We're going to think about the right way
to pray, to talk to God, because when
we learn to pray the right way, we
can get our prayers answered.
A lot of prayers are not answered because
they are prayed in the wrong way.
Please listen carefully.
When Jesus was teaching His disciples how to
pray, He said in Matthew 6, verse 9,
Praising our Father who art in heaven, think
of God as a loving Father, and think
of Him as an almighty ruler from heaven
who can answer every prayer, meet every need,
solve every problem, lift you up from any
pit you have fallen into, unwind any mess
you have made of your life.
There is nothing He cannot do.
He loves you enough to help you, and
He is powerful enough to solve your problems,
to protect you from your enemies.
Our Father who art in heaven.
We are not orphans.
We are children of God.
That's why we can pray.
And then He said, But if you want
to communicate with God, you've got to get
rid of this self-centered attitude.
Jesus came to save us from sin.
And the essence of sin is that I'm
centered in myself.
I'm thinking of myself all the time.
What I can get, what I can get,
what I can get.
So if that hasn't changed in your life,
something is wrong.
And the reason for all our problems is
because we are centered in ourselves.
And Jesus said, Get out of that.
Make God the center of your life.
That's the way it is meant to be.
You know, like people for thousands of years
thought the earth was the center of the
universe.
And all your calculations and all go wrong
in astronomy if you think the earth is
the center of the universe.
It isn't.
The earth is just one little speck of
dust floating around in space.
In the same way, like man got his
science right when he discovered that the earth
is not the center of the universe and
not even the center of the solar system.
But the sun is the center of the
solar system.
In the same way, spiritually, we need to
recognize that God did not create us to
be centered in ourselves, thinking of what we're
going to gain, what our family is going
to get.
As long as you think like that, you're
living in sin.
And Jesus came to save us from that
sin, to teach us to be centered in
God, where we are taken up with what
His need is, and with His kingdom and
His name.
And then the other things will fall into
place in our life.
So if you're having problems in this area,
just consider if the reason is that in
all your prayer, you only think of yourself
and your family's needs.
Change that.
Change it from today.
I'm not saying don't pray for yourself or
your family.
By all means, in fact, it's a responsibility
for parents, for parents especially, to pray for
their children every day.
That's important.
You should be doing that.
So I'm not saying you should stop that,
but center everything in God.
When you pray for your children, don't just
pray that they'll make a lot of money,
but pray that they will honor God and
seek His kingdom first.
That's what I mean by centering it in
God.
Center everything in God in terms of God's
name being glorified.
Hallowed be Your name.
That's what Jesus taught us to pray.
The very first request is, Lord, let Your
name be glorified.
Let people respect and reverence that name.
The name of Jesus Christ is the name
that God has given by which all men
can be saved.
It is the only name through which you
can get answers to prayer.
When we come to the Father, we are
to come in the name of Jesus Christ,
His son.
We are to pray that the name of
the Lord Jesus will be honored throughout the
world, throughout our country.
Not honored in the sense that they respect
Him as a great man.
That's not the type of honor God wants.
The way the name of Jesus Christ is
to be honored is when people bow in
total submission to the Lordship of Christ in
their lives.
Beginning with Christians, those who claim to be
Christians, to put Jesus Christ as first in
their life totally, completely.
So the first thing Jesus said was that
we must have a concern for God's name.
It's not enough just to pray these prayers
with our lips.
It must come from our heart.
Hallowed be Thy name, Lord.
The number one burden in my heart is
that Your name will be glorified in my
life, in my family, with my children, in
our church and in our country.
That must be the burden of our heart.
And if that's not the burden of our
heart, then we must ask God to change
us inside.
Lord, change me such that my greatest burden
at all times will be that Your name
will be honored.
Even if I have to go through a
difficult time, let Your name be honored.
There was a time when Jesus was on
earth, when He was facing a time of
pressure just before He went to the cross.
And He was honest and He said in
John 12, 27, My soul has become troubled.
Now what shall I say?
Think of this verse when you are in
a very difficult, difficult situation and your soul
is troubled.
What are you going to say?
