Thank you so much. Before I begin, I want to take just a brief opportunity as long as we're going long anyway, and do what is highly dangerous in a church, and that is thanks some specific people because I recognize that as soon as I do that, I'm going to leave someone off the list, and so I apologize at the front for that, and just know that that's unintentional, and the Lord certainly knows. I want to begin by thanking my partner in church planting, the one who's had to make the biggest sacrifice, to have to live with a church planter. And that is my wife, Ellen, who my love, and treasure more than anything else in this life. And my three daughters, Anna Margaret and Mary Caroline, who have had to learn what it's like living in a fishbowl, but they have found that people looking into the fishbowl are very friendly in time.
I want to give thanks to Skip Ryan, the senior pastor at Park City's Presbyterian church, and the session, the leadership up there who took the risk of hiring me in the first place, and then having the courage to send me down here to begin this church. What Ned did not tell you, and Ned thanked you for that extraordinary presentation, what Ned didn't tell you, is that the idea for this church originated in his mind, and he and Liz, more than anyone else, were the beginning of this church. But shortly after they began praying, Lauren Dimmon heard, joined together with them, and then shortly thereafter as well, Will and Dee Dee Bertron, and Ronnie and Dorothy Cunod, formed what Mayo called the G4, the original core group, and so many of you others joined quickly with that group, and just frankly worked your tails off over many, many months to see the beginnings of this church. I want to thank the Lord for the most exceptional church staff that a young pastor could ever imagine having. Starting day one with me was Adrian Fry, and I call her the amazing Adrian, if you have not had the opportunity of meeting her, then I want to recognize her right now, would you please stand Adrian? Thank you so much for all you've done.
Two months after we started, Helen Holbrook, as Ned mentioned, joined us to lead the premier children's ministry, I believe, in the city of Houston. I don't think Helen is in the room at this point, but I love you, Helen, thank you for all your sacrifices. And then of course, what I am most thankful for in terms of the ongoing work of this church is the quality of our leadership throughout, and especially the session of this church. God gave to us an original session that I simply cannot imagine having a finer one. In fact, Dr. Clowney has stated in his entire ministry, he's never seen a session of the quality of the one here at Christ the King. Bob Hansen has worked his tail off and more to do so much from a lack of capacity in this church to get us into this facility. Thank you, Bob, for all of your work and as well to John Marshall, Ronnie Tuna, John Dury, and Matt Jones, our original elders for all that you've done. To our deacons, thank you for all of your extraordinary work and ministry team leaders as well. To the silent servants of the church, and there are so many of you, so this is where I'm so dangerous to even mention any, but I would be remiss if I didn't recognize Michael Wins for his silent servitude over these last five years. Doing so much, particularly in setting up and taking down of a church, which is no small pass and so many other things and his wife Susan that we call Rinsy that has become a surrogate mother to my children and done so much to reach the people who first visit Christ the King and build them into new members. To Mark Miller, who has sacrificed beyond measure to produce the quality, the excellence that you have just heard, and we enjoy weekend and week out. Thank you, brother, for your great work and to all of you who give each week. To Jason Wiles, who I sold a bill of goods, the very beginning to be our sound engineer, Jason, thank you for your labor and service these past five years and to the one that you have trained to succeed you, Lance Orton, thank you, Lance for all of your work. And maybe most importantly, to Kim Lofton, who models the beauty of a life devoted to prayer and leads us in, again, a silent way, but in such a beautiful way, that responsibility that is the highest calling that any other path. Thanks to all of you for making these past five years the greatest in my life and in our marriage, may God add his rich blessing. Now let's pray. Father, I do offer thanksgiving to you for all of these who we have remembered and to the many more that were not specifically mentioned by name. Thank you, thank you for the courage displayed by so many people to join a startup church and for the countless sacrifices. Oh God, it is all our desires that whatever humanly we have given that it would redound to your glory, that the name of Jesus might be shown for it in this city and throughout the world. This is our desire, Lord, and now add your blessing as we look into your word in Jesus name we pray. A Sunday school teacher was preparing to dismiss her children to the worship service and she said now remember why is it necessary to be quiet in church and one cute little girl named Annie spoke up and said because people will be sleeping in church. Now I'm a realist, I recognize that sometimes it's too warm in the facility, other time the service just drags on and the preacher's a little bit dull. So Annie was right but I'm not thinking about the literal sleep so much as I think her statement was very pointed about a temptation that every Christian faces but in particular I think we face need to realize we face this day as we move into sort of the five years and beyond mode in this church and that temptation is that we will simply ease into a comfort zone. That we will fall asleep as it were in life and in church that we will forget the urgency, the spectacular privilege that it is to be servants of the great high king of all the universe. I think this is a very present temptation in cultures like ours where there is a fluence and ease and entertainment are the names of the day and yet the church of Jesus Christ is as