The Prayer of Jesus - Part 2

Welcome to this edition of PowerPoint with Jack Graham.

I'm Jack Graham. Now the fact is Jesus Christ is our example and encourager in all things and certainly when it comes to prayer. Jesus himself was a man of prayer. He would often rise before dawn to seek the face of the Father. He would separate himself in solitude from his disciples and from the crowds and pray and seek God. And when he would return, the disciples often noted the difference, the change even in his very countenance no doubt.

There was the presence, the glow of God the Father on the face of Jesus. They saw the effect, the power of Jesus Christ. And certainly if Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Savior of the world needed to pray, the disciples knew they needed to pray. And so they said, Lord, teach us to pray. Teach us how to pray like that.

Jesus must have smiled because he had them right where he wanted them and he began to teach them the Lord's Prayer or the model prayer, the pattern prayer which is found in Matthew chapter 6. What we have in effect is an outline for praying. Pastor Cho, pastor of the world's largest church in Seoul, Korea describes his prayer life as jogging a track.

He says, I get up every morning and I get on the prayer track and I run. And what you have in the Lord's Prayer as recorded here in the passage is a prayer track. And each point of the prayer, if you will, is a lap on the prayer track. And I want you to see with me and discover with me these rich truths concerning how we are to pray. Now remember this prayer is not simply a prayer to be repeated, though it's certainly good to repeat the Scripture, to memorize the Scripture and to share the Scripture. But this prayer is not pray in these words but pray in this way, in this manner. And so we have these principles for praying, an outline for praying that gives us incredible opportunities, expansive opportunities by which we can pray.

Let's look at the prayer again in verse 9. In this manner, therefore pray. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come.

Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil or the evil one.

For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. The most phenomenal thought is this. God answers prayer. God answers prayer. Now to consider that the great God of the universe, God Almighty is eager to hear from His children and answer their requests.

That is an incredible, amazing thought indeed. To believe that God answers prayer is to believe the promises of God's Word. It is to trust in a Lord who delights, who desires to give good things to His children. Prayer you see is not overcoming God's reluctance to bless us, but rather it is laying hold of His highest willingness.

It is not twisting His arm or changing His mind, but asking and receiving from the good hand of our God. And Jesus makes it clear to us how we're to do that. We saw in the previous message on the prayer of Jesus the paternity of the prayer, or the person to whom we pray, our Father who art in heaven. And we learned that prayer is made possible through a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. That we become the children of God through a new birth experience in Jesus Christ. We are born into the family of God and therefore our God is our Father and our friend.

We are related to Him and we connect to Him through Christ Jesus our Lord. That relationship with God therefore begins the prayer in worship as we seek Him, as we desire Him. And we ought to spend the first portions of our time of prayer just adoring Him, worshiping Him, getting to know Him better. It is in worshiping God and seeking Him and honoring Him that we prepare ourselves for the answers that are to come later. And then the second portion of the prayer in verse 10, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

That's the priority of the prayer, the purpose of the prayer, the passion of this prayer. That the kingdom of God will rule and reign in us. That Jesus Christ will take His rightful place of preeminence in our lives.

That His kingdom will come. That His will be done in our lives. The will of God then becomes the heart cry of our prayer. To submit our will to Him, to commit our obedience to Him. And so when we pray having sought God then we seek His honor and His name and then His will. And so when we pray we're asking God to show us His will, to lead us, to guide us in His way. And now we are ready to move to the next part of prayer, the third lap of prayer if you will. And that is seen in verse 11, give us this day our daily bread. Now that may seem like a strange request for some of us this morning. Give us this day our daily bread.

Such a simple thing. In fact, some of you are asking God to help you to keep from eating bread, all of you on those carbohydrate diets. Lord, no more bread. But of course Jesus is not talking about bread alone. When He teaches us to pray, Lord, give us this day our daily bread. Bread represents our physical needs.

It represents any need we have. And isn't it incredible that we are to pray in daily dependence on something, for something as simple as bread? Why did Jesus teach us to pray for daily bread? Because when we pray for bread it is a recognition that even the most basic and simple things from life, even the smallest things, things we often take for granted, come from the good hand of our God.

Bread. Asking God to meet us at the point of our needs and to supply our basics. You know, it is a declaration of our dependence upon God every day. Humanism is a way of life in America. Humanism which says we don't need God.

