Good morning. Morning if hey, I wanna I wanna
say welcome to all of you. If you're new, if you're
visiting with U.S. special welcome to you.
My name is Grant and I'm one of the pastors here at the church.
And it is it's good to worship together.
So whether this feels like something you've been doing for
the entirety of your life or whether it's something that is
that's kind of brand new, I'm I'm glad that you're here.
It's good. It's good to be together.
Thanks guys. Perfect.
If so, we're going to be in Luke Chapter 11, and Luke Chapter 11
is most of the way through your Bibles.
And so I just want to say we're going to work our way through
it. I'm not going to read it at the
beginning, but we're going to land in Luke.
We've been working our way through the entirety of the
Gospel of Luke and we're reading every single line, every single
verse, every single word, and really trying to wrestle it out
for our own lives, both individually, maybe in your
household as a family, as a church, for us, as a community.
What does this mean? What does it challenge us into
and toward? And we're almost halfway
through. So if you've been here since the
beginning, you can do a little bit of math.
We're almost halfway through. But I think the best thing for
you to do is to get in front of you.
I love as we gather, as we're able to worship together, to
read together. And so I'd encourage you to do
it. I'm going to have it up on the
slides here. And if you would like a Bible,
though, if you want like a real physical Bible, we do have those
hanging at the back of the sanctuary over here.
And I feel more than welcome to get up and go grab one.
If you write all over it and want to take it home at the end
of the day, that's fantastic. That's yours, our gift to you.
Take it, please. I would love to one day realize
that we need to buy more Bibles because all of our Bibles just
walked out the door and that we had no more left on that
trolley. So we love that for you.
But Luke Chapter 11, find it on your phones, find it on a tablet
or read along with us on the screens.
But let me pray as we begin. God, thanks for your love.
Thanks for your grace. Thank you that you're with us.
Yeah, I'm grateful. I'm grateful that you in your
wisdom, choose to call us into community, not into isolation,
not into loneliness. We got into meaningful
relationship. And thanks to that, meaningful
relationship is with you and with others.
So, yeah, as we look specifically about prayer today
and how it might change our relationship to you and our
relationship with others, God, I do pray that you would challenge
us, kind of break down anything inside of us that needs to be
broken down, build up and encourage us in the places where
we need to be encouraged. Yeah, we're gonna trust that
you're gonna do this today as we wrestle out your word and what
it means for our lives. So God, thanks in advance for
what you're going to do, what you've already done today in
Jesus name, Amen. So today we are talking about
prayer and I've shared this story a couple of times in
different places and spaces. And so it may not be a new story
for you and I think that's OK. But a few years ago, this was
years, this was a few years before I landed here, I was
asked by someone to meet and this is how that e-mail went.
It usually how these emails go said, hey, Grant, can we meet?
I need to talk to you about something period.
And it gave a few times and suggestions about when we could
meet and you know, location coffee shops that we could go,
but that was it. And I gotta tell you, like when
you receive those emails, you know what that like that could
be anything, right? Immediately you start thinking
like, what is this about? What are we going to talk about?
What we need to like, what did I say?
What do we need to meet about? And so like I said, years ago,
had this request. And so we set a time and we met
at a local coffee shop and we sat down and we did the whole
small talk thing, like, how's it going?
How's your family? How are things in your life?
And then we got to the point in the conversation where I said, I
still don't know why we're here, so I gotta ask.
And I just simply said, hey, what is it that you want to talk
about? Like at some point in the
conversation, you just have to name the thing, why are we here?
And it's good. Like, let's talk about the real
thing. Let's not talk about the surface
level things. Let's get to what really
matters. And so this person that I was
meeting with, he paused. And then he looked up and he
said to me, after a few seconds of silence, he said, I, I don't
think I know how to pray. And I went, hey, thanks for
sharing that super vulnerable, honest thing.
And you gotta keep in mind like this is somebody who was active
in the church, like he was a follower of Jesus, grew up in
the church, spent many, many Sundays in the church worshiping
alongside other faithful members of the church, praying and
praying together, praying out loud and leading.
And still got to a point in his life where he really sat down
and thought about it and realized, like, I'm not sure
that I know how to pray. Or at least that I know how to
pray in the way I feel I should or need to.
Or I am called to or would like to and and want to.
And maybe that's not dissimilar to how you feel in certain
seasons, maybe even in this season, like you don't know how
to do the thing that you want to do that you feel you ought to
need to are led and called to do.
Like you might not know how to pray prayer when you get to
simply like the base value heart of it is talking with God.
