The Winning Walk with Dr Ed Young

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to the Winning Walk with Doctor ed Young. Before
we get to today's message, we want to tell you
about an insightful sermons series from Dr Young called The
Church Awake. Our world is teetering on the edge of
disorder and disaster, and this series sounds an inspiring call
for the church to awaken and engage your culture with
clarity and conviction on important issues, standing confidently on truth

(00:25):
than bending to the pressures of the world. This series
is our thanks for your gift to help keep the
proven truth of God's Word reaching you and others around
the world through this program. So be sure to request
your copy of The Church Awake when you give just
call one eight hundred three five oh Walk one eight
hundred three five oh nine two five five. Now let's

(00:48):
get started with today's teaching from Doctor Young.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
Over your Bibles Matthew chapter number six. I'll read verse
five and six. Then I'll read verse nine in Matthew
six five six nine. Ready, when you pray, you're not
to be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand
and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners,

(01:14):
so that they may be seen by men. Truly, I
say to you they have their reward in full. But you,
when you pray, go into your inner room, your closet,
close your door, and pray to your father, who is
in secret. And your father, who sees what is done
in secret, will reward you. What he's saying here is

(01:39):
who you are in secret, who I am in secret?
Go to bed? What do you think about? Wake up?
What do you think about? Quiet times by yourself? What
do you think about? That's the siner of your life.
Who you are, who I am is best seen in secret.
What do you think about? What do you think about?

(02:00):
What do you think about it? And then verse nine,
Jesus says, pray, then in this way, our Father, who
art in heaven, hollow it be thy name. Let's prepare
for the teaching of his word. And Oh Lord, we

(02:21):
know that we have to prepare for your truth. We
can't just come into church casually and expect anything except
just a ritual or the motions of worship. Lord, open
up our minds our hearts, our ears, our lives to

(02:44):
truth as we seek to worship Thee in spirit. Our
hearts are right and in truth, in full knowledge as
to who you are. Let me get out of the way.
Is our prayer in Jesus' name. I'm in the first

(03:06):
followers of Jesus were like a bunch of kids, just
like a bunch of kids. Jesus went up to them
and they were fishing, engaged, I'm sure in their family vocation,
and Jesus said, follow me. They didn't know much about him,

(03:28):
and they put their nets down and just sort of
the Bible seems to say, spontaneously followed Jesus like a
bunch of kids. Another it happened, follow me, follow me,
follow me, and they followed him. How old were those guys,
I don't know, maybe older teenagers, maybe early twenties, mid twenties,

(03:51):
maybe a few in their early thirties. But they were
like a bunch of kids. And I wonder if they ask,
In fact, I know they asked in their mind, what
is it going to be like in the future for
me to be a follower of this man? What's going
to happen in the future as I follow this man?

(04:15):
They could never have guessed, could they not in a
million years? Because as they followed Jesus, those apostles disciples,
they went from one mind boggling experience to another. Blind
man now he's ees, wow, lame woman. Now she walks whoa, whoa?

(04:41):
Wait a minute, storm quite the heavens. Mind boggling, mind boggling.
That was their experience as followers of Jesus. And then

(05:04):
they saw that sometimes they would eat a meal and
they were camping out as they were traveling primarily through
Galilee early on, and they'd look up and they say,
where's the Master And they'd say, well, he's gone to pray.
He'll be praying all night. They'd be walking down the
road and he'd walk on ahead and they'd say, well,

(05:27):
what's his hurry? And they said, oh, look look at look,
look he's got that crazy look he's he's he's praying.
Then he would lag back as they were walking, they'd say,
what's he doing back there? Well, he's talking to the Father.
He slipped the way over there behind those rocks on

(05:47):
the mountain. What do you do? He's praying. This went
on all the time. There was this private time Jesus
had with the Father and the public time he administered
the supernatural, And naturally they begin to ask man, what's
his secret? And they saw and discovered it was prayer.

