Unlocking the Power of Prayer: A Deep Dive into Matthew 6:9-13

Unlocking the Power of Prayer: A Deep Dive into Matthew 6:9-13

In this episode of 'Defeat is Optional,' we delve into the power of prayer and how the Lord instructs us to pray. Ronnie breaks down Matthew 6:9-13, commonly known as the Lord's Prayer, offering a line-by-line explanation of its significance and how it serves as a blueprint for effective prayer. He also shares practical tips on praying efficiently and discusses the importance of recognizing God's holiness, seeking His will, repenting, and finding strength to overcome temptation. Tune in for an insightful discussion that promises to deepen your relationship with Christ and transform your prayer life.

00:00 Introduction to Defeat is Optional
00:37 Welcome to the Live Stream
00:56 Bible Study: Matthew 6:9-13
01:52 Breaking Down the Lord's Prayer
05:50 Understanding God's Will
09:54 The Importance of Forgiveness
12:12 Overcoming Temptation
18:01 Concluding Prayer and Reflections
20:56 Final Thoughts and Farewell

🎙️Defeat is Optional Podcast Fan Page

💊Train Harder, Recover Faster 10% OFF

🛍️Defeat is Optional Merch

📩Join Ronnie’s Inner Circle

Transcript

Ronnie Baker 0:00

Welcome to defeat is optional. The podcast where I'll give you the best mental tips to unlock your mind so you can improve your performance on race day. If you've ever felt stuck, doubted your abilities or struggled to bring your best on race day, you're in the right place. This isn't just about training harder. It's about thinking smarter. Here we'll break down the mental barriers that hold you back and build the mindset that propels you to victory because in your journey to greatness, Defeat is never the final answer. It's a choice. So let's get to work. Remember defeat is optional is not just a podcast. It's a way of life. Welcome to another edition of the defeat is optional live stream. Hey, wow. We are live baby. We live baby. what's up guys. Welcome in to the defeat is optional live stream. Jet six was good. What up y'all? We're going to do a Bible study on Matthew six, nine through 13. If you're joining in, I'm pretty excited. I. I have been really like studying this pretty, pretty hard, especially because it's a new year, man. And a lot of people are on fasting and praying and getting their relationship right with Christ. And so we're going to talk about, we're going to talk a little bit about that. We're going to talk about how Christ tells us to pray. I'm going to really break that down, break the scripture down line by line. And then you get, give you guys some practical stuff that you can do to. Pray more efficiently. Okay, because I feel like a lot of people they don't really understand that prayer is a conversation with Christ and it doesn't have to be super robotic But Christ gives us specific instructions on exactly how to do that how to pray. So we're just gonna go through that and break some of that down and then we will get going. So, without further ado guys, we're gonna jump into Matthew 6, 9 through 13, which is the Lord's Prayer. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna read that for you guys and then we're gonna get rolling here. This is what it says. It says this then is how you should pray. This is Jesus speaking to His disciples. It says our father In Heaven Hollow would be your name. Verse 10 says, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not in temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is a kingdom, the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen. Okay, so if any of you guys have grown up in the church, if you. If you've known who Jesus was, maybe your parents taught you how to pray. You've probably said this prayer a bunch of times. I know that when I was growing up, I said this prayer a lot. And it was something that I would recite when I'd go to bed, when I wake up in the morning, even sometimes when I would eat right. And what most people grew up doing this. And what it is this is not actually a script on saying, this is how you should pray. But it is a blueprint for how you should pray. It's a blueprint for how God wants us to pray and how we should pray. I talked about that before we even started. Like your prayer shouldn't be robotic, but prayer is simply a conversation with the Lord. And the good thing about God is that he will always meet you exactly where you are. However, wherever you are in your walk with Christ, he'll meet you there. But as you mature in your faith and you read more of Christ's example, and you read more of the Bible you can get a depiction of how your prayer should be augmented and you can change your prayers accordingly. Okay. So this first line says, our father in heaven, hallowed be your name. So whenever I'm studying, scripture, the first question we have to ask ourselves is what does the word hallowed mean? Because a lot of times we read something in the Bible We don't know exactly what it means. So we just skip to the next line But if we really want to study the scriptures, we have to ask ourselves questions How what does hollywood mean? So hollywood means to be made holy or to honor as holy And what Christ is saying is that at the beginning of your prayers We shouldn't open up our prayers with asking for things we should come humbly in reverence to God because He is holy. So this first part of this scripture of Christ teaching His disciples how to pray is really how we should acknowledge God. We should acknowledge His holiness. So whenever we're asking these questions of the text and we, when