Father

Father in heaven, we are so thankful that we can call you Father, Abba, Daddy, or so grateful that you, the one who pursues us, you, the one knocking on the door of our hearts, longing to sup with us. Father, we know that we have a lot to learn in regards to prayer. We know it because it's the right thing to say, because it would lack humility if we said we didn't, but we also know it in experience that something about prayer is extremely difficult. One thing we know is true, our enemy does not want us to pray. A noisy world, a noisy heart, a busy life, a lazy soul, so many things Lord keep us from praying. And yet it's what we ultimately long for, that communion with you. Father, we are like the disciple who asked you to teach them how to pray. We have been praying that now for a week, Lord, I pray that you would continue to do that. Even now in this time, as the word has preached, that you would teach us something about prayer that would encourage our soul and cause us to seek after you, as you have sought after us. Lord, we are so indebted to you, and we are so thankful for the love that you've shown us, that that love is beyond measurement. Oh, God, would you make it even more real to us to stay? That we might walk out truly transformed by the work that your Holy Spirit, the gift that you've given us, the work that he has done. We have removed from us anything in this moment that's distracting us. Our emotions, our fears, our worries and anxieties, our anger, Lord, our illnesses, whatever it might be, would you please remove those things that we might hear clearly? What it is, you long to say to us through your word, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. So if you were not here last week, we began a series on prayer. Learning to pray boldly, independently, we're asking God to teach us to pray. To review is very simple. I ask that every member of our church and all those visiting that we would simply, throughout each day of last week and throughout each day of the summer, begin to pray, Lord, teach us to pray. That in itself is a very bold and dependent prayer. Lord, teach us to pray. I then ask you to do an evaluation of your prayer life using four questions. The first question was, when and how often do you pray? And I urge you to be honest, how much time truly do you spend in prayer? How often? When? I then ask you to consider, who is it that you are praying for? And the third question, what are you praying for? And lastly, it was, how is it that you are approaching God in prayer? Prayer is hard, but it's something we can all do. It's a gift from God, he gives us the grace to do it, he invites us to do it, we ultimately long for it and respect those who seem to do it well, but yet it seems so distant for so many of us. Listen again to what we sang just a few minutes ago, oh, the pure delight of a single hour that before I throne I spend, when I kneel in prayer and with thee my God, I commune as friend with friend. Is that your experience? Do you long for that single hour? Is it even an hour, does that seem so impossible that you would pray like that? Well, that's why we need God's grace. That's why we need Him to teach us how to pray. One example is if you're married, I know that couples struggle to pray together. How do I know? I am part of a couple. 18 years of marriage has not been beautiful in the area of prayer, not together. I shared this at the 11 o'clock service last week and I didn't at the 9.30 just for sake of time, but Christine and I, yes, we have a beautiful marriage. It's like many marriages, it has highs and lows, but one of the consistent lows have been that we do not pray boldly and independently together very often. Some of you do, and I admire that and have much to learn from you, but I know that's not true for most of us. Early into our marriage, we were mentored by a couple, their last name is the Morseys, and both of us left astonished one night when they confessed to us that they never prayed together. They were both mighty men and women of prayer, but not together. Instead, they would fight when they prayed. They would pray things for one another that involved that person's sin and that person being changed, and so they decided we're no longer going to pray together, and we were shocked. Without saying it, I know we both felt that our marriage would be different, but you know actually it hasn't, not much. We've had seasons where it's been better than others. But as a husband, I have really failed in that area, and that's going to change. It's going to change because God told me it's going to change. Now you might be thinking, oh Mark, here's the audible voice of God. Yes, I do, don't you? Now some of you are laughing nervously, and I'm glad because I don't hear the audible voice of God, but I hear God, and I know that as a man of God, he doesn't want me to continue to struggle to lead my family and my wife and prayer, nor does he you. He wants his children, his body to learn to pray together, and we must. The sermon this morning really isn't about husbands and wives praying together, it's just an example of how difficult prayer can be. Why isn't it so hard for two people who deeply