I invite you to open your Bibles to Luke chapter 11. We have finished chapter 10. We are moving on to Luke chapter 11. I want to read to you the first four verses of Luke chapter 11. It happened that while Jesus was praying in a certain place after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, Teach us to pray, just as John also taught his disciples. And he said to them, when you pray, say, Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves also forgive everyone who is indebted to us, and lead us not into temptation. Now, as you know, these verses of Scripture are commonly referred to as the Lord's Prayer, and they are amongst the most beloved and well-known verses found anywhere in the Bible. More sermons have been preached about this prayer than about any other prayer mentioned in Scripture, and more people have recited these words in their church services than any other biblical passage. And yet with all the attention given to the Lord's Prayer, it is very surprising that most people don't realize that Jesus never prayed all the words of this prayer. In fact, not only didn't he pray this exact prayer, but he couldn't pray this exact prayer. It was impossible for him to pray exactly this way, because this prayer contains a request for the forgiveness of one's sins. And since Jesus never sinned, he could never ask for forgiveness, nor did he ever need to ask for forgiveness. Therefore, in the words of one Bible teacher, this prayer, he said, is the prayer that Jesus never prayed. Now, although this prayer has been called the Lord's Prayer for the last 2,000 years, and that's how people think of it, it would be more appropriate to call it the Disciples' Prayer, because Jesus used these words to teach his disciples how to pray. See, rather than viewing the Lord's Prayer as the precise way that Jesus always prayed, the Lord's Prayer was given as, note this, it was given as a model prayer for his disciples to learn from and to follow. But note this, to follow, yes, but in principle, not in exact wording. In other words, rather than a prayer to be recited word for word, This prayer was intended by Jesus to be a teaching tool to guide his followers on the timeless truths that should govern and direct the way that we pray. Now, it's helpful to know that the Lord's Prayer is mentioned two times in the Bible. I actually read it to you earlier, once here in our passage of Luke chapter 11, and then, as I read earlier to you, Matthew chapter 6, part of the Lord's Sermon on the Mount. And though they were given on two separate occasions, the one in Matthew was given in the area of Galilee, while the one in Luke occurring a few months later was given in the region of Judea, in both cases Jesus presented this prayer for the same exact purpose as a teaching tool for his disciples, a primer, if you will, upon which their prayer should be patterned but never to be repeated verbatim. Now, although Matthew's accounts and Luke's accounts of the Lord's Prayer are similar, there are some minor differences. Here's how one Bible teacher explained the differences between them and why they are different. He writes, study of Jesus' prayer in Luke reveal that it is a different Lord's Prayer than in Matthew's Gospel. The familiar rhythms and comfortable cadences of the prayer in Matthew 6 are not found here. Also, the prayer in Luke lacks two petitions that are included in Matthew. Your kingdom come is not followed by your will be done. And the final petition, lead us not into temptation, is not followed by but deliver us from the evil one. Jesus clearly taught his disciples about prayer more than once. Also, the lines from Matthew are implicit in Luke's shorter form. That is, when one prays, your kingdom come, he or she is implicitly praying, your will be done. And likewise, lead us not into temptation implies a desire for deliverance from it. The variations in the Lord's prayer come naturally from Jesus' desire to teach a pattern for prayer rather than a rigid insistence on form. Now, since obviously Jesus taught his disciples how to pray on more than one occasion. And since Luke's is a briefer version of the larger teaching on prayer found in Matthew chapter 6, as we go through these various petitions over the next few weeks, I've chosen to include Matthew's version in order to give you a fuller and more complete teaching and explanation about prayer as Jesus intended it to be understood. Now our passage in Luke is very helpful in determining the purpose and the intent behind the Lord's prayer because it came about in response to a request by one of the Lord's disciples. Notice what we read in the opening verse of chapter 11. It happened that while Jesus was praying in a certain place after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray just as John also taught his disciples. Alec begins by telling us how our Lord's teaching on prayer, how it came about, why he began to teach them about praying. He tells us it happened that while Jesus was praying in a certain place. Now where Jesus was praying, we aren't told, nor is the location frankly important. It's not important. What is important though is that on this occasion his disciples were in the vicinity of where he was praying so that they observed him praying. This wasn't always the case because although the New Testament presents Jesus as praying many times, and on numerous occasions and numerous events so that his disciples often heard his prayers, there were other times when the Lord sought to be alone when he prayed. This is precisely what we read in Luke chapter 5 verse 16, but Jesus himself We