When we pray, we should make our desires whatever God desires. In this message on Luke 11:2–4, David Platt teaches us that our desire for God is the heart and secret of prayer. Christians can remember that God gives us protection amidst temptations and perseverance amidst trials.
When we pray, we should make our desires whatever God desires. In this message on Luke 11:2–4, David Platt teaches us that our desire for God is the heart and secret of prayer. Christians can remember that God gives us protection amidst temptations and perseverance amidst trials.
You are listening to Radical with David Platt, a weekly podcast with sermons and messages from pastor, author and teacher David Platt. What I want us to see this morning is a facet of prayer that I know in my own experiences serving in context overseas. God has taught me the most about and its desire in prayer. Two particular situations or circumstances come to my mind. One was the first time I had an encounter with house church believers in Asia. Believers gathered in underground locations to study the word in a country where it was illegal to be a follower of Jesus Christ and illegal to gather like we had gathered. I remember we were sitting there, just in this small room, a circle of about 20 or 30 believers sitting on little stools, sitting in a circle there, and we began to pray. They were sharing testimonies about what God was doing in their lives and they said we need to pray. All of a sudden, they fell down on their knees and on their faces and they began to weep, just to audibly weep before the Lord. For the next hour all they did was pray and weep and they weren't praying. I was having their prayers translated to me. They weren't praying big theological prayers, they were praying things like God, thank you for not forgetting about us. God, thank you for loving us. God, thank you for knowing our names. And for an hour, that's what they prayed Non-stop, just weeping before him and I know preachers have a tendency to exaggerate, but this is no exaggeration. When we got up off the floor Because I had lost it, I was right there with him. We got up off the floor and literally there were puddles of tears around the room for people who were so passionate about their God in prayer. The other situation or circumstance that comes to my mind is in the middle of Sudan, where they were on the heels of 20 years of persecution. We would pray and these guys would call out to the Lord, these women would call out to the Lord with such passion, and then we'd finish praying and we'd immediately go into dancing. They had these dances that they would do and it was wild. Sitting there dancing with these Sudanese brothers and sisters and looking across the way and seeing war torn buildings, seeing their church building that had been ravaged by helicopter gunships, and to see them dancing in the middle of it. What causes you to pray like that? What causes you to fall on your face and just weep before the Lord to let your praying lead to dancing in the middle of a war zone. How does that happen? I think it has something to do with desire and prayer. Based on those circumstances, I began to study prayer and scripture and began to see and experience prayer in entirely new ways that I had never experienced before. I believe desire and prayer is all over scripture. I want us to see that this morning. I want to lay down two foundational, primary truths from the start that are going to guide our time together. I think these are truths that we see all over scripture, but especially in the passage we're going to study this morning. Here's the two truths. You've got them in your notes. Number one desire for God is the heart of prayer. Desire for God is the heart of prayer. Listen to what Jonathan Edwards said, preacher back in the Great Awakening, who wrote a book called Religious Affections. She said a person who has a knowledge of doctrine and theology only without religious affection has never engaged in true religion. I am bold in saying this, but I believe that no one ever seeks salvation, no one ever cries for wisdom, no one ever wrestles with God, no one ever kneels in prayer with a heart that remains unaffected. In a word, there is never, never, any great achievement by the things of religion without a heart that is deeply affected by those things. Last week we saw in Luke 11, one that we pray because we need God. But I want to remind you this morning that one of the fundamental reasons why we pray is not just because we need God, it's because we want God, it's because we long for God, because we yearn for God, because our souls crave God. That's why we pray because we want Him, and desire for God is the heart of prayer and not just the emotion of prayer. What I mean by that is that without desire, prayer cannot survive. Our prayer lives cannot survive apart from desire, deep, intimate desire for God. That leads to the second truth. That desire is not just the heart of prayer, but I'm convinced that desire for God is the secret to prayer. Even last week, when we began thinking about prayer, we began thinking about questions that many of us have thought all our lives about prayer, how does prayer work? How do you have the kind of success and prayer that we see all over the New Testament, that for some reason, if we're really honest with each other, is completely foreign to our lives, and I think desire is the secret of this picture of success we see in prayer. And you've got two blanks there in your notes and this might be a little bit of an oversimplification, but if I were to summarize a picture of prayer when it comes to desire and it being the secret to prayer in two steps that I would encourage you with this morning that we're going to see unfold in this passage, the two steps would be this In your prayer life. Number one make your wants, god's wants. Make your wants God's wants, your desires, god's desires. Desire what God desires. This is how intimacy is created. Intimacy is created by a unity of affection. When you and somebody else, anybody else, when the two of you long for the same things, or you desire the same things, or you want the same things, it creates intimacy between you and that person. That's the way it works with God. When we want what he wants, when we desire what he desires, and that intimacy that we talked about last week, the mystery of intimacy with