The School of Prayer Part 7: Introduction to The Lord's Prayer

Welcome friends to the Line of Fire.

This is Michael Brown. Class is in session. We continue in the School of Prayer today focusing on the Lord's Prayer as recorded in Matthew 6. It's also in Luke the 11th chapter. We want to break this down as a pattern of prayer in our own lives. We'll be spending weeks looking at what the Word of God says about prayer, how we can pray more effectively, how we can deepen our relationship with God through prayer, why sometimes we need persevering prayer, what the Bible speaks of when it speaks of intercession, examples of intercessory prayer, some of the spiritual warfare that's involved in prayer. We're covering all these bases, the role of faith in prayer, so many other things.

So I pray that each day you'll be edified and then you'll take this series as a whole. Any broadcast that you miss, just look online, Apple, Spotify, iTunes, wherever you listen to your music or get your podcast. Look for The Courage in the Line of Fire Podcast. This way you'll also get thousands of previous episodes of our live radio broadcast which has now been replaced with The Courage in the Line of Fire Podcast.

Also, everything is on YouTube. So if you go to The Line of Fire on YouTube, you'll see all of our classes and the School of Prayer that we're in now, a whole month before that on getting to know the Holy Spirit, and then thousands of other videos for you, debates with rabbis, Muslims, gay activists, others, preaching, extended messages, all there waiting for you. All right, Matthew chapter 6 verse 5. Jesus has been teaching now in the Sermon on the Mount about not to do our acts of righteousness to everyone to see.

Now it's fine if you're in a setting and funds are being raised and folks want to know, hey, how many can stand together to say, hey, we can stand with you. It's another thing when you say, I'm giving this, I want everyone to know how much I'm giving. Jesus said, the hypocrites do that. You have your reward. You get your earthly reward when you do that. You lose your heavenly reward. And he says this, Matthew 6, 5, when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others.

Truly I tell you, they've received their reward in full. Now to be clear, there's nothing wrong with public prayer. Corporate prayer is throughout the Bible. In the book of Acts, the fourth chapter, when persecution comes, the believers pray together with the leaders. In Acts 12, when Peter's in prison, they're all praying together in a house. Corporate prayer is very powerful. It's found throughout the Bible. And many of the great moves of God in church history came as a result of corporate prayer meetings. God's people gathering together to pray. But Jesus is speaking here as to our motivation and our daily prayer habits.

What he's saying is this, not that you can't go to early morning prayer in your church or to a church prayer meeting or have a prayer in your home, a group that meets in your home. What he's saying is don't do this to be seen. Don't do this to be seen by people. Do not do this so as to be seen by people. That's his point.

That's his whole point. Don't put on a show of prayer. Even if you pray at a prayer meeting, don't pray in such a way as to show how well and powerfully I can pray. Listen to me. Pray. I really know the Lord. No, he said, you do that, you get your reward in full. People think, oh, aren't you spiritual?

And that's it. He said, but when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father who is unseen. Oh, there's nothing more powerful than you can do than get along with God in prayer.

Yes, there is corporate prayer, which has its power, but in a daily basis in our own lives, more powerful than speaking through the media, more powerful than getting our message out on internet, more powerful than thousands of other things, all the things we could do. No, when we pray, we're asking God to move. When we pray, we're saying, God, do what you can do.

Do what only you can do. I, a little human being, a frail mortal, I am going to you Almighty Sovereign God. I'm going to you for you to do what only you can do. Why care about what people can do when we can commune with Almighty God and Almighty God can do what only He can do. So, get alone with your Heavenly Father. Now, what's remarkable is even alone we pray our Father. Now, it's not to say we can't pray Abba or whoever you personally communicate with God, but we pray as part of a body. We also pray with the consciousness that we are not alone because we say the words our Father. Then Jesus says this, when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, 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.

Wow. Well, that leads to a question. Why ask Him? If he already knows, why ask Him?

