Open up your Bible with me now to the book of Matthew, Matthew chapter 6, where we continue today, our series on the subject of prayer. I began a series of messages last Sunday. If you were here, you remember what we are doing for the next four weeks. We're looking at Matthew chapter 6, just one chapter of the Bible, and we're going to learn what Jesus has to say about prayer. Matthew chapter 6, it's found on page 960, 960 of the Hardback Bible that if you don't have a Bible, just reach up under a chair and pull one out, and look for Matthew chapter 6. We're going to be looking today at verses 9 through 13. Hold your place right there for just a moment while I remind you of what we're discussing. Last week I posed the question, why do we Christians often struggle with prayer? Some of you perhaps would say, I am a person who has a hard time praying. I don't pray very often, you might say. I don't really enjoy prayer. I don't know what to say when I do try to pray. Perhaps that describes you, and so in this series, what I'm doing is I'm trying to answer the question, why do we struggle with prayer with four conceivable answers? Last week, the answer that I posed or that I suggested might be your answer is that your God might be too distant. In other words, your view of God is that He's way too far off, and that's why praying to Him is a difficulty, and so we talked last Sunday about the fact that God is our father. He is not distant, He is close, and if you're a follower of Jesus, you know that. Well, today I want to suggest that there's another possible answer to the question, and maybe this is your answer. Why do I struggle with prayer? It might be because your prayers are too complicated. What I'm suggesting is that you are perhaps making prayer more complicated than it really is. You've forgotten, or perhaps nobody has ever told you, that for Christians, prayer is really very simple. Compared to a lot of the other world religions, for example, Christianity teaches that prayer is simple because God is accessible. We could compare, for example, Christianity to Islam, the religion of Islam. Some of you know about what Muslims have to do about prayer. Prayer is one of the five pillars of the religion of Islam, and when a faithful Muslim praise, he has to pray a specific prayer, every adult Muslim, a specific prayer five times a day. They have to pray for Allah for ten minutes each time. They must pray in Arabic. There are specific words and gestures and motions, positions of the body that they have to go through. They have to do a ritual cleansing of their bodies before they pray, and they have to face in the direction of Mecca. That makes prayer out to be quite a difficult thing if you're not doing it just so. You're not praying according to that religion. Christianity is different from that. Even in some Christian circles, some of the teaching about prayer makes it more of a burden than a blessing. And maybe you have been exposed to some of that distorted teaching. But the New Testament teaching about prayer shows you that it is really simple. It's not complicated. It's not rocket science, you might say. Or another way we might put it is that Jesus would have scribed to that acronym, KISS. Keep it simple, Saints. Keep it simple, Saints, is the philosophy of Jesus when it comes to prayer. Now let me hasten to add that prayer by saying that prayer is simple. I'm not saying that prayer is easy. It is not. It is a discipline. It's hard. It's difficult at times. Prayer is contrary to human nature. One person has said that prayer is the ultimate counter-cultural move. He writes, it's the ultimate statement of rebellion that Christians can make against the world and its system. And that explains why when you sit down to pray, sometimes you're going to feel opposition. Your mind and maybe even your body will fight back against prayer at times. Prayer will feel inefficient to you. You will think, my goodness, this is such a waste of time. The world, the flesh, the devil will all unite to keep you from praying. For those reasons, that's why I say prayer is not easy, but it is simple. And one of the greatest proofs of that is the Lord's Prayer. So without further ado, let's look at Matthew chapter 6. I'd like us to read aloud all of us together this passage. It's Matthew 6, 9 through 13. It is known usually as the Lord's Prayer. So I'll be reading out of the new international version of the Bible in IV. If you happen to have that version, let's read this passage aloud. Beginning right there at verse 9, listen to God's word. This then is how you should pray together. 