Matthew 6:9-15, How Do You Pray?, Dr. John B. Carpenter

Covenant Reformed Baptist Church

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On Matthew chapter 6, beginning from verses 9 to 15, hear the Word of the

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Lord. Pray then like this, Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

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Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

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And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly

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Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your

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Father forgive your trespasses. May the Lord add his blessings to the reading of his holy word.

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Modern American Christianity is filled with the spirit of narcissism. We are in love with ourselves and evaluate churches, ministers, and truth claims based upon how they make us feel about ourselves.

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If the church makes me feel wanted, it's a good church. If the minister makes me feel good about myself, he's a terrific guy.

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If the proffered truth supports my self -esteem, it is thereby verified.

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That's Mr. Monty Wilson describing what he called church -o -rama, it's a show put on for the entertainment of consumers, judged to be successful first on how it makes me feel, and then we really know it's successful if that feeling is able to draw in more and more people.

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We provide those people with something they want, and then they come, and they keep coming right up until something else provides them with something they want better.

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We have a common religion today that caters to, rather than challenges, narcissism.

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Now think of the words that we use for what we're doing right now. We call this a, what do we call it? This is a church service.

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Now who is being served? If we're in a restaurant and we talk about, you know, the service, we say that this place has good service or the other one has lousy service.

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We mean how they serve us, how courteous and prompt they are, how often they come and check if my drink needs refilling or there's something else

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I need. A restaurant service is all about us. And so is that what a church's service is all about?

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The narcissist assumed, yeah, of course. I'm in love with myself and evaluate churches, ministers, and truth flames based on how they made me feel about myself.

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Those who focus on church growth, that a church's success is measured purely by numbers, cater to this impulse, to narcissism.

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They don't think, well, how can I grow these narcissistic people to become true disciples of Jesus?

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They don't think that. Instead, they think, how can I make these consumers happy so that they keep coming?

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But people who think they constantly need serving, that the world revolves around them and everyone and everything in it exists to serve them and exists to help them feel good, they are what psychologists call narcissistic personality.

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And a person like that is exactly the opposite of Jesus and his disciples.

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A church that creates people like that or encourages people to stay like that is a failure as a church.

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No matter how many people they have, a joke, how many narcissists does it take to change a light bulb?

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Just one, but he has to wait for the whole world to revolve around him. What we see here in the so -called

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Lord's Prayer, this is the model prayer for us, is that we approach God like he is

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God, like the world revolves around him and not us. We find here the cure for narcissism.

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And here we see that a true relationship with God does the exact opposite of what the narcissistic personality expects.

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We see that it is not we, we as a group or we as individuals who are being served, that the service is not first for us, but as in last week, we serve for an audience of one.

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We come to prayer, we come to church, to every day of our lives to serve the Father in it.

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Even the request, each of them in their own way, take us away from narcissism, away from the idea that our faith and our church, even our family, our religion, that it all exists for us, for us looking good, for us, our feelings, for our self -esteem.

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Last week we saw how the fake religion of the actors, remember the hypocrites, it was all about making them look good.

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They gave or they fasted or they prayed to look good to others for the reward they could get for social approval.

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Here in the middle of all that, we come to the model of what an authentic child of the

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Father should look like. And we see that here in two very uneven parts. First, the right audience, and second, the right request.

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First, starting in verse 9, the prayer begins addressing our Father in heaven.

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Notice the sweet hour of prayer. It begins with hour, not just my, hour, pray it in this way, hour.

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Who is the hour here? Hour is possessive, plural possessive, of we, belongs to us, because this prayer has been taught even to unbelievers, they assume the hour is themselves, it's everybody.

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Everybody is part of the us, the universal fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. But remember, the

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Sermon on the Mount began by telling us that Jesus was teaching his disciples. There were people from all around there listening in, but he was teaching the disciples, that's his audience, his followers, the people who believed in and who were committed to him.

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That's the we, the us here. Jesus did not believe in the universal fatherhood of God or the brotherhood of man, so who is the hour?

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The possessive, plural, of us, it's the disciples, it's believers, it's the church, us, not the world.

