share with you from Luke chapter 11. If you want to get the PowerPoint up there, Ben. Ben's working his little socks off there, bless him. He's been put through his paces today. I'll buy him some time. There we go. Luke chapter 11, please. Just one verse of scripture to share. Luke chapter 11 and verse number 1. And the word of God says, it came to pass that as he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, one of his disciples said unto him, Lord, teach us to pray. As John also taught his disciples and we pray the Lord would just bless everything that is said and done here this evening in his name. We get to this portion of scripture and we hear the disciples ask the question, or make the request, Lord teach us to pray. Now the very fact that they asked that question of Christ, and the very fact that he answered it by giving the model of the Lord's prayer, tells us what this evening about prayer? It tells us that prayer can be taught. It can be taught. But honestly, who here has ever asked the spiritual leader in their life, the person they go to with spiritual questions, or for direction, who here has ever asked somebody, would you teach me to pray? Very few. If you have done, well done you, you're super spiritual. Who says that? We don't. And the thing is, we hear this term in Christianity, those of us that are saved and have been in Christian circles for any length of time will have heard that one of Christianity's bizarre terms, you need to get in the prayer closet. Which is madness, really, when you think about it. But we know what it means. But actually, what I want to put to you this evening is, before we get into the prayer closet, we need to get into the prayer classroom. That means we need to ask God, we need to seek His Word to find out how we pray. So the question is, how do we pray? Or how should we pray? Well, on Wednesday nights at our church, I'm doing a Bible study and the Lord's Prayer. And that's what's really led me to put this together. I wanted to put a synopsis, because the Lord's Prayer, when you get into it and study it, it's just packed with stuff. Absolutely packed with stuff. And it takes an age to get through it properly. But I wanted to sum it up and say, what is Jesus saying through this? Because we see this prayer, we hear this prayer prayed all the time up and down the land. But Jesus never ever meant it to be prayed like that or repeated like that. Jesus was teaching a model of prayer, a pattern of prayer. And remember, it's an answer to the question, Lord, teach us to pray. Remember, prayer is individual. It's you talking to God. Prayer is a dialogue. It's not a monologue. It's two-way communication between you and your Creator God. It's personal. And the Lord, He sets this pattern down, and He doesn't say, go and repeat this vainly. He tells us something. He teaches us something. So the question is, how should we pray? And I want to try and summarize the Lord's Prayer, or the Disciple's Prayer, as it should really be called. It's not the Lord's Prayer. You want to go and see some of the prayers of the Lord, you can find them in Scripture. Christ's High Priestly Prayer, that's a prayer of the Lord. This is a Disciple's Prayer, or a Disciple's Pattern of Prayer. So I wanted to really go through these steps with you and build them as I think the Lord's Prayer builds, and I hope and I pray that it will change your prayer life. If you've come here this evening and you're struggling with prayer, I mean it's some robotic mechanical thing that you do, but there's nothing happening there. You don't see answers to prayer. You don't feel the Lord's presence in your life. You don't feel the Lord talking to you. You get up in the morning and you think, I know I've got to pray. I want to pray. I have to pray. That's what Christians do. And you pray and it's dead. What's wrong? Maybe you haven't gone to the book and said, Lord, teach me how to pray. So we'll go through the steps. I'll attempt to use this clicker better than Johnny did, see? Look at that. Here's the first thing in what I'm going to call the Pyramid of Prayer. Now, don't get bent out of shape, that sounds quite New Agey, but it's the only thing I could get to alliterate and it works well, so bear with it. The Pyramid of Prayer. Here's the first thing. Here's the foundation. It's all about relationship. It's all about relationship. Relationship is the key word in prayer. It's foundational. That means it has to come first. That means that anything that comes after it is built upon it. When we talk about foundations, that's the most important thing in the building. The foundation. Because if the foundation isn't right, it doesn't matter how good the other things look. It doesn't matter how good these walls look. If the foundation's not right, the building's going to crumble. So the foundation is foundational. It makes sense. So the key to prayer, the key to the Christian life, is relationship. That means our prayers, that means our works, that means the things we do, we say, that means our Bible reading, that means our teaching, that means our serving, that means absolutely everything is built upon the foundation of our relationship, first and foremost, with our God. Turn to Matthew 22. You'll probably know this well, I'm sure you will. Matthew 22. Excuse me. Matthew 22 verses number 34 to 40. Here Christ is quizzed. But when the Pharisees had heard that he had put the Sadducees to silence, they were gathered together. Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him and saying, Master, which is the greatest commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. So here Jesus is quizzed. And really they ask, what's the most important thing to do? What's the most important thing to carry out? What's the most important thing to adhere to? That's what they're saying. And Christ says, first and foremost, the most important thing is that you love God with everything. That means everything. You give Him your all. That means you're devoted to Him. So it's love God first, then love others. And that's the priority. It's gotta be God first. He's gotta have the preeminence. He's gotta be number one. We gotta love Him, then we love others. And the thing is, often we let our love for others eclipse our love for God. We do. We all do at times. But we're called, commanded, to love God with absolutely everything. And often we make the mistake in life, and I speak as one who's gone through this, that at times we think, well God, if I give you my all, if I give you my everything, if I love you as you're commanding me to love, I won't have time for anybody else. I won't be able to love my wife as I should. I won't be able to love my children as I should. I won't be able to love my partner as I should. I won't be able to love my family as I should. I won't be able to fulfill this and fulfill that and fulfill this. I can't give you everything God. But the truth is, when we give God everything, He enables us to give others everything. He makes it work. And that's a conundrum. That's harder to understand logically. But we serve a supernatural God. That means if you give Him everything, He will enable you to do everything you need to do with others. Not want, need. That means you love God with everything, then you move on to the part where your relationship with others will be right. So when we're talking about our prayer lines, we're talking about anything to do with the Christian life. First and foremost, our relationship is the foundation. And our relationship with God has to be right. It has to be right. Without that, nothing can happen. So what does that mean? Well firstly, that means you must be born again. That's what it means. That means if you're here this evening and you don't know Christ the Savior, that means if you've come to this place and you've never given your heart. I don't mean that you haven't prayed. I'm not asking that. I don't mean that you haven't come to church before. I'm not asking that. God doesn't care about that. That takes care of itself. What God cares about is your heart this evening. Have you given it to Him? Have you trusted Him as Savior? You must be born again. That's the commandment. If you want to be in a relationship with God, if you want to know your Creator, if you want to spend eternity with Him, then you must be born again. You can't have a relationship with God outside of that. You can't. It's foundational. How do you do that, you say? Three things. You need to see God for who He is. Holy. Blameless. Sovereign. You need to see sin for what it is. It's the thing that separates us from God. That broke that relationship with the Creator God. And then thirdly, is the most important thing. You need to understand who you are this evening. You're a sinner from birth. Your sin nature is there. Can't be worked away. You need to make it right with God. And the only way to do that is through the Lord Jesus Christ. So you've got to see all these things. You've got to understand that you need to be saved. Then you've got to cry out to God the Saviour, and He is faithful and true that He will, no matter what you've done. No matter what you've done. I stand here tonight as a man ordained I was a man called by God to preach His Word, to pastor. Fifteen years ago, I stood as a man that was up to his neck in paramilitaries, up to his neck with murderers, thieves, hooligans, drug addicts. I was a man that destroyed lives, and I didn't care. I'm telling you now, I didn't care. But God saved me, despite of that. And I'm telling you now, from the authority of the Word of God, there's nothing you've done in your life that God can't save you. You can't fall low enough that the grace of God can't lift you up. That's the gospel. That's the good news, because it's good news for everybody. Then secondly, if you're here this evening and you're saved, remember we're talking about relationship. You can't even start that relationship with God unless you're saved. But if you get saved and then you say, well I know Christ is Savior, you've started the relationship, but where are you now in that relationship? Are you walking right? Are you living for God? We heard Johnny this morning, it's all mission. It's all for God's glory. Are we living like that? I say we. It's not for me to say you when I'm on the holy hill. We're all on the same boat. It's the same challenge for all of us. Are we living for God? And here's the thing I want to say to you this evening. It doesn't matter what of the two camps you're in. It doesn't matter whether you don't have a relationship with God or it doesn't matter if your relationship with God is not where you want it to be. The remedy is the same. That means you repent. You get on your knees before God and you cry out, forgive me. Turn to Psalm 51, please. Psalm 51's my favorite psalm in the whole Word of God. And there are many psalms that are wonderful and people hold them to their own, but Psalm 51 always, always spoke to me. Always. Psalm 51 is penned by King David. And when you look at the context of King David's life, before he writes this psalm, he's had a terrible year. His relationship with God is not right. He's backslidden. What's happened? He's sinned with Bathsheba, there was a child, there was a murder, there was a cover-up, all sorts of terrible things that David got involved in. He commits these acts and he's not in a right relationship with God. and he's living in this backslidden state for about a year year and a half whatever it is we don't know exactly but we know it was a period of time where this man was just not in the right place this is king david man after god's own heart but he doesn't get to the place of repentance by himself And sometimes, a lot of the time, we don't get to that place by ourselves. That's