We can do it ourselves. That man is the supreme being. And some would even suggest that our Christian faith is a religious crutch. Well, our faith is not a crutch.

It's more than a crutch. It is life itself. Our breath, our life, our very bread, our sustenance is in our faith in Jesus Christ. And Jesus wants to meet your deepest need. He desires to answer your request and to meet your needs even more than you desire to ask it.

He's waiting on you to simply ask it. The Lord your God is a sun and a shield. He gives grace and glory and no good thing will He withhold from them who walk uprightly. God is waiting on you to simply ask Him, even for daily bread. The banquet is spread. All the luscious flavors, the beautiful colors, the luscious smells, all of it is available.

It is a banquet of blessings for the child of God. All we must do is ask and receive. Now you say, well, I've asked for things and I didn't get what I wanted. I didn't get what I asked for.

Indeed. Sometimes when we pray, the answer is no. Sometimes the answer is wait. Sometimes the answer must be, you gotta be kidding. But God always answers prayer.

Sometimes with a denial. Sometimes He answers with a delay. We wait on the answer. We keep praying until the answer comes. Sometimes the answer is direct.

It is a direct answer to the prayer. At times the answer is different than what we expected. Sometimes God says no. When I'm not right or if I'm not ready for the answer, God may say no. If the timing is not right on the prayer or for the answer to come, God may say slow. But if I am right when I pray and the time is right, God says go.

And He gives the answer. Yes, sometimes God changes the way He answers our prayer. But God always answers the prayers of His children. The prayer is not on the God end. The prayer is on our end. We don't ask. Ask that you may receive.

Now don't delay on this. Don't wait until you know more about prayer or attend the latest seminar or read the next book on prayer. Start asking. Start today.

Be specific with your request. Sometimes we don't know whether God answers our prayers or not because our prayers are so general. Lord, bless the world. Lord, bless the church. Lord, bless my friends.

Lord, bless the missionaries. Well, that's a safe prayer. You don't know whether God answered that prayer or not. It's wonderful to pray for missionaries, pray for the church, pray for friends, pray for family.

But get specific. Start praying by name. Start praying by need. Start calling your friends' names, your family's names, the missionaries' names.

Start writing them down. Keep a prayer journal and watch how God works when you pray. You're listening to PowerPoint with Jack Graham and today's message, The Prayer of Jesus, Part Two. There is an invisible realm that's just as real and just as active as the physical world around us. In his 11 message series called Invisible, Pastor Jack Graham opens a window of understanding into the unseen realities of the spiritual forces that affect you every day. Invisible is our special thanks for your gift to PowerPoint this month.

But we also want to ask you to help meet an important goal of adding 100 new monthly partners. With your first monthly gift today, we'll say thanks by sending you a copy of Dr. Graham's book, Unseen. This is the last week of this offer, so call today. Call 1-800-795-4627. That's 1-800-795-4627.

You can also text the word PowerPoint to 313131. And don't forget to visit JackGraham.org where you can shop our e-store, give a gift online, or sign up for Dr. Graham's free daily email devotional. Our website again is JackGraham.org. Now, let's get back to today's message, The Prayer of Jesus, Part Two. God wants to hear from you.

You must ask. Ask personally, do you pray? Do you have a life of prayer? Pray personally, pray specifically, pray confidently, and pray continually. Give us this day our daily bread.

But then there's another lap. We've seen the person of the prayer praying to God our Father and worshiping Him. We've seen the passion, the priority of the prayer, seeking the will of God, His kingdom to come, and to reign and to rule in our lives and in our world. We've seen the provision of the prayer, give us this day our daily bread.

Now let's look at the next lap, which is the pardon of the prayer. Verse 12, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Now in the Bible, sin is seen in various ways. For example, sin is seen as dirt. That's why the Psalmist prayed, wash me thoroughly from my iniquities.

Cleanse me from my sin. At other times, sin is seen as disease compared to vile leprosy in the Old Testament, a cancerous disease of the body. Sin is a disease of the soul that needs to be cured.

And the cure is the blood of Jesus Christ. Sometimes sin is viewed as death in the Bible. The wages of sin is death, spiritual death, because sin separates us from God. But here, Jesus is showing us as believers that sin is like a debt.