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Now notice it is plural. In this whole section on the Sermon on the Mount, showing what the life of the person who has a real relationship with the

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Father is like, he or she gives secretly because it's done out of love for the Father, who sees, he prays secretly because it's just about relating with the

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Father, so he doesn't care if other people overhear him, who does it in his room by himself. He fasts secretly, it's between him and God.

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There is in all these things a living relationship with the Father that is intimate, it's just between myself and him.

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But for all that, the prayer, in the middle of all that, is still not individualistic.

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It's not detached from others. Even when alone in our room praying, God is still our

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Father. Even when we are alone, we come to him with the church.

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There aren't just two sets of footprints in the sand. Narcissists think they are the only ones who matter, that I'm the one important enough for God to walk alone with, not anyone else, no body, no church, it's just me,

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Jesus is walking alone just with me on that beach. One psychologist said to the narcissist, others exist to meet their needs or may as well not exist at all.

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But here Jesus tells us that even in our private prayers to consider others, that we come to God as part of an hour, a we, to consider that we are part of a larger group.

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Even our private prayers are our prayers, not just those of us as lone individuals, just me and Jesus chilling, speaking to my

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Father. No, we approach God, even when approaching him in private, as a member, a part of the body, a member of the church.

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He's our audience of one, but we don't come to him merely one -on -one.

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This is our sweet hour of prayer. Our right audience is our

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Father, Jesus is the first one to teach praying to God as Father. This is not a Jewish tradition that Jesus was following up on.

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He innovated this, to pray to our Father. And by teaching that, he shows that God is related to us.

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He's not just our Lord, as the Almighty, just God.

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He's Father to his people. And Father doesn't just mean he's the founder of our group, kind of a distant historical figure who established us way back, like George Washington, the founder of our country.

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But I don't know George Washington. I've never met him. He's just someone history tells me about. He's not someone

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I have any kind of relationship with, or experience with. But here, the Father is to be our

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Father. God is not as it were a father. He doesn't say, you're kind of like a father, it's not a metaphor, it's not an analogy.

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He is the true Father to his people. We are related to him. And he cares for us as a father.

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Spurgeon said, he is the Father from whom all fatherhood on earth is derived.

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In other words, his fatherhood establishes other fatherhood. He's not like our father.

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Other fathers, good fathers are like him. He is the Father who is in heaven, high above us.

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He's our creator. He's in heaven. So, there is respect, there's reverence there.

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We can be authentic and respectful at the same time. We don't have to be glib and cool sounding, like we're talking to just any guy.

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You know, he's our pal in heaven. Just sit back and relax and chat with him. And we don't have to be formal and stilted either to have real reverence.

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To those who have had difficult and disappointing, perhaps even abusive fathers, this is a different father.

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He's the Father who is in heaven. He is our right audience.

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Second, we come to the Father establishing the right request. We're not narcissistic to ask the

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Father, the Lord of the universe, to stop and listen to our pitiful little request. You might think that way, but he's the Almighty.

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Why should he spend time listening to me? That's kind of narcissistic to think God would take time to hear what

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I have to say. Perhaps if we were addressing a powerful person, the president of the US or a CEO of a major corporation, we should realize, hey, this person has lots to do and has a limited amount of energy and time to listen to what

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I have to ask. And we think that way if we're not narcissistic. Narcissistic person thinks everyone should listen to him or her.

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But we think that way if we're not narcissistic because we realize that this person has a limited amount of time and energy.

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And so for us to ask, even for just a little bit of that, is to ask a lot. But we can approach

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God with our request because he has an infinite amount of energy. He doesn't have a limited energy.

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He's an infinite amount. He's above time. He knows what we need before we ask him.

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Jesus said just before this. And he knows what we will ask him before we ask him, which means that he had enough time in eternity past to consider our prayer, even before we asked the prayer.

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So he had plenty of time. So we're not guilty of having had a grandiose vision of ourselves.

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Otherwise, we're not narcissistic for believing that we can approach God as our father with our request.

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We can, but we should have the right request. There are seven right requests in this prayer.

