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The connecting purpose of prayer.
HERE'S HOW: Today, pray in a new way. Don’t feel the need to try to make it “work”, but rather allow the prayer to work on you and your connection to God. - Slow down. - Slowly pray the Lord’s Prayer. - Meditate on each phrase and allow it’s meaning the well up within you. - Make this a practice in your daily life.
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SPEAKER_01
People inside the church and outside very often wonder: does prayer work? And the very important quick answer to that question is no, it doesn't. It does something that is actually much, much more important. It connects. And that has to do with the nature of God, and that's what we're learning about from what's called the Lord's Prayer, greatest teaching who ever taught, greatest teaching ever offered, the Sermon on the Mount that tells us that what is unconquerable, insurmountable, eternal is not the problems that we face or the circumstances that are so hard that make faith so difficult. I know, I know, I know. Um, it is God and his kingdom, and it's available to us. And in particular, it's available to us, it's accessed in a special way by this mysterious activity that is universal amidst human beings called prayer. Now, when Jesus is teaching about this, he contrasts uh his approach to prayer with two different uh two different kinds of approaches. First, he says in uh Matthew chapter 6, verse 5, when you pray, don't be like the hypocrites. Their prayers are mostly self-centered. They're just trying to get people to notice, look how good I am. Pharisee and the tax collector, if you remember that story, he prays, God, I thank you that I'm not like that guy. Look at how much better my life and my devotion is. So Jesus contrasts, don't do it that way. But then he goes on to say in uh verse 7, and when you pray, do not keep on babbling like the pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. So he contrasts prayer in the wrong way with the hypocrites, but then also with uh pagans. Now, the idea here is the pagans had an approach to prayer uh quite similar to a lot of folks in our day, where the idea is that there is some impersonal force out there that I want to leverage to get what I want. One of the great questions about the nature of spirit, I hope we will dive deeply into this sometime, is is spirit, this transcendent power, personal or impersonal? And Jesus taught that it's personal. If it's impersonal, then it's kind of like electricity, um, where I electricity doesn't have a mind, it doesn't have a will, I just use it to light my house or make my car go if I have one of those kind of cars, or I use fire to cook my food or to heat me. And there's a lot of approaches to spirituality, New Age or so on, where if you think of the spirit in that way, you just find techniques to manipulate it to get what you want. You're not accountable to it. It doesn't demand justice, it doesn't require love. And that was the kind of spirituality that characterized the pagans in Jesus' day. So you would be superstitious. If you say the right magic words, you will get what you want. And Jesus says, no, no, no, it's not like that. Prayer doesn't work like electricity does or like fire does. Thank God, thank God, thank God, because we couldn't be trusted with that kind of power. Prayer connects us with God. And therefore, we are invited through prayer into this relationship with this unseen God, he is unseen reality. And uh, we have been walking through how to do that. We looked last time at uh don't lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil or deliver us from the evil. When I was talking to Nancy and asking how I should end this stuff on the Lord's prayer, because that's the end of the Lord's prayer. And she said, No, it's not. And I said, Yes, it is, and she said, No, it ends, for yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. And I said, No, it doesn't. And she said, Yes, it does. And I said, No, it doesn't. She said, Nobody ever told me that. So that's how we discuss stuff. Um, you'll be familiar with that ending. Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory. It comes from the old King James translation. And the King James was based on uh the best manuscript in its day, called the Textus Receptus, but that was hundreds of years ago, thanks to archaeology. We have lots more manuscripts now. Uh, by the way, because of its unique importance, the scriptures have more ancient manuscripts that we can base translations on than any other document from the ancient world, exponentially. So the changes uh after other manuscripts, after the Textus Receptus were discovered were quite small. Um, but one of them is this the earliest manuscripts don't have for yours the kingdom, the power and the glory forever. Uh, Jesus apparently ended at least that prayer in Matthew, deliver us from the evil. When he was uh quite aware of the power of sudden endings to linger in the memory. Sort of the mouse, as we will see, has one of those. Gather builds a house on the rock, great was its fall, though, everybody go home. But Dale Brunner writes in a wonderful commentary how the church recognized real early on there is a need that we have to want to end with a sense of praise and declosure. And so uh that great language, yours is the kingdom, yours is the power, yours is the glory, actually comes from the Bible, from Chronicles where David is rejoicing greatly and makes statements uh along those lines to God. Part of what I want to say about this is if you find yourself in a season where things are real dark and you just want to end this prayer with those words, God deliver me from evil and from the evil one, because I feel like I'm there, and you want to just be reminded God is precedent suffering, be God in the darkness. You just end right there. But now, if you want to end with this uh affirmation of the goodness of all of reality and what God is doing, uh you know, cynicism and meaninglessness and despair are contrary to conventional wisdom in our day, not more sophisticated or more intelligent than hope and meaning. So I want to close our look at the Lord's Prayer by looking at how to use it, how to pray it. And this comes from Dallas Willard in the Divine Conspiracy, page 268. And he talks about how uh for reasons he cannot explain, at a certain time in his life he began to use the Lord's Prayer in a new way, taking each phrase of it and slowly and meditatively entering into the depths of its meaning, elaborating within it important details of my current life. So when I get to forgive us our debts, then I might spend a little time with my debts, or give us this day our daily bread. What do I need for this day? And Dallas began to pray in a deeper, more reflective way. Sometimes he would just jump into the middle of it if that's where he needed prayer and dive in right there. He says that he would find it often helpful to pray this prayer driving through the freeways of Los Angeles, where the billboards there just look like a uh unending pile of words and images that may not be real helpful to locate you in reality. So that's the takeaway for today, by the way. Pray the Lord's Prayer today when you're in the car, when you're driving, instead of just automatically turning on music or uh news or whatever you today. The invitation is uh when I get in the car, pray the Lord's Prayer. And if you're not driving anywhere, you're probably walking someplace. So when you're walking, pray the Lord's Prayer. Dallas did a little paraphrase of the Lord's Prayer when my dad passed away at his memorial service. That's the version of the Lord's Prayer that he wanted to have read. So I'll often think about that. And what I want to do today is just pray through Dallas's paraphrase of the Lord's Prayer, and now you pray this along as I say these words. Dear Father, always near us. May your name be treasured and loved, may your rule be completed in us. May your will be done here on earth in just the way it is done in heaven. Give us today the things we need today, and forgive us our sins and impositions on you. As we are forgiving all who in any way offend us. Please don't put us through trials, but deliver us from everything bad. Because you are the one in charge, because you have all the power, and the glory to you is all yours forever, which is just the way we want it. Is a kind of a prayer, it's just the way we want it. Dallas writes that is not a paraphrase, not a bad paraphrase for Amen. What is needed at the end of this great prayer is a ringing affirmation of the goodness of God and God's world. If your nerves can take it, you might occasionally try woo-bye! I imagine God himself will knock on. Make it a golden rule day.
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You've been listening to Become New with John Orpert, where you can receive 10 minutes of daily teaching about the person you're becoming. If you like what you're hearing, you can head on over to our website become new.com, where John has over 710-minute teachings on the person you're becoming, cataloged in 20 different series covering a range of topics you might be interested in. If you'd like to receive the emails that go along with each episode that include extra resources and discussion questions, you can let us know at become new.com slash subscribe. Lastly, if you have a prayer request, there's a team of us who meet each weekday to pray for listeners just like yourself. You can send your specific request to us at the number 855 888 0444. I'm glad you're here, and we'll catch you next time.