That's it. Prayer is talking with God and
we all do it or need to do it at some point or another in this
life. Like whether it's the daily
prayers of the grandma who rises early to pray for her grandkids
every single day. Or whether it's the urgent and
unfamiliar kind of awkward prayers of the father whose kid
is sick in the hospital. He's not quite sure how to do
the thing that he knows he needs to do.
Whether it's doubt filled, angry prayers that you pray after
you've lost somebody significant to you.
When a relationship goes sideways in a way that you can't
now navigate and figure out, all of us come to a place where we
need to pray and where we do pray.
I think the problem is that for many of us, we resist for so
long. This interior life, this
contemplative life, this slowed down, introspective way of
really wrestling with the deep things of our heart and our mind
and our soul and our body and our relationships with God and
with others. We push against it for so long
that it takes a moment of crisis for us to be brought to a place
where we then need to pray. Something has to happen in order
to push us into a place of vulnerability.
Because I don't know about you, but I think like human beings
were really good at running from vulnerability with ourselves and
with others. And instead, we live these lives
that are so busy or so numbed, which are often the same thing,
that it takes something catastrophic to push us to a
place of prayer. When we live life this way,
Ronald Rolheiser writes, we end up as good people, but as people
who are not very deep, he says. Not bad, just busy.
Not necessarily immoral, just distracted.
Not lacking in soul, just preoccupied.
Not disdaining depth, just lacking in practice.
And prayer takes practice. So I Thomas Merton says if you
want a life of prayer, the way to get it is to pray.
There's there's no magic formula, there's no like if
this, then not say these words and all will be well.
Absolutely you will understand it.
The only way to do it is simply to do it.
Jesus we see all throughout the Gospels.
We've seen it already in the book of Luke.
He lives a life of prayer. He goes into these moments and
out of these moments. All of his ministry is filled
with Jesus moving into quiet places in order to pray.
And at the beginning of every single significant thing that we
see happening in Jesus's life and in his ministry, we first
see him moving into a time of prayer.
He prays and then he goes because it's in prayer that I
heard one person say Jesus gets his marching orders.
Prayer keeps him close to the Father.
Prayer for Jesus is where he spent time with his Father.
It's where his own identity was confirmed as Son of God.
It's where he steps into all of his life as it was directed by
the Father, and that's how he stayed in step and aligned with
the will of God all throughout his life and his ministry.
And so it's not surprising to me that we see Jesus's teaching on
prayer as rising out of his own moment of prayer.
It says now Jesus was praying in a certain place and when he
finished praying, so the ciples wait, one of his disciples said
to him, Lord, teach us to pray as John taught his disciples.
It's out of Jesus's own prayer life, his own interior life, his
own life of examining himself before God, that the disciples
go, Hey Jesus, can you teach us to pray like that?
Can you teach us to pray like you pray?
There's something about the way in which Jesus is praying.
For starters, the disciples see Jesus praying.
They're witness to it. And when Jesus finishes praying,
one of his disciples then says, Lord, teach us to pray.
Give us the same language, Jesus, that you have.
Give us the same posture that you have.
Whatever it is, whatever this is that we just witness it
witnessed, God would you give us that we want, whatever that is.
I tried buying my shirts Blue Jays or my I tried buying my
girls Blue Jays shirts this week and that wasn't possible or easy
at all. And listen like that.
Yeah, World Series. The week of the World Series is
not the right time to go out and try to buy a Blue Jay shirt for
your kids. I looked online, I looked in
stores. There were shirts available, but
I wasn't willing to price there to pay the price that they that
they cost. I couldn't, I couldn't find them
for starters. I just couldn't find anything
anywhere. And then when I found the the
shirts, they were just, I wasn't willing to pay that price for
them. When you cheer for a team, you
wear a shirt or a jersey. Or when you jump on a bandwagon,
you go out to buy a shirt. Or at least you try to buy a
shirt for your kids because at the end of the like, the shirt
is meant to identify you with something, right?
As a fan of the team, with the team alongside the team.
Like, so there's something about sports where like fans, I don't
know why we do this, but we say when the sports team wins, like,
well, we just, we did it. We did it.
Like what? We, I wasn't involved.
I'd like that's not the wheel I'm talking about, but the
listen, the jersey identifies you with the team and, and
really like at the end of the day, that's what Jesus is
disciples are asking him for. That's what I want us to see
here. When a person becomes a
Christian, a person becomes a follower of Jesus, their entire
life has changed. And it's not just on Sundays,
and it's not just on some days. Like it's all the time.
