look at something you’re very familiar with, you tend to take it for granted. You tend to speed read it and move on, think you already know it and move on to the next thing. But I do propose to you that it’s not what you know, it’s what you do and I think what you know impacts what you do and I’m excited to look at this passage for you today, but I think jesus has some very heavy words on prayer and so it’s hard to work through heavy hitting passages and make it all light and fluffy and that’s not my desire. Nor is that your preference. We want the real whole truth and nothing but the truth. So help us God. Alright so luke 11 verse one bow, look, look at your phones, your bibles in front of you. We’re gonna jump in at verse 11 verse one verse one, chapter 11. Now jesus was praying in a certain place and when he finished praying one of his disciples said to him, Lord teach us to pray as jesus taught his as john taught his disciples, it’s the only time in the gospel kind of loop where the disciples asked us to teach them anything. Have you ever thought to yourself? I need to learn something. I need to learn a new skill. I do a bunch of marriage counseling as a pastor of pastors to a bunch of marriage counseling. There’s new skills for teaching young guys and young girls about being married. If you have a baby people have had babies in the last couple of months here in this church, there’s a new skill you need to learn as a parent as life goes and as you grow, you need to learn new skills. Have you ever thought to yourself? A new skill I need to learn is how to pray. Have you ever thought to yourself, I know where I’m gonna go, I’m gonna go to a spiritual leader to learn how to pray. Hopefully you think I need to pray. I’m gonna ask my community leader, I’m gonna ask one of the pastors, I think they pray this Godly man or this Godly women in the church. I mean I think they pray, I’m gonna go ask them how to pray. Hopefully have that same heart as the disciples. I know we can all feel inadequate in our christian walk, we’ve got all experienced seasons of dryness and our prayer life, but we all need to learn how to pray. We all need to be taught today from the word of God With the Holy Spirit’s conviction, what the Bible says here in Luke 11, this is a healthy thing for you to wrestle with, this is a healthy thing that the disciples russell with how to pray and you heard, you know at the end of the day Morris said that he’s done and at the end things are both caught and taught, Jesus was teaching with his lifestyle and he was teaching with his mouth on the subject of prayer. It is amazing that the disciples just, they got it, I mean you’ll, I’ll show you in a second the highlight fly over the prayer when jesus praying in the gospel accounts, but the disciples aren’t that thick, they realized that there was true power that occurred. Wind juice was praying. True ministry power. True personal power seems like there’s conviction, there was, there’s emotional release, there was, there’s a lot of things that you just processed in prayer, he had strong words and he was privately strong with God, Jesus was with God alone in the private place and he was very bold in the public place, he gained power from his prayer life, he was incredibly passionate about his prayer life. I do not think we should look at Luke 11 like millions and millions of Catholics, look at Luke 11 every day. They say it heartlessly, mindlessly without any emotion engagement, they just roll over this passage, millions and millions of people say this prayer daily and they walk away unchanged. I do not think that is luke’s intention of writing this passage. I do not think that was jesus intention on teaching this passage. There is a method and structure of how you should pray and aspects of prayer that we’re gonna look at today and there’s some very encouraging heart of God and and our our situation as people, we’re gonna look at here at this passage real high level. Let’s look at what the bible says about jesus in prayer, Isaiah 53 verses 12 and Hebrews talks about jesus in prayer. If you go on to uh I mean hebrews 57 says with with both prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears. It is what it describes jesus prayer life as that’s not a sleepy prayer meeting with jesus, the man is emotionally mentally, he’s invested in bringing his burdens and his pains to God. If you go to the next passages here in Matthew, that’s what the book of Matthew says about jesus in prayer. A whole bunch of different passengers talk about Houston prayer. If you go to Mark I mean Mark 1 35 it talks about early in the morning when it’s still dark, jesus got away to a solitary place to pray. I go to Luke the book right now and and Luke six, it talks about how you spent the whole night in prayer before pointing and raising up the disciples. You go to john john 17 it’s the high priestly prayer. It is a powerful, amazing passage of jesus, High priestly prayer. You’re gonna look under the hood of jesus prayer life and watch his prayers as he’s praying to God dan. Our own dan is going to be speaking at the bible conference here later in february and you all are gonna be invited to that and he and other pastors gonna be preaching through the high priestly prayer, it will be a great time, You’ll get the date later, amen. Never once have I read through the gospel accounts and thought mindless, heartless, legalistic, ritualistic prayers. I see a rich mental a rich emotional