why God brings men to preach the Word of God like I'm here tonight. There's no accidents, there's no coincidence with God. You just didn't walk in here and God doesn't know about it. This is divinely ordained that you're here this evening. So when you hear the Word of God challenging you, you understand that He's talking to you this evening, not me. Sometimes we need people to speak into our lives. And the prophet Nathan comes to King David, he tells him a little parable about a little lovely fluffy sheep, and if you know the story, I'm paraphrasing, don't hold me up on this, don't correct me at the door, this is my paraphrase, alright? Man has a sheep, he looks after the sheep, he loves the sheep, big rich guy comes in, takes the sheep and kills the sheep. Right? That's it in a nutshell, alright? I don't have time to go into it. But David's outraged at this. He's outraged at the travesty of this rich man coming in and taking a poor man's lovely fluffy little sheep that he's raised as his own. The rich man has everything he needs and he has to take this poor man's sheep. David's heartbroken. He's enraged. He says, that man deserves to die. And what does God say to David through Nathan? Thou art the man. David's broken because he knows that God's talking to him. And he's broken about his sin, his actions. He comes to the place of repentance and he writes Psalm 51. Let's read this. Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness, according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions. Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. Hear David crying out to God as he says this. This is his words, this is his cry. For I acknowledge my transgressions. and my sin is ever before me. Against thee, the only, have I sinned and done evil in thy sight, that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest. Behold, I was shaping an iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom. Purge me with hyssop, and I will be clean. Wash me and I will be whiter than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice. Hide thy face from my sins and blot out all mine iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence. Take not thy Holy Spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation. and uphold me with thy free spirit. This is the cry of David. as he gets before God. This is a man after God's own heart. This is a man that recognizes his life and understands he's not in the place that he should be. His relationship with God is not where it should be. He says, my sin is ever before me. That means I can't get away from it. No matter what I do, no matter what I think, no matter where I go, it's there, it's there, it's there. I can't do anything about it, but you can, God. He says, cleanse me, wash me, purge me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation. No matter where you are this evening, whether you don't know God as Savior or whether you know Him as Savior and your relationship isn't right, the remedy's the same. Get into this psalm and cry to God and make it right. So it's foundational that we're right with God, we're in a right relationship. But then, you know, the second greatest commandment was to love others as ourselves. So it bears the reason that to be in a right relationship with God, we've got to follow that and be in a right relationship with others. Now, here's the thing. That doesn't mean that everybody in the Christian world, every born again believer, everybody in the family of God is in each other's pockets. It doesn't mean that you have to be best pals with every believer that ever lived. personalities clash. We're all different. There's some people that you're more comfortable with than others and that's fine. That's okay. But what we can't do as children of God and a family of God is harbor ill will to brothers and sisters in Christ. We can't let resentment and bitterness and hatred and whatever it is fester with those that are children of God. Now, We've got to be friendly with people out there, but our concern is with the children of God, the church first and foremost. We've got to be in a right relationship with each other. So we've got to have our relationship with God right, and then we've got to have our relationship with others right. And here's the thing, God is central to everything. Why do I say that? Because if our relationship with God isn't right, our relationship with others can't be right. What does Psalm 51 verse 4 say? So it ties in. If our relationship with others isn't right, we're not in the right relationship with God. See how God's central to it? See how we can't separate it out? The relationship with others and the relationship with God are one and the same. That means if we're in a right relationship with God, we'll be in a right relationship with others. That means if you're not in a right relationship with others, you can't be in a right relationship with God. You see? You can't separate it. Relationships are foundational and it all hinges upon God. So, when we talk about prayer, we have to understand that our relationship with God and then with others is foundational. It builds for everything else. Anything of that that's out of whack, then our prayer life is going to be out of whack. So it's the foundation. Let's move to the next stage. Then we move from relationship into recognition. Firstly, God's holiness. This is God's chief attribute. This is what God is all about. Now, we know God as love, we know God as compassion, we know God as mercy, but his chief characteristic is his holiness. And as people of God, as children of God, those who are in a right relationship, we've sorted that out. We're in the right relationship with God, we're in the right relationship with others, then we can move to the place of recognition. We have to come to prayer recognizing that God is holy. That's who we're praying to. The holy God. Turn