Good morning, welcome to Immanuel Eakin Church.
You may be seated. It's a real joy to be with you
this morning. And this season is our church is
in a season of Thanksgiving and rejoicing as we rejoice and are
thankful for God's provision for us as a church family, leading
us here to Saint Bonaventure's on Diversey Ave.
And really we're starting a new chapter.
We're starting a new season in our church's life, in our
church's ministry and outreach. Now starting here on on, as I
said, on diversity here at Saint Bonaventures.
And as I was thinking about speaking to you today under
these circumstances, I was thinking about another coach,
coach Vince Lombardi, who addressed his team at the start
of a new season. And you see, what you need to
know about this is this team. And in the name of that team is
not important. But this team had just made it
to the championship game the season before, but they had
lost. It was their first time.
And so now he gathers the team in the summer to address them
and everybody's wondering. The media is there, the players
are there. What is he going to say?
Is he going to remind them of their success?
Is he going to try to re instill in them that swagger of a team
that's a championship caliber? Is he going to remind them of
the bitterness of the defeat, of how disappointed they were?
And is he going to try to use that as motivation to encourage
them to just try that much harder this time?
We're going to finish it. And if you know this story, you
know that he did not do either of those things.
Instead, Coach Lombardi, he reached into his bag, pulled out
a ball, and he looked at this room full of professional
athletes and he said, gentlemen, this is a football.
And in starting his speech and starting his season in that
famous way, I think the coach was doing three things.
First of all, he was giving his team permission to make a fresh
start. He was saying all the
expectations, all the regrets, everything that has happened in
the past. We're putting that behind us.
We're not carrying that forward with us.
We're on square one. We're starting over.
This is a football. I think secondly, he was saying
you're never going to outgrow this, no matter how much you've
accomplished, no matter how many accolades you've received as
players. Success always starts at the
very foundation. It starts with the fundamentals.
We're going to start at the basics.
This is a football. But I think he was doing a third
thing, I think in addressing those young men, those those
professionals with this very basic fact.
He was inviting them to recall a time, maybe when they were 8 or
9 or 10 years of age on a school ground or in a play yard, and
they first learned what a football was.
And they had their very first practice and they learned how to
throw a football and they learned the rules.
And it was all before them. And it was all wondrous and, and
there was joy and fun and play and they fell in love with the
game of football. Today we're going to be talking
about the Lord's Prayer, which was read for us just a moment
ago by Father Samuel. These are some of the most
familiar words probably in the history of human language.
We say them every week in our service.
Some of you say them every day as part of your prayer and
devotion. And I can imagine Jesus standing
before us today, maybe wearing his Lombardi fedora and holding
up this text and saying this is prayer.
This is prayer. And in doing that, I think he's
inviting us to to start fresh. We can start at Ground Zero.
Maybe some of you need to be here today and you need a fresh
start, a fresh start in your relationship with God.
And he's saying, let's just start at the very beginning.
This is prayer. I think He wants to remind us
that everything we hope to accomplish in this new season of
ministry, in this building, it all starts on the foundation.
It all starts by remembering these very basic things.
We're never going to outgrow them.
We never go past them. We always need to remember.
It starts with connecting with our Father, having a
relationship with him. It starts with prayer, but I
think a third thing that's on offer for us today is to just
remember maybe when you were eight or nine, maybe in a church
basement or a Sunday school room, where you first
encountered that idea that the God, the Creator, the Almighty
knows who you are, cares about who you are, That you can talk
to Him, that you can bring your needs to Him.
Maybe it was with a little bit of fear, maybe with excitement
you first discovered. What is it like to enter into a
relationship with God through prayer?
Remember the first time you learned these words?
Maybe you were not a young child, maybe you were a young
adult. Maybe you were just recently
have just kind of encountered the risen Christ and are still
wrestling with what does this mean in my life?
Today we're going to think about the very basic facts of what is
prayer. So in that vein, I'm going to
have three points today from this text .1.
God is great .2. We need help .3 God is with us.
God is great. We need help, but God is with
us. Let's go to the text, you can
find it in your bulletins. This is Luke 11.
I'll just read the first couple verses here.
Now Jesus was praying in a certain place and when he
finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to
pray as John taught his disciples.
And he said to them, when you pray, say Father hallowed be
your name, your Kingdom come Father.
