My thoughts this afternoon are largely based, not entirely, but largely based on a book by Brian Chappell entitled Praying Backwards. Have any of you read that book? Haven't read? It's a good book. And I actually taught this series at Sycamore Baptist Church back in 2006. And when I'm at Hope Reformed Baptist Church, I'm for Sunday school, I'm teaching this. I'm not there as often as I used to be. But I want you to turn with me to a very familiar passage of scripture, Matthew chapter six verses nine through 13, which we know as the Lord's Prayer, Matthew six, nine through 13. In the chapters, the first book or the first chapter is entitled Praying in Jesus Name. And you may recall that last week, Pastor Dale, spoke about praying in Jesus' name. So he did the first chapter. He didn't even know it. He didn't follow Brian Chappell. But his teaching was very, very good. So this is the second chapter in Brian Chappell's book. Praying in Jesus' way. Not my will, but your will be done. Well, I was going to say, follow as I read this. You know, most of us probably learned the Lord's Prayer in the King James English. And I don't know if the young people know it, the old King James English. But let's try it, shall we? In the old King James English together. Can we do that together? Let's do it together. Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy 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 lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, both now and forevermore. Amen. You know it. That's good. Do you ever, ever do you ever have difficulty praying when you're under stress? I would guess that you do. I think all of us do something. We get distracted. We're under stress. It's hard to pray in his book. Brian Chappell tells the story about a monk who bet another monk that he could not pray the Lord's Prayer, which we just did together without having a wandering thought. He says, if you can do this, he says, I'll give you a horse. Well, after he got through the second request, The monk says, stop, I've already lost. He says, because I was wondering whether or not the horse came with a saddle. So wondering, wandering thoughts. Well, we do have wandering thoughts, don't we? We I don't know of anyone who doesn't. And if you say you don't, please tell me your secret when our prayer meeting is over this afternoon, if you would. The question that I'm asking today, this afternoon, is what is the golden thread that connects this prayer together? And I'm not going to tell you what that golden thread is, but we're just going to go briefly through each of the requests and then ask the question at the end. What is the golden thread that holds the prayer all together? And there is a golden thread, according to Brian Chappell. Now, you may not agree with him. You may have a different golden thread, and that's fine, because Brian Chappell could be wrong. I just like any preacher could be wrong about these things, but it is a I think he's probably right that that's why I'm I'm teaching it. Well, let's look at the request together. Hallowed be your name is the first request. Hallowed be your name. That is, we're asking God to make his name holy in our own lives, in the church, in the world. in every way. We want God's name to be holy. And you know that. And we pray that, don't we? It is a fantastic request to ask God's name to be holy. We want the whole creation to recognize the holiness, the greatness, the majesty and the glory of God. We want that for ourselves, our family, our church and so forth. Well, the second request is may your kingdom come and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And this is a large part of our prayers where it's very obvious here in the first part of the prayer. We're concentrating on God and what his glory is and his needs. We want his kingdom to come. We want him to rule over all things great and small. We want him to rule over our lives. I was reading this morning in my regular Bible reading the words of our Lord Jesus. He said, if you love your father, your mother, your wife or your son or your daughter more than me says you're not worthy of me. And I write little notes on my computer. And I just said on the computer, I said, do I really love the Lord God that much more than father or mother and everything? I mean, I want to, but I don't know about you, but I have to confess I don't always. Other things come up and we have to confess, but we love the Lord Jesus, don't we? Well, we want his kingdom to come. We want his rule to come. We want him to rule in our hearts. We want him to rule in the world. We want to see the gospel progress. We want to see our churches grow. We want to see them, as the hymn writer says, our churches full. That's what we want. And we pray for that. And we want his will to be done. We know it's his will that his kingdom progress, that his kingdom come. So we want God's name to be glorified. And we want him, as the hymn says, Jesus shall reign where'er the sun, where'er the sun he shall reign. And then there's a request for our daily bread. Give us this day our daily bread. And this is a prayer for our necessities. This is a request that we don't necessarily probably feel the need of praying every single day simply because we open the refrigerator and there's not room for anything more. Is there many times? Um, this is going out over the internet, so I can't use any names, but, um, we, I have, I have some friends who live in a far East country and they're, they can't be there anymore. Uh, but the wife went back to sell things out of the apartment and to, um, to get, and, and basically it closed down because they don't know if they'll ever be able to be back. Well, it happens to be in Shanghai. You know, what's going on in Shanghai, don't you? The lockdowns because of COVID over there. Well, they showed a picture where she and her friend were, they're locked down. They can't do what they need to do. They opened the refrigerator and it was almost empty. The prayer for daily bread was very, very real. But then a few days later, they opened the refrigerator and got a supply. The refrigerator was full. Their need had been met. So give us this day our daily bread. But it's not only our necessities. that we pray for. We can pray for the desires of our heart. As the psalmist says, delight yourself in the Lord and he shall give you the desires of your heart. And I hope that our desires are holy and pure and good. On the other hand, we've all read accounts, historical accounts, where it appears that the Lord hasn't answered that prayer. Chapel tells a story of Christians and believers in Sudan who were taken out into the desert in groups of 50, and they were not fed. And all they had to do to get food and water was to deny Christ. That's all they had to do. Well, they didn't do it and they died. So did the Lord not answer their prayer? Well, we remember that man shall not live by bread alone. We know that