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, forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors, and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one. This is God's word. First, let's do a flyover. Just a flyover over the Lord's Prayer. Let me mention about five things. Five things that I observe about the Lord's Prayer that might help us get an orientation here. First of all, notice that it's a short prayer. Isn't that a relief that when Jesus is teaching us to pray, He gives us a short prayer. It's just a few verses. Secondly, it's a structured prayer. There is a pattern in this prayer. There are six petitions. The first three focus on God, His name, His kingdom, and His will. The second group of three petitions focus on us. Our needs, our need of daily bread, our need of forgiveness, and our need of protection. So it's a structure. In some ways, some of the commentators point out there's a similarity here between the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments consists of two groups of commandments. The first group oriented vertically toward God. The second group oriented horizontally toward our duty to our fellow man. So there's this similarity between the two. The third observation I would make about the Lord's Prayer is that it's meant to be a sincere prayer from Jesus to us. He is not giving us this prayer so that we could just read it in a wrote kind of mindless way. It's meant to be sincere. In fact, we looked last week at the verses previous to this one, and I pointed out that Jesus takes pains there to say that prayer is not supposed to be done hypocritically, or like the mindless babbling that He criticizes in those verses. So the prayer is sincere. The fourth thing to observe about the prayer is that it's expressed in a corporate way. It's a corporate prayer. In other words, it's not expressed with singular pronouns, but with plural pronouns. Our Father in heaven, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread, forgive us our debts, and so on and so forth. So this is a prayer, not just for you individually, but it's a prayer for the church. It's a prayer for your family, a prayer for your life group, for your Bible study, for your circle of friends, for your accountability partners. See what Jesus is communicating here is that prayer is not just about you, but it's about us. It's a corporate prayer. And the fifth and final thing to observe is that Jesus gives this prayer as a pattern or a template for our own prayer. That's why he says in verse 9, this then is how you should pray. So let's not ignore our Savior. When he says this is how to pray, let's learn how to pray by taking the Lord's prayer and learning all that we can from it. So what I'd like to do for the rest of the time is to now that we've done that fly over. Let's dive in and look more closely, and what I'd like to share with you this morning is four things that we learn from the Lord's prayer about how to pray. Number one, from reading the Lord's prayer, we see that we can pray with confidence. You and I as children of God can pray with confidence. Verse 9, the very beginning of the prayer, it's usually called the preface to the Lord's prayer. It says, our Father in heaven, because of that relationship that you have with God. If you're a follower of Jesus, you can pray with confidence. Why? Because your God's dearly loved child. We talked about this last week, so I'm not going to go into it as great in detail as I did last Sunday. But I just want you to notice that prayer is the language of sonship. It's not the timid, trembling voice of a slave hoping, just hoping for some favor from his or her master. It's not the four-learned cry of an orphan hoping that somebody out there somewhere is listening. No, prayer is the expected approach of a son or a daughter to the most loving father you can imagine. I love this picture if you're my age or somewhere thereabouts. You remember what this picture is all about, right? This is a picture of John F. Kennedy in the Oval Office sitting behind his desk with his little son, John F. Kennedy Jr., otherwise known back then as John-John, playing up under his desk. And the reason that this picture has so captured the imagination of America over the years is not just for the relationship that those two had, but for what it suggests about our relationship to God. If you're a child of God trusting in Jesus Christ, this picture sort of displays what prayer is like. Sometimes we think, God, you're so awesome, you're so immense, you're omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, you're running the universe. But I can still come into your room, into your presence, I can sit under your desk and you and I can talk. See, that's the mentality of a child of God. It's familiarity, it's confidence because of the relationship that you have. So when you talk to God, it might help you to begin your prayer the same way Amy began her prayer today, heavenly father. It'll remind you of your identity, you've been adopted. Prayer is your legal right as an adopted child of God. This means, let's get practical, what does it mean that you're adopted when it comes to prayer? It means that you can pray unedited. You can pray unedited, you can write your prayers, you can read your prayers, you can use some of the Bible's prayers as your own. For example, in the book of Psalms, there are bunches of prayers there, you can make them your own prayers. You can sing your prayers, you can scream your prayers, you can lament your prayers, you can weep your prayers. The Bible even says that you can groan your prayers. It says in Romans 8, that we don't know what we ought to pray for, but the spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that