All of life has changed all of the time, and so this request,
Lord teach us to pray is a very specific request because I hope
you notice this. He says teach us to pray as John
taught his disciples. So it's a very specific ask.
They're not asking Jesus just to give us language of prayer.
They're asking for something very specific.
Teach us to pray as John taught his disciples.
They're asking for a team jersey.
They're asking Jesus to give them a prayer that would
identify them uniquely and specifically as Jesus's
followers. They're not just asking for some
generic prayer that will maybe get them to a place that they're
not already at. They are asking for Jesus to
give them very specifically his prayer as their rabbi, as their
teacher that they could then live into, and a prayer that
would form them and shape them into a community.
Jewish rabbis would teach their disciples specific prayers and
it was common. You could tell which rabbi A
disciple belonged to based on the prayers that they prayed.
And so John taught his disciples to pray.
People would know who's John who, who were John's disciples.
They would know who they were following as a rabbi based on
this prayer that John taught them.
Specific prayers that linked students, disciples to rabbis,
teachers. Something about the way that
they prayed and the words that they use communicated as a
disciple, who their teacher was. And so the disciples, what
they're really asking for is for Jesus to teach them to pray in a
way that would identify them uniquely as Jesus's disciples.
They're not asking Jesus to teach them to pray like John
taught his disciples to pray, as in in the way John taught his
disciples. They're saying, Jesus give us a
unique voice and a unique prayer that will show people that we
belong to you, that we are yours.
That's what their ask is. They want to be identified as
Jesus Christians. You, Christian, are those who
are formed by prayer. Christians are ones who are
identified in the way they pray as individuals and even more as
a community. We are a community that is and
needs to continually be shaped and formed by the way Jesus
prayed and how he taught us to pray.
Because it's through repetition of the prayer and its messages,
they get ahold of our hearts and our minds and they shape the
decisions we make and the lives that we live, the imprint
themselves on us as a community. And so the prayer that Jesus
taught his disciples to pray and the prayer that Christians have
said now for centuries, the prayer that we continue to say
as followers of Jesus, we become more of that prayer as we pray
it. Henry Nowen calls prayer the
breadth of your life. It is what gives you life.
Again, I want us to notice that the entire conversation rises
out of not Jesus deciding to teach about prayer, but out of
Jesus is praying life. And so I think an honest
question to ask yourself is simply, is prayer the breath of
my life? Like what gives me life?
Jesus was praying in a certain place.
Prayer is where God challenges you and where God convicts you.
Prayer is where God heals and restores you.
Prayer is where God longs to meet you in the midst of your
hurt and your healing. It's where you can work out the
deepest things of your heart and your soul.
It's where you workout the loss that you've experienced and the
ongoing pain of sadness and sorrow and grief.
It's where you work out and wrestle with the relationship
that is sideways and you don't quite know how it got there or
how to move forward. It's where you can wrestle out
and experience forgiveness that you need to receive, and it's
where you are challenged to give the forgiveness that you need to
go and hand out and live into. It's where we wrestle with.
It's where we face the false sense of self that twists our
understanding of who you are, who I am, and who God is.
That's how we understand who we are.
And the wonderful thing about prayer is that Jesus gives us a
pattern to follow. Anyone can do it.
Anyone can pray at any moment and Jesus gives you words to
utter when you don't know what to say.
Jesus says start here. Pray these words, and so 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
forgive everyone who is indebted to us, and lead us not into
temptation. Now that prayer might be a
little bit different then the prayer that you are used to
saying. Matthew's version is longer.
If Matthew's version is like Jesus's master class on prayer,
this is like the Ted Talk version where it's like right to
the point. He's gotta stay on time and he's
quick, but I want us to see these same lines, he says.
Father hallowed be your name, she says.
Halo, make Holy Honor the name of God to how something simply
means to declare that it is holy, to name it as holy.
Now, I don't know about you, but God definitely doesn't need me
to declare him holy. There's nothing like there's
nothing changing about God when I decide to declare that Jesus
is holy. I like, I'm not that great.
What happens, though, when we pray this prayer is that I'm
forced to speak for myself when I hallow the name of God.
When I make God's name holy, I am forced to face the ways and
places and times in my own life when I have not made God's name
holy or when I have profaned the name of God.
My declaration changes nothing about who God is, but it does
change how I approach God to pray.
This prayer requires me to confront what is going on in my
heart and my mind and and the ways in my life that have not
honored God in His Holiness. And so we pray.
