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Prayer, The Lord's (model) Prayer By Pam Davies

I'd like to look at the Lord's Prayer for the next session and it's found in Matthew 6, this is 9-15.
We're all very familiar with this prayer, aren't we?
But we will nevertheless read it through.
In this manner therefore pray,
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.
And do not lead us into temptation but deliver us from the evil one for yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
For if you forgive men, their trespasses,
your Heavenly Father will also forgive you.
But if you do not forgive men, their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
Now the single most important influence on the way we live the Christian life is how we think of God.
We've just been talking about our communion with our Lord Jesus Christ and how important it is to focus on Him, to meditate on Him,
to think about Him, to love Him, how important these things are.
And when our Lord Jesus Christ himself taught the disciples to pray,
he taught them to pray, our Father which art in heaven.
And I start by saying something very basic,
how important it is to know God as our Heavenly Father and to know the intimacy of a father-son relationship with Him.
You see, we have fellowship with the Father.
Our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ.
So we have communion with the Son
and we have communion with the Father through the Holy Spirit.
And the Lord Jesus said,
this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God,
and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.
So this is what it means to have eternal life,
is to know the Father and to know the Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.
And I should think we are all aware that it's only those who repent of their sins
and trust in the Lord Jesus as their Saviour,
the one who died in their place,
it's only those who have confessed Him as their Lord and Saviour.
These are the ones who have been born again, born of God
and have become God's children by adoption
because we know that we are not naturally the children of God, are we?
We have to be born new and we have to be adopted into God's family.
And I'm sure that most of you would remember the time
when you first of all called God Father.
The Apostle Paul speaks of this cry in our hearts, doesn't he?
At the Father.
And every Christian, every true believer has that cry in their hearts.
And as you come to prayer, you know, there's this cry,
you're coming to your own Father
and it's lovely to know that we are coming as children.
No wonder the Apostle John said,
Behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us
that we, people like us, sinners like us,
should be called the children of God and he said that is what we are.
And so we are very privileged, aren't we,
to be living in this world and to be God's children.
And someone has once described the New Testament
as the revelation of the fatherhood of the Holy Creator.
We know that our Father is the one who has created the heavens and the earth
and everything in them by his almighty power.
And I don't know about you,
but I love to think of this when I come to the Lord in prayer.
And very often the Psalmist speaks about this, doesn't he?
You know, he said, Lord, you alone are God.
You made the heavens and the earth and everything in them
by your almighty power.
And, you know, it's wonderful to know that he's also made us,
but he's also recreated us to be his children.
And if we want to know how well a person really understands the Gospel,
then find out how much he makes of the thought of being God's child
than having God as his Father.
Because this truth must control our worship of God,
our praying and our whole outlook of the Christian life.
Now, if we look at Matthew, Matthew's Gospel,
the Lord Jesus Christ had just been saying
that the religion of the hypocrites and pagans is hollow
because of the way they speak in prayer shows that they do not really know God.
As their Father.
And, you know, when we come to God, we must come openly,
we must come laying our hearts before him, we mustn't hide from him
or draw back from him in hypocrisy like the Pharisees.
And we mustn't mistrust him in our anxieties like the pagans.
Our Lord Jesus Christ was speaking about those who are constantly worried
about what to eat and what to drink and what to put on.
And he said to them, well, you mustn't be concerned about these things
because your Father already knows that you have need of these things
before you ask him.
Remember, he said, why are you worried about so many things?
You are children of God and you must learn to trust your Heavenly Father.
And yet isn't it true that so often when we come to the Father
we are involved in a strange sort of conflict within.
Because as we draw near to God, we often feel a sense of pain
and shame in our hearts because of failures, our failures in the Christian life, don't we?
You know, so often we are conscious of the things that we've left under
and we are conscious of the way we should be and we are not.
We are not the Christians that we'd really like to be.
We've got those feelings in our hearts.
And yet at the same time there's that sense of great joy and great relief
because we know that the one that we are coming to is a God of grace
and he's willing to receive us and willing to forgive us yet again.
And so there's often that conflict in our hearts as we come.
And yet somebody said that prayer must often mean
coming out of the dark and secret places in which we've been hiding the truth about ourselves
and laying the whole of our lives before God.
And how important that is, isn't it, that we should be willing to be open before him.
Now, as we look at the Lord's Prayer, it serves two purposes really.
First of all, it's a model prayer and it shows us how we are to approach God as our Father
and how we are to speak to him and it also tells us what we should ask for.
In fact, it is, as we've said, an outline of the whole Christian life
because it underlines life's priorities.
It shows us again what's really important in the Christian life
and it helps us to get the whole of our lives into a true focus.
The Lord's Prayer provides us with fixed points of concern for the family of God.
In other words, it tells us what our real concerns should be.
It's meant for all Christians, in all places, at all times
and it's meant for us today, here and now.
And as you're familiar with this, three of the requests are concerning God
and his glory and four of the requests concern our own needs, in that order.
I hope that will sink in, in that order.
Three concerning God, four concerning our own needs, God first.
And it is a challenge, isn't it, as we come to prayer, to put God first.
His concerns first in our praying and not only in our praying but in our lives as well.
So there are five important things here and I've just got five headings.
The worship of the Father, the Kingdom of the Father,
the sustenance of the Father, the grace of the Father
and the protection of the Father.
I'm indebted to Sinclair Ferguson for those things, those titles.
So let's have a look at the prayer, Our Father in Heaven, the worship of the Father.
As we've already said, only true believers can really call God Father.
So if we are believers, we are royal children
and you know the way that royal children behave,
they can come into the presence of the Queen and call the Queen Mother,
whereas nobody else could do that.
Royal children know the intimacy of children with their father
but they're also conscious of the great privilege that is theirs
because they have access to the great King.
I feel this is very important that we should not live in intimacy with God
in a way that destroys our reverence of Him.
I feel that we are living in days where this is beginning to happen,
where a sense of the greatness of God, His awesomeness,
His transcendence is just being lost among Christians
and I feel that it's a very serious thing
because as we come into the presence of God,
we are coming into the presence of the King, our Father in Heaven.
He is our Father, but He is in Heaven
and we must praise and adore Him as we come into His presence
and we must praise and adore Him first.
I think we've already just indicated that,
that sometimes when we pray we come with a whole lot of requests
and we start with our requests and we go right through them, don't we,
without stopping to realise who we are coming to.
So often today as well our ideas of fatherhood have become debased, haven't they?
But our God is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ
and He's far more wonderful than any earthly father.
As we think of our Father in Heaven, we think of life, there's a life,
there's forgiveness, there's acceptance, there's inheritance,
there's family and there's discipline in this relationship.
And as we think of our Father in Heaven,
it reminds us that we worship Him together as a family.
The people of God are in a family, the church is a family
and we worship Him as a group of people who belong to Him together.
And when our Lord Jesus Christ taught His disciples to pray this prayer,
He was speaking to men who really knew and understood something
of the awesomeness and the greatness of God.
And they would have been aware of what a great privilege was theirs
to approach this God in such an intimate way.
And when our Lord Jesus Christ taught the disciples to call God
the great God of Heaven and Earth, the great God who made all things,
the great God who sustains all things,
the great God who will bring everything to an end and will judge all nations,
when He taught them to pray, our Father, to this God,
they would have been so filled with wonder and so filled with amazement.
And I really feel that sense of wonder, we need to recapture
something of that sense of wonder and amazement and awe
as we come into the presence of God, because if we don't know that,
I feel that we're missing out on something very, very important.
So we're coming to the God who is almighty, who is all-knowing,
who is also our Father.
And so as we come to Him, what should our attitude be?
Well, it certainly should be one of reverence.
And I think we should stop and think about this,
but it should also be one of love, reverence and love together.
We know as we think of God that He knows all things
and He looks at us in His almightiness, He sees our every need,
He looks at us with a holy love.
He hears our every sigh, He's concerned about us, He's our Father.
Because He's our God, He's able to do for us more than we can ever ask or think.
You see, our ideas of Him need to be much bigger than they are.
The hymnist writes this,
We are coming to a King, large petitions let us bring,
for His grace and power are such, none can ever ask too much.
I wonder, do we come to our God asking Him for great things?
Or do we come thinking that He's a man like us?
That as we come to Him, we should be really encouraged
because all the blessings of heaven are at His disposal
and He wants to give them to us.
And also, He's more willing to give to us than we are willing to ask Him.
He's more willing to bless us than we are to be blessed.
And sometimes we know, the Lord Jesus Christ has told us
that we do not receive because we do not ask.
Or we do not receive because our prayers, we do not receive great things
because we don't ask for great things, we don't expect great things.
William Carey had a wonderful vision of God and of God's work, didn't he?
He said, attempt great things for God, expect great things from God.
And I just want to ask us, what do we really expect from God?
Do we expect Him to change things? Do we expect Him to change us?
Do we expect Him to save people? Do we expect Him to revive His work?
We know that He is sovereign and only God can revive His people
and He does it in His own way and at His own time.
But do we expect great things from God?
And when we come to our Father in heaven, we will never find Him out of sorts.
Not like an earthly Father.
He's not like a frustrated, gloomy, irritable Father who just wants to be left alone.
He doesn't say to us, as I might have said to my children when they were small,
or go away for a while. He never says that to us, never.
He wants us to come.
The Father is a parable of the prodigal son who ran to meet the Son, didn't he?
And his arms were open to receive Him.
And remember, he was brought into the feast
and the best robe was brought out for the prodigal son.
He's that type of Father.
And we must think of God as He is, not as we think He is.
And we, of course, need to know our Bibles, don't we,
if we want to know what God is really like.
So that's the first thing. Let's come to our Father in heaven.
And as we start to pray, let's first of all think of Him.
I always remember reading in Acts chapter 4, that prayer.
You know, when the early apostles found themselves in great difficulty,
they were being persecuted for the gospel's sake,
and they got together to pray.
They didn't immediately rush into their problems,
and they didn't immediately just pour out their problems to God,
they worshipped God first.
And they acknowledged who He was and who they were coming to.
And as they acknowledged Him, I'm sure their hearts must have been lifted up
to know that no matter how hard the situation was,
God is well able to handle it.
And so that's how we must be too, when we come to Him in prayer.
And as we've already said, that when we pray,
that God doesn't want us to come and ask for things and go away unchanged.
Isn't this easy?
So often when we pray, we have prayer lists, we say,
Now is there anything to pray for?
And God does want us to bring all our requests to Him.
But then we launch into a series of requests,
but then we are not changed at all.
We've just asked Him for this, that and the other.
But our Lord wants us to be changed as we pray,
and He wants to change us through our asking,
to shape us into the likeness of our Lord Jesus Christ.
So that like Him, our greatest desire will be to glorify the Father,
to delight in Him and in His will.
I just started to read this book by John Piper called Desire in God,
and there are some very interesting things in here.
And he said, you know, how we've got to learn to enjoy God.
We've already mentioned this,
but there was one little bit that I'd just like to read to you.
He says this,
The enemy of worship today is not that our desire for pleasure
is too strong, but too weak.
We've settled for a home, a family, a few friends, a job, a TV,
a microwave, an occasional night out, a yearly holiday,
and perhaps a personal computer.
We've accustomed ourselves to such meagre, short-lived pleasures
that our capacity for joy has shrivelled,
and so our worship has shrivelled.
It was hard to get that out.
Many can scarcely imagine what is meant by a holiday at sea,
that is, worshipping the living God.
Many do not know what it is to enjoy God,
because they've been satisfied with lesser things,
and that's like us.
We're satisfied, as we said earlier on, with so little,
and we take pleasure in things that are passing away and inconsequential
when we have the mighty, the wonderful, the glorious God of heaven as our Father.
And we really need to start knowing what it is
to finding all our needs met in Him, our joy in Him, our delight in Him.
He's a delightful God.
So when we come to God, even though we may be in desperation
and we are anxious perhaps about lots of things,
our first desire must ever be that this wonderful God,
who has become our Heavenly Father, should be glorified and honoured.
And if we really want to know God's blessing
and we want our prayers to be really effective,
we must follow this order.
The Lord Jesus Christ himself prayed,
Father, glorify thy name.
I wonder, do we really want that?
Do we want God's name to be honoured and glorified?
Now, the next request is your Kingdom Come, the Kingdom of the Father.
We are reminded here that there is another Kingdom
that is totally opposed to God's Kingdom
and it is totally opposed to the hallowing of His name,
that is, the Kingdom of Satan.
And when we pray your Kingdom Come,
we are praying that the power of Satan, the usurped power of Satan,
will be cast down and that people around us
will acknowledge God as their lawful King
and also that the kingdoms of this world
will become the kingdoms of our God and of His Christ.
These should be our concerns.
The final setting up of this Kingdom has been predicted long ago.
Right from the day when Adam fell
and when Satan first came in and tempted people into sin
and people were brought under the power of Satan,
even from the very beginning,
we have known from the Bible that the Lord Jesus Christ was going to come.
He was going to bring in God's Kingdom
and the Lord Jesus Christ is still engaged in this task
and He will be until the very end when the kingdoms of our God,
the kingdoms of this world,
will become the kingdoms of our God and of His Christ.
And the Kingdom of God has already come in your heart and mine.
That is in the hearts of all who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ
and have submitted to Him as their lawful King.
Isn't it wonderful that Christ lives in us
and that Christ reigns in us?
We need to think about this, you know,
that He is our King, that He is the one in control of our lives
and what a wonderful King to have.
He loves us, He desires the best for us.
But we must also pray that others will come into this Kingdom as well
and that the rule of Christ will be extended in our own hearts
because as you know very well,
and as I know, we're still fighting against sin, aren't we?
And so we must pray that God's Kingdom will come more and more
in our hearts and in our lives and in the lives of those around us.
So what are we praying when we pray,
Your Kingdom come?
Well, we're praying this.
We're praying for the success of the Gospel
throughout the whole of the world.
We are praying, this is a missionary prayer, isn't it, really?
We are praying, may the Kingdom of God come in all its fullness
because this will mean the perfect accomplishment of the Father's will
without any rebellion, without any delay,
without any hindrance, without any evil agencies.
And we're also praying this prayer.
When we pray this prayer, Thy Kingdom come,
we're also looking to the future, aren't we?
We are praying that our Lord Jesus Christ will come again
and that He will set up His Kingdom finally
because isn't it a wonderful day to look forward to?
The day is coming when every knee will bow before Him
and every tongue will confess Him as Lord
to the glory of God the Father.
I think we should be looking forward to that day
with very great expectation and anticipation.
I mean, do we say in our hearts, do we really desire in our hearts
that the Lord Jesus should come?
Come, Lord Jesus, come.
We've got some wonderful pictures in the book of Revelation
of the Lord's final triumph over all the powers of darkness
and in Revelation chapter 17 verse 4
it speaks about the enemies of God coming and making war with the Lamb.
But it says this,
And the Lamb will overcome them,
for He is the Lord of lords and the King of kings.
Isn't it wonderful to know that our God is King,
that our Lord Jesus Christ is going to come from heaven
and that all will bow before Him?
And we should look for that wonderful day to come.
But this is also a very personal prayer
because when we pray this prayer,
when we pray that your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,
by kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,
what are we exactly praying?
Do we look forward to the day when His will shall be done perfectly?
Let's ask ourselves that.
But do we bow to His own sovereign purposes in our lives?
Because when we pray your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,
it means something very personal for us.
It means, Lord, will you do your will in my life?
When do we want that to happen?
Do we want His will to be done in our lives really?
Do we do all we can to learn all we can about His will?
Do we study the scriptures, for example?
Do we know what the themes of Zechariah and Galatians are?
What do we learn about God's will from Exodus and Ephesians?
What have we learned this week
that's brought about a greater conformity to God's will in our lives?
Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Do we really want to do God's will?
Are our concerns the Lord's concerns?
Are we really concerned about God's glory, God's reign and God's will?
And do we want to do this even though it means crossing our own wills?
Reading Psalm 119, I know it's a long psalm,
but it's very, very wonderful to read that psalm
because the psalmist all the way through says
how much he delights in the Lord's word and in the Lord's testimonies.
He says, I meditated on them and I was very careful to put them into practice.
And so the psalmist in Psalm 119 did all he could
to bring his life into conformity to the will of God.
And I wonder, you know, are we really concerned to please God?
Do we want to please our Heavenly Father?
And the psalmist says,
Rivers of water run down from my eyes because men do not keep your law.
He was concerned because people around him
didn't obey God and didn't want to do his will.
So really, you know, this is quite a personal prayer, isn't it?
When we pray that God's will will be done on earth as it is in heaven
because we're asking God to change us, aren't we?
To do his will in our lives.
I love that hymn that says,
My gracious Lord, I own thy right to every service I can pay,
and make it my supreme delight to hear thy dictates and obey.
So can I ask you, are we really, really serious
about wanting the Lord's will to be done, not in the lives of others,
well, not only in the lives of others, but in my life too?
And then the prayer,
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts, give us this day our daily bread.
Now, we're looking at the sustenance of the Father here, aren't we?
Because the second division of the Lord's Prayer
covers our physical and our spiritual needs.
But we are taught to pray here for necessities, aren't we?
We're living in days where people are telling Christians
that they should pray for all sorts of luxuries and expect them.
But here we are taught to pray for necessities
and we are to pray for our daily bread.
And as we think of this prayer, it covers all our material needs.
The great God of heaven is concerned about my every need,
and the hairs on our head are numbered.
We have to come and ask, and we cannot live one day without Him.
I wonder, do we think of this,
because every good and perfect gift comes from Him,
but we have to ask Him to take charge of us
and to provide for us in all that concerns this world.
Do you know, if God willed it, we wouldn't have any daily bread.
He could stop the rain, He could make the land barren.
We are totally in the Lord's hands
and nothing would continue were it not sustained and kept going by God.
And so it's always good to pray this prayer.
I wonder, do we really pray this prayer,
give us this day our daily bread, or do we take it for granted?
Maybe sometimes we are living in days
where we have so much material prosperity, aren't we?
And sometimes I think our material prosperity
can contribute to our thanklessness and our independence of God.
So as we take His gifts for granted, we don't bother to pray,
give us this day our daily bread.
And I wonder, do we need to learn a fresh lessons of repentance
and gratitude and poverty of spirit and dependence on Him?
You know, I think we really need to remind ourselves
that if God has blessed us with material things,
that they've come from Him,
and that He could easily just take them away from us
as quickly as He's given them to us.
Give us this day our daily bread.
So it is always good to remind ourselves that our times,
our health and our very existence are in His hands.
And the Lord wants us to every day wait on His providence
so that we may receive material blessings from His hands as He sees fit.
And that we may be blessed in the use of all the blessings He gives to us,
because we need to know wisdom in using material blessings, don't we?
We need to ask Him to show us how we should use the blessings that He's given to us,
because we are stewards of His gifts.
And also we should thank Him every day
for the things that He gives to us so freely, by His grace.
And the next petition is, forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
And this comes under the heading, the grace of the Father.
So the Lord wants us to ask Him for forgiveness,
even though we've been justified.
Now, justification by faith in Christ means
that all our sins have been blotted out, our guilt has been removed,
we are no longer condemned, we are God's children, our sins have been forgiven.
But as we walk through this world, we become tarnished by sin, don't we?
And every day we do things or we say things
or we think things that are not pleasing to our Heavenly Father.
And every day we really do need to come to the Lord
and to confess to Him particular things, particular sins and particular failures.
And sometimes I think that we can get a bit blasé about it,
because we think, well, my sins have been forgiven.
Then why have I got to come and confess little things to Him?
Well, it's most important we are told to do this.
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just,
to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness,
but we must never hold back from confessing our sins.
Somebody once said we should keep short accounts before God,
because if we don't confess our sins, it will hinder our fellowship
and communion with Him, and the Spirit can be so easily grieved.
And so we must always be open and honest before God.
And there's a verse in Psalm 32, I often think of this verse,
that if we hide our sins, we will not prosper,
but if we confess and forsake them, we will obtain mercy.
I think someone once said that the whole of the Christian life is one of repentance,
and every day we should come back to the Lord.
If we know that we've done something wrong, we should immediately confess it to Him
and ask Him to search our hearts, to show us those things perhaps
that we are not aware of in our lives that might be wrong.
Ask Him to send His Spirit into our hearts
so that the Spirit will show us those things that are displeasing to Him
and that need to be put right, but come back to Him, be open before Him.
And sin here is pictured as a debt, it says,
Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
And a debt has got to be discharged, hasn't it?
And if someone owes us such a debt,
and we fail to release the person by forgiving that person,
his or her debts, our debt to the Father will not be forgiven.
In other words, if somebody has sinned against us
and therefore they owe us a debt, don't they?
And they're indebted to us in a way because they've sinned against us
and we are to release them from that debt.
Just as the Father has released us from all our debts
and you think of the things that we've been released from,
the sins that we've been released from.
And so we are to forgive, or we will forgive, put it like that, we will forgive.
There's no forgiveness for the one who refuses to forgive.
I feel this is a very, very important prayer
because the person who really knows his sin before God
and turns to God for forgiveness
is the recipient of such grace and such mercy from God
that he cannot but forgive others.
If we're forgiven, we'll forgive.
That's a principle. I don't think there are any conditions here at all.
I feel it's a very, very important principle
and it's one that we've got to apply to our own lives.
It's one that we've got to apply in our churches.
We, Christians, are forgiven and forgiving people.
There shouldn't be anything that we hold against any other Christian.
No grudges, but we forgive freely, fully,
without any conditions, without any strings attached.
Total, full, free forgiveness.
That's the mark of the Christian.
So I must be ready. It's a big challenge, isn't it?
But I must be ready to forgive anybody, anything,
because God's grace has humbled and broken and softened me
and if God has forgiven me, I will forgive.
I must be ready to confess my sins every day
and keep short accounts, as we've said, with the Lord.
And it's very interesting here to read in verses 14 and 15
that our Lord Jesus Christ emphasises this whole matter of forgiveness
because he says, if you forgive men their trespasses
your Heavenly Father will also forgive you.
But if you do not forgive men their trespasses
neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
It's very clear, isn't it, those verses.
Verse 13,
And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
The protection of the Father.
And as we depend on the Father for physical sustenance
and we depend upon him for all his physical provisions
we must also depend on him for moral triumph
and spiritual victory over our sins and over Satan.
We must pray this prayer every day.
And what we're asking here is that we should not be led
into a situation where we are likely to be tempted by Satan
because, you see, we all have the same problem.
The problem that we all have is the problem of indwelling sin, isn't it?
And we need every day to ask the Lord for help to overcome sin
and also to overcome the evil that's in the world.
And there are occasions when the sin that still remains within us
can be stirred up by the temptations that come against us from the world.
People sometimes suggest things to us, don't they, that perhaps are not quite right.
You know, things that perhaps a Christian shouldn't really do.
And so the sin within us can be incited by the temptations of the world
and worldly people and stirred by the activity of Satan as well.
Sometimes the enemy just comes against us, doesn't he?
And he can spur us on into sin.
Or sometimes the enemy can come against us in this way
that he can hide the terrible consequences of sin from us
by making it appear very lovely.
Oh, the enemy sometimes says, that's not too bad, is it?
Go on, do that, it's only a little sin.
Go on, you can get away with that, that won't harm, nobody will know.
And so it's important, isn't it, to realise that we've got a subtle enemy,
that he knows the ways that he can tempt us individually.
And it's also important to realise that there is such a thing as the evil day
when it seems that sin is stirred up within us,
when it seems that the world comes against us with all its temptations,
and when it seems on top of all that the enemy attacks.
Those three things together, that's called the evil day.
And our Lord Jesus Christ has taught us to put on the armour, hasn't he?
Because he says that in the evil day, if we've got the Christian armour on, we can stand.
And it's most important therefore for us to pray this prayer every day.
Do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.
To be forewarned is to be forearmed.
And, you know, as we grow in grace, as Christians grow in grace,
they realise their own weakness.
I think the older you get, the more you are aware of your own weakness
and your own vulnerability to sin and to Satan.
And the more you are aware of the deceitfulness of the sin
that's still within your own heart,
and the more you realise that only Christ can strengthen you
to stand against sin and evil.
You see, there is a realisation here, isn't there, of our weakness
and the need that we have for our Lord Jesus Christ
as the captain of our salvation to strengthen us
so that we will not fall into sin easily.
So we must really cry to the Lord and pray this prayer each day
because he is able, he is able, and he is able to deliver us.
And if we neglect to pray this prayer,
it really is a mark of spiritual carelessness and insensitivity.
It means that we don't really realise what we are like.
We don't see our own weakness
and we don't see the power and the subtlety of Satan
if we do not pray this prayer.
And in the book by John Bennion, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners,
he just describes in that book how the enemy came against him
time and time again.
And he said, why was this?
Why was I tempted like this over and over again?
And in the book he says, it's because I hadn't prayed this prayer.
Do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
Because he hadn't taken this prayer seriously,
because he hadn't prayed this prayer,
then he was more open to the attacks, to the cunning,
to all the pathogens of Satan.
So we really should pray this every day
that our Heavenly Father will hold us back,
will keep us from evil and will protect us.
Why do we pray this prayer?
Because we don't want to dishonour our Father by falling into sin
and we do dishonour God.
And it's one of the sad things, I think, in the Church today
that this can often happen.
We can dishonour the name of our Heavenly Father
by living loose, careless lives as Christians.
And our concern should be that we will not dishonour his name.
And also our concern should be that we don't want to mar our witness
before those who are living around us.
Because if Christians fall into sin, the world says,
Ah, look at them.
They're supposed to be Christians.
And look at the way they live and see what's happening there.
And you can almost see Satan rubbing his hands with great glee, can't you,
when Christians fall into sin.
So we must really take this prayer seriously
and ask to be kept from sin.
Because otherwise, if we fall into sin,
our witness will be marred as individuals and as churches.
And also we must take this petition seriously
because we don't want our fellowship and our communion
with our Father to be broken.
We've seen already how important it is to know this sweet communion
with a Father and with a Son and with the Holy Spirit.
And if we sin and don't care about sinning,
then that sweetness, sweetness of that communion will be disturbed.
And there are times, you know, when our Lord Jesus
and when the Father and the Spirit can withdraw from us,
withdraw their presence from us.
We know that this can happen in our lives as Christians.
And we don't want that to happen.
And we certainly don't want that to happen in our churches.
We want to know the presence of God, don't we?
And so we must pray this prayer from our hearts,
the whole of this prayer from our hearts.
And let's just ask ourselves to finish some challenging questions.
Are God's concerns our concerns?
And do we really believe that the Father loves us with such a great love?
Do we believe that the Son loves us with such a wonderful, enduring love?
Then shouldn't we love Him first?
Should we love the Father?
Shouldn't we love the Son?
Shouldn't we seek God first before all else?
Shouldn't we delight in Him and His will?
And shouldn't we really be so concerned in our days
that God's name will be honoured in our society and in our churches?
You see, really, if we pray this prayer from the heart,
we are really praying for revival.
That's what it amounts to, really.
We're asking God to bless us and to bless His Church in this way,
in that His name will be hallowed, His Kingdom will come,
and His will will be done upon the earth.
So we're just asking for a mighty movement of God
when we really pray this prayer from the heart.
And we're also expressing our love to Him and our need of Him
when we pray this prayer from the heart too.
Thank you.