are too deep for words. You can pray in your bedroom, or in your kitchen, or in your car, or at your desk, or on the treadmill, or in the shower. You can pray sitting, or standing, or kneeling, you can pray flat on your face if you want to. You can pray anytime of the day or night, you can pray the way you want to pray, you don't have to pray like me, or your parents, or some guy on TV, that ought to be a relief. You can speak in your own words, words that might sound to your ears, awkward and illogical and disorganized, but that's okay. There are your words, you don't get a grade on your prayers. The point is you are free. It's about relationship, not rules. You'll look in vain throughout the whole Bible for a prescribed method of prayer. You might have heard about the grandfather who, one time overheard his little granddaughter at her bedside praying. She was kneeling there at the bedside, but what she was doing was reciting the alphabet. A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and so on, and so the grandfather asked her, what are you doing? And she said, I'm praying. I can't think of the right words, so I'm just saying all the letters. My father knows what I'm thinking, and he'll put them into words. See, she's voiced our confidence at the throne of God. You can say what you want, because you're a loved son or daughter of the father. So first, if you're a child of God, trusting in Jesus, pray with confidence. Second, pray with audacity. Pray with audacity. Do you know what audacity means? You might not have used that word for a while. It means reckless boldness, fearlessness. It even borders on presumption. And yet the Bible teaches, Jesus teaches here in the Lord's Prayer that you can pray that way. You can pray with absolute reckless abandon bordering on presumption. Why? Because God is king. God's king, and that's why prayer can be audacious. Let's take a look at these first three petitions in the Lord's Prayer, the ones that focus on God. Just hallowed be your name. See when you pray that what you're saying is, Lord, your name is holy. You Lord are holy. So Lord, I want your name to be hallowed throughout the earth and loved and honored by people everywhere. And Lord, let your reputation be built up, not torn down by my behavior, and by my words and by my attitudes today. Let your name be loved and cherished wherever it is heard. Second petition, your kingdom come. When you pray that prayer, Lord, your kingdom come, what you're saying basically is Jesus. You came to usher in a new kingdom, a kingdom of love and of light and of righteousness. You say in your word, Lord, that you're making all things new. But Father, when I look around me, I don't see all things new. I look around me and see much that is wrong. And so Lord, let your reign and your rule be manifest in this world today. Father, set the world right. Let the gospel be preached in new places today. Fix what's broken in my neighborhood, my goodness, in my home. Fix what's broken in Orlando and Florida throughout our country. Fix what's broken in the halls of Washington. Fix what's broken in the world. Let your kingdom come. And then the third petition, your will be done on earth, as it isn't heaven means. Lord, we need life here on earth to resemble life in heaven just a little bit more today. Father, shine your light into the dark places of my heart, of our church, of our city, nation and globe. But your blessings flow far as the curse is found to remember that well-known Christmas Carol. See, what these are, are audacious prayers. These are big prayers because God's king, they should be big. Sometimes I think that when we pray, and I'm exhibited here, sometimes when we pray, it's about my name, my kingdom, my will. And what Jesus is telling us to do is throw the nets far wider than maybe you ever have before. Think of the fact that God is our omnipotent king and ask him for more, be reckless in our prayers. And you know, another thing that we struggle with sometimes is not knowing what to pray for. Perhaps the requests are just that many. Or perhaps we don't really understand the situation well enough to know what to ask God for. Well, you know what Jesus is saying here in the Lord's Prayer, he's saying, you don't have to know what to pray for. Just pray this, Lord, glorify your name in this sickness, in this situation, in this unemployment, in this challenge that I'm facing, in this interview that I have today, in this class that I've got to go to today, whatever it is, Lord, glorify your name. That's a great prayer. It's sort of like that prayer that Moses prayed in the book of Exodus, chapter 32. Do you remember that the people of Israel had built a golden calf, and they were bowing down and worshipping and praying to a golden calf and Moses was just ready to throw in the towel while I'm sure. And he said, God, if you don't go with us, I don't know what's going to do, what's going to happen. I'm going to be undone. If you don't lead us out of this place, I give up. And then Moses prayed this prayer, God, show me your glory. That's audacious. Show me your glory. Have you prayed that prayer recently? Can we at UPC pray that