(06:10):
Now they were all familiar with praying. Did you know
the pious Jew would pray three times a day. They
would pray in them morn in the shima. They had
seventeen different petitions they would offer to God as a ritual,
seventeen of them count them. So they knew about prayer.
They prayed all their life. Jesus, I'm sure all of
his life, prayed those seventy petitions every day. But they

(06:34):
saw in Jesus a kind of praying that was, could
I say it out of this world? And so they
went to him, according to Luke chapter eleven, and said,
we want to learn how to pray like that. And
so Jesus gave them a pattern of prayer that we're

(06:56):
going to look at. Now. Somebody may be said, we're
studying the law, for that's the only thing in the
Bible that I really know. I don't need to study
the Lord. Let me tell you something. I have preached
and taught of the Lord's prayer dozens of times, but
in preparation for this study, I haven't looked at one word,

(07:20):
a one note that I've taken in all the years
of studying the prayer. I started clean and fresh. Some
of you don't know it but I write out my sermons.
I'm old fashioned. I write them out. Usually they're about
anywhere from thirty five to forty five double space pages.

(07:41):
Now I just do that. I don't memorize it. Somebody says,
what do you do when you forget? I said, I
keep talking till I remember. And when you write it out,
when you write it out, that's you. And so I
write out as I study and as I prepare, and

(08:01):
I just stand up and you punch me. And That's
what God's laid on my heart. But I haven't gone
back and looked at any of the past because I
wanted what is said to be fresh. And God shows
us things. You could take the same scripture and study
it and pray over it and meditate, read commentaries, ask people,
go to Bible studies, and soundly you will pick it

(08:21):
up one day and it's like, that's the living word,
isn't it. That's the living word. Some of you understand that,
some of you never experienced that it is out of
this world, out of this world. So we come here
and see that Jesus taught them how to pray. And

(08:44):
how important is that we learn how to pray? Let
me say two things to you. If you really pray,
these two things have to be in place. Okay, you
could say words, rituals, go through the emotion, but if
you really pray, you have to have two things operating.

(09:05):
Number one has to know who God is. Number two
has to know who you are. Got that. You can't
pray unless you know who God is. And you can't
pray unless you know who you are. So you have
to know God. You have to know yourself. Pretty tall order.

(09:26):
First of all, we can't pray unless we know God.
You say, well, what's that about. There are a lot
of god so called God's running around. Kathy Grossman, USA
Today writer responding to a survey taken by three Baylor sociologists,
and they this survey gave how America sees God. I

(09:51):
want you to look at it on your screams up there.
This is how America sees God. Some people see God
as a look authoritative God, see the blue. They see
God as thou shalt, not thou shalt. This is the way,

(10:13):
this is the way you go, This is what you do,
this is what you don't do. Now, they see God
like that. Now to pray to a God that you
see like that, would be totally different from praying from
a god you see as a benevolent god. See that
twenty two percent of America see God is benevolent. Do

(10:35):
you need anything? Do you want anything? I want you
to be happy. I want you to be fulfilled. And
if you're not healed, you don't have enough faith. I mean,
God is just what can I do for you? Well,
I'm I'm I've got this terrible thing I'm doing. Don't
worry about that. It's okay. I'm like a grandfather. My

(10:58):
grandkids can do no wrong. And if I think perhaps
somebody thinks they're doing wrong, I just leave them. I
just say, but what do you pray to a God
who's benevolent god? And look at the bottom, what do
you pray to a God that is a critical God?
That's not quite good enough? I know, I know you pray.

(11:19):
You didn't pray long enough. I prayed fifteen minutes. Oh,
you ought to pray at least thirty. Oh. I read
my Bible. If on Iron Hacke, you should have read
it two hours. A critical God. That's not right. You're
not doing it right. You're you're real wrong. And boy,
here's a god everything you do is not quite good enough.
You ought not to have done that, and you ought

(11:40):
to have done that a critical God. Look at the
hybrids and of American see God is a critical God.
Then we talked about God as a distant God. Twenty
four percent these would be dice. I guess they have
the idea that God brought this world into being, the
solar system into being, and just threw us out there

(12:01):
and then oblivion and said, whoo, lots of lot, gang
hang on that gravity will just be you. I mean.
And they see God as a distant God. And there's
the world and where we are up there. You pray
to a distant God. How do you do it? I
guess you had God. Can you hear me? I can't
hear you. I'm not even interested in you. Then you