read, would often slip away to the wilderness and pray. So he wanted to be alone at times. Nobody around him, just praying alone. Again we read the famous verse now, Mark chapter 1 verse 35. Many of you know this. In the early morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went away to a secluded place and was praying there. So there were times when the Lord just wanted to be alone and spend time with the Father in prayer. But on this particular occasion, Luke tells us that Jesus was praying in the presence of his disciples. And when he had finished praying, one of his disciples, no doubt speaking for all of them, asked him, Lord, teach us to pray just as John, meaning John the Baptist, also taught his disciples. Now, two factors motivated their request for Jesus to teach them to pray. Factor number one is that Christ's disciples, having observed him praying, must have been very impressed by his prayer life. This is highly significant. Why? Because, as you know, our Lord's disciples were Jewish men, which means they were nurtured. They were raised on an understanding of prayer. They were saturated and very familiar with the Old Testament, so they knew about praying. They prayed themselves. They were men who believed in prayer, men who practiced praying. And yet, after watching Jesus pray, they felt like they didn't know how to pray, and they needed him to teach them how to speak to God. In other words, his praying stirred, it stirred the hearts of these men, and they wanted to pray like him. That is to say, against the background of Christ's prayer life, they saw the deficiencies of their own prayer life, and so they asked Jesus, teach us to pray. Teach us how to pray. We don't know how to pray. After listening to you, we realize we don't even know how to pray. Now, to emphasize what I said earlier, it is critical to understand what these men are actually asking. of the Lord. They aren't asking Jesus to teach them a specific prayer to repeat verbatim, but rather to teach them how to pray. In other words, they didn't say, Lord, teach us a prayer, but rather teach us to pray. And that's exactly what the Lord's Prayer is. It serves as a general skeleton outline that highlights various truths in order to guide us on how we should speak to our God. The second factor that prompted the disciples to ask Jesus to teach them how to pray is that they were aware that John the Baptist, the forerunner of Christ, the messenger of Messiah, had taught his followers how to pray, and so they wanted Jesus to teach them, as his followers, how to pray, too. Now, going back to the first reason the Lord's disciples asked him to teach them to pray, which is that against the background of Christ's wonderful prayer life, they saw the deficiencies in their own prayer life. In order for Jesus his teaching on prayer to really impact our lives, we need to feel just like his first disciples felt. Totally deficient, totally lacking in our personal prayer life. We need to see how needy we are. In other words, unless we see that we have a need for instruction on praying, we won't benefit from the teaching of the Lord's Prayer. We won't have the right attitude, the right openness to be instructed. You see, the reality is that some Christians don't see their need for any instruction on prayer. In fact, they actually resent anyone telling them. how to pray because they see prayer as being so intensely private and personal that it is beyond being evaluated, beyond being critiqued by anyone. But in studying the Lord's Prayer, we have to remember that it isn't just anyone who is critiquing us. It isn't just anyone who's evaluating our prayer life and revealing any flaws on how we speak to God. It's Jesus. It's our King. It's our Lord who's teaching us how to pray. And He has every right to scrutinize how we pray and then correct us. Listen, if the Lord's first followers realized that they needed help in praying, then certainly we need help as well. All of us, no matter how long you've been a Christian, we all need help in knowing how to pray. And that's really the whole purpose of the Lord's Prayer. It helps us by providing a perfect summary, an outline form of the way every single Christian is to pray. See, everything we need to know about how to pray, it's presented here. It's presented in the most concise way in this prayer. Using the briefest of statements, Jesus sums up exactly what we should all be saying in our prayer life in principle, if not in precise wording. For example, when Jesus said that we should pray, hallowed be your name, he didn't mean that we should recite those exact words when we pray. He meant that when you pray, in whatever words you choose to pray and use, you should have a concern for God's name and his character to be treated as holy. That's the principle. Or in telling us to pray, your kingdom come, the timeless principle here is that we should be praying for people to be saved, for their lives to come under his rulership, to come under his kingship. for his kingdom rule to expand to their lives. And the words, give us this day our daily bread means that you should ask God to provide for your individual daily needs, whatever those needs might be. And to pray, forgive us our sins or our debts and do not lead us into temptation. It reveals that our prayer should include confession of our sins as we ask God to help us in our own personal struggles in sanctification. See, this is why the Lord's Prayer, folks, is just so significant, because it contains all of the essential elements necessary for a meaningful prayer life. If you base your petitions on the principles