He said, shall I say, Father, save me
from this hour?
No, I will not say that.
I will say, verse 28, Father, glorify Thy
name.
So you see, when Jesus was in that
difficult situation where His soul was under such
tremendous pressure and He was tempted to pray,
Father, save me from this hour.
But He said, I am not going to
pray.
And He prayed what was proper, even though
it meant pain and suffering and the death
of the cross.
Father, glorify Thy name.
That was just before He went to the
cross and He could have said, Father, please
save me from this hour.
And He could have gone straight up to
heaven without going to the cross and we
would all be lost in our sins.
Isn't it a good thing that He did
not seek to save Himself there, but sought
the glory of the Father?
And that teaches us that when we seek
the glory of the Father and not our
own comfort or gain, our life can be
a tremendous blessing to others.
So even when we are under pressure, follow
the example of Jesus, who taught us to
pray, Hallowed be Thy name.
And then He said, from there you go
on to Thy kingdom come.
See, our next request also has still got
nothing to do with our problems or family
problems, but Lord, at the moment the kingdoms
of the world are ruled by the devil
and his agents.
But I want Your kingdom to come on
earth, a kingdom where righteousness is at home.
I want Your kingdom to come quickly.
Your kingdom means, the word kingdom is not
understood so much nowadays because we don't have
kings.
A better word would be government.
Lord, let Your government come.
That means the government which You are heading,
which You are controlling.
The way You run the universe, Lord, we
pray that You will be able to run
this world and this church and my life
in exactly the same way.
Your kingdom come.
And then He taught us to pray, Your
will be done on earth as it is
in heaven.
So there we see a desire for God's
name, God's kingdom and God's will, to be
done on earth exactly as it is done
in heaven.
Now Jesus once said in John chapter 6
and verse 38 that He had come from
heaven to do the will of His Father.
He said, I have come from heaven not
to do My own will, but the will
of Him who sent Me.
Throughout His life, Jesus never did His own
will, but did the will of His Father.
However much pain or difficulty it caused.
And Jesus taught us to pray, whenever you
pray, pray this for your life, that God's
will will be done in your life, not
your own.
All the misery and sorrow and problems in
the world have come because man has wanted
to do his own will.
Whatever he thinks is good, that's what he
wants to do.
But Jesus taught us to pray for the
Father's will to be done on earth as
it is in heaven.
In other words, first of all, we've got
to begin with our own life.
In my life, Father, let Your will be
done.
Now how is God's will done in heaven?
Think of how the angels obey God.
Angels obey God immediately.
They wait for hearing what God has to
say and they obey immediately.
They obey joyfully and they obey totally.
If God says something to an angel, the
angel will not say, hang on God, just
wait a minute, I've got something more important
to do.
Man behaves like that.
If God tells him to do something, go
and apologize to someone or go and get
baptized or go and do this particular thing,
return that money you took wrongfully, and man
waits and waits and waits, sometimes for days
and weeks and months before he decides to
do.
But no angel in heaven waits like that.
As soon as God says something, they do
it immediately.
We are praying that God's will will be
done in our life like that.
That means as soon as you see something
in the Word of God, you're going to
do that immediately.
You're not going to wait and you're going
to do it joyfully.
You see, the angels don't go around with
a long face and complaining and grumbling that
their lot in life is so difficult.
They're joyful, they're happy.
And they obey God totally.
So, Jesus was teaching us there that that's
how we must obey also, totally, completely, joyfully.
Thy will be done on earth as exactly
as it is done in heaven.
There we have the angels as an example
for how it is done in heaven.
So if we get this right, first of
all in our prayer, that we think of
God's name and God's kingdom and God's will,
and apply all that to our own life,
that in our life the name of God
will be honored by the way we live,
that in our life God's government or rule
will come.
He's going to rule our life.
And that in our life God's will will
be done exactly like it's done in heaven,
unquestioning, joyful, complete, total, immediate obedience.
Then we can say that we've got our
priorities right.
Self is no longer at the center.
Then we are beginning to learn how to
pray right.
And then we shall find our prayer's answer.