God, becomes a reality when the things that are closest to God's heart become the things that are closest to our heart. We begin to want what God's wants. Once you make your wants God's wants. It leads to step number two ask whatever you want. Ask for whatever you want and you've got it. Jesus says Guaranteed when your wants are God's wants. You ask for whatever you want in prayer and you are guaranteed to get it. You've already have it as soon as you ask for it. You know you have it when your wants are God's wants. Now again, that's maybe a little bit of an oversimplication, but I think it's biblical Make your wants God's wants and then have the freedom to go to God and ask for whatever you want and he will give it to you. You see, that desire is at the heart of prayer and it's the secret to prayer. I want you to see that unfold in Luke, chapter 11, verse two. We studied verse one last week and the whole context of Luke and Acts. Disciples have asked Jesus to teach them to pray, and this is what Jesus says. It says he said to them when you pray, say Father, how lo be your name, your kingdom, come, give us each day our daily bread, forgive us our sins for we also forgive everyone who sins against us and lead us not into temptation. How many of us recognize that, if not all of us recognize that is the Lord's prayer. I'm guessing somewhere you're thinking that Luke left out some important things in there. We know that Matthew chapter six gives us a picture of the Lord's prayer and he includes some things that Luke has apparently forgotten. Luke should have taken better notes when Jesus was talking so he could have gotten it down right. Well, that's not exactly right. Before we harp on Luke, let's realize that when Jesus began to teach them to pray, he wasn't saying if you recite these exact words, then you're going to have success in prayer. This is not intended to be some rote religious formula that becomes a ritual or liturgy for us that we always say and we know we're in. There's some kind of magic, so to speak, in saying these particular words. I know my high school baseball team. We'd get together before every game, before we ran out in the field, we would pray the Lord's prayer and it just it didn't work. We were horrible. We were horrible, so maybe that's not the way it was intended to work. Now that it's bad to pray this word for word, it's certainly not a bad thing, but that's not the point. Jesus is not just saying you pray these exact words Even in Matthew chapter six. We get a little confused, because when you read the Lord's prayer in Matthew chapter six, it ends with deliverance from the evil one and you don't see the Dine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. What's the deal with that? Did Matthew forget something too? Well, actually, 1611, king James translation. At that time the manuscript we were using to get the New Testament had the Dine is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever and ever. But a lot's happened since 1611 and during that time we've discovered a lot more earlier manuscripts that didn't have that part. So it's probably added a little later on, and so most translations of the Bible today, when you go to that part of Matthew chapter six and I'll have a little note at the end says some manuscripts say this. So we've kind of had that one in there more than Matthew forgetting, and I think we do it primarily for the sake of weddings, if you ask me. I just think we like that part of the song at the wedding and it just doesn't seem as right to end on deliver us from evil. Okay, amen, y'all have a wonderful marriage. We want that, you know. Just hit the high note and just let it rev. That'll be the last time I sing, but you just let it rev and that's beautiful and it may be beautiful weddings. The only problem is it's just probably not biblical. So, anyway, we come to the Lord's prayer and we see not Jesus saying these are the exact words you say. Instead, he is showing us what we're supposed to desire in prayer when he says when you pray, this is what you say. That word pray, original language of the New Testament, it's two words that are put together that basically mean, in the context of intimacy or closeness, to ask for something, to request something. So what do we ask for? You said last week, dave, go into your room, close the door and pray. What do I do when I get there? What do I ask for? I want you to see, in Luke, chapter 11, verse two, through four, four primary requests, four primary requests. Everyone would say there's five here. We're going to group the first two together Four primary requests. And here's what we're going to do. We're going to look at each one of these requests and then we're going to pause. We're going to pray for that thing that we've just studied I want to invite you to do, when we come to those times in prayer, all throughout this service. My goal is for us just to have the freedom all across this room To pray. We're going to have music where we can pray as we sing or you can pray as you're sitting there. I want to invite you to have the freedom to stand. I want to invite you to have the freedom to come down here to the front kneel or go to the sides of kneel or just go to the aisles and kneel. You do it every one. I know that's a little different, but I want us just to have freedom as we study the word, to let it become the prayed word throughout this room, however that looks in your life. So what does Jesus tell us? To ask for? Number one, jesus says Ask God for His glory. Ask God for His glory. He says Pray, father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come Now. Here's what we've got. To make sure we don't miss the point here. For years I thought that this was a declaration of the glory of God, of the holiness of God. God, you are holy, and therefore you start your praying with just saying God is holy and then you go on asking for things. But that's not what Jesus is saying. The language here, this is not a declaration God, you are holy. It's a request for God to hallow His name. The verb is passive. The whole Lord's prayer is requests Hallow your name. Now, what does that mean? To hallow His name? What does that mean for God to hallow His name? Well, this is a word that we see throughout Scripture that basically means to sanctify something, and to sanctify something just unpack that a little bit can be used in one