prayer together? Father, show us your glory at University Presbyterian. Show us your glory in East Orlando. Send us revival, Father. We don't like the way things are. We don't accept the status quo. That's what Moses prayed. Show me your glory, Father, I'm desperate. Let's pray with audacity. When you're distressed, when you're depressed, when you're drained of your spiritual energy, Jesus says, keep it simple, Saint. Lord, show me your glory. May your name be loved. May your kingdom come. Give us a little bit of heaven, right here on earth. So you struggle with prayer? God is telling you here, keep it simple, pray with confidence as a child, pray with audacity, and thirdly, pray with specificity. That's another thing we learn from the Lord's Prayer. Pray with specificity, if you can possibly say that word. Jesus in the Lord's Prayer says in verse 11, to pray, give us today our daily bread. Why can you pray that prayer? Because God is your provider. He's your provider, so you can pray specifically for the things you need. The word bread, don't take it too literally, I believe that what it's meant to be is representative of everything we need for daily life. Martin Luther said that daily bread includes food, a healthy body, good weather, house, home, life, children, good government, and peace. And I'm sure you can think of a lot more things that could fit into daily bread. But Jesus is saying here in verse 11, where he says, give us today our daily bread. He's saying he's inviting you and me to tell him what we want. Do you remember one time Jesus was walking down the road from Jericho to Jerusalem, and he saw by the side of the road two blind men. This is in Matthew chapter 20. And when the blind men saw or heard that Jesus was coming their way, they leaped up and said, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on us. And Jesus comes alongside the two blind men and he looks at them and he says to them, what do you want me to do for you? Prayer is God asking you, what do you want me to do for you? Tell me and be specific. I'm going to talk more about this next week. But for now, just let that sink in a little bit. What do you want me to do for you? Says Jesus to you. You might ask, well, why do I need to tell God what I need when he knows about it already? I mean, after all, it says in verse 8 of this same chapter, your father knows what you need before you ask him. So you might be thinking, can't I just assume that since Jesus is all knowing, God's all knowing, he knows what I need and I can just let him give me what he knows that I want. Well, but here's the thing, when you don't ask somebody for help, it means that you're trying to live life on your own. Asking helps you to cultivate an attitude or a habit of dependence and dependence is a good thing. See, you glorify God by asking him to do things for you. Sometimes we think that we're going to bother him, but no, it actually glorifies God to need him. Here's an illustration. When we were in Mexico on this mission trip that we were on, we were building these concrete roofs for these houses, right, I told you about this last week. And the guy on the ground would lift up a heavy bucket of cement to a guy on the scaffolding and the guy on the scaffolding would lift it up to the guy on the roof. Now if you were on the ground, would it glorify the guy on the scaffolding to take the heavy burden of cement and try to get it up to the guy on the roof? No, it wouldn't glorify the middle man at all. It would tell the guy on the scaffolding, I don't really need you. You're not very important to me. And so when you fail to pray, when you don't ask Jesus for what you need from him, you're treating him like a guy on the scaffolding who doesn't matter. I love how John Piper put it, he used an analogy in a book called Desiring God. He said, not to pray to God about the things you need is like a guy, a bus driver who tries to push the bus out of the ditch by himself when all the while Clark Kent is on board. You know who Clark Kent is, right? And then he went on and used another analogy. He said not to pray about the things you need is like shopping at Goodwill when your bedroom is wallpapered with Sax 5th Avenue gift certificates. And some of you are acting that way toward God. I don't need you. I can handle this all by myself. Pray with specificity and that will really help. I say a 30 verse 18 says that the Lord longs to be gracious to you. He rises to show you compassion. So let him meet your needs. Tell him what you want. Pray with specificity. Pray with confidence with audacity with specificity and then finally pray with brokenness. The Lord's Prayer teaches us to pray with brokenness. Look at the last two petitions in the prayer verses 12 and 13. Jesus says to say, forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one. What this is is an admission of sin and weakness. When you admit to God that you've sinned that you've failed him in some way, when you tell him that you're prone to wander, Lord, I feel it prone to leave the God I love. You're confessing and confess means to agree with or come clean. When you admit your faults and your failings, you actually