or rich engagement of people doing work and business of God and that’s what our prayer lives look like. People would pray more if that’s what our church prayer meetings were like, people would want to come to them more. We can make it too cerebral as christians, I C. G is doing work in the gospels spiritual battling and prayer. He’s alone in private prayer in the wilderness away from the people crying out to God, pouring out very real feelings and emotions to God processing pains and burdens. He has gathering his spiritual power in private prayer. Walk with God. I don’t see scenes of sleepy, larger older congregations repeat after me, sleepy prairie mix. I see jesus doing work with God. If if if this if prayers roll over the tongue and rolls without rolling over the mind or rolling over your heart, you deceive yourself and we christians can deceive ourselves on the subject of what is prayer and what is not prayer. Listen christians, many, many pray and walk away unchanged. Many, many hearts, souls and minds are not engaged in their prayer lives. So what follows answering the question, teach me to pray, jesus disciples. He lays out very systematically what some potential models of prayer could be for us. I think this is very important for you to really grasp what real prayer is, what authentic prayer is from jesus himself. Look at me at verse two and he said to them when you pray say Father hallowed, be your name, your kingdom, come and we’re gonna stop with the word father, we’re going so like names matter, especially in the bible, what is the name? If you close your eyes and think of, think of God! Names of God, what names come to mind. I was looking over there’s hundreds and hundreds of names of God in the old testament, Abba Adam ad and I advocate the Almighty Almighty God Alfa and the omega all sufficient one. The Amen the ancient of days, the anointed one, the apostle high priest, the anointing sacrifice, the author and finisher of our faith, the author of Internal Security, the author of life, the author of peace and that’s the ace. There’s hundreds of names of God. If you think of God though you probably think of God the father, Jesus Holy Spirit, that’s probably the names you rattle off and what’s significant here in Matthew, Mark Luke and John 66 times in the gospel accounts, Jesus refers to God the title he gives God as father. Father. None of my kids say reverend pastor, whatever title that’s reverend, I’m just having fun. Whatever titles I should have as a pastor, Mr Whitney, my kids don’t call me that, they call me dad, they don’t call me father, they call me dad sometimes daddy, usually dad, that’s what my four kids called me. It would be kind of weird if my kids called me fancy names, Maybe you called your parents fancy names, but in my household they call me dad, sometimes father, this is a significant shift that jesus modeling for us and how to pray his disciples, how to pray and first john 1 12, it says this to those who received him to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become Children of God. The bible says your identity as a son or daughter of the king and you’re approaching your father, that is a paradigm shift in the history of God’s work with people and also you should know that there’s not a lot of fancy language usually like when we pray, we get like super spiritual and we get super insider language and I was remember the community, we were at not this last community, the one before that that we’re at our house and I was sitting in a group and I said, hey pray with the person next to you and I turned, I was praying for a young lady and she said, you know there’s like 14 of us in this on our living room and she’s like, you know, I never paid before, I was like what? Like I’ve never prayed like we’ll just, it’ll be fine and they’re great, I don’t remember what I said, but she prayed a very sincere prayer without a lot of fancy christian rhetoric and then she concluded her prayer like I feel very convicted, how just Raleigh you talk to God, it was great, it was refreshing, she spoke to God like her father, there shouldn’t be special religious language now we can get, we can do, we can give out olympic gold medals and Christianity and how we can get all fancy rhetoric and specialized fancy words, we would never use, we use in prayer meetings, this is not the model. We see from jesus teaching his disciples how to pray. There isn’t a polished language, this is actually flies against the common, you know, fancy rhetoric that was going on by jewish rabbis at that day when they taught their disciples to pray. When you pray say father, this that should symbolize a deep relationship with a son or daughter with their father, a deep relationship that jesus models deep relationships of God, deeper walk with God. In verse two here, father, that’s translated to Abba Daddy papa, that’s an intimate relationship with a good relationship with your father. That should even remind you of Galatians 46 it says because you are sons, God has sent the spirit of his son into our hearts crying Abba father, we can have a deep relationship with God in our prayer life and how we speak to God if you are a follower of God, if you are a christian, when you pray say father, very important next little stands with their next little line, Hallowed be your name. So there’s a tension here between father and hallowed, be your name. So intimate respect. Abba papi papa, Hollow would be your name. There’s