And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites. They love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their award in full. But when you pray, go to your room, close the door, and pray to your Father who is unseen.
Then your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think 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. This then is how you should pray.
Our Father in heaven, hallelujah be your name. Your kingdom come, you will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread, forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. This is the word of war.
Thanks be to God. Thank you, Mr. David. So I'm going to try to condemn some of this down, because I'm all excited.
And when I'm excited, that's a dangerous thing to do, is let me be up here because then I get really excited. So the question today is how do you pray, especially when you don't know what to pray, when to pray, where to pray. I mean, like how do you really pray? Last week we looked at it to the importance of being a body that prays together, strengthened together a powerful church, is a praying church.
And that's great, and that's fine. But what happens when you just don't know how to pray? When we were little, we were taught those little prayers. Now I lay me down to sleep.
I pray the Lord my soul to keep. Our baby, our blessing prayers, God is good, and God is great. And so we have these prayers that we remember as a child. But as we mature and as we grow out, how do we pray?
As our scripture here, this morning tells us several things, and it's almost a slap in the face when we think about it. Don't go out and be seen. Don't go babble. Go close your door and go in private.
But be sure and pray our Father in heaven. So it can be a little overwhelming when we look at those things and think, well, that's not how I do it. What am I doing wrong? Well, first of all, what we're doing wrong is this.
Perhaps we're just not doing it. We learn by doing. There's no real true manual. That's a model of prayer.
But if there's no real manual of how to pray. But if there were, perhaps the first thing I would say is you begin by doing. You learn to pray by praying. Now, when we're thinking of little children, when we want them to learn to walk, we grab them by the little fingers and their little hands and we hold them and we teach them, come on.
You learn to walk by walking. You learn to read by reading. The teacher doesn't hand you a book and say, here you go. You begin to sound out letters.
You begin to learn what they mean. You begin to put letters together to form words and words form sentences. And before you know it, you're reading. But it's a process.
You begin to pray by simply opening your mouth. We can't sit there and just wait for God to tell us the next step. We begin by just opening our mouths and allowing ourselves to talk to God. But we also, when we do these things, we open our mouths, we begin to speak and we must be honest.
We've got to be honest when we're praying because this is a conversation between you and God. And part of the reason why the scripture says not to Bible and part of the reason it says to go behind closed doors because it wants us to understand the importance of this is between you and God. Your time with God and we have corporate prayer. Don't get me wrong on that.
But your intimate daily prayer time is something between you and God. It's not so that you can impress other people and God doesn't need to be impressed by us. But it's a time when we can go quietly before Him and say, this is who I am. These are the struggles of my heart.
And this is between me and you. A lot of times the battles we fight are because we haven't gone to God first and we've gone to everybody else beforehand. And we get a lot of skewed answers and direction. And so that's part of the reason why we don't want to Bible.
We don't want to be out there for everybody. We want to go to God and acknowledge that He is the Father, that He is the head of all things in heaven and on earth. And so we go into worshipful state too. So prayer is this beautiful thing that is intimate and private, but ultimately it's for God's glory.
And I love it. God knows our hearts. He just wants us to open our mouths and begin. But for some reason it scares us.
It scares us to be vulnerable. It scares us especially whenever I say, anybody want to pray? If I were anybody? Yeah, that's a no for me, don't.
Yeah. Maybe we look like this. This is what y'all look like when I say, anybody want to pray? This is a look I get like this little baby thing here.
That's exactly what y'all look like. Anybody feel that? Yeah. I'm like, anybody want to pray?
Because maybe we're afraid. We're afraid of the invulnerable. But the truth is, we're afraid to be made fun of. We're afraid that somebody asked me on the retreat.
I thought I was going to fall out. And that makes somebody ask me here too. Do you take a class on how to pray? No, I was Cody.
That was you. Thank you. Do I look like I take a class on how to pray? Sometimes I don't even know the words that come out of my mouth, Cody.
But I mean, seriously, people ask that he knows I love him. Something gone. But people do wonder, do I have to do it a certain way? Do I have to sound sophisticated?
If so, I feel that y'all. But thank you for getting that. I mean, we think we have to be hauling in lofty. And we have to get it right before we can come to God, even with our prayers.
