PRAY | Matthew 6:5-13 | Pastor Ryan Gerlach | 7.19.26

breathing for the soul

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello, this is Pastor Ryan Gerlock and Pastor John Anderson. Welcome to the Resurrection Church Podcast. Each week we bring you Sunday's message from Resurrection Church right here in Raceteen, Wisconsin. So whether you're listening on a walk, driving to work, or just folding some laundry, or avoiding folding laundry, we hope this encourages your faith, challenges your perspective, and reminds you that resurrection isn't just something that happened. It's something God is still doing. Enjoy this week's message.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

A reading from the Gospel of Matthew. And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they stand to love and pray in the synagogues and the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your father in secret. And your father who sees in secret will reward you. When you are praying, do not heap up empty pro phrases as the Gentiles do. For they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them. For your father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then in this way. Our Father in heaven, may your name be revered as holy. May your kingdom come, may your your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one. The gospel of our Lord. Praise to you, O Christ.

SPEAKER_02 1:40

Thank you, Brett. Did anyone else almost say the Lord's Prayer when Brett was reading? Right? I almost did. Yeah, me too. I was like, our father. Oh, because we're it's in gr it's like in our soul. Like we hear it and we have to jump on in and say it as well. Um, it's holy. It there's something deep and and holy and sacred uh about the the Lord's Prayer. Uh there's a reason we still say it. Um by the way, another question, totally random question though. Like people in that side, do you ever lock eyes with Fred while he's he's on the guitar? You ever just accidentally just lock eyes with him? Because like I it's weird. I'm playing and then I see each and of your beautiful faces, wonderful faces. But I wonder if that happens. Um I'm gonna stay, I'm gonna notice y'all from here on out and see what happens between. Um anyway, good morning, everybody. My name is Ryan. I'm excited to worship God with y'all today. Um, but today we are lifting up this holy topic called prayer. We're looking at prayer today. Uh hopefully it's something you've heard about, and even more hopefully, it's something that you have done more than once in your life. Maybe it's a practice, maybe it's a daily thing, maybe it's a weekly thing for you. Whatever it is, we're going to explore it and what Christ is calling us into today. Uh, before we jump in to anything even deeper, I feel it appropriate that we pray. Let's pray. Come, Lord Jesus, you are so good. You taught us this prayer, and there's so much richness in, and it's it's simple, yet it's exactly what we need daily. Uh, feed our souls, transform lives today, God, and may your message uh speak through me today in holy ways. We pray this in your holy name, as all God's people say. Amen. Amen. We have been doing a sermon series called Back to Basics, and we've been looking at what it looks like to be Christians. What is what is the foundation? What is it, what are the fundamentals? What does it mean? And oddly enough, to follow Jesus, you first have to follow Jesus. And we talked about that. We talked about what it means to love God and love your neighbor, to practice forgiveness, not only to forgive, but to receive forgiveness. We talked about what it looks like to live generously and to serve others. And today we talk about prayer. I remember when I was a pastor down in Orlando, I might had a bouncing baby boy, Ben. He's grown up to uh he still bounces a little bit, a little bit older now. But he would just ask me questions nonstop. Anyone with a kid that just doesn't stop asking questions, it's good. It means that either A, you're not a good communicator and they constantly have to ask, or they have a big brain that keeps growing, right? But he asked me once when I was before a sermon, he says, Why do you always bow your head before you go up there? You you pray again when you go up there. And I said, Well, I bow my head, just ask God, make this a good sermon. Most you know, the more likely make it make it good and and to be present. And and Ben goes, he thought about it. He said something along the lines of, well, someday he'll answer your prayer, Dad. And I'm okay, okay. Thanks, son. Love you too, buddy. And maybe next week will be the week. I'm still waiting. So I'm gonna ask you to do something for me. Take one deep breath and breathe out. They say that we get about 20,000 breaths every day, in and out. 20,000 of them. Some