Father is a word of title, of honor and respect in the ancient
world. It's a word that connotates both
authority but also intimacy. I think you could preach 10s of
sermons on the fatherhood of God.
But what has been standing out to me as I reflect is how God is
Father is the origin of our story, is the context of our
story and how our story and our Father's story intertwine and
become one story. And I'm thinking not just the
biological fathers, but a founding fathers.
We might think of our political founding fathers, Washington and
Jefferson. We might think here in this
place of the the generation that built this church, the
generation that first brought the cross to Diversity Ave. and
how their story is living on. And now we're becoming a part of
their story and of that story. Or for the disciples, they no
doubt would have thought of Father Abraham, that first great
patriarch, that first person who made the covenant with God, who
left his home for the Promised Land.
And the thing about God, the Father of our fathers is he knew
Abraham as a young boy. He knew him as a human being.
He was there when Abraham had his first awkward conversation
with Sarah. He knew what that relationship
was all about, the rhythm of that relationship.
He knew what it cost Abraham to leave her.
He knows all the friends he left behind.
He knows the dreams he left behind as he took that journey
of faith, but he also knows what that step of faith, the legacy
that that meant not only in his life, but for his descendants,
how it inspired Joseph and David and Daniel and reverberates down
through the generations. Or if Abraham seems a little bit
remote and distance. I've been thinking about just in
my own life, my own story, the ancestors and stories that have
formed me, how I've been formed in the faith.
And maybe you have some of these stories.
Maybe there are people that you can think of, parents,
grandparents. I think of my grandparent, my
grandmother Eleanor, a woman who was a mighty, godly woman, but
who died young when my father was 14.
I never got a chance to meet her, but the spirits, the fruits
of the spirit, were bright in her life and particularly the
stories are told of her patience and her kindness and of her
grace. And I got to see how those fruit
would bear, bring a harvest in the lives of her son and
daughter and how they continue to nourish her grandchildren and
are even now being told to her great grandchildren.
One of them bears her name. You see, if God is our Father,
God knows us. He knows our struggle and he can
form fruit in our lives, and he can connect us to a story of
redemption that's an eternal story.
The same God that talked to Abraham is the God that talked
to us. The same God that worked in the
life of my grandmother, the same God who worked in the lives of
your grandparents and your father's and mothers you have
access to. And the legacy that they left in
this world is a legacy that we can also participate in.
And God knows how the fruit that he's forming in US is going to
bring a harvest, maybe, and people will never meet.
Maybe we'll reverberate down through the generations.
Hallowed be your name. The name of God is elevated, is
separate, is different than all the false idols of the world,
all the things our hearts long for but never really satisfy the
power, the pleasure, the wealth, the security.
God's name is apart from that. One thing.
As I get older, we're all getting older, right, is
noticing how language just changes.
So you notice this like how words come and go in fashion.
And lately the word I'm hearing a lot is the word wholesome.
Has anybody heard this word wholesome?
So like a movie can be described as wholesome or an Internet meme
can be described as wholesome or even sometimes people are said
to be wholesome. And the Internet tells me that
wholesome means kind and gentle. It means encouraging or
inspiring. It means pure, and I don't think
the word wholesome means exactly what the biblical word holy
means. I think holy is even going a
little bit beyond that. But they're pointing in a
similar direction. And I think they're reminding
us. You're speaking to this longing
we have to escape from the pollution, the ickiness of so
much of the world, you know, where you always have to be on
guard. Is this a scam?
How are you trying to manipulate me?
What's going on here? I always have to have my guard
up. Don't we long to just be in the
presence of somebody who's truly kind and gentle, where we can be
safe, where it's good, where there's rest.
See, our God, He lets us escape the crass self-interest of this
world, the exploitation of this world, the crude, mean
debasement of this world. He's pure, he's beautiful.
He's going to outlast all of the things of this world, Your
Kingdom come. Finally, the orientation of this
prayer. We're not oriented backwards.
We're not remembering. I guess I said like backwards.
We're not remembering the great things God has done in the past.
This isn't like, oh, recall all the great works of God.
No, we're looking forward. We're looking to the things God
is going to do. It's God is not like that 90's
rock man that's still touring and playing 30 year old hits.
He's still writing new music. And in fact, the greatest hits
are the hits that are still going to come.
Like if you thought the Exodus and the resurrection were cool,
wait till you see the new heavens and the new earth.
