The Lord's Prayer

Transcript

What do you think is the most important factor that contributes to your personal happiness? What is the most important factor that contributes to your happiness? Well if you guessed relationships, you’re right. In fact, the amount and the depth of your relationships is the number one predictor of happiness in America. It’s also a significant predictor in how healthy you are, believe it or not, and how long you will live. If you are given only two choices, and the choices are that you smoke and you have friends, and you don’t smoke and you don’t have friends, smoke. You will live longer. Friends have that much of an impact on your life. In fact, social relationships are so important, and having good support systems, they should be one of the highest priorities in the daily decisions that you make in life. Isolation, staying home, playing video games, being alone is a great recipe for unhappiness,

poor health, and a short life. If relationships are the most important thing for our happiness, then what’s the most important thing in creating a healthy relationship? Well if you guessed level of communication, you would be right. It is impossible to have a relationship with someone without communicating. You can live next to someone for years, but if you never talk to them, you have no relationship with them. Relationships deepen and move from casual to intimate as the communication deepens. So if you want to have a more intimate relationship, you need to deepen the communication. Well what is the most important thing about good communication then? Well if you think the answer to that would be, well using the right words, you would be wrong. The most important thing to communication is in fact not words. In all of the research that we do, the message of any communication is largely carried by

the nonverbals, cues that you give, and the context in which it occurs. In fact some research says that up to 60 to 70% of all communication is in fact nonverbal. You can see this in this way. If I was to walk up to someone like my wife and go, I love you, it probably, the words are right, but it probably is not going to get any kind of response, right? In fact if you want to try it sometime, when you’re talking to someone, just break into rigidity, don’t move, don’t smile, and give absolutely no nonverbal cues. Don’t shake your head, don’t do anything, and when you talk to them, do it in staccato. Just no. The conversation will die. On the other hand, we could be playing a game, and my wife once again chooses to set me back to go when she gets one of the cards that says I can do that, and I look at her with

a smile on my face and say, I hate you. Now the obvious, the language is pretty inappropriate, but the context is really communicating quite the opposite. So your nonverbals can either enhance or cancel the verbal communications that you give. In fact, when you provide incongruent communication, it breaks down the relationship. It causes us to have difficulty interpreting exactly what was said. This is part of the reason why cross-cultural communication is often so different, because we don’t understand the cues or the context for that person, which might be different than ours. This is also one of the major problems with social media, because social media oftentimes we lose all nonverbal communication and textual cues to what is going on. Now we’ve tried to solve that somewhat with emos, but they don’t seem adequate to me. So social media just doesn’t seem to allow the depth of communication that we would want,

God Relationships Mirror Human Ones

and the research is beginning to bear that out. See, being able to read and to respond to nonverbal communication is the key to good communication, and in fact it is one of the keys to emotional intelligence, EI, which is a high predictor of how successful you’ll be in life. Now you might wonder, Norm, what are these principles, or why are they important, and why are you talking about them on a Sunday morning? Because in many ways our relationship to God parallels our human relationships. In fact, we build our relationship to God on what we have learned in human relationships. Let me give you some examples here. If human relationships contribute the most to successful and happy life, we would expect that our relationship with God would be the most significant contributor to a successful spiritual life. If communication is the most important factor in quality in human relationships, we would

expect that communication with God would be the most important factor in our relationship with him. Remember, it’s impossible to have intimacy with someone without communicating at some level in some sort of way. But if the most important factor in communication isn’t words, then what does that mean for our talking to God? If words are not the primary issue, then we’d ask the question, what is? Sometimes we forget that the Bible assumes things that it never states. Example, it assumes that you can read. It doesn’t teach you how. It assumes that you understand the meaning of words. It doesn’t necessarily come with a dictionary for all terms. In college, when I took German, I got to the level where I could pronounce most of the words and I could probably even read the Bible in some comprehensible way, but I frankly didn’t know what the word meant that I was pronouncing.

