Welcome to the River Mountain Church Preaching Library. It is our prayer and indeed our hope that this message might inspire your life. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the preaching of God's Word. And I want to talk about filling your life with joy through prayer. Now my belief is that every good Christian prays and When we talk about prayer, and I mentioned this before, we're talking about putting your heart in sync with God's heart. That's what prayer is, becoming one with God in space and time, in a moment. And because we're talking about experiencing God's presence in prayer, it's only a deduction of sorts, but it's true, that if we're in God's presence in prayer, we're experiencing joy and pleasure. How many people experience joy and pleasure in your prayer life? You should. And if you don't, there might be a reason why. Because I find out that a lot of people don't really fully enter into the fullness of prayer. or into the presence of God. We have to remember that in the Psalms, the way they approached God was, yes, in prayer, but they met with God in a holy place, the Tent of Meeting, and there all of the great men of God, like David, their souls longed for the courts of the Lord. Their heart and their flesh would sing for joy when it got into God's presence. And we all remember that when the Ark was before David, what did David do? He danced. So again, when you're in the presence of God, you should feel like dancing. Now, I'm not a dancer, but I do experience the abundance of joy. I always say to my wife, because my wife wants me to dance, but I don't dance, that when the Spirit of the Lord comes upon me, I shall dance. So if you ever see me dancing, you know the Spirit of the Lord must be upon me. But God and his spiritual power will cause such joy to be in us that we will experience a desire just to physically move. And so when Jesus was asked by his disciples, how do I approach God? How do I get into God's presence? Jesus said to them, you pray like this. And I've spent perhaps, perhaps maybe the last 13 years, really, really studying what Jesus was trying to say about approaching God in prayer. Because so many people know the prayer that he's going to say and introduce to his disciples is what we call the Our Father. And I have found that we do the exact opposite with the Our Father that Jesus instructs his disciples never to do. For instance, One of the things we do with this prayer is we say it publicly. This is not a public prayer. Now, I've been guilty of saying it publicly. Churches pray it publicly. But Jesus says, when you pray this, I'm specifically going to tell you, when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites who love to stand and pray. Where? What is the current synagogue? The church. He says, or they like to do it on the street corners. They like to use this prayer publicly. He says, but, and the desire there is to be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have the reward in full. And he tells them specifically, but you, when you pray, how many people are you? You're you? OK, is he talking about the Lord's Prayer here? Yeah. He's saying, you, when you pray this way, here's what I want you to do. I want you to go into an inner room. And by the way, I believe this is even symbolically of us going deeper into our spiritual life, into the innermost part of us, into what we would call the Holy of Holies. Remember that the temple had a progress. He says, when you pray, you close in secret, and your Father who sees you in secret will reward you. Again, the context, Lord's Prayer in secret. Now, I am always astonished by my own lack of being biblical, and I'm also astonished that we've been 2,000 years at this, and we're still missing this. Now, let me give you the other example. And again, I'm not trying to be critical here. I'm trying to honor Jesus in His Word. I'm not trying to be critical of any movement. Believe me, I've done all of the same things. The other thing he says to do, and in the same context, he says, when you pray, don't be like this. What do they do? Meaningless repetition. The emphasis here is you don't understand the meaning. You're repeating the words, you're just repeating the words, but you don't know the meaning of the words. He says, now the Gentiles do this, But his implication is, you know better. You're not a Gentile. And I thought to myself, my upbringing, when I would go to confession as a child, and there I was told, go do meaningless repetition. Pray a non-biblical prayer, the Hail Mary, full of grace. And then top it off with an Our Father, and then an actor. Again, could you be more contrary to the words of Jesus? Jesus says, now people who are Gentiles, they think because they had this meaningless repetition, they suppose they're going to be heard because they said many words. They just kept repeating it over and over again. I mean, I'm astounded. Now, they might say, well, we're not saying this meaninglessly. You cannot tell me that. Again, am I trying to be critical? No, I'm trying to honor the words of Christ. This is an important prayer. This is so important that the idea is here, you've got to know the meaning. If you don't know the meaning of every part of this prayer, you're going to fall into meaningless repetition. You're going to say this