God, make me aware of your holiness.
Keep me open to your presence, which is all around me.
Give me eyes to see you at work in the world.
Help me to remember the greatness of the greatness of
who you are. And help me to forget a little
bit the greatness I think I can claim to have and hold on to, he
says. Father, hallowed be your name,
your Kingdom come. To declare God's Kingdom come is
to declare that my own Kingdom has to die, right?
This is a prayer of surrender. This is a part of surrender into
the hands of God and His coming Kingdom is to say I'm not gonna
build my own little Kingdom. It's to say I'm not gonna pursue
my own greatness in little ways. It's to say, God, your Kingdom
come, I'm all in on your Kingdom.
Help me to forget the ways I still try to claim and take hold
of and put stake in my own little ways of brokenness in an
attempt to make myself greater than I am or ought to be.
Your Kingdom come, we pray. God, allow what I do today to be
in line with your Kingdom and not mine.
Allow people to experience more of who you are and how I am.
Would people see me act not out of selfish ambition, but with
humility and grace, like we pray God your Kingdom come give us
this day, Our Daily Bread. Jesus continues.
He says listen as you learn to surrender, you also learn what
it means to depend on another. Jesus's prayer reminds his
followers not to take an extra shirt or spare change for the
road, but to go with urgency and to trust that God will provide
what you need. This prayer prays every single
day in words that I love. God, give me today what I need
for today. Help me to stay present to
myself and to others and to you. God.
Would you give me what I need? Yes, like physically bred for my
body but also for my soul. How would you speak to me?
Would you meet me in the moment of this day and would you give
me just what I need for today? He says.
Forgive us our sins as we forgive everyone who is indebted
to us and we pray. God, remind me of my need.
Remind me of my need to be forgiven.
Help me not to just keep forgiveness at arms length out
there with everybody who I need to go and forgive because
they've wronged me. Helped me to 1st recognize that
I need to be forgiven and then help me to experience Your grace
and Your Mercy. Remind me of my forgiveness so
that I can live out of that same place of grace and mercy and
forgive others. Help the way I am to be rooted
in Your grace and not my own. Doling out of forgiveness over
here but not over here and holding on to grudge here and
then offering grace here. How would you remind me of how
badly I need to be forgiven? And then you concludes here, and
lead us not into temptation. Finally, says God, keep me in
step with your spirit, Keep me in step with your will, Keep me
in step with your life and your love and not my own desire.
Help me not to slip mindlessly into evil.
Help me to be freed from fear. Help me to live released.
Jesus says when you pray, when you pray, say pray like this.
And I gotta tell you, on the one hand, I I say, if you don't know
where to pray or how to pray or where to start, pray these words
verbatim. Start by reading them every
single day. Try to do it today and then
tomorrow try to do it today and the next day try to do it today.
And she says pray this pattern. Live into this pattern of prayer
and then eventually find your own words.
Eventually make it such a part of who you are and how you are
and how you are before God that your own words flow out of this
same prayer. When you pray, pray this
pattern, pray like this. Follow these words.
Allow them to define you and to change you.
And one of the things that I don't ever want you or us to
forgive is this, he says. Give us.
Forgive us for we ourselves. Forgive everyone who's in debt.
Lead us not. This is a prayer that will
forever link you and bind you and shape you and form you
inside of community. And it's a prayer that you pray
alongside and with every other follower of Jesus who has ever
prayed it. Give us, Forgive us.
Jesus says when you pray, pray like this, follow this pattern,
use these words. But then he continues because he
doesn't just give the disciples words to memorize and recite.
It's not just a + b = C equation for Jesus.
It's not just when you get to the end.
Lead us not into temptation. Period.
You will be a master of prayer. He gives them a posture with
which to pray. He challenges them how they
ought to be as they approach God.
When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, they're
also asking them to teach them how to pray like Jesus prayed.
As in, they see something in him that is different.
And we have to remember the disciples weren't rookies at
prayer. They're not like, this isn't
like, oh, well, Jesus, we've been seeing you do this thing
and you call that prayer for a little while now.
Like, would you, could you just teach us how to do that?
Like the disciples have memorized Jewish prayers since
their childhood, and they have been reciting those prayers
since their childhood. They were in their own rights,
masters of prayer, and yet they still see something in Jesus
that is so different that they say, Jesus, teach us to pray
like that. Give us that same posture, that
same heart that you have, whatever that is.