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The first is, hallowed be your name. Hallowed means to sanctify, to set apart as holy.

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May your name be set apart as holy, dedicated for special use and value. The first right request is that God's name be set apart in the eyes of other people and in the way it is regarded as holy, that other people are revering

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God because of whatever else I'm asking. Now, remember, the hypocrites, the actors, Jesus talked about both before and after this, they wanted themselves to be regarded as holy.

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That's what they're doing it for. That's what they're praying or giving or fasting for. So you look at me, I'm holy. I'm fasting, you can tell.

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The narcissist's quest in their religion is that they be seen to set apart in special. I'm so special. You got to listen to me.

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It's all about them. But here we begin our prayer, our first request, asking that God's name be made holy, not made

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God, that people esteem it as special and glorious.

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God's name is not just the sounds that we call it by. It is the revelation of who he is, who he has revealed himself to us.

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He revealed himself at the burning bush to Moses as the I am who I am, the one who is dependent on, who's derived from, based on no one else.

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He's not the son of anybody. Moses asked, what should I call you?

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Well, I am who I am. There's no race or family that begat him.

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There's no culture or nation that made him up for their purposes. He's not a national god, a god of a particular land.

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He's the I am who I am. Everything is based on him. He's based on nothing. He was not, as the false teachers today claim, someone who was once like us.

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He was a man, and he evolved. And we can evolve, too, and have our own planet, be our own gods.

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No, that's what the Mormons believe, and that's all wrong. That's against this prayer. He's to be hallowed.

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He's special above everything else. God is altogether beyond and above us, and his name, the I am, shows that.

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And so that truth, that revelation of who he is is so special that he dedicated one of the

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Ten Commandments to protecting it, the Third Commandment. You shall not take the name of the Lord, that's Yahweh, the I am, your

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God, in vain. We are only to use the name of God when we are either seriously speaking to God or seriously speaking about God.

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It is a far, far more serious sin to use the name of the Lord, now including the name of Jesus, which is the name that is above every name, to use that name in a flippant and an empty way.

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It's far more serious to do that, like some people do. Use Jesus like it's an expletive when they're startled with something.

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It's far more grievous wrong to do that than it is to use whatever the most vulgar profanity.

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Our first request to God is not that we look good. It's not that, you know, our father in heaven, hallowed be.

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No, hallowed be your name, but his name, the revelation of himself, look good. And so for everything we pray for, we pray for this, that this sickness we want to be healed of, that this job we want to get, this relationship we want to have, this church we want to grow, we are praying that through this,

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God's name be revered, that it be treated as holy and glorious. And glorious means weighty, it's heavy, it's substantial.

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And that whether we're healed or we have to learn that his grace is sufficient, God's name is revered.

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That whether we get the job or have to make do with much less, we pray that God's name be seen as holy.

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That whether we have the relationship or we have to learn to be single and content, we pray that God's name is to be treated as weighty.

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That whether we get big and respectable or we stay small and a bit edgy, we pray that most of all,

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God's name be seen as glorious. So through all our desires, whatever else we're asking in this prayer, whatever we work for, we're desperate for, whatever we crave, through them all, we ask that God, may your name,

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Father, may your name be hallowed. The second right request is that his kingdom would come, in verse 10.

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His kingdom, his kingdom means his rule, where he's in charge. May the areas where he is ruling increase, and may it come on earth now, and can continue over all the earth.

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Remember, this is, as it began in chapter 4, this whole sermon, this is the gospel of the kingdom.

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This is the good news, the rule of God has come and is coming on earth. But it's not here completely yet.

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There is still rebellion against his rule, including in our own sinful natures. So our prayer is that his rule would continue over more and more of life, including our own lives.

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And so we pray that he will rule more and more of our feelings, our desires, our thoughts, our money, that he will rule our family, that he will rule in our church, and he'll rule in our county, in our state, in our nation, in the world, that wherever we go, whatever we do, whatever we say, that we would bring, we would be the instruments to bring more and more, first, of our own thoughts and feelings and words and actions under the rule of the

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Lord Jesus, and then we would be used by him to extend that rule outward to all of life.