(12:24):
got that little small slice of people who are atheists
and agnostics. They believe there's no God, or we can't
know God, or we don't know him yet. And that's
how Americans believe. That's their picture of God. There you
have five different pictures. Now, if you pray to an
authoritative God you'd pray one day, or a benevolent God,
or a critical God or a distant God, you'd pray

(12:46):
in different ways, wouldn't you, and your prayers weld be invalid,
they'd be nonsensical because none of these tell us who
God is. That's the reason we spend all of these
weeks talking about the names of God, because when you

(13:08):
reveal someone's name, you understand their nature and their character
and their personality, their assets, their liab buildings, goes with
the name. I say, Wayne Fancher leads the music. God
minters to music. Everything about him, depending on how much
you know about him, goes with that name. You say,

(13:29):
the names of God eloheen Yahweh, Jehovah, Jehovah, Ralpha, l
el Yon. You're revealing God is making himself known in
his name. So we see, we learn who we who
God is, who God is, and so we want to

(13:54):
pray to the true God who has given us a
picture of himself in this book, and it's best seen
in the name of Jesus. In the name of Jesus,
see we see God have to have a true understanding,
a true picture. We have to know God in order
to pray. And look what it says, our Father. Look

(14:17):
at all the plural personal pronouns in the prayer our
us us. We not in the Lord's prayer. Do you
find one single singular personal pronoun. You don't say my father. No,

(14:37):
you don't find my father, my debts, my, it's not there.
It's all plural. It's our. It's a corporate prayer. It's
not only a corporate prayer. We say our. Guess what
Jesus is praying with us? Who gave us this prayer? Jesus,
he saying our. We pray with Jesus. That's the only

(14:59):
way to pray to. We can't get to the Father
except through Jesus. And now Jesus says, how do you pray?
We pray our Jesus prays with you and me when
we pray. I get excited about that. I think about it.
I mean, Jesus is praying with us our Father. And
we can't pray unless we have a relationship, a personal
relationship with the Father. And the only way we have

(15:19):
that is through Jesus Christ. So we begin to see
who God is and we pray to the true and
live in God. And that changes everything about our prayer,
does it? So we have to know who God is.
Also we have to know ourselves. There's a task. Why

(15:41):
do you think God send his son in the world. Well,
you say, oh, I know that one. I've been to
church to save me. Know he sent his son in
the world primarily to make out of you and me
a worshiper. Do you know that our first thing we
are to be is a worshiper. Christ came and took

(16:02):
a bunch of rebels and made us send the worshippers.
That's what we are to be worshipers. You say, well,
what does it mean to worship? Hallowed be thy name?
That's the beginning step of worship. How do you like
the word hallowed? Have you used that lately? No, it's

(16:22):
a kind of an old fashioned word. It's an Anglo
Saxon word. It comes from the English word hal h
a l E say, I don't know that word. Oh,
yes you do. We say to somebody, how are you doing? Well?
I'm hale and hearty. There it is. Now, what does

(16:43):
it mean to be hale? It means to be holy,
It means to be separate, it means to be solid.
It means to be complete. So you say, how are
you doing? I'm complete, I'm holy, I'm solid, I've got
it all together. I'm unique, I'm complete. All this is

(17:06):
involved in the word hallowed. In our translations, most of them,
even the new modern translation, they still use the word hallowed,
and some of them have reverend, reverent, reverend be thy
name or unique, be thy name special. But you can't
beat hallowed hallowed because this leads us to worship. Now,

(17:31):
what is worship? Simple definition? By the way, if you
ever write anything down, this might be with the right now,
but I don't want to upset anybody. Worship is to
feel in your heart. It's to feel in your heart
and to respond with wonder, awe and humility is to

(18:01):
feel in your heart and to respond with oh and
wonder and humility. You meet God and God meets you worship.
Did you know we were all built to be worshipers.
That's the primary reason God sent his son in this

(18:22):
world to clean up our act on the cross of
Jesus Christ, so we're able to worship, have a divine
appointment with God. To worship, we are called primarily say
who am I? I'm a worshiper. If I'm in Christ?
Who is God? He is a father, our father. So