Would you show us that? And so maybe like you, maybe you
feel to some sense like you've plateaued in your prayer life or
that like you've peaked or that you've hit a rut or that you're,
you know, you're doing the same thing, but it all just feels
rote or like maybe at worst, you feel like you've mastered prayer
and you're not quite sure what to do next.
Jesus continues. He says to them this Which of
you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him,
Friend, lend ME3 loaves. For a friend of mine has arrived
on a journey and I have nothing to set before him and he will
answer from within. Do not bother me.
The door is now shut and my children are with me in bed.
I cannot get up and give you anything.
I tell you though, he will not get up and give him anything
because he is a friend. Yet because of your shameless
audacity, he will rise and give him whatever he needs.
And I tell you, ask and it will be given to you.
Seek and you will find knock and it will be open to you.
For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks fines, and
to the one who knocks, it will be opened.
Jesus says more than a pattern, more than words to pray.
The posture of prayer that we are to live into is 1 of
boldness and persistent prayer. Jesus says pray boldly, and he
says pray persistently. Shameless audacity.
Now I've got to admit that I come to this line and I hear 2
very different things echoing in my ears.
I feel attention when I read this and when I really ask
myself whether or not I pray in this way.
And in the one year I hear echoing people like Kierkegaard
who said the function of prayer is not to influence God, but
rather to change the nature of the one who prays.
And so I say thank you. It's not about influencing God.
It's about changing me. OK, God change me.
But then on the other side, in my other ear, I hear people like
Karl Bart, who writes God is not Deaf, He listens.
More than that, he acts. He does not act in the same way.
Whether we pray or not, prayer exerts an influence upon God's
action, even upon his existence. That is what the word answer
means. And so I sit here and I go,
Which is it? Is prayer about God exerting
influence on me? Or when I pray, am I actually
changing what God would do? Sometimes my prayers are
answered. Sometimes my prayers aren't
answered, at least not in the way that I would have liked or
hoped or longed for. And I know that I don't need to
ask you if you've ever had a prayer feel like it's gone
unanswered or if you know the pain of a prayer that's answered
in the way that you didn't want. And so maybe you feel a little
bit like me and you come back to this verse and you struggle to
read this line. Ask and it will be given to you.
Seek and you will find knock and it will be open to you because
you say in your own prayer, God, you said, and I gotta tell you
like I've prayed these spurs got you said that you give good
things and good gifts like you. You're the one who does.
You said seek. You said breed persistent.
You said that we will find. You said that doors were gonna
be opened. God, you said ask and you'll
receive and I'm asking over and over again and it feels like
you're not answering it in the way that in the way that I'm
hoping for. You said everyone does my
prayer. Maybe this thought has gone
through your mind. Does my prayer even matter to
God? Like, why am I gonna pray if
you're just gonna disappoint me and let me down anyway?
And, and in some beautiful and complex way that I can't ever
hope to explain to you, the answer to those questions are
both yes. Does our prayer influence God?
Yeah, sometimes. Does it change me?
Hopefully all the time. Yeah, it does.
And that's the tension that we are challenged to live into.
That's what I need prayer to do in my life.
I need prayer to challenge me. I I need prayer to be the place
where I surrender my will in favour of God's will.
I need prayer to be the place where I commit to building God's
Kingdom and not my Kingdom, where I'm brought out of
alignment with my own desires and into alignment with God's
heart for compassion and humanity.
Humility. Like I need prayer to change me.
And you need prayer to be the place where God confronts you
and changes you, and where you wrestle out the deepest things
of your heart and your soul. And God's design is also that
you would be a coworker with him.
God likes to be asked. God doesn't need our wisdom or
knowledge or even the information that we bring to
prayer as we pray, But God invites us into relationship.
And that's the beautiful thing about prayer is God is inviting
you into relationship. He's not waiting for you to ask.
I'm like, well, I'm just gonna hold off and see what they do.
God longs to have you drawn into a relationship of intimacy with
Him, where you're known and where you know God.
And it's there. It's inside of that partnership
that God draws you into, that he involves you in the coming of
His Kingdom. And so we pray we watched a
video about Alpha, which I would highly recommend anybody and
everybody who can come out for those life groups.
But Nikki Gumbel, I once heard say, and we were talking about
this this week, say that essentially we we listen
sometimes. Sometimes God answers our
prayers in the way that we want, and sometimes He doesn't.
Sometimes people are healed, sometimes they're not.
Sometimes people are restored to life, sometimes they die.
Sometimes God shows up exactly how you were longing for, and
sometimes it feels like he's absent.
But sometimes he does. And so we're gonna keep on
asking. That's his line.