It also recognizes that words have multiple meanings. In fact, if you go to a dictionary and look up a word, it can have anywhere from 10 to 30 meanings. What meaning is it meaning in this text? The Bible tells us to feed the hungry, but it doesn’t tell you what. Probably taking a truckload of Twinkies to an encampment of people would not be appropriate. The Bible kind of assumes that you’re going to feed them healthy food and that it’s going to be nutritional, and Twinkies aren’t. We assume that when the Bible says, the Bible assumes when it says, be kind, be supportive, be loving, all the ‘one another’ passages of the Bible, it assumes you know what these look like. It doesn’t tell you what supportive is, it assumes that you would know what that is. Sometimes what we need to do is slow down and examine the assumptions that are behind

the text or in the text. What exactly does this look like when lived out in our lives? Now we’ll all agree that communication is at some level important to intimate relationships. But words aren’t necessarily the key to good communication as we’ve seen. Yes, words are important, but not the most important. In fact, congruent, clear, consistent nonverbals are more important. These nonverbals communicate the intent of our message, the purpose of our message, and they either reinforce the message or in fact override that which was said. Now while examining nonverbals makes sense in human communication, it’s difficult to apply the concept to our communication with God. So I tried to find a word or a concept that I thought would kind of be equivalent to that as we study our communication with God, and I came up with the word disposition. Now the dictionary defines disposition as a state of mind or feeling in respect to another

The Power of Disposition

thing or a person. It’s a bent, a bias, an attitude, a mindset, a proclivity. Meaning that when we come to communicate with someone or we come to communicate with God, we do not come to God from a neutral state. We come communicating to God with a certain attitude, with a certain mind, with a certain bent. And that bent or those predispositions act as, I would say, kind of nonverbals. So here’s my thesis. Your disposition functions like nonverbals and trumps the words that you use in your communications with God. I’ll give you an illustration from Scripture, Matthew 7, 21.

Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven. Many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name cast out demons and in your name perform miracles? And then I will declare to them, I never knew you

— Matthew 7

(ESV)

.

Note that they got the words right. There’s nothing wrong with what they said, but God declares them as not his children. The words were in fact invalidated by the disposition behind the words. Their nonverbals conflicted with their words. They weren’t congruent with their words. The incongruency trumped the words. Here’s my second thesis. Your disposition in communicating with God is also spiritually diagnostic. Every year I’m at the age where I need to go see a doctor and get a physical. Invariably what he does is he takes a urine sample and blood samples. And then I go back to my chart and he gives me the readouts on those. And the reason they do that is because through research we have found out that they are early markers of being something wrong in your body. It can show up in your urine or it shows up in your blood.

And the reason they’re looking is because they want to do an early intervention. They’d rather tackle the issue at the early stages. And so my doctor looks at those things and says, you’re okay, come next year. Or he says, hey, we’ve got some concerns. We have found that nonverbals in marital interactions are highly predictive of marital outcomes. In fact, they’re the highest predictor of whether a couple will in fact get divorced or not. Do you ever wonder how a certain pastor or gospel singer or other public person suddenly lost their faith and now proclaim the fact that they no longer believe in the God that they once sang about and proclaimed? I’ve seen this happen many times as both a pastor and a psychologist. In fact, a number of months ago I went up to TJ and I said, TJ, I haven’t seen this couple in our church in a while.

Do you know what happened to them? TJ said, yes, it’s really sad. They’re in the process of deconstructing their faith. Which basically meant they’re in the process of losing their faith. After having been here for years and worshiping with us and singing with us and praying with us, something’s happened. I believe that many, if not all, relational problems with God begin dispositionally. If that’s true, then it’s worth paying attention to. If those are the markers that show illness, then we ought to pay attention to it just like the doctor pays attention to the problem markers in our blood and our urine. I’m going to illustrate this in the Bible with a concept, illustrate this concept through the Lord’s Prayer. Now there’s probably not terribly many scriptures in the Bible which you don’t have to ask people to turn to because they know it by heart.