We've addressed that earlier in our series, but we'll come back to it in a moment. When Jesus says don't just keep on babbling like the heathen, He's not saying it's wrong to pray long prayers. I mean, we have explicitly, explicitly in the Gospels where Jesus gets up early in the morning when it's dark and He goes away to pray, where He leaves the crowds and goes to isolated places to pray, where He prays into the evening, where He prays all night. So, He knows that He prayed for hours at times. We know Paul spoke of continually praying day and night and told us to pray without ceasing.

We know that. We know that in times of crisis believers gather and they pray until the breakthrough comes. So, He's not saying don't pray a lot, but don't just go on babbling empty words. God, I ask you to do this, God, I ask you to do this, God, I ask you to do this, God, I ask you to do this, God.

No, no, that's not going to do anything. The worst example of this I ever saw, it happened to be a Catholic gentleman. I've seen abuses with Protestants. I've seen abuses with people of all different faiths, okay, outside the body of Christ and within the body, but this one struck me in particular. There was a Catholic gentleman that I met and I was trying to see if he had any relationship with the Lord because you can go to church, you can go to a Baptist church, a Catholic church, any church and not know the Lord.

You can be raised in Christianity and not know the Lord. And he told me about a crisis he went through and he pulled out a little card and it was a novena. It was a certain prayer to a particular Catholic saint and he said, I would pray this like eight hours a day. And I said, what do you mean? He said, well, I would just read this. I didn't do anything else. I just read this prayer on this card eight hours a day.

I mean, I was stunned. On the one hand, that's devotion, but this is the opposite of what Jesus is teaching. Even a good prayer. It's not just, I'm going to keep saying it, saying it, saying it, saying it, saying it, saying it, saying it, saying it, saying it, saying it, saying it, saying it. Somehow that's going to like tip the scales of heaven.

Somehow it's going to like, it's going to rise, rise, rise, and then it hits the thing on the bell on the top. And no, that's not how prayer works. It's relational. It's based on faith. It's based on intimacy.

It's based on trust. So he's saying, don't just go on babbling empty words and doing them hour by hour, thinking that you'll somehow be heard. Think of 1 Kings 18 with the false prophets of Baal and they're trying to call down fire from heaven. Of course, Baal is just a demonic spirit. He's not a real deity. He can't answer the way God answers. So they're whipping themselves and they're cutting themselves and they're dancing and they're getting in a frenzy. It does no good.

It does no good. He's saying, come to your Father. He already knows. He already knows everything. He already knows the need. He already knows the situation. He already knows the crisis. He already knows what's coming.

He already knows. Why do we pray then? Why do we pray? Because he's working together with us. Because it's a relationship. Why doesn't he just save sinners? Why does he use us? Because he's working together with us.

It is relational. And as we pray, it does influence what he does. Yes, it does because that's the way he set it up. In other words, and we'll come to this when we teach on intercession, in Psalm 106 he said he would destroy Israel. He said he would if Moses had not stood in the breach. In other words, if Moses doesn't pray, I'm going to destroy.

But I've set it up that if he does pray, I won't destroy. Just like Jeremiah 18. Whenever God says he's going to bring blessing on a nation, if that nation turns to sin and rebellion instead, instead of blessing, he'll bring judgment. If he says he's going to bring judgment on a nation and that nation turns and repents instead of judgment, he'll bring blessing. So he has set it up like that.

In his sovereignty, he set it up. James, Jacob, the fourth chapter, you don't receive because you don't ask. You don't pray so you don't receive.

Then you pray and you pray personal prayers just to consume things in your own flesh unless God's going to answer those kind of prayers. So, God has ordained that he answers prayer. It teaches us dependence.

It deepens our relationship. It shows us the reality of the power of God. This was the situation before I prayed.

This is the situation after I prayed. Look at how God worked. Now, some say God will do whatever he's going to do because he's sovereign.

And when we pray, it just reminds us that he's doing whatever he's doing. It's not what Scripture says. Scripture does say, if this, then this. If my people, 2 Chronicles 7 14, spoken to Israel with application in different ways to believers today, if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray, what's the if about? When I'm sending judgment because of sin, when I'm working to bring my people to repentance because of their guilt, so they're under divine judgment. So, they're under divine judgment.