love one another to come together in prayer? It's prayer is hard. Our enemy does not want us to pray because prayer is absolutely powerful. It causes the wealth of heaven's resources to move into our world, to accomplish the things of Christ. It's powerful, and we know it. Yet, when we gather in small groups, even though we call them prayer groups, do you pray in those groups more than you share prayer requests? Or do you simply talk? I know the temptation, God, Father, Lord, would you teach us to pray? And the answer is yes. He will, in my expectation, in my own life, is through the summer and throughout, until I die and go with him and paradise, that I will grow and continue to grow, and so will you, it will take our humble spirit saying, Lord, teach us to pray. And in the passage which Patrick just read, in the passage we looked at last week, the same passage we will look at next week, he does that. The first thing he teaches us is who it is we're praying to. He then specifically teaches us what to pray, which we will look at next week. And he also teaches us how to pray. And so this morning we're going to look at the first word of the Lord's Prayer, Father, Father, Abba. The word Father here, the New Testament, is only used 14 times in the entire Old Testament, but it's used over 60 times by Jesus alone. It means great respect and intimate connection. It truly is like the word daddy. There's this understanding that as the disciples heard Jesus say, Father, they understood that he was speaking about an intimate connection between God, the Father, and the disciple. There's an intimate connection that he longs for us to know that it includes his love, his power, his provision, his mercy as he seeks after us and we respond to the way in which he loves us. Father, Abba, daddy, what I want to happen this morning is for you to begin to understand this unbelievable passion that the Heavenly Father has for you. That what he longs for you to understand and in understanding that love that he has for you, it will begin to transform the way in which you pray. It will, I promise. But to leave simply thinking, I'm going to be more dutiful, I'm going to try harder you'll be on the same treadmill you've been on perhaps all of your Christian life. But to see Father, Abba, daddy, madly, passionately in love with you can truly transform the way in which you pray, but we have to understand what has meant by Father. Today, as you know, is Father's Day. I was reminded of it about 928 when I stepped up to the pulpit to put down my notes to get my books and Bible ready that I will use and here laid out before me was a happy Father's Day card and another and another and because I have four children, there's a fourth one. My son isn't here this morning, he's actually ill, but this is his card, so I'm going to read it to you. Happy Father's Day, whenever you leave to work, I get sad, especially when I'm at school. But when you get home, I explode into space. Caden. Hi, Cara. Hi, Maddie. They're sitting in the balcony with the Bullocks. Christine is at home with Caden and Esther Kate. Father's Day is a powerful day. It's a day in which we honor fathers and I wonder how many of you really know where Father's Day began. Children, all the children here this morning, I want you to really listen because I'm about to tell you something that I bet most of your parents don't know. Father's Day started almost 100 years ago, 99 years ago to be specific this month. It started when a woman named Mrs. Sonora Smart Dodd was sitting in a pew on a sunny morning on a mother's day. On this Mother's Day in May in 1909, she was listening to the preacher preach and encourage mothers for all the sacrifices that they have made, but as she said they're listening to this beautiful sermon about mothers, she was thinking of her father. He was the one who had made all the sacrifices for her family. She was one of six children, the only girl and her mother had died giving birth to one of the children. Her father as civil war veteran was responsible for raising these children. So sitting in that pew, she began to believe that it was time for fathers to receive that same type of encouragement. So she spoke to her minister who spoke to other ministers and others who led the YMCA, and they all agreed that it would be a very generous thing to host a father's day celebration. And so they did. She asked if the date could be set for June 5th, three weeks after Mother's Day, which happened to be her father's birthday. The ministers agreed to it and then moved back to her and said, can we move it three weeks later? Because we have never preached a sermon on fathers. Newspapers across the country carried the story. In 1916, 17 years later, President Woodrow Wilson and his family personally observed the day for the first time. In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge recommended to the states that they should hold their own father's day observances, and here's why. The widespread observance of this occasion is calculated to establish more intimate relations between fathers and their children, and also to impress upon fathers the full measure of their obligations. But it wasn't until 1972, under Richard Nixon, that father's day was permanently established. Next year, we'll celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the idea of father's day, a woman sitting in a pew listening to a sermon. She was overwhelmed by the goodness of her father, the sacrifices he made, the beautiful way in which he trained of the six children, the way in which he honored them with the life he lived. And so as she heard these wonderful words to Mother, she couldn't help but think of her father. And since that time, slowly at first, we have come to celebrate this day. So that father's day is the fifth busiest day of the year for Hallmark. 