Wait till you see him reconcile all things.
Our God is still advancing, His Kingdom is still moving.
He's alive and active. Our God is elevated and
different than the things of this world and he satisfies in a
way that the things of this world do not satisfy.
Our God knows your our story. He's invested in our story.
He can connect us to a life of significance and purpose.
Our God is great. Second point we we need help.
Let's go back to the text Luke 3/3 through or Luke 11 verses 3
through 8. Give us each day Our Daily Bread
and forgive us our sins and for we ourselves and forgive us our
sins for we ourselves. Forgive everyone who is indebted
to us, and lead us not into temptation.
And Jesus said to them, 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, my
children are 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 his friend, yet
because of his impudence, he will rise and give him whatever
he needs. So something that's really hard
for me, and I don't know, maybe some of you can relate to this,
but I just, I hate asking for help.
I don't know if that's like a male thing or a Midwestern thing
or just just a personal issue. But I'm the one who's in the box
store and I'm wandering around and just clearly clueless and
the person comes up in their little vest and excuse me, Sir,
can I help you? And then I'm always like, no,
I'm fine. I, I'll get it.
And I, I'm not fine or my, my wife who's here, who every time
she goes to the store, she texts me like, Hey, do you need
anything? And she's so consistent about
that. And I always, always want to
respond, no, I'm good, I'm good. You see, The thing is, I do not
want to be the person with needs.
I'd love to imagine that I'm the one who helps solve problems,
not that needy person who's always coming.
I always, I need help. I need you to do this.
I need you to do that. But as you read the Bible, you
know who are the people Jesus especially seems to love?
He loves needy people. He loves people who just come to
him and start off. Lord, I'm blind, have mercy on
me. Lord, our friend is paralyzed
here. Help fix.
Lord, my servant is sick. Lord, my daughter has died.
And God's heart responds and he responds with grace and
compassion to people who just call out and need to him.
But the people who want to show off and like, you know, kind of
leave with their credentials, not their need.
Like, did you know Jesus that I've kept every law since I was
a kid? Or the people who want to engage
and like show off how smart and clever they are, Like, hey,
Jesus, what do you think about taxes?
You know, I got some theories, but what, what do you think?
That's a pretty tricky one, right?
Or the the people who want a nitpick like, ah, the miracles.
Like that's cool. But but hand washing, man, like
you're doing it all wrong. You don't know.
I'm going to send you a podcast on hand washing.
You can learn some stuff like Jesus calls those people to
repent. See, I think the Bible wants us
to know that if you're in a room with Jesus, it's better to be
the neediest person in the room than the smartest person in the
room. It's better to be the neediest
person in the room and then the most polished, put together
person. God responds when we share our
needs with Him. And what are the needs?
In this passage, I think we see three kind of basic and
universal needs. First of all, we have physical
bodies that have tangible needs. We need food.
We need air to breathe, we need water to drink.
We need a place to rest. We need our bodies to fight off
the diseases and viruses of this world.
And we don't just need that today, we're going to need it
tomorrow and we're going to need it the day after that.
And God said don't be ashamed. Don't feel embarrassed.
Just come and ask me for your needs, for your daily bread
every single day. Something else we need is we
need people to love us and we need to love other people.
We need family, whether that's biological family or found
family or church family. We need to connect with people.
But here's the thing about community, we're not very good
at it. Like inevitably we get
distracted and we start to focus on my own thing.
And I, I fail to show up for somebody, even though they may
be, I may be implied that I would, or even I just get
jealous and envious. Like, why are they getting all
the attention? Well, you know, actually
something about them that's not so great.
And we tend to undermine our social connections.
And God says if you need to heal your broken communities, you
need to come and ask for forgiveness.
You need to step forward, not hide behind the relational
armor, but become vulnerable, ask for forgiveness.
And you need to give other people forgiveness.
You need to forgive and show mercy if we're gonna have true
community. And then a third thing we need,
and this can be hard to admit, but we all need spiritual
protection. The Bible teaches that we have
an enemy who's like a roaring, prowling lion looking for
someone to devour. And although we like to tell
ourselves, like, we are immune from spiritual disaster, like,
yeah, we feel pretty rooted and secure, none of us can take on
this foe by ourselves. It's only when we put on the
armor of God, the breastplate of righteousness, the helmet of
salvation, the shield of faith, it's only then that we can stand
against our spiritual enemies. God, Christ says don't, don't
fake it. Don't pretend.
Acknowledge that you need my help.
Ask for my help. Pray that you can be, that you
are not taken to temptation. And how do we ask?
And this is where I think the next parable comes into play.
He illustrates this right. You might say, well, how what do
we come to do? We come and ask like the
customer, do you know the customer?
That's the person who's always right.
That's the person who gets all the attention because they have
the money. And it's, it's just like the
natural way I think we tend to show up in spaces is we tend to
show up like we're a customer. And Jesus says you're, you're
not the customer. You're not coming to my store
kind of asking what kind of bread I have today.
And maybe you're going to go somewhere else.
Now you're the lousy neighbor. You need to come and ask like
the lousy neighbor who wasn't prepared, who's pounding on the
door. This is not a no negotiation.
This is not a quid pro quo. He's not like, hey, I'll mow
your lawn tomorrow if you give me some bread tonight.
He's just like, hey, I need the bread and and the person in the
house, he's not going to help him because he thinks it's going
to gain him social capital or he thinks that, you know, maybe he
is somehow indebted him. No, he's like, I just don't want
my kids to wake up, man. Like I don't want to deal with
that. So I'm going to deal with you so
that we can just get some rest God.
So just come, don't come with pretense.
In the book of Matthew, it says unless you become like a little
child, you will have no part of the Kingdom of God.
Little children, they can ask. There's a certain ferocity to a
little child's request, right? They're just demanding.
I just need help. I'm not going to pay for it.
I'm not going to try to figure out a way where this can be a
win win situation. I'm just here to ask.
I just want to receive. We asked like Jesus asked.
We come as needy people. We lead with our needs.
We ask Him to meet those needs, needs for physical needs, needs
for healing of our communities and our family, and finally
needs for our spiritual protection and spiritual growth.
God is great. We need help.
Finally, God is with us. Luke 9, Luke 11, verses 9
through 13. And I tell you, ask, and it will
be given to you. Seek, and you will find knock,
and the door will be open to you, for everyone who asks
receives. And the one who seeks finds, and
the one who knocks, it will be open.
What Father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will
instead of a fish, give him a serpent?
Or if he asks for an egg, we'll 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? Here we are told that even
though we might be in the position of lousy neighbors, God
is a good father. God's a father who's attentive
to the request of his children, who longs to give good gifts to
his children. And how often have we received,
maybe without even really fully noticing the blessings of God?
You know the old song, count your blessings.
There's, there's, there's wisdom in sitting back and just
thinking, how has God provided for me?
But as I get to this text and I read it, I struggle with this a
little bit here and maybe some of you do this, this set second
parable, It can raise as many questions as answers.
You see, I know that some of you have.
I know that I have what I call the daily prayer list.
These are people in my life. These are circumstances, maybe a
temptation or an addiction. And I prayed for it.
And I pray every day for a week for a month.
I pray for a year, I pray for two years.
At some point, I realized I'm going to be praying just every
day for the rest of my life. I am going to be in prayer for
this. And you feel like I'm knocking,
knocking, knocking, knocking. Why isn't it being open?
Why isn't there an answer? And so if you are there, if you
have these questions, I just want you to know I have some of
these questions and I have been wrestling with this and thinking
about it and I want to just provide.
Share a little bit of what I'm thinking and there's some
examples that I've been thinking about see as I look at this text
I think what's interesting is if you look in verse 13, what is
really being promised. It's not eggs and eggs and fish
it's the Father will give you the Holy Spirit.
What does that mean to give the Holy Spirit?
It means that we are going to be connected with the good peer,
the the God of the universe, the eternal one, the one who's going
to outlast all of our circumstances, that we're going
to be have a relationship with a God, a God of power, a God of
love. I mean, this is the Pearl of
great price, right? In the Gospels, this is what you
sell everything for. Sell everything for this, for
Jesus. This is the one thing that
matters, that you're connected to the Holy Spirit.
So then I got thinking about some examples of times when
people in the Bible prayed out to God and God showed up, and
what did that look like and what a difference did it make?
And the first example is from Luke 8.
I call this boat Jesus. You might know the story.
Everybody's in the boat. The storm is raging, Jesus is
napping, and the disciples are freaking out.
Like, don't you care? We're all going to die.
Like this is horrible. And Jesus wakes up and in
response to their prayer, God shows up.