The Lord’s Prayer Framework

And probably all of us know the Lord’s Prayer by heart. But if you’d like to turn to it, it is in Matthew 6. So Matthew embeds the Lord’s Prayer in the Sermon on the Mount. Luke in Luke 11 embeds the Lord’s Prayer as a response to the disciples’ question of teach us to pray. Now that’s kind of an interesting question when you think about it because there are multiple examples of prayers in the Old Testament. The Old Testament doesn’t lack for conversations with God. There are lament prayers, impeccatory prayers, argument and question prayers, praise and celebration prayers, request and petition prayers. The only conclusion you can come to from reading the Old Testament is that there’s no exactly right way to pray. But Jesus gives an illustration. So Matthew 6, pray then in this way, our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name.

Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive our debts as we also forgive our debtors and do not lead us into temptation but deliver us from evil. Here’s the message take on the same passage. Our Father in heaven, reveal who you are, set the world right, do what’s best as above so below, keep us alive with three square meals, keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others and keep us safe from ourselves and the devil. Now there’s some important contextual clarifications when talking with God that precede the prayer. Number one, Jesus says, don’t do it for show. Don’t pray to impress. God doesn’t care how you articulate to him who you are. Isn’t it interesting, at least when I grew up, I would constantly hear people praying in Elizabethan English.

You know, none of us talk in Elizabethan English anymore and maybe that’s because we read the Bible from the King James. You know, but isn’t it interesting that most of us wouldn’t be afraid of publicly watching ourselves talk to our friend or to our mate and yet we’d be afraid of people listening to us talking to God? You’re not here to impress. Number two, it’s an intimate conversation. He suggests, go to your inner room, do it in secret. You should feel free to speak to him in ways that you wouldn’t want the public to know. I’m glad that when we do our confessional prayer, they don’t flash up on the screen for everybody to see. This is just between God and I, it’s my chance to be honest with him. And then don’t use thoughtless repetition. It should be an engaging conversation. You should be personally present.

You know, if you’re not careful, it just becomes a rote. You’re doing something, but you’re really not there, God says, I don’t want that. It’s a model, it’s not a script, it’s not a formula. Remember there’s multiple types of prayer in the Old Testament. Now there’s a number of ways you can outline the prayer. And for our purposes, I’m going to outline it with an opening address and six statements. Now if we were going to do justice to the prayer, quite frankly, what we should do is have a seven-week sermon series, because this is going to be a 30,000-foot flyover. And there’s some really rich things that could be mined here. So the opening address is Father, Dad. Now this is meant to be more than just a title. You know, I could walk up to Jan Verbruggen and say, Hi, Dad. The words are correct, the sentence makes sense, but it’s totally empty of meaning because

he’s not my dad. Seems like he’s old enough to be, but he’s not. You know, it’s frankly empty of any emotional connotations. I could use the words on him, but they don’t mean anything in reality or emotionally. Here’s the unstated premise, that the address should mean something and should arise from an emotional connection to God. J.I. Packer, one of my favorite authors and probably the book that I consider most significant next to the Bible, Knowing God, writes this. If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child and having God as his father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all. Wow. See the disposition behind the title is he’s a personal and caring father.

This is the reason why chants and repetition and impersonal rituals make no sense. You’re speaking to someone who loves you, who already knows your needs, and very much desires an intimate relationship with you. Now part of the problem with words is that the meanings come from our experience. We get emotionally attached to words. If I was to say the words Dinuba or Readley, I doubt there’s a single person in this room that has any emotional attachment to those words. In fact, most of you have no idea what the words even are. But for me, they have a tremendous emotional attachment because I grew up in Dinuba in Readley, Central California. So when I meet somebody from that area, there’s an immediate emotional attachment. We know from the research that one’s emotional connection to God is often influenced by their emotional connection and experience with their own father.

