We all could use some encouragement, and we'll find it together today in the Bible-based preaching of Dr. Don Wilton from God's Encouraging Word.
It's the Bible itself. That is God's Encouraging Word, and today our teacher, Dr. Don Wilton, well-known author, evangelist, and pastor, is going to take us straight to Matthew chapter 6. And as we open the Word together, know that we're open to you as well.
We'd like to open our phone lines at 866-899-WORD. Love to pray with you and for you. We have an opportunity to encourage you in a lot of ways online as well at www.tewonline.org.
That's www.tewonline.org. As a matter of fact, I pray that you'll look at some of the new resources we have online right now. As a matter of fact, we'll talk about that confident assurance of salvation a little later in the broadcast. But first, let's just open God's Word and our hearts together as Dr. Don teaches us.
This is the Encouraging Word. I've got some wonderful news for you today. I want to speak to you today not on when actually there is nothing else to say, but I want to speak to you this morning on when actually there is something to say. You see, something happened to Moses. I want you to think about it just for a moment with me. No different to you and me today what God wants from us to begin with.
He wants all of us. He wants us to take whatever it is that we hold in our hands and throw it down. And once having thrown it down, God will enable us to pick up the rod of God. Consider Moses. Moses went from being a wimp to becoming a warrior.
We know that. We see it in God's record. Moses went from being a stutterer to being rather a polished statesman. If we understand the record after Moses had thrown it down, he went from being speechless to becoming a spokesman. He went from powerlessness to powerfulness. He went from being faint-hearted to being rather feisty, if you please.
The same man Moses that we looked at last week, all because he was willing to give it all to God. I think Moses went from apathy to being on the attack. I think Moses, if we understand him clearly, went from a condition of cowardice to a man of deep and sincere courage and conviction. He went from a man who was running away from God to a man who rather was running with God. He went from retreat to revival. He went from ability to availability. He went from rags to riches. He went from a man who had an incredible low esteem to a man who had a marvelous, humble, godly, high esteem.
This is Moses. He became speechless. He threw it down. He came to an understanding that what God expects of his disciples is everything, not something.
What God wants from all of us is all of our heart, not part of our heart. That's what happened to Moses. He went from nervousness to boldness when he threw it down. He went from being barefoot in the presence of God to being bold in the court of Pharaoh. Moses went from a man who carried around the rod of man to a man who carried around the rod of God.
So where do we go? You see, when actually there is something to say. I'm relieved to be honest with you. I think like most preachers, when finally I go to be with the Lord and you celebrate my passing into his presence, those who are still alive, I think some people are going to look at my coffin and say, well, finally our pastor has nothing more to say. He's quiet.
You know something? God, when we throw it down in his presence, when we find ourselves speechless in the presence of God, something miraculous happens. God says, I want you to know you do have something to say, but you only have something to say within the context of your speechlessness. You only have something to say in the context of your submissiveness. You only have something to say within the context of your humility.
That's what God says to us. Charles Haddon Spurgeon, perhaps the prince of all preachers. In 1865, under God's leadership, he began to cultivate and grow a church in downtown London, not dissimilar to this one in size.
They ended up with about 6,000 members. The mega church, it was unheard of in that time, in that era. People would come from all over the world to meet with Charles Haddon Spurgeon, and the first thing he would always do would be to take them down into the youth center, down into underground, down into the hangar.
That's where he would take them. And he would take them downstairs into the basement and almost inevitably, writers and historians tell us that there were always some people from his church on their knees, down in the basement, below the church, and Charles Haddon Spurgeon, it is well documented, said not once but repeatedly, if you want to know why this church has received a blessing, if you want to understand why God is moving on this congregation, if you want to really unlock the key to what God is doing through the ministries of this church, it's right here with these people upon their knees in prayer. You see, God says to us, yes, I want to render you speechless because in my presence you have nothing to say, but actually once you come to terms with that and once you understand who you are in Christ Jesus, you do actually have something to say, and so we must of necessity go to the Lord Jesus Christ. The disciples were bamboozled. They were confused.