85 million cards will exchange hands. These are all originals. They're beautiful. They're from the heart. But for some people, in fact most, the wonderful attributes of their father also are mixed with things that our fathers taught us that impact negatively the way in which we view God. Fathers do so many things really well, but not all fathers. And even the very best fathers do things that can create in their children a very distorted view of who God is. I want to mention this morning just a few. As you hear this list, I want you to begin to think about your own father in the way in which he has impacted the way in which you view God. And if you are a father, I want you to think about the way in which you even now might be continuing this pattern that your children might see. For some on Father's Day, it's not so positive because their dad was absent. He simply wasn't present that often or if he was present, he was still absent. For you can be at home a lot and still be very absent. For some, their experience with their father is very cold. Not many words were exchanged. And when they were, they weren't warm words. I wonder how many of you rarely have ever heard your father say, I love you. That is not a phrase that my father and I exchanged very often. Even though I know he did. But for some weird reason, much like it's hard to pray, I don't get it. It was hard for my family to say, I love you. Some of you think of your father and think of his discipline. You may think of it in terms of a lack of discipline. He didn't really help you. He didn't really train you. He didn't really correct you. You were allowed to go somewhat wild and your friends, your parents were really cool. But you wished he had put some rails on and guided you a bit. But others of you know the opposite end of that. The extreme discipline, which in some cases in a church the size, there were some of you who were abused by your father. And that clouds your ability to truly see the love of God. Some of you had fathers that weren't very wise, that made foolish decisions that were selfish, consumed with their own agenda, their own pleasure, their own leisure. Some of you lived under the roof with a father who lived a hypocritical life. He said one thing in public, but then behind the scenes there was a different man and it wounded your soul. Some of you experienced a father who broke promises and it caused you to doubt. And it brought about a real lack of trust. Some of you had a father who was addicted to some substance that changed his mood and you tiptoed around because you weren't sure who was present in the living room. Others of you grew up with a father that was extremely critical and perfectionistic. And you wanted to please him so much. One of the most powerful descriptions of this I've ever seen was when the author, Ken Geier, was speaking at a conference I was attending. In a very quiet way, Ken walked up to the overhead projector which tells you it was a few years ago and he put on the projector a letter that his daughter had written him. It said something like this, dear daddy, you are my favorite person. I love you so much and I am so glad that God made you my daddy, daddy, you are my hero. I love you daddy. It was written when his daughter was around five or six. He simply let us read it for about 30 seconds. He then stepped through the overhead projector with the red pen and said, as a writer, I make my living editing. He began to edit the letter. Misspelled word. Run on sentence. She says, I love you daddy and then says, love her name. He wrote, redundant. And then he simply said, this is how some of you view God's relationship with you. You can't say it right. There's always the mistake. You could have done better. I had a great dad but he wounded me at times. Went after a football game. When I scored two touchdowns but dropped a pass on third and eight, he said, good game. Why did you drop the pass on third and eight? Those experiences caused us to see or heavenly father often in an inappropriate way. And Jesus longs to correct it. The thing I think Jesus is correcting most is the tendency for us to approach God the way the Pharisees did. The Pharisees believed that they had to earn God's favor. They had to do things in a perfect way so that their father and heaven would be pleased and more than anything unintentionally Christian fathers give their children great opportunities to become Pharisees because they see the way in which we often without meaning to may love them with some condition. What I want