Dr Charles Stanley - A Pattern for Prayer - Part 1

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
If we understand the holiness of God, we will live
holy before God, and not to do so as a
contradiction of everything we profess, everything we claim to be,
and everything we said to the world. We are my Father,
who are in heaven. You're holy. I want your Kingdom's
rule in my life. I want your will in my life.

(00:23):
I look to you as the source of all my needs.
You're the only one who can forgive me and cleanse
my heart.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
We face complex issues on many levels. Almost every day.
Scripture tells us to pray fervently about these needs, But
how do you know what the real issue is?

Speaker 1 (00:43):
Today?

Speaker 2 (00:43):
On in Touch, the teaching ministry of doctor Charles Stanley,
will discover a pattern for prayer that's accurate and relevant
every time our series Learning to Pray the Bible Way continues.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
When you pray, what is the primary objective of your prayer?
Is it to get something from God? Well? If that is,
there's nothing wrong with that, because Jesus said asking it
should be given you seeking you shall find knocking it
shall be opening to you, and all through the scriptures
where admonished to ask for our needs. But if that
is the primary objective of your prayer, you're missing something

(01:23):
because from God's point of view, the primary objective of
our prayer should be fellowship and communion with the Father.
But most people's idea of praying is you just ask
God for what you want, and he'll give it to
you sooner or later, and if you live it right,
you're surely getting. If you're not, maybe you want that's
not what praying is all about. But because many people

(01:46):
since that as a method of talking to God and
they call it prayer, and that's the way they pray,
their prayer after a while becomes ritualistic and sort of perfunction.
It's something they sort of get through. After they've given
their list, it's in Jesus name, they're on their way,
not much time. And what happens is after a while
gets set of dull because after a while, also they're

(02:09):
not many answers that come. And so if they're not
many answers coming, and that's what you're primarily after, then
why I keep talking to God who's not answering your prayer.
There is a prayer that millions of people have prayed
that God will not answer, and there's a reason for it.
And now I want you to turn to. That prayer

(02:29):
is found in the Sermon of the Mount in Matthew
chapter six. You and I call it the Lord's prayer.
It is a pattern prayer, and that's the title of
this message, a pattern for prayer in Matthew chapter six,
beginning in verse five and reading through verse fifteen, it's
a prayer that many people have repeated and repeated and

(02:50):
repeated for years and years and years, didn't know what
it meant, still don't know what it means, and most
of all have absolutely no right whatsoever to be praying
the prayer. So let's look at it, if you will,
and see what God would say to us. And as
we've said in the very beginning, and this is part
of series on prayer, learning to pray the Bible Way,

(03:13):
And each of these times we've taken a passage to
find out what is God saying in that specific passage
about prayer. So let's look at this beginning in verse five.
And when you pray, you not to be as the hypocrites,
for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues
and on the street corners in order to be seen
by men. Truly, I say to you, they have their

(03:33):
reward in full. But you, when you pray, go into
your inner room, and when you've shut your door, pray
and your pray to your father, who is in secret.
And your father, who sees in secret, will repay you.
And when you're praying, do not use meaningless repetitions as
the gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be
heard for their many words. Therefore, do not be like them.

(03:56):
For your father knows what you have need of before
you ask him. Pray. Then in this way, Jesus says,
now here's a method. Our father, who are in heaven,
hallow would 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,

(04:19):
as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not
lead us into a temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the
glory forever. Amen. And then he adds the following, For
if you forgive men for their transgressions, for heaven and
Father will also forgive you. But if you do not
forgive men, then your father will not forgive your transgressions.