Sometimes he does, and so we're gonna keep on asking.
See a better translation of this line for the Everyone who asks
receives and the one who seeks finds the one who knocks, it
will be opened. And this I tell you, Ask, seek
and knock. A better translation would
actually be keep on asking, and there's a whole lot of great
reasons why that's the case, and I'm not going to get into them
because they're boring. But each of these verbs were
meant to see not as a past action, not as something that is
completed, not as a A + B = C K and you will find period.
What Jesus is saying is keep on asking.
It's a present action that continues forever until
Infinity. Keep on asking.
Keep on seeking. Keep on knocking.
God's not asking for you to say the right words and then you
know, so that you can finally dole out the answer that you've
been waiting for. God is inviting you to pursue a
relationship with Jesus, to continue to wrestle things out
in prayer, to do what Paul says when he writes pray without
ceasing. To be persistent and to be bold,
and to approach God and to continue to do it over and over
and over again. And in the rhythms of life.
As you are persistent and as you are bold and as you are asking
and as you are seeking and as you are knocking.
To determine whether God is changing you or whether God is
answering your prayer. And in it to explore, to find
out what you're being invited into and to see how God will
change you and how God will answer your prayer.
Last point, I promise as we wrap up Jesus ends like this.
He says what father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will
instead of a fish give him a serpent or snake?
In some translations, if you ask for an egg, will you give him a
scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know
how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the
Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?
How much more? How much more will God?
So what Jesus wants you to see is that the heart of God is 1 of
generosity toward you. God is generous with you and
longs to be and to continue to be generous with you.
These sorts of thought experiments in the Bible, and
especially when Jesus is playing with them.
What Father among you? If a son asks for a fish like,
of course not. That's the implication here.
Of course not. Of course you would never do
that. Of course the father's never
gonna give a hungry kid a serpent instead of a fish like,
or a scorpion instead of an egg like.
Of course they're gonna give what the kid needs, and the turn
is for you to wrestle with. How much more will God give you
the Holy Spirit as you seek, as you ask, as you knock, as you
pursue intimate intimacy with Jesus?
The gift of the Holy Spirit is what connects us to Jesus.
It's the Holy Spirit that leads and empowers Jesus in his
ministry. And it's the Holy Spirit that
leads and empowers you. And it takes us all the way back
to the beginning with the disciples.
First, ask Jesus. Teach us to pray because they
see Jesus praying in the power of the Holy Spirit.
What is going to allow you to pray like Jesus?
It's the gift of the Holy Spirit.
What should you ask of God in prayer and pursue?
It's the gift of the Holy Spirit.
And what is God gracious to give?
How much more will God give the Holy Spirit?
Fred Craddock says Without the Holy Spirit there was not there
is not the Church. And so God is gracious, and he
gives the Holy Spirit to those who ask him.
We're going to do something different than we've done in my
time here, and we're gonna pray together at the end of this
sermon, the Lord's Prayer. Only here's the awkwardness for
you, you who has been in the church for many, many, many,
many, many a year and has prayed the Lord's Prayer many, many,
many times. We're gonna pray Luke's version
of the Lord's Prayer. And so whether this is the first
time you're speaking these words out loud or wrestling them out
in your heart and in your mind, or whether you have prayed this
for many years in community and alone before God, I want us to
just slow down and read these words together.
And you're going to have to resist the the urge to continue
and to finish it and to make it tidy like Matthew does.
It hangs and it lingers, and that's OK because actually what
I want it to do is hang and linger with you as you leave
today and as you continue into tomorrow and the days ahead.
My prayer is actually that it would feel so unfinished that
you would continue to pray it. Over and over and over again.
And so I'm gonna pray. And then during the prayer, I'm
going to make it abundantly clear, we're going to pray this
together and invite you to open your eyes, look at the screen.
Please read this as we pray together.
God, thank you for your love and your grace.
Thank you that you are gracious and generous with us.
God, thanks that you have so much more for us than we could
hope for. Imagine.
And yet we need to wrestle out exactly what that is.
And so God in prayer, I, I do pray for us as a community and
for each person here, that we would find ourselves drawn to a
place of prayer. And in that place, we would find
more of who you are and more of who you've called us to be.
And so God, as we prayed these words, I pray, God, challenge
us, encourage us, convict us, change us, shape us, make us
yours for your namesake. And so we pray together these
words, Father hallowed, be your name, your Kingdom come, give us
each day Our Daily Bread, and forgive us our sins, for we
ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us, and lead us
not into temptation. Amen.