What a joy it is to be here with you guys this morning.
My name is Jenna. For those of you who don't know,
I am 1/2 of the Hatfield site pastors, My husband AJ being the
other half and bless him, he is there this morning with our four
children leading with the team there.
I think he's doing communion and I think we got a message to say
there was no one for AV so he could be jumping into AV as
well. So pray for him and the team
over there. But no, it's so good to be here
with you guys this morning. And we have been in a series
here, haven't we, about prayer called, pressing in and pressing
on. And Claire kicked this series
off a few weeks ago with an invitation.
The sense that the Lord is calling us as a church in this
in between season where we are between having senior pastors to
press into prayer. I love how she unpacked the
story of Isaac with the digging of the wells, that we are to do
the same that we are to keep digging wells.
And I love she used an illustration of a shovel, didn't
she? She even bought one with her
love that the call for us each to pick up whatever it is that
we have in our hands, whatever shovel we have, whether it's big
or small, and to use what we've got and to just start digging to
make a choice. And then Week 2, Richard, he did
a brilliant job talking about having faith in the waiting.
You know, what does it look like to stand in expectancy when
we're in a season of waiting? What is our posture like in that
season? And then last week, Claire
looked at fasting, turning from one thing to another, and she
talked about how fasting is this invitation from the Lord for us
to come and feast at His table. What a beautiful image.
And it reminded me of a picture that the Lord gave me a while
ago. And as I was preparing this
week, he brought it to mind. You know, I have a little boy
called Cameron. He is 2, nearly three, and he
absolutely loves food. He loves his food and like he
will eat a tea at nursery, he will come home and he will eat
dinner at home and then if his siblings don't look out, he will
steal food off their plate when they're not looking.
And he's come to realise that they're a bit bigger and a bit
stronger than him. So he can't always get away with
doing that, but he does try. And there's sometimes where I
find him even on the floor. Look, this is Grace, right?
Looking for food. Now I get it that like if
something falls on the floor, we've got like 3 second rule, 5
second rule, maybe even 10 second rule.
Like we can put away with that and he can pick it up and we're
like, yes, fine, you know, germs, not too bad for you.
It builds your immunity and all that.
But when he's under the table looking for food, I have to draw
a line. Goodness knows what he will find
under the table. But, you know, sometimes I find
myself yourself saying to him, Cameron, get up off the floor.
If you're still hungry, I've got food for you.
I've got food. I can feed you more food,
banana, whatever it is that you want.
I've got something for you. And I sense the Lord saying
something through that. And I think there's two things.
One, we don't have to make do with yesterday's lot.
Food that's probably gone stale, food that is old, food that is
gross. He has fresh bread for each and
every one of us. Fresh words from the Lord every
single morning. He is a living, present, moving
God. And just like with the
Israelites where he said you don't have to put up, don't, In
fact, he said, don't eat that food from yesterday because I've
got fresh manna for you today. And So what is the fresh bread
that he's got for you this day? And #2 there is always more.
We need to make a choice sometimes to get up off the
floor and to pull up a chair and feast at His table.
Because when we do that, our perspective changes.
It moves from a making do. Let's grab what we can while we
can, to realising that there is an abundance of the Lord that
when we come and pull up a chair at His table, there is always
more for us to feast on. And it kind of leads me into
what I want to talk about this morning.
You know, when we talk about prayer, what comes to mind?
It's been described as talking to Jesus.
Like prayer is where you bring everything to Jesus and you talk
to him. It's a conversation, isn't it,
with our Heavenly Father, where we talk to Him, we listen, we
get guidance, we get help, we ask for wisdom, we share what's
on our heart. It's where our relationship with
Him is formed and developed. And all of these things are true
and important. And I can say with absolute
confidence that God loves it when we bring all of those
things to Him. We bring our hopes and our
failures. We bring our dreams and our
fears. We bring our pain and our
disappointment, our questions, our anger, our needs.
We bring it all to Him, and He loves that.
But I wonder if there's even more to prayer than that.
You know, if it's our purpose to not only pray about what's on
our heart, but to pray what is on his heart.
If God is inviting us as a church to move from provision
based prayer to purpose driven prayer.
And you know, I had the joy, absolute joy of speaking at
Alpha just the other week. We're currently running an Alpha
course here, and one thing I love about Alpha is that it's
the space for people to come who are exploring the Christian
faith and they can ask their questions.
And we encourage guests throughout the whole course to
bring their questions. In fact, we have a saying that
there's no question too silly. Bring those questions.