today they are rejoicing. The persecutors, unless they repented, are either suffering eternal judgment or will. So the Lord, we are to pray this, but he answers it in different ways at different times for different people. And then there's the prayer for keep us from temptation, as he says here. This really leads naturally, because when we when we pray for our daily necessities, the Lord provides that. And for us, at least here in our culture in America, he provides beyond that. I mean, we can even have ice cream. We can and we do. We can have desserts like we had here today, and that's not a necessity. It's a wonderful luxury. But the Lord gives all that to us. But then the temptation comes that we may desire these luxuries more than we desire Christ. And we become covetous as a result. So we've got to keep in mind Proverbs chapter 30, verses eight and nine, keep falsehood and lies far from me. Give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise I may have too much and disown you and say, who is the Lord or become poor and steal. And so dishonored the name of my God. Would any of us want to become so rich that we forget the Lord? I don't want that. Riches can be a stumbling block. They aren't necessarily. I mean, Abraham was a very wealthy man. There's nothing wrong with having riches. It's a wonderful thing. A wonderful blessing that the Lord gives to to to to some people more than others. But, oh, it can be a temptation. So we we ask the Lord to keep us from that temptation of covetousness. And then, of course, there is the request. Forgive us our sins. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And here we're asking the Lord to open up his storehouse of mercy. We need forgiveness. This forgiveness that we receive is beyond anything that we could ever give. Our forgiveness flows from the forgiveness that we have received. But I want you to notice what our Lord does not say. He does not say, Father, forgive us. As we forgive others, what if he had said that? Do you want that? I don't. Because we can never forgive someone like the Lord has forgiven us, we just don't do it. Now we forgive by the grace of God. When people sin against us, we forgive them and we can freely forgive. But I don't know if this has ever happened to you, but it has happened to me. There are people who have sinned against me and there's people who sinned against you. Unless you've been absolutely, totally in a different world than I live in. There's people who have sinned against you and then you've forgiven them. And then sometimes, at the most inopportune times, that thought of what they did to you comes back. And then a little seed of bitterness comes into your heart. Has that ever happened to you? Why? It's happened to me. And what do you do? I say, oh Lord, forgive me. I've forgiven them. You've forgiven me. Please take away the seed of bitterness. It just entered my mind. The forgiveness of the Lord is so different. He removes our sins from us as far as the East is from the West. That's how far away they are. And he buries them in the depths of the deepest sea. And then he even says that he remembers them no more. The thought never comes back up in our father's mind. Gordon, I remember what you did. Oh, I shouldn't remember it. That never happens, does it? He forgets it and it never enters his mind again because we are forgiven through the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ. So here we have these requests. We have. Hallowed be your name. Father, make your name holy. Your kingdom come. Your will be done. Provide this day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins as we as we forgive others and lead us not into temptation. Now, what's the golden thread? Well, I'm going to tell you what Chapel says, and then you can go home and think about it, whether or not you think he's right, OK? He says, here's the golden thread that runs through this entire prayer. It is. We're seeking always God's will. Seeking God's will. Hallowed be your name. That's his will. So we pray that prayer. We pray. Bring in your kingdom. And actually, there's where we actually have the statement. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That's God's will. Give us this day our daily bread. According to God's will, we receive our daily bread. Keep us from temptation. It is God's will that we not sin. He never tempts us, of course. We are tempted when we're drawn away of our own loss. But it's God's will that we seek. Lead us not into temptation. Forgive us our sins. It is God's will that we are forgiven of our sins. You remember 1 John 1 9. If we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And that is written to Christians, of course. These things are written that you may know that you have eternal life. And I've taken great comfort many, many times as I've as I've quoted that verse sometimes in the middle of the night. That it doesn't say if we confess our sins, he's merciful to forgive them. He's faithful and just. He's already shown his mercy. He's already shown his mercy. There's no more mercy he can show us because we're in Christ. But because of his promise that he's taken our sin away because of his promise, he is going to be faithful to forgive all the sins that we commit as we walk through this world and dirty our feet with various transgressions of his law. He's faithful and just. Your will be done. So I think Chappell's on to something here. And There may be another golden thread that you see, and that that would be that would be wonderful because I'd like to learn from you as much as I can. But this was this was very helpful, very helpful to me. And I trust that it will be to you as well. Speaking about the will of God, Chapel had this soldier's prayer in this chapter. And I found it on the Internet and the story behind it. And I think it's a good illustration. It's a prayer that perhaps many of you have read. It's the unknown Confederate soldier. And he was probably a young man in his 20s, and he was at war. And they found this prayer on him stuck on a piece of paper in his pocket from when from his body, from his body. And here's what this unknown Confederate soldier wrote. I asked God for strength that I might achieve. I was made weak that I might learn humbly how to obey. I asked for health that I might do greater things. I was given infirmity that I might do better things. I asked for riches that I might be happy. I was given poverty that I might be wise. I asked for power that I might have the praise of men. I was given weakness that I might feel the need of God. I asked for all things that I might enjoy life. I was given life that I might enjoy all things. I got nothing that I asked for, but everything I hoped for. Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered. I am among all men most richly blessed. Evidently, a young man that learned thy will be done, not mine. Well, before we go to prayer, let's sing again and we're