you really want to go study the word of God, what you do is you read the text and you ask questions. And whenever we ask questions, what we want to do is we want to find scripture to answer that question. We talked about what Hollywood means, right? Holiness set apart in Exodus 15 11. It says who is like you Oh Lord among the gods who is like you majestic and holiness awesome and glorious deeds doing wonders and then in Revelations 15 for it says who will not fear Oh Lord and glorify your name for you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship you for your righteous acts have been revealed. it's pointing to the fact that God is holy. It's pointing to that simple fact. So it's giving you clues and giving you basically evidence to point to God being holy. So when we first start to pray, this is our first step is to acknowledge God's holiness. Okay, to acknowledge God's holiness. And the next few verses, we're going to go into the next few verses. It says, your kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. So if I were reading this part of this scripture, the question that I would ask to really help me understand and search for what God is trying to teach us would be what is God's will, it says in this part of the Lord's prayer that his will be done. So what is God's will? A lot of people say, not my will, but your will, God. But a lot of people don't know what God's will is. A lot of people don't know what God's will is for their life. They think that God's will is for them to make a lot of money. They think that God's will for them is to win a gold medal. They think God's will for them is to run faster. They think God's will for them is to have a prosperous business. But what does it actually say? What does the text actually say? And so the best place to find the answers to the questions that you're asking about scripture is in scripture. You have to let scripture validate scripture, and we have to be careful not to try and answer these questions on our own, because when we do that, we start to mix our own human experience into what we believe God's will is for us, when in reality, it's plainly written in the Bible. So you don't want to answer these questions with your own beliefs, your own answers. You want to look in the text and see what does God say his will is for us? Okay, so here are a few scriptures that highlight God's will for our lives. Matthew 22, 37 through, or 27 through 29 says, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. So what does that tell us? It says that we should love our neighbor as ourself. It says the first commandment and our will, that God's will for us is to love him with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, with all our strength. Romans 12 2 says, do not be conformed to the patterns of the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. First Thessalonians 5 18 says, give thanks in all circumstances for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. After we have gone through the first part of prayer, which is acknowledging how holy and sovereign and mighty God is, then we want to proceed to pray His will over our lives, pray that His will be done in our lives. you can start like this, you can say, Lord, I pray that your will be done in my life. Your word says that we should first and foremost love you with all our heart, with all our soul, and strength. So Lord, show me what it looks like. Direct my heart in the direction of you. That would be a good start. You're praying through the word so you can ask God to help you to flee from the patterns of the world. You can ask him to help you to be transformed by the renewing of your mind through the word of God. So now you guys can see we're not only praying, we're not only having a conversation with God, but we're actually praying the words that he's given us back to him. And this actually happens many times in the scriptures and Psalms David speaks the words of God in prayer. Okay, so We've acknowledged how holy God is. We've prayed his will over our life. This is the structure of a prayer. And so now we're going back to what the Lord says, what Christ is saying. He says the next line in the Lord's prayer, it reads, Give us today our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. So our daily bread is Our daily bread is the word of God. And Christ says in Matthew 4, 4, again, looking at scripture, what does the scripture say about the scripture? Matthew 4 says, but he answered, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. this was Christ quoting what Moses said back in Deuteronomy 8. This is when the Israelites were in the wilderness for 40 years. Moses was talking to them about how God provided manna from heaven. And he said those exact words in God. And Christ here is quoting those exact words. And this is just one example of how the Bible references, references itself. as we pray, we should pray that we would feast and fill our hearts and minds with God's word, which is the Bible, and that we should repent and ask for forgiveness and forgive others who have wronged us. And when we talk about forgiveness, guys, I don't want you to forgive someone because it's the right thing to do. And I think that a lot of times we. So funny. People will forgive other people and say, this forgiveness is for me. I'm forgiving you so that I can move on. And at the end of the day, forgiveness, that's not how forgiveness works. We don't forgive people because it's going to benefit us. We don't forgive people because it's the right thing to do. You should forgive