Boom storm is gone, waves are gone.
It's quiet. We freaked out again.
Like what? What just happened?
Sometimes we ain't call out to God.
God shows up and things are just different.
The bonds are broken. I can remember a time in my life
when I was 28 years old and I'm going to details, but on a
Friday morning in Champaign, IL, it's one of the lowest moments
of my life. I was a completely spent and God
showed up and things changed. I know some of you have stories
of being in physical peril or spiritual peril and you called
out to God and he showed up and he rescued you and he provided
completely changed the circumstances.
That's sometimes how God the Holy Spirit shows up.
But there are other examples. The second one I call fire
Jesus. This is from Daniel chapter 3.
And some of you know this story, 3 young men, they're told to
worship the Pagan king, but they're followers of God.
They refuse. We will not worship you Pagan
king. The king gets mad.
He says, all right, I'm going to throw you in the furnace.
And they pray, and I'm sure they hope that somehow the king would
have a change of heart. The pilot light would go out,
something would happen, and they would be spared.
But they weren't. The guards come, they bundle
them up. They bring them to the furnace.
They toss them into the furnace. But then Jesus shows up.
God shows up in the furnace. He walks with them in the fire.
He's present with them. The Pagan king looks and is
amazed, like whoa, there's four people in there and praises the
God of reality, the God of the world.
See, God sometimes shows up with us not before we face the storm.
He doesn't get rid of the storm, but he's with us in the storm,
He's with us in the fire, and he walks with us in the fire.
That our testimony can be, can go forth to the Pagan kings who
are watching us in this world. He can show us that his people
can endure even the fires of this world.
And, and he not only walked with those men in the fire, he led
them out of the fire to a future that they could not imagine.
I'm sure as they were going to that furnace, they thought this
is the end, this is it. But God was there.
He met them in the fire and he got them to the other side of
the fire. So I think sometimes when we
call out to God, we might call out hoping for rescue, but God
might choose to show up to be with us in the struggle.
But then there's a third, third, and final example I want to
think about. And this is Jesus in the garden.
And you know this story as well. This is Jesus with only hours
left to live. His death is right there.
He's now all alone. The disciples have all abandoned
him, and he's calling out to God.
He's praying to God in agony. You can find this in Luke 22.
And he's saying, Father, if you are willing, remove this cup
from me, he's fine. He's like the disciples in the
boat. God, can we get rid of this
storm? And the Bible says that an Angel
showed up and ministered to him. An Angel is a messenger of God,
right? So God's presence comes to Jesus
in this moment, but he doesn't take the cup away.
And in fact, as you read in Luke 22, I'll just read for a minute,
And there appeared to him an Angel from heaven strengthening
him. And being in agony, he prayed
more earnestly and his sweat became like drops of blood
falling to the ground. The Angel doesn't even remove
the agony, the agony and drops the blood or after the Angel.
What the Angel does is he gives him the strength to be faithful
all the way to the end, the strength to love his enemies all
the way to the end, the strength to follow God all the way to the
end. So that on the other side of the
cross he can participate in the victory that was read about in
our our gospel or our epistles passage.
That triumph over the rulers and authorities, that victory over
darkness. He can defeat death by going
through the cross. So I think sometimes when we
pray out to God and we ask for God for help, he doesn't take
the cross out of our path. He gives us the strength and the
stamina to move towards the cross.
He might show us that the road we are called to travel is a
harder Rd. than any road we could have thought of before.
This is harder than I anticipated, but it's the future
is better than we could have imagined.
That is, we participate in the cross of Christ, we get to
participate in the victory of Christ.
And as we know the cost, we know the joy and we know the
resurrected life, and we can be with God forever.
So as I'm learning to pray and thinking about this passage, do
I still pray for rescue? Yes, yes I do.
Let's let this storm out of the way, but I'm also praying, God,
show me what it would be like to show up in this circumstance.
Like where are you ministering me?
How are you walking with me through this and looking for
God's presence and finding God to be there?
And I'm, I'm asking in faith, God, give me the faith to
believe that even if I'm going to do something that seems so
hard, seems beyond me that you can give me the strength to
finish it, to go through with it.
And on the other side of this trial is going to be a future
beyond what I could imagine. You see, our God is great.
We, we need help, but God, God is with us.
This, this is prayer in the name of the Father, Son and Holy
Spirit, Amen.