a tension between these two concepts. Yes, it’s your heavenly father, but we don’t get flippant with it, we don’t get light with it. Hollowed, be your name. Hollow would be your name, The bible dictionary says to make holy or sacred to sanctify or consecrate to veteran Hollywood’s meaning is Holy are you God, your nature, your character, your being is holy, how would be your name? She could remind you of what it says in revelations about the angels staying around the throne of God and the crowd. Holy Holy Holy is the Lord God Almighty just opening your prayer life with reminding your personal private prayer life of Magnifying God’s name, praising who God is acknowledging who you’re talking to. You’re not talking to a person that you know, Mcdonald’s, you’re not talking to a police officer pulled over for speeding, You’re talking to a God who knows the cosmos, who made you, who knows everything is going to happen in your day and everything that’s happening every day in the past and everyday that’s gonna happen in the future. Who you’re gonna stand before you naked and give an account for every thought word. Indeed you’ve ever done your entire life. The god of the cosmos, the all powerful god of the universe is who you’re talking to and he’s your father, your father, Hallowed, be your name. There’s a tension between these two. We need both. This is a, this is a big God we’re talking to, Hallowed, be his name, His name is honor. Holy Sacred Consecrate this is a big deal. He’s your father. There’s a tension we need to hold on to in our private prayer time of both. Adoring God praising God. Magnifying God. This is healthy for us to remind our hearts of what is what we’re coming into. The presence of heavenly father who’s way more than any earthly father whose name is holy verse two again your kingdom come. If you’ve read the Matthew 6 10 version, it says your kingdom come, your will be done. Your kingdom come. It’s a simple and significant part of prayer that we need to have baked into that phrase. Your kingdom come should be a softening of your will, your mind, your heart, your motivation, it’s God’s will be done not my will be done God’s plans to be done. Not my plans to be done. God’s kingdom come, not my kingdom come. There should be a yielding a softening to your scheming your efforts. It’s like you excel and you let go of the steering wheel. It’s like yeah, I shouldn’t be driving this car. Yeah, you will be done. Your kingdom come. Yeah, jesus, you should hold this wheel and you could drive this car in my life and our family and this church and your will be done. Your kingdom come. If you repeat. I mean how did christ bring his kingdom? How did christ bring his kingdom Church? How did christ bring his kingdom here on earth among men? It’s a very important question. Your kingdom come is just a prayer we pray. How does Christ bring his kingdom to Lincoln Nebraska in the year 2022 by bringing Godly men and Godly women into obedience to the father’s will buy you obeying God’s will for your life. That allows God’s kingdom to come into your family and your loved ones, your neighborhood, your network when we’re walking in submission to God’s will as godly obeying men, women, God’s kingdom is coming and it’s alive. Remember Jesus opening line when he came out of 40 days in the desert began ministry, his opening line was repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand. The kingdom of God is central to reduce his message. The Kingdom of God is important to God. Your kingdom come, it’s a call on life, a life defined by repentance and obedience. Your kingdom come. So the first part about this prayer is to focus our heart and the posture of our heart towards the vertical relationship with the with the son and daughter of God and their heavenly father and you and God need to be right in your relationship with God to be right. If anything else in your life, we gotta be right with God. Before we write any fellow person. The second part of this prayer of shifts from focusing vertically to focusing horizontally and that addresses problems people and pain we all experience. When you jump into verse three, it says give us each day our daily bread. Give us each day our daily bread daily we are to come to God for what we need. I’m reminded of the Israelites wandering in the desert. Daily. They had to look to God for bread, manna and meat quail. Daily. God provided a cloud by day and a fire by night, cloud by day to give them shelter from the scorching sun in the desert and fire by night to keep them warm in a cold desert bread. Daily quail daily, God’s light and God’s shelter daily. They look to God, that is a beautiful picture for us and what our daily walk of God should be like substance. Meet the bounty of rich meat and the daily substance of bread. I fired a light. My dark nights in the cloud to shelter me from the scorching day. Daily, we should look to God’s hand and provisions for our life. It’s a simple request from God to meet our needs. But it means more than just physical food. It means spiritual bread and other forms of substance, wisdom, knowledge, Courage. God wants a daily relationship. A few christians, John 651 says, I am Jesus saying I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of others is my flesh. Just use this word of bread that’s kind of like how we, how we uh we like our burgers. Amen. We like burgers in Nebraska. This is the beef state is that the beef is there beef steak, right? We