We get everything right. No, because of all that. He wants humility. He wants realness.
He wants us to bring our authentic selves. But a lot of y'all are afraid you're going to sound like this. Watch this. I got you on some funies today.
Sorry I thought that might start my fast. That's what y'all are afraid you're going to sound like. And maybe you do. But God doesn't care.
He just wants you to come. OK, bow your heads, bow your heads. Oh, God, he's our suffering in this arm over the great despair. Yay, admit this good and decent woman into the night of arms and the clock, in the heavenly area up there.
And who have he laid its down behind at the band of the king of knights? And yay, it's all the Hindus speak of karma. Clark. I implore you.
Give her a break. Clark. Baru Katar. La Luyah.
Clark, this is a serious matter. I'm going to do it myself. Honey, I'm not an ordained minister. I'm doing my best, OK?
Sound like that fool over there going, oh, but God doesn't care. He just wants us to come and to share, just like we would with a personal friend. He wants us to come and to have a conversation with him, like you would your spouse or your mother, your father, your best friend. He wants us to be that first person that we come to with all of our stuff.
But he wants us to also acknowledge that God is the father, that we have to proclaim his goodness, that he is holy. That his will does need to be done on earth before ours. There's a lot of submission that comes with it. We've got to seek forgiveness, and we have to give forgiveness.
Oftentimes when we pray, it's more like, Lord, I really need you to do this and work this out. And Lord, I don't see the big picture, but I know you do. And they're almost kind of superficial. But there's these wonderful little things called five-finger prayers that you can teach children and love that kind of stuff.
So if you don't know how to pray, begin like a little child, OK, Lord, I'm going to pray for those who are closest to me. I'm going to pray for those who are in authority above me. I'm going to pray for those who are weak. I'm going to pray for those that's, oh gosh, I'm missing one.
The ones that are furthest away from you. But I mean, there's all these little tricks. We look at Acts. Adoration, confess that God is good and that he's holy.
Begin by just acknowledging who he is. Lord, I'm coming to this place. And I don't know what to pray. So I'm just going to begin with the fact that you're good and that you're holy.
Lord, and just help me to see that. I'm going to confess that I'm not always good. And I'm far from holy in my walk. I'm going to confess that I don't always act right or love my neighbors.
And I'm going to confess that to you because you already know it. But Lord, I don't want to get up. You have before I give you Thanksgiving because you're so good. I want to thank you that I've got food on the table.
And I want to thank you that my family is happy and healthy. I want to thank you that our needs are man. I want to thank you that we have a church family. I want to thank you for the blood of Jesus Christ that forgives us of our sins.
And there's an S for supplication. And Lord, I want to remember those who are hurting. I want to remember my friend Mallory who's under the weather. Lord, I want to pray for favor over my family.
Lord, I want to pray for a boundary. Lord, I want to pray for my grandmother. I want to pray for my sister. I'm going to you.
I'm coming to you. I'm going to the throne of God on behalf of someone else. And when we begin to think of those things as so much secular, isn't it? When we begin to see, I just got acknowledged who God is first.
I got to confess who I'm not. I got to give thanks for all that I'm blessed with. And I got to remember others who are suffering and hurting. So when we pray, it really isn't that hard.
It begins with God and it ends with God. And it doesn't begin with us and our holiness of, I don't know how to do that and it's about me. No, we open our mouths and pray. There was something I read this week that says, if you don't plan to pray, you won't pray.
It's something intentional. Set a time each day, plan to spend time with the Lord. I love that they say here, but when you pray, when Jesus says, but when you pray, go into your private room. And the Greek room means treasure.
Go into this room where your treasures will be made known and the treasures are not gonna be worldly things, but those treasures are gonna be what God is gonna do through your prayers and in your heart. He may not answer your prayers, but he's gonna do something in your heart during that time with him. So when it says to go into that room, I used to think, I gotta do it in my closet or something. I don't have an extra room to go where nobody can bother me.
But no, it's saying that the room and the Greek literally is a treasure, a place of treasure. So spending time with God reveals so many things about who he is, about who we are, and he works and he moves when we're willing to do that. I'm gonna show you one more clip and watch my time. But I thought this one was too funny not to share because we talk about the Lord's Prayer and Lord, you know, our Father who art in heaven.