found here in the Lord's Prayer, expanding upon each one of these principles by putting them in your own words to fit your own unique circumstances, you'll be praying in an effective way, in a righteous way, in a way that Jesus intends for you to pray. As one Bible teacher put it, he said, in fewer than 70 words, we find the masterpiece of the infinite mind of God, who alone could compress every conceivable element of true prayer into such a brief and simple form, a form that even a young child can understand, but the most mature believer cannot fully comprehend. In other words, only our brilliant God could come up with something like this. Now, one of the keys to understanding the Lord's Prayer is to know that though this prayer lists several petitions, everything in this prayer is centered around promoting God's glory, promoting His honor. See, the Lord's Prayer in Matthew's longer version can naturally be divided into two parts, with the first three petitions concerning God directly, His name, His kingdom, his will, and the second three petitions concerning our needs, our daily food, our sins, our temptations. However, it would be wrong to conclude by the structure of the Lord's Prayer that half of our prayer should be about God and half of our prayer should be about us. And that's because according to scripture, and note this, the purpose, the purpose of praying is always to promote God's honor and his glory. Jesus very clearly spoke of this when he said these words in John 14 verse 13. He said, whatever you ask in my name, that will I do so that the father may be glorified in the son. Jesus said that our motivation in bringing any petition, any request to God should be for Him, for God, to be glorified. This truth was deeply impressed upon me many years ago when my mother was dying from lung cancer and I was so burdened for her salvation. I was fervently in prayer for her to be saved. However, though I certainly long for her to be saved, In being very honest, I have to say that one of my primary motivations for praying for her salvation was to make life a bit more comfortable for me. Because I was the only one in my family, family I grew up with, that was a Christian, and at times that was very difficult to be around them. And so I thought if my mom became a Christian, then my situation would be easier. But I wasn't really praying for the Lord to be glorified by her salvation. Until, until one night when the Lord deeply impressed upon me this very verse found in John 14. Whatever you ask in my name that will I do so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. The Lord dealt with me, convicted me of my selfish praying and so from that moment on I began to pray for the Lord to save my mom for his glory so that there would be one more individual who would honor his name. And in his mercy, the Lord did save her as she prayed to receive Jesus five hours before she died. But listen, there is no question that the reason so many of us have anemic prayer lives and don't see many positive answers to our prayers is because our requests are often so self-centered and they're born out of self-interest. They're all about my needs, my health, my feelings, my desires, my interests. Now, I don't want you to misunderstand. Certainly, it is appropriate to pray. for our needs. We all have needs, it's appropriate to pray for them, but not in a self-seeking way that has no concern for God to be glorified by the answer to those prayers. You see, our first consideration in bringing any request to God should never be, how does all of this affect me? or how will I benefit by the answer to this prayer? Rather, it should be, how does this affect God? How will he be honored by answering this prayer? You can easily see that Jesus had this promoting and this exalting of the Father as the primary consideration of our prayers by the way he did structure the Lord's Prayer. Notice that he mentions God's concerns first. in this prayer before any of our personal concerns. He purposely did this in order to teach us, and listen closely, that only when God's name is first honored, when his kingdom is first longed for, and when his will is first considered, then we can look to him to meet our needs. In other words, the Lord is telling us that His glory is to be our number one priority. That is to say that His affairs must come before our affairs. Our personal needs, though certainly important, are secondary to exalting Him and His will. So from beginning to end, the Lord's prayer shows us that when we pray, our first concern should be for God and for his honor, so that even when we do pray for ourselves, it is only so that God may be glorified by the answer. However, before we can even begin to ask anything of God in prayer, we first have to recognize the person that we are addressing in our prayers, right? And so before any instruction on how to petition God, before giving any of that, Jesus first speaks about the God who we are petitioning, the God who we're requesting from. So in the opening statement of the Lord's Prayer, in teaching us how to pray, Jesus gives us three key truths about the God we speak to, with the first key truth being that the God we speak to, folks, is, number one, he's a father. He's a father. We break in in verse two. And he said to them, when you pray, say father. Most of us are more accustomed to hearing the very familiar words of the Lord's Prayer from Matthew's version, our father who is in heaven, We're familiar with that, but we tend to not give much thought to that. In fact, we're so familiar with it, we hardly even think about it. We just