of two ways throughout Scripture. Sometimes, sanctify most often is the word that's used to describe how you make something holy. As followers of Jesus Christ, the Bible says we're in a process of sanctification. God is making us holy, he's making us look more like Jesus. But when you come to hallowing the name of God, there's really not a lot of holiness to be made there. He's already got that cover. And so the other way we see this word sanctify used in Scripture, is not just to make something holy, but to treat something as holy. So the prayer here, what we're asking God to do, is to cause His name to be treated as holy, to cause His name to be hallowed, to be sanctified. Cause your name, oh God, to be regarded as holy. That's what we're asking God to do. We're asking God for His glory. Now here's the picture of God that we have. Even in the context of this prayer, you see a few different characteristics of God brought to the forefront. Picture our God here in Luke 11, verse 2. First of all, he is the sovereign Father, and we're going to dive a couple of weeks from now. In the last week in this series, we're going to look at what it means for God to be Father and the implications of that for how we pray. It suffices to say at this point don't miss this. The God who is sovereign over the entire universe calls you child. Let that soak in. The God who calls the stars by name and who created the mountains and the valleys and the hills, and the skies and the seas. God calls you His Son or His Daughter. He is the sovereign Father. We pray to Him as our Dad, our Father. He is the sovereign Father. Second, he is the Holy One. This picture of hallowed make yourself known as holy. This is the characteristic of God we see throughout the Old Testament, especially emphasized Isaiah. Chapter 6 comes face to face with the glory of God. The choir is saying Holy, holy, holy, the only attribute of God that is mentioned three times in Scripture is holiness. It means he is completely unique. He is completely other. Ezekiel, chapter 36, verse 23,. God says I will show the holiness of my great name. The nations will know that I am the sovereign Lord, declares the Lord, when I show myself holy through my people, he shows Himself as holy. Samuel, chapter 7, verse 22,. You are sovereign and great, o Lord, there is no one like you. There is no God but you. When we pray, hallowed be your name, we pray God. Make yourself known as the one there is nobody else like. Show to the world that there is no God but you, no one like you, that you are great, you're holy. Not only is he a sovereign Father, the Holy One, he is the coming King. Your kingdom come, and this is where that second petition kind of comes in there. He is the coming King. Throughout the New Testament I always see a picture of the kingdom of God being inaugurated in Christ coming to the earth and showing what the reign of God looks like with His life. But it also looks forward in the New Testament does to the consummation of that kingdom, when God will come and he will reign, and God will one day eradicate all evil, he will demonstrate, manifest His righteousness on the earth. So when we pray, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, we are praying. God, come and make your name known. God, come and make your reign known. That's what we're asking God to do. We're not saying God, hallowed is your name, although it is. We're saying God, make your name hallowed, make your name known as holy. That's our cry. But who are we crying that out? For? For whom are we praying? When we pray, hallowed be your name? I think there's a personal dimension to this and a worldwide dimension to this. I think we're praying. Our cry is God, make Yourself known in my life. God, make Yourself known in my life. Make Yourself known as holy. Make Yourself known as great in my life. Cause me to treat your name as holy. I want to believe your greatness with greater intensity. That's why I'm praying. I'm praying that you would cause me to trust in your power with greater intensity. You'd cause me to obey you like you are holy. You would cause me to be pure as you are pure. God, make Yourself known in my life. Think about it. Every single one of us in this room who has a relationship with Christ. We bear the name of our Father. So how is God going to make Himself known in the world as holy To those who bear His name, you and I? That's why we pray hallowed be your name in my life, but not just in my life. God, make Yourself known. Hallowed be your name in all the world. There's a cosmic, universal dimension to this prayer. Hallowed be your name, your kingdom, come in all the world. The picture we've got the rest of the New Testament, the kingdom of God coming, is a picture of every tribe and every people, in every language, every nation seeing praises to Him as the King. That's where our prayers are headed. We want Him to make Himself known as great and holy and mighty in all the world, in every corner of the earth, in every corner of Birmingham. We want God's name to be known as holy Every corner of every country on this planet. We want God's name to be known as holy when we pray for these teams in Ecuador. We pray God, use these brothers and sisters of ours to make your name known as holy in Ecuador, our brothers and sisters in Venezuela this morning. Make your name known as holy through them for our students in Ukraine. Make your name known as great throughout Ukraine. Through them, they reported back to us this week that 50 students had come to faith in Christ there in Ukraine. God, make Yourself known as great and Savior in the middle of Ukraine. That's what we pray Now. Here's the beauty of it Our cry for God's name to be hallowed and His kingdom to come. The beauty of it is and it goes back to where we started this morning. God wants this to happen. He wants His name to be hallowed. We've got to remember that when we pray, we're not asking God to do things he doesn't want to do. We're asking God to do that which is most passionate on His heart. He is not disinclined to make His glory known. This whole person is inclined to make His glory known. There is nothing that is higher on God's priority list than making His greatness and His grace and His mercy and His majesty, his love, known. And so when we pray for that, we're coming in line with the desires of God. This is why we can say make your