This sermon was preached on June 16th, 2024.
A couple of years ago, Angela suggested a tradition that we started at dinner time. High/Low/Water Buffalo. We each take turns giving our High—our favorite good thing that happened during our day. Then our Low—our least favorite moment in the day. Finally, our Water Buffalo—the silliest thing that happened in the day. And it’s been so fun.
It gives us a framework to discuss our day. Rarely is it just us listing things. Often it expands out, and we get to talk about why it was our high, why it was our low, why it was our water buffalo. It becomes an invitation to enter into each other’s highs, lows, and water buffalos. And an opportunity for us to see and understand each other better.
Last week we introduced the topic of prayer by talking about how prayer is not performance—for God, for ourselves, or for other people. Prayer is family talk, us communicating with our Father as his delighted-in children.
This week we’re going to look at a bit more at prayer by speaking about what this family talk is about. To see how Jesus guides this family talk by teaching us to pray, and how this propels us into lives that are on mission with God to bring renewal to this world.
9“This, then, is how you should pray:
“‘Our Fatherin heaven,
hallowed be your name,
10your kingdomcome,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us today our daily bread.
12And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.”
God Sets the Tone in Prayer
Prayer is not just us talking to God. That would be a one-way conversation and if that’s all it is, it’s no different than talking to yourself and the benefit of prayer will just be entirely how it makes us feel. Then prayer would be a self-care thing like starting an exercise program or a new hobby.
Prayer is more than that. It’s our part in the ongoing conversation that God has with his people. Think about how our worship service is laid out, for instance. It’s a dialogue. God speaks through his Word and by his Holy Spirit. We are addressed by him and respond—in praise, confession, thanksgiving, lament, in singing. All of these are prayer—just different forms.
God calls to us and invites and enables us to respond. God sets the tone, and grace goes first—Jesus teaching us how to pray, which is what we have in in Matthew 6—the Lord’s Prayer. Praying according to the Lord’s Prayer is like learning to speak in the accent of Jesus, and it rewires the way we think—not just how we speak but how we hear. It guides us in being people that value what Jesus values and love what Jesus loves. It teaches us what truly matters, and launches us into our world as God’s children.
We don’t only learn from Jesus’ words, but from his example—how and when Jesus himself prayed. After all, he is the ideal human being. The one who lived out the reality of why God created us. So what do we see in the Gospels?
Jesus prays from a deep sense of who He is as God’s Son. At the beginning of his ministry, Jesus is baptized and hears the voice of God: “You are my Son, in You I am Well-Pleased.” This moment became the foundation of everything else for him. And please note, he received this declaration at the beginning of his ministry, before he had done anything of note. The starting point that carried him through it all.
Jesus prayed in all kinds of different situations and places. At moments of great decision and great temptation. At moments of suffering and moments of joy. He prayed in joy and delight with his friends, he prayed in lament and sorrow on the cross. His life was marked by prayer in the highs and in the lows. We often see Jesus praying in private. Of course, he prayed in public as well. But those public prayers were more like times when the ongoing conversation with the Father was overheard.
In fact, there’s a number of times when Jesus flees into solitude to pray. This could just be Jesus being an introvert recharges away from other people, but I think there’s more to it than that. I think that the brokenness of this world simply wore him out, and he needed time to rest and dwell on the reality that He was God’s Son, in whom the Father is well-pleased.
Just take those two points: the prayers of Jesus reveal someone who is abiding in the reality of who He is (so his prayers aren’t him trying to win or earn anything before God or convince God to love him) and Jesus was someone whose prayer seems to be a continuous thing in every season of life.
As Jesus teaches us to pray, he sweeps us into this. It’s why he teaches us to pray to God as ‘Father.’ Because we live under the words spoken to him at his baptism too. “You are my son, and with you I am well pleased.” It’s the truth that’s pronounced on us at our baptisms. By faith in Jesus, this is God’s Words to us too. Our obedience to God and our prayer to him flow from this, where we take God at his word that he is our Father, and we take ourselves seriously as his children.
It’s also why he calls us to pray at all times. For our conversation with God is not just something for the highs or the lows, but even the ordinary days. It’s meant to be the baseline, ongoing reality of our day to day lives.
Praying God’s Agenda
So God sets the tone in prayer. And if God sets the tone, then we become people who pray what some people have called kingdom prayers. We learn to pray God’s agenda.
We pray that his name will be hallowed. That his kingdom will come on earth as it is in heaven. We pray for forgiveness for us and forgiveness of others, because we can recognize that it is God’s agenda to bring forgiveness. We pray for protection from temptation because it is God’s agenda to lead us into thriving and flourishing.
We pray our prayers through this lens—seeing our individual lives as tied into God’s larger work. God is not just there for us to pray for when we need a new job, or need guidance about a decision. That doesn't mean that it’s selfish to pray for yourself. Jesus teaches us to pray for ‘our daily bread’—the things we need in this world.
But notice he doesn’t lead us to pray for ridiculous wealth. He leads us to pray for daily bread—meaning we are meant to pray for it daily. We pray that God will give us enough. And this prayer for our needs is intimately joined with our prayers that his kingdom will come and his name be hallowed. Meaning that God gives us our daily bread for the sake of his kingdom, that we will have what we need to be witnesses that God is bringing salvation.
This all leads to the question that we all ask when talking about praying God’s agenda comes up. Why pray? If God’s all powerful and he’s doing this work of renewal, what can our prayers have to do with that? Why bother? What does it accomplish?
We pray because it’s part of our role in God’s overarching plan. God has structured our world in a way that our communication with him plays a part of how he brings things about. That may seem odd to us, but it’s true. Prayer matters.
We don’t know exactly how. It’s not an equation, spread-sheet kind of thing. But prayer matters. It’s a part of us drinking from the well of God’s goodness and sufficiency.
Prayer is basic to what it means to be human. Human beings need oxygen to live. Eat food to live. Prayer is just as crucial to who we are, though maybe in less obvious ways. But that living communication with our God is something we were made to have and apart from it, we shrivel up like fruit that has been disconnected from it’s tree.
So prayer is our family talk and God sets the tone. And we pray kingdom prayers—prayers about God’s kingdom and prayers that see all things through the light of God’s overarching plan and our part in it. That leads us to the next part—the calling of prayer.
The Calling of Prayer
Christians have been mocked over prayer. A tragedy happens and folks will post or say “my thoughts and prayers are with you.” People will say “forget your thoughts and prayers. We need action!” And I have to be honest, I get this response. Sometimes people can say “thoughts and prayers” as a way to make themselves feel better that actually doesn’t lead to anything else.
In reality, it is not either we pray or we act. No, we pray then we act. We pray while we act. Prayer is the family talk that sends us out into our family mission.
Prayer recognizes that there is a need that outstrips by ability to act, and takes ahold of God’s great willingness to act in definitive ways to show his love to his children. Prayer also comes with a calling. To pray for God’s kingdom to come and will to be done on earth as it is in heaven is to pray “how can I be someone who witnesses to this kingdom that is coming….how can I be a part of making God’s invisible kingdom visible in my world?’
To pray that God’s name be hallowed is to pray that we be mobilized to see that his name is hallowed in me and through me.
To pray “forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors” is to be engaged in living as forgiven people, righteous in Jesus b/c he has paid for our sins and gifted us his righteousness. It’s to be engaged as those who wage peace in a world war by allowing forgiveness of others to transform our hearts.
When we learn to pray God’s agenda, it becomes our agenda. Again, we are swept up into what God is doing. After all, a disciple is a person being formed into the image of a teacher. So Jesus not only gives us words, but is giving us an entire pathway of life. And that’s what the Lord’s Prayer leads to—it emphasizes what is core to being a follower of Jesus, and propels us into the world in which we live to not be passive, but active as God’s children copying him.
I’ve been reflecting much lately on the legacy of my parents, and how their love for me has reverberated into the rest of my life. When I was boy,I was well-loved. My parents were attentive and patient. They took time to guide me in words and actions on what it meant to be Tim Inman, son of Lila and Tim.
I remember their hospitality. How they cared for their friends, our house often being the place friends at some of the lowest and worst moments of their lives could find welcome and safety. A late-night knock on our door was not a rare thing, and it was answered with an open door, and company until the dark moment had subsided.
I was taught that truly being a friend to someone meant to be a friend to them always, that it required sacrifice. I was taught that people matter. And I learned that it was no small thing to be the son of Tim and Lila. They set the tone and invited me to live out this family agenda.
Jesus teaches us to pray, not just to have some words to say, but in a way that is meant to shape every other area of our lives. Next week we’re going to look at the first two words Jesus teaches us to pray “Our Father”—but in close today I’m going to borrow a bit from next week’s sermon. It is no small or casual thing to be a daughter or son of God. To be someone that has been sought out and found by the grace of Jesus and brought home.
He is setting the tone and inviting us to live out our family agenda. So let’s get to praying. Let’s pray kingdom prayers and watch as God moves to make us like him. People who pray not just with words, but with actions that flow from those prayers. And let’s watch our God at work, together.