say it. There's a certain cadence to it, certain rhythm. But we really don't pay much thought to it. However, however, the Lord's first disciples, these Jewish men who followed him, must have been absolutely startled and shocked to hear Jesus say that they were to address God as their father. That's because no Jewish person up to that time ever, ever addressed God directly as his father. Instead, he would address God with certain exalted titles. And they still do this in the synagogues to this day, such as Sovereign Lord, King of the Universe, Ruler, Creator of all. Now it's certainly true that the Old Testament writers, they believed in the fatherhood of God and they wrote about God being a father, but never, note this, never in a personal and intimate way to individuals. They always presented God as father in his relationship to the nation of Israel. There's not one instance in any of the 39 Books in the Old Testament in which any individual ever calls upon God as his personal father. Abraham never did. Moses never did. David never did. No prophet ever called God his father. Of the 14 times God is mentioned as father in the Old Testament, it is always in relation to Israel as a nation and never to an individual. For example, Isaiah 63 verse 16 says, you, O Lord, are our father, but meant as a nation. Jeremiah 31 9 says, for I am a father to Israel. In 1 Chronicles 29.10, David praises God by saying, blessed are you, O Lord of Israel, our father forever and ever. And in Exodus 4, verse 22, God acknowledges that he's a father to the Jewish nation by saying, Israel is my son, my firstborn. So based on this understanding that God was a father to the nation collectively and not to any individuals within that nation, no Jewish person ever directly spoke to God as his father. That is, until Jesus did. And Jesus did it a lot. As one reads through the New Testament Gospels, it becomes clear that Jesus did not use the standard Jewish way of addressing God in prayer. He didn't speak to him as king of the universe or sovereign one or creator or ruler of Israel. Instead, He had an intimacy with God that was reflected in the way he consistently addressed God as Father. The four New Testament gospel writers record more than 60 times Jesus addressing God as Father. The one exception, the one exception to this being the time when Jesus was on the cross and he cried out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? But the reason he didn't address God as Father at that time was because he was stressing at that very moment while on the cross that he was being forsaken by the Father as he was dying in the place of being our substitute, our sin-bearer, separated from the fellowship of his Father. Therefore, the fatherhood son intimacy that he had experienced for all of eternity was broken. And for the very first time ever, the first person of the triune Godhead was just God to Jesus, not Father. But in all other cases, Jesus spoke intimately to God by addressing him as Father. And by doing this, the Lord was revealing a closeness he had with God that was foreign, foreign to the typical Jewish person of his day. You see, as we said before, they spoke of God in such terms, these exalted terms, a sovereign one, ruler of the universe, king of Israel, because that's how they knew God. That's how they knew God, as awesome and powerful, but also as remote and distant from them. As one Bible teacher put it, he said, they saw God as a distant faded figure who had once guided their ancestors. That's all. But when Jesus instructed his disciples on how to pray, the very first thing he taught them was that they should address God in the same intimate way that he did. And what's so amazing about this, folks, is just how intimate this intimacy was. You see, while the Greek word used in the New Testament for father is pater, Pater, Jewish people, including Jesus, spoke in Aramaic. And the Aramaic word for father is Abba, which is equivalent to our English terms daddy, dad, papa, or even dearest father. The word Abba was one of the first words that a Jewish child back then learned to say, daddy. It's also true today, as Michelle and I once, when we were in Israel, we were getting our luggage in the airport. We heard a young Jewish boy in Israel addressing his father. He kept saying, Abba, Abba. It's a special and it's a precious word because it is a word of endearment. It's a word of tenderness. It's a word of closeness. It's a word of familiarity, of nearness. And that's the way Jesus said that we are to address God as our Abba. our papa, our dearest father. Now it may startle some of you to think of God this way, but Jesus was really teaching us that it would be very appropriate in our prayers to address God as our daddy in heaven, or our heavenly papa. And if that sounds unthinkable, if that sounds irreverent to you, foreign to the way that you were raised, then consider this sobering thought. That's exactly how the Jewish people of Christ's day thought too. They considered God too remote, too awesome, too majestic, too exalted to ever be called daddy by a mere human being. But that's exactly how Jesus commands us to address God in our prayers. That's the point. I want you to understand that the precise word or words that you choose to use to express your intimacy With God, those words aren't that critical, whether you refer to him as father, Abba, daddy, papa, dear father, words of that effect. But what is important is that you understand that if you are a true follower of Christ, a true disciple of Jesus Christ, then you have become a child of God. And that means that God