And it's true, isn't it? I think most like asking
questions provides opportunity for clarity and for a deeper
understanding. And maybe during this season on
prayer, you found yourself asking God some questions
yourself. And if not, why not go to him
and ask him these questions? Perhaps you found yourself
asking him God, what is the shovel in my hand?
Or how, Lord, are you asking me to dig wells during this season?
Or what can I do in this waiting season, Lord, to honour you?
And you know, I love how in the Bible, the disciples asked Jesus
a question about prayer. And we're going to read it now
in Luke 11. It's Luke 11, verses 1 to 2.
And if you've got a Bible or if it's on your devices, you can
turn there. Otherwise it will come up on the
screen behind me. So it says this, It says one day
Jesus was praying in a certain place.
And when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord,
teach us how to pray, just as John taught his disciples.
And then he said to them, this is Jesus.
He says when you pray, say, and then he goes on to say what to
say. But I love that the disciples
asked a question. And did you see Jesus response
there? He doesn't say it's easy.
What do you mean prayer? It's talking to Jesus, it's
talking to me, it's talking to your heavenly Father.
And yes, of course it is. We've talked about that.
It is, but no question is silly. By the disciples asking this,
Jesus is able to reveal something deeper to them.
It was an opportunity for him to reveal a truth to them.
He said. Do you know what?
There is a great way that you can pray.
And So what does Jesus go on to say?
We're going to read now what it is that He says.
And for this, we're going to look at a different scripture.
We're going to look at Matthew 6, verses 9 to 13.
Now this is the same conversation.
This is the same scenario, but from different eyewitness
accounts. And so this scripture that we're
going to read, you might be familiar with.
It's the Lord's Prayer. Maybe you're familiar with it,
maybe you recognise it or maybe not.
Maybe you're here and you've never heard this before, but
we're going to read it together now.
So Matthew 6, verses 9 to 13, and this is Jesus speaking, says
this then is how you should pray.
In answer to that question, He says, Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name, your Kingdom come, your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today Our Daily Bread
and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors
and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil
one. Now for some of you, I
appreciate you might read this and see it a bit like a formula
or a script of some kind, but I want us to look at it with fresh
eyes again this morning because this here is beautiful.
This is Jesus teaching us how to pray, not as a script or a
formula, but as a pattern of life.
He's revealing a truth to us and taking us deeper.
And so we're going to go through it some more of it in in more
detail in a moment. But what's interesting here,
just from the get go, just when we look at it, we look at the
order that Jesus teaches us to pray.
And I think it says something about our priorities as we pray.
You know, verse 11 says give us today Our Daily Bread.
It's good to ask the Lord for what we need for his provision.
He cares about that. But can you see it comes after
verse 10, which says your Kingdom come, your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven. And I think here Jesus is
reorienting us towards praying for God's Kingdom and for his
will, not just our personal needs.
And so that's what we're going to spend some time unpacking
together this morning. What does it mean to pray that?
What does it mean to pray Kingdom prayers?
What does it look like to prioritise the Kingdom of God
and Kingdom prayers over provision based prayers?
And so let's look in more detail at those first few verses.
The first line there, our Father in heaven, our God, is a
relational God. The Bible tells us that we have
been adopted into his family, that we are now sons and
daughters of him. And so Jesus is saying, when you
pray, we can, we should recognise him as our Father, we
should acknowledge who he is and who we are to him, not out of
obligation, but out of privilege.
I think it blesses God when we call him Father.
You know, I know for AJ, my husband, what a moment it was
when our kids first said those words.
Dada, what joy it brought him. And even now when he comes in
from work and the kids run at him, Daddy, what joy, what
delight that brings him. And how much more delight does
it bring our Heavenly Father when he hears us, his children
call him Father. Dad, Daddy, hallowed be your
name. I'm guessing you guys probably
don't use that word hallowed very often.
Maybe DI don't. But what does it mean hallowed?
It means holy. It means set apart, greatly
honoured. And so we are to declare his
greatness when we pray, no matter our circumstances, we
recognise and we speak out his goodness.
And as we do that our our perspective shifts.
It says, Lord, before you do anything for me, before I ask
anything, I recognise who you are and that you are good.
And then we get to this line, your Kingdom come, your will be
done on earth as it is in heaven.