of us more. Uh if you're a jogger, um, or if if you forget to breathe sometimes like I do, like maybe that's that's uh you get less. But with a average about 20,000 breaths every day. How many of you uh set a reminder in your phone or mark it in your calendar? Don't forget to breathe. Anybody? It's something that's natural to us. It is something that we just do, hopefully. And you don't realize how much you need to breathe until you can't breathe. You're you're underwater or something's going on. You have uh a disease where you need some extra help to breathe, and you realize how important it is to have oxygen in your lungs? It's scary not to have oxygen in your lungs. But let me ask you this: what if prayer was supposed to be that natural to us? What if talking to God should be as natural as us breathing in and breathing out? What if talking to our creator, walking with our creator was something like it looked like in the garden with Adam and Eve, right after God breathed life into Adam? There was still this holy rhythm of this in and out conversation. What are you doing? Well, I was gonna pick from that tree today, but now I'm gonna go pick from that tree. Great job, Adam. This conversation daily, in and out, highs and lows, everything in between. But however, if you were to look at my prayer life often, especially when life gets busy, my prayer life is like three numbers, 911. Some of us treat our prayer life like we're it's an emergency only. We'll save up those prayers for when we need it the most. I don't want to waste God's time with anything else. But God is calling us into something more than just an emergency button, a fall and I can't get up button, right? We need a always on like a 24-7 prayer life. Not just the airbag, but the steering wheel. Like, think about it. Uh, it's it's the same sense of uh I'm only gonna brush my teeth when I get a cavity, or uh I'm only gonna hold the steering wheel and drive when I'm about ready to hit a tree. It just doesn't make sense. God calls us into something that is so much bigger than an emergency um relationship. Yes, of course, call God in an emergency, but we're called to so much more. Jesus teaches us to treat prayer like oxygen, like we need it. When we're aware of it and when we're not, we just need prayer. And I like to call that spiritual breathing. Jesus teaches us how to breathe spiritually. He's he's working with he comes into the community where there's these Jewish leaders and they pray beautifully. They have these beautiful prayers, they they make themselves look like they've been fasting. They probably put some nice dust under their cheekbones, looks like they have a nice jawline because they've been fasting. Look at my ribs, I've been fasting, and look at me pray. And it's he's saying, You are doing a public display. God knows your heart. What are you doing? So he says, Go in your room, lock yourself in a room and pray to God, because then you know you're not performing for anyone. When God asks you how you're doing, you're like, Oh, great, the weather's been great, a little bit of smoke in the air, but we'll get over it. We're Wisconsin tough, right? But no, you bear your soul. You say, I'm having it, I'm I'm really having a bad day, God. This you you name it, any lament or any joy. God wants to hear it all. Tell him what you had for lunch. God enjoys just being connected with you. And he teaches us this very important thing. Who do you go before? Not our judge, our mighty conqueror. He starts with our Father, our Father in heaven. Oh, holy is your name. Give me next week everything I need. Give me my 401k to be bountiful, help me retire comfortably. No, it's give me today what I need for today and trust you with everything else. Give me my daily dependence, not an emergency response. Give me what I need today. There was a scripture verse that I always had trouble with because I knew it was impossible. There's no one on planet earth that could ever make this possible. It's when Paul was talking to a church in Thessalonia and he says, pray without ceasing. That's not possible. What are you talking about? And what he was trying to say is it should be part of your daily rhythm. Do you feel yourself breathing? That's how your heart should be connected with God. Everything you do should be a holy breath of prayer. Never stop breathing spiritually. I know it typically doesn't seem like it, but I went to school and I went to pastor school, and I uh they call that seminary. And I've said it before, but it's like the hogwarts for pastors, right? But it's wonderful. You learn big words and then you can say them and then you sound smart. One word I learned was this one. It's like my favorite word. It's called tetragrammaton. Everyone say tetragrammaton.

unknown 10:20

Tetragrammaton.