love our burgers in the jewish world did not have hamburgers. They had bred. There was day old bread, there’s week old bread but their bread doesn’t like our bread. Our bread does not handle time. Well, I mean there could be a loaf of bread in your fridge that’s been in your fridge for a long time with preservatives and refrigeration. It’s gonna last a long time. They’re making of bread without preservatives, refrigerators, bread was a central theme to what it was like. To feed your family, feed your loved ones, feed yourself, give us our daily bread. That meant a lot. So think about this God wants us to go beyond just a toddler relationship with the parents. So if he’s the heavenly father, give us our daily bread. I had toddlers growing up, growing up in the early marriage and and I had four kids, we have four kids and they used to be toddlers and I don’t know what you were like as a toddler, you probably were perfect, your mom says, but but kids seem to be very needy. Give me, feed me, carry me, hold me play with me, change me. They don’t say changing, but they say a lot of other stuff and it’s very self centered narcissistic relationship with a child and me, their father, but as time went on, I do not have a 10 year old saying change me, feed me, hold me, they say play with me, but they don’t say the other stuff you have never called your mom or dad the last couple of years of your life and said feed me, hold me carry me, play with me, right? Your relationship has changed. If your earthly father and mother, it’s grown from a toddler relationship to an adult relationship, our relationship with God needs to go to that same healthy growth from very needy, give us our daily bread, which we all have to have two more mature established walk of God that grows beyond that. Your relationship with your heavenly father needs to grow and change beyond just a young toddler relationship to an adult relationship and then we go on to verse four and forgive us our sins for we ourselves, forgive everyone who is indebted to us and lead us not into temptation and this gets into that daily recalibrating walk with God, we have to daily remind ourselves and recalibrate ourselves because when I sin, I distance myself from you and when I sin against you, the relationship splits. When I sinned against God, the relationship splits, I’m not talking like I’m gonna lose my soul and go to hell, I’m talking like sin has consequences, and when I hurt you, there’s consequences. When I sin against God, there’s consequences. Our sin has consequences and to walk with God, a walk with as a disciple of jesus shows there’s a daily recalibrating where you pause, you pray you think, hey, if I have I done wrong by you God, have I done wrong by my family? Have I done wrong by my close relationships? Is there someone I need to get right with? We model that for you as a church, as we take Communion weekly as a church, that should be something you do daily walking around recalibrating your life, a daily assessment of where you are at and your main relationships in your life. It’s a healthy thing to pause, pray and think about whatever. Is there something I’ve done? I feel convicted by what I read. I feel convicted by the spirit prompted me saying no, that was wrong. You shouldn’t have done that. You got mad at your boss. You should not have done that. You shouldn’t have posted that. You should not have wrote that, that’s wrong. That’s sin. You should, you should be able to confess and yield and soften when you feel conviction verse this verse verse four should feel like we’re doing a we we we should be familiar to what we do with Communion Weekly. It’s a healthy habit for you to walk through as you grow and mature. The reality is if you don’t repent of sin and bring it to God, there’s a distance that grows in your coldness. If you and God and you’re in relationships with others. The reality is if you stop repenting and you stop admitting you’ve failed and you’ve not been what you should have been, you refused to admit fault your relationships with people around you will grow cold eventually you’ll become hard hearted or they’ll become hard hearted towards you. I know a handful of people that I don’t think I’ve ever heard them apologize in my life. I’m not saying like they’re in this room, I’m saying like in my life, there’s a handful of people that never apologize and there’s a there’s a hardness have to guard against and there’s a hardness that just happens in hearts and in relationships. There’s a stiffening that happens if you refuse to repent. If you refuse to repent to God, there’s a stiffening a hardness that comes into that relationship. Your walk with God slows down to a stop. If you stop a bang, you’re on the path to dying spiritually. Your walk with God starts to die when you stop obeying The second part here, forgiving others doesn’t mean we open ourselves up to the same toxic dysfunctional, self destructive life patterns that people have. Some people are unrepentant and they’re they’re trouble. You can forgive them without including them right into the dysfunction of your life. I’m not saying we do that, you can forgive them and release them, but you still have to take steps of protecting yourself. Let’s look back at verse four and forgive us of our sins for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us and lead us not into temptation If you know the Matthew version it says, but deliver us from the Evil one. See you and I have an