wants God's wants. Then ask for whatever you want Jesus is saying. He said that throughout Scripture, god's name will be vindicated, he will show His righteousness, he will show His power and His mercy is glory to all nations. So you pray for that and you're in on the cosmic plan of God to make His name hallowed in all the earth. He says you have the privilege of praying this prayer into reality in your life. I'm convinced that if the kingdom of God comes, is consummated in our lifetime, god may it be so. But if it is, it will be because the Church of Jesus Christ gets serious about praying the Lord's prayer. Hallowed be your name in all the earth. I'm convinced that if we are going to do what we talked about two weeks ago and we are going to fulfill the Great Commission, it will be because the Church at Brook Hills unites in a concerted effort of prayer where we fall on our faces day after day and week after week and we cry out together as a faith family Make your name known as holy throughout the earth. God wants to answer that. It longs to answer that. Let me give you a picture. I got an email this week from Houston, a 51 year old man. He writes in the spring of 2006, with the encouragement of two of my friends at work, I began for the first time in my life to study God's Word and apply it to my life. It was during this time that I began to have a burden to go on a mission trip to Brazil. I began praying and seeking God's direction. I had no idea where to turn for guidance. In September, I was contacted with an opportunity to go to Brazil in July of 2007, this month Because the team of 22 would come from another place. I was isolated from training and had to work and plan via the internet. This is where the Church at Brook Hills plays in. In early spring of 2007, I started subscribing to your podcast. It was during the spring and early summer that I listened to your messages on sharing my faith with people in different cultures. I can remember listening to the messages on preparing and giving our testimonies and sharing with guilt, shame and fear-based cultures. I didn't realize at the time what God was doing in my life. Few weeks ago, our team went to St Helena in the northeast corner of Brazil. On Saturday morning I was asked to share my testimony. By the way, it was less than 100 words. I was asked to share my testimony with approximately 75 local Christians. I then shared with them how to write and share their testimonies with others Over the next three days. Through the efforts of those Christians. Over 100 Brazilians came to know the Lord in a personal way. Now here's where it gets really good. Not that that wasn't good, but here's where it gets really good. I want to personally thank you and the church for all you do for the furtherance of God's kingdom. Also, I would like to thank Charles Carr, jim Shepard, gene Mason and others at Brooke Hills whom my wife, pam, had contacted while I was gone to pray for God's will in our lives. Mark it down Guaranteed. You pray for the name of God to be hallowed in all corners of the earth and it will happen. He will make his glory known. He will show himself faithful. He will show himself the Savior of the world. He will show himself the Lord of the nations. Let's be a faith family that goes, falls on our knees and asks God to do it. Ask God for his glory. So that's what we're going to do In the next couple of minutes. We're going to come face to face with the glory of Jesus Christ and we're going to ask him to make his name known as Holy in our lives. We're going to ask him to make his name Holy in all the world, and Amy's going to sing over us, and while she's singing. You feel free to sing along If you'd like. You feel free to just sit in prayer. You feel free to stand in prayer as you sing along. You feel free to come to the front. You have the freedom. But let's, let's do this. Let's ask God for his glory. God, cause your name to be hallowed in our lives, in this room, and cause your name to be hallowed in all the world. God, we pray that your name would be known as Holy in us and we pray that you would make yourself known as great and mighty, powerful healer and deliverer and redeemer. And Ecuador and Venezuela and the Ukraine, god, we pray that you would cause your name to be regarded as Holy, as the coming King, as the sovereign Father and as the Holy One We'd give ourselves. And we ask for your glory. Do may know that is, we know that is the priority of your heart, and so we make it the priority of ours. We ask for that in prayer today, in Jesus' name, amen. You make your wants as once. Then you ask whatever you want. Ask for his glory. Second petition, second request, and the Lord's prayer. It's to ask for his gifts. Ask God for his gifts, it says. Give us each day, our daily bread. Now we come to this point. We kind of ask the question why is this the only thing Jesus tells us to ask God to give to us? Give us bread. I mean, let's be honest, there are things more important even than bread. We need water more than bread. We need air more than bread. Why does he say give us our bread daily? Well, the picture goes all the way back to God's work among his people in the Old Testament, exodus, chapter 16,. You remember, so you may remember, when God's people were wandering the wilderness. They had been taken out of slavery in Egypt and they were brought in to this wilderness where they were wandering. They were hungry, they didn't have any food. So God provided food for them, literally bread from heaven, manna. They would wake up, walk outside their tents and then refood everywhere. They'd refood enough for that day and be able to eat for that day. But if they tried to save it until the next day, what happened? Bread wasn't so good anymore, and so they wouldn't want to eat the bread on the next day. They learned to trust God day by day. Every morning, god's going to provide us the food we need. We go to bed at night we don't have food for tomorrow. Wake up the next morning, he's giving it to us. Now, why did God do that, why did he lead them like that, and why would that be so important for how we pray? Well, I think there's two truths that are fundamental to understanding Exodus chapter 16, and especially how it relates to the Lord's Prayer. Number one God satisfies our hunger. Let me ask you a question that's going to seem very elementary, but think about it with