They moved amongst the ranks of the rituals of the Jewish sect. They understood the high watermark of the spiritual beings like Nicodemus, who was born a Jew who had done all kinds of theological study, who understood what it meant to pray, and yet these disciples began to understand the growing dissatisfaction in our Lord Jesus as He mingled among the masses of humanity and came to understand just how far away they were from the grace of a God who loved them. Perhaps they began to get somewhat of an inkling into the fact that Jesus was completely dissatisfied with the inability or the refusal of these people to lay it down and to throw themselves down and to become totally committed. Perhaps the disciples began to understand as they rubbed shoulders with Him, as they moved through the masses of society, that Jesus had a total disdain for all their super spirituality, their theological discourses and their doctrine, and perhaps what Jesus began to say to His disciples was, I want all of you, and when I've got all of you, I will give you something to say. And so it is in Matthew chapter 6, Jesus gave His disciples something to say.
He wasn't giving them something to repeat. In fact, if we go back into the earlier verses, God's Word says to us that there must never be repetition. God's Word cries disdain upon people who repeat prayers after prayers and say the same thing over and over and over again.
God's Word says, do not do that. The Lord's Prayer is no exception. The Lord's Prayer was not given in order for you and me to rattle it off by rote and by heart, in parrot fashion, in some school assembly. God gave us the Lord's Prayer to provide us with a key insight into exactly what it is we say to Him when we have something to say. The Lord Jesus was a man of prayer.
John MacArthur said this, he said, prayer was the spiritual air that Jesus breathed every moment of His life. Why was Jesus saying this? Let me read these verses to you, Matthew chapter 6 and verse 9. This then is how you should pray. I'm going to talk more about that phrase next week, although I'm only going to be preaching on that phrase today. Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one for yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and forever and forever. Amen. This is what Jesus said.
Perhaps don't you suppose that Jesus was actually giving His disciples something to say? I'm going to ask a redundant question here this morning. You ready for this? How many of you have ever prayed to God before? Would you raise your hands? Put it up. Go on. Every hand is going up.
That's a redundant question. You see, prayer is something that we're accustomed to. We grow up with it.
We're taught about it. But folks, Jesus said something to His disciples about what to say. Jesus said to them, listen, number one, I want you to be speechless and you can only speak when you know what to say and how to say it according to what I'm teaching you. Jesus said you don't pray according to your own fashion. Jesus said I'm going to give you specific directions in praying. And so it is that we go through Scripture and we find two guarantees. Can I say this to you this morning? I'm going to guarantee you on the authority of God's word that when you pray, two things are going to happen.
You can write both of these down, hide them in your heart, lock them in your soul. Two things are going to happen when you and I pray. Number one, we will experience, when we pray, we will experience the fullness of communion with God.
Now folks, let me run that by again. When you and I pray, it is guaranteed that we will experience the fullness of communion with God. You see, friends, prayer is not me, it's God.
The emphasis is not on myself, it's on God. And when I get on my knees and I pray, Jesus Christ taught His disciples, and we're going to look at this in a lot more detail, one of the most exciting things that you'll ever see. What happens is that a dialogue takes place and when we pray we are drawn right into the heart of God. We are sucked into the very character of God. And when we are sucked into the character of God, guess what happens? The character of God begins to infiltrate our being, and so we begin to take on the nature and the personality of a God who loves us.
And the way we do that is on our knees in prayer. Don't you love talking? Some of us do. That's why I love to be around teachers. You know, I've always been nervous whenever my children have had teachers.
I mean, you watch them, Sunday school teachers. Do you know, folks, that the greatest thing that you can do with your children, amongst others, the greatest thing that you can do is to invite and encourage your child to talk to you. If you are a parent today and you are in any way preventing your child from talking to you, do you know what you're doing? You are robbing both yourself and your child of that communion with the character and the personality and the experience of a parent who loves them. That's why it's important to listen to your children when they come home from school. Don't shut them off.
Don't say, just later on, I'm watching the television. It's a discipline for those of us who are adults. Find places, encourage it. Just sit and listen. Listen to their stories. Boy and children can say some stories. I'll tell you what, I know all those elementary school teachers, they collect information on us. I know that. You've got all kinds of information. You can pull it out any time you want to. Sunday school teachers, boy, they hear some wonderful stories about mom and dad, don't they?
It's amazing. But friends, when you have a dialogue set up between a child and a parent and that dialogue continues, it is one of the most precious commodities. When your children become teenagers and when they are looking to marry and when they are going into business and when they are going off to college and you can dialogue with them, do you know what happens? There is an interaction that goes on.
