MAY 16 2004

John W. Fowler

Scripture: Luke 11:1-4

This morning I would like to share with you from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 11, and this is Luke’s version of The Lord’s Prayer. It says:

It’s a little bit shorter version, but it is a prayer that you are probably very familiar with. If you are like me, you grew up with it. You have it memorized and many people have a great deal of respect and reverence for the Lord’s Prayer, and it is a good prayer for worship. At the end of our wedding almost twenty-five years ago, our choir (which we met in) sang the Lord’s Prayer and that was really a died-and-gone-to-Heaven experience, to hear the Lord’s Prayer sung. And you have heard it sung in other settings and know that it is beautiful. But more than saying the Lord’s Prayer and singing the Lord’s Prayer, especially we need to be reminded today that it was in response to their request: “Lord, teach us to pray as John taught his disciples.”

Years ago I was serving in a congregation in Rutherford County and one of my members had a daughter in another church who had been listening to some tapes on the Lord’s Prayer. She loved them and she shared them with her father and, as often times happened, he was blessed. He wanted his pastor to be blessed so he put them in a little brown paper bag and brought them to me and said, “Boy, these tapes are good. You need to listen to them, Preacher.”

And so, they were on my shelf and, well, I was too busy to listen to them, but I finally got one or two out and listened to them and gave them back, kind of embarrassed that I really hadn’t gotten through all of them. I said, ‘Yeah, they’re good.” I didn’t say how many of them I had listened to — I just said, “They’re good.” And then about a month later he came and said, “You know, since you said you liked those tapes, my daughter, she bought. . .” Here were these nice cassette things of the prayer tapes of this Baptist preacher on the Lord’s Prayer, and he had a copy and said, “She bought you a copy too; thought you’d like to have one.”

And so, when I was praying I thought, you know the Lord said, “I bought these tapes to you one time and you didn’t listen to them, so I nudged her to buy them for you so you would listen to them.”

So I began to listen to them and they were good. They were just what I needed at that time, and I still come back to the realization that the Lord’s Prayer is especially a pattern for prayer that we come to talk with our Lord. Think about it: What makes you too busy to pray? What keeps you from spending time with the Lord? Sometime we feel like, well what do I say? The Disciples asked Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray as John taught his disciples.

I want to share with you six areas of prayer based on the Lord’s prayer. I like acrostics so you can remember this and it will spell the word PRAYER.

The first area of prayer is PRAISE. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. When we come to the Lord, first of all we remember what Maxie Dunnam wrote in his Adventure of Living Prayer, that he wrote some thirty years ago when he came to the Upper Room, that, first of all, God is Good. And then also that communication with God is possible. When we’re praying, we are praying to a Lord who loves us and wants us to spend time talking with Him and listening to Him. When we praise Him, one of the things that helps me, when we ‘hallow Thy name’ we remember the I Am sayings of Jesus.

Jesus said, I am the Bread of Life. He who comes to me shall not hunger. He who believes in me shall never thirst.

We praise Him that He has given us life. We praise Him for all those things that He provides for us.

We also praise Him when Jesus said, I am the Way and the Truth and the Light. We praise Him that He sent Jesus into the world to show us the way to live, the way to salvation, the truth, and we praise Him for that.

We praise Him when Jesus said, I am the Good Shepherd and I lay down my life for the sheep. We especially spend time praising that He loves us and that is truly the key to abundant life when Jesus says, I have come that you may have life and have it abundantly.

We praise Him when Jesus says, I am the True Vine in John, Chapter 15, especially when we feel weary; we are lacking in strength, we come to Him and believe that if we abide in Him and He abides in us, we can do all things through Christ.

We praise Him, especially, when He says, I am the Resurrection and the Life and he who believes in Me, even though they die, yet shall they live, in John, Chapter 11. We praise Him for the great gift that we have no idea how long we will be here but we know that when we die, with faith in Christ, we will be going to Heaven. We praise Him for this eternal perspective. It is also good to sing hymns or to read hymns. A Luther pastor, after a Swedish thunderstorm over a hundred years ago wrote:

Read the hymns, but spend time praising Him. P is PRAISE.

And then, R is RULE. Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done, as it is in Heaven. When Jesus speaks of the Kingdom He speaks of His will being done — they are one and the same. If you want to understand the Kingdom, if you are praying for “Thy Kingdom come,” you are praying for God’s will to come to pass in your life and the life of others. The Kingdom, Jesus describes it as a treasure. A man finds a treasure in a field and he goes and sells everything that he has in order to buy that treasure. The Christian life is the greatest life possible. It is worth any sacrifice, any commitment that you need to make.

And, then also, it is so dependent on receiving this life that we are receptive to God’s Word and His will. In Matthew, Chapter 13, as well, it’s like a farmer going out to sow seed and some seed falls along the path, some on rocky ground, some among thorns. But that which falls into the good soil brings a good harvest.