SPEAKER_02 10:21

Amazing. And uh, if you're into Transformers, that's actually the Megatron's brother's name, uh, but I love Stacy because she'll just be like, that's a terrible joke, but I'm gonna laugh anyway. Thank you, Stacy. You get 50 Jesus points for that one. Thank you. Uh, but uh tetragrammaton is just a big word for the the name of God, how we translate the name of God from Hebrew to English, and and then how we translated it. And and sometimes it depending if you have like a German translation or whatever, you you'll hear this as Jehovah or Yahweh, and it's uh yo dehe a vavanahe, which if if you really pronounce it right, it's just sounds like a bunch of vowels put together. Uh yah, way, yah, like that, like you're breathing. It's it's really cool. If I heard a rabbi really flesh it out, and it sounds whether you're breathing loud or quiet, it sounds like the name of God, Yah. Yahweh. It's really holy. And then and when when Moses asked the burning bush, what should I call you? What should I tell them your name is? The call, have them call me, I am, I am Yahweh. This morning I lifted up Psalm 150. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. And Jesus took it a step further when they told him to shut his, when they said, Shut your disciples up, they're being too loud, they're gonna cause chaos, the Romans are gonna come after us. He says, even if you shut all these people up, the stones will sing out praises. This even the stones will sing hallelujah, Hosanna in the highest. Maybe every breath we take should be a praise to God, Yahweh. When we don't have the words, let our breath be the prayer. The Spirit intercede for us with sighs too deep that words cannot even express. I'm gonna give you a big number. You ready for big numbers? I gave you 20,000 earlier for how many times we breathe a day. But in our lifetime, 600 million breaths is the average person when they turn about 80. Give or take, uh, one or two here and there. 600 million breaths in about 80 years of life. If you're older than that, you'll probably have more, younger, it's something like that. We'll we'll we'll take a shot in the dark. But 60 or 600 million times you're saying the name of God in a breath, and we take everyone for granted most of the time. I have someone at the eight o'clock, every time I ask him, no matter what, he'll he'll say, I'll be like, hey, how you doing? He's like, Oh, good. It was a great day. I woke up today and I had breath in my lungs. What a great day. And I'm like, oh wow, okay. So no matter what, I'm I'm having a headache, I gotta, you know, it's complaining about this or that. I still know that I have breath in my lungs. God is good. When I get disconnected from God, when I get out of this rhythm of breathing God's um, this holy rhythm of this spiritual breathing, I can tell immediately it becomes, you know, you notice that person that gets hangry and you're like, get that guy a cheeseburger, right? Like I'm I'm that guy when it comes to food, right? He's getting hangry. But I'm also that guy when I get spiritually hangry. If you disconnect me from my God, if I'm too busy, I I get disconnected. I don't dive into deep prayer. And and my wife can sense it, my son can sense it. I'm sure a lot of you can sense it. And I know for a fact I have to get back into it. But when you're in that hangry spiritual moment, the last thing you want to do is dive into prayer. Last thing you want to do is turn on that Christian radio station and listen to some good worship music or turn on that worship play mix you made. When Martin Luther was put in that spot, I I love this quote attributed to him. He said, Listen, I usually pray about three hours a day, but today I'm just too busy. So I'm gonna pray five. Meaning, when you're too busy for God, when you put prayer on the last part of your daily task and your to-do list, you know you gotta flip that around and make it number one. What would it look like if we started each day instead of scrolling through our phones, our news, or or even putting on a cup of coffee? Well, what if we let uh prayer be the caffeine for our soul? What if we started the day with that posture? Oh God, thank you. I have oxygen in my lungs. The first thing we ever did was breathe in. The last thing we will ever do is breathe out, dear church. What matters is in between that A and that B and what God is calling us to do here. And how holy is it that perhaps the first words we actually say isn't daddy or mama or more, or I think my first words were no. I mean that star stopped. I don't know when that stopped, probably never. But but what if our first words were Yahweh, our last words are Yahweh, and everything in between was just a holy echo of that? Dear Church, may every breath in between every part of point A and point B, everything in our lives, say that God is good all the time and that all the time God is good. Amen. Amen. Let's pray. Dear Church, you call us into this holy posture of prayer, not weekly, not monthly, not even daily, but every breath we take, may it be a declaration of your goodness and your grace. Help us be humbled by that. Help us be transformed by that. Help us be a people that are moved to love deeply as you have called us to love. Help us be a reflection of your heart for this world that you do love so much. And that may every breath we take be a prayer, and every exhale be a prayer of thanksgiving and hallelujah. This day and always, we pray this in your holy name, as all God's people say, Amen.