me. Why were the Israelites in the wilderness? Why were they hungry? First, because they didn't have any food. But go deeper than that. They were hungry because God created them with that hunger right. The only reason we are hungry for food, the only reason we have cravings, is because God has created us that way. God has created us to hunger after things, and here's the beauty of it to hunger after things that only he can fill. He caused them to hunger. It literally says in Exodus chapter 16, he created them that way so that they would look to Him to fulfill that hunger. He satisfies our hunger, and that leads to the second truth. Not only does he satisfy our hunger, but he sustains our faith and he teaches us in the process to look to Him to give us the gifts we need, to look to Him to fill those hungers in us. Let me show this to you. Hold your place here in Luke 11 and go back with me to Deuteronomy, fifth book in the Bible, deuteronomy chapter 8. Genesis X, the Leviticus numbers. Then you'll come to Deuteronomy, chapter 8. This is when God is explaining why he did what he did in the desert. He's after he had done it and he is explaining His motivation, what His whole purpose for providing them food in that way was. Listen to Deuteronomy, chapter 8, verse 3, and you're going to see both these truths the fact that he satisfies our hunger and he sustains our faith. Look for Him here in Deuteronomy, chapter 8, verse 3. It says he, meaning God, humbled you, causing you to hunger there. It is causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna which neither you nor your fathers are known. Two. Here's the purpose. Here's why God did it to teach you that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. These were people when they were slaves in Egypt. They had a lot of food to eat and they even grumbled. In Numbers, chapter 11, said we don't want the man, we want the food back in Egypt. The reason God did this is he wanted to teach them that they had a hunger, that he created them so that he would fill it. So that I'm teaching you to trust in me to provide the bread you need. Trust in me to provide the gifts that you need. Man does not live on bread. You live on God, on every word that comes from the mouth of God. That doesn't mean you're hungry. You eat the Bible. It means that you've thought it before, haven't you? What does that make sense? It's teaching them that God is the provider for them and they're to seek Him to provide what they hunger for and they long for. That's the whole point of why we get to Luke, chapter 11. He says give us today, each day, our daily bread. It's that picture of us saying on a daily basis God, we have a hunger for food, a physical hunger for food, and only you can provide for that hunger. We have a thirst for water. Only you can provide that. We have a longing for air on a moment by moment basis. We don't even think about it, but we've got it. As soon as it's taken away from us, we begin immediately to long for it. Only you can fulfill that. We have all kinds of hungers, desires, thirst, longings in our life for peace, for love, for intimacy, for meaning, for purpose. Jesus is saying you go to God and you say only you can provide these things for me. Now this whole request seems really strange in our culture today because, let's be honest, we don't very often ask God to give us bread today, to give us food today. Not one of us in this room was worried about the fact that we may not have anything to eat today. So why would our main request for God to give us something be for bread when in our culture, most, if not all, of us need less food, not more? Why do we ask for daily bread? Because Jesus is saying that you need to pray, and prayer will be the guard in your life to guard you against thinking that you can provide bread for yourself on your own, apart from Him, and prayer will be the hedge of protection to keep you from thinking that you can provide what you need, that you can provide for your hungers by going to the things of this world instead of going to God. I'm convinced I look at my own life. I look at the state of Christianity and Western culture. One of the reasons that we are so flippant and so casual with prayer is because we actually believe that we can. We can do this thing on our own and we can sustain our lives on our own. We believe that because we've got the things to prove it and we have bought the bill of goods, the materialism that sold us, that said we don't need God, we just need our things. We can make it without God because we've got all our things. And Jesus says the core of prayer is you realizing that you have a Father in heaven who desires to give every good and perfect to you, and you need Him, not bread, you need Him, not water, not air, not all of these things that you hunger and long for. You need Him and he will provide those things for you. And prayer brings us back to that realization we have. We've got to ask God to deliver us in this culture that we live in, to deliver us from self-sustaining Christian lives. You can't. That goes against the whole point of Christianity. We're only sustained by God, we're only satisfied by God, and he gives us that which nothing else in this world, no matter how big our house is, no matter how nice our car is, no matter how great our 401K is, no matter how great our job, our salary is, the possessions that we own, no matter how great they are, we don't need things, we need God. And spending time and closed doors with God saying we're none of us, I'm guessing none of us If I ask today, give me my daily bread? Maybe very few of us, because we think we've got it on our own and we don't. We don't have it on our own. We can't do this thing without Him. He alone is our provider. And so we go to Him and we say give us, give us the coordinates. I need you to provide these things for me. And it's why and we're not alone we need God to provide these things for me. And it's why, it's why our Sudanese brothers and sisters in the middle of the African jungle are dancing when they pray. It's why, in a war-torn community, they're celebrating Because they they've seen their friends and their family members take it, taken by militant Muslims, miles into the desert and left there to starve, without food or water, and they've seen those trucks go back every day to those people in the desert, those believers in the desert