to Isaiah chapter 6. Isaiah chapter number six. Verse number one. It says, In the year the king Uzziah died, I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his tree and filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphims, each one had six wings. With twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried to the other and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. When you're in the Old Testament and you see things repeated three times, it speaks of continual, eternal. Holy, holy, holy, the eternally holy God. Verse number four, And the post of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke. And what does Isaiah say? He said, Then said I, Woe is me, for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips. He says, Woe is me. He gets a glimpse of God's holiness, and he is undone. Woe is me. Turn to Revelation chapter number one. Revelation chapter number one, verse number nine. I, John, who also am your brother and companion in tribulation and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was in the isle that is called Patmos for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ. I was in the Spirit on the Lord's Day and heard behind me a great voice as of a trumpet, saying, I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last. And what thou hast seen, write in a book and send it on to the seven churches which are in Asia, on to Ephesus, on to Smyrna, on to Pergamos, and Theatra, on to Sardis, and on to Philadelphia, and on to Laodicea. And I turned to see the voice that spake with me, and being turned I saw seven golden candlesticks. And in the midst of the seven candlesticks, one like unto the Son of Man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girded about the paps with a golden girdle. His head and his hairs were white like wool, and white as snow, and his eyes were a flame of fire, and his feet like unto fine brass, as if they'd burned in the furnace, and his voice as the sound of many waters. And he had in his right hand seven stars, and out of his mouth went sharp two-edged sword, and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength. And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead." This is coming into the holiness of God. And these men were undone. Isaiah says, woe is me. John fell at his feet as dead. He couldn't take it. But when we come to God in prayer, it's the same God. The same holy God. And we've got to recognize this. We've got to recognize His holiness when we come to Him in prayer. Before we get to anything else, remember we're building here. So we've got to recognize His holiness. Yes, He's our Father, but He's God. And when we come to His throne, we have to recognize that. And then when we do that, we recognize His holiness, we see that we're undone. We see that we should fall at His feet as dead. We get to God's mercy and we recognize that we deserve nothing but punishment. The human race has done nothing but rebel against God. This world, when we look at it now, is an absolute cesspool of evil, of greed, of corruption, of violence, of wickedness, pornography, paedophilia, unnatural marriage, whatever it is. This world is a cesspool. I could go on and on and on. None of this, none of it is God's fault. It's all our fault. We deserve to be punished by that holy God of creation. But He showed mercy. It's not God's fault. When you say, well, you know, God's not fair. You ever hear that? We hear it all the time. Look what happened to me. Look what's going on in my life. God's not fair. If God was real, he would be fair. He'd fix this and he'd do that. But when we come to the place of recognition of God's holiness and His mercy for us, we understand that we don't want fair. Because fair means we take the punishment that is due. And what's that? Wipe the human race off the face of the earth. That's fair. But God doesn't give us fare. He shows us mercy. So when we're building this, our prayer lives, we're coming to God in the right relationship. We're moving to the place of recognition, who it is we're praying to, who it is we're before. We see his mercy. We recognize his mercy. Then, that moves us into rejoicing. For from God's mercy and the recognition of that, you springboard into God's grace and you rejoice. Praise the Lord, that he would save me, that he would save you. Despite of who we are, despite of what we've done, despite of what we deserve, he showed us grace. And that grace should fill our souls with joy. I say should, because honestly, a lot of the times, believers are some of the most miserable people I've ever met. Honestly. All of us at times walk about like the world's tripping us up. And we come to God in prayer in that state. What was me? I've had a terrible day, Lord. But when we come through this process of a right relationship, of the recognition of who God is, and we rejoice in His grace, what goes on in this world means nothing. Because if we know Christ as Savior, we're eternally secure. The Holy Spirit lives within us. God has promised to be with us forever. Nothing can shake that. We deserve eternal damnation, eternal separation from God. But if you've trusted Christ as Savior, you've got the opposite. That should fill us with joy. Smile, Christian! Then we should rejoice in God's sovereignty. The world is in a tailspin, but God is on the throne. Rejoice that God is in control, that His plan, His purpose will be fulfilled, and there's no stopping it. It doesn't matter what the great thinkers of the world say. It doesn't matter what the aggressive atheists say. It doesn't matter what the gay praying people say. It doesn't matter what the world says. God's promises will be fulfilled. Rejoice, Christian, in that. God's in control, and he's coming again. Remember, he said, if it were not so, I would have told you. I'm not playing about here. I'm coming back. So, we're building our pyramid. We've