you to see this morning through this passage is that God the fathers love for us is far greater, far beyond anything that we could even imagine. We could vote for who is the father of the year in the sanctuary, who had the father of the year in the last 50 years. But no matter how great they are, they're not God. They're imperfect. And the heavenly fathers pursued of us and Jesus teaching us how to pray and giving us that word father shows us the wonder of his love. So this morning I'm asking that God would open our eyes that we wouldn't take our experiences that are negative with our earthly fathers but would take the gospel truth for who he is and begin to see the wonder in love of Christ. When Jesus teaches father, he then goes on through this small parable which is only included in Luke to describe the father's love. I want you to think about this parable using three words, presence, promises and provision. I'll say it again. I want you to think about this parable through these three words, presence, promises and provision. Look with me at the parable. Verse 5, Jesus begins to teach, which of you has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, friend, lend me three loads for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey and I have nothing to set before him and he will answer from within. Do not bother me. The door is now shut and my children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything. Now let's explain the situation. It's midnight, it's late. Likely, they're in a one room hut and the whole family is sleeping together on a mat. It's not a big mansion like we see today. There aren't all these private rooms with private bedrooms. They're all there together and now a stranger or if I'm sorry, a friend is coming into town and the cultural expectation is that when he arrives, you will give him a place to stay and food to eat, but this individual is not prepared. So what does he do? He relies up on another custom that says that the entire community is to be hospitable. So with great shameless, relentless boldness, he goes to his friend, knocks on the door and says, give me bread. Imagine the frustration that the friend would feel. You see it in the text. But verse eight, I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is a friend, yet because of him's impudence, he will rise and give him whatever he needs. And I tell you, asking it will be given to you, seeking you will find knock and it will be open to you. What is Jesus teaching here? What Jesus is teaching is that he is not like the neighbor. He's not asleep. He's present. Always. If your earthly father wasn't present, this may be an issue for you. But the heavenly father is always present. Always. The heavenly father also is not irritated when we come to him with these requests, even late in the night. I know for so many of us, we think of the father in heaven as being somewhat bothered by our little prayer request. How do I know? Because often through email, you will send me prayers and you'll say things like I hate to bother with you with such a small request. But would you mind praying? If you're emailing that to me, my guess is that you also believe that your prayer bothers the father and it doesn't. He's interested in such things as loaves of bread at midnight so that you can be a hospitable host. Brothers and sisters, take your request to God. He's present. He longs to be with you. He wants you to come and you can come boldly and shamelessly. If one of your children calls you in the middle of the night and needs help because of a flat tire, you will go. You care about your child. You will move. We've been more so your heavenly father. Notice also, though, he's not just present, but he makes promises. Again, verse nine, I tell you ask and it will be given to you seek and you will find knock and it will be open to you. For everyone who asks receives and the one who seeks finds and to the one who knocks, it will be opened this week. I want you to begin to do this. Take the acronym ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find knock and the door will be open to you. God longs to answer our prayers. Sometimes the answer will be no. Sometimes it will be wait and sometimes it will be yes. But he longs for us to bring our request to him this week. Take something to him. Something specific. Tell him the desires of your heart. What is it that you long for? Be honest. One thing I've noticed in prayer is that we become so formal and so afraid that we're going to say it wrong. That's the sign of a Pharisee that's in us. I'll give an example. Right now if I called on one of you to come and pray, you would take a deep breath. Even if you were an ordained pastor or a elder, you would take a deep breath and the temptation would be not that you were delighting in bringing our people into the presence of the Father in prayer. You would be thinking about how you sound to a thousand people or so. You would be thinking about whether or not you were eloquent, whether or not you said it in the right way. Am I right? Wouldn't you be that way? My father, earthly father, was so afraid to do it wrong that when the pastor asked him to pray, my father just