and say if you will renounce your faith, we will take you to food. If you will renounce your faith, we'll take you to water. And they've seen their friends and family members die there in the desert because they would renounce their faith. Does that mean that God did not give them their daily bread? Absolutely not. That means our brothers and sisters in the Sudan know that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. God is their sustenance, he is their satisfaction, and it's why, when you go to Sudan today and you say I'm sorry about all the tapping around you, they'll look back at you and they'll say the same three words every time. Their favorite phrase is God is greater. We don't have food. God's greater. We don't have drink. God's greater. Our homes are ravaged. God is greater. He gives us what we need, he satisfies us, he sustains us and he is all we need. And so we need to pray for our daily bread. We need to pray for God's provision, we need to pray for God's gifts, like we want God to give them and like we can't. We can't get what he offers anywhere else. Let's throw over the next few minutes. I wanna invite you to let this soak in in your life and prayer Again. You have the freedom. You stand you'd like, sit there and pray if you'd like. You'd sing along if you'd like. The whole purpose of these songs is to guide us in prayer. You kneel if you would like, but across this room and this materialistic, wealthy culture that we are all immersed in, let's ask God to give us our daily bread and let's confess that we are desperate for Him to provide His gifts to us. Psalm 16, verse two I said to the Lord you are my Lord, and apart from you, lord, we have no good thing. We have no good thing apart from you, god. You are our sustainer. You're the only one who satisfies us. So we ask for your satisfaction. We want you to satisfy us in a way that bread can't satisfy us, water can't satisfy us, in a way that more possessions, cars or houses, money cannot satisfy us, money cannot satisfy us, and we need you to sustain us in a way that we are completely dependent on you. God, help us to find that and prayer and communion with you amidst the materialistic culture that we live in. God, help us to come out in the middle of that and say, apart from God, we have nothing. Teach us to pray like this in Jesus' name, amen. We ask God for His gifts because only he can give them. We ask God for His glory and His gifts. Then we ask God third petition, or request some Lord's prayers for His grace. For His grace. For His grace, forgive us our sins. For simple words that absolutely blow open the storehouse of heaven's mercy. May we never lose sight of the beauty and the wonder of coming before the Holy God of the universe, saying forgive us our sins and knowing that we have a hearing with Him. What an incredible thought. Don't go over that quickly so you can go out in the baseball field. Don't go over that quickly so you can go on to the next thing that you really wanna get to and ask God to do this. Let that soak in. Forgive us our sins. We want His grace, we ask for His grace. God, I need your grace and the more I'm convinced, the more we walk with God in prayer, the more we connect with Him in prayer, the more this will become a fundamental part of our prayer. You'd think it'd be the opposite. You'd think that the closer you get to God in prayer, the less you need to ask for His grace, the less you need to ask for His forgiveness because you're getting things taken care of in your life right. I think the opposite is true in Scripture as well as in personal experience. I think the deeper you go in your relationship with God and the deeper you walk with Him in prayer, the more you become aware of your need for His grace and the more he exposes the things in your life that you never saw before, that you want to get rid of so that you can live the Christ life. You need His grace so you experience his forgiveness. Forgive us our sins and we have the privilege, in prayer, of experiencing his forgiveness, of, in that moment of praying to this God, knowing that our sins are forgiven, we experience it. This is not just a theoretical truth on the pages of scripture. This is a reality in your life. In prayer. Forgive us our sins, you experience his forgiveness. He looks at you and he says not guilty, don't wipe clean. That's reason to pray. Once you want his grace, he's ready to pour it out. We experience his forgiveness in a couple of ways, I think in Luke, chapter 11. First of all, continually hold pictures. Whenever you pray. This is what you say Forgive us our sins. The Lord's prayer, jesus, seems to imply, or assume, that we're always going to need to ask for this one, this to assume that we're in constant need of forgiveness, that even our best works need to be washed in the blood of Jesus Christ, even the best things we have to bring to the table in prayer, filthy rags that he cleanses with his righteousness. So we ask continually, over and over again God forgive me of this, god forgive me of this, god forgive me of this. And we know, ladies and gentlemen, you cannot exhaust the mercy of God. You just keep coming back to the well and it'll keep covering you time after time after time again. You ask for his forgiveness continually. And then you ask for his forgiveness. You experience his forgiveness. Specifically, there's a definite article the sins Give us of the sins that we've committed. It's the prayer there. It's not just saying to God, I know I messed up somewhere, so I'm just going to cover my bases and say forgive me and that'll cover it. You know, there's a point in our salvation where that's certainly the case. We come to God and we realize our sinful nature and we realize our need for Him. Our whole life has been headed towards sin, given over to sin, and we come to that point where we make a decisive trust in Christ and he cleanses us of all our sins. Then, at that point on and I think the picture here in Luke, chapter 11, is we're no longer coming before a judge to be declared guilty or innocent for all of eternity. Now there's a picture of a child coming before a father, sitting down at the table with a father and saying you know, there's some things that I've let come between me and you and I need to specifically just get those out on the table and lay them out there, as if he doesn't already know, as if you're