Because we take the word father and translate what we know from the fathers that we experience to the father that we have not experienced interpersonally. My first job after graduating from graduate school was working in a Christian psychiatric hospital. I had a young patient who was emotionally and sexually abused when she was young with her father. And now she had a very negative visceral reaction to the word father. She could not even consider God as her father because the word was so negative. Matthew 18.6 says, If anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. Because of her father’s abuse of her, she had a long and painful and difficult journey in learning to trust God as a truly loving and caring father. So God is our father, he’s dad.

And then there’s three statements that we start with that focus on God. First his name is to be hallowed. The name means his character, his personhood, means we hold it in reference and respect. Everything about him is to be honored, sacred, holy. In fact, as you look through the Old Testament, God got very angry when his name was misunderstood, misused, misrepresented. His name is to inspire reverence, awe, and worship. Second is his kingdom is to come. We’re to live in the reality of two kingdoms. In fact, Jesus before Pilate, John 18 says, my kingdom is not of this world. He makes it very explicit. This isn’t my kingdom. In fact, you cannot read the New Testament and not recognize that there are two kingdoms. And the one you and I live in is not his. See, the hope of all God’s children throughout all human history is his desire to see his

kingdom come and be fully established. Do you realize that the last prayer in the Bible is all about this? Maranatha? Come Lord Jesus. It’s the last prayer we have. Come and establish your kingdom. We want your kingdom to come. The third is his will be established. Heaven experiences God’s perfect will. There’s not a single molecule in heaven that doesn’t experience his perfect will. The prayer here is that we desire the same thing for earth. We desire that his perfect will be lived out on earth. I’d like you to think of these phrases as kind of titles that are attached to doors. And when you walk through the door, there is a vast expanse of wonder. What Jesus is doing here is he’s inviting you to look in more depth at each of these doors. It would be kind of like you and I going outside and looking at the sky.

And then somebody says, would you step over here? Let’s look through the Hubble telescope. If any of you are following the images that Hubble is now coming back and sending us, it is just staggering. You’ll never exhaust the wonders of his name and character. You’ll never exhaust the wonders of his kingdom in which he is king. You will never exhaust the wonders of his perfect will being lived out. You know, what’s kind of interesting is that this prayer will be perfectly answered. Did you know that? His name is above every name. And at his name, every knee will bow. Philippians 2, prayer is going to be answered. His kingdom will be established when he comes. When the king comes, the kingdom is coming. And he will perfectly implement his will in this redeemed earth. Because he’ll be personally present there to make sure that it is.

Focusing on God First

These are all indisputable biblical truths that will be perfectly fulfilled. Now it’s quite obvious that any of us could say the words of this prayer. In fact, we could all read it together. Remember we said words aren’t the primary bearer of communication. The biggest issue is what is the disposition of the prayer in fact determines its meaning? You ever stop and think, do I really mean for his name to be honored in everything? Is his name more important than my desires? Do I really want his kingdom to come? Remember he said you can’t be friends of his kingdom and friends of this kingdom. They’re mutually exclusive. Do I really want his will imposed upon my life? See sometimes when we pray, we forget that God knows our hearts better than we do. In fact, you can’t fool him by saying the right words. You know, I can fool all of you and never know what’s going on inside of me

because I can communicate maybe in such a way as to never let you know what I really think. You can’t do that with God. Ever stop and think about that? So he really doesn’t care about your words because he’s looking at your heart. He’s looking at the non-verbals, your disposition. Our disposition when saying the prayer is the subtle indication of how well we are spiritually. Let me give you an example. All of you have probably heard of Demas. If you go to Colossians 4.14, when Paul ends the letter, he says, And Demas, my fellow laborer, fellow pastoral staff, he sends you our greetings. Some years later in one of Paul’s later letters in 2 Timothy 4.10, he writes this, Demas, having loved this present world, has deserted me. When Demas was praying, your kingdom come, his heart was really in this one. See, his disposition really didn’t follow his words.

