| Lord, teach me to pray |
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Grace and peace to you from God our Father, Jesus Christ our redeemer and the Holy Spirit our Comforter be with you all. Amen Sermon text: Matthew 6:5-15(NIV) And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth; they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. “This, then, is how you should pray: ‘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. For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. Dear Congregation With what kind of attitude are you sitting here in church this morning? Are you sitting here with a heart full of anger against your fellow human being? Someone who have caused you pain whom you find difficult to forgive? Are you sitting here in church this morning, because it has become a custom to you since you did it as a child and you’ve been taught that it is the right thing to do every Sunday? Or are you sitting here because you want other people to acknowledge your presence by being seen? Our sermon text wants to ask us these questions this morning because we sometimes forget that the whole service is a prayer and worship in itself. An attitude, positive or negative can either disturbed or enhance our worship and prayer life and thus it all depends on whether you are only in the service in flesh or in spirit as well. Jesus later in our text teaches us that it is better for our prayer life if we go into our rooms and pray, since there is no one who can disturb you. There isn’t a pastor who irritates you when speaking or people with whom you had a bad experience during the week, but it is only you are the Lord. Sometimes we only pray and forget that the Lord would like to respond to that prayer, but we do not even give him a chance to respond to our needs and praise and then we wonder why God does not answer our prayers. In the service God meets us half-way. It can be described as two friends who meet each other in town and starts talking about the business of the day. Like any normal conversation, there will always be one person speaking and one listening. Once this person stopped to speak the other can then respond to what was said and so the conversation is kept alive. If the other does not have the opportunity to respond the conversation will become one-sided and eventually die out. For a conversation to happen, there must be some sort of a relationship between two people and if that does not happen then a conversation will not be possible. Sometimes, we as Christians tends to do the same in our prayer life and we run the discussion that we have with God and therefore we do not give God a chance to respond to the things that bothers us. This becomes clear to us when Jesus says that we do not need to use a lot of words, because God already knows what we need, since he knows our hearts. This means that God already has an answer to our questions and because we do not allow him to respond, it might happen that we experience prayer time as a waste of time, because God does not hear our prayers, meaning that he either does not exists or is so busy with whatever he does that he has not got time to listen to us. However, to our amazement, we realize month’s or even years later that God did hear our prayers, if we can remember that we have asked for it and then we start to understand why certain things has happened the way it did, because God had to lead us there, because we did not want to listen when he wanted to spoke to us earlier. The question thus is, if the Lord knows what is on our hearts, why should we then pray? When we pray, we invite the Lord into our lives and through our prayers we share with him all our desires. The Lord, wants a relationship with us, he wants to know our joys, our sorrow’s, our fears. He wants to be our friend and in discussing with the Lord all these things, we start to realize that the Lord is the only individual who really is interested in our lives and who understands us. We realize that the Lord is not sometimes like our other friends who when we come to them with a problem, respond in saying, I do not have time for this… or I have got enough things to worry about, no God’s only agenda is the well-being of his children and therefore, our concerns, our heartache, our fears and our joy is his business, meaning that he cannot wait to hear from us about anything that we may have on our heart. The Lord is not a God who is judgmental, no he is a God who liberates the people and bless them abundantly with strength and energy. God wants us to trust him, since he knows all the corners of our hearts; he wants us to trust him since he knows what the best is for us. In our prayers, God gives us an opportunity to bring before him anything that is on our hearts and is that a Father/mother to whom a child when he/she is need of something or someone to talk to. Through our prayers, we trust on God’s goodness and that he shall bless us with the things that we need and not with the things that we want (luxuries). Through our prayers, we trust that God knows what will be the best for our lives and thus we can count on it that whatever we ask in His name he will give it to us, when it is in our best interests. This promise is confirmed in the next chapter, Matthew 7:7-8, which says “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.” In giving, the Lord does not only give to you and me, but for the whole humanity. He does this in order for us to be his hands and feet in this world. Therefore, when we trust him that he will give us the necessary things, let us also trust him when he sends someone on our path of life who needs that with what the Lord has blessed us with, for the things that we have received, we received by God’s grace only and not via our own effort, knowledge and strength. Yes, we all are experiencing dry moments in our prayer life, moments where God is far or it feels as if he has departed from us and it is during those times that Jesus gave us the “Our Father” prayer, because this prayer entails everything that we need to water the seed of prayer in our lives, since the devil hates us talking to God, because that means that we start to see God’s plan for our lives and he hates it because then his lies will have lesser and eventually no more impact on our lives. As we pray the “Our Father” prayer, we acknowledge that the Lord is almighty and that he is present in this world busy to let his will happen on this earth and it does not matter what people try to do to hinder his plans for your life, because He will let it happen, no question about it. God’s will is always revealed in this world and our lives, because through the power of the Holy Spirit, God always gets us there where he wants us to be even if it means that it may take some time and sometimes feel as if it is never going to happen. In the second part of this prayer, we testify in front of God that we trust him completely as the “Great Provider” for our everyday needs to make a living on a daily basis. We testify and acknowledge God that we believe in his promises as well as that he has set us free from the things that Satan throws in front of our door, which results in us doubting God’s mercy and grace. In the “Our Father” we confirm again who dependant we are on God to help us in withstanding the temptations of this world, but also in all other spheres of our lives. Therefore, in praying this prayer, we cannot help but to be filled for the days ahead, with a thankful and revived heart and spirit. Dear Congregation The last aspect which keeps us from experiencing God answering prayers, is an unforgiving heart and self detriment. Due to our unforgiving heart towards our fellow human being, we sometimes withhold the Holy Spirit to do its miracles in our lives, because fostering these feelings, makes us blind for what the spirit wants to reveal to us. This blindness is sometimes expressed in our thoughts and even out loud in confession etc. We judge ourselves saying things like: Have I followed my instincts then things would have been different; Have I rather done something about the situation myself then the outcome would have been different. “O’ really I wonder, because if you are so brilliant why didn’t you do something yourself in the first place, because then all this pain would not have surfaced. The fact is, we cannot come up with ideas and when we do and it is not working out we blame God, or other people, instead of asking God the reason behind this event, which might just surprise you when you get the answer. God has the answer. Take responsibility and ask God to forgive you and be able to forgive others, because it is through forgiving one another that God free us from our own iniquities and the pain and unhappiness is irrelevant and will be avoided. The Lord has set us all free and thus he blesses us with a new opportunity to start over again, each day. This new beginning begins with a prayer where we stand before the Lord and confess our sins daily, recommit ourselves to trust God daily, and receive his forgiveness daily, which leads into a new direction for our lives. This time the only difference is that we can find comfort in the knowledge that the Lord will be journeying along alongside us on this that we call life. And The Peace of God, which surpasses all our understanding, will protect our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus. Amen |