hiding. You come to those points where you say God, I need you to forgive me for, and you fill in the blank and you say things that you would be ashamed for anybody else to hear, because you know that you have a father in heaven who hears you and he forgives you specifically. He covers that sin with his righteousness. We can be specific with him and we let God, in this thing called prayer, take hold of those areas. We don't want just to wash the outside of the cup and leave the filth inside. Do? We Watch the whole thing, this and this and this. Sometimes we just need to camp out at this part of prayer and ask for his grace when I have him say to us over and over and over again you're not guilty anymore, you're not filthy anymore. So we experience his forgiveness. And then it's not where this whole picture stops and Luke 11 says you extend his forgiveness. Forgive us our sins, as we also have forgiven those who sin against us. Now the danger here in Luke, chapter 11, is to think that what Jesus is saying is that the basis or the ground for our forgiveness is our actions with others. That's not what scripture teaches. The basis for our forgiveness is obviously the grace and the mercy of Christ and trusting in Christ. So we ask them to forgive us based on that. But here's what Jesus is saying very clearly If you ask God to forgive you of your sins and yet you are not forgiving others around you, that unforgiveness is a sin and so you really haven't asked God to forgive you of your sins. Unforgiveness, the roots of bitterness, the grudges, the desires for revenge that we hold on to at work and we hold on to at home and we hold on to in the church. Jesus calls it out it's sin, because failure to forgive is a complete contradiction of the gospel that you have trusted in. It's a complete contradiction of what you're asking God for in prayer. And so he says you receive my forgiveness, and then you radiate my forgiveness, you show my forgiveness in a way that makes no sense to the world around you. And so Jesus says to us in praying, even goes so far as to say if you come to pray and you realize that your brother, if there's something in between you and him, you need to go get that right, then you come back and you're praying. The challenge is for all of us in this room to consider what areas of bitterness are still there in our hearts, what grudges or desires for revenge or whatever that may be Unforgiveness in our lives, in our relationships with other brothers or sisters, and we have got to get those right if we are going to progress in prayer. Quite and simple, this thing called confession is not where we like to camp out a lot, when I'm convinced that as God works in our faith family, he leads us deeper and deeper into His Word and deeper and deeper into this mission. We will need more and more time in confession, not less. We will need more time to fall on our faces, corporately and as individually, and to say God, I, I need and I want your grace. And so over the next few minutes, that's what we're going to do. And, again, the goal this morning is that there would not be spectators in corporate worship, but as we've seen this in the Word, okay, then we need to pray. We need to pray all across this room as individuals. God forgive me of and you fill in the blank and you be specific with God and forgive us of. There's a corporate nature that the whole Lord's prayer. God, we have fallen short in this and this and this as your people, and if there's things that we're holding onto roots of bitterness or unforgiveness, so we need to get those right. Whether that's even right now, turning the person beside us, or going to someone else and say, hey, I need to, I need to get this right with you, or if that's saying God, I'm going to resolve that today, the result of my praying is I'm going to go and handle this. I want to suspend some time. Incorporate confession again you, you bound, pray where you are. You say along if you like, you stand or you kneel. Let's just spend time becoming honestly before the throne of mercy, saying forgive us our sins. Let's ask God for his grace. God, we want your grace. We want you to pour it out on us. We want to bring our filth before you and know your grace and know the power of your grace. We need your grace. I pray that you would give us such a strong desire for your grace that we would be honest with you in our sin and you would draw us deeper and deeper towards yourself, and that you would expose more and more of our need for your grace. And we trust that you'll provide it in abundance, in Jesus name, amen. This is how you pray. You ask God for his glory and his gifts and you ask God for his grace. And then the final petition, the Lord's prayer, is you ask God for his guidance, lead us not into temptation. And almost seems to imply that God wants to tempt us, that God wants to entice us. But that's not at all what scripture is teaching. We know James one just debunks that whole idea. So what is this saying? I think it comes on the heels of a need for grace for a reason, and I think the picture we're seeing here in prayer is that we come before God as a people who are all prone to sin. We are all prone to wander toward temptation. Every single one of us, including myself. You need to know that your pastor in his flesh, is prone to wander, is prone to leave the God he loves. We all are, every single one of us in this room, without exception, and so we pray because we need him to redirect us. We need him to lead us, not into temptation, to lead us in a way that honors and that glorifies him. Lead us in the path of holiness and righteousness. We need him to do that because we can't do it our own. He gives protection amidst temptation. He gives protection from temptation. Christ does, and apart from him we are powerless against temptation. We need to realize that we have this tendency that goes back to our self-sustaining Christianity, that this is the whole point of Christianity. We have this idea that when we hear people falling into this sin or that sin, we think I would never do that. And the Bible tells us take heed lest you fall. You can't overcome temptation on your own. Not one of us in this room can. I can't, you can't. Only Christ has the power to overcome the snares and the schemes of the adversary. Only him, only when we are in him that we can overcome temptation. We need him to