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But that is not something that we can do by our own determination. That's why we're asking for it in a prayer. It's not something we're going to desert ourselves to make

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God's kingdom come. Jesus teaches against that elsewhere. We can't make it happen.

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Our own zeal, our own work, our voting for the right people is not going to make that happen. Only God can do it.

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That's why we pray for it. And if we know ourselves very well, if we were paying attention in chapter 5 and realize, hey,

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I lose my temper, I'm liable to hell, I'm vulnerable to lust, these other things, that we've not been perfectly living under the rule of God, and so we pray first for ourselves, your kingdom, your rule, come, rule over me.

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The narcissistic personality hates that request. He craves authority for himself.

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Deep down, narcissists think they are God. And so for them, everything, even the church, if they go, it's about their kingdom, their rule, they want to come.

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That's what they're seeking to come on earth and for other people to submit to their kingdom. But here we're told to pray your kingdom, not mine, come.

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The third right request, your will be done on earth here as it is already in heaven.

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Again, we have some who abuse Christianity and turning it into a weapon to further their own self -centeredness.

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They'll misuse scriptures about submission to suggest that they can't be questioned, you know, the abusive husband who said, you got to submit to me and whatever sinful thing he wants to do.

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And they condemn everything new and different from what they're used to. I think much of what drives

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King James -only -ism is, how dare you read a version that I don't like?

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It comes down to basically that. Cults are places where the cult's will, especially the cult leaders, his will is done.

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Never mind about God's will, it's about the man's will. This is another expression of narcissism as described by psychologists.

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Any failure to comply with their will will be considered an attack on their superiority.

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So narcissists may pray, but they will pray for their will to be done. So we have some today who claim that you can, in your prayers, you can command and decree, what are they called?

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Decree and command whatever you want to happen. It can decree that the clouds move away from the sun so you get a good sunset.

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I actually saw somebody do that once. The clouds didn't move. We can have the nicest car, decree and declare that.

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You can. The power's in your words. You can have the biggest house, you can have all the money you want, the baby you crave, all that.

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It's all about us having our best life now. But the third request is that we pray, as we're praying, as we're praying for the health we want, the things we think we need, that the

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Father's will come, just as His will is perfectly carried out already in heaven, where everything is already arranged just as He determines.

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So our will, above all, above all the little things that we want so much, is to have the

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Father's will come about. And there's no better example of that than the Lord Jesus Himself, who asked the

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Father in prayer, Father, if it be Your will, let this cup pass from me.

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Now, He did not want to have to suffer the horrendous torture, those beatings and lashings and the thorns in His scalp, and the finally being nailed to beams and hoisted over a hill so that all could see

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Him, humiliated and bloodied, in agony, abandoned by all but a few. And worst of all,

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He fell abandoned by the Father Himself. He didn't want that. He prayed that that be taken away.

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He's teaching about prayer here. That was His prayer. But then, above all, He said, nevertheless, nevertheless, what

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I want, not My will, but Yours be done.

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That was His prayer. It's as far away as it could possibly be from all our selfish prayers consumed with just mere physical needs.

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He prayed the prayer. He modeled for us here, Your will be done.

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And it was, so that heaven could come to earth, and we could go to heaven.

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True Christian prayer is the pursuit of the Father's will.

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The fourth right request is that the Father give us our daily bread.

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In verse 11, we admit our dependence for God on day -to -day sustenance.

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In other words, we need God just to survive today. And this destroys much of modern spirituality.

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The modern spiritual religion, as has been described, is deistic. It's deism.

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That God is detached from our natural lives. That we only need God for feelings, you know, for our spirit.

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We don't really need God for practical things, earthly things, things on this earth, like bread.

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We don't need God for our bread. What are you talking about? Or maybe we need God for rare crises, only the, quote, very lowest and saddest times, like the footprints poem.

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Then you need God on those very lowest and saddest times. But most of the time, we can walk through life ourselves, unaided.

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Thank you very much, God. I don't really need you for this. Lowest and saddest times, I'll need you then, but not today.

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We certainly aren't so dependent that we need God for something as mundane and as easy as today's bread.

