New Testament Prayers: Week 4

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Transcript

Hey everybody. Unfortunately, due to the weather, we have been unable to meet, and we are going to be starting Second Samuel this coming Sunday when we are hopefully, Lord willing, able to get back together.

So what we wanted to do was I’m just going to take a moment to kind of walk you through some of the content that we had prepared and was intending to walk through as we finished up our prayer series this Sunday. And so just wanted to walk you through some of that.

If you will just grab a Bible, go to Matthew chapter 6. We’re going to look at what is known as the Lord’s Prayer. So Jesus, this is how he teaches his disciples to pray. And this is actually in the middle of what we’re looking at is in the middle of the sermon on the mount, although it shows up in other times as well.

So what we’ve done in our prayer series is we’ve taken the time to look at New Testament prayers and consider the things that Paul prays for. Some of the things that Paul prays for and we’ve seen these expansive prayers. The requests that he’s making are huge. He wants us to see the glory of God and to know eternally what’s coming for us. He wants us to be sanctified completely. That’s the will of God, that we would be sanctified, that we would completely be made holy. He wants us to know the love of God, the unknowable love of God, so that we might be filled with all the fullness of God, which is unfathomable. And then to be able to then see that he’s able to do more than we can ask or imagine. He’s beyond our mental capabilities. Like these are massive prayers.

And what we’re going to see here is something very, very simple, straightforward.

And so some of what I think is helpful for us to understand is that there is no ceiling to prayer when it comes to the things we can talk to God about and we can pray for, that we’ve entered into it goes as high as heaven, like it is beyond thought, it is beyond reason. We get to go and talk to him about everything and request anything and talk - like the expanse of prayer is wide open.

But the floor to prayer is very low. It’s not complicated. And that’s what we’re going to see as we talk through and see what Jesus teaches his disciples here, is that it’s not like, hey, in order to pray this is going to be real hard. Anybody can enter in.

So for the person who goes, man, I just don’t even know how to pray and I feel like when I pray it’s only like 30 seconds long and then I’m distracted, it’s like, yeah, you can do it. A prayer can be 10 seconds long. The prayer that when he says pray like this, he prays for about 20 seconds. The thing that he shows him how to pray.

But then we see that Jesus also prays all night long. And so there’s just, the ceiling is non-existent. You can go as high as possible. So for the person who’s like, oh cool, I prayed for 15 seconds, I did it - it’s like, no, you get to keep growing in this.

But for the person who’s like, I think this is really difficult and I don’t even know if I’m praying right - it’s like, hey, the entry level is real simple. And so that’s where we’re going to start with Jesus teaching a basic daily prayer that’s pretty straightforward.

And so I want to read the whole section we’re going to look at. It’s in Matthew 6. And then we’re just going to go through it piece by piece. And I’m going to try to go through it fairly quickly. This is the content that I would have been preaching, but I’m not really preaching to y’all. I’m just kind of walking you through some of this. So we’ll move fairly fast.

Matthew 6:5–8
“And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”

Now, I said I was going to read through the whole thing, but I want to stop there for a second.

He’s going to start off by basically saying, “Hey, I’m going to teach you about praying, but when you pray, there’s some ditches. There’s some things you just need to avoid.”

One of the dangers of praying is that you would pray to be seen by others. That’s the way he words it. He says, “Don’t pray like the hypocrites,” meaning that they look like something on the outside, but there’s something else going on. It’s a trick.

And so he says they pray in the synagogues, they pray at the street corners, and their goal is for you to see them. And he says they have their reward. They’ve done it. So if your praying is a performance, it works. It works as a performance, but it doesn’t work as a prayer. They get what they wanted because their prayer wasn’t to God. It wasn’t between them. It was for you to watch them.

And so he says, “Don’t do that. Don’t make praying a performance. Rather, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who sees in secret.”

So the bulk of Christian prayer should be done privately like that. You should have an active private prayer life.

He does not forbid praying in front of people, and we actually see that he prays in front of people. He prays out loud at times. The disciples pray together and pray out loud. There’s actually a lot of good and health that can come from us praying together. But you do have to watch that the point of your praying together is still relating to God, communing to God, speaking to God, and not somehow putting on a show.

So we just have to be careful if somebody asks you to pray at a meal or if you’re praying in your group. Like I know that there are times where we’re praying together and I’m thinking about what I’m going to pray and I’m not praying with them. And so I’m doing what he said here as I’m turning it into some sort of performance.

And he says, “Don’t do that. I don’t think you have to pray out loud in front of people. You do have to pray.” And he says, “Go in your room, close the door, pray by yourself.” So that is commanded of us as Christians.

But he’s not prohibiting praying together. But we do have to be on guard that when we do that, that we don’t miss the point and make prayer somehow a performance.

So he starts off there. Don’t do that. Don’t pray as a performance.

He’s going to give us another ditch. Don’t do this.

So then he says, “And when you pray,” this is verse 7, “do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”

Okay? So don’t heap up a bunch of empty phrases. Don’t think that your prayer has to be a certain length or a certain amount of flowery language or you’ve got to use the right words. Don’t do that.

And specifically, one of the things I think you would see here is that his disciples are coming to him and he’s teaching them how to pray. He’s explaining to them how to pray. And this is in the sermon on the mount. There’s another place where they come and say, “Teach us how to pray,” and he does the same thing.

If you went to a priestess of some deity and you were asking, “How do we pray?” what he’s saying is that they would, they have all this junk. You got to chant. You got to wear the right clothes. You got to be in the right place. We’re going to have to have some music. We’re going to need to cut ourselves. They’re going to add all this stuff to it. You got to do it a certain amount of time or it doesn’t count. Or you have to do it at a certain time.

And he just is like, “No, none of that. Don’t heap up a bunch of empty phrases. Don’t think that your many words are going to get it. Don’t think you have to assault God with language to get him to bend to your will. None of that.”

And then what he’s going to say is, “Pray like this.” And what he prays now is simple in its form, simple in his word use, simple in his sentence structure. It’s straightforward and it’s not long. Just pray like this.

So when we’re talking about like this, which is what he says in verse 9, pray like this, it’s simple, but it does open for us, I think, categories that might, when you’re thinking about the prayers that you have, might increase the like, oh actually, I probably should be praying about this and I should be praying about this.

So we’re going to take it through and just kind of go, what are the categories that he prays? You’ll notice the sentence structure is simple and the length is simple. But it maybe will add some complexity to your praying if there’s some areas where you’re just like, I haven’t been praying about that and that.

So I don’t want you to, because we’re going to go through it and look at the different categories, suddenly go, “Oh, wow. This is really complex.” It’s like, “No, he actually is praying pretty straightforward, pretty cleanly, pretty simply,” even if it opens up categories for you, it doesn’t make it more difficult.

Like I said, the floor here is very low. And I think that’s built into what he says when he says, “Don’t be like them.” This is verse eight: “For your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”

And that’s the baseline assumption in praying, is that we’re going to the Father and he cares about us. He knows what you need. And that’s beautiful.

So if you understand, okay, does a three-year-old know how to talk to his father? Does he know how to approach him? Doesn’t know how to be humble and to be in need. Then if that can happen, then you can pray. If you knew how to ask your father for something you needed, then you can pray, because that’s the baseline thing that’s happening here.

So with that in mind, we’re going to look at, he says, “Pray then like this.” I’m going to read the whole thing and then we’re going to go through bit by bit to just see what’s in this prayer. Even though it’s simple and straightforward, it takes 15 seconds.

And like I said, that’s the entry to prayer, is we get to pray very simple, very straightforward. And then we can go from there into not more empty words and phrases, but just greater depth of relationship.

You know, Jesus prays all night long, and it’s not because he had to say the same thing over and over again for it to work. It’s because he relates to the Father. The same way that you would stay up all night and talk to someone, a friend that you cherish or someone that you’re in love with, and you would just, it would just keep going and it’s conversational and there’s so much to talk about and you don’t want to stop.

That’s what I mean by the ceiling to prayer. The requests that you can make, the things that you can talk about is unending because of the depth of relationship that we get to have with the Father.

But the entry level to just like what counts as a prayer is any of it. If you’re aiming it at him and if the point is to relate to him and to talk to him and to bring your needs to him, then it all counts.

So I’m going to, this is what he says. Pray then like this.

Matthew 6:9–13
“Pray then like this:
‘Our Father 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 us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.’”

That’s it. That’s the whole prayer.

So we’re going to walk through. I’m going to tell you what these different things mean, what he’s saying, and then I want you to consider them as like, okay, do I have category for that? Do I pray that sort of thing?

Again, not complicated in language, not long, not repetitious, but also for us to go, hey, there’s things I should be praying for.

It’s like, what? Well, let’s look and see what sort of things he says to pray for.

So he starts off with “our Father in heaven.” And that’s just framing up who are we talking to. Prayer is not to the universe. It’s not just floating out there. And Christian prayer is to the Father. We can pray to Jesus. We can talk to the Spirit. But in general, normative Christian prayers, we’re praying to the Father. That’s who Jesus bought our relationship with. He brought us back to the Father. Our arrangement was with the Father and that Christ comes to rescue us and to bring us in to be adopted as sons and daughters of God.

So we’re praying to the Father, and it’s beautiful this pairing. He’s our Father in heaven.

So he is our Father. That’s the - he loves us. He knows us. There’s this relationship built in. But he’s also in heaven. He’s big, competent, capable, ruling, reigning, glorious.

And so know who you’re praying to and begin with the relational depth there, but also the weighty glory of him reigning from heaven.

So that’s “our Father in heaven” is where he starts.

And then “hallowed be your name.” Now we don’t consider, we don’t talk about hallowing things very often, but it’s may your name be honored as holy. May it be set apart.

And I think that there’s two things happening here. This is just praising God. So it’s beginning with, I’m hallowing, like I’m surrendering to you your honor. It’s, you know, when the angels say glory to God in the highest, it’s I’m glorifying you now. I’m hallowing you now. I’m honoring your name now in this very moment.

And so it’s, you can praise God, glorify him, honor him. And it’s a way for you to remember you are my Father in heaven. You do love me but you are holy and completely other and different and above me. So it’s a humility in approach.

It also, if it’s a prayer that moves forward, is to be praying that, Lord, I would honor you, that I would show you respect, that I would bring glory to your name, that in my heart and my words and my actions I would live in a way that brings you honor.

So that’s start off knowing who you’re praying to, and then in submission and respect and humility, we praise him. But also do you pray that you would honor him as you go forward and as you live your life.

So that’s some of what’s happening there.

Okay. “Hallowed be thy name.” “Your kingdom come.”

Now again, I think all of these is such a simple phrase. All of these we could spend a whole sermon on just explaining some of what’s going on here. But the category that I want to open up for you is that we should be praying for the advancement of his kingdom on earth.

We want more people to submit to the King. Which means that we want more people to place faith in Jesus. We want the advancement and the good news of the kingdom to be proclaimed. We want the good effects of the kingdom to be extended.

So you should pray for missions and missionaries and for your school and for your co-workers. You should be praying that people would meet Jesus.

This is, you know, we have this section in when our groups meet. We want to discuss and review kind of how are we being missionaries together and who are we building with? We want to pray for those sort of things.

And this is built into what you’re going to see later. It’s a daily prayer. So it’s just the normal daily way to pray. You should be praying for missions. You should be praying for the kingdom to advance and for more people to surrender to Jesus.

And then this fits into that, but he says, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

So this kingdom advancing is faith and it is new believers, but it also is submission to his will. It’s that the world would look more like it belongs to him.

So “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” So we should be praying that his will would be accomplished in our lives, in the lives of others, in our schools and our neighborhoods, that it would look like we belong to him, that we would surrender to him, that good things would happen, that people would turn from sin, that we would do what is right.

And so as you’re going through and thinking through what are the things I’m praying for and how do I pray normally, we pray for missionaries, we pray for the work of the advancement of the kingdom, and we pray for the advancement of his will.

And then also when there’s situations in your life, you can pray it like this: I pray that your will would be done. I don’t know what should happen at work. I don’t know how this conversation should go. I don’t know how I should handle this, Lord. I pray that your will would be done. I pray that I would be sanctified and repent of sin and handle this well and honor you well. And so I just pray that your will would be done in this situation.

And so that’s the - he prays that.

Then he says this: “Give us this day our daily bread.”

This is humility in the fact that we are dependent on him every day of our life.

I think that for a lot of us, this is kind of where most of our prayers center around, just what’s going on today. What do I need? And that’s fine and beautiful that that shows up in our prayers. He expects it to.

This was a practical reality for them that often they needed their food today. Like they didn’t know if they were going to have it. Whereas we, you know, we have grocery stores and refrigerators and freezers. And so a lot of times we just kind of aren’t thinking about how dependent on him we are for the general just function of life, but you are.

And so we should normally be asking, Lord, hey, provide for me what I need. And one of the ways I word it, and I pray this through this with my boys a good bit, was, Lord, give us everything we need and help us to be truly thankful. Help us to enjoy it, but help us to be truly thankful.

But I think for a lot of us, this is the stuff. This is, you know, praying over this meeting I have at work and this test that I’m going to take and all these just different things that are coming up that are on our plate that day. This conversation I’m going to have with this person. Just, Lord, provide the things that I need to live, to exist, to function, for this day to go well.

And so we ask for that, and we humbly are dependent on him for those things.

I think for some of us the bulk of our prayer may be in this zone, this practical need zone. And I would just say, yeah, but you need to open up and understand we should be praying for missionaries. We should be honoring the Lord in our prayers and we should be considering his will at work and things. So, you know, spread it out.

And then I think that every once in a while I’ll meet someone and it’s almost like talking to God about simple things like bread is beneath God, so we shouldn’t talk about stuff like that. I shouldn’t pray to him about, you know, this test I have because I don’t want to waste his time.

And that also, I think, belittles him as if he’s big but not so big that we are able to waste his time. We’re not able to waste his time. He’s not exhausted by us. He’s not limited by us. We are to bring things to him, and he delights to talk to us.

If there’s something that’s burdening you or bothering you or in your way or in your need, you talk to him about it. He’s not too big for that. He’s not too busy for that.

And so I would say for the person who’s like, I only pray big prayers - it’s like, yeah, we should pray big prayers. But we also should know that he loves us, that he cares for us, and that he is dear and near, and not too big that these are beneath him, but so big that he can handle everything. And so I just think that don’t limit him in that way either.

So we should have the humility to realize situations and we should talk to him about practical things.

All right. So then as he finishes, he’s going to say, “Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.” Those three together.

I find it very interesting and very helpful, and I point this out a lot when I’m talking to people about prayer. The Bible tells us we have three enemies: the flesh, the world, and the devil. And it doesn’t always frame them up like that in that order, but we do. It’s going to talk about those three things as that stand in the way of us following God.

So we’re told that we have to put to death the deeds of the body, that we’re fighting the passions of our flesh, that the flesh is opposed to the Spirit, and that we’re only going to walk in one. We’re either going to walk in the Spirit or walk in the flesh.

And so that’s the idea that you want to sin, you desire sin. That there’s a part of you, there’s a part of me that genuinely wants to sin, and I have to put that to death. I have to fight against that. You have to fight against that.

It tells us that one of our enemies is the world. This is not like “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son” as in the people, but the world systems, world ideas that stand opposed to God. It is people that tempt us to sin or that tell us sin is okay or that normalize it, or the systems that are in place that help us rebel against God.

So that friendship with the world is enmity with God. That is the way the Bible’s going to talk about it. So that we shouldn’t be friends of the world but we should come out of the world. We should love Jesus. We should follow him. We shouldn’t look like we belong here. We should look like we belong to him.

So that’s a second enemy, is the world.

And then the third one is the devil, that we actually have a real spiritual enemy that wants destruction for us, that wants us to follow him into rebellion, that doesn’t want joy or peace. You know, he roams around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour is the way Peter puts it. So we have that enemy.

And what’s interesting and I find very helpful in this normal daily way to pray, Jesus has in mind all three. He has in mind that we are in a war against sin, that sin is destructive. We are in a war that the world tries to pull us and lure us and take us captive. And that we’re in a war against a real enemy that wants us to not surrender to the Lord and not follow him.

And so I think it’s very helpful that in his normal daily way to pray, he considers all three: the flesh, the world, and the devil.

And so when he considers the flesh, what he says is, “Forgive us our debts,” or forgive us our sins, “as we have also forgiven our debtors,” or as we have also forgiven those who have sinned against us. And so trespasses is another way that that’ll be translated at times.

That a normal daily way for you to pray is to ask for forgiveness, to walk in repentance. That repentance is part of the Christian life. And it’s not us walking with our head down in shame. It is delighting in the freedom that has been purchased for us by Christ, that we get to be forgiven.

And so you should, in your normal praying, be considering: forgive me for how I spoke yesterday. Forgive me for the language I use. Forgive me for the attitude that I have. Forgive me for when I had that opportunity to serve somebody, I just did it begrudgingly. I was annoyed the whole time that there was a person around me in need rather than loving them. So forgive me. Help me.

And this is why one of the normal things Christians should do with each other is repent to each other, because it’s been - it’s part of our normal praying. It’s part of our normal walking with the Lord, is that we’re asking for forgiveness.

The flip side of this, and I would encourage you to read what he says after this in 14 and 15, but he connects this idea of us being forgiven with us forgiving others. And Matthew 18 is also helpful here. Yeah, all of Matthew 18. I was wanting to see if it went into Matthew 19, but in Matthew 19 he starts talking about other things. So just all of 18.

But it’s helpful here in this idea of how forgiveness works.

But we’re to be people who receive grace and live in the grace and the mercy of God, and that we’re to be people who give grace and mercy to all those around us. And so that’s where he puts those together. That he says forgive us as we forgive those who sin against us.

And so that a normal part of our daily praying is to consider our sin, but also to walk in repentance and ask for forgiveness and to move forward in being forgiven and receiving mercy. That his mercy is over all that he’s made, and so that daily we receive mercy and it’s wonderful. And so that we would normal daily pray, repent of sin.

The next thing he says is, “Lead us not into temptation,” so that we would be aware that one of our enemies is the world. That the world is going to try to normalize sin. It’s going to be out there taunting us and calling to us.

And you’re saying, “Lord, don’t let me look at the bait on the hook and not see the hook.” You know, that’ll keep me away from temptation. He doesn’t just say, “Help me withstand temptation.” He says, “Pray that you won’t even enter into it. That you won’t go near it. That I won’t even be tempted today.”

And I was, Chet said one of the ways that he prays this and considers this in his prayer life is, Lord, help me to see the things that tempt me. You know, he gave the example of like if there’s a certain app on my phone that’s going to keep tempting me, help me to see that, recognize that, and just get rid of the app. Help me to see the areas and the avenues and the people and the places that lead me into temptation so I can get rid of them.

You know, I heard a pastor say this one time and I found it very helpful. But the sooner you show self-control, the less self-control you need.

So that saying, “I’m going to go to the party, but I’m not going to drink,” is harder than just saying, “I’m not going to go to the party.” Saying, “We’re going to go up into the dorm, but we’re not going to commit sexual sin,” is harder. It’s more difficult than just being like, “Hey, let’s just not go in the dorm. Let’s just not be alone together.” That temptation level is higher. So let’s avoid temptation.

And so rather than saying, “I want to avoid sin,” Jesus is saying, “Yeah, okay.” But also you want to be forgiven for sin and you want to avoid temptation. You want to go further back and say, “What are the things that tempt me? How do I not even get to where I’m close to the line? How do I stay away from temptation?”

And so that’d be a thing that you’d be praying, and that you would be aware of the world’s influence to draw and entice you away from the Lord and into sin.

Third enemy, and the way that he finishes prayers: “But deliver us from evil.” Now the word evil there, evil is a fine translation. Wickedness is a translation that it’ll be translated wickedness sometime, or wicked as in like wicked people, or the evil one as in Satan himself.

And so I think you just need to be in your praying mindful of the evil of the world. And so this is in some ways praying, Lord protect me from wicked men, from evil situations. Protect me from the evil that I’ve already gone into and that I’m surrounded by. Like deliver me out of it. Rescue me is kind of the word he’s using here.

But also to be mindful of like when Ephesians says:

Ephesians 6:12
“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”

That I think sometimes in our normal configuration of prayer and the normal way that we think, because we’re western, most of us, and we don’t grow up considering spirits and dark forces and invisible things, we even in our own faith are sometimes like, yeah, well this is my personal faith, but the real things in the world are like on the periodic table. And we even miss that like, no, God is real and the spiritual world is real. It’s as real as oxygen and hydrogen. We’re just not thinking about it right. We don’t have it framed up in our head right.

And so sometimes when we think about the things that we’re worried about or that are assaulting us, that we most often in the western world, when you think about like what are the enemies, you pick people. You pick political ideas or entities. And so the things that you’re worried about is like them trying to do this, this nation, this people, this idea, this group.

And Paul says, yeah, we’re not wrestling with flesh and blood. That’s not who we’re worried about. That we’re at war with a much bigger enemy in a much bigger scheme. And so your normal daily praying should consider, hey Lord, deliver us. Rescue us from the influence of the enemy. Rescue us from the evil one. Rescue us from evil. Rescue us from sin as it goes to work. Protect us.

And so your normal daily praying should include repenting of sin, praying against temptation, and praying about the work of the enemy, that he would not have any effect, that he would not, that the Lord would rescue you from lies that you’re believing and ways that he’s at work and ideologies and temptations and things that he’s doing in the world, and just that evil is at work in the world.

But evil isn’t just a benign force. It has an agent behind it, and being aware of that in our praying.

So Jesus says praying is not a show and it’s not some big long complicated thing. Pray like this. And then he gives a simple straightforward prayer. But I do think it opens up categories for things that we should consider as our normal prayer.

So that you should go in your house and close the door and pray simple straightforward things. And I think it’s helpful if you can print this out or you can open it up to Matthew 6 and you can just kind of go, okay, and help these things guide some of your praying. But don’t complicate it. Don’t think you have to say it well. You’re not filling out forms at the DMV. It’s not like it’s going to get rejected and sent back to you.

You’re talking to your Father who already knows what you need before you say it.

Now, Jesus does tell us to labor in prayer, to continue at it, to pray the same things. And he doesn’t mean say it seven times in a row for it to count. He just means come talk to him again about it tomorrow. Pray when it’s on your mind. Pray again. Pray this morning and pray this afternoon. And then when you think about it again, pray, because he cares about you and he knows you.

And keep at it. Keep talking to him. Keep telling him what’s going on. Keep letting him work on you in prayer so that we would be people who pray.

And the last thing I want to point out as I’m wrapping up just kind of this walkthrough, this assumptive reality of how we get to approach God that Jesus teaches his disciples, is purchased by Jesus. This is a blood-bought gift to you.

You don’t get to pray like this if Jesus doesn’t go to the cross, because he’s not your Father, because you haven’t been adopted. If Jesus hasn’t saved you, you haven’t been brought into the family.

Jesus has to go die for this to be a reality, that he gets to be our Father in heaven. You don’t get forgiven if there is no cross. You don’t get rescued from the enemy if there is no cross. You don’t get taken out of the world if there is no cross. The provision that we need stops at daily, and our eternal provision is not provided if there is no cross. His kingdom doesn’t come if there is no cross. His will isn’t accomplished if there is no cross.

And so one of the things that is to be in mind as we do this is to rejoice in the work of Jesus and to know the privilege and the delight that this type of praying is because it was purchased by the precious blood of Christ and given to those who belong to him as a way that we get to relate to God.

And without him it doesn’t exist, but with him we get to delight in and enjoy it. And it’s not something that we earn or that we achieve or that we do well. It’s something that he’s graciously given us as a gift.

So hopefully as we wrap up our prayer series, this simplified kind of, hey, it’s not a show and it’s not complicated. You get to go talk to your Father and you get to do it because Jesus has earned that for you and given that to you and modeled it for you.

Then go pray. Pray big prayers, but also realize that you get to talk to him normal daily about all the stuff of life. And trust him, because he’s your Father and he loves you and he knows you and he already knows what you need even before you ask.

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New Testament Prayers: Week 3

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Transcript

My name is Spencer, I'm one of the pastors here. We are in week three of a four week series on New Testament prayers. So we are looking at some prayers that are in the New Testament and trying to capture some of the truth that is bound up in them so that it might encourage us in our prayers but also help us grow in the discipline of prayer which is vital for the life of the Christian. So we'll finish this, we have one next week and then we'll jump back into Second Samuel. So we're gonna be in Ephesians chapter three today, verses 14 through 21. It's on page 568 in the blue Bibles. If you don't have a Bible at home, please take that blue Bible. That's a, that's a gift we want. You have a Bible that you can read, but you can follow along with us. The text will also be on the screen.

There are some things in life that you learn kind of on your own through reasoning and all types of things. And then there are things that happen to you that just change you. Some external forces that just absolutely change your life. So this can happen in a variety of ways. One of the clear ones that happened for me was when we had our first child. So, you know, heard for years that we have a child, it'll change you. Have a child, it will change you. And kind of do that at some experiential level. That was going to happen before we had a kid. We had a, we had a dog. So we got a little bit of a jump start on taking care of some type of creature. And we loved that dog. I didn't like that dog. You've been here long enough, you've heard enough stories about that dog. That dog was the worst. But we loved it, took care of it. And then like lady and the Tramp, that story that plays out over and over again, we had a child and that child, like when you first hold your child in the hospital or if you adopt a child and the agency places that child with you either, and you're in the room with that child for the first time, like there's just something that happens within you. External force just comes in and it just, you, you thought you, you, you knew this category of love and that just gets deepened in ways that are just so profound and wonderful. And when I held my daughter for the first time, it was just powerful. Then went home and I saw that dog and I was like, I hate you. Like, I love, I love this child so much. With the Love that I had this child. I just is a disdain by comparison. But there's just something happens. There's external forces that work in you. That's not just limited to children. Sometimes experiences happen to you and it changes you. And none of those hold, hold a. Hold a flame to. When the Lord determines to work in our lives in powerful ways, the external force of who our Lord is is working in our hearts. It changes us in ways that are profound. And that's what this prayer is today. It's capturing that. It's a prayer for God to. To work powerfully within us. So we're going to see this prayer and see the encouragement that comes with a prayer like this and then also see the fruit that comes from these types of prayers. So let me pray for us and then we'll walk through this piece by piece.

Heavenly Father, I thank you that you do work in mighty ways. And I pray that this would be a morning in which you do that you would work in our inner being, in our hearts, in profound ways that help us not just hear your word, but do it. But that comes not from ourselves. It comes from you. And we ask that you do that in Jesus name. Amen.

All right, so this prayer begins in the middle of. Towards the end of chapter three with for this reason. Okay, we're going to stop there. So this happens in Ephesians. You see this phrase for this reason over and over again. And what's happening is that Paul is drawing to mind what he said previously. He's building on truth that he's already established for this reason. And we saw this a little bit in week one. Chet, in week one of this series went to a prayer in Ephesians chapter one. And that was built upon the truth that came before that, which is the first few verses of Ephesians is this. This declaration of how God plans to redeem his people, that he chooses us and he redeems his people. And then Chet walked us through this prayer of wanting to know God and experience his glory in profound ways. Then when you get to chapter two, those first 10 verses one through 10 and chapter two are some of the most, I would argue, one of the most important passages in all the Scriptures. It is a beautiful summary of the gospel. That we were once dead in sin. We were sons of disobedience, children of disobedience, that we were wayward and that God, in his mercy, he saves us by grace through faith, not of our own doing. So if you're looking to grow in some scripture memory this year, and you have no place to start. I can't think of a better place to start than that passage right there. Builds upon that talks about how Jews and Gentiles are both a part of the same household of God, of how God dwells in his church. So really, for this reason, builds upon the gospel that he's articulated with such beauty and specificity. And those first three chapters, because the gospel is good news.

> For this reason I bow my knees before the Father,
> from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named,
> that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being,
> so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love,
> may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,
> and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
> Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us,
> to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named. Stop there. As I bow my knees, which just for a moment, we should consider our posture when we pray. Now, I'm not being dogmatic on this. I'm not saying that every time you pray you have to bow on your faith, bow on your knees, that every time you pray you need to be on your face before the Lord. I think you can drive and pray. I think you can sit in a chair and pray. But if the only posture by which we pray is a comfortable posture, I think we're missing something. In prayer, there's something about the physical body and how God has made us in the position of bowing before the Father, laying prostrate on your face before the Father. And if that's not an aspect of your prayer life, it should be because it brings humility within us. There's a physical humility displayed when we bow before the Father in prayer. That's what he's doing here. I bow before the Father, which also should be noted. This prayer is very trinitarian in its language, very explicitly. So going to see Father, Son and Holy Spirit in this prayer. And as most prayer in the New Testament that we see, all the prayers that we see written, some of the teachings that we see on prayer, normative patterns of prayer are to the Father, but we also think of our triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. So this begins with I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and earth is named. Throughout every family, every creature comes from, from his creation that we're named, that God's sovereignty and all of this is implied here.

And then we have verses 16 through 19, which is very dense, very rich, and it is a lot. So we got to kind of take it component by component. Because Paul's breaking down one kind of overarching truth for us piece by piece. My wife and I, we were trying to teach our kids some life skills and try to teach them to make a sandwich. You could just say, get on in there and make it. Make yourself a PB and J. It's like, no, it's like, this is how it works. Step one, get the bread out. Step two, get the jar of peanut butter. Put the knife in the jar, get the peanut butter out, smear it over this one piece, then take the a paper towel and wipe that peanut butter off. Because only psychopaths put that straight in the jelly. You know who you are. Leaving peanut butter remnants in the jelly like a. And then get the jelly smear in the bread, and then we piece it together and then you've got the sandwich. Right? So Paul's component by component here, there's one overarching sandwich, one big truth he's trying to give us, but he's got to break this down. So we're going to have to take this piece by piece to see what he's getting at here.

In this prayer, he says that according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner being. Okay, sit there. That first part, according to the riches of his glory, Chet helped us see in week one of this. He was quoting Herman Babnik, a theologian from a century ago, and describing glory and defining it. He said, the glory of God is the infinite, indescribable perfection and beauty of all the other attributes that all the good and wonderful attributes of God, his goodness, his faithfulness, his power, his might, and on and on, shine brightly in a way that displays glory. And he says, according to the riches of that glory, this indescribable, infinite, marvelous glory says, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with the power through his spirit in your inner being, to be strengthened with the power of spirit through his spirit, the Holy Spirit in your inner being. Okay, let's pause there for a moment.

There is an American lie that is told repeatedly over and over again that if you look inside yourself, inherit to who you are, you'll discover power, you'll discover greatness. And that greatness will help you win and overcome and be great. And y', all, that story is told over and over again, from Moana looking inside herself to, I mean, most recently, Stranger Things, the stories that we tell over and over again. There's something inherent inside of you that you just got to tap into. To overcome, to do great gets told over and over and over again. And that sometimes actually even funnels into some American churches, not even the majority, but some of them, certainly some with big platforms, and there are even some pastors, at least those who claim to be, that will parrot that lie. Over and over again. There's something you just gotta tap into. The power that's deep, that's wonderful within you. But that's not what the gospel teaches at all. It's not what the gospel teaches. The gospel teaches that if you look deep inside yourself, what you will discover is frailty, weakness, sin, brokenness, depravity. That's what's inherent in each of us. And that's what makes the gospel such good news. That's why that's wonderful that it's not in ourselves to arrive at greatness. It's on ourselves to overcome that. It comes from God working within us, the external power of God coming to work inside of us in powerful ways. May he strengthen by the power through his spirit in your inner being. This power comes from God.

In verse 17, he says, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through. Through faith. That Jesus Christ and faith in him brings the power of God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, to dwell richly in his people. And then he continues. That you, being rooted and grounded in love. Here we go. May have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and. And height and depth. And to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God, goodness. When I was a kid, we got to go to the Grand Canyon. My stepdad and I, we went. And I remember getting out of the car, walking through this clearing and seeing the Grand Canyon and having a very normal experience that many people have when they see the Grand Canyon. You just feel small. Now, the reasons that you feel small, because the Grand Canyon is massive. The Grand Canyon is 277 miles long. It is 4 to 18 miles wide. various points. It is over a mile deep. Totals at 1,904 square miles. You could take the entire state of Rhode island and put it in the Grand Canyon. I want to help you picture this for a moment. You may not find this helpful. I found this helpful and I'm talking. So theoretically, if you filled up the Grand Canyon with water, okay, it would take 4.17 quadrillion liters of water to fill the Grand Canyon. Now, if you're like me and you failed math as a kid, you might ask, what's a quadrillion? Had that same question. Quadrillion is 1 million billions, right? Take a billion. Now you have a million of those billions. And now you have a quadrillion four of them. That's how many liters of water it takes to fill the Grand Canyon. Now stay with Me further, the average adult human being, the capacity and the adult human being is about 42 liters. So if you were to take a human and fill it up with water. 42 liters. Okay. I in the eighth grade, well after my second eighth grade because I failed math. Stay with me. After my second eighth grade when I was there witnessing how big the Grand Canyon was, I was very small, very had not broken £100 yet. So half an adult human being. So think 20 liters capacity human being beholding 4.17 quadrillion capacity Grand Canyon. That's why I felt small. That's why anyone feels small. You might be. That's the most crazy confusing way to explain how to behold the Grand Canyon. I could keep going. I could tell you that if you took all the people in the world and put them in the Grand Canyon you wouldn't come close to filling it up. But it takes 60 to 70 trillion trillion human beings to fill up the Grand Canyon. I could do this with all kinds of things. With AI, I can do jello, I can do VW beetles, I can go all day pounds of sand. And every time I try to explain to you how big the Grand Canyon is by our understanding, you still can't grasp it because you can't understand 4.17 quadrillion liters of Wallers. Even if I switch it to gallons, which would be more helpful, I couldn't understand that. 67 trillion people. There's no quite way we could possibly picture and understand how big the Grand Canyon is. And when we in ourselves try to understand the bigness of the God who made that Grand Canyon, who holds that in the palm of his hand like it's nothing, the scale of comparison doesn't work. To try to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth of and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. It's not an 8th grade kid trying to stack up against the Grand Canyon. We don't have categories for that. The discrepancy between us and the size and the majesty and the wonder and the glory and the weight of glory of who our God is, is infinite. Yet God and his graciousness, this is what he does. Knowing that we and ourselves have no ability to begin to comprehend how great and how wide and how wonderful the love of his love of God. Him understanding this, He Himself dwells in us. He goes to work in our inner being to strengthen us, to empower us so that we can begin to understand the infinite capacity of love. That God has for us. That's. I mean, that's more than having your first child and having this love grow and understanding of what really love is, it's much, much, much, much, much bigger than that. When God goes to work in us to give us eyes to see and understand just the beginning of how great his love is. That's why, y'. All. I don't. When people who don't believe in Jesus and are skeptical when they take shots at the character of God. Your God is loving. Let me tell you how your God's not loving. Your God is not righteous. Not just. Let me tell you why your God isn't just. This is why. I don't. I don't get all offended. I'm not. Of course you would not begin to. How possibly could you begin to understand the depths and the riches of the love of God if He's not working in you to help you understand that in the first place? You have no capacity to understand how great he is. You have capacity to understand his great love. You have no capacity to understand his justice. You have no capacity to understand the riches of his glory and his majesty and his wonder and his all. So of course you would not get this. But when the Spirit goes to work in us and begins to open up our eyes to see and we. We begin to. To start to grasp how. How grotesque our sin is and how wretched our rebellion is against God and how we just joyfully choose sin over him repeatedly, over and over and over and over and over and over again to the point of ad nauseam. When we begin to understand with new spiritual eyes to understand how much our sin is heinous against a holy and perfect God who made us. Once we start to understand that, we can begin to partially understand how rich his love is that he would not injustice bring down his full wrath upon us. But he would send His Son to be crushed for us. He would send His Son to be crucified for us. He would send His Son to take the place that we deserve in judgment. And the more you stare at the cross by the power of the Holy Spirit working in us, you begin to see how deep his love is. You cannot discover God without Him first working in you. You cannot know him without him first working in you. You cannot understand his glory, his goodness, or any aspect. And especially you cannot understand his love without him first working in us. We need God to work in us. That's why Paul's praying this. That's why he's praying this over them, because they're not going to reason their way to this. They're not going to logic their way to this. No, they need God. He's praying. May God work in your inner being to see this and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.

And here's the sandwich, y'. All. Here's where it all comes in. That you may be filled with all the fullness of God. It all leads into that. He's praying you don't have it in you, but may God work in you, strengthen you, work in your inner being, so you might understand the depths of. Of the love of God, that the fullness of God may dwell in you. He's praying the fullness of God may dwell in you. Which begs the question, what is that? What is the fullness of God? I can both tell you what that is and can also admit I don't fully understand what that means. I can tell you biblically what that means. Biblically, it means that God dwells in you and his glorious attributes begin to work through you in mighty wonderful ways that display who he is. That's what that means. But how to fully understand that? I don't know. I don't know how you pictured that. I mean, you can tap a 4.17 quadrillion liter water tank and take your eighth grader and say, get to drinking, but I don't. So how do. How do you understand the fullness of God? And as I thought through this, the best way that my finite mind could try to picture this is that if you have a light bulb on a dimmer switch that you can slowly turn up, which I do in my. In my dining room, I've got this dimmer switch and turn it on, and I still have the Edison bulbs that haven't got out of stock yet. And you can turn it up a little bit and then you'll see the. The inner components of the light begin to light up. Light bulb begin to light up. But if you have a powerful enough light switch and enough light source, the more that you turn up that switch, the less you're going to see of the components of that light bulb. And eventually, if you turn up a light bulb to its maximum capacity, that you're not going to be able to see anything but light itself, you're not going to be able to see the inner workings of this at all, that the only observable substance will be light. And the best I can picture of what the fullness of God is is that God and His glory and the perfection of his attributes dwell so richly in his people that the only observable reality is God himself. And that's a beautiful thing to pray for that when people see you, the only observable reality that shines through you is the fullness of God. And that is a glorious thing to pray for. As he prays this on behalf of this Ephesian church. And you can't reason your way to that reality. You can't discover that our only hope is praying for it is praying for God to work in us in mighty wonderful ways. That at the fullness of God, God and all of his glory and his bright shining love working in us would just be the only observable thing about you.

So that reality makes this final part of the prayer that we're about to read so beautiful. Because that's true now.

To him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think according to the power at work within us to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen, man. The end of this prayer is an opportunity to dream, to dream a bit. Any all ever dream about winning the lottery? I know a Baptist would never do that. I think most of you have. I've dreamed about it and all the silly material things that you could purchase if I won the lottery. Now let's just disclaimer. I don't buy lottery tickets because I'm a Baptist. I really don't. Let's put that aside. If I won the lottery right now, there's no limit on money. There are some material things that my heart would go after. No doubt. Probably not the same as you, but I would try to find. There are some big land tracks between like Cayce Lexington. So if you took Cayce Lexington, Red Bank. There's an area right there where there's still some big old land tracks. It's getting developed, but not all. And I scoop up one of those land tracks, 100 acres. And then I put a giant fence, we're talking like 20 foot fence all the way around it. And then I'd stock it with as many deer as possible. Just load it up. It'd be a reserve. I wouldn't be selfish. I'd invite some of you. Some of you that don't shoot things you shouldn't shoot. You know who I'm talking about. Some of you know how I'm talking about. This isn't pointing anybody specifically. It just annoys me when people shoot smaller bucks. But that's not the point of this dream. If I I would. I would get this big land track and then I build pretty much the same size house I have now, a little nicer and there'd be a pond because my son has gotten into fishing. We stock it with fish and we just invite people to this to be. So we just have people coming over enjoying it. And I'm sure you've done some version of that, probably different. I don't think your lottery dreams are based in that area of town. But we've done this if we're honest, many of us. And what makes some of those dreams about things that do not matter at all, that have no really tangible, eternal significance, the reason you could do that is because money is the limit, right? That's the point of those lottery dreams, is that money is the limit. And if you didn't have money, here are the things you could really do. But it's all about things that don't matter. It's all about things that don't last. It's all about things that will be here and gone.

When is the last time we took that type of creativity and dreaming about things that do matter, things that have eternal significance, that if there were no limits and God was at work in us in mighty wonderful ways, beginning to help us comprehend the limitless love of God and the fullness of him dwelling in us in rich and powerful ways. If that's true, then man, what are the things that we could be dreaming about that we could pray for now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think? And I want you to dream for a bit about things that actually have significance. If God and His infinite power is at work within us, what are the things that we should be praying for, things we should be dreaming about? I want to give you some categories. Last week we talked about holiness. We talked about. We read a prayer of sanctification, of us becoming more like Christ by repenting of sin and obeying him. And the hope is, is that you didn't just hear that, but you responded to be a doer of the word. And this week at group, you began to talk about sin and not in shallow ways, but in real ways. That's my hope. And if you haven't done it yet, please do. But what if in this past week you started to take sin really seriously and then leaving today, you started to pray big prayers of just like God, this area of my life that I so deeply want you to change, this sin that just keeps plaguing me, God, would you so remove its Influence in my life that a year from now, just walking with you and all of a sudden temptation comes and I'm like, neo from the Matrix, just. And you're just. No, it's just an annoyance. I'm just. Would you work so powerfully within me that I wouldn't feel the destructive influence of the sin? I just have so much fullness of you dwelling within me. That's a thing to pray for.

Let's talk about reconciliation as a category. Some of you have relationships with people that have been marred by the effects of sin. And maybe you're not talking to them anymore. Maybe there is relational weirdness. And it just. Every time you see them, it just. You. Every time you see something online, you just. What if you started praying in a way to our limitless God that he would work in a mighty way in you and in them, so that when you saw them, all you felt was actually love, the love of God. That brightness just shines through you in a way. It's like I. I just love that person so much because he can. He can work in mighty ways.

Give you a different category, personal evangelism. Some of y' all have that lost coworker or that friend that you've been building with for quite some time. What if you began to pray with dream and imagination? God? Would you. Would you use me to declare the gospel of Jesus Christ to this person? Would you save them? And what if God, in a few months, orchestrated you and her? Or you and him standing right in front of me in a pool baptizing them, celebrating that Jesus saved them, and then you disciple them? You say, come, follow me as I follow Christ. Here's how you study the Word. Here's how you pray. Here's how you live in community. Follow me as I follow Christ. And then in a few years, they're actually a group leader. Because you prayed for boldness and zeal, the death of apathy and self interest, and God worked in you and you declared the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Give you another category about planting a church. It's about time we did that. It's about time we planted a church. What if 50 of you weren't in this room a few years from now? What if you, because God, working in your inner being, gave you faith to take a step of obedience and go and take the gospel somewhere else? I'll give you one couple more categories. What if some of you considered the call to ministry, serving the local church? What if some of you prayed some dangerous prayers and God began to work in your inner being in wonderful, mighty ways. And you said, I, I'll make less money. I'll serve the church, I'll be obedient. And for, for the men in this room, some of you, that means considering the call to be a pastor and, and aspiring to the office of overseer and desiring that noble task 1 Timothy 3:1, in a way that you would give your life away to loving and shepherding and leading and preaching God's people. And I'll give you one last category to dream on. What if some of you became international missionaries, you began to pray those kind of dangerous prayers that when you think about it, you want to put it to the side because you don't want to go there. But God began to work in you and broke your heart for a people group that doesn't know the gospel, for a country that needs solid theological enrichment in the local churches. And you, in a few years packed up your bags and sold everything and you left. And you're obedient to the call to go, to make disciples of all the nations. Those are the things worth dreaming about and those are the things worth praying for.

Now, to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen, y'. All. He's able. He's able to do more than we could ever dream or imagine. Why aren't we praying? The type of dangerous, wonderful, glorious Christ exalting prayers that make us uncomfortable. We have access to limitless power to go to work in us, to do unimaginable work that he set apart for us. And the question is, is what are we waiting for? I think some of us are holding back. I think even as we think in those type of categories for a moment, there's already the counter that said, I just, I don't know, I'm not ready. I don't know if I'm ready for that yet. That seems scary. What if I fail? What if it doesn't work? What if? What if? What if? What if? And I want to tell you, you let God be the limit on what he's going to do in you and through you and get out of the way. We pray and we dream like this because of where this ultimately ends. Because to him belongs all glory and the church and in Jesus Christ throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. This ends in doxology. This ends in glorious praise to Him. Did we get to experience him in indescribable ways that we would get to be used by him to do unimaginable things to Him. Be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

Brothers and sisters, God wants to strengthen us, to help us comprehend the depths of his love in profound, wonderful ways. And as we experience his love in infinite, wonderful ways, we'd be obedient to the things that he calls us to with no limit style Dreaming it's time for us to pray for the fullness of God to dwell in us. It's time to start praying bold, audacious, big dream prayers. And that's what we're going to do for the next few minutes. Daniel's going to come up here and he's just going to play and we're going to sit and we're going to pray and we're going to pray for two things. We're first going to pray for God and His fullness to dwell in us that would shine so brightly that when people see us, they see Christ. And the second thing we're going to pray for is going to pray for God to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think. And we get to dream a little bit and we get to be dangerous a little bit. And we get to be silent for a little bit. And we get to let the Lord go to work in our hearts. So that's what we're going to do. For a few minutes we're going to sit in silence and then I will close this in prayer. But let me, let me make this clear. Some of you need to encounter, maybe for the first time, this power of God. Some of you. This won't make sense until God first begins a work in you, which means some of you need to place your full faith in Jesus that you've been putting faith in other things yourself. And now is the time for you to actually respond to the lordship of God so that he might begin to dwell in you fully. And I would encourage you to do that as well. But we're going to sit for a few minutes. Maybe you need to get a posture of prayer. Maybe you need to be open handed a little bit. Maybe you need to get on your knees. We don't have a traditional altar, but you might need to come up here, you might need to stand up and walk out, but prepare yourself to be in a posture of prayer. And for a few minutes we're going to sit in silence and we're going to pray for the fullness of God to dwell richly in us in mighty ways. And then we're going to pray for God to do far more abundantly than we could ever ask or think. Let's pray.

Lord, we pray that we'd be filled with the fullness of you, God. May you work in our inner being that we might be begin to comprehend how profound and wonderful our love is and a world way that you would dwell so richly within us and shine so brightly through us. Oh lord, would you fill us, God, to you who are able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think. God, would you remove the limits that we place on you in our lives? Would you make us uncomfortable? Would you give us faith? God, we ask for faith to pray like this. May you work mightily in us to do the things that you desire for us. To you be glory and your church and our Savior Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

We're going to stand, we're going to praise our glorious God and we're going to worship.

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New Testament Prayers: Week 2

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Transcript

Good morning. Nope, wrong way. There we go. My name is Spencer. I am one of the pastors here. We are beginning the year with a series on New Testament prayers. So just the first four weeks, we're going to look at. When you read the New Testament, you're going to see in various points where it's not teaching, it's. It's not application, it's not correction, but it's actually just there's a prayer. And we're going to look at a few of these over the next few weeks with the goal of encouraging us to pray, which is a discipline that we as Christians need to continue to grow and especially as we start out a new year. Then we'll jump into second Samuel and we're done with this to finish out first and second Samuel. So we're going to be in first Thessalonians 5, 23, 24. Last week, Chet took us to Ephesians 1, and we got to look at a prayer that calls God's people to delight in worship in God and his glory, to know him. And this week we get to see another aspect of what God desires for his people.

So I am getting closer to 40. Yeah. Which means getting closer to the age where you start going to the doctor more because you get to discover all the ways that your body is trying to kill you. You just. When you're younger, most folks, the only doctor that you have is whoever you see at urgent care. But when you get older, you, like, have your own doctor. And then you start having a team of specialists, which I've gotten a head start on already. I realized I had entered a new phase of life when I started bragging about how good my specialist was. But this, this is what happens, because the older you get, like, statistically, when you're younger, your car is more likely to kill you. When you get older, your heart is more likely to kill you. So you, if you want to live, if you want to thrive, you want to flourish bodily, you've got to actually go to the doctor more regularly. And our older folks know this. How many of you of our older folks this that? A big topic of conversation that shows up every time that y' all get together is doctor visits, right? It. It's, it's. That's a reality. And we should consider our health seriously. We should go to the doctor. We should be healthy. We should do all of those things. We should take our health deadly serious. It matters.

Paul in, in. In First Timothy 4, he makes the point that for a while, bodily training is of some Value. So he starts that statement with saying, yes, you should. You should take care of your body. There's some value there. But he continues and says, godliness is of value in every way as it holds promise for the present life and also the life to come.

> For while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. (1 Timothy 4:8, ESV)

So it makes the case, yes, bodily training is of value, but you should train for godliness. As serious as we take our physical health, the question is, how serious are we taking our spiritual health? And more specifically, how serious are we taking sin in our lives? And that's the subject matter for this prayer today. This is a prayer of sanctification. It's very brief, but I'm encouraged that we get to look at this this morning and hopefully we will see a prayer that calls us to grow in being more like Christ, the process of sanctification. So let me pray for us, and then we will walk through this together.

Heavenly Father, I pray that you might help us consider the reality of our sin in ways that we may not have or are not. That takes you going to work in our hearts in a way that compels us to be the people that you've called us to be. So God, I pray that you'd speak to us and that we would respond. In Jesus name, Amen.

All right, so first Thessalonians 5, 23, 24.

> Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will do it. (1 Thessalonians 5:23–24, ESV)

All right, so this is a prayer. It's a benediction, a blessing, a prayer that he prays over this church in Thessalonica. So before we jump into this prayer that comes at the end of First Thessalonians, I want to give a little bit of context for this letter that Paul wrote to this church in Thessalonica. So Thessalonica is a city in Greece, still is a major city in Greece, and at the time in ancient Greece was a major city that Paul traveled to. In Acts 17, he plants this church. It begins, it grows, and then there's some persecution and suffering that happens, and the God takes him elsewhere. And one of the things that Paul does in his ministry as he starts churches all over Asia Minor, Asia Minor in Europe, is he ministers to them from a distance. And some of that we get in these letters that God has inspired through him, teaching truth to these Thessalonians.

So when you read First Thessalonians, there's a major theme that shows up over and over again. And that is the encouragement that Christ will return, that Jesus is coming back. That's a, that's a big part of this letter. And that's important for Christians to remember that Jesus is actually coming back. If you were here this time last year in January, we were finishing a five month journey through the book of Revelation. And one of the helpful things that we gathered from that is this regular reminder that the end is coming, that Jesus will come, he will make all things new, that we need that encouragement, especially when life is very difficult.

Over the past couple of weeks we've had sickness, various forms of sickness flow through our house, which has been loads of fun, you guys, but we had the flu. Now we've got some type of infection. And one of my kids who was going through seven days of fever ridden flu in the middle of it, she just was so tired of it. She just was like, I'm, I'm so, I've just, I want to be well. And I just had to say, hey, listen, I know the flu stinks. Waking up every day feeling like this is rotten, it's awful. But there's a day coming in just a few days, you're going to wake up and you're going to finally feel better. And she just needed that little bit of encouragement to pick her head up and realize, okay, no, this is hard, but I'm going to be okay at the end of this. And the New Testament does this over and over again. It picks up our gaze a bit and says, Jesus is coming. He's going to make all things new. And that's the big theme that runs throughout this letter. And towards the end of him really pressing this upon this church, he prays this blessing over them. May the God of peace sanctify you completely and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

As, as Jesus is going to come, he says now, may the God of peace, which pause for a moment. Isaac Hill and I were, we were discussing this this week and he just made a really good point. He says it's so helpful that he, he could have chosen any attribute to emphasize here about God. But he says, may the God of peace. It doesn't say may the God of wrath. He says, may the God of peace, which is a picture of God the Father who makes peace with us. We once were lost, dead in our sin, enemies of God. But through the redemptive work of Jesus Christ, we have the opportunity to become friends of God because he makes peace with Us and we live in peace with God, says, may the God of peace sanctify you completely. May sanctify you. So that is the prayer of sanctification. So let me take a moment and define sanctification, okay? Because it's important for us to not miss this sanctify, which is the verb form here, or sanctification, which is the noun form, the state of being. Sanctified comes from the Latin word sanctus, which means holy. And the original language, which is the Greek here it's hagios. So this is the process of becoming holy as God is holy.

When you read the Old Testament and the Old Testament law, in Leviticus 11, it says, Be holy as I am holy. But we get the fullest picture of what sanctification is in the New Testament.

> For I am the LORD your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy. (Leviticus 11:44, ESV)

So if I had to define sanctification for us this side of the New Testament. And sanctification is the process of becoming more like Jesus Christ through repenting of sin and obeying him. Sanctification is the process of becoming more like Jesus through repenting of sin and obeying him. Which means that for the life of the Christian, this is one of the most important aspects of our faith. It is becoming more like Jesus taking sin seriously, repenting and obeying him. That this should mark our lives.

Every now and then I'll be meeting with somebody and they'll, they'll ask some version of. I'm just trying to figure out like what, what is God's will for my life? I just want to know what God's will is for me. And when they say that, I have to have some self control because an intrusive thought comes in. Because first Thessalonians 4, 3 is the, the one verse that captures that idea. The bet, like the most explicit in the Scriptures, 1st Thessalonians 4. 3 says, for this is the will of God, your sanctification.

> For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality. (1 Thessalonians 4:3, ESV)

And every time someone, I know what they're saying. It's not that the will of God is just narrow to sanctification. They're asking about how do I think about this job or how do I think about this decision. I just wonder what the will of God is. In the back of my head, I'm like, it's your sanctification. No, put that away. You're talking about something else. But that is a big part of the will of God for us is that we would be more like Him. That's one of God's grand desires for us, is that we would be more and more like him. That's a big part of our faith. And in the context of First Thessalonians 4, when he continues, for this is the will of God, your sanctification. He starts to name what is one of, probably one of the bigger sins in that church and in that city at the time. He says that you had abstained from sexual immorality. And he goes on to explain that further. But you broaden that out to the rest of the New Testament and you see that God desires His people to take sin seriously. I want you to hear that He. He wants his people to take our sin seriously.

> And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. (Galatians 5:24, ESV)

Galatians chapter 5, verse 24 says, and those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. That he references the horrific, violent, brutal murder of Christ pulls that imagery to mind. And he says, all of that violence you should reserve for your flesh, that you should murder, destroy, end the desires of your flesh.

> Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? (Romans 2:4, ESV)

Romans chapter 2, verse 4 says, or do you presume on the riches of his kindness in forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? It's this idea that gets throws up over again. We do not presume upon the kindness of God. The kindness of God and His patience and his forbearance is meant to lead us to repentance, to the turning away of sin to crucifying the flesh. You see this over and over and over again in the New Testament as it calls us to take our sin seriously.

So we should, as Christians, consider our sin seriously. That we should consider all the ways in which we sin. We should live a life that is one of walking in the light, that is one of confession, confessing our sin to the Lord and confessing it to other Christians as we walk in the light together. That we should be in the process of sanctification, reading our Bibles and reading His Word and knowing God and His Word and knowing his holiness, and as we read His Word, realizing and reflecting upon all the ways in which we sin against God. That we should grow in this type of holiness. That we should grow in the difficult work of identifying patterns in our life that need to be changed and changing those patterns. We should identify habits, we should consider what we watch. We should consider the things that we scroll through. We should consider the things that we fantasize about, the things we think about that in all these ways and more, we should consider our sanctification seriously. We should be serious about our repentance as we plead for God to sanctify us. We should have this type of Prayer, pleading for God.

And think about how thorough Paul is here. He says, now, may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely. And he says, and may your whole spirit so that word, the word for completely and the word for hold there in the original language are the same. And I, and I, I think, completely captures some of this. I do like what the NIV says. The NIV says, may he sanctify you through and through. May he sanctify you through and through thoroughly. And then he goes on to picture this. Your whole spirit, your whole soul and body be kept blameless. Now, I, I, I don't think what Paul's doing there is dividing the self into three different parts, body, soul, spirit. I don't think that's what he's doing. He's not doing three clean divisions of who we are. I think what Paul's getting at here is he's saying all of you, and this is what the scriptures do sometimes and just capturing all of who we are. This is your thoughts, your actions, your immaterial self, your spiritual self, your material self, your body, every aspect of may God sanctify you completely. And this should be our desire.

Let me address an aspect of sanctification that I think our church, specifically we need to receive this and understand this. Well, I'm going to say something, and for some of us that's going to be quite jarring. But just stay with me. You should desire. We should desire to please God in our sanctification. Now let me qualify for a moment when it comes to the work of justification, faith in Jesus Christ. When he converts us, we go from old to new, dead to alive. We're born again before Christ. You cannot please God. I think it's important, because we say this sometimes, is that we cannot please God with our good works. We cannot please God. We cannot earn our favor, earn favor before. We cannot earn our status before Him. And it's like, yes and amen. We absolutely should remember that, that we cannot please God in earning our place before him. So have that locked in our brain when he makes us new and brings us to a new life in Christ. In our sanctification, we should want to please God. We should want to please Him. And the New Testament captures this over and over again.

> But just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts. (1 Thessalonians 2:4, ESV)

I'll just give you a couple of ways it captures this in First, Thessalonians 2, 4, it says, but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak not to please man, but to please God, who tests our hearts in Colossians 1 a prayer, he says, and so from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will and all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 10 so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.

> And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. (Colossians 1:9–10, ESV)

So when it comes to the work of sanctification, the work of becoming more like Christ, the repenting of sin and obeying him, that we should want to please God, that is for our joy, for our flourishing, for our good, and we have to kind of separate those two parts of our brain that we will never please God to be saved. But in Christ, when he puts the Holy Spirit within us, that work that is flowing in us when we lean into this, it is pleasing to God. Every deliberate choice to kill sin and to honor God is a choice to depend upon his power and not our own. Every time we decide to know, I want to grow in this, I want to be holy as God is holy. It pleases him, it's pleases him. When we confess Jesus is better than everything else and we live that out. When we have temptation that comes to us and presents, send us and we just say, no, I want Jesus, I believe that he's better than everything else. And therefore I'm going to desire, I'm going to choose, I'm going to follow Christ here. It's pleasing. And we should remember that language because I think sometimes we get so much in the language of I don't have to please God, I have to please God, I have to please God. And we blur the lines a bit till we get to a little bit of Romans 6 where we're presuming upon the grace of God and that's not a place where we need to be as Christians, we should desire to grow in sanctification.

We should take our spiritual health seriously as like more seriously than we do even our physical health, as I said earlier, with all the time and energy that we take to think about our physical health, to think about our overall financial well being, our overall success in life, all that ever different aspects of our life which we should consider and pray for, we have a lot of energy that's directed in that. And then some of us, we have little energy that's directed in seeking the Lord, asking Him to sanctify us. I mean, consider our prayers. Consider what you pray for on a regular basis. Do you pray for, for physical health? Do you pray for financial success? Do you pray for a lot of good Things that you should absolutely pray for. God never grows tired of hearing those prayers. You should. We should grow and we should pray. We should do all of that. But do we pray for that with more zeal, more passion, more earnestness, more consistency than we do in praying and considering our own sin? That's something we should reckon with and we should consider.

I mean, think about the psalmist, how the psalmist pray. Go to Psalm 139. It says, Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts and see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

> Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting! (Psalm 139:23–24, ESV)

When is the last time that we prayed like that? That on our face before the Lord? We're saying, God, would you search me? Would you know my heart? Try me, expose me, help me see. I don't want these grievous ways to have victory in my life. I want you to lead me in the way of everlasting. When is the last time that we prayed passionately, consistently, fervently like that?

Consider how David prays in Psalm 51 after he. He sins against Bathsheba and Uriah, which we'll read about in Second Samuel, coming up. And he has this prayer of repentance. He says in verse seven, purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.

> Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. (Psalm 51:7, ESV)

When is the last time on your face before the Lord? You said, God, purge me. Purge me of the sin. Purge me like hyssop. Cleanse me. Remove this. I want to be holy as you are holy. I want to be whiter than snow. I don't want to be a slave to my sin. Would you purge me of this? When is the last time that we fervently prayed like this? This is the type of intensity that God desires of his people that we might pray like this, y'. All. We will. We currently do. And we will probably, with the size of our church, always have someone who is battling cancer, who is battling disease. And this church, we respond by consistently and passionately pleading with the Lord on behalf of our church family to heal. And we're not going to stop doing that. But with that type of intensity that we're asking for physical healing, do we do that with spiritual healing, with becoming more like Christ, with repenting of sin and becoming more like him. Do we pray like this? Because we should.

We should consider all the ways in which we are plagued by sin and praying. We should pray earnestly. God so tired of the sexual sin that's bound up within me. I'm so tired of stumbling and falling with actions and with thoughts. God, would you purge me? Would you cleanse me? Would you remove it? I don't want to sin against you when the temptation comes. I want to believe that you're better. Would you cleanse me of this? God, would you purge me of a dishonest tongue? Because I don't know what happens at work. My boss talks and it gets me stressed out and I tell half truths. I'm hanging out with my friends and they're telling all kinds of stories and I feel like I gotta tell a story and then I embellish upon it. And then all of a sudden I just. I don't want this anymore. I want to speak truthfully. God, would you purge me of a dishonest tongue? Would you cleanse me of the heartless apathy that has plagued me in this season? I feel so spiritually dry and distant. And I don't want it. God, I want to. I want a fervor for you. I don't want to be so apathetic. God, would you cleanse me of this? God, would you purge me of the greed within me? Because every time I get a raise, all I can think about is the next thing I want to buy that. All I can think about is more and more. I don't want that. God, would you purge me of my greed? Would you cleanse me of my faithless anxiety that I'm so tired of being so fearful of everything else but you? But God, I want to fear you. Above all, I want to try. I don't want to live in a persistent, consistent state of anxiety. God, would you purge me of the petty rivalries that I create in my own heart with people that don't even know that I'm mad at them and the gossip that flows out of me and the slander that flows out of me? I don't want this anymore. Would you cleanse me of this desire to seek substances for my pain? I'm tired of just wanting the next drink. I'm tired of getting THC in my system. I just. I don't want. Would you cleanse me of my faithless anxiety, my faithless idolatry? And on and on and on and all the ways that we should consider, all the ways in which we sin against God? When is the last time that we got on our face and prayed with that type of zeal? That's what God desires of his people, to pray and say, God, peace, sanctify me. Sanctify my whole spirit, my whole, every part of me. Keep me blameless until the coming of Jesus Christ.

John Owen, the Puritan pastor from centuries ago, and his work, Mortification of Sin and Mortification of Sin, which mortification just means putting to death of a thing. He impacts this idea of mortifying sin in the flesh. He says to mortify means to put any living thing to death. To kill a man or any other living thing is to take away the principle of all its strength, vigor and power so that it cannot act or exert or put forth any proper actings of its own. He goes on to say, it is the constant duty of believers to render a death blow to the deeds of the flesh that they may not have life and strength to bring forth their destructive influence. Boy, oh boy, when have we prayed that God would remove the strength, the vigor, the power, the destructive influence, the life, all of it from our sin? I just want you to remove the destructive influence of this sin in my life. God, would you do it? You put the spirit in me. It's alive and it worked in me. Would you empower me to put this to death? This is the pursuit of the Christian life. This is what God desires of his people. How often are we praying for our sanctification like this.

And push this even further. How often are we praying these type of prayers for one another? How often are we praying? Because look at this, this is Paul praying for them. He's praying for their sanctification. And how often are we doing that with one another? Because sanctification is not a solo sport, it's team sport. We have a Western American individualistic mindset that my sin is my business. The Bible says, no, it is not your business. You belong to a community. No, your sin is not just your business. This is how we love one another.

Well, I was watching over the holiday season, I was watching a movie called the Long Walk, which is an adaptation of a Stephen King novel. And it's about a dystopian future after an American civil war where there's a totalitarian regime in place. And they, they have a contest and a lottery for that contest. They take young men from all 50 states and they put them in the Long Walk, which is a death march, which is quite the movie to watch over the holidays. But I was really looking forward to seeing this movie and a death march, if you don't know what that is historically, it's where you tell people to walk. And every person that stops walking is shot. And the last person standing, last person walking, the end wins. The contest. And one of the things I appreciate about this story is that the main character, he arrives and he. He decides, I'm going to team up with some of these other guys and we're going to walk together. And they. They team up and they walk together. There's another guy that shows up, and his strategy is to walk alone. And he. His whole strategy is to discourage everyone else who's walking. And for a few days, it works. He gets in the head of a few other guys, they stop walking, they're killed, and he just keeps walking. And that works for one, two, three days. But about day four, day five, and day six, when there's only about 10 people left, the guys who've been walking together are still walking together. And there are times where it's in the middle of the night, and one of them is literally sleepwalking. He's asleep and he's walking. He's slowing down, and his friend grabs him and carries him every step of the way. So they endure as they go up steep inclines, and people are starting to fall off. One by one, they encourage each other together. And these five are walking together. By day five or six, the guy who's been walking alone begins to go insane. Name? He begins to lose his mind. He has this desire. He's freaking out where he wants a team, he wants people to walk with him. He feels all types of disorientation. Then he finally stops walking and he dies. And as I'm watching that, I'm like, that is such a picture of why we need each other so much. That sin is serious. This life is serious. There's a lot on the line, and we should walk together. We're not designed to walk alone. We're designed to walk together. That means we should care about each other enough to care about each other's sin and sanctification.

When is the last time that you. You reached out to someone in your group and asked them, would you be praying for me? I'm struggling right now with temptation. I've been struggling with sin. But would you pray for me? When's the last time that you've reached out to someone in your group, someone you're walking with, inviting them in? When's the last time that you spoke honestly about the reality of the sin that you're struggling through? When's the last. At a time, at a care night, as we're talking to each other in group, that you were real and honest and didn't give polished stories of your reality even further? When is the last Time that you cared enough about someone else that you're walking with to go out of your way to ask them tough questions. Do you know their sin? You've walked with them for a year, a few years, you know what's happening. When was the last time that you went on your way to ask them difficult questions, to reach out and say, hey, I know it's been hard lately, but I'm praying for you. And you're on your face pleading and praying, may God sanctify him completely. May he sanctify her completely. May you help this brother or sister, crucify this desire, and may they have victory. When have you been praying like this and caring about someone else that you walk with? This is what we're called to. This is sanctification in the church of Jesus Christ. This is what part of the reason he's given us one another, that we might walk together in this battle with sin.

Let me close with this. In verse 24, he says, he who calls you is faithful. He will surely do it. The good news of God's sanctifying work is that God is the One at work within us. God is the one at work with us. He will surely do it. It is he that will keep us blameless. The God who calls us into faith carries us through to completion and works within us every step of the way. And if you belong to Jesus Christ, he will surely do it. And that is encouraging. And some of us need to be reminded of that today. Some of you need to be reminded of this because some of us have been trying to sanctify our worldly minds by our own effort, by our own strength. And we're neglecting this opportunity to run to the Lord in prayer, pleading with him, relying upon Him. Search me, know me, purge me, cleanse me, sanctify me by his power and not our own.

Some of us need to hear this this morning because some of you are deeply discouraged right now. You've been stumbling and stumbling and stumbling and I want you to hear so clearly this morning. He is at work within you and he will surely do it. That as you lean into the reality of spirit filled dependence upon him to crucify the desires of the flesh. Yes, we know biblically we're never going to be perfect. We know that. We know we're never going to arrive there. We know that we're broken, sinful, corrupt to the core. We get that. And also the Spirit at work within us will mold us and shape us in the image of Christ. And whatever you're facing right Now God is at work. If you belong to him, he will surely do it.

Some of us have neglected. Though hear this. Some of us have neglected the power of God coming to bear on our lives because we have not taken sin seriously enough. And it is time for us to start taking some sin seriously. The beginning of this year. Some of you need to start taking sin seriously. You need to start praying for God to search you, to know you, to purge you, to cleanse you. Some of you have neglected the power of God to destroy the patterns of sin in your life, be it for reasons of apathy, distraction, indulgence, indifference, unbelief. But all of those we got to put at the foot of the cross and we got to plead for God to change us. But if we belong to Christ, we have to start taking this seriously. And for some of you, some of you have only depended upon your own self. And this morning, it is time for you to depend upon the Lord to actually see him as Lord and ruler of your life, taking over every aspect of your life, including the things that you've held most dear to you, so that he might change you and conform you into his image. And beautiful, wonderful ways to bring about the change that God wants for you because there is a man or a woman that he has made you to be that is growing in Christ likeness. But you cannot take those steps to flourish and grow into his image until you start taking sin seriously. But if you woo, if you, if you, if you take the leap of faith, if you walk in the light, if you start talking to other Christians, if you do the tough work of sanctification, you will change. He will surely do it.

This is how we're going to close this morning. It's going to be a little bit different. We're going to take communion here in a moment. So let me go ahead and introduce communion now as we prepare for the table. On the night that Jesus was betrayed, he took bread and he broke it. And he said, this is my body that was broken for you. And he took the cup. This is the cup of the new covenant. This is my blood that was shed for you, that as often as you eat and drink this, you proclaim my death until I return.

> For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, "This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me." For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. (1 Corinthians 11:23–26, ESV)

So the table is a reminder that our sin cost the blood of God and that God and His abundant mercy and kindness gives us Jesus Christ. That covers our sin. So typically, we take a few moments and we consider our sin and we consider our Savior and then we come to the table. But that's not what we're going to do this morning. We're going to do something a little bit different. I'm going to ask Matt to come up and Matt is going to sing a song over us. So right now we're going to pray. We're going to pray. The song captures Psalm 139, Search me and his kindness leads us to repentance in Romans 2. And we're going to pray. We're not coming to the table. We're going to sit and we're going to pray. And we're going to ask the Lord to sanctify us. We're going to ask the Lord to expose us, to search us, to know us, to find the grievous ways within us. And we're going to sit in silence as he sings and ministers to us, as he sings over us. We're going to consider our sin. And I hope right now that the Holy Spirit begins to prod and worship. I hope he starts giving you action steps when you leave here today that you start having conversations. We got a care night this week in our community groups. I hope that you come prepared to bear burdens with one another there. But we're going to do the work right now where God's going to work in our heart. So don't come to the table. We're going to pray. And when he's done singing the song, then he'll invite us to the table. But right now, sit and pray before the Lord in silence. And may the Lord go to work in our hearts.

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New Testament Prayers: Week 1

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Transcript

Well, good morning. Happy New Year. My name is Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. If you will grab a Bible and go to Ephesians, chapter one. We are going to begin the year by. I got to get rid of this pen or I'm going to fiddle with it. Sorry. We are going to begin the year by studying prayer together and seeking to grow in prayer together.

As we start this year, I know a lot of people kind of think through, okay, how did last year go? What do I want to change, what I want to grow in? And as a church, we want to grow in praying. And so the way we're going to go about doing this is we're going to read New Testament prayers. We're going to see what they prayed for, how they prayed. At its simplest, prayer is just talking, talking to God. It is a gift from God to us that we would be able to speak to Him. He, that we, as intelligent, relational creatures, he's given us a way to relate to him in an intelligent way, who is the source of all relationship and the source of all intelligence. So he's given us a way to commune with him, to speak with Him. And we want to grow in this. And we're going to see how they prayed in the New Testament. We're going to practice it. We're going to mimic it, which is how we learn things. It's all the things that little kids do and the games they play and the ways they learn things. They just mimic the things that they're seeing. This is why you had an Easy Bake Oven. It's why you had a pretend little push lawnmower. It's why my dad spent most of his games as a child being a cowboy, because that's what he saw. Apparently, all the shows were cowboy shows. That's why I was a Ninja Turtle and why. Why I've been beaten up by Black Panther and Captain America more than I care to admit now with my two sons. It's because we see something and we want to practice it. We want to grow in it, we want to develop it, and we follow what we see. So we're going to do that. We're going to see how they prayed, what they prayed for, and we're going to practice it together.

So we're going to pray more in our groups over the next few weeks that we'll get together and spend more time in our groups praying. We always pray in our groups. It's a great time for us to share burdens with one another, pray for one another. Pray with one another for our missionary efforts and for our lives. But we're going to do more of that in the coming weeks. And as seems fitting, we're going to pray this morning as we begin, before we get into the text. Lord, we ask for your help and your mercy that as we study your word, your spirit would go to work to help us, to hear it, to see it, to believe it. So we ask for you to minister to us in this time. Lord, we're so often hard of hearing, so often dense, so often shallow, easily distracted, worried about other things. But we ask for your spirit to put away distraction and to open our eyes that we might see you in Jesus name. Amen.

So we're going to be in Ephesians, chapter one. We're going to pick up in verse 15. So Paul, the Apostle Paul is writing to the church in Ephesus and he's going to talk to them about him praying for them. And he's going to say what he's been praying for them. So he says, for this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints. So he that for this reason is a bridge statement. It's referencing what he's been talking about and where he's about to go, so that it's walking through all the things he's been saying already and then what he's about to say next. And. And so what he's been talking about is salvation. He's been saying that we have been saved by grace, by the work of God. It's what we read together a little while ago, that it's to the praise of his glorious grace that he has saved us, that he's predestined us, chosen us, adopted us as sons. And he's been talking about this and he keeps saying it's to the praise of his glory, to the praise of his glorious grace. And he says for this reason, all of that salvation and that you believe it since I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints.

So those, those things, salvation and your particular salvation, the church in Ephesus. Here's what I've been praying.

> For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

So he's thankful for them in his prayers. And then he says, remembering you my prayers, that so he can tell us what he's been praying for, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened that you may know. So let's go back. So he's praying to the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory may give you the Spirit of wisdom. So right there we see the Trinity, we see the Lord Jesus Christ, God the Father and the Holy Spirit at work. And so what he's saying is, I'm praying that Jesus, who is our Lord, who's brought us into a relationship with the Father, I'm praying basically through Jesus to the Father. And he calls him the Father of glory, which is not a phrase he uses often, but in this whole context, he's got glory on his mind. He's been talking about all the salvation is to the praise of his glory, to the praise of his glorious grace. And we're going to see that he says glory multiple times as we keep going. We're actually going to take some time to consider glory this morning. So he's saying the Father of glory that he may give you the Spirit. So he's praying that the Holy Spirit, and he calls him the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him. So specifically what he's praying, he's asking the Father for the church in Ephesus that the Spirit would go to work in such a way that they would know God, that he would reveal God to them. He's going to say specifically what he wants them to know about God, what he wants to understand about God. But I want you to see that his primary, the basis of his prayer is that they would know God.

Now he's writing to a church that he helped get started. And when he helped get it started, it was kind of a mess. At some point he gets run out of the city. But he now hears that they're still following the Lord, they're growing. He's excited about their faith. He's thankful. But consider what he could be praying for them, what he could have written. Here's what I've been praying for. You think about what you would be praying for. A church plant in a difficult spot that has faced opposition. I wouldn't be surprised and honestly might would find it more practical if he had said, I'm praying for protection, praying that the Lord would help you against those that would oppose you. I'm praying for your safety. I'm praying for the effectiveness of the gospel work. Like there's a lot of things he could be praying for them. I'm praying that y' all find places to meet and gather where you're not in danger. I'm praying that you can share the gospel well and people will receive it. But that's not what he says. He's saying, I'm praying that the Spirit goes to work in your heart so that you can know God. He actually says that the eyes of your heart would be enlightened. Okay. It's a real simple picture. What do your eyes do? They see. What does your heart do? It loves. It takes in the essence of things. It's what people talk about, that they feel something in their heart. If you looked at somebody and said, the eyes of my heart see you, they'd get what you meant. And let's hope it was appropriate for you to say that to them. It's probably not first date conversation, but you they'd get it. And that's what he's saying is, I want your heart to grasp this. I want you to know know it. Not just know it. I want you to know, know it. I want the spirit to go to work so that you really, really, actually, really, truly inside of you know this. He wants us to know God and y'. All. That is primary, that is essential.

If you live your entire life and it's a good life, a comfortable life, that you're kind, you're generous, you're well liked, you're well received, you get to enjoy life, you get to partake in some of the good things that the earth has to offer. And then you get to the very end of all things and you don't know God. You get nothing. Nothing. You have nothing. But if we make it to the end and we know God, then we've gotten everything. And it's essential that we know God, that we have God, that we participate with God, that we worship God, that we delight in God.

I want to take just a moment for the skeptic in the room, because I've heard before, I distinctly remember my grandmother was a missionary, and I remember her talking to my cousin and he was being antagonistic to this idea, but he was saying that he thought it was crazy narcissistic that God would create the world and then demand that his creation worship him, that he would make himself essential. Basically, for this to be essential for us to either get God and that's all that matters, or not get God and like that this is the bare essence of all creation and existence would be, do you know God or not? Do you relate to God or not? He just said, that's crazy. So if that's where you are, I just want to give you two things to consider One, it is the right ordering of the world that us as creatures would relate to God, know God and worship God. That if you said, why should I worship God? And I responded by saying, because He's God, that's not a cop out. That's a legitimate answer. Imagine with me for a moment that you are a headstrong, recalcitrant, cheerless teenager, rebellious, problematic, mouthy, and you say to your friend, I just don't know why my mom's all in my business and why she wants to ask me all these questions and why she wants to be my friend. And let's imagine for a moment that your friend says, because she's your mom. That's a legitimate answer. You understand? That's a legitimate answer. It's actually messed up if she doesn't want to know you, talk to you, care about you. That's where the brokenness comes in. Not when she's momming, but when she's not. And so when we say, well, why would God want us to know him, worship him, relate to him, because He's God, is a legitimate answer. Because it's the right ordering of the world. It's my first one. Second one, if God were to say, create the world and then say, hey, the most joy, the most delight, the most goodness, the most life can be found in blank, and he pointed to anything other than Himself, then that thing would be more glorious than him, and it would be God, not Him. So not only is it the right ordering of the world, but it's actually innate to the, to the intrinsic goodness of God, and it's for our good that we would know him and relate to Him.

So what Paul is praying for is actually that we would get what we've longed for always, which is a right relationship with God, that we would really, really know Him. That's what he's praying for them. He's going to give three specific things he wants them to know. So he says that you may know, Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you? What are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints? That's number two. And number three, what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe? So the first one, That you may know what is the hope to which he has called you? Second one, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints? And the third one is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe.

So the first one is that you may know what is the hope to which he has called us, called the Church? He's talking to Christians. What is the hope? Well, there's a hope of salvation. There's a hope of heaven. There's a hope of eternity. There's a hope of joy. There's all these things. But there are some places where Paul specifically references this hope that we have. And I want to point them out to you because I think he's getting at something specific here. It is all of those things, but it's bound up in something.

Romans 5:2.

> through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

Through him, that's Jesus. We have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand. Okay? This is how we're saved. By the grace of Jesus, by our faith in Jesus. Grace meaning that he has freely gifted salvation to those who will believe. And then we just trust him. We believe in him. So if your New Year's resolution was to get your act together and be moral enough to please God, we're glad you're here. And that will never happen. I don't even know you. And I can already tell you that will never happen, because that's not how it works. So we receive salvation by grace. We receive it by the work that he's done. That's why it's good news that we place faith in him and that he saves us. That's what he says. So it's in faith, by grace, through faith. But then he says this, and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. So we're hoping our hope is the glory of God.

And he says this other places, says it all over the place.

> To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

Colossians 1:27.

> waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ,

Titus 2:13.

That's our hope, that he's going to show up in glory, that we're going to rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. That's Wonderful if we know what glory is, because it's like, that's great. What's glory? It's glorious for sure. But what is it? What does it mean when we're hoping in the glory of God, he's our blessed, that we're awaiting the appearing of the glory of Christ. What does it mean when he says he's the father of glory? Tim Keller, who I thoroughly appreciate, he passed on recently. He was a pastor in New York for a long time. He said that if you'll notice that sometimes when you read a theology book that there's no that when it talks about the attributes of God, sometimes it won't even list glory. It'll just talk about his power, it'll talk about his omnipotence, it'll talk about his love, but it won't say that he's glorious or that he has glory. And he said the reason he thinks that, and he actually thinks that. Herman Bavink and his theology work puts it best when he says the glory of God is the infinite, indescribable perfection and beauty of all the other attributes. John Piper says that it's the beauty of his manifold perfections. And John Piper, when talking about glory, said, one of the reasons it's hard to define glory is that the word glory is a lot more like the word beauty than it is the word basketball. If you didn't know anything about basketball, in about 10 minutes, I could describe both the object and the game to you in such a way that you could walk into a room and pick a basketball out of a whole bunch of other balls and get some people together and basically play the game. Doesn't take much to describe it. You can do that. But if you don't know anything about beauty, you've never heard of the concept, and I've got to describe beauty to you, we're going to have a harder time. Piper says that we know beauty because we have the ability to point, say, that is beautiful. It's right there. And that's kind of how glory works.

But when the Bible talks about glory, it does talk about glory, and I think three distinct ways. So even though it's hard to describe, we've got to try to wrap our minds around it this morning. So I'm going to show you three ways that the Bible talks about glory, and then we're going to try to understand what it means that we have a hope of glory and why it's so important to Paul that our hearts know that this is the three ways that the Bible Talks about glory, talks about intrinsic glory, ascribed glory, and manifest glory. So if you just went right now and word search glory in your Bible and started reading all the places that said glory, you're going to see that it uses the word differently. And that's because it's going to use it in basically these three categories. Intrinsic glory is glory that is essential of the nature of something. God has intrinsic glory. He is glorious, whether you know it or not, whether you see it or not, whether you enjoy it or not. He is glorious that there are things that have glory. This is where Paul can say that there's a star differs from star in glory. It means it's intrinsic glory. Then there is ascribed glory, which is most often used for us to ascribe glory to God, meaning that we're responding to his intrinsic glory and we're saying that he has glory. This is when the angels show up to the shepherds and the stories that we read around Christmas and they say, glory to God in the highest. That's how they're using it. Give glory to God, acknowledge his glory, ascribe glory to him. And then there is manifest glory, which is God's glory on display. Glory that can be perceived, glory that can be received, glory that can be enjoyed. This is when the angels show up and it says, the glory of the Lord shone around them. He made some of his invisible attributes visible so that glory is displayed.

Now, I don't know if you know this, but you are hungry for glory. We thirst for it. We love it. You know when you watch a movie or a television show or you go to a concert or you go see a play, or you go watch someone play a sport, you know what you want? You want the most glorious version of that. You've never gone to a concert and been like, oh, I hope they come out 30 minutes late and they're off their game. I hope this is the most mediocre spot on their tour. Now you want the best one. If I told you I had a time machine and we were going to go watch Michael Jordan play, and then I took you to Birmingham, Alabama, so that you could see him play minor league baseball, you'd be furious. If I took you to 2003 when we could see him play for the Wizards, you'd be less mad but still annoyed. You want to go to early 90s Chicago because we want the most glorious version. We want to see. This is why we go see great sights. This is why we want to be in awe of things. We want to participate in glory. We Want to see the original cast sing the songs? Because we want the most glorious version. We're chasing it all the time. We want those things that when we look at someone and we go, I can't describe it to you. You should have been there. I mean, I can try to tell you about it, but all I can really say is, it was beautiful. You should have seen it. It's etched in my mind. I'll never forget it. And what he's saying is, I want your heart to know that the glory of God has never fully been revealed to man. It's been shielded for us. And every little bit of glory we've ever gotten is just a wisp of a vapor of a taste of a hint of a smell of the glory that is bound up in his person, in who he is. And our hope is that one day, full, unadulterated glory will be ours to partake in, to receive, to enjoy forever. That everything we've ever chased and wanted, that one day, it's just there. This is why the book of Revelation says, and I saw no sun, because the glory of the Lord is their light. You ever just walked out after being cold and stood in the sun, close your eyes and just let it kind of cook you for a second. You ever done this? Am I the only person who does this? Ever just stood and been like, oh, there'll come a day when there is no sun. It's just the glory of the Lord that we're standing in, soaking and delighting and enjoying that every bit of every little hint of glory we've ever tasted pales in comparison as we are brought up into the glory of the Lord forever. And if you belong to Jesus, that is your hope. And Paul's saying, I'm praying that the Holy Spirit would come into your heart and open it up so that you might see that, so that your heart might wrap around it. Because I can tell you, if it does, it changes what we care about and what we chase after.

That's the first thing he wants for us, that we would know what is the hope to which he has called us. Second thing, he's praying for the church. What are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints? What are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints? I want to highlight two words for you because I think it's quite possible that we've just read this backwards. The two words I want to highlight are his and in. Now, we read together earlier the passage leading into this. And in that, it talks about our inheritance, meaning that we Have a hope of something that we're going to receive, that he's set aside for us, that we have an inheritance that's kept in heaven for us, undefiled and undefeating, unfading. That's the way Peter puts it. But this doesn't say our inheritance. It says his inheritance. And it doesn't say for the saints. It says in the saints.

Now, if it said his inheritance for the saints, we would just think it's worded a little oddly, but we would understand what it meant. Because if your granddad came to you and said, hey, I want to talk to you about my inheritance, you're like, you mean my inheritance, but you wouldn't say that. You just wait and see. If that's what he was talking about, the thing you're going to inherit, meaning the stuff that he's going to give, you'd be like, that's cool. If he said, I want to talk about my inheritance for you, then you'd go, got it. So if that said for the saints. Got it. If it said our inheritance in the saints, then we'd go, okay. It just means as we are in the saints, as we belong to the church. But it says his inheritance in the saints, meaning that it's talking about the thing that Paul wants your heart to grasp is that he intends to have the Church, that God will have his people. It's a rich and glorious inheritance. And the reason we invert that is because without the Spirit helping our heart see it, we reject that idea. What do you mean? I want to show you this. This is throughout the bible. It's real.

> But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

1 Peter 2:9.

First Peter 2. But you Christians are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that when Jesus came, what he came to do was to claim a people that are going to be His.

> I will tell of the decree: The LORD said to me, "You are my Son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession."

Psalm 2:7-8.

Okay, now this is quoted in the New Testament to tell us it's referring to Christ. This is the Messiah. What's he say in verse 8? Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage and the ends of the earth your possession. In the Book of Revelation, when the tribes, when all the tribes and language and tongues and people are gathered around the throne, that is Jesus's inheritance. Those are his people that have been made his through his work and through the gift of the Father, who set it up this way and preordained by his will to do it. It's a glorious inheritance.

> But the LORD's portion is his people, Jacob his allotted heritage.

Deuteronomy 32:9.

Deuteronomy 9:29 says, for they are your people and your heritage, whom you brought out by your great power and by your outstretched army. Deuteronomy 32:9 says, but the Lord's portion is his people, Jacob is his allotted heritage. Heritage. That's why Jeremiah 10:16 in the same verse will say it both ways.

> The portion of Jacob is not like these, for he is the Maker of all things, but Israel is the tribe of his inheritance; the LORD of hosts is his name.

Jeremiah 10:16.

Not like these is he who is the portion of Jacob, meaning that Jacob gets him, Israel gets him, for he is the one who formed all things and Israel is the tribe of his inheritance. The Lord of hosts is his name, so that we have a hope of glory, which is that we get him and that he intends to get us. That the church is his glorious inheritance that he plans to bring to himself.

You know, this is written in our hearts too. You can be one of the most non romantic people, but if you watch a show that has a love interest, you're still kind of like, alright, get it together. Fall in love already. I know, I'm just watching Cheers or the Office because I want to laugh, but I also now I'm somehow invested in you two dating. I care and I'm annoyed that y' all haven't gotten it together yet. I'm not a. I'm not a sappy person, but in the Office, when they started messing with their relationship at the end of the sea, the end of the series, I was having problems, you guys, I was distraught. Can't do that. There's something in you that wants this to work out. And y', all, that's what he's doing, that we're going to get him and he's going to get us. And Paul says, I'm praying that the Spirit would show up and help your heart to grasp that. That he intends to have the church as a glorious inheritance and that we get him. Do you know that? Do you know know that? I think it's so easy sometimes for us to just be like, yeah, well, I'm like lagging behind. I'm not really. It means in general, but it doesn't mean me specifically. That he loves generally, but not specifically. The enemy comes in right now and goes, sure, if the Bible says that, sure. But not really. And not really for you. You're in on like a technicality. You think Jesus Christ shed his blood and chose you in him before the foundation of the world on a technicality. Do you think that he bought you as a treasured possession on a technicality? Or do you think that the God of all the universe, who specifically Saved individuals made you an individual and specifically went to work to save your soul and has been at work in you to change you and to redeem you and to make you more and more glorious and. And to be made into the image of Him. Do you not think that he will not, with tears in his eyes, delight to welcome you? Let's not besmirch his glory by thinking that it's somehow beneath him to be that wonderful? Oh, he's glorious, and our hope is glorious, and his redemption of the saints is glorious. And it magnifies his glory that he goes to work to save you. And Paul says, I want your heart to know it. I want you to respond to it. I want you to see it, I want you to feel it. I want the Spirit to go to work so that you know know it.

And then he says, third thing he wants third thing he's praying for, that we would know what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe. So this is, if you believe, this is all for the saints, it's all for the Church, it's all for those who've placed faith in Jesus. But he says, I want you to know what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward you according to the working of his great might? And then he's going to describe where his might is found according to the working of his great might, that he worked in Christ when He raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places far above all rule and authority and power and dominion above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come.

I'm just going to read that again because it's a lot to try to take in.

What is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe according to the working of his great might, that he worked in Christ when He raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come. He goes on to say, he put all things under his feet and made him the head of the body of the Church.

And I love how these three things pair together. Paul says, I want the Spirit to help your heart know where you're headed and what we're longing for. I want the Spirit to let your heart know that he intends to have us. And I want the Spirit to let you know there's not anything ever going to come remotely close to stopping it. I want your heart to know the immeasurable greatness of his power, that he has worked in Christ when He rose him from the grave, when he seated him above all things, and that he has the name above all names in this time and the next time and all times forever. And not a single thing will stop his intended will from taking place. That's the kind of hope that we have. It's not even close. It's not a toss up.

See, I think if we can wrap our minds around it, the Spirit can help our heart see that God intends to have us. Then the next thing where the enemy goes to work and goes, well, let's hope it works out. We'll see if he does it. We'll see if you make it to the end. I don't know. We'll see. I sat on my couch yesterday and I watched the Carolina Panthers try to win a division. And I had hope. It's the word I would use. It did not work out. I now have to cheer for the Falcons. Today I coach Little League football. I got invited to coach tackle football with seven and eight year olds. I don't know if you've ever seen a seven or eight year old wear football pads. It's awesome looking. It's basically just pads with hands poking out. One of the things that happens in the world of Little League sports is people intentionally bring in older children because it makes a massive difference. And then because that happens every once in a while. I don't think it happens a ton, but it does happen. All parents are paranoid and angry forever. And if your kid just happens to be tall, people want to see their birth certificate. I've had coaches come over and ask children on my team what grade they were in. It's like, dude, quit talking to these children and get back over on your side. But imagine for a moment that somehow Lexington county allowed the Carolina Panthers to play against 8 year olds. Do you think they'd win the league? I mean, mentally picture the tackles that would take place. What would happen when we handed the ball off to a Carolina Panther and then watched 8 year olds try to take him down? If there weren't so many injuries, it might be fun to watch. Paul is saying, it's not even close. It's not a toss up. It's not in doubt. Do you see the resurrection of Christ? Do you know the immeasurable greatness of the power that was at work not in him, just in him, but toward you? That when he did that it was aimed at you. The redemptive work at Christ was aimed at you, the church. That he might claim you, that he might wash you, that he might make you new. This is why the Bible talks about all the time, that he's going to present us to himself. This is why in Ephesians 5, it calls us his bride, that he came to claim and to keep forever. And not anything is going to stop him from doing that. And Paul says, that's my prayer. I heard you believed. I'm so thankful. And I want you to know what that means.

There's some new Christians in our church, Paul saying, I want you to get on your face before the Lord and I want you to ask that you would know what this means. If you're trying to disciple somebody and help them grow, this is what you're praying for them. I want them to know what it means that Jesus has claimed them. I want them to know that there is no doubt. I want them to know that they will be kept. I want them to know what. What they're hoping for and longing for and what the end will be. I want them to know that if he says, you're his, you're his, and there's nothing stopping. We want to pray that the Spirit would be at work so we would know that the hope of salvation is the eternal delight in the manifest glory of God. That we would know that he has a rich and glorious inheritance in the saints. His church is beautiful. And that we would know that nothing is going to stop that from taking place because he has a powerful, immeasurable greatness of power at work toward his church in the resurrection of Christ. And that he's seated above all things, all rule, all authority, all power, all dominion. He has a name above every name, not only in this age, but in the age to come.

So we're going to pray. I would invite you to keep your Bibles open to Ephesians 1. We're going to put back, if you don't mind putting back on just the three things that he prays for. We'll have it up there. But I'd encourage you to look at what else he says in here. We're going to take a moment to pray. I'm going to start us, then we're going to pray. You pray where you are. Pray for your own heart. Pray for the heart of those in your group. Pray for our church, that this would be true, that the Spirit would go to work. And then I'll close this in prayer and we'll sing.

Lord Jesus, we're thankful for the salvation and the hope that we have. And so we ask you, Father, Father of glory, that the Spirit would come to work in our hearts. That you would send the spirit of revelation and knowledge of you. That he might open the eyes of our hearts to see this, to see you, to know you, to know the greatness of the salvation that you have offered. That it is not some small thing, that it is not some little moment in our life. That it is not fitting into our life in some way as if this is our religion, but other religions are somebody else's. And this is my thing, but that's their thing. That it's not little, but it is cataclysmic, glorious, eternal. And we ask that you'd help our hearts to see it and that your spirit would go to work. So, Lord, we're. We're going to pray. We ask you'd help us to pray and that you would answer our prayers. Lord God, may you answer the prayers of your people. May you open our hearts to the work of your spirit. To know you, To know the hope to which you have called us. To know what is the immeasurable riches of your inheritance in the saints. And to know. The great power that was at work toward us who believe in Jesus name. Amen.

We're going to sing together. If you need to keep praying, keep praying. Band's going to come back up.

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