enemy. Peter defines him as the devil and he’s roaming around as a lion seeking someone to devour. We need to be alert. The devil is real. He does exist and he has legions of demons that are assigned to harass temps and harm us. We shouldn’t be over, over infatuated them. We shouldn’t act like they don’t exist. There’s a healthy tension that we need to be in the reality of spiritual enemies. If the Lincoln zoo fails and a lion, I think they have a lion, they have a cougar, what do they have? They have tigers. The Lincoln zoo failed. And let’s say the tigers got out alright? And Nikki comes in and she’s like guys, there’s tigers in the parking lot. It’s not a line, We’ll make it work. All right, you better be alert walking to your car that there’s tigers roaming the property. Does that make sense? So I’m saying christian there are spiritual lions and tigers and bears out to get you called the world the devil in the flesh. And if you’re not alert and sober minded about that, you’ll be eaten up. Someone will take a bite out of you. You need to be alert spiritually to the reality of what it means to walk with God means you have enemies of God that are now enemies of your enemies because your son or daughter of the king. This is a healthy model for us and how to pray. And then verse five GS illustrates the heart behind the example, the method of prayer behind the motives. We jumped from method of prayer structure of prayer to motivation and the motivation matters. The spirit behind the structure of what we’re looking at. And verse five He wrote this and he said to them, which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, friend Lend Me three loaves. This is a bread 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. I cannot get up and give you anything. Verse eight I tell you though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend. Yet because of his imprudence, he will rise and give him whatever he needs. What I think we need to get from This concept is so bread. If you have something that arrived late at night, that meant they traveled during the dangerous hours of traveling at that time in Israel and if they arrived at your house late at night means it was urgent and important and unexpected and in a culture that really valued hospitality not to offer them fresh bread from that day was incredibly rude and to save face if your family and your whole clan, you had to offer fresh bread to guests. And so he went to his neighbor’s house and knocking on the door is not not something we do our phones, your phone, my phone silences phone calls after a certain hour. Right. That was an interesting new development. That’s not a bad thing. I don’t know if I’m sleeping at night. It’s great, but but like it’s beyond just phone calls or text messages. It’s like you come to my house and you’re knocking on the door and you’re ringing the doorbell, you’re gonna wake up everyone in my house. That doorbell is loud in my house knocking on a metal door that’s been locked and bolted. Would wake up all the people in the household of this family. So I think this, this jewish couple sleeping on and maybe they have a bed, it sounds like which is wealthier families have a bed and they probably pile all their toddlers and little babies on that bed. This is like them ringing the doorbell, waking up everyone to get the bread. Do you understand the boldness that is in this request the translation the SVS causing imprudence, which is the opposite of being modest, polite or shy and prudence is not modest, polite or shy. We pray modest, polite and shy prayers as christians, we’re not supposed to do that. We’re not supposed to, we’re supposed to pray brash, bold, persistent, relentless prayers and prudence means brash, bold, persistent and relentless. That’s what we’re supposed to do in our prayer life christians. And then verse nine, it’s one of the climaxes of this passage. Sorry, the intent of the author seems to steer clear, clearly stated. If we miss this and we miss verse 13, I think we missed the whole heart behind what keeps this passage from being a legalistic wet blanket. Let’s look at verse nine, Jesus says, I tell you ask and will be given to you, seek and you will find knock and will be open to you. For everyone who asks receives the one who seeks, finds the one who knocks, it will be opened. I tried it in a creative way When I first preached this passage to a group of college kids 10, 12 years ago I, there’s a door behind the stage and I told one of my student leaders when I get to this passage, get up and go behind me, just start knocking loud and don’t stop. Then I continue to preach my entire sermon with someone knocking the door behind It was so confusing for everyone including myself. It was just like jarring like he’s just pounding on the door and people were concerned, it was not a good idea, but let me read this just refresh eyes, let’s look at the amplified bible, looking at this same passage, it gets to gets to the heart behind. So I say to you ask and keep on asking and two and it shall be given to you seek and keep on seeking and you shall find knock and keep on knocking and the door will be open to you for everyone who asks and keeps on asking and he who seeks and keeps on seeking fines and to him who knocks and keeps on knocking the door shall be opened. The everyone in the bible. The greats of the bible. You read about the big the big fish, the big men and women of God. In the bible they had some strong ask seek and knock muscles you see in the bible they keep at it. Jacob Ezra, Hannah, Nehemiah paul peter. They had a strong nontoxic ask muscles that they leaned on. If you flip to the 21st century the O. G. S of Christianity. Their biographies of Godly men and women who God used in powerful mighty ways. They had great ask seek knock muscles. They were not shame, shameful, a little afraid prayers. They were go getters. They had some grits, some determination with God. All great works and movements of God originate in individuals and then groups of people asking seeking and knocking. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the largest three of the four largest churches in the world are in South Korea. They’ve had 24-7365 prayer meeting that’s gone for decades. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that spiritual haves and have nots ask seek and knock. I think there’s a shocking picture that we look at verse 11. A shocking picture. Looking at the nature of our heavenly father helps you and I have expectations as we expectantly pray. The nature of our father, verse 11. What father among you? If his son asks for a fish will instead 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. How much more will your heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask? Alright, so none of your kids are asking for fish and eggs. This last week, let’s say you’re at church and your son or daughter asked you if they can get another donut and he said, nah, here’s a heroin needle. Like ask you for a piece of gum, you’re like nah, here’s some crack, No right. Even evil, bad natured fathers in our culture don’t do that. Does that make sense? The nature of bad, fallen fleshly fathers here give good things to their kids. The nature of our heavenly father, If we’re true sons and daughters of the king, the nature of our heavenly father is to give us, what is it? Let’s look at verse 13 again, your heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him so this is not a Joel Olstein, health and wealth, prosperity, Gospel Church, We don’t grab material possessions and slap it into the verse 13, the best thing, the best thing jesus can get from God, the best thing God the father can give to his sons and daughters is himself is a relationship with jesus christ and you find that relationship through your prayer life, if you’re stagnant, your spiritual walk is stale, your prayer, life is stagnant, still men and women think of how this, the disciples just changed, we read about them here like uh we read about them in the garden of Gethsemane, they couldn’t pray for an hour, were like nah and then we read about them later in their life after the Holy Spirit came and filled all the believers, we see, we see these men of God and women of God accomplishing great feats throughout the rest of the new testament and there’s power and there’s understanding and there’s growth and these people are different people after the gospel accounts, the disciples changed because of the prayers, they grew up, because of their prayers, they were refined and they’ve got over sin and they got over insecurities and they become the men, God wanted them to be and the titans of the faith, we read about, they learned to pray as time went on, they became formed in the image of God because they spent time with God, their identity became impacted by God, the best thing God can give you is himself himself the Holy Spirit. I’m reminded of excellent sermon Ben gave, we talked about the Holy Spirit, how to be filled the spirit. I think a lot of reforms, churches like us can kind of like make this super cerebral but jesus loud christ prayers and petitions were presented his request to God. There’s a lot of rawness and jesus, emotionally processing life and jesus is bigger theologian than any of us will ever be. Is the mental and the emotional that showed up when jesus prayed. I don’t I don’t think we could be, we don’t be afraid of this. We should learn how to pray mentally, emotionally head and heart soul, we can learn how to pray. And if you and if you if you’re desperate, if a if a sibling is dying, a parent is dying, you’re dying. You get desperate and you get real and raw. If life gets real, you get real in your prayer life, it’s appropriate to confess yield and ask God to lead you then share this great sort of how we’re confessing our sin. We yield like kingdom come yielding and that’s that God would lead us with wisdom and understanding what we read in the bible and what we feel mature believers still prompted to obey and do I think there’s a tendency when we get brittle about this passage, but this is all over our bible. Men and women of God pursuing God and the good times and the bad times. The title is serving as shameless persistence Planning for that verse eight If you look at verse verses 11 all this passage in verse 11, I think there’s another famous passage, uses teaching on prayer and luke 18 verse one, when jesus told the disciples are parable to show them that they should pray and not give up verse two, he said to them in a certain town, there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with with the plea grant me justice against my adversary for some time he refused, but finally he said to himself, even though I don’t fear God or care what people think. Yet because of this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice so that she won’t eventually come and attack me, Verse six and the Lord said, listen