(18:44):
we know who God is and we know that we
are worshipers. But in our society, how we have moved
away from being worshipers. How far we've moved away from
that Moses in the wilderness, Remember all the people were thirsty,

(19:05):
they were dying. And God said, Moses, speak to the rock.
And Moses took that rod and struck the rock. Water
came forth. But God says, Moses, you have responded to
my sacred request in a very personal, secular way in
striking that rock. Moses, guess what, You're not going to

(19:27):
go to the Promised Land. His whole life was about
going to the Promised Land. His whole reason for being
alive was to lead the children into the Promised Land.
But because he responded to a sacred request and a selfish, violet,
personal secular way, bang, he was prohibited. He was prohibited.

(19:50):
Did you read in the paper about in a rural
church a young kid went in there and took a
stick and just smashed everything. Did you read that he
just smashed up everything you could find in church in anger,
just smashed, smashed, smashed up, broke up the whole church.
The reason was he came from a tough family, had

(20:12):
a problem with anger, and he wanted to go on
to church picnic miscommunication. He didn't get to go, so
he went in there and just smashed up the church. Say,
what's a horrible thing the place that's set aside for
God's business to be smashed like that? But we realized
that you and I are in the smashing business. We

(20:35):
take sacred things, they've become secular. We have smashed up
sacred relationships, have we not? Marriage is a covenant, sacred,
and we'd taken marriage and made it secular and say
I'm just ready to move on. Oh, we say the

(20:58):
dumbest thing of all, I just don't love you anymore,
as if love is a feeling instead of an action.
We smashed. We smashed the relationship between parents and children.
Children are to honor and respect their parents, honor and respect,

(21:19):
and there is a biblical promise, long will you be
your days on this earth? The Lord has Lord, thy
God has given you when you respect and honor, it's
a commandment with promise. And we are to respect and
honor our parents even when they're wrong, even when they're
out of base, even if you are eighty one and

(21:40):
they are one hundred and three. The respect and honor
is there. We have taken and smashed sacred relationships, and
we smash sacred days. Did you know in the Commandments
there's more written about the Sabbath than any other commandment,
been any other commandment? And where in the new Sabbath

(22:02):
we're in the resurrection day of Sunday, Acts twenty twenty four.
But I do not consider my life of any account.
Is dear to myself, so that I may finish my
course and the ministry which I receive from the Lord Jesus,

(22:24):
to testify solemnly in the Gospel of the Grace of God. Now,
one definition of the word abandoned is to give oneself
over without reservation, holding nothing back. For example, a person
who jumps out of a plane abandons himself to the parachute,

(22:45):
same with a bungee cord. In Acts chapter twenty we
find the apostle Paul saying farewell to the church in Ephicus.
Although he knew hardship, persecution, and danger were in his future.
Paul in the believers that.

Speaker 3 (23:01):
He was abandoned, totally sold out and surrender to God.
He had placed his life in God's hands, and this abandonment,
in this abandonment, through this abandonment, he found security.

Speaker 2 (23:19):
Are you abandoned to God, his purpose and planned for
your life? Really, I can guarantee that His hands are
much more reliable than any parachute or bungee cord, and
that your life experiences will be much more exciting and meaningful.
And really, so listen, abandon yourself, sell out, surrender. God's

(23:44):
hands await you.

Speaker 1 (23:51):
We hope today's message has encouraged you to build your
life on the proven truth of God's word, and we'd
love to encourage you even more by sending you Doctor
to Young's eight message series, The Church Awake. This powerful
series will help you understand cultural trends and the threat
they represent to marriage, to family, and to a biblical worldview,
and equip you to courageously take your stand against the

(24:14):
forces that seek to silence you and compromise your witness.
So call now to request The Church Awake is our
thanks for your gift to reach more people with the
proven truth.

Speaker 2 (24:23):
Of God's word.

Speaker 1 (24:25):
Call one eight hundred three five oh walk. That's one
eight hundred three five oh nine.

Speaker 2 (24:31):
Two five five.

Speaker 1 (24:33):
Thanks for being with us today on the Winning Walk.
Tune in next time as Doctor Young shares more proven
truth from God's word,