There is a sharing. There is a communion that takes place and as a result, there is a more contribution to the character and the personality of both parties involved. God says, listen, I love you, I know what you want, I know what you need, I know where you've come from and I know where you're going, but because I know what's best for you, I want you to talk to me and when you talk to me, you are going to be drawn into the heart of God. And when you are drawn into the heart of God, God begins to feed like an umbilical cord. The blood begins to flow between your Heavenly Father and you and what is the result? You begin to become strengthened in your faith, guaranteed when you pray. You will experience the fullness of communion with God, but number two, you will see the floodgates of Heaven's blessings open wide. I love that. I just love that. When you pray, you're not only going to experience the fullness of communion with God, but you are going to actually see the floodgates of God's blessings poured out upon you.
That's what God does. When you go to Him and you say to Him, Lord Jesus, I've got to talk to you. I need to talk to you about my business. I need to talk to you about my finances. I need to talk to you about my son, my wife, my daughter. I need to talk to you about my grandparents, my neighbor, my dating, my girlfriend.
I need to talk to you about this and that. You begin to have a blood flow that goes on God communes with you, and when God communes with you, God is always right. Why? Because God is good all the time. That's why.
That's why. All the time, God is good. He never changes.
Oh, how we celebrate that consistency of God. Forgive the interruption. Dr. Dine insists I remind you we're available for you. We'd love to talk with you, pray with you. We can do that a couple of ways, keyboard to keyboard. It's a fun way to do that on our website, TEWOnline.org.
It's got a brand new look. A few things we're working through, a couple of glitches, so to speak, but I hope you'll drop by and maybe visit often, TEWOnline.org, but you can also call the ministry anytime. I hope that you have jotted this number down or perhaps stored it in your cell as a contact. We are The Encouraging Word at 866-899-9673, and every day we have friends sign up for things like our free daily encouraging word Bible guide. We provide it for you in a hard copy, a physical copy, like a quarterly. You're welcome for that at 866-899-9673, or while you're on the phone, just give us your email and sign up that way. You let us know you'd like to have it.
We'll have it within your email box for the next 48 hours, all by connecting at 866-899-9673. Now back to today's message with Dr. Don Wilton. And listen, when God speaks and God communes with you, He's giving you the very best, not giving you second best, third best, or not quite the best, He's giving you the very best. And when God gives you the very best, dear friend, this morning, listen to what happens.
The floodgates of God's blessings will be poured all over you. And so we must know how to pray. When we find ourselves in God's presence, and we are rendered speechless, and we throw it down before Him, and we say, Lord, I am nothing but by the grace of God. When we say, Lord, but by the grace of God, go I.
When we say, Lord, I want to give to you everything that I am, God says I'm now going to tell you what you can say. And so we turn to the Lord Jesus. And when we turn to the Lord Jesus Christ, and Jesus says this then is how you should pray, He's talking about three fundamental facts of prayer. I want you to write these down. Three fundamental facts related to prayer. Number one, that prayer is effective.
Now you can write that down. Anyone here want to say amen this morning? Prayer is, not maybe, prayer is effective. James said this in James chapter 5 and verse 16. He said, the effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.
I love that. You just think about it. Go right through Scripture.
Abraham's servant prayed, and Rebekah appeared. By the way, parents, some parents come to me, Brother Seth, I'm sure you deal with this all the time. Parents come to me and say to me, Pastor, should I pray for my son or daughter as they date? Absolutely yes.
Absolutely yes. If you don't pray for your son or daughter when they go into dating and that, folks, you are robbing yourself, number one, of a dialogue with God. Number two, you are robbing yourself and your son or daughter from being blessed with the floodgates of God's blessings. But I'll tell you one thing we do know. We know that God knows the end from the beginning. We know that God is all knowing. We know that God loves us.
We know that God is vitally interested in everything we do. So what do we do? We give it to God. Boy, give it to Him. Turn it over.
Hand it over to the Lord. Jacob wrestled and prayed, remember? And what happened? Esau's mind was turned back from 20 years of revenge. Moses prayed and Amalek was struck down. The Bible is full of it. Hannah prayed and Samuel was born.
I'm not going to get into that one. Zion, Hezekiah, they prayed and over 185,000 Assyrians were slain. Elijah prayed and for three years there was drought and so he prayed again and the rain came.
You can go right through Scripture. Number one, prayer is effective. Number two, prayer is vital to kingdom living. It is vital to kingdom living.
But it is vital, folks. It is vital because prayer is directly related to giving. Prayer is directly related to fasting and I'm going to be teaching you about fasting. I'm going to take you into the Scripture.