said no. It was awesome. Mr. Davis, would you be willing to close this in prayer tonight? I'll never forget it. He said I don't think so. I've shared that before. I didn't know whether I should be embarrassed or see him as a hero. It doesn't take being in front of a large group to fill that. Does it? I am sure that for most of you, even when you're in small groups praying, before you pray, you're wondering what you're going to pray for and how impressive you're going to sound. Stop it. Stop it. We have the same father who's saying it's okay to come to me at midnight with a silly request. Stop it. Let go. Old Halsbia, Norwegian Theologian wrote a sweet little book on prayer in 1931. Listen to what he says in the beginning. He writes, I have had more of a desire to write this book than possibly any other that I have ever written. And he wrote many. And yet, I have been more afraid of this one than of any other. It seems to me that it is very difficult to speak or write about prayer. So in chapter one, as he begins his book, he begins with the verse and revelation that most of us know well. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come into him and we'll sup with him. And he with me scripture begins the book. And then he writes, I doubt that I know of a passage in the whole Bible which throws greater light up on prayer than this one does. If I ask you the question this morning, what verse in the Bible throws the greatest light off of any verse on prayer, what would you say? I'm not sure very many of us would have gone to Revelation 320. But he did. He says it seems to me the key which opens the door into the holy and blessed realm of prayer is this idea that he longs to sup with us. Now those of you who are thinking, well, I wonder if he was reformed. I'm not sure he really understood that verse in context. He says this. This verse teaches us in the first place that it is not our prayer which moves the Lord Jesus. It is Jesus who moves us to pray. He knocks thereby he makes known his desire to come into us. Our prayers always are a result of Jesus knocking at our hearts door.

You're going to have dinner or lunch with someone this week. How many of you, and I'm talking about a close intimate friend, not a business connection, how many of you are going to show up with a list that's real formal to make sure you walk through it perfectly. How many of you are going to be cautious that you say every word perfect? Stop it. Pray according to God's word. But his word teaches us that he is our daddy. He is our Abba. He wants you so to speak in his lap that you might commune together, sup together. You might hear his voice through his word and spirit together. He's present. He promises to answer. And lastly, he provides for us provision. You see it at the end of the parable. He asks this question. 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 will 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 good gifts? i.e. the Holy Spirit to those who ask him. God has adopted all of those who are his children. And as their father he's present, he's made promises to them and he has provided them with the Holy Spirit. In Galatians 4, Paul says this, and because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his son into our hearts. He has sent the Spirit of his son, the Holy Spirit, into our hearts crying Abba. Father in Romans 8, Paul says this, for you did not receive the Spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry. Abba, Father, Daddy, the Spirit, the gift he gives us in provision, himself bears witness with our Spirit that we are children of God and of children in errors, errors of God and fellow errors with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. And then listen to what he says, likewise the Spirit helps us in our weaknesses. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. That's what Abba has given you. You can pray. You can because of his grace. So begin now to approach him like this child making these sweet babbling noises. That is how our Father sees us and wants us and loves us and even likes us. Is that how you've been viewing God when you go to him in prayer? If not, no wonder your prayer life suffers. Use this text. These words, these truths and ask God to teach you to pray. This week, keep praying, Lord teaches to pray. Add to it the acronym, ask, ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find knock and the door will be open to you and consider the Father knocking on your Lord Jesus. I can't imagine what the disciples saw when they saw you pray. I can't imagine what they felt when they heard you tell this parable. I'm so thankful for it, though. I'm thankful for this day, this Father's day when we recognize what earthly fathers do that's really good and the challenges that are there as well and that you say even good fathers who give good gifts are still evil. You are the only great one. Would you please expand in our hearts and minds an understanding of your grace and love and pursuit of us that we would be consumed with it, unable to stop speaking about it and that we indeed would sup with you and the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit we pray. Amen.