someone because God has already forgiven us of our sins. We forgive out of the love that we have for Christ, out of the grace that he's shown us. We show grace to others and we forgive that way. We forgive because God's already paid our debt in full and forgiven us. That's why we forgive. So what I want to just make a point here is that if your prayers are pointing to you, To yourself, and your own troubles, and your own circumstances, and it's about you, then you need to try to refocus your prayer and have it being more centered on God. Because again, even repentance it's different from forgiveness, but even repentance, while it is a point of humility for you, and it's recognizing your sins, and requires action on your part, it's not just saying sorry, but it's actually turning from your sin. Meaning, You don't go and do the very thing you just ask for forgiveness for. repentance is not even about you. Repentance is about recognizing the magnitude of God's grace to actually forgive you of your sin. To wash away your debt so that you can be counted as righteous and clothed in righteousness so that you can enter the kingdom of heaven, So your prayer, it should never be about you. That's why you never start your prayer with asking for things on your own accord. You always start with prayer in reverencing God's holiness. You ask that his will be done in your life. understand that as you're praying, It's always to point back to Christ. And when you do that, it fills you up. Okay. So speaking of repentance. This leads us directly into the last lines of the Lord's Prayer, which says, and lead us, not in temptation, into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. in this right, we wanna start to pray that we don't succumb or get caught up in the temptations that are presented to us on a daily basis. Temptation is going to present itself to us every single day on a daily basis because the enemy does not rest. The enemy wants to take you out. The enemy wants to distract you from your purpose, which is spreading the gospel. Everyone's mission and purpose. If it's not focused around Matthew 28, 19, then you might want to reevaluate your purpose. Now, I understand that everyone, a lot of people are trying to figure out what they're good at and what they do on this earth, and a lot of people will tell you that your purpose is those are those things, right? People will try to tell me that my purpose is running track. My purpose is not athleticism and running track. Athleticism and running track is a gift that God's given me to accomplish my mission, which is Matthew 28, which is spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is why I'm here talking to you guys right now. Okay, so temptation is going to come to you on a daily basis, right? the Lord's prayer is saying to keep us away from temptation, one if we're asking questions of this text, what is the temptation and who is the evil one in this scenario? James 14 says, let no one say when he is tempted, I am being tempted by God for God cannot be tempted with evil. And he himself tempts. No one verse 14 says, but each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desires. Another scripture, first Corinthians in first Corinthians, it says, no temptation has overtaken you. That is not common to man. God is faithful and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability. But with the temptation, he will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it. So two things that I noticed here. One is that God does not tempt us. The enemy and our own desires are what tempt us is clearly what the scripture says. So now the question is, How do we get rid of the evil desires inside of us that are enticing us and tempting us to sin? Because that's exactly what the scripture says. And inherently from birth, guys, we're all evil and we're, we all have sinful desires. Meaning until we reach heaven, we can never fully eradicate the evil desires that are within us. But with God's help, we can develop the discipline to find a way of escape from all temptation. While the enemy may tempt you, in 1 Corinthians it says that God will not let you be tempted beyond your ability. And, I think right there you should rejoice. You should understand this concept that because you will be tempted by the enemy, but because the Lord says that he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability to resist, what that means is even though the enemy is trying to trip you up, God has control over the enemy. I always think about this from the quote from Friday, it says, I got my control over Devo. That's exactly how the Lord is with the enemy. The enemy has a string to what he can do. He has a limit to what he can do because God's in control of what he can do. So while this temptation may come, God is in control of how much temptation he could give you because he's not gonna let you be tempted past what you're capable of handling. He's never going to let the enemy go too far. And that's great news. Your God will always protect you in the midst of any struggle, any temptation, and any trial, right? Remember that he's holy and he's sovereign over everything. That means including your life, including the temptation, including the trials, and including your prayer life. He's sovereign over all of those things. this is Matthew 6, 9 through 13. It gives us a blueprint for how to pray, how we should pray, and how we should make prayer about God and not about ourselves. Okay? just to recap the start of this, talked about the Lord's Prayer, and we want to start with