Your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in
heaven. You know the theology and
practice of the Kingdom is of God is one of our core values
here at Vineyard. And I hope if you've been here
for a while or been hit any length of time, you would have
heard us talk about the Kingdom of God, the here and the not
yet. You know, the phrase Kingdom of
God or Kingdom of heaven appears over 100 times in the New
Testament, mostly in the Gospels where we read about Jesus and
his life. And the the Greek word for
Kingdom, it means kingship or royal rule.
So it's not talking about a geographical area, but it
implies the exercise of kingly rule and reign.
And so when we talk about God's Kingdom, it's where his rule and
his reign is established. And if we want to know anything
at all about the Kingdom of God, we look at Jesus because the
Kingdom of God came in him. In Mark 1 verses 14 to 15, it
says Jesus came proclaiming the good news of God.
The time has come, he said. The Kingdom of God has come
near. Repent and believe the good
news. Jesus spent the majority of his
teaching ministry explaining and demonstrating and inviting
people into the Kingdom of God. His core mission was to proclaim
and to demonstrate the Kingdom by healing the sick, casting out
demons, raising the dead. And in doing this, what he was
doing when he was, these miracles were taking place.
He was confronting people and saying in me, the Kingdom of God
has come and you have a choice whether to accept it or to
reject it. And so the Kingdom of God is
already present through Jesus, but it's not yet fully
established until Jesus returns. And so we live in this time,
this kind of in between time. We call it the here and the not
yet. So to help us understand this a
bit more, there's an analogy we often use.
You know, during the Second World War, it is agreed that the
victory for the Allies was assured on D-Day when they
successfully landed on the Normandy beaches, right?
The victory in that moment was won.
But it's like 11 months for the war to actually end.
And during that time Hitler who knew that his time was short, he
launched some of the worst bloodiest attacks where
thousands and thousands of men lost their lives.
The coming VE Day was assured but not realised.
And we are in a similar position church as Christians.
From the moment Jesus died on the cross and was resurrected,
death was defeated. Satan had been defeated and the
final and full establishment of the Kingdom of God was assured
from that very moment. Amen.
We talked about it this morning. The victory belongs to Jesus.
But we have to realise, we have yet to realise.
Sorry. It's fullness in the days in
which we live, because there is a war still to be fought, an
enemy still capable of inflicting great harm.
And you know, just as with Hitler, when he knew his time
was up, Satan knows it's finished.
It was finished then, and it's still finished now.
He knows he's on borrowed time. And so he is on one final
rampage against humanity to cause as much destruction and
chaos and pain and mess that he possibly can before Jesus
returns. And our role as a church is to
equip ourselves through the power of the Holy Spirit to come
against the enemy's plans, against the enemy's attacks.
And when we understand that it changes how we pray, it changes
how we live, it changes how we speak, it changes how we pray,
The victory has been won, but there is still an enemy to
fight. You know, once we place our
trust in Jesus, we have been drafted in to a fierce spiritual
battle and our assignment, our mission as a people of Christ,
is to push back the darkness and to bring God's Kingdom to earth.
And when we recognise that this is the time we're living in, it
makes sense that Jesus said to pray for God's Kingdom to come.
You know, in John Wimber's book Power Evangelism, I don't know
if you guys have read it. It's a brilliant book, so good.
But at one point in there, he describes that often Kingdom
life is likened to a Caribbean cruise on a luxury liner.
People change into their leisurely clothes, grab their
suntan lotion and saunter down to the docks.
What a shock it is when they find that living in the Kingdom
is really more like enlisting in the Navy and doing battle with a
vicious enemy, an enemy who follows no rules of war.
You know, I'm going to be real with you guys.
Like sometimes when we talk about being in a battle and we
talk about spiritual warfare, I think there's a danger that we
can fall into one side or the other of a pendulum.
We can either super spiritualise everything and blame Satan for
it all. You know, I'm on my way to
church this morning. I'm on my way to Versa group and
my car broke down like such. It's a spiritual attack.
What if it's because I didn't service my car?
What if I ignored? I ignored the red light that was
on the dashboard for too long and my car broke down for that
reason. You know, sometimes things
happen as a result of the choices we make.
Sometimes think things happen because life is life.
Be careful not to blame Satan for everything and give him too
much attention. But on the other hand, we can
swing too far the other way sometimes and we go around
without a care in the world. Completely naive, ignorant to
the fact that there is an enemy prowling around who will do
anything he can to bring distraction and to kill, steal
and destroy. And that's a dangerous place to
be because you end up being an open target.
And so guys, we need discernment.
We need wisdom from the Lord to know what and how to pray.