is your father and that you can and you should have such a close and personal relationship with him that you can speak and relate to him with words of personal warmth and intimacy. You see, not everyone is a child of God. The Bible teaches that, though, God is the creator of all. And in that sense, we're all, we could say, we're all his offspring. He is the Father only to those who trust Christ as Savior and Lord. Here's what we read in John chapter 1, verses 11 through 13. Makes it abundantly clear. John chapter 1, starting at verse 11. He came to his own, and those who were his own did not receive him. But as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in his name, who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. See, only those who have been born again born from above by faith in Jesus Christ, only those enter the family of God. Only those have the right, the authority to be children of God because our sins no longer separate us from God. And being forgiven, we have been brought into fellowship with Him, and that means we're now part of God's intimate, personal, forever family. So that He is our Father, and we are indeed His children. And note this, one of the very first indications that you have truly trusted Christ as your Savior is that you have a new awareness and a Holy Spirit-given inward impulse to relate to God as your Father. I say that because of what we read in such passages as Galatians chapter 4, verse 6, where Paul said, because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Paul said essentially the same thing in Romans 8.15. He said, for you have not received the spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, Abba, Father. Now what these two verses mean is that at the time of our conversion, the Holy Spirit comes to live within us. And the Spirit is the one who not only makes us aware that God is now our Father, but he also moves us. He gives us an impulse to call God our Father so that we now cry out to Him in our prayers in a way that we never previously spoke to Him. Abba, Father, Father in Heaven. We know He's our Father. We address Him that way. We want to speak to Him that way. We now relate to Him differently. Concerning this new awareness of God as your Father, Bible teacher Kent Hughes wrote this about his own personal experience. He said, Sincerely addressing God as Abba, or dearest father, is not only an indication of spiritual health, but it's a mark of the authenticity of our faith. This is precisely what happened to me when I came to faith during the summer before my freshman year in high school. Before that, I had a vague theological notion of the universal paternity of God as the creator of all humanity. His fatherhood was there, but it was not personal. But at my conversion, God became warm and personal and dear father was the constant refrain of my soul. I knew God and I knew he was my father. This realization is one of the primary works of the Holy Spirit. He keeps enhancing the spirit of sonship in us and increasingly integrates it into our lives. So if God is your father, then how should this practically affect your prayer life? Well, every time you speak to God as your Abba Father, it should be a fresh reminder to you that the one you are speaking to is loving and kind, and he has your best interests at heart. He is your father. And therefore, he can be trusted to provide for everything you really need. Because that's what a loving father does. As a father, God takes it upon himself to provide for his children's needs. Jesus spoke very clearly of this, Matthew chapter 6. Starting in verse 25, he addressed an area that many of us are guilty of. We worry. We're fearful. Jesus said, you don't need to be. And here's what he said. For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life as to what you'll eat or what you'll drink, nor for your body as to what you'll put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air. They don't sow nor reap nor gather into barns. And yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? And who of you, by being worried, can add a single hour to his life? And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow. They don't toil, nor do they spin. Yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all of his glory clothed himself like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will he not much more clothe you, you of little faith? Do not worry then, saying, what will we eat, or what will we drink, or what will we wear for clothing? For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things, for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all of these things will be added to you. What a great passage of scripture, knowing God as your Abba, your Papa, your Father. It ought to take folks all the anxiety and fear out of life for you. Why should you worry about anything when you have a loving father who has promised to meet your needs? And he knows your needs before you even ask him. But he wants you to ask him anyway, because he loves hearing from you. Again, in Matthew chapter 7, starting in verse 7, Jesus speaks about God being good to His children in that He provides for them. He said, Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you'll find. Knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man is there among you who, when his son asks for a loaf, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, he'll not give him a snake, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, don't we? We're evil, but we know how to give good gifts to our children. How much more will your Father, who is in heaven, give