(04:43):
Now I want to ask you a question that I'm
going to ask you several times, and that's simply this,
how much time in any given day does God have
you all to himself, with your undivided attention concentrating on
him and no one else. Well, my friend, no matter

(05:04):
what you say about your prayer life, if you're only
giving God a little bit of time in which you
are making your request and you hurp and get over
that so you can get on with something more important,
more than likely you're not really praying God's way. That's
not communion. That's issuing a list hurriedly praying that the

(05:24):
Father will reaching the storehouse sends you what you want,
and you get on your way with what you think
is important in the eyes of God. More important than
giving you what you want is time to fellowship with you,
because you see, it takes time to love and to
be loved. And God's objective in giving us prayer is
giving us the privilege of expressing our feelings, our desires,

(05:45):
our wants, our heartaches, our burdens, our sorrows, our cares,
but likewise thinking about him, adoring him, loving him, worshiping him.
And the problem is that most folks idea of prayer
is so juvenile and so infantile, and so unbiblical. The
thinking in terms of listening to God and speaking to

(06:05):
God and fellowshipping with him is totally foreign to their thinking.
If praying is primarily communing with the Father and we
only give him a few moments per week, then we
don't know anything about prayer. Now here's the problem. I
could stand here all day and tell you what it
means to be quiet and to be alone by yourself

(06:28):
with the Father, just listening, just loving him, just letting
him love you in return, just telling him what you
feel and knowing that he's listening, and having him speak
to your spirit and assure you and encourage you or
give you direction. I could go through all of that,
but I want to tell you won't make one bit
of difference until you give God the time and you
allow him to do that in your life. And when

(06:50):
you do, nobody's going to have to ask you to pray.
Nobody's gonna have to beg you to spend time praying.
You know what, you will make time to be with
the Father. When did you have a rush into your
bedroom or into your den? Take the phone off the hook,
isolate yourself from everybody else and just get on your
face before God and just tell him you just love

(07:13):
him and you're grateful, and you thank him and you
praise him, and you run out of words and you
go them again because you don't know how to tell
him exactly how you really feel. Well, there's the prayer.
Lots of folks have repeated and repeated and repeated it.
In fact, millions of people have prayed this prayer or
repeated it. Didn't know what it meant. God never heard
it the first time. And you and I call it

(07:34):
the Lord's prayer. He says, our prayers ought to be
what listen verse five. When you pray, you not to
be as the hypocrites. They love to stand and pray
in the synagogues and on the street corners in order
to be seen by men. True lie say to you,
they have their rewarding full. He says. First of all,
when you come to God and pray, you should come

(07:55):
in sincerity, never to show off, never to make an impression.
Not praying so other folks will hear us and maybe
somehow say it wasn't that a beautiful prayer? Doesn't she pray? Well,
isn't he good at praying? My friend, If that's the
reason we are praying, you know what God says. He says,
whatever they say is all the rewards you get. In full.

(08:19):
You just got paid, which means not going to do
you a bit of good. He says. If you're praying
to be seen, you've had it. That's all the rewards
you're going to get. Second thing, he said, But when
you pray, go into your inner room, and when you've
shut your door, pray to your father who is in secret.
And your father, who sees in secret, will repay you. Notice,

(08:40):
he says, the first fellow has his reward, he's been
seen by others. The person who prays in secret will
be repaid. That is, God will honor, and God will
answer that prayer. What is he referring to here? Simply this,
and that is the times when you and I exclude
ourselves from everyone else and we get alan to talk
to the Father. Public praying will, ever do, will have

(09:02):
no more effect than the private prayers we pray. The
choicest way to pray is not in public, where everybody
can see you, where everybody can hear. There's nothing wrong
with that, He's not against public prayer, but our public
prayers should probably be short, to the point, and certainly
not arrayed in some kind of beautiful language in order

(09:22):
to impress someone with our education, experience, our spiritual to
our pacity. But rather, he says, the real key here
is what in the privhecy the door shut. That's where
we can be spontaneous. That's where we can feel liberty.
That's where the real you comes forth. And in the
privacy of our own prayer room, whatever that may be,