It is a debt, a debt that we owe. And we need to be forgiven of our debts, our sins against God. And therefore we come as a part of our prayer life on a daily basis and we ask God in confessing our sins to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us that we may walk in purity and holiness in our lives. And so we come with the Psalmist and pray, Lord, search my heart and know my ways and see if there be any wicked way in me. And you see, if we don't stop and pray and ask God to search our hearts, we may find ourselves in a pattern of sin or disobedience in our lives.

And this, someone called this preaching to ourselves constantly and recognizing that there are areas in our lives that we need to be judgment day honest about before God and that there are areas in our lives that we need to get right with God. Because the Bible says if I regard iniquity in my heart, God will not hear me. Now I'm so glad it doesn't say if I ever sin God will not hear me, right?

It doesn't say that. It says if I regard, Psalm 66 verse 14, if I regard iniquity in my heart. That is if I keep for myself, if I regard, if I reserve for myself, if I harbor or hide sin in my life, if I don't deal with it, if I'm not done with it, God says, count on it, I will not hear or answer your prayer. There's nothing like sin to clog the channel of blessing in our lives. And so if I don't spend time daily asking God to search my heart and then asking Him to forgive me of my sin, you know what happens? I blow right past my sin. Soon sin sets in.

It becomes a habit. It becomes a pattern rather than dealing with it, rather than confessing it, rather than repenting of it. So every day we ought to be confessing and asking God for His forgiveness. And good news, His forgiveness is always available.

I love the statement, the Christian life is a series of new beginnings, and we have a new beginning every day in Jesus Christ. And then He says, but not only pray for your own forgiveness, but those who are forgiven will forgive others. The emphasis of the Scripture is often if you have been forgiven, then you will live a forgiving life. We live in a world that's full of vengeance and revenge and getting even, but the Christian is to be different. We are to forgive those who trespass against us, those who owe us. We are not to live with a critical, harsh, fault-finding, belligerent, bitter spirit. Bitterness is an acid, an emotional acid, a spiritual acid that will destroy its own container.

It will destroy you physically, emotionally, and spiritually, to harbor hatred or to keep grudges, hold on to hate in your life. Jesus said, don't live like that. If you have been greatly forgiven, and you have, if you have received the grace of God in Jesus Christ, extend His grace and His love to others. You say, well, you don't know, pastor, what that person did to me.

Well, I may not, but I do know that Jesus Christ died on the cross, and He cried out, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. And if you are having difficulty, and yes, sometimes it is difficult to forgive, and if you're having difficulty forgiving others, you go to the cross once again, and you see the love of Christ and experience the grace of God once again in prayer. And in experiencing the grace and the power of God in prayer, you rise to be a forgiving person rather than a forgivless person. Pray for God's pardon and that He may give you grace for others. This is the way Christ teaches us to pray.

And then one final word. He says, and do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil or the evil one. This is the protection of the prayer, the power of the prayer.

We live in an evil world. Satan is like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. And therefore, how dare we enter our day without seeking the protection of God. The reason that many of us are failing is because we don't pray. Life is a war and prayer is the battleground. And it is in the battleground of prayer that we win or lose.

Someone said, prayer is the antidote for the disease of self-confidence. And when we pray, we recognize our confidence is in Christ and not ourselves. And we are able to meet all the attacks of the enemy. We are able to deal with temptations and overcome rather than being overcome. We are victors rather than victims because we have prayed and prepare ourselves.

We have placed on ourselves the spiritual armor of Christ and we are ready for spiritual battle. Pray for protection. And when you pray for protection, that means that God will lead you in places that will protect you. Some people give the devil a stick to hit them with. They find themselves in places they ought not to be, looking and watching things they ought not to see, being involved in circumstances and situations and groups and gangs and so forth that drag them down. I mean, young people, the time to pray for God to protect you to keep yourself pure is not in the back seat of some car parked somewhere.

You need to pray and ask God to protect you and keep you pure at the beginning of your day, to ask God to strengthen you and help you and to prepare you for the temptations of life that come along. We need to get more offensive about this. I love the story told about Suge Jordan. He used to be the coach down at the University of Auburn, Auburn University in Alabama. He got one of his former players to come back and do some recruiting for him one year. And he was telling the young man what kind of players they were looking for. He said, you know, there's that certain kind of player when you knock him down on the football field, he stays down. And the young man said, well, we don't want him Do we?

He said, no, absolutely not. We don't want that kind of player. He said, but then there's that other kind of player. You knock him down, he gets back up, you knock him down, he gets back up.