what is good to those who ask Him? If we're evil by nature, if we're depraved and corrupt, and yet it's in our hearts to give good gifts to our children, how much more will God, who is a perfect Father, give to us? as his children. That's what the Lord is saying. So the truth of God is your father. It ought to cultivate in you intimacy with him, trust, closeness, warmth of fellowship towards him. However, Listen closely, though we should be close with God, we need to be careful, need to be careful that we don't confuse spiritual intimacy for irreverence and becoming flippant with him and treating him with disrespect. We can easily cross the line. And so Jesus is careful in the Lord's prayer to teach us a second key truth about the God we speak to and praying to him. Not only do we speak to him as a father, but we also speak to him as a sovereign father. Referring to the Matthew accounts of the Lord's Prayer, Jesus said that when we pray to God, we ought to pray not merely to God as Father, but to God who is our Father, who is in heaven. Now, contrary to what we might think at first, the expression who is in heaven, it's not so much a reference to God's location in heaven, as it is to His sovereignty, His power, His exaltation above all things. You see, when Jesus speaks of our Father as being in heaven, He is stressing His elevation above all, which means that He has the ultimate power to do whatever He chooses to do because He is the Most High God. The psalmist captured the thought of God being the sovereign exalted one in heaven when he wrote these words in Psalm 115 verse 3. He said, our God is in the heavens. He does whatever he pleases. That sums it up, doesn't it? Our God is in the heavens. He does whatever he pleases. He doesn't ask anyone's permission. King Nebuchadnezzar recognized and acknowledged the God of heaven's exalted status when he praised him with these words in Daniel chapter 4, starting Verse 34, for his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation. All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing but he does according to his will in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of earth. And no one can ward off his hand or say to him, what have you done, our God? is the exalted one. So folks, God's sovereignty is such an important truth to grasp because it has a profound impact upon your relationship with the Lord, especially in your prayer life. An understanding of God as your sovereign Father will impact your prayer life in two ways. First of all, it'll impact your prayer life in that it will protect you from becoming so familiar with God as a loving Abba Father that you forget to show reverence and respect for Him. Though He is our Father and therefore we should approach Him with intimacy, we also need to remember that He is our Father who is on His throne in heaven, ruling over the universe, and therefore we must be careful to approach Him with humility, devotion, and adoration. One Bible teacher had this to say about the problem of letting intimacy with God cross over to disrespect. He wrote, today we have the problem of flippancy. Whether motivated by the desire to startle or amuse or just out of ignorance, some will refer to God as the man upstairs, or worse, the big guy. They will say, hi, God. It's me, Bob. How you doing? Hey, I was just wondering. And off they go. If the designation father invites intimacy with God, the addition of heavenly reminds us to avoid undue intimacy or flippancy, reminds us that God is in heaven and we are on earth. So let me illustrate the balance between intimacy and flippancy. with God from the words of Bible teacher John Gillespie, writing in his book, the book that our men study, is going through right now. It's a book called Following Jesus in an Age of Quitters. And here's what John Gillespie writes. He said, let me take you back to my boyhood for a minute. For my earthly father very well represented our heavenly father. As a small child, I could climb onto the lap of my father, always assured of a welcome. As a teen, I often knew his embrace. I could be myself with all my attendant flaws in his presence. As a young man, I could gain access to him anytime when others could not by phone or in person with a big problem or just to talk. He was always ready to listen. He was ready and willing to fix whatever mess I had made. But you dared not waste his time. I could not slouch in his presence. I could not approach him with a swagger or answer him with a, yeah. I had to knock first. and take my hat off when I entered his office. Respect. He was both daddy and sir to me, and that was good. Likewise, folks, when we speak to God, he is both daddy and sir to us. We are to speak to him as a dear, caring father, but also as an exalted, sovereign one. And that means we must approach him with a deep sense of love, but also with awe and worship. Now, the second way that an understanding of God's sovereignty impacts our prayers is that in recognizing our Father as the sovereign one of the universe, we recognize that he has all the powers and all the resources to answer our prayers. In other words, there is no limit to God's ability to answer your petitions. There's nothing too hard for him to accomplish. He has all the resources of heaven available at his disposal. And what that means for you is that you can come to God with great confidence that he is able to answer your prayers, regardless of how impossible your situation looks to you. God is in total control over people, over nations, over nature, and over the course of human events and everything else. And so you