Greg Gleason reminds me is to see itself as a ship but not a cruise ship. As we would have it but a battleship one that is armed and ready to cross at times turbulent waters to carry forth the great banner of Jesus Christ. Now what would I speak on especially as things are going along this morning that would be so important to take that concept away from today. I think it's a subject of prayer when we look at the life of Jesus Christ particularly at crisis moments in his life what was Jesus doing he was praying even on the cross Jesus was praying and we think of him in the garden of Gethsemane right before he was handed over to be tried and finally crucified right before that he was in the garden of Gethsemane praying. And yet do you remember what the disciples were doing they were sleeping Jesus came back and invited him urged them chastise them to watch and pray and yet they fell asleep again. That is our greatest temptation that we would be lawfully by whatever it is in our own lives or in our culture and fail to grasp the great calling that God has given to this church to be a difference in this city and throughout the world. When the pastor that Lauren didn't heard read earlier we see Jesus casting a vision for prayer it was sort of curious because the disciples evidently talk him praying and you might imagine they were a little bit timid maybe feeling a little insecure thinking boy I guess we should have been doing this what do you want to talk to and they just decided to sit there and watch and then when he finished one of them had the guts to speak up and said. Lauren will you teach us to pray and what Jesus did then was he taught them to pray cast a vision for prayer and he gave them first a model for prayer kind of a how to to pray what we should pray for and then secondly he gave them a manner to pray that is a certain feel to the prayer that we should have. And finally the motivation for prayer and so I want to look at those three things with you briefly this morning as we speak to grab a hold of all that Jesus has called us to be and do as a church. Now as you think about the urgency of this particularly the way I've practiced all this you think man this is very serious business and this is serious business it's not child's play and yet the curious thing is that woven throughout this section in each of the three movements of this passage you find the concept of children emphasize over and over again. Jesus is saying don't over professionalize what you do in your prayer life and as a church realize that it must be simple it must be an essence of child's prayer and that's what we see in each of these movements first of all the model for prayer that is what is it that we're supposed to pray for. Now of course this is where this is where he gave what we call the Lord's prayer this is a little bit of a contracted version you find the more lengthy version that we would use in our worship service in the gospel of Matthew and the tale in those words are not explicitly found in the prayer that Jesus gave that gathered from the Old Testament really is an add-on to finish up with a symbol clash of the glory of God so to speak. Now in a model for prayer that Jesus gave and the Lord's prayer really we need to understand that this is not a mantra this isn't something magical where if you say it just right absolutely the right formula then God's going to bless it and write things are going to happen it wasn't intended to be that way it wasn't intended to be some mantra it was intended to be really a set of priorities to give us a lens through which to understand how to pray to give us categories to pray by and so I want to just look briefly at two of those priorities that are given in the Lord's prayer that we might have the right model for prayer the first thing is what it begins with and really what it's absorbed with and that is the person of God. Human beings by nature Jesus says in this passage that we are evil by nature all right we tend to focus where on ourselves we gravitate in that direction this is great magnetic pull in the following world to gravitate towards self but the Lord's prayer just smacks us in the face and says no you must begin and be centered on God and so you see this spectacular vision of God that's cast here father hallowed be your name that word hallowed means set apart remarkably distinct that is God is totally different from anything in our world anything in our imagination and we must begin by being absorbed by him. Eugene Peterson in his book Reverse Thunder says this prayer is a focus upon God whereby all things come into focus in that wonderful by sintering attention on God the center all things become centered life is not indiscriminate bits and pieces mingle treasure and rubble it is coherent and so we see this we focus upon the person of God in his great holiness that God is holy other and transcendent. He is the king and we are not we need to hear that many of us particularly those that were involved in the start of the church I mean great entrepreneurial spirit but we all wanted to remind ourselves continually that it wasn't about us and our ability it was about God and what he is pleased to do by his omnipotent power. But notice how the prayer begin literally the first words not just that God is the great king transcendent overall but that God is father this is where you first get the concept of children the prayer that God has invited us into his not only his presence but into his royal family through the person and work of Jesus Christ is the every person in the world is not a child of God every time. When a person is a creature of God we become children of the Almighty when by faith alone we admit that we are evil by nature that we are wayward and that we cling to the person and work for the Lord Jesus Christ his life death and resurrection for us we become his children and God enters into a remarkably intimate relationship with us one whereby we can come to him and ask anything that we please. And he welcomes us as a young child might come and sit on the lap of a parent he welcomes us into his presence and listens to us God is not distant and