We're going to look at this, folks. We need to look at what it means to pray and fast before God. I want you to prepare your hearts for this, but we're going to look at it in terms of what God says. Prayer is directly related to living.
It is related to everything that we do. Prayer is not only effective in the first place, but prayer is vital to kingdom living in the second place and in the third place, prayer is connected to God's sovereign purpose. And what is God's sovereign purpose? His sovereign purpose is to glorify Him. If you were on Jeopardy or one of these talk shows today and they said to you, Excuse me, but what's the number one reason for which you were created?
What would you say? To be president? To own your own business? To be married? To raise children?
No, none of those. The number one purpose for which God created you and me was to glorify Him, was to worship Him and to glorify the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is why Jesus, we're going to discover, made an emphasis upon the fact that prayer must be for the sake of God, not for our sakes. Prayer is an opportunity for God to manifest His goodness and His glory.
Listen to what one saint said. One saint said, and I quote, True prayer brings the mind to the immediate contemplation of God's character and holds it there until the believer's soul is properly impressed. That's why Jesus said, Whatever you ask in my name, that I will do.
For what reason? In order that the Father may be glorified. You can read that in John chapter 4 and verse 13. You see, true prayer, listen to this, three things. True prayer is effective. True prayer is vital to the kingdom of God and kingdom of living.
And true prayer is directly connected to the purpose of God. And what comes out of this? What comes out of this? We receive communion with God. Just think about it. We receive communion with God and we receive the floodgates of God's blessings.
Wow! How unbelievable to think that God could do that for you and me. Actually, there is something to say. Our Father, we thank you that you give us permission to talk to you. We thank you, Lord Jesus, that by your grace we're able to open our hearts as individuals in every walk of life. Thank you, Lord Jesus, for not only hearing our prayer but for answering our prayer, too.
Sometimes it sounds too good to be true, doesn't it? That not only God hears our prayers, but He's ready to answer our prayers. Not always exactly like we want, but He will give an answer. This is the encouraging word. If you just tuned in, you're listening to Dr. Don Wilton's teaching and we share this via podcast, online, broadcast every single day.
And it's our joy that as we communicate and share this particular teaching, we let that begin a conversation. And if this has stirred something in your heart that you'd like to talk about, have us pray with you about, why don't you give us a call? 866-899-WORD is our phone number.
That's 866-899-9673. Perhaps they're questions that need to be answered. But perhaps the most important question is the one that Dr. Don's about to ask next. Are you ready to give your heart and life to the Lord Jesus Christ? I'm so happy to hear that. Why don't you pray this prayer with me today? Dear God, I know that You love me very, very much. And I know that the Lord Jesus Christ came and died on a cross so that I might be forgiven of my sin. Today, I repent of my sin.
I confess my sin to You. And I invite You to come into my heart and into my life by faith. In Jesus' name I pray. If you prayed that prayer, let me be the first one to welcome you to the family of God.
This is wonderful. I hope that you know how much I'm going to be praying for you and how very important this is for me. Call us so that we can talk to you and connect you in the right place so you can begin this wonderful journey. I believe you've done it.
Some of you, while Dr. Don was praying, have prayed to give your heart to Jesus Christ. We would love to be a part of the next steps in your life to encourage you, to put resources in your hands that will help you grow. But we need to talk to you. Give us a call. 866-899. Word is the phone number. Jot it down.
I'll be slow. 866-899-9673. We'll connect you with one of us 24 hours a day. And we'd love to be a part of encouraging you in the next steps. And one of those is giving you resources like you'll find online at www.tewonline.org.
Resources like this. Many people around the world are looking for some kind of assurance to quiet their fears. They want to be totally secure. Total assurance only comes from God.
I have a serious question to ask you. If you were to die today, would you go to heaven? This month, with your gift of $25 in support to the Encouraging Word, you will receive Dr. Wilton's powerful message, The Confident Assurance of Salvation, along with his book, Totally Secure.
Both of these ministry resources will help answer five important questions people churched and unchurched struggle with, such as, What is salvation? Am I saved? Can I lose my salvation? Will I go to heaven?
What happens when I sin? Call us at 866-899-WORD to request The Confident Assurance of Salvation along with his book, Totally Secure. You can find peace, protection, and assurance in the arms of God. The Encouraging Word is a viewer and listener supported ministry. Thank you for listening today. Our time's gone for today, but let's stay connected online at tewonline.org The Encouraging Word
Whisper: medium.en / 2024-01-26 12:06:19 / 2024-01-26 12:16:52 / 11