(09:46):
he says, in secret, because the secret prayer is going
to make the public prayer more effective. Then he says
a third thing in verse seven or third characteristic. When
you pray, do not use meaningless repetitions. Now, the Lord's prayer,
which is the pattern prayer, and the Lord's prayer in
John seventeen is probably the best Lord's prayer, the best

(10:06):
explanation of that. But this is a pattern that Jesus gave.
Now you can repeat this our father, who aren't having hell,
they'll be done in that kingdom. Come back, we will
be don't know if this is in heaven. Every one
of us can say the whole prayer amount of a
split few seconds, absolutely meaningless and can think of something
else while we are praying it. We can be just
as guilty as the unbeliever by simply quoting or repeating

(10:27):
a prayer which we call praying when it's meaningless to us,
don't understand what it means, not applying it to our life.
And I want to show you really the truth is,
it's sort of dangerous to pray this way. And he says,
don't be like the Heathens who pray with meaningless repetitions,
and what they would do, They would just go on
and on and on long elaborate prayers trying to impress

(10:51):
their God. Doesn't mean that we will not pray the
same thing over and over again. Jesus in the Garden
of gath semony prayed, Father, if it be thy will,
Three times he prayed the same prayer. There's nothing wrong
with saying the same thing in your request over and
over again, if that's what you feel. Nor is there
anything wrong with a prayer that maybe someone else has

(11:11):
written that you can honestly pray with them. In sincere to,
there are denominations that have prayer books, and you can
pray that prayer if you mean it, if you understand
the meaning of the prayer, and you commit yourself to
what you're praying, that's one thing. But if you're just
repeating some instruction that someone else has given you as
somebody else's prayers, it becomes the same meaningless jargon that

(11:35):
Jesus talked about when he said those pagans who pray
to their gods trying to convince and persuade him, it's
meaningless repetition and it amounts to absolutely zero. Don't expect
anything from God. Now, then he gives us a prayer.
He says to his disciples, here's a pattern that you
can go by. And this does not mean that this

(11:55):
is the prayer that we had to pray all the time.
This is the only prayer we to pray. Because I
want to explain this prayer. Well, that has three parts
to it, and I want you to look here for
a moment. Has three parts to it. The first part
is in verse nine when he says, our Father, which
are in heaven. That's sort of the doxology, or rather
the invocation. And then comes the petition beginning with halle

(12:18):
be thy name, and then comes the doxology at the
very end when he says for Thine is the kingdom
and the power and the glory forever. Amen. A very
short prayer. But I want you to ask yourself this question.
I want to explain it that. I want you to
ask yourself this question. Can I really pray that prayer?
Some of you who are lost, you've never received Jesus
Christ as you save you. You don't even go to

(12:38):
church too much. You happen to be listening at this
particular time, and you've been repeating this prayer for years.
And you get in trouble, and you get scared, and
finances go down, and if somebody gets sick, you want
to call in some preacher or somebody, or what do
you do? You get on your knees for our Father,
which aret and having how it to be Thy name,
that kingdom come out, will be done, and you repeat
that prayer, and the worse off the condition is, the

(12:58):
more sincere you repeat the prayer. And I want to
tell you, God never hears one word of it. He said, no,
wait a minute, Jesus said, we to pray that prayer.
If I pray that prayer, you mean God is listening,
not listening? Well, what did Jesus say to them then
pray then in this way. If he's not going to listen,
here's the reason, because he begins by saying, our Father,

(13:23):
Listen our Father, who are in heaven. Who can say
our Father, who are in heaven? Only those who have
recognized Jehovah God as their father. You say, well, but
I do believe that God is God. Do you really well?
Listen to what his virgin born incarnate son, his only
beloved son, Jesus Christ, the Lord, Jesus Christ, the Savior,

(13:49):
Jesus Christ, our life. Said the one who said, if
you've seen the Father, you've seen me. I'm the father
of one. Listen to what he said. No man comes
to the Father, but by me, to those who believe
in him, to them give he the power to become
the sons of God. The only person who can say
our father is one who is a child of God.
You say, well, but all of us are children of