to what the unjust judge says and will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones who cry out to him day and night, will he keep putting them off? I tell you he will see that they get justice and quickly. However, when the son of man comes, will he find faith on the earth? I know jesus whenever he preaches on prayer, he’s poking at the soft underbelly of christian prayer that I can have and you can have all of us don’t measure up and at this area of our life, we all can grow, we all can be taught something today, not just shrewdly taught something, but experientially grow in this area. What are some applications for us? I think just pray and don’t give up. There’s somebody who have spouses, loved ones, kids that our wayward. Some of you have persistent sins in your life dot life, dominating sins in your life. Somebody feel a burden and a call to ministry praying don’t give up. I uh, I think about like I bet like five minutes after I die standing in heaven, I will, I will think a lot differently about how I spend my time here on earth. I have a feeling a lot of us. If we could feel guilt in heaven and regret in heaven, we would feel like man. If I could do this over again, I’d wish I prayed more here on earth. The spiritual haves and have nots the keys of the kingdom. Everything is laid out for those who seek knock and ask. It seems like there’s a encouragement to persevere in prayer and encouragement to be bold in prayer. And there’s some of you who have very bold and consistent prayers and others of you who have very persistent non bold prayers. The bold people need to learn how to be persistent and the persistent people need to learn how to have some holy boldness because if God answered the persistent people’s prayers, things might not change at all in this life or your life. If God answered the bold people’s prayers after they pray one day and they quit. We need to be both bold and persistent. We need to knock and ask, knowing the nature of our father. Being persistent and bold is what we’re called to do. I know that prayers worship prayers work and prayers for those who are weak. The proud strong christians don’t pray. I know that I remember times in my life where there’s little things that you pray about. I was reminded by Hudson taylor. It says a little things, little things but faithfulness and a little thing is a great thing. I know I can demonstrate little faith and little things in my life and being persistent in little prayers in my life. I’ve been praying for years that lost friends become saved. I think God slowly one x one has been answering not all but a chunk of those prayers And I’m persisting. I’m praying for my lost friends become saved. Everyone. I was like 13. I started to pray that my wife Annie, who I did not know she’s not over there. She was over there in the first service. My wife Anne would would, You know, be the woman she is. I was praying for that girl when I was 13 until I got married her and they stopped praying for right, right, husbands, right. Ah, just kidding. I pray for my wife still remember praying for my first car, my second car, my third car and I’m from cool God stories of God providing cars. I remember praying for my first house that would be a mile from campus because I was the campus director of that college group now now like an applique applicable prayer that you all could join me in praying at at 10 02. The most awkward ist alarm goes off at 10 026 days a week, not seven because sunday at 10 02 is during the first service. Um, this alarm goes off and that reminds me of what luke derrick preached on in luke 10 versus two saying the Lord of the harvest, pray to the Lord of harvest for more labor, more workers to help you enter the field. I’ve been praying that prayer since last spring, I’m gonna pray that prayer the rest of my life that God brings in more workers more laborers but our motivation, our prayer life used to be bold and to be persistent and know the nature of who we’re talking to, jesus invites you to shameless persistence in your prayer life just invites you to shameless bold prayers. The disciples got it and they learned and they grew and so can you jesus wants to teach us how to pray. The disciples built a ministry in the church on the prayers they had you read about all these prayers that happened all these prayer meetings that happened all throughout the gospels and all into the book of acts, the praying change the early disciples, the praying will change you. Your prayer life grows, you just like a group area, the disciples and your prayer life will transform you just like to transform the early disciples. Lord teaches the prey. We’ve had, we’ve had two longstanding prayer meetings at our church that have both been going for about, I think a one year anniversary coming up for both those prayer meetings, one’s on sunday nights. If you’re a YP young professional, you’re invited to that, you can email hello at our church dot com. I’ll give you the info. The other one is on like a Tuesday morning at six a.m. Here at the building. I think God is teaching us how to praise the church. I think there’s this healthy book, we read our leadership team red last spring. It’s this orange book on prayer. It’s on corporate prayer, not personal prayer, it’s on corporate prayer. What does healthy church prayer look like? It talks about how prayer is not a gossip club. Prayer is not a worship service. Prayer is not a thing where you show up and