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What are you talking about? On the other hand, that's the way some people think. On the other hand, others think that this is a promise that you don't even need to worry about anything in this world, in this life, anything at all about practical things.

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You just be, quote, spiritual. And so they will misuse this verse to say that we do nothing to take care of ourselves for the future, that we spend everything we have today.

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Don't save a dime. Don't stock the fridge. Don't put anything in your cupboard.

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And just wake up in the morning to an empty fridge, a bare cupboard, and pray, give me today the food

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I need. No, that's twisting the Scripture. This is not saying that we aren't to do what the

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Lord gives us an opportunity to do, to provide for our needs. It's telling us that whether we work for our food or it's given to us or it disappears miraculously on our table, if that happens, great.

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But if it doesn't, well, no matter. It's a gift from God, and we are to ask

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Him to keep providing it every day. Give me today my daily bread.

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The food I get today depends on you, God, giving it. If you don't give it, it will not come.

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So if you survive today, if you eat today, it's because God gave that to you.

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Now, narcissists hate to admit that they are dependent. So this request just irks them. What are you talking about?

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I don't depend on God for those things. I could do it myself. Admitting dependence exposes vulnerability, and they hate to admit that they're vulnerable.

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But Jesus here trains us to embrace our vulnerability, to declare it.

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I can't feed myself. I am like a helpless baby.

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I need you, Father, for today's food. True Christian prayer recognizes that we are dependent, even for our every meal.

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The fifth right request is in verse 12, forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors.

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Some translations there might have transgressions or offenses or sins, and that's okay. That's basically what he means. In this version of this prayer in Luke, it has transgressions, forgive us our transgressions, but literally here it is debts.

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And this suggests that our sins, they create a debt with God, that every time we do or say or think something that is out of line with God's perfect will, we have deepened our debt in his accounting book.

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We've withdrawn a little. We've gone into the hole, into the red with our

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Father, and that debt has to be paid if we're to be right with him. That we owe and are not owed runs counter to the narcissistic tendency that is so common today.

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Narcissists think that they're owed. Everybody owes them everything they want. Others are in debt to them.

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They also assume, even if they won't admit it, that they're perfect, basically. They're the standard.

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So they have nothing to be forgiven for. They will use all kinds of psychological tricks to avoid having to come face -to -face with their own imperfections.

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And such people hate the kind of preaching that used to favorably be called searching, the kind that makes us search our hearts, search our lives, and realize that we're guilty and we need to repent.

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I failed in this or that area, so I need to change and seek forgiveness, that we're in debt to God and the debt is so great that we cannot pay it.

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But here we are to come face -to -face with that reality, with the reality of our debt. So right in this model prayer, we're shown to remind ourselves that we are in that debt, that we need to ask the

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Father to do what we cannot do, erase that debt, and we seek forgiveness in the same way that we give it.

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We are told to pray that we be forgiven for our debts as we have forgiven those who are indebted to us. This is the one part of the prayer that the

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Lord Jesus here elaborates. So He stops, elaborates on it after the prayer in verses 14 and 15.

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God's forgiveness, remember, is prior. That is, He gave us forgiveness first.

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And if we truly experience that forgiveness, it softens our hearts then to be able to forgive others.

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If we have opened our hands to receive His gracious pardon, we cannot then keep our fists tightly clenched against those who have wronged us.

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It's not that we earn God's forgiveness by forgiving others. If that were the case, we wouldn't have to ask for forgiveness in this prayer, would we?

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We just go out and pay our debt by forgiving. We could earn forgiveness by forgiving, if that's what

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He meant. But no, that's not it. It's that one of the surest signs of being forgiven is being forgiving.

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Narcissists are unforgiving. They'll hold a grudge. They believe the worst thing anyone could possibly do is offend them.

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It may be an unforgivable sin to offend them. Even if they do forgive, it's conditional.

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It's for their advantage because they want to use you for something. The people in God's kingdom are to be different.

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They know that we are not of the universe. So offending us is not the worst thing that anyone can do.

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We understand the grace that we've received from God. We're now in a relