Today we will be reading from Luke 11. Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he was finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray as John taught his disciples. And he said to them, when you pray, you say, Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins. For we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us, and lead us not into temptation.' And he said to them, which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him, and he will answer from within. Do not bother me. The door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything. I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet Because of his impedance, he will rise and give him whatever he needs. And I tell you, ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives. And one who seeks, finds. And the one who knocks it will be opened. What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent? Or if he asks for an egg, will you give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? This is the word of the Lord. Last week we started through the first of 10 practices of Jesus or practicing the way of Jesus. These are habits, like you could say key habits that kind of define both the personal life of Jesus as he walked this earth, but also as he taught his disciples, his apprentices, he said, here are 10 basic things that I want you to do and to teach to each subsequent generation. Last week, the first of those that we looked at, the first practice was the practice of scripture. And we kind of talked about this basic idea that scripture is the main means by which God speaks to us. This morning, we kind of look at this partner word or practice or habit, which is prayer, which is the primary means by which we speak to God. I always love this quote, and I think I'm actually paraphrasing it by Tim Keller, the idea that the failure to pray is not just breaking some religious rule, but it's actually failing to treat God as God. When we go through our day and our day-to-day and live relatively prayerless lives, it's not just another breaking of another rule. The whole idea of entering into apprenticeship with Jesus is that there would be an ongoing dialogue where he speaks to us and we respond to him and this morning we get to learn some pretty basic stuff for many of you. This may be a reminder, a refresher, that sort of thing. It may be new to some of you, but let's go off and running. And I want you to notice, first of all, that Luke 11 is a key text in scripture. There are very few times that his disciples, those apprentices, explicitly came to him and said, Rabbi, teach us about anything. But here they say, Rabbi, teach us to pray. And Jesus responded with teaching that's, I think, as relevant and as practical to us today as it was to those first disciples. And I wanna kinda go through these words of Jesus, this teaching of Jesus, with these five kinda key key words that we're gonna hang this on in a memorable way. We're gonna learn about the precedent of prayer, the pattern, the persistence, the promise, and then the presence. So look at verse one with me, the precedent of prayer, which says, now Jesus was praying in a certain place. I want you to just stop there for a moment. And have you ever thought about this? Have you ever asked yourself, like, why was Jesus praying? I mean, he is the eternal son of God. The Bible actually says it is through him that all things were created, okay? So you've got the eternal creator God come in the flesh. He has all power. He has all authority. He doesn't have to ask his father for permission to do anything. He is God, fully God. He doesn't have to ask for assistance. Yet this was the pattern of his life, to pray. Mark chapter one verse 35 says, and rising very early in the morning while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place and there he prayed. Luke five, 15 and 16, but now even more the report about him went abroad and great crowds gathered to hear him and to be healed of their infirmities, but he would withdraw to desolate places and pray. Luke 6.12, in these days he went out to a mountain to pray, and all night he continued in prayer to God. Matthew 14.23, and after he dismissed the crowds, he went up on a mountain to pray by himself. And Luke 22, on the night of his betrayal, we read this, and he came out and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives. And the disciples followed him, and when he came to the place, he said to them, pray, that you may not enter into temptation. And he withdrew from them about a stone's throw and knelt down and prayed. And again, what keeps Jesus up at night praying? What gets Jesus up early in the morning before the sun rises to pray? Let me suggest that these were not mechanical perfunctory rote prayers as Christians often pray today. I don't think these were what I call Christmas-less prayers of I want this and I want this and I want this and I want this. I don't think that's why he's up all night in the midst of a busy and exhausting ministry. Let me suggest that the precedent that Jesus was setting And the precedent that his first apprentices would have observed in his life over and over again is that Jesus sought intimate fellowship. He sought humble dependence upon and he sought surrender to. I think Jesus is praying because He wants to be particularly present with the Father and with the Spirit. He knows, like, I'm always present. Just as you, if you're a follower of Jesus, if you're a Christian, you are always present with God. But there's something that happens in prayer where you can be particularly present, particularly aware that He is with you and He's for you. And I think Jesus is doing something like this where instead of just using His power and His authority and His own best ideas as the Son of God, He wants to express to His disciples, if you can see me surrendered to the will of my Father. as he prayed in that last prayer. Father, not my will, but yours be done. Then you can learn something. And remember this about all of these 10 practices, and I don't have them up there, but these 10 practices are not just a matter of what did Jesus explicitly teach us about these things, or what does the Bible explicitly teach? We're actually looking at the life of Jesus and just seeing, first and foremost, before he even explicitly said, verses two and following, the disciples would have observed there's a pattern to his life, and we want to follow. That quote keeps coming back to me from a few weeks ago of that Jewish proverb that I shared, and some of you have said it back to me because it stuck with you as well, like, may you be covered in the dust of your rabbi. I love that. And this idea of as they're walking behind him, literally they're being covered in his dust, but as we walk behind Jesus figuratively, and following in his footsteps, following in his pattern, that life of Jesus, the way he prayed, just kind of is getting all over us. Again, intimate fellowship, humble dependency, and surrender. So I said that this is a key text because the disciples come to him having just heard him pray again. And they're like, Jesus, as John the Baptist taught his apprentices, Would you teach us to pray? Like we hear you praying, we see you praying, often you're going off by yourself to pray. Would you teach us to pray? By the way, if you're familiar with the Lord's Prayer in Matthew chapter six, in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, you probably recognize this as a shorter version of that prayer. And that's significant, and I'll share why I think it's significant. Because you could come to this prayer, and in Matthew six, Jesus began by saying, when you pray, pray then like this. And here in this text of Luke 11, he said, when you pray, say this. And so you could come to this text and be like, wait, so am I literally supposed to say those words, like verbatim, like memorize this and regurgitate those same words over and over and over. And that's what it looks like to pray. And the answer of course is like, you're welcome to pray these exact words. But I think the fact that the two times that scripture records this one prayer, it says it a little differently, is showing you that Jesus is presenting themes. kind of a framework, a skeletal structure to hang your prayers on. And that's what I want to go through with you this morning so you understand here's kind of a framework for praying. And kind of the way I think of it is Jesus is not teaching a mantra, he's teaching a model. He's teaching, here are some key themes, some key ideas that as you're praying, and last week I had you draw kind of a pie chart of your scripture reading and how you approach scripture and add it up to 100% no matter how much time you read. We're gonna do the same thing this week with prayer, but how do you tend to pray? And now let's look at point two, which is Jesus' pattern. I think I've used this illustration with some of you before, but Steph Curry is arguably, or maybe I should say inarguably, the greatest shooter in NBA history. Well, if you go to Steph Curry and you're like, Steph, teach me to shoot. He's gonna go through some basic fundamentals of like your hips and your shoulders, you know, you need to try to get square to the basket before you shoot and then you're aligning your shoulders and hands a certain way and you're pushing and following through with your fingertip pointed at the basket and so on. Here's where you're looking and all these things. And what he realizes, I'm not literally teaching you how to shoot like every single shot, but I'm giving you some basics that as you click through these, you could go through real game time action and reproduce this shot a thousand different ways depending on the specific circumstances. I think that's what Jesus is doing here. It's like, teach us to pray. It's like, okay, here's some fundamentals. First of all, adoration. As Jesus begins both here and in the other prayer in Matthew 6, you know, our Father in heaven, but it's hallowed be your name. Or hallowed. And the idea is if you hallow something, you've set it aside as something that is cherished, as something that you respect and you reverence. This name is not for common use. You don't just throw it out there as a curse word or as just a word you just drop. And it's talking about like a certain reverence for the name of God. We've been through many footballs in our house over many years, but I have one that is hallowed. It's in my office and actually has a glass or acrylic case around it. And it's this football from when the Broncos won Super Bowl 50. And we haven't been any good since then. So it becomes more and more hallowed with each passing year. when we realize we're not going to sniff something like this again for a very long time. But it has this insignia on it. And the boys know that as we play with all of the footballs in and around the house, and we can go ask for another football from Amazon or from Dick's Sporting Goods or whatever, but we don't use that for common toss it around the backyard. Sometimes they'll get like an actual game-played puck from the avalanche or something like that, and they treat that puck as different than all the other pucks, or a signed baseball that their grandpa got for them is different than all the other baseballs that they hit in the backyard. This idea of there's something special about this, there's something unique about this one. You ever seen those people that go on to college campuses and they maybe set up a table with a provocative question hanging on a banner out front, and then they're just like kind of arguing with people? And I don't know how effective that is, but I don't remember who this was, but recently I saw one of those where someone was coming up and just kind of attacking this person, and she was presenting herself as an atheist. And as the conversation went, the person behind the table is like, you're an atheist, then why are you wearing a cross pendant on your necklace? Like, do you understand what that stands for? And she was like, I understand what you say it stands for, but she said, I just think it's cute. That was her response. I just think it's cute. A cross is a method of execution. You just think that's cute. And again, it's the idea of we see that symbol, and it's just a symbol of Jesus' name, and it's a symbol of Jesus' work, but the idea is the opposite of that. We don't just think it's cute and just slap that tattoo or that mark on any little thing. We're like, that means something very special to me. And so let me just be practical with you here. How do you work adoration into your prayers? You know, even adoration is not a word that we use very often, but there is this famous painting called the Adoration of the Magi. You may have heard of this. What is adoration there? It's the three wise men who come from afar to Bethlehem to find the one who's born King of the Jews. and they're coming, and that idea of adoration is there's an affection. We still use, like, I adore you, there's an affection. So do we work love into our prayers? Like, Father, I love you, I cherish you. This conversation that we get to have, this relationship that we get to have, it sounds like love. It sounds like reverence. You know, there's this doctrine that I think that we have potentially lost or diminished in the modern Western evangelical church that we're so excited about the idea of Jesus' imminence, the idea that He is near and He's like a brother and a friend, that we've lost the simultaneous truth of God's transcendence. Yes, God is near, and yes, God loves you intimately and closely like a friend, but He is wholly set apart. He is completely different than anyone or anything else. And do we approach in prayer, there are words and a tone that sound like awe and respect for God. Adoration, again you see this in the gifts of the Magi, it's praise, it's worship, it's giving something back to God that you believe that He is worthy of, deserving of. It sounds like gratitude, it sounds like thanksgiving. Okay, so all these kinds, like love, reverence, gratitude, thanksgiving, praise, worship, worked into our prayers, where we don't just come straight into, and I realize there are times where you're just like, I just have enough time for that one moment prayer, and I've shared some of mine before. Like, I give everyone and everything to you, God. That's all I have time for. But as you have time, is there a tone to your prayers where it's like, Father, I thank you for this. Jesus, for this. Spirit, I'm grateful. I love you. I appreciate you. I'm taking time just to spend time with you and rehearse to you what you mean to me. So that's adoration. The second kind of fundamental of prayer that Jesus teaches is acceptance. And this is the phrase your kingdom come, your kingdom, not necessarily a geographic kingdom with borders and boundaries and gates and walls and that kind of thing as we think about an ancient kingdom, but it's more talking about the rule of God or the reign of God. And it's a righteous rule. It's a gracious rule. It's a merciful rule. And what we're saying is, God, I accept the reign of King Jesus here. It's an acceptance. It's a, as I pray to you, Lord, in a thousand ways, I'm submitting, Lord, you have my heart, you have my mind, you have my body, you have my will, you have my family, my marriage, my vocation, my entertainment. It's all for you. By the way, Matthew 6 adds here, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. It's a parallel thought of as we're surrendering to the Lord, as we're accepting as Jesus did, not my will but yours be done. And I want you to just think how easy it is to make prayer the exact opposite of that, how often we go to God in prayer and kind of the point of like touching base with God is like, I have a will here and I need you to do it for me. Like I'm checking in because I decided what needs to happen in this situation. I decided the gift that I need to receive from you right now. So would you do the thing that I want you to do? And Jesus is training us as his apprentices to work acceptance into our prayers. It sounds something like this. It sounds like reminding yourself that Jesus is king. And maybe you do that because in a moment of honesty with yourself, you're like, I've made myself king. I've made my opinions king. My beliefs, my convictions that go against what he's taught, I'm in charge, not him. And you're like, but I lay that down because Jesus, you are king. Make your kingdom come here in my life. It sounds like surrendering your hopes, your dreams, your fears, your ambitions, I'm just saying, I don't have to have these. I don't have to hang on to these. If they're really good and beautiful things, I don't have to have that. I'll let you be king. But if it's a very fearful thing, like I'm surrendering my anxiety, Lord. I'm surrendering my depression, Lord. I'm asking you to be king over the things that I feel, over the patterns of thought that I'm tied up with right now. It sounds like a desire for God's will, not only to be known to you, but for God's will to be known through you to other people. Like, Lord, who do you want me, if I'm surrendering my will to your will, who else do you want to know about your will through me, and how can I share that with him? So adoration, acceptance, and then thirdly, this kind of third fundamental of prayer is asking. There is asking. He's a father, okay? And he's a good father. He's a wise father. And so it's not just like, I want you to reflect how awesome I am and just trust me with everything. He's like, as a father, I'm inviting you to come and to say, I know I need this. And you'll notice, There's a couple words here, just again, keywords, a framework of the kinds of things that Jesus is teaching us to pray for. By the way, can we just acknowledge that part of what we're doing in prayer is saying, there are certain things I need that I cannot achieve. There are certain things that I need that I can't accomplish for myself. I can't just go make them happen in my life. That's why we're praying a lot of the things that we're praying is because it's like it's a need, Lord, and I can't do it. By the way, I want you to think about all the things that you didn't pray for just this past week, this past month, this past year. And I don't remember who it was. It may have been Keller or Paul Miller, perhaps, who writes a lot on prayer that's been impactful to me. All the things that you're not praying about, are the things that kind of subconsciously you're telling God, I got that. I got it. I can handle the stuff I'm not praying about. It's the stuff that I need help with, divine help, that I'm gonna bring to you. And so prayerlessness is actually an indication of self-reliance. It's an indication of, we could start making lists of like, oh, I didn't pray about that. I had an important conversation this week and I just drove over there and just told that person, you know, because I thought, that I'd figured out what I needed to say. Or that interview, I knew what I was doing. Or that presentation for work, or that test that I was taking in my educational path. I mean, we could go on and on and on, just think about all the things that we think I can handle it on my own, I don't need to ask. And how asking is a beautiful thing, because it's an admission of, I need your help. And God loves that we need His help. I mean, I'm a parent, I have three kids, I mean, one almost adult, I mean, three offspring, okay? And you'd, like, as a parent, I mean, there are times where you're just like, okay, stop. Like, if you ask for the bunk bed one more time, I'm gonna throw up. But most of the time, it's like, I want you to come. And I, like, it's such an amazing way of knowing what's on your kids' minds for them to come and just be asking and asking and asking. So look what Jesus models here briefly about what can I ask for? Well, number one, he says, you can ask for provision. This phrase, give us this day our daily bread. And back then bread was not just like, hey, am I doing the gluten-free thing? Or is it the multigrain? Or is it like, what are we talking about? Bread was life. In an agrarian culture, bread was life. It was an absolute fundamental necessity. And he's saying, you can come to me and you can ask for your fundamental daily necessities. This is the very opposite of like, Lord, I pray that you provide for me that new Mercedes G-Wagon that I've had my eye on, the AMG in the matte black. And we try to make it not sound that specific or that bad, but it can be like, Lord, I've just really had my eye on this next promotion or this next like lateral move into this other company where my track can go up and up and up and up. And I thought about that, like how many times am I asking God to provide for me in a way where it's like, I literally need this versus I'm asking you for something, God, that takes me up and to the right a little bit. You ever notice that, like how your prayers for provision take you up and to the right? Like the job is better, the place to live is better, the car is better, the friendships are better, the church is better, like everything's better. And that's not how Jesus taught us to pray. Like it always needs to be better, faster, easier, healthier. With each of these things that Jesus is teaching us to ask for, I want you to picture we're in the Atlantic Ocean, we're about to sail into the Mediterranean, and there are these straits of Gibraltar. You have these big rocks on either side of you. And the idea of this prayer is God's guidance through these straits, where you have something that you can shipwreck on over here, and you have something that you can shipwreck on over here. This first one, when we're coming to God in dependence and saying, I need you to provide for my needs, we're sailing through these straits of arrogance on the one hand, and anxiety on the other. Because the arrogance would be, I don't need to ask God for that stuff. I've got it. I can provide for myself. I don't need to pray about that or that or that or that because I can do that. Or another word instead of arrogance would be like self-sufficiency. I can take care of myself. I don't need to ask God for that or about that. But on this other side is this paralyzing anxiety of like, I'm worried where my next meal is gonna come from. And some of you, that's literally you. Or I'm worried about a job or I'm worried about the medical funding running out. And there can be a paralyzing anxiety and God's like, I want you to come to me and just say, Father, I need your provision. and that rescues you from this self-sufficient, I can do it, but it also rescues you from just having to be like, if it's up to me, I'm scared, God, I'm anxious, I'm worried, I can't handle that. And he's like, but if you keep your eyes on me and keep talking to me and keep trusting me to provide, I'll bring you through here so we're not crashing into either of these arrogance or anxiety. That's asking for provision. Number two, Jesus invites us to ask for pardon. This is the phrase, forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And we do that weekly here, corporately, but do you do that individually, where you are coming to the Lord and you're acknowledging two things when you're praying for forgiveness, when you're praying for pardon, you're acknowledging, number one, I sinned, or I am a sinner, I am broken. But number two, I recognize that you're a savior. You are one who delights to forgive. You are not a begrudging giver of the gift of forgiveness. You love to forgive your children. And again, picturing these Straits of Gibraltar that I'm sailing through as I'm saying, Father, I need your pardon, but I trust your pardon, is like on the one hand, there's this self-righteousness of like, I don't need God's pardon. I'm fine, I'm good. I'm a good person doing good things. What are you talking about? And on the other side, this rock that we could crash into, some of you have just groveling of like, whoa, it's me. Man, there I go again. I am... I am a worm. I am a terrible person. And maybe you are, in the sense that Paul himself, the apostle, was like, I am a worm. I am the worst person I know. And I'm coming back to God because Jesus invites me to come to him for forgiveness. And I want you to notice how Jesus is explicit about this particular framework for prayer. that you're asking something of God is connected to your everyday practice in life. Like, God, as I ask you for pardon, notice this, I'm following the steps of Jesus to forgive people who are indebted to me. And I'm not coming to you as this self-righteous hypocrite of like, God, I need your forgiveness, but I refuse to forgive people who have hurt me. There's a connection between what I'm learning in prayer and this ongoing conversation with God and the way I'm treating other people. So asking for provision, for pardon, and then finally for protection. This is the phrase, and lead us not into temptation. Some of you may know the Lord's Prayer adds, but deliver us from evil or from the evil one. By the way, I think this is a confession of personal weakness, not an assigning of blame to God. It's not, it's not, do not lead me into temptation because I think you're about to. I don't trust you, God. The Bible says, God is not tempted by evil, neither does he tempt anyone. Okay, there are trials in your life, there are tests in your life, so that you can learn more about you, so you can learn more about your response to God. But God is not tempting you. I think what we're saying here is like, God, I recognize my own propensity. It was John Calvin who said, the human heart is an idle factory. And do you see this in your own life, how quickly you can take a good gift from God, and it's not a temptation, but how quickly you take a good gift and turn it into a temptation? You turn it into a cause for lust, I don't just mean sexual lust, I mean like there's a Matt Black AMG and why does he get that and I don't? And there can be an over desire for something good and beautiful, but we can turn anything into a lust, into a temptation, into like literally a false God, something that we turn our desire and our affection toward almost in place of God and we're pursuing that thing. And when we say God protect me, Don't lead me into temptation. We're saying, I recognize the bent of my own heart. Save me from me. And one last time, kind of these Straits of Gibraltar that we're praying as we say, Lord, protect me from temptation, deliver me from evil or from the evil one, is like on the one side, there can be an air of invincibility. I'm strong. I would never fall prey to that temptation. And I look at this of like, even like this wreckage of pastors and spiritual leaders that probably most of them thought, like, I would never commit certain sins. And when we come to God and we're like, I don't think I would, but for your grace, there go I. Would you protect me, Lord, from temptation? Would you rescue me from the wiles, the deceits of the slanderer? So this air of invincibility, I'm delivered from, but on this other side, there's just this air of carnality, just worldliness, just fleshliness of, I don't need to be delivered from temptation, because I don't think that's that wrong, but recognizing as I define things as God defines them, this prayer, asking God, depending on God, is protecting me from both the invincibility and the just fleshly pursuits. So that's a pattern. And again, I invite you just to think of that as a skeletal framework, like your backbone kind of like sets the general shape for your body, but then you've got to flesh it out. So I think Jesus invites you to bring your own words, your own struggles, your own temptations, your own fears, your own frustrations, your own... God, this is a really good thing that happened in my life this week, or just a touch point into your character that I saw and I experienced this week. And so I'm bringing my own words to say, thank you, I'm grateful to you. That's the pattern. Going on here, we see the persistence of prayer. So verses five through eight. And he said to them, which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say, friend, lend me three loaves of bread for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him. And he will answer from within, do not bother me, the door is now shut, my children are in bed with me, I cannot get up and give you anything. I tell you, though he will not get up and give you anything because he's your friend, Yet because of his impudence, he will rise and give him whatever he needs. By the way, I think Jesus is using a little humor here. I think he's using a little exaggeration. I don't think he's picturing the father as this crotchety old man who's like, I've gone to bed and it's 9.15. What are you doing? Like it's already dark outside. I've got to get up in a few hours. I think his point is more about you. He's encouraging you to be bold and persistent. This word impudence, shameless audacity. That's what Jesus is encouraging. Do you know your father loves you so much you can come to him with shameless audacity in the middle of the night? By the way, there are certain ones of you that if I were in crisis, I wouldn't hesitate to call you in the middle of the night to interrupt a number of different things you could possibly be doing that are incredibly important. There's a bunch of you I would not call and bother in that way. That says something about your character and the kind of relationship, the special relationship that we have. That you know and I know, it's okay to bother me in that way. So in a sense, he is saying something about the father. He's like, you have that kind of access. I mean, my children, and all three of them at different stages, have had no problem at all just waking us up in the middle of the night just to declare, it's too warm in my bedroom. Okay, well, I mean, do you know how to open the door in your bedroom to the outside where it's 50 degrees? Or crack a window? Or take off your socks or, you know, I mean, something? Or I'm thirsty. It's like, well, there is a glass of water on the bed stand, or you know where the kitchen sink is, but the kids don't even think about it. They're just like, I trust my parents' goodwill, and I can come, and I can bother them. I mean, Keller reminds us that nobody wakes up the king at 3 a.m. to ask for a glass of water except the king's child. And he says, you have that kind of access with God to be impudent, to be audacious, to be bold, to be courageous, to not think like, oh, this is probably too little to bother God with. And you ever feel that? Like, this is too little. I know I have friends that are going through really difficult, painful things, and what I'm dealing with is hard for me, but it pales in comparison to these other prayers that God should be listening to. And God doesn't feel that way. I mean, what's big to you What's disruptive to you, what's taking your eyes off Him, is what He wants you praying about. So this is the persistence of prayer. And by the way, I asked the boys this morning, as we read this story a couple times, Miles misheard it the first time, and he said, I said, what was the man asking for when he knocked on the door? And he said, well, he wanted three loaves of bread. Yeah, why didn't the man give it to him? And he's like, because that was bread for his children. And I was like, well, that's not what it says. But part of the impudence is you understanding by the grace of God, by the blood of Jesus Christ, you've been adopted into his family. And so now you have a rightful claim to stuff that only the children are supposed to get. Remember that woman that came to Jesus that one time, and she's like, can I have this from you, Jesus? And Jesus is like, no, that's for the Jews, that's for the children of God, and you're not a Jew. And I think he was just pushing back to see where her heart was at, and she's like, you're right, I'm not a Jew, I'm not worthy, but even the dogs get the crumbs that fall from the table. And he's like, wow, you're a daughter. You can have it all. And when you know that you're a loved and adopted child of God, this persistence in prayer comes more naturally because you trust the kind of relationship you have with your Father. By the way, I also asked the boys, I was like, is there anything that you have asked and asked and asked for that you didn't immediately get? And they're like, oh, yeah, I mean, lots of things. And they start listing them off. And I was like, what did that waiting do to you? The fact that mom and dad didn't just give that to you right away, what did that do to you? And immediately, Miles was like, well, when I had to wait for the Nintendo Switch, that made me really patient. And I was thinking, I remember that differently than you. I think it made you really impatient. Do you see why Jesus may be saying part of the apprenticeship in prayer is persistence? Because God is doing, if God isn't just like, okay, here you go. immediately, it's because he's probably doing something in your life that could lead you to impatience, more impatience, worse impatience, but it could also lead you into a beautiful patience and reliance and trust. God's up to something in your life if he's asking you to wait but to keep praying. By the way, I just think of watching my children and the things that they asked and asked and asked and asked and asked for and didn't get, and then one day they just stop asking And just thinking as an earthly parent, some of the times that you're not getting that thing that you think you so desperately need is because mom and dad know that would not be good for you, or at least it wouldn't be good for you right now. And how much wiser is our Heavenly Father to just think, like, that wouldn't be good for you right now. You can trust. That's the persistence of prayer. A couple more quick ones. The promise of prayer, I want you to note verses nine and 10, where Jesus says, and I tell you, ask. and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives, and the one who seeks, finds, and to the one who knocks, it will be opened." And by the way, I'll say just two things. One, the verb tense is ask and keep asking. It is not just like, God, I asked you, you didn't, but it's going back to that persistence in prayer point of it's ask and keep asking, seek and keep seeking if it's important to you, knock and keep listening for an answer, okay? So I'll say that. I'll also say it's not a blank slate. It's not, I asked and God didn't give it to me, so therefore God's a liar. And I didn't get whatever I wanted, because in this whole context of verses, Jesus is referencing the relationship between a father and a son, and if God is a good and wise father, he's not just like, oh sure, yeah, yeah, whatever you pray for. I mean, you just had ice cream, but you want another ice cream cone right before bed? That's great. It's like, well no, you're gonna have a stomach ache. So you don't get the other ice cream cone. I mean, fathers know. But I love this point that Tim Keller makes in his book, Simply Entitled Prayer. that I think it just nails this promise. What he says is God will either give us what we ask or give us what we would have asked for if we knew everything he knows. So when he's saying ask and keep asking, seek and keep seeking, knock and keep knocking, there is a promise of your wise, loving, compassionate, father who's about to lavish on you the inheritance of Jesus, he will either give you what you asked for in his will, or he'll give you the thing that you would have asked for if you had known. And some of you who are older, you could point to specific circumstances in your life and just say, I saw God do what you just said, where I didn't get what I was asking for, I got something different, something sometimes the opposite of what I was asking for, but now in hindsight even, just as a human being with a few months or a few years of hindsight, if I had known what I know now, I would have asked for the thing that He gave me instead of the thing that I was asking for. That's this promise. And then finally, the presence. And this one just kind of brings us right back into the heart of discipleship with Jesus. So notice verses 11 through 13 here in closing. He says, what father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish, give him a serpent? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly father give What? And what do you expect him to say there? I mean, the parallel would be like, if you as earthly parents who have flaws and you're broken and you don't see the future any more than your kids do necessarily, if you know how to give good gifts, how much more does your heavenly Father know how to give good gifts? And that's kind of what we would fill in the blank. Better gifts from a better giver. But that's not what he says. He doesn't say if you know how to give good gifts, God knows how to give better gifts. He says, how much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him? And this is my last point, and I called it the presence of prayer, because what if the ultimate point of prayer is not to get what you think you want from God, but to get more of God Himself? What if that conversation, that's done in dialogue with, I'm reading scripture, so I'm present with my teacher, my savior, my Lord, and I'm listening to him, and I'm talking back to him in all these healthy ways, and we're having a conversation. What if the greatest gift that he could give me would just be a deeper knowledge of him and a greater well of satisfaction in him? And Jesus is disabusing us of the notion that the people with the most toys know God the best, or are better people than other people with fewer toys, because they are really connected in prayer. You know, if you just had enough prayer, a little bit more faith, then you would get this thing. And it's like, well, no, I mean, some of the people that I know that have the deepest, most relentless faith don't have all the toys. but they have an abiding dependence on God. And just a sweet, intimate relationship with God. To hear them talk, it's just like, that's a person that walks with God. And I could give you several deeply painful examples in my own life, from my own life, of saying, God, I cry out to you because I believe that this is not a selfish request, but I believe that I need this from you right now. And it's not that God said no, there was just never an answer. So I'm like, okay, the answer is no. But as I walked it out, when God didn't heal that pain or fix that conflict or whatever the thing was that I thought was so clear that God would do, what God did do was cause me to trust Him more and just be like, you're sovereign, you're in control. I don't know why you didn't do this thing. I don't know why sometimes it seems like you don't care, but you're giving me more of yourself. And doesn't that sound just like a mentor? As we went through several weeks ago, what the rabbi-pupil relationship looks like. Jesus is not sitting here. When the disciples are like, Lord, teach us to pray. He's not like, okay, here's three facts. Just memorize it, reproduce it on the test, and we can go our separate ways. the goal of the rabbi is not to get you to go your separate ways with more information. The goal of the rabbi is that you would abide, that you would be with him, that you would continue to learn from him and be like him and do what he did and say what he said. And so, if he's answering your prayer with If your earthly father knows how to give good gifts, how much more will I give you the presence of my spirit to be in you, to counsel you, to guide you, to convict you, to admonish you, to encourage you, to give you hope when you're hopeless, to bear his fruit in your life, not your own fruit. And family, this is my dream, that we become more and more a congregation that prays these bold, audacious, persistent, surrendered prayers. Where prayer, and I confess this is not me a lot of the time, but where prayer becomes a first impulse, not a last resort. Anybody else feel that? I tried all these things that I just thought would work, and it didn't, and now I'm throwing out my hands and praying. God, help. I was like, yeah, that should have been the first thing, not the last thing. But a congregation where time spent in conversation and communion with God always feels like it's worth it. And I said earlier, we have three children, and I want them to come and ask for what they need, for what they want. I don't want that to be the only kind of conversation we have. Of just like, oh, my phone's ringing. I see who it is. I wonder what the problem is now. It's a delight, like yesterday, for my daughter to call and just be like, hi, how's your morning going? I know the boys are off in Breckenridge for this hockey tournament, thinking of you guys. I hope you have a happy day. And it's just like, you need anything? Nope, I'm good. You know, it's like, okay, all right. We did something right, maybe, you know? Or God's working in her life. But you want that as a parent. And Jesus wants that as our teacher. that yeah, if you need something, please come ask, even if you think it's silly. And my answer may be no. My answer may be it wouldn't be good for you. But can you bring the adoration, the accepting and the asking and have like this fully orbed conversation with God as a huge central part of what it looks like to follow Jesus. He invites you, you have access, let's pray.