guide us, to protect us amidst temptation. There are people all across this room who are dabbling and flirting with this temptation or that temptation, this sin or that sin, thinking well, it would never go beyond that, it would never get worse than that. And the greatest need for us is to go home today, this afternoon, go into the room, close the door and pray lead me not into temptation. For some of us, that is the most urgent need, because the adversary is somewhere along the way, convinced us that we can overcome temptation on our own. We can't. We need his guidance. And the picture here is not just in temptation to sin, but in the temptation that comes in the middle of trial. And Jesus says pray, lead us not into temptation in a way that we would turn away from God in the middle of trial. And so he gives protection amidst temptation, he gives perseverance amidst in the middle of trial, he gives the sustenance that you need to continue to seek him and to trust him in the middle of our trials. The golden thread. We've seen it throughout the Lord's Prayer, but it knits it all together. That golden thread is a prayer, not not my will, but yours be done. We see it in Matthew, chapter six, and it's over different places in the New Testament. But let's be honest, in the middle of trial, let's just be honest, there's times where it's easier to pray not my will but yours be done than it is other times in our life. And I'm guessing there's a whole host of people who are sitting in front of me this morning who are thinking not my will, but yours be done, dave, I'm, I'm just not there. I'm having a real hard time praying that in my life that whatever God wants to do in the middle of this trial, I I want him to do. And if, if that's you, I want to encourage you. This morning I've just got a feeling that God understands that, that Christ understands that you look at Jesus' prayer life and comes to the Garden of Gethsemane and he doesn't pray just casually not my will, but yours be done. Whatever you want, I'll do it. It's that easy. He agonizes in prayer and there's times in our walks with God in prayer that we need to camp out here a little longer than other times, pray for a long time. God I'm just not there and know that he understands that, and the beauty of this picture in prayer is that he leads us to get there, even though we started make your wants God's wants. Well, how do I do that? You ask God to lead you and to guide you to want what he wants. You ask him to take you there. You don't have to get there on your own. Now you're ready. He guides you and leads you to that point. So if life has taken a turn for the worse, and your family and your health and your job, or when that does happen, ask God to lead and to God, ask him, and he'll bring you to the point where you can say it Not my will, but yours, be done. This is what happens in prayer. This is part of that intimacy, and we all know. We all know that it's not in times of triumph, but in times of trial when the beauty and the intimacy of God in prayer is so much more real than any other time in our lives. And he's designed it that way so that he would guide you. In the middle there is there's a phrase that Puritan believers use back in the 16th and 17th century, called the valley of vision and we talk about how it was in the middle of the valleys where God gave clearest vision of who he is and how he leads and how he guides. The Puritans are known in the history of Christianity as leaving some of the greatest legacy, example of prayer and devotion, and I'm convinced it's because Puritans were really born in the picture of the church in England during that timeframe, when they were, they were trying to bring the church back to what the word taught and the purity of the word in the church, and they were facing persecution. Their homes were being burned and Archbishop was taking their leaders aside and torturing them, literally cutting off their ears. They were being threatened. Many of them fled and ended up founding the Massachusetts Bay Colony, founded by Puritans who were living in the middle of persecution. They left this legacy of prayer and devotion, I'm convinced, because they knew what it meant for God to lead and guide in the middle of the valley. And so, as we think about praying, asking God for his guidance, I want to let them lead our prayer time, and what you're going to see on the screen is prayers, puritan prayers that they prayed. That I hope will encourage us as we pray and ask God for his guidance, and then, in between those prayers, we'll have an opportunity to sing prayers to God asking him to be our guide. And if Solomon, I'm guessing, is familiar to many of us, let's ask God for his guidance. Lead us not into temptation. Dear God, we want your guidance because we know that ours is so limited in scope. We don't know what the next year holds, the next five years or 10 years. We don't know what the next week holds, but we trust that you do and that you guide us according to what is best for your children and, ultimately, for your glory, and so I pray that you would lead us. Lead us in the middle of the temptations that surround us, in the trials that we go through. Lead us to trust in you, and pray that you would show yourself strong by guiding our steps according to your glory, in Jesus' name, amen. This, then, is how you pray Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom, come, ask for his glory. Ladies and gentlemen, think of as many ways as you can possibly think of to phrase that. Just ask for him to make his name known over and, over and over again. Let that be the perspective that now counts, as you, asking for his gifts, with complete and total dependence on him, for his grace and complete need before him and ultimately, for his guidance. That all brings us back around to making his greatness known. This is how you pray. So my challenge for you, for us all, as we've seen this in scripture this morning, my challenge for us is to be rid and done with desireless praying, with affectionless praying. Let's be rid and done, even when we sit down at the table. Let's be rid and done with the rote praying and misses the heart of prayer desire for him. And let's let desire for what he desires be the secret to discovering his power in prayer. And let's see what he does. We hope you've enjoyed this week's episode of Radical with David Platt.