disinterested he is alive and present and he is intimate with all of his children. The other priority that we need to recognize though as we come into this prayer this model is what it says about us you know one thing that I never noticed until studying for this it may seem real obvious but the first person pronoun is not mentioned in the Lord's prayer. I is not there me is not there is it the focus of prayer again we tend to gravitate towards self but the Lord's prayer pushes us away from thinking about ourselves first thinking about God and then the corporate body the we the body of Christ and the focus of course there is that we are incredibly needy give us this day our daily bread we're needy every day as the people of Israel were in the wilderness. That we are guilty people we need forgiveness every day and that guilt is before God but also before others that we forgive as a as a sign that we know the forgiveness of God. J.C. Ryle that great British bishop said sin is a mountain that stands between God and man and this isn't talking about you know the rolling hills of the hill country of Texas this we're talking Mount Everest and it is only through the Lord Christ to literally blast down the mountain. That we are reunited to God but also that we are prone to wander lead us not a detentation that is that we even being united to Christ even being a Christian we are prone to wander that we are weak and dependent children that we are prone to starving to that unless God daily captures us and and feeds us and nourishes us. The Scottish devotional writer Andrew Bonar in 1853 said God likes to see his people shut up to this that there is no hope but what lies in prayer here in lies the church's power against the world and brothers and sisters in Christ we must as a body as a church as we move forward we must see ourselves as yes God's children favored of him for his own purposes not because we've been good but also that we remain utterly completely dependent that we are powerless apart from him we can do nothing with this model in mind Jesus then begins to speak of the manner of prayer that is he says that with these categories fixed in your mind. Now pray with this kind of fervor you see the problem is we tend to take things and formalize them and that's why a lot of the churches in our day reject liturgy altogether because all this does is just breed a bunch of hypocrites who are just saying mantras in worship. We think that it is important to hold to the historic terms that the church is healthy throughout the ages to remember that we need to learn from those who have come before us how to pray how to affirm our faith how to celebrate God all of these things but do so with with great urgency and fervor.
Theodora speaking of Luther back in the 16th century said this he said I overheard him in prayer but good God with what life and spirit did he pray it was with so much reverence as if he were speaking to God it was so much confidence as if he had been speaking to his friend. Luther had in mind that model of God being the great king of the universe but also his intimate father who loved him and cherished him and he came boldly in his presence with great fervor. Jesus told a story to help reinforce this truth the story of what you might call the friend in the middle in the middle of the night in the ancient world that people traveled at night oftentimes to avoid the great heat. He didn't have many air conditioned camels in those days and so they would pull up to the friend's house in the middle of the night and it was expected that you would be hospitable and part of being hospitable was you would feed them. Well this guy was caught off guard his friend came in the middle of the night and he had nothing to feed him what a travesty and so he maybe snuck out while his wife was carrying on conversation with him. He ran next door to ask his neighbor for some bread paying back in the morning well he's knocking on the door and presumably it was a small house that his neighbor lived in. He won bedroom house presumably he was in bed with his children and he didn't want to be messed with and he said come on don't bother me I don't want to wake up my whole family. Now most of us at that point would be just so embarrassed that we would with our tail between our legs wander back to the house not this guy this guy was recklessly bold and at this point we can imagine he began to shout and beat on the door let me in let me in you don't understand. And it says not because he was the friend of this man but because of his impudence now I don't know how many of you know what impudence is not impudence all right it impudence and we have to look it up this week in the church office. It means this is literally what the dictionary says cocky boldness it is a recklessness it's a nerdy attitude. Jesus has an effect that type of attitude that type of boldness that type of shameless prayer must characterize the people of God because of the urgency of the kingdom that Jesus has come to unleash on the world don't be timid about it don't be athletic don't be passive to use corporate lingo of our day be proactive of the highest order in your prayer line. Now there is sort of an implicit argument from the lesser to the greater because Jesus is not saying God is like the guy you don't want to get out of that God lazy God sleepy no it's just the opposite picture what that guy is like and then go to the other end of the continuum and there's where you find God he is so ready to hear our prayer he is so eager to hear us but he wants us to get excited about the needs that we need. We know he is placed in our life particularly I think the need for the kingdom to come through us to our unbelieving friends every single one of us is a missionary Christ the King Presbyterian Church we live in one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world and God wants us to be praying for and reaching out to our unbelieving friends sharing the gospel and bringing them in. That they might declare the praises of Almighty God with us. The great story of Andrew the George Mueller who was let an orphanage in the 19th century back in England let me just read you from his diary in November 1844 he said I began to pray for the conversion of five individuals. I prayed every day without a single intermission whether sick or in hell on the land on the sea or whatever the pressure of my engagements might be 18 months the last before the first of the five were converted. I thank God and prayed on for the others five years of last and in the second was converted. I thank God for the second and prayed on for the other three day by day I continue to pray for them and six years past before the third was converted. I thank God for the three and went on praying for the other two these two remained unconverted and in 36 years later he wrote that the other two sons of one of Mueller's friends were still not converted. He wrote but I hope in God I pray on and look for the answer they are not converted yet but pray they will be and then in 1897 52 years after he began praying these two men were finally converted. After Mueller had died it's this kind of boldness this kind of dogged persistence that must characterize us in prayer before the Lord. Look at the picture of the friends in the middle there's an analogy there for us that you and I who ordinarily are well fed spiritually have friends out there wandering in the cold of the night. And by God's grace they come to our door without us even having to go to them sometimes and they're hungry and needy but we know we have nothing in and of ourselves to provide them with and so we go to one who has food for the Lord Christ and beg him and beg him to feed our friends with his gospel of grace. John Knox the great Scottish reformer cried give me Scotland or I die. Is that your prayer for Houston or are we asleep are we too comfortable we must remember our brothers and sisters in lands where there is persecution where there is great difficulty. And as it were see with spiritual eyes that also we are in the midst of the battlefield we're on not a cruise ship but a battleship and we must pray as the friend in the middle for our friends who are without bread that's the manner of prayer now finally the motivation for prayer because frankly I know that for many of you myself included. You've heard sermons and talks and books on prayer and the primary vehicle for motivation is what if you go I read a story this last week of this young lady who sold Girl Scout cookies. I lived a bit Brent 13 year old Girl Scout sold 11,200 boxes of Girl Scout cookies. It's pretty good job. What is her philosophy she says you have to look people on the eye and make them feel real guilty. That is not my job this morning. If you leave here with that motive for prayer you have missed the core of this passage. It is not because we must feel duty bound it's because we should be so thankful thankful for a God who is powerful beyond imagination and good. And beyond anything that we have ever seen or known in our life that's what this passage teaches us with the primary motivation is first of all that God is powerful it says in verse 10 look for everyone who asks receives and the one who seeks finds into the one who knocks it will be open that is there should be an expectation on our mind prayer works prayer is powerful. Now we should pray and pray and keep knocking and keep seeking until the door is open praise me to God for his power. It is given through the instrumentality of prayer God I firmly believe the scriptures teach God has ordained all that will come to pass the monkeys not on our back God is setting forth his eternal plan. Yet he has been pleased to choose human instruments week though we are and to use our prayers have instruments through which he in space time history executes that beautiful and perfect plan pray because we get to participate in what God has already ordained now. This is where we see the children represented again because God wants us to understand that he's not like the man laying that I've had with his children not wanting to get up. Instead he is a gracious father ready to give gifts to their children. And so he says fathers look even though you're evil Jesus didn't mens word he was amazing at his candor even though you're evil inherently not thinking of good things for other people even though you're evil and know how to give good gifts to your children. When your son asked for a fish you don't give him a serpent and he asked for an egg you don't give him a scorpion you know how to get good gifts. Think of your heavenly father now who is perfect will he not give the Holy Spirit all those that ask this is now an argument from the greater to the lesser just the opposite of what we saw few verses ago. God is saying imagine what the greatest gift is to a human being well it's to have God come live inside of you and that's what happens and that's what can happen to some of you today for the first time. If you come by faith to Jesus Christ admitting your sin that you are utterly powerless in and of yourself and placing your faith squarely and firmly upon Jesus Christ if white death and resurrection for you when you do that the Holy Spirit comes to live inside of you. That's the greatest thing that will ever happen to you and he's saying if God is willing to do that for his children just think of what else he's willing to do. Pray with great with a greatly informed mind the model of prayer but pray with fire and then recognize that the whole reason that we will be able to keep praying with that kind of fire and persistence. It's because God is so powerful and so blessedly good and gracious that he's willing to give us whatever we ask and the kingdom thrown in. Christ the King Presbyterian Church God has rich and blessed us that's not fall asleep. May we remain awake with the vital urgency that Jesus himself demonstrated and continues to demonstrate this very second as he sits at the right hand of his father and prays for you and me. Let's pray father thank you for this privilege to be your church. Would you use us Lord as we lift up not ourselves but the beautiful sacred cross of Jesus Christ that you might draw the nations that are located here in Houston and far beyond to our blessed Savior Jesus amen.