If, in that situation, if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I'll hear from heaven and forgive their sin and heal, restore their land. So, that's the way God has set it up. As one of the believers said, the pastor's brother who used to drive us to and from church services when we were first saved before any of us had driver's licenses, he said, some people say, you know, it's just coincidence when prayers are answered. He said, you know, when I pray, coincidences happen. When I don't pray, they don't happen.

He said it with a smile. But it is not just God saying, I was going to do it anyway. And when you prayed, now it reminded you that I was doing it. No, he's saying, if you hadn't prayed, I wouldn't have done that. If you had prayed, I would do this. Because you prayed in faith according to my will, I'm going to answer this way. Because you didn't pray, you missed out. Or ask yourself a question. Do you really think that the person, the man or woman who really gives themselves to prayer, who really gives themselves to intercession, who really gives themselves to secret worship and seeking God earnestly, will have the same answers as the person who doesn't pray at all?

Obviously not. God is a relational God. And He gives us this pattern of prayer to deepen our relationship with Him and to see Him glorified in the earth. We come back on the other side of this announcement.

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1-800-771-5584 or online at trivita.com. Thanks for joining us, friends, as we continue diving into the beautiful realities of the Lord's Prayer here on the Line of Fire broadcast. Now, if you come from a traditional Jewish background and you have grown up praying certain prayers, you know you pray three times a day, basically at dawn and late afternoon and then dusk.

You pray basically three times a day, mid to late afternoon is the middle one, and you pray certain wrote prayers, set prayers. You may pray them from your heart deeply, but you're repeating these beautiful prayers three times a day and then slight variation on the Sabbath and other prayers at different times of the day or different holy days and things like that. But when you read the Lord's Prayer, you think, oh, some of that's familiar to me. Right, that's because this was a prayer being taught by a rabbi, a Jewish rabbi, to Jewish disciples.

These were not all new elements. This was kind of a condensing together of other key elements and a reflection of what mattered most to the Lord. This then, Jesus says, is how you should pray. Our Father in heaven. So even though you're praying alone, you're praying as part of the people of Israel at that time or part of the body of Messiah, now part of the church. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

Now we're going to break down each word. Your kingdom come, 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 lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one. And then other ancient texts said for yours is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever.

Amen. Jesus says this, it ties in directly, for if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive you your sins. So we'll break those verses down. I want to go through this verse at a time.

So a few thoughts. We should never let any human forms stop us from receiving from God. So in other words, some of you are used to praying this prayer corporately in church services to our Father.

Some come from other backgrounds. But don't get hung up on your own tradition. This is something that can be prayed in one of two ways. That you can pray these words daily and many do and find it to be a beautiful and healthy practice. You literally pray these words every day as part of your time with God. It's obviously not all your prayer time but part of your prayer time with God. Or you use this as a pattern, a daily pattern, a pattern you unfold over a period of days and weeks and you pray according to the themes. Both ways are beautiful and healthy. But don't get so fixed that I've always done it this way that you can't find your own rhythm and walk with God following the teaching of Jesus here.

So question here. Question. Have you stopped and asked yourself why do I pray the way I pray? Why do I have certain prayer habits? Have you asked yourself what's the meaning of the Lord's Prayer in my life? Again, some of you have grown up in a church tradition where every day for decades or for years you've prayed the Lord's Prayer in your own life and it has meaning or you pray it daily as a family or you pray it weekly in church services and it has meaning and beauty to you.

Others know it's taught but don't really do anything with it. Especially those of us who come from non-liturgical traditions. So traditions where we're not reading set prayers or we don't have a set prayer book. Many of us that come from charismatic Pentecostal backgrounds don't have that. Some of us that may come from Baptist backgrounds and things.

We may not have some of these set forms that others have. So I ask what do we do with the Lord's Prayer? Didn't Jesus mean something when he told us this? Shouldn't it have some value in our lives? Shouldn't it have some authority in our lives? I mean I'm understating my questions. Obviously yes. At the very least this is a pattern for prayer if not something that we actually say in terms of actual words in our own lives or when we come together.