(14:09):
God because God is the creator. Everyone is a child
of God, and the fact that God is the creator
of all humanity. But until you can say it spiritually,
our Father, then, my friend, that prayer is meaningless, and
to repeat it is absolutely a waste of your time.
And the only way you can say, our father is
first of all to accept the gift of forgiveness provided

(14:35):
by our Father, and that forgiveness has provided in his son,
Jesus Christ, who went to Calvary, sacrificed his life, laid
down his life, placed upon himself the sin of all mankind,
so that every single person who is forgiven of their
sin is forgiven by receiving Jesus Christ as their personal

(14:57):
save in Jesus that if you've seen Me, you've seen
the Father. You you cannot get to the Father and
bypass the Son somebody. So I don't believe all this
stuff about Jesus, but I believe in God. No, you don't.
You may believe there is a God. You may believe
in a God that you have configured in your mind.
But until you believe in the God as revealed by

(15:18):
the person of Jesus Christ, you are believing in a God,
but not the God who is Jehovah Elohem Yahweh, the
God of the Old Testament, the God of the New Testament,
whose son Jesus Christ is the only way to understand
what God's all about. Therefore, he limits this prayer in
the very beginning to those who can honestly and sincerely say,

(15:39):
my Father, who are in heaven. Now, When he said
who are in heaven, that does not mean that God
is geographically bound to heaven, because you and I know
that everything in every place and all things are in
the presence of God. But God is seated, on the
other hand, in the heavens at his throng, And he says,
when you and I come to him, we are to
approach him. God, listen, our Father, who are in heaven.

(16:03):
Then he says, there are three things about the Father
that you and I are to think about and to
honor and our prayers His name, his kingdom, and his
will hallow would be thy name. What that means is
holy be the name of the Lord God. And the
name of God represents all that God is. It represents
all of his characteristics, all of his attributes, all of

(16:27):
his actions. That is, the name of a person summarizes
the totality of that person. So when a person says,
hallowed be Thy Name, what you're saying is God, I
recognize and honor you as Holy God. If you're an
UNBELIEVERD the reason you can't pray that prayers is because
you don't recognize the holiness of God. You say, well, yeah,

(16:48):
I do too. No, you don't. If you acknowledge the
holiness of God, you would fall upon your face in
confession and repentance and cry out to Him for mercy
and forgiveness. Before God, it is either mere words or
a confession and a declaration and a proclamation that you
acknowledge and honor the holiness of God, and that no

(17:12):
sinfulness can stand in the presence of Holy God. The
very idea that a lost person can come to God
and say, our Father, which are in heaven, hallowould be
thy name is a contradiction in terms that listen. A
person living in willful known rebellion against God and rejecting
his son does not honor the holiness of God, because

(17:35):
the holiness of God is to be found in his son,
Jesus Christ. In any person who says to God the Father,
I do believe that I can come to you, and
bypass your son is declaring God the Father. Your experience
at Calvary by crucifying your own son was a tragic mistake.
I can come to you without him, And therefore, what
a terrible, horrible waste. What has blasphemy against God. A

(18:02):
person cannot say, our Father, who are in heaven, holy
is thy name, I recognize your holiness and your righteousness.
That means that whatever God says and does is right,
and God says no man comes to the Father except
through his son, Jesus Christ. Jesus says, I came into
the world that the loss in the world may be saved.
I came to give my life a ransom from any

(18:24):
I was sent by the Father. I only do the
things I see the Father do. For you. To come
to the Father and bypass his son, ignore his son,
rebel against his son, reject his son, spurn his son,
is blasphemy against God. I'm coming to you God, but
I don't have to come through your son. What you're
saying is God, you either made a mistake and you're wrong.