again are depending on God for his grace. You're saying, I blew it, Lord. I gave in. I bowed down to that idol of reputation. I gave in to greed, Father. I gossiped, Lord, forgive me. I'm worrying, Jesus. Help me to stop. Help me make it right with that person that I've just offended. That's what you pray in those last two petitions. Help me be holy today, Father. Fill me with the Holy Spirit and make me strong in my fight against sin. Don't allow me to enter into a trial that I cannot bear. Let me say for myself and from the devil, that's what those last two petitions express. Now why can you pray that prayer? Why can you pray with brokenness? How can you look up into the face of God without shame even when you know you've blown it, even when you know how far short you fall? Well, it's because of what we sang earlier today. Before the throne of God above, I have a strong and perfect plea, a great high priest whose name is love, whoever pleads for me. His name is written on his, my name is written on his hands, my name is written on his heart. I know that while in heaven he stands, no tongue can bid me thins depart, no tongue can bid me thins depart. And Satan tempts me to despair and tells me of the guilt within, upward I look and see him there who made an end of all my sin. Because the sinless Savior died, my sinful soul is counted free. For God the just is satisfied to look on him and pardon me. To look on him and pardon me. Pray with confidence because your God's child, he's your father. Pray with audacity because God is your king. Pray with specificity because he's your provider and pray with brokenness because he's your redeemer. I want to close with a quotation from Richard Foster. He wrote a book on prayer called Finding the Hearts True Home. And he writes this, the Lord is inviting you and me to come home. To come home to where we belong. To come home to that for which we were created. His arms are stretched out wide to receive us. His heart is enlarged to take us in. For too long we've been in the far country, a country of noise and hurry and crowds, a country of climb and push and shove, a country of frustration and fear and intimidation. And he welcomes us home, home to serenity and peace and joy, home to friendship and fellowship and openness, home to intimacy and acceptance and affirmation. That's prayer. You know, I may be talking to somebody today who has never come home to God at all. Maybe you didn't think you could. Maybe you didn't know how. Maybe you've been trying to live life on your own, trying to be that self-made man, that self-made woman, but you're finding out, aren't you, that it doesn't work? It never works. The problems are too big and so you feel alone. The people and the things that you've trusted in have failed you. I want you to know if you don't know it already, they will always fail you. You need God in your life. See, that's the problem. Jesus is the way home and it's not complicated. It's simple. You just need to ask Jesus to forgive your sins, to cancel your debts and you know what? The good news is that he can do that. That's why he died on the cross, to take away your guilt and your shame and to make you a new person, but you must be willing to turn away from your old self-centered life and hand the steering wheel over to Jesus Christ. You need to follow him. You need to obey him. You need to make Jesus the most important person in your life, and you need to give him your total allegiance. Now that sounds pretty scary and it would be scary where it's not for the fact that you'll never meet a person who loves you as much as Jesus does. And Jesus will give you the Father in a relationship that you were created to have. If you're willing to say yes to Jesus, I can actually lead us in a prayer right now and you can just sort of follow along silently in your heart and you can begin a relationship with God right now that will allow you to pray, real prayers, let's pray together. If you are feeling and wanting to have Jesus Christ come into your life in a real way, you've never said yes to God before, let's say it now. Father, I'm a sinner and I need Jesus. I need you in my life. I've tried it all, I've done it all, I've found out how empty this world is. I'm ready for something real. Lord I give you my guilt and my shame and I ask that you step in and take control. Here's the steering wheel of my life. You be Lord, you be master and please give me the strength I need to give you the wheel every single day. Lord thank you for dying on the cross to save people like me. Thank you that I'm not hopeless. Thank you that you love me so much, you gave your life for me. Now here and now I give my life to you. Father all of us need you, doesn't matter when we said that prayer, it might be just then it might have been years ago, but we need you. So help us to pray Lord, we pray as a confident child. Help us to want your glory more than anything in this world. Help us to depend on you and to be honest about our failings and our weaknesses. Thank you for the gift of prayer. Help us Lord to keep it simple. Thank you that our prayers matter to you because we do. In Jesus name we pray, Amen.