started with our relationship. We've moved to the place of recognition. Remember, put this in your prayer life. You're coming before God in a completely different mindset than we do when we pray to God of an evening, the last thing at night. Dear God, thank you for today. See you in the morning. Or how often do we pray last thing at night and fall asleep mid-prayer? I'll tell you something now, if you approach your prayer life with a recognition of who God is and His holiness, you will not fall asleep when you're talking to the God of creation. Can you imagine the uproar if you had a lunch with the Queen? Pastor David Muir has lunch with the Queen and he falls asleep mid-conversation. Can you imagine the shame? It would be all over the news. Who hears this, Phil? But we talk to God, and how often do we fall asleep? We've got to build our steps. Now, you think about this in the context of the Lord's Prayer, go and read it. See how it builds? Starts with God and then moves on. The very last thing that we should come to in our prayer, our requests. Firstly for others, the needs of others, the heart's condition of others, their walk, their ministries, whatever it is. We've got to pray for the saints. And pray. And pray some more. Because prayer protects. Prayer provides. And we need to pray for each other. So that's fine. But your prayer for others is only effective when you have gone through these steps in the right way. It's a good thing to pray for others, but often we just say, dear God, so-and-so's got a problem, fix it. Dear God, would you do that for this person? No reverence for God, no approaching him in the right mindset and frame and a recognition of his holiness and his mercy and rejoicing that you can even speak to him and then getting the honors. Whose prayer carries more power? The person that just rhymes off the needs for others, or the person that comes to God in the right way, and says, God, would you intervene? We've got to pray for others' needs. And then, finally, we can deal with ourselves. Last. We should be last. The Christian life, as Johnny said this morning, is about dying the self. That means self, doesn't even matter. It's okay to pray for things for yourself if it's coming the right way and if it's at the end. Because what you're saying to God is, I care about you first and you foremost. Then I think about others. And Lord, lastly, when there's no one else to think about, I think about me. Romans 12.1, That means away with you. It's about God and it's about others. It means we come last of all. Love God, love others, deny self. Now, here's the magic bit. Put it all together. What do we have? The pyramid of prayer. This is what I'm talking about, folks. You can't get to the second stage if the first stage isn't right. You can't get to the third stage if the first and second aren't right. And you certainly can't get to the final stage if the other three aren't in line. But it all depends on the foundation of relationship. So you think about this. I want to challenge you because I'm telling you now, I don't have to be a psychic, a clairvoyant. I say there's people in this room that that's upside down. when you pray to God. I know, because a lot of the time I've been there. I've been so challenged by studying the Lord's Prayer and how Jesus was dealing with them. And when you read it, it's God, God, God, God, God, God, God, then man. We go man, man, man, man, man, and a little bit of God. So I want to challenge you, I want to say to you, is your prayer life dead? Is there nothing happening? Are you not seeing God moving in your life? I want to suggest that some of these are out of order. That your relationship with God's not right. Or your relationship with others is not right. Or when you're coming to Him, you're treating Him like some Santa Claus, or some chum, or some pal, that you're not coming. Really, you should come to God and fear for your life. You don't have to fear for your life in that aspect, but that's the healthy fear and reverence of God. This is the God of creation. Rejoice to come into His presence, and then ask Him. I wonder, this week, leading up to Sunday, for those of you that are saved and are praying, I wonder if you ever just prayed and not put any requests in your prayer. I mean, just on the first three. Just know you're in the right relationship with God. Come to Him. and His reverence and His holiness, worship Him and rejoice that you're saved and leave it there. It's a challenge. It's always requests, requests, requests. Let's go to the Lord in prayer because there's a need. No, let's go to the Lord in prayer because He's God and He deserves our worship. He deserves our prayer and He deserves our relationship with it. I'm going to close, we don't have time, but I'm sure you know George Miller and you've heard stories about that man of prayer. Time after time where just the Lord provided. Now what was special about George Miller particularly? Nothing. He was just a man, flesh and blood. But I think he had this right. I think he approached God in the right way. Why? Because look at his ministry. God was there with him all the time. So, just to close, I want to challenge you. I want to ask you, is your relationship with God right? Are you saved? Do you know him as Saviour? If the answer is no, then you don't have a relationship with God. The good news is, you can. Through the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ and what he did in Calvary. And in Christian, Are you walking right? Are you living right? Is your relationship with God right? Then, if it is, do you recognize who God is? His holiness? His mercy? Then do you move in the rejoicing at His grace, at His sovereignty? Then give your petitions and your requests to God. That's the prayer classroom. You need to now take it to the prayer closet. Let's pray. Heavenly Father I just thank you for this time Lord to be