prayer being in reverence for God. We have to come before His throne with humility and acknowledge His holiness. We His holiness is really what sets him apart from every living thing, right? So acknowledging his holiness, acknowledging who God is first, then we want to pray that his will be done in our lives. And we want to pray through the scripture the entire time, making sure that we're truly expressing God's will, not our own will, but God's will. This is why whenever we ask what is God's will for our life, if you're in a discussion with a discussion of people and they, and someone asked what's God's will for our lives, you don't go to explain that with your own human experience. You go to the word of God to ask what is God's will. And so while you're praying, you can pray through those things. You can pray through scripture on what God's will actually is for your life and pray that those things be done in your life. So that's the second part. Then we want to repent and ask God for forgiveness and remembering that repenting isn't just a mere, sorry, it's a change in action. It's a change in heart. It's a full turn from your sin. Repentance is not just, Hey God, I'm sorry. I knew I screwed up, but then the next day we do the same thing, right? Or we dance with sin. When you repent, it is asking God for forgiveness and turning from your ways. Not continuing to do those things. So in prayer, you should ask God, you should ask God for forgiveness and then get, ask him to give you the strength to turn. God doesn't hate you, but God does hate sin. He does not hate you. He loves you, but he hates sin. repentance is important. then lastly, in our prayers, we need to ask God for strength to overcome and flee the temptation of our own flesh, fleshly desires. As I close this out, just want to pray for you guys. God was just been putting on my heart to talk about the Lord's Prayer because for so long I prayed. I prayed for myself, and I asked God for a lot of things. I never really knew who God was, so I never could really give thanks, right? And so when I finally understood how God instructed us to pray, it changed my prayer life forever. if you guys can bow your heads if you're in a place where you can do that'd be great. Bye. We're gonna pray for you guys, dear Heavenly Father, I want to thank you for your grace and your mercy you've displayed to us today. I want to thank you for being set apart, being above all things. The Word says you are glorious in deeds and that all nations will worship you. And we thank you that this task wasn't assigned to a man, that you alone are sovereign and worthy of all of our praise. And because you are holy and in control, we pray that your will be done on each and every person's lives listening to this right now. We pray that we can release the things we have been so tightly clinging to in our lives that are keeping us from pursuing your will. We ask that you would give us a heart that would seek after you, that would love you with all our souls, with all our minds, and our strength. we pray Lord that we would not be conformed to the ways of the world, that we would see the patterns of this world and choose to do the opposite. That as we read your word, Lord, you would guide us into all truth and what your will is for us. Your word says that if we love the world and the things of the world, then the love of the Father is not in us. So Lord, we pray against the things of the world being a part of our lives. Help us to live more like you and forgive us of our sins, Lord. Forgive us for sins we aren't even aware of. And for those sins we know we openly continue to commit. Let us humble ourselves and admit that, admit when we're wrong. And simply not be ashamed to ask you for your help to fix them. Give us the strength to overcome sin. In fact, Lord, your word says that you overcame sin and the grave, meaning we already have the victory over any sin we feel is holding us back from being all that you've called us to be. So Lord, help us to know that truth. Help us to live in that truth and help us to walk in that truth. And lastly, Lord, help us to find that way of escape from temptation in our lives. Whenever we see that door open that you created for us to flee, help us to take it. Deliver us from evil, but also help us to know your word says in Psalms 23 5 that you prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil and my cup overflows. This doesn't say you snatch us out of the presence of our enemies, it says you are there right in the midst of it. for those people out there going through a rough time, let them remember that you're right there making a table, a feast in the midst of darkness. All we need to do is keep our eyes on the light that is across the table from us, Lord. So we love you, Lord, and we ask all these things in your mighty name. Amen. guys, I just want to say thanks for Just for hanging out with me, talking about the word of God. This is something that I'm super passionate about. Christ has just always been a big part of my life. And I think that even more in the last couple of years I've gotten to know him a lot more and it's just changed my heart. And so I just hope that tonight was. Helpful, insightful, and I hope that it helps you guys pray at a more efficient level. I hope you study the word a little bit more, a little bit more efficiently, a little better. I love you guys, and I will catch you all next week. All right, so if you enjoy this tell a friend about it invite them And I will see you guys next week. You guys have a blessed night. Peace