We need to open up our spiritual eyes and see things for what
they are. And I'm not saying this to make
us fearful. There is No Fear.
The Lord hasn't given us a spirit of fear.
We know the end of the story. We know what happens and we walk
in that confidence, but what it should do is evoke in us an
anger, a righteous anger, where we are compelled to speak out,
to stand up, to fight for God's Kingdom here on earth.
You know, the Bible says that we've been given keys to the
Kingdom of heaven. We've been given authority and
power over the enemy, but we still have to exercise that
power. It's a bit like a traffic police
officer go with me with this, like he or she doesn't have any
physical power to stop cars, but they are able to stop them
because of the badge that they wear and the uniform they put
on, which is given to them by a higher authority.
So when we pray in the name of Jesus for his Kingdom to
breakthrough, we do so from a place of authority and power
because of who he is. And I wonder, I wonder if you
are here this morning and you are actually questioning whether
your prayers even make a difference.
Maybe you've experienced disappointment.
Maybe you've prayed for healing like you've got on your knees
and you have been praying for healing for a person and they
haven't been healed. Or you've prayed for someone to
come to know Jesus and they still haven't.
And that disappointment is heavy on you this morning and it's
left you questioning what's the point?
Or maybe you're worried that you won't be able to explain to
somebody if nothing happens. You know, they already think
this God stuff is a load of rubbish and actually if I pray
and nothing happens, I'm going to have to explain that they
already think I'm silly. How am I going to explain it?
And I want to encourage you afresh this morning that the
outcome of our prayers is not our responsibility.
Isn't there freedom in that? The outcome of our prayers is
not our responsibility. Our responsibility is to pray,
to ask God for His Kingdom to come and to leave the rest to
Him. And we will never understand
why. Sometimes we see miracles and
sometimes we see His Kingdom breakthrough, and then other
times we don't. And we don't have to try and
explain it because there's no formula.
And that's OK. It's to say it's heavy sometimes
and it's hard, but we do see His Kingdom breakthrough more when
we pray than when we don't pray. And so I want to encourage you
to try again to keep pressing in and pressing on.
Pete Gregg says this great quote.
He's the founder of 24/7 Prayer. And he says it's arrogance to
think that only our prayers matter, but ignorance to think
our prayers don't make a difference.
It's arrogance to think only our prayers matter, but it's
ignorance to think our prayers don't make a difference.
And you know, I love that. This is seen in a story in
Daniel. In Daniel 10, we read about how
Daniel is going through a time of mourning and an Angel appears
to Daniel and he strengthens him and he encourages him.
Do you want no one know what the Angel says in verse 12?
Daniel 10 verse 12, the Angel says since the first day you set
your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before
your God. Your words were heard and I've
come in response to them from the first day.
Now this was 21 days later that the Angel appeared to him
because in that chapter it goes on to say that there was a
battle going on in the spiritual realms which Daniel wouldn't
have had a clue about. He didn't see that the Angel was
being held back by a demonic power.
But because of Daniel's persistence in prayer, there was
a release of angelic intervention.
Daniel's prayers, his persistent prayers over those 21 days,
literally moved heaven. We don't always see what's going
on in the heavenly realms, but there is a battle taking place
and we should never underestimate the power of our
prayers, the power of persistence in praying for God's
Kingdom to come. Your will be done.
You know, from the moment we're born, we have this desire, don't
we, to do things our way. It's easy when we pray for us to
focus on our will, because that naturally comes to us.
But here Jesus is teaching us a better way.
He says when you pray, say God, would your will be done?
When we say that we're surrendering our will and we're
submitting to him and saying, do you know what God, you know
best? God, even before I consider my
needs, I want to pray for your agenda.
You know, there are times when we don't always know clearly
what God's will is in specific situations that we might be
facing. You know, we can pray and we can
ask God to reveal it to us and pray into it from there.
And sometimes he does speak into that, sometimes he doesn't.
And in those times we have to say, you know, God, I don't
understand. I don't get it.
It doesn't make sense to me. But God, your will be done.
It's an act of surrender. It's an act of trusting in him.
Jesus prayed the same prayer, didn't he, in the Garden of
Geth's enemy, one of his most vulnerable, powerful prayers, as
he was literally sweating blood, coming to terms with what is
going to happen to him. And he says, God, please, if
this is possible, just take this cup from me.
I can't bear it any longer. Just take it from me.
Yet your will be done. And there are times when we know
what God's will is because he tells us in his Word.
And so we have to make sure that our prayers align with his will.