can pray with confidence that he will change lives and circumstances according to his will. Our God really is an awesome God, and he does reign over the affairs of men. And if you're a believer in Christ, then this sovereign, omnipotent God is your Father, your merciful Heavenly Father. So in praying, Jesus instructs us that the God we speak to is, first of all, he's a father. Secondly, he's a sovereign father. But there's a third key truth that Jesus taught us about how to address God in prayer. When we speak to God, Jesus said we are to speak to him as a father to a family of children. Now, it is wonderful to be able to pray to God as a father. But it's important, important for us to realize that he's not only your father, not only my father, he's also the father of all who have trusted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. And that's why in the Lord's Prayer, in Matthew's version, Jesus didn't say you should pray my father, he said you should pray our father. And what this tells us is that our praying should and must never be only about those things that concern us. In coming to God as our Father, we realize that we're part of a larger family, a global family, His forever family, and therefore we need to be praying for our brothers and sisters in Christ. See, an understanding that God is the father to a family of believing children, it'll help us, it'll help you, it'll help me put a lid on self-focused praying because it reminds us to pray for others in the family. The Apostle Paul certainly did this. As you read Paul's letters, in almost all of his letters, he mentions how he is praying for other believers. Following the Apostle's pattern, we should be praying for what? Well, pray for the spiritual growth of other Christians. Pray for the Lord to grant them wisdom and insight and discernment. Pray for their usefulness to the Lord, that they would produce fruit in abundance that would bring him glory. Pray for their understanding of scripture and pray for any specific need that you know that they have. So I ask you, do you do that? Do you do that? God wants you to. because he loves all of his children and commands us to love them as well. And that involves that we pray for them. So in answer to the disciples' request that Jesus teach them to pray, the first thing, the first thing the Lord told them, and the first thing he tells us is that the one you are praying to is a father who is sovereign and who is the father of all who have believed upon Jesus Christ, his son, for their salvation. Have you believed upon Christ. Are you trusting in Jesus Christ alone for your salvation? And I emphasize alone for your salvation. Do you know God as your father? Is there something within you that internally you know that he's your father? You know that he's not remote and distant. The gap has been bridged by Christ. If you don't know that, then let us help you. Let us help you. If you'd like to speak to someone about this, about knowing Christ, then just see me after the service as some of our elders will be up here happy to assist you. But if you are a child of God, then in response to your Lord's teaching on prayer, what changes are you going to make in the way you speak to God? Will you make an effort from this point on to be more intimate with him? Will you dare to call him daddy or similar words of endearment? Will you make an effort to be more reverent in how you speak to him, to pay attention, to not just use vain repetition where you're saying things you're not even thinking about what you're saying? Will you be more trusting of him, confident that as he is the sovereign of the universe, he can handle your most difficult circumstances? And will your prayers reflect that you are interested in God's other children so that you will pray for them? You know, each month, the beginning of the month, you're given a prayer calendar for our missionaries. Do you pray for them? Each day you can pray for a different missionary or missions organization. You should take that seriously. and pray for those who are on the Lakeside Prayer List. Almost all of you get the Lakeside Prayer List online. Goes out each week. Do you look at that? Do you pray for people? You should. So how are we to pray? It begins by recognizing that the one we speak to is a wonderful father. Let's speak to him right now. Our father, our Abba, Papa, heavenly dad, dearest father, We thank you for making us your children. We thank you for loving us, for adopting us, for having us be born again into your family when we were once so estranged and lost. Lord, may your words today impact the way we relate to you. May we put into practice these truths we have heard and not go back to our old habits of how we pray. May we think differently when we speak to you. Lord, We pray for those who have never trusted you. They don't know you as their father. They don't know you as one who they can be intimate with and warm with. But Lord, we pray that you'll draw them to yourself. We pray that there will be somebody who comes to faith in Christ and will experience that wonderful reality of the Spirit of God crying into their hearts, Abba, Father. So Lord, we pray to that end. We pray that when we pray from henceforth now, we'll remember that the purpose of praying is to bring you glory and not just to get whatever we want. So I pray the words of your word from this sermon will linger long in our lives and not just be a fleeting lesson we learn and then we go to lunch and forget about it. I pray it will impact us forever for your glory and honor. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.