It's a beautiful example. His will, not our will, but we get it all mixed up sometimes. We get it all mixed up. And so sometimes it looks like a hot mess, figuring out what's our will, what's God's will.
Is he really first in line or is he last in line? But when we look at it from Jesus' point of view, we'll get it right. And we won't sound like this poor little guy. That's what you do.
Hey, today's just been a day full of interesting things. It's okay. Not hurt my feelings, I always say, we're just real here. For you two, recite the Lord's Prayer.
Is that what we're resorting to here? You should not vote tactics. I would like to hear what you like to hear in the day full? I don't have to.
Our Father, art who is of in heaven, aloe vera be thy dear, the thigh, thy kingdom, the magic kingdom as it is on earth in a helicopter. Give us this day our daily pizza. Let us know just forgive us, pass, forgive us for trespassing and not lead us to the temptations because we are tired of dancing and deliver us from able with your mighty sword and falcon forever than we ever be. No, it's silly.
And you think, why are we watching this in church? But we have to find ways to relate to things. And sometimes, like I feel this morning, we're just a hot mess. But God never said you had to be perfect.
He never said you had to get it all right. He gave us a model, but even the disciples asked, they're like, Lord, teach us to pray. They saw Jesus praying, they're like, teach us to do that. They didn't even know really what they were supposed to do and they were walking with Jesus daily.
Sometimes we just have to say, Lord, teach us. I don't know how to pray. I don't know what to do. I'm just really getting started in this journey.
But that's the beautiful part. You won't do anything till you get started. So this morning, I want you to look at all that we witnessed and all of these great things. And I want you to remember that all of these situations at some point, somebody was praying.
Somebody was praying with Elijah. Somebody was praying for Elijah. It's the body of the church. We're gonna be praying for Elijah.
We're praying for Mallory so that she can get better. This morning, I call my sweet little 90-year-old Nanny, who is my faithful prayer warrior. I'm never asking her Lord, Nanny. What are we gonna do?
What's gonna happen to you? Who's gonna pray for me? And I thought, I guess I'll start praying for somebody. Like she prays for me.
I'll call her and I said, everything's going to ride this morning. I just, I need you to pray Nanny, I need you to pray. Cause I know that she is faithful to do so. But so are we.
We are faithful to do so because the Lord just wants us to begin. Open your mouths and talk to me. I love the scripture that says, and I'm paraphrasing. But as long as he bends down to listen, I will pray.
And he never grows weary and tired of bending and listening. It's we who get distracted and close our minds and our mouths. So this week, I'm not only encouraging you to pray individually so we can begin to pray collectively. I've given you the assignment to take your prayer cards and to really be praying over those.
Hold it in your hands. Ask God, simply Lord, God, Father, however you wanna address him, Abba, Daddy, show me, talk to me. Because the more we talk and he listens, then we'll be compelled to listen while he talks. Let me say that again.
The more we talk, the more he listens, and the more we will be compelled to listen as he talks. But it must begin. We can't afford to keep waiting. So let us begin those who pray fervently and mindily, expectively.
Y'all, I know it's fight club. But we had a moment of prayer at that retreat. And I was so overcome by the Holy Spirit. I can't even tell you what I said.
But y'all it was good. Prayer changes things. It changes us from the inside out. As a church, I want us to be strong and steady.
But we can't do that if parts of the body are shaky. We need to each and every one own our faith. Elijah now has to own his faith. Our children one day, especially our confidant, will own their faith.
They won't be able to carry the mantle of their parents any longer. You won't be able to carry the prayers of your parents any longer and your grandparents and the church. You're going to have to step up and do those things. So now's the time I've told you before.
Now's the time for the church to rise up. Now's the time to be praying in ways that we have never prayed before. Especially my kids, you got a lot of battles to face. You got to learn now to pray your way through them.
So let it begin. Let it begin by acknowledging that God is good. And that whatever we are facing, his will is what we should seek. Your will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.
It will change the way we do things. We won't be those guys. God bless them. They were trying, but they weren't centered.
They weren't focused on the one who bends and listens. Thanks be to God. Amen.