And to do that we have to get to know his character.
We have to know what he's about and what his will is. 1 John 514
to 15 says this is the confidence we have in
approaching God, that if we ask anything in accordance to his
will, he hears us and say, what are some of those things?
He reveals his will to to us through the Scriptures.
Number one, it's God's will that everyone is saved.
Did you know that one Timothy, 2-3 to four, this is God and
this is good and pleasing. Sorry, this is good and pleases
God our Saviour who wants all people to be saved and to come
to the knowledge of truth. Something else he tells us is
his will, that it's God's will that we be a holy people, that
we be a grateful people. It's God's will that we do good
even when we're faced with opposition.
It's God's will that we are spirit LED and transformed on
earth as it is in heaven. So it helps us to pray.
If we know what God's Kingdom is like when we say, God, would
your Kingdom come? If we want to know what that is
like his Kingdom, we look to Jesus.
And if we want to know what his will is, we look to Scripture.
And if we're still unsure, we look at heaven.
And I loved Yasmin shared that verse this morning, so beautiful
from Revelation. When we pray your Kingdom come,
your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
And So what does the Bible say about heaven?
Revelation 21. It says there'll be no death, no
mourning, no crying or pain, and He will wipe every tear from our
eyes. Revelation 7.
No one will be hungry, no one will be thirsty.
Revelation 22. It says heaven is full of light.
There'll be no darkness, there'll be healing and
wholeness for all, and that what was lost in the Garden of Eden
will be restored. Amen.
That's the hope that we have. And that is what that is what we
pray when we pray that heaven will invade earth.
God, would heaven invade earth? We pray, would your Kingdom come
and your will be done here now in this day as it is in heaven.
And you know, I think we can make an assumption by looking at
this verse that God's Kingdom and God's will are not always
outworked all the time. Because if it was, Jesus
wouldn't tell us to pray for it. Let me give you an example.
We've just read it's God's will that everyone becomes a
Christian. But that doesn't always happen.
Why not? Because we live in a fallen,
broken world where people have free choice, people have free
will. And so, yes, God has a will, but
he's not controlling trafficking, abuse, injustice,
poverty, sickness, pain. None of this is reflective of
God's character of his Kingdom or of his will.
And I think sometimes we need reminding of this because
church, we are not called to be a passive people.
Phrases like what will be, will be or everything happens for a
reason. Like I get why there's a
tendency to say things like that.
But guys, we have to be careful that we don't get complacent
because Jesus teaches us to pray for these things.
We need to take our place in the battlefield and not just sit
back and go what will be will be.
We need to stand up, fully clothed in the armour of God and
pray these bold, extravagant, ridiculous, outrageous prayers
to contend for His Kingdom, to breakthrough church.
We want to be known as a people who have understood the
assignment, a people who fight on their knees in prayer.
A people that don't give up praying for His Kingdom and His
will to be done. Who stand in the gap for the
marginalised, the vulnerable, the hurting, the poor, the
people that don't yet know him and say God with your Kingdom
come. Matthew 633 But seek first his
Kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be
given to you as well. What does it mean to seek?
It means to focus in on, to give our attention to, to be
motivated by His Kingdom and His righteousness and everything
else. Food, clothing, the bills,
whatever it is that you need today will be given to you as
well. What are your priorities when it
comes to prayer? What or who are you seeking?
Are you seeking Jesus or are you seeking the result?
Are you seeking His purposes or to have your needs met?
And you know, to finish, I want to encourage you this week to
spend some time with God and ask Him questions.
No question is too silly. Ask Him what?
What does Kingdom prayers look like for me in this season?
What does it look like, God, to contend for your purposes in our
church, in our cities, in our nation, in our lives?
And maybe he's asking you to commit to praying for one person
that you, you know doesn't yet know Jesus every day to pray for
them. Maybe he's asking you to give 5
minutes a day to pray for your friend who is sick or to pray
for that person that you know is is walking through depression.
Maybe he's asking you to prayer walk in your local town once a
month if you can't do it once a week or once every day to find
out what the prevalent issues are in your town, in your
cities, And pray against those things of darkness.
And pray that God's light would come and that heaven would come,
that businesses would thrive, that people would turn to Him.
Maybe he's asking you to pray for our young people or the
students in this nation that they would have dreams where
Jesus calls them to church, or to pray for justice across our
world for the persecuted church to pray for our enemies.
Guys, this is not just a nice thing to do.
This is what we are called to do.
Would you guys stand as I pray to finish?