you do everything in chit chat, but you don’t pray, you know, just what does it look like to have healthy prayer in a healthy church. I think God is taking us on a prayer journey teaching us to pray if you want one of these books, you can grab one for free in the resource library. I think we have a few left. If you don’t move quick, you won’t get one. You have to buy your own. That’s fine. I think God is going to continue to teach and grow us in this area. Amen. Let’s pray God. Thank you for these men and women. Thank you for what you’re doing in our life. I ask that you would just really grow us up in this prayer life. Teach us to pray Lord as individuals and as, as single men, single women moms and dads grandmas and grandpas Lord, I pray you just teach us to pray. It’s not like it’s a paid person’s position. Lord, it’s not like it’s only for the gifted people. Lord, I pray to teach us all what it looks like to pray. I pray you change us in our prayer life as men and women just grow us up in this area in jesus name, we pray. Amen. Amen. Thank you Mike for bringing the word and preaching the word faithfully. Good morning church. My name is Ryan. Um, I’m gonna lead us in our community meditation this morning. Just two quick reminders. The first is that the red liquid is wine, clear liquid is juice. Um, and then the second one is, you do not have to be a member to participate in the Lord’s supper with us this morning, a member of sour, but we do ask that you profess complete faith in christ as your Lord and savior. Um, if you don’t let the elements pass from you and just spend some time praying, um forgot to open your eyes, shape your heart. Um, yeah, so as a church, we’ve been going through john piper’s uh 50 reasons why jesus came to die and today we’re in reason 23 which is so that we might belong to him and the verse that we’re gonna meditate on this morning kind of sit on is a roman 6 22 says, but now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and is in eternal life. So question, working on as a campus minister on campus and uh, you know, Greg of a church. A question I hear all the time is who are you and uh, you know, think about the identity we have in christ, the identity. Um, that christ gives us through his death. And it’s a very important question, a vital question that needs to be considered that needs to be answered about who you are. But this morning, I want to pose another very important, vital question that I don’t think it’s asked very often and that is who’s are you or to whom do you belong in the world? People talk about how their autonomous, that that their own person that their own creature. They’re not, you know, bounded or a slave innocence to anything. But in reality we’re all, everyone on earth is a slave to one of two things. They’re either slaves, their sin and the slaves to darkness or a slave to christ and slaves to righteousness. And at one time or another we were all slaves to our sin. And you may be thinking brian, what do you mean by a slave to sin? And and to that I turned to roman seven remember romans seven verse 15 where paul says I do the things I don’t want to do and I don’t do the things that I do want to do man. I it’s like man, I sin and I know this is wrong, but I just feel like I have no victory and no power over this sin over this thing in my life that I was a slave to it. That I was you know under bondage and and and change to my sin. But jesus came and completely changed our situation completely changed my situation that we are that we are no longer slaves to our sins. We are no longer in bondage to that, but we are free in christ and slaves to him that we are to do good to seek after christ, to worship him to love him to serve him with all of our lives. He bought us with the price and that price was his own blood on the cross. so that we are his. That we belong to christ. And what an incredible truth that we belong to christ That we are completely free in christ Not autonomous on her own but slaves to him slaves to to worship and to seek and to love and to serve a perfect king. So church take a few moments reflect on who whom do you belong to? Have you given your life to christ And if not asked that that you just lay down your life before him this morning. Just repent and take a few minutes before the king church. If you would rise with me, you would take the bread and remember christ’s body that was broken for you take the cup. Remember the blood of christ that was poured out for us. Let’s pray dear Father, you are good and mighty and holy Father. I just praise you. We praise you as a church for sending christ to the cross so that we would be free from from sin. That we would be have freedom in you christ. That we’d be able to have a relationship with you. Be able to love you. Be able to serve you to know you personally and intimately jesus. Thank you for everything that you’ve done for continually to pour out grace and mercy on us Father. I just ask to continue to shape our hearts and shape our minds Lord. We love you. We know that you love us and priorities. All these things in christ’s name. Amen. Let’s sing the first two verses of a mighty fortress. My fortress is Our God aboard. Mm hmm. R. Albert. Of For still our range seek to work us, woe. His craft and power. Bye Did we driving? We’re not the right on its own. You asked who that may be christ jesus. The Lord of hosts is his name from Hulu and he must win the masturbate. Okay. Still at church for