(18:46):
I'm coming anyway. No, you're not. You may try to,
but you won't get that. You pray all you want
to pray, But I want to tell you God isn't
going to answer that prayer because an unrighteous, unholy listen,
lost person who has rebelled against God is not recognizing
the holiness of God, so that petition won't work. But

(19:08):
you're not a come to Him acknowledging his holiness. And
what does that do? When you and I kneel in
the presence of God, or standing the presence of God,
or whatever it may be in our heart. When you
understand the holiness of God, there cannot be any pride,
There can be no egotism, there can be no self sufficiency.
I'm not coming to God in control. I'm humbling myself

(19:30):
before Holy God, whose righteousness is absolutely supreme and sovereign
above all the works of humanity.

Speaker 2 (19:44):
Maybe doctor Stanley's message has opened your eyes to the
essential significance of Christ's sacrifice. Place your trust in Him
today and receive God's gift of forgiveness and salvation. Then
you can begin enjoying the incomparable benefits of prayer. Learn
more about becoming a Christian at InTouch dot org and

(20:04):
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It's one eight hundred in touch. You can write to

(20:27):
us at in Touch Post Office Box seventy nine hundred, Atlanta, Georgia,
three zero three five seven. The believer who serves God
in this life is preparing to serve Him for eternity.
Listen for today's moment with Charles Stanley coming up.

Speaker 3 (20:46):
In places where churches have closed or never existed, the
need for discipleship beyond evangelism is urgent. Our mission is
to train people on the frontlines of ministry through Life
Principles training based on the biblical teaching of doctor Charles Stanley,
shaping people to reflect Jesus and empowering them to fulfill
the Great Commission. For more info, visit in touch dot

(21:09):
org slash Global.

Speaker 4 (21:14):
With the thirty Life Principles Bible Study, you'll enjoy a
rich exploration of God's Word designed as a ninety day
learning experience for individual use or in a group setting.
You'll explore doctor Stanley's thirty Life Principles and learn how
to make the Bible look part of your everyday life
because we can all benefit from a closer look. To
order the Thirty Life Principles Bible Study, call one eight

(21:37):
hundred in Touch or visit InTouch dot org. Slash store.

Speaker 2 (21:45):
You're listening to in Touch. God is honored when believers
serve him willingly, obediently, and humbly. Here's a moment with
Charles Stanley.

Speaker 1 (21:58):
When I express love toward other people, what are we doing.
We're building reward and we don't do it for that motive.
When we see people, for example, in need, we want
to give to them. When we see ways that we
can help someone else, we want to help them. A
person who's building that kind of structure has a sense

(22:20):
of humility about them, and they're willing to forgive, and
they're willing to go through difficult hard times and claim
Romans eight twenty eight that I know that somehow, even
though God is allowing these things in my life, He's
going to turn it for my good. And a person
who is building that kind of structure on their life,

(22:43):
they're merciful toward others. And maybe the don't always understand.
For example, something as simple as this. You see this
little lady and she's on the corner and she's getting
ready to cross the street, and it's bad traffic, and
she's looked like she's not doing too good. You walk
up and say, ma'am, just let me walk across the
street with you. Now. Nobody else may see that. Nobody

(23:05):
else may never ever know it, and you may not
ever tell anybody. He sees it. He knows it, he
records it. You know what you did. You express love,
You express kindness. You were tender the way you approached her.
You helped her, You help someone who is in need.
Every day of our life, we have the awesome privilege

(23:27):
of building on our life and instilling within our life
those activities that what that God sees as those things
that are consistent with a foundation, and He's going to
reward us for every single one of them. That's why
godly living is so very important, besides the fact that's
who we are.

Speaker 2 (23:49):
Learn more about living the Christian life at endtouch dot org.
Have you been encouraged by what you heard today? Take
some time to let us know tomorrow. In Touch, Jesus'
model prayer in Matthew chapter six may be short, but
it's very rich and meaningful. We'll hear more about it
Thursday on in Touch, the Teaching Ministry of doctor Charles Stanley.

(24:17):
This program is a presentation of in Touch Ministries Atlanta,
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