So let's consider a few things. Jesus never prayed outside of God's will. He always prayed in faith. He taught us how to pray. He prayed perfect prayers. So this that he's giving us is a perfect prayer. The words of the Lord's Prayer are perfect words that we can pray in faith every day. Now I don't mean that we can just manufacture faith but for example let's say you're praying for a job opportunity.

You'd love that job opportunity. You just don't know if it's the Lord's will or not. Lord have your way with that job opportunity. You can pray that in faith but you can't say Lord give me that job opportunity unless you know it's the Lord. Well this is something you know as the Lord. Every word of this is a perfect prayer. Every word of this is in harmony with the will of the Father and therefore we can pray this prayer in faith before God. So because the Lord's Prayer is often prayed verbatim we must intentionally read it afresh.

We've heard it so many times we can become accustomed to it. So if you prayed it by rote daily let's step back and think afresh about what you're praying. So we don't just repeat specific words in prayer. We take them and we make them our own.

Sometimes you just have to hang on each word our Father, our Father, my Father, Abba and press in from there. So we understand that meaningless repetition is praying the same thing thousands of times as if we just pray the same words by way of saying them more they're going to have a magical effect. Forget that.

Forget that. But you may come every day. What if you pray the Lord's Prayer every day? Is that meaningless?

No. What if you prayed the Lord's Prayer several times a day? What if you take an hour or two to pray out the Lord's Prayer?

It's all good. It is all healthy. So when Jesus says pray this way again it either means follow this pattern or say these exact words and we start at the beginning our Father, our Father. On the one hand we understand we're part of a body. We're part of a family.

We are not just individuals scattered so no matter how alone you are if you're in a prison cell for the gospel you're still praying our Father, our Father. There's a unity. There's a jointness. There's a sense of connectivity. You're part of a family. You're part of a body.

But there's another aspect to this. God has put within our hearts the spirit of his Son and sometimes when Jesus prayed he said Abba. Yeshua the Son of God would address his Father as Abba. It's extremely intimate. As I've said it's in between Daddy and Father. It's intimate in terms of just the way a child would speak to a father. It has respect and reverence to it but if Daddy is the closest English equivalent to you or Dad is the closest English equivalent to you I love to say Abba also you know no Hebrew and Aramaic so it's more natural for me to pray that way but it's a prayer that Jesus could pray.

Think of this. He came to his Father as Abba. So you might pray Abba, our Father.

Pray in both ways. Let that personal expression be there Abba that a child would come in that intimate way to the Heavenly Father Abba and then also our Father our Father. So the use of the word Abba to refer to God made a huge impression on the believers and it's carried forward into Paul's letters in Greek. So in Galatians chapter 4 verse 6 he says this is how we cry out to God and he writes Abba in Greek than Father. Romans 8 15 the same thing he writes Abba in Greek as well as saying Father because it made an impression on the believers.

We can come to Almighty God the King of the universe the sovereign creator of all things the beginning and the end the Alpha and Omega the one who is omniscient and omnipotent who rules. We can come to him saying Abba Abba. Luke says Father Matthew says our Father and Jesus in his own praying would not only pray Avinu our Father as traditional Jews pray around the world Avinu our Father our King our Savior our Deliverer they pray these beautiful prayers. There's also a prayer that is not found in traditional Jewish prayer books yes individuals might have used it but it's not found in traditional Jewish prayers.

Abba Abba. So many times friends I've come to God in deep deep deep intimacy and said those same words Abba that place of intimacy that place of putting all my trust in you I have nowhere else to go but you. We'll continue opening up the Lord's Prayer in the next broadcast. If you're not getting my monthly digital edifying informative frontline newsletter with a powerful lead message with beautiful beautiful beautiful testimonies from our missionaries on the field the Hebrew word study excerpts from my book all free go to thelineoffire.org it's once a month digital and free thelineoffire.org and click subscribe today. This is Dr. Michael Brown thanks so much for tuning in just a reminder that we are listener supported if we have been a blessing to you if you're being enriched in the word and prayer and your own walk with God through this broadcast then stand with us so that we can reach many many more and bless many many more together friends we're making a difference so go to thelineoffire.org thelineoffire.org and click donate.