And one of the things that we know psychologically is you cannot live incongruently for a very long period of time. It tears you apart. You will go in one direction or the other. Maybe Demas loved this present world. At some point in Demas’ life, probably imperceptibly, God’s name ceased to be a priority. God’s kingdom faded in importance, and God’s will wasn’t as important as his own. And it all blossomed in a behavior of abandonment. A couple of months ago, I got an email from an old high school friend who for a number of years worked in a mission organization. In this email, she was sharing with me the struggle and some of her beliefs and with her faith. She concedes in the email that in studying the Word, it’s pretty clear on the issue that she’s addressing. But here’s how she concludes her email to me.

I can’t hold the traditional beliefs, which means here the biblical beliefs, right or wrong. If I’m wrong, then I will pay for this when I stand before God. Note the disposition of approaching God. I don’t like what you said, God. I don’t like your will. I’ll take my chances with you when I get to heaven. And I wrote her back. I tried to be very gracious and understanding, but tried to point out the blood level. The urine samples are indicating you’ve got some spiritual sickness going on here. You’re no longer approaching God with, hey, your name, your kingdom, your will. And that was losing out. One of my favorite cartoons is Dennis the Menace. I was hoping I could find it, but I couldn’t find it on the internet. So if somebody finds it for me, give it to me because I’d post it up here if you haven’t

seen it. But Dennis the Menace is sitting in a corner. It’s obvious that he has been disciplined. And the caption underneath says this, but I’m standing up inside. I’m standing up inside. You know, we’re all here worshiping. The question which I can’t see and only God can is, are you standing up inside? Are you standing up inside? There’s nothing wrong with struggling with God. There’s nothing wrong with arguing with God. We see Job doing it. We see David doing it. We see Habakkuk doing it. Just when you do it, don’t stand up inside. Don’t stand up inside. In all my struggles, it’s your name, it’s your kingdom, it’s your will. That’s the start and the stop. Doesn’t mean it answers all my struggles, but that’s the premise in which I build. See when you establish that kind of disposition, then it’s interesting, Jesus says, from that

disposition now move to your requests. And the second series are three statements about our needs. The first is bread. Now this has two kinds of meanings. The first meaning is our daily provision, food, clothing, things that we need to exist in this world. God’s interested in that. We’re here. Our life on earth requires certain material things, temporal things. But the secondary meaning is that we also required spiritual things. Notice Jesus said, John 6, I am the bread of life. You not only need something temporally, more importantly, you need something eternally. You can have all the bread in this world, but if you don’t have the bread of life, you really don’t have life. If you have the bread of life, you can be shortchanged on bread on this end, but you’ve got the bread of life. Both by the way, speak of our utter dependence on him.

Our Personal Requests

The fact is, is we didn’t create the bread. Just like the manna, he has to give it to us daily. Matthew 18, 3, unless you become like little children, you will not enter the kingdom of God. Here, what he’s talking about is dependence. Can I dispositionally approach him with, God, I need you for everything. Here’s one of the big problems. We mix up our needs and our wants. We make our wants into needs and then blame God for not meeting them. In growing up, I didn’t know I needed a smartphone. We never had them. Anybody in here who doesn’t have a smartphone probably feels deprived. I’m lacking in something. No, you want a smartphone, you don’t need it. Romans 12, 2, don’t let the world squeeze you into its mold because it’s going to squeeze and squeeze and make things into needs that are really quite honestly only wants.

God’s never promised to give you what you want. There’s no place in the scripture where he ever says he’s going to give you what he wants. He’s promised to give you what you need. I get those all mixed up all the time. One of the biggest struggles of my life is the needs and the wants and trusting God that he’s going to meet the things that I really need. And then our debts. Now he’s not talking here about financial debts, but moral debts. Now he’s not meaning that it’s the basis of our salvation that we forgive others. That would be a contradiction of all the rest of scripture. It’s not a condition to God’s forgiveness, but it is a consequence and evidence of. When we’re forgiven of a debt that we cannot repay, the evidence is that we do so with the people we interact with.