Think of just how well you are receiving the message that God is Love. When we receive that well, life is good. It seems that we can stand about anything. But when the thorns of doubt and fear and anxiety come in, it chokes it out, sometimes, and we begin to doubt that. When we are praying for Thy Kingdom to come, we are praying for God’s rule in our life. Who is ruling your life? Are you allowing God truly to be in charge of your life? This is one of my favorite prayers for my family and for you: I am praying for God’s will to come to pass in your life. I pray for myself. It could be a dangerous prayer because God will take you up on it and He will change you.

We pray Proverbs, Chapter 3, Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not rely just on your own insight, but in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths.

How do you need to pray for God’s rule in your life and the life of your family at this time? We remember James, Chapter 5: The effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous person is a great power in it’s effect. Believe that God uses your prayers. We pray R, for His rule in our lives. We praise Him; we pray for His rule.

And then A is ASKING. We pray, Give us this day our daily bread. It seems like bread has fallen upon hard times with all the “carb” talk and now when places like Hardees and McDonalds start talking about it, I just don’t know. I just can’t quite do it yet, but I know I should. I like the cartoon: There is this grandmother, an older lady coming out with this big old chocolate cake for her grandchildren, and the caption is, “One of the things I love about my grandmother — she doesn’t care about carbs.”

But God providing daily bread was so basic in the Bible. The children of Israel were out in the wilderness. They had a better diet when they were slaves but they were still slaves. God was trying to teach them to trust Him by providing manna in the wilderness. Jesus did the same in miraculous fashion. One time He fed four-thousand people with a few fish and loaves. Another time He fed five-thousand. They liked that and said, “Lord, do it again.” When He started talking about discipleship, the crowds thinned out. They didn’t want to hear about that.

But when we are praying, Give us this day our daily bread — and indeed many people throughout the world are literally praying for their next meal, and where will their food come from? — but any need that we have can fill in here. I remember when our children were little and we were losing a lot of sleep. It was a revelation to me that you could actually pray, “Lord, help us to get some sleep.” Oftentimes I have used this part of prayer about finances, when you are worried about how you are going to pay for this bill or a financial need, you pray give us this day our daily bread.

Paul, who was in prison at the time, said, “I have learned to be content. I know what it is to have a lot and I know what it is not to have much at all, but I have learned the secret of contentment: I know that God will supply every need of yours according to His riches and glory in Christ Jesus. (tape change)…

. . . taking his own life. David, on the other hand, Nathan comes to him, tells him, “You’re the man.” He repents. And we have Psalm 51: Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.

What a difference it makes when we yield our hearts to the Lord and let Him examine them and cleanse them.

E is ESCAPE. When we pray, Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, Jesus tells us, first of all, that if you are tempted, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you are sinning. To be tempted is not a sin. It is the yielding to the temptation that is a sin. When He was in the wilderness, praying, seeking God’s will for how He would win this world, praying for forty days, the Tempter came to Him: “Turn these stones into bread.”

He said, “Well, jump off this temple if you are a miracle man and every one will believe in you.”

The Devil then finally pulled out all the stops and said, “Look at this — all this glory, power, wealth — all of it’s mine if you will worship me.”

When you worship the Lord God and Him only, what did Jesus do? He used God’s Word — Deuteronomy, because the enemy is a great liar and our Lord came back with His truth. The Apostle Paul knew that we were in a spiritual warfare, dealing with our sin nature, dealing with the enemy, and he said, Put on the full armor of God that you may withstand the wiles of the Devil and stand.

When he wrote to the Corinthians in the tenth chapter, he wrote, No temptation is overtaking you that is uncommon to man. God is faithful and just. He will not allow you to be tempted beyond your strength, for with the temptation He will provide a way of escape, so that you may be able to endure.

Sometimes temptations descend; you just need to get out of there and flee and escape, and God will show us the way to escape.

We praise Him; we pray for His rule; we pray of asking, the prayer of yielding our hearts to Him; we pray for escape for those sinful temptations and then R: we come back to REJOICING.

It’s a Doxology: Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.

We praise Him “For He is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords” that we sing about in the Messiah. As in Tim Lahaye’s last book, It’s a Glorious Affair, it talks about the glory and the majesty of the King of Kings, who will return in the second coming in great might and power.

We also pray that thine is the power. We don’t live this life under our own power, and to me, I just found that when you spend your time in praying, the spiritual power that comes into your life — sometimes I felt so weak — and after praying feel so strong. There is a direct correlation and God is pouring out His spirit upon us. He said that you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and to all the ends of the Earth.

When we pray, God gives us the power to live the Christian life.

And then we pray: For Thine is the glory. Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount that when we let our light shine it glorifies our Father in Heaven. But we rejoice.

Now — six areas of prayer — if you spent two and a half minutes with each one, it is fifteen minutes. Think about it: if you did that in the morning, or in the evening, or did it both times. Or if you are real prayer-challenged and need to spend more time on each, that is fine. It is where you are right now in your life with prayer. But God calls you to Him; He wants you to pray. The Lord’s Prayer is not an end in of itself. It is a wonderful pattern that our Lord gave to us when His Disciples said, “Lord teach us to pray as John taught his disciples.”

He was a man who was a Pastor, and also a craftsman — William Walford — and he wrote these lines. (He had someone write them down for him, for he was blind.) He wrote:

Let us pray.