And then he lays down on the third time. He won't get back up. He said, Well, we don't want him either, do we? He said, No, we don't want him either.

Coach Gordon said then there's that player. When you knock him down, he gets back up, you knock him down, he gets back up. You knock him down, he gets back up, you knock him down, he gets back up. Every time you knock him down, he gets back up. Young recruiters are saying, that's the guy we wanted coach that's the guy we want he said no that's not the guy we want either he said well then coach who do we want he said we want the guy who's knocking everybody down that's who we want we need to take the offense and instead of falling into our beds conquered by sin and temptation day by day we could begin our day by seeking God and his protection and his power and his guidance his grace so that we can overcome the challenges of a sinful world that's the prayer of Jesus no wonder it concludes for thine is the power and the kingdom and the glory forever you see this prayer begins with a father who hears in sympathy who loves us and wants to hear from us and it concludes with a king who reigns and rules and supremacy and sovereignty and in the middle these requests for provision bread these requests for pardon forgiveness the requests for protection right in the middle where we live we are sandwiched between the sympathy of a father the supremacy of our Savior don't miss the privilege the power of the prayer of Jesus prayer like most anything else is a discipline a discipline that we practice many people have the desire to pray from time to time but not the discipline to practice I want to challenge you to begin a life of prayer to set aside a time a place where you pray we seek the face of God in the hand of God who delights bless his children you're listening to PowerPoint with Jack Graham and today's message the prayer of Jesus part 2 the devil will stop at nothing to control your mind through lies doubts and fears that enslave you to sin and rob you of life but you can experience freedom and victory when you let Jesus renew your thoughts with his truth dr. Jack Graham will teach you how in his message series invisible this powerful resource is our thanks for your best gift today and this month we're asking for your help to meet an important goal of adding 100 new PowerPoint partners if you become a PowerPoint partner with your first monthly gift today we'll send you a special bonus gift of dr. Graham's book unseen this is the last week of this offer so call today call 1-800-795-4627 that's 1-800-795-4627 you can also text the word PowerPoint to 313131 and don't forget to visit Jack Graham dot o-r-g where you can shop our e-store give a gift online or sign up for dr. Graham's free daily email devotional our website again is Jack Graham dot o-r-g pastor what is your PowerPoint for today well Scott you know as I've read many books through the years on prayer and heard a lot of sermons and messages on the subject often the motivation has been to challenge us and increase our guilt because we don't pray enough and I got to tell you most of us struggle in this area and we don't pray enough and therefore we feel guilty and we say okay I'm gonna pray more and I'm gonna pray more and we continue to struggle in this well the purpose of today's message was not to lay more guilt on you or to cause you to struggle more but what I wanted to do is to show you that when you pray God will answer and that the motivation is not simply guilt but it is the grace of God that just pours out incredible blessings upon our lives if somehow you could just begin to see what God could do when you begin praying if you could just realize the great promise of prayer in your life you would be highly motivated to pray I mean if you really believe that God answered prayer you would pray I believe and I want to practice prayer more and more in my life this message on the prayer of Jesus is to challenge you somehow to see what you're missing if you don't pray think of all that you're missing in your life the possibilities the blessings the amazing provision of God because you don't ask the Bible says we have not because we ask not I want to challenge you to stop missing out on what God wants to do in your life through prayer prayer is the pathway of blessing to your life and through your life and you're never going to max out spiritually you're never going to bear fruit as God would have you in your Christian life unless you are a man a woman of prayer no wonder the prayer concludes with this great benediction of praise for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever amen you see prayer is trusting in a God a great God who is King whose power and glory is forever whose promises are sure the prayer begins with the Father who hears us in sympathy and in secret but it concludes with a great King who answers in power and great glory thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever this great King is King Jesus and therefore pray unto him pray in his name pray like he prayed and your life will never be the same and that is today's power remember when you give a gift to PowerPoint we'll send you dr. Graham's powerful message series invisible as our thanks call 1-800-795-4627 that's 1-800-795-4627 you can also text the word PowerPoint to 313131 text PowerPoint to 313131 join us again next time when dr. Graham brings a message about the power of the longest recorded prayer of Jesus that's next time on PowerPoint with Jack Graham PowerPoint with Jack Graham is sponsored by PowerPoint ministries