It’s a comparative factor. Remember the parable of the evil servant who was forgiven of a million dollars and then goes out and has a hard time forgiving somebody of five cents. God has forgiven us a million dollars. If you’re hanging on to five cents, then you’ve really never understood the million dollar gift that you’ve just been given. See our lack of forgiveness of others becomes a contributing factor in constricting God’s ability to provide life and joy in our lives. One of the things that’s constant in scripture is that your horizontal relationship is a very significant component in your relationship with God. First Peter 3.7, live with your wife in an understanding way, so prayers will not be hindered. Isn’t that interesting? When you’re interpersonal relationships, when you don’t live in an understanding way, it blocks your prayers to God. I’m not sure how or why, but Peter says it does.

And then our temptations, again, James 1.13 says, God does not tempt anyone. Life is nothing but a series of challenges. You don’t have to live long to know that it’s just one mountain after another, and then you die, you know? There’s no easy street. It’s just hard. And I don’t know how to make it any less hard. So the challenges of life can be viewed as testings. Challenge the prayer. Don’t allow them to become the occasions for temptations. See, what the evil one is trying to do is he’s trying to take the testings of life, the difficulties of life, and alienate us from the Father. The prayer is, don’t let these challenges of life, God, get in the way of my just accepting the fact that you’re a good and gracious and loving Father. Note again, God’s already answered the prayers that he’s now told us to give.

If you’re alive and here today, he’s met your physical needs. And when you die, if you’re a Christian, he’ll meet your eternal needs because you’ve got the bread of life. So you have enough bread to be here now. You hopefully have the bread of life, which will get you to eternity. He’s forgiven your sins, and he’s delivered us from Satan’s power. There’s nothing that can separate us from the love of God. I’d like you to do the same thing. Think of these three requests as three doors, which enter your personal life. God says, pray about your needs. Pray about your needs. Your wants, be careful with. Pray about your relationships. Keep them honest and clean, forgiving. Pray about the challenges that life throws at you. Remember, we never come to God from a neutral stance. We come to God with a disposition. Here’s the dispositional questions.

Living in Right Disposition

He’s already said he’s going to meet my needs. Can I trust him? He wants me to mimic his relationship to me. Can I forgive others as he’s forgiven me? Can I treat others with grace as he’s been gracious to me? He wants me to accept the challenges of life and trust that he’s faithful and he’s sovereign, and there’s no mistakes in the events that occur in our lives. When you talk to God, and I hope you do, in fact, one of the goals that you all should have, which I have, is pray without ceasing. Prayer ought not to be a ritual which you engage only in the morning or the evenings or at meals. It ought to be something that begins to occupy your mind throughout the day, reminding myself, Lord, it’s your name, it’s your will, it’s your kingdom. I need to always start there.

If I keep those in correct perspective, it’s fascinating how my needs, my relationships, and my life challenges kind of are more likely to fall into place, not easily. Here’s some conclusions. Remember God knows what you need better than you do. When you come into his presence, just come as you really are. You don’t need to fake him out. You don’t have to use religious language. You can be honest with your struggles. He already knows them anyway. Number two, your disposition in approaching him is more important than the words that you use. It’s not the words that he’s looking at, it’s the disposition. And if the words fail you, Romans 8, 26 has said, the spirit will supply the words that I can’t articulate. He’s looking at my heart. He’s not impressed with my language. And when my heart’s all confused and messed up, he’ll tell the dad what I need.

Lastly, maybe more important, and most importantly, monitor your disposition. Do the words that I say when I talk to God, or the words that I don’t say because I like to ignore him, they tell me something about my disposition? How are your non-verbals with God? Let’s pray. Father, we want your name honored. We want your kingdom to come. We want your will done. We thank you that you meet our needs. We thank you that you forgive us. We thank you that you support us in the challenges of life. Help us that those aren’t just words, but a disposition that we really want them to be true, and we bend our lives in that direction. Waiting for the day when all of these prayer requests will be perfectly answered. Amen.