prayer in a way that you don't really comprehend it. And so that's what I want to do today. I want to talk about the importance of this prayer and how it leads us into God's presence. It really, in many ways, is a doorway to our joy, but we have to understand it. Prayer, remember, is bringing our heart into oneness with God. And how do we do this? We do this through this doorway of understanding what Jesus is intending when he says, I'm going to teach you now how to pray. And when you get this, you will understand oneness with God, and therefore you'll experience joy and pleasures forevermore. Remember that the whole idea of oneness with God, according to Jesus, this is when he talked about abiding in the vine, and without me you can do nothing. He goes on to say, he says, these things I've spoken to you, that you're what? That my joy might be in you, and not only that, but that this joy might be full. Again, getting my heart in sync with God, bringing myself to a place where I'm approaching God in the way he taught me to approach him. So the prayer starts out this way. It says, Our Father. So what is intended by this? How many people know that when we are approaching God, we are approaching him as children? That's the only way to approach God. But specifically, we're approaching him as his children. Now, what I want to say about this is Jesus, again, in the Sermon on the Mount, talks about, I believe, our attitude of understanding our Father. He says, if you, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father, who is in heaven, give what is good to those who ask Him? The idea is, if you are going to approach God, you have to know how good He is. You have to know that your father, who you're approaching, is so good that you take the best father on earth, and God says he is far short of perfection, and if he can give a good gift, how much more? In other words, God wants you to know how good he is. When you say, our father, what you're really saying is, God, you are my only good. In the book of Hebrews it says, without faith it is impossible to please him. Listen to this very closely. And he who comes to God must believe that he is, but there's another part to this. You have to believe what? Read it. He is a rewarder of what? Of those who seek him. You must believe that as you go, my father, I'm approaching my ultimate good. I'm approaching the best father that I could possibly be approaching. And I know he's going to reward me. This is amazing that people don't approach God understanding that as I approach him, I know that he will reward me. This is a scripture that I use all the time in my devotional life as I pray through this prayer. And by the way, I'm very uncomfortable talking about this prayer publicly, because this is my intimate time with God, and the only reason I'm doing this is because I want you to fully comprehend the intimacy of this prayer. In the Book of Psalms it says, you're talking to the Lord and you're saying, Lord, I have no good besides you. There is no good in this world. There is no good in any other place. As I approach you, my good father, I recognize as your child that there is no other good but right here, right now in this place. You are my ultimate good. He is a good, good father. And I understand this, you will reward me. That means that there is no good thing that a good father will withhold from those who walk uprightly. My heart is getting into that place. And you say, well, why is it so important for you to believe that God is not only good, but he's going to give you something? How many people you like it when your children respond to you knowing that you're good? But not only that they know you're good, they know how good. And they also know that when they go to you, that you are going to bless them in some way. They're anticipating. Our grandkids, when they come to our house, they know it's going to be a good time. They know it's going to be a good time. And what do you think that does to us? We love it! When they come boating out of the car, and they come running to us, and this is like the happiest place on earth, our house. That's what God wants. He wants when you get into his presence that you got this anticipation that this is going to be the happiest time of my day. I'm going to my father's house. I'm going to meet with my God. You see, that delights our father that we go in there knowing how good he is and we know how much good he gives to us. Sometimes it's hard for us, but when our grandkids are crying to their parents, we don't want to go! We don't want to go! Can we stay another night? And we just kind of snarl at each other because we've spoiled them rottenly, right? But there's something that delights our heart in that. And it's true of the Father. He doesn't want there to be anything better than Him. He doesn't want there to be anything better than His presence. If there's something better in your life than the presence of God, then you don't understand God. This anticipation that I come to my Father as a child. And where am I going? I'm going to heaven. That's where my Father is. And this meant a lot to the Jewish people. It means little to us, I think, especially if you've prayed this prayer being repetitive and not with meaning and understanding. The Bible, when it talks about God in heaven, it has something very specific in mind. The Jewish people understood when they went into the temple that it was a special place because here's what the Bible said in Chronicles. It says, my eyes are open there and my ears are attentive to the prayers there. Remember Jesus says, go into a secret place, I'm watching you. Go into that closed place because my eyes are there, my ears are there. Go to that place because I'm right there in that place. Solomon, who is the wisest man who ever lived, he says, listen, when you come before God, you have to know this. Do not be rash with your mouth. Don't let your heart be hasty to utter prayers before God. And he says this, for God is in heaven, and you are on earth. So what? Let your words be few. See, as I come to God, I have to come to him understanding that he is already aware of my situation. Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, echoes this. He says, listen to what he says here. Speaking of people that don't know God, the Gentiles. They think they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them. Why? Your Father knows what you need before you ask Him. He sees it all, He knows it all, He controls it all. He is in heaven. He is good and He wants me to come with anticipation of goodness. But understand, I don't have to go, Oh God, do you see what's happening? No, He sees, He knows. So don't go on and on explaining the situation to him. He knows. He knows what you need before you open your mouth. I love this scripture because it tells me again these two concepts. God is good and heaven is where I get all my goodness. Listen to what it says here. Every good thing given, every perfect gift is from where? It's from above. In other words, if it's something good, if it's something perfect, the perfect gift is what I want, that must come down from above. And it comes down from my Father, who is full of light, full of knowledge, full of understanding, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning. When I come to him, he is not only good, but he knows exactly the good gift to give me. He knows exactly what the best and most perfect thing. He is in heaven, and he's going to say, now I'm going to send down to you the most perfect gift. It comes from above. And in it there is no shadow. George Jensen sent me this this week. He didn't know I was preaching this. But it's a cool little illustration here. Do you know that light gives out no shadow? that if you took a match and lit it, you can see the match, but the light gives out no shadow. And isn't that just what that scripture says? God is light and in Him there's no darkness at all. He is light. There's no darkness. It doesn't even give a shadow. And in this scripture it says, every good gift comes down from the Father of lights in which there is no variation or drifting shadow. It's perfect. And when I go to prayer, I'm not asking God for a lot of stuff because I know nothing. I'm going to God and saying, God, here's my situation. I don't explain it to him, but he knows what it is. And I want the perfect gift. Again, he's in heaven, he knows what the perfection is. So as you pray this, my good father, I come as a child, you are good, and everything that comes from heaven, you see everything, you know everything, and I know good comes from heaven. You're positioning yourself with God, fully understanding him, and then you say these words, Hallowed be your name. Do you understand? You're saying you're a perfect God in a perfect heaven who gives perfect gift. It's all about perfection. Holiness is who you are, perfection is who you are, and I want some of this perfection. I want some of this perfect good. I want some of this uncommon stuff. See, what does it mean to be holy? It means you're different, you're uncommon, you're spiritual, you're not earthly, or you're not religious. And when Jesus wants to talk to his disciples about what the Father is like in holiness, see, what do we think holiness is? If I say, oh, Paul, he is a holy, holy man, what do you picture? I don't know what you picture. But usually we picture holy people as like, oh, he doesn't watch TV and he doesn't do this. We picture some sort of ascetic monk living away someplace. And this is religious. This is not the way God defines holiness. Remember the Pharisees did not recognize Jesus' holiness because he did nothing that they classified as holy. They classify people who fast a lot as being holy. People that don't hang out with sinners, they're holy. People that don't go to a lot of parties or don't have wine, they're holy. They're so holy that they don't do this stuff. And so Jesus says, now the Son of Man came eating and drinking. Now there's nobody holier than Jesus. He comes eating and drinking. And you look at him and you say, now he's a glutton and a drunkard. Why? Because he eats a little bit, he has a little wine. He's classified as that? He hangs out with certain people, so he's a friend of sinners, of tax collectors. They're looking at holiness and they're saying, if Jesus was holy, he would fast more. If Jesus was holy, he wouldn't hang out with certain people. That's their definition of holiness. And by the way, in the 21st century church, it's still the definition. We got it wrong twice and 2,000 years later, we're still getting it wrong. You want to know what holiness is? Listen to Jesus. Here is holiness. You want to know if somebody's holy? Ask yourself, do they do this? Pray for those who persecute you. And so you may be the sons of your Father in heaven. God the Father is holy. He is in heaven. You want to be like him? You start doing this. You love your enemies. You pray for your persecutors. Look at what he goes on to say. For he makes the sun rise on the evil and good, he sends rain on the just. You stop being a vindictive person. You stop being somebody who says, I'm going to get you back, or I'm going to ignore you, or I'm going to be passive-aggressive toward you. You start treating everybody, even your enemies, with love and respect. Then you're holy. Look at what he goes on to say here. What we're talking about is common love. What is common love? Common love is when you love those who love you. Anyone can do that, Jesus says. Anyone can do that. He says, don't even the tax collectors do the same. And if you greet only your brother, what more are you doing than others? Even the Gentiles do the same. This is common love. People love who loves them. He says, if you want to be like your Father who is in heaven, who is ultimate and holy, you start doing this. He says, therefore, you must be perfect. There's that word perfection. As your heavenly Father is perfect. So if you want to know how holy you are, ask yourself the question, how do you treat your enemies? That's the mark that Jesus gives for holiness. How do you treat those who persecute you? That's holiness. How patient are you? That's holiness. Again, the Bible says we are very different from God. His ways and our ways do not line up. His thoughts and our thoughts do not line up. But the only thing that allows God to love people that are so far away, how far away? We are so far away from God, it's like traveling to the ends of the universe. That's how far away we are. As far as the heavens or higher than the earth. The only thing that causes him to tolerate us is the fact that his love is the same distance. As high as the heavens or above the earth, so great is his steadfast love to those who fear him. His love fills in the gap. How big is this idea that God is loving and merciful to people? That at the end of this teaching on prayer, Jesus goes back to this one point, one point only. It's like, I'm not going to leave the subject of prayer until I finish this clarity. Here's what he says here. Right after he says, deliver us from evil, he says this. For if you forgive others their trespasses, so your Heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive you yours." In other words, if you can't get to this place of forgiveness of people that have hurt you, if you cannot get to the place where you love your enemies and pray for your persecutors, you might as well not even pray. Are you listening to me, Church? There is no connection to a loving, merciful God if we are not loving and merciful people. How is God holy? He's holy in His love and His mercy and His compassion to a broken humanity. And if we can't get there, I'm going to say this, I doubt that we're children of God. Because the children of God eventually adopt their father's DNA. and their father's characteristics of love and mercy to the sinners and to the broken. Pray like this. You have a good father who is in heaven, who sees all things, knows all things, gives all good gifts from heaven. And He is holy. You need to know that. You are approaching a loving, merciful, compassionate God. He is holy. That's not what we think about when we think of holiness, because we've been doing it. He is loving. He is merciful. He wants to be loving and merciful to you right now. And then we're going to close with looking just at this. When we get that perspective of who our Father is, His love, His mercy, His goodness, His kindness coming down from heaven, now we say, God, give me that kingdom. Give me that kingdom. May that kingdom that is in heaven come to earth. May your will, which is just like this, may that come to earth. I want your kingdom to come now. I want your will to be done on earth now. I need the kingdom. Do you understand this? The best way of understanding this idea of the kingdom is to understand the Jewish mindset as they approached God at the temple. They were coming to his house. They were coming into his kingdom. And Paul goes back to the Jewish people and how they approached God by bringing a sacrifice. And here's what Paul says to the Romans. He says, I'm going to appeal to you, brothers, that by the mercies of God, that you will present your bodies as a living sacrifice to God. And by presenting your bodies holy and acceptable to God, this is worship. You want to know what worship is? Worship is when we get to that place where we can present our... Can you hear me? Okay. So he says, I appeal to you brothers, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. The idea is that worship involves me presenting myself to God daily. How often was this sacrifice made that Paul is referring to? It was done in the morning and it was done in the evening. If you have a devotional life, and you really want it to click with God, and you really want to do it according to Romans, then this is what I would tell you. is have a morning devotion and have an evening devotion, have two different devotions, because, again, it's not Old Testament, it's Paul saying, I want you to do just the way they did in the Old Testament with the sacraments, or with the sacrifices. And what every Jewish person knew, if I was a rabbi, and I study rabbis, but if I was a rabbi, I would tell you that an altar represents surrender. that when you came to God, you understood how good God was, you understood where he was coming from, you understood he was holy and you were going to be approaching him with fear and trembling. This place of an altar is a place of surrender, it's also a place of transformation, and now you can begin to pray for God's provisions. And his provisions are both spiritual and natural, righteousness, direction, protection, deliverance, water, shelter, food, it all comes as I bring my sacrifice to him. And again, what did I say? What did Paul say? He says you bring your bodies to be a sacrifice, just like they did in the morning and the evening. You lay your life down. And the idea is... How many people know that when you were born, you were the king of yourself? You have a kingdom. You're the king of yourself. You have a will. You can do whatever you want to do. And you notice when you get to this part of the prayer of surrender, you're saying, may his kingdom come, may his will be done. And what you're indirectly saying is, my kingdom is over. My will is over. I am going to learn now to trust God with every aspect of my life. I'm going to learn to bring my body and let God begin to provide for me as God. This is the hardest thing for Christians to do, and it's the reason why God took the children of Israel into the wilderness. Look at what it says here. This is the whole reason of Exodus. And then the Lord said to Moses, I will rain down bread from heaven for you. the people who are to go out each day and they're to gather enough for each day. In this way, I'm going to test them to see if they'll follow my instructions. Jesus is saying, I want a people that will come to me daily and know that I will provide for them daily. It's not a one-time deal. It's every day I become extremely dependent upon God. To be a disciple means that I begin to trust God's word to me each and every day. Remember the story of the rich young ruler? Jesus said, OK, you obey the commandments about love? He says, yes. He says, now, there's one thing you're lacking. I want you to give away everything you have. And what he was saying here, and you'll find this out later, and I've talked about it many times, he was saying, I want you to trust in nothing but me. and then I want you to follow me." Now remember, he was not only rich, he was a ruler. And Jesus is saying, you've got to trust God for all your provisions, not yourself, and you've got to stop being the ruler of your life and you've got to follow me. Can you do that? He could not. He could not surrender all of it, and then say, I'm no longer going to rule my life, I'm going to spend the rest of my days following somebody else. How many people here know it's hard to follow people? But Jesus isn't asking them to follow anybody but a person who's following God. Jesus was God, but he followed the Father completely. So as you pray this prayer, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth, you are surrendering all. You are saying it's his kingdom, it's his will being done on earth. This is the point, also, of transformation. What does Paul say? He says, you present your bodies to God as this holy sacrifice. Why? There's a point. Why do you surrender your will? Why do you come to this place of just laying your life down on the altar? He says this. He says, don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. At the altar, and again, every Jewish person knew this, the altar was a place of not only surrender of the will, the lamb was tied. That's not going anywhere. That is a sacrifice. That is done. Remember Abraham. God, you promised me something, but I'm going to surrender what you promised me. You promised me a child, but I'm going to lay him on the altar. This is surrender. And what you're saying is, at this point, not my will. I'm surrendering my will. It's not about what I want, God. It's about what you want. I want this child. I want this promise. But no. When you go to the ultimate altar, Jesus laying his life down like the Lamb of God, his ultimate prayer is, not my will, not my human will. I'm going to surrender even my greatest desire to live as a human being. I want your will to be done. The transformation comes as you surrender. And what happens with fire as it meets a sacrifice? What does fire do to a sacrifice? It not only consumes it, but the Jewish people had this visual that the flesh of that animal was now becoming what? Smoke. What is smoke? Smoke is like a spiritual substance. It goes from being visible flesh to now being transparent like spirit. And what they saw happening is a connection to heaven. Remember, we're praying in this prayer, will his kingdom come down to earth? And so this surrender part of this is where I am connecting my heart by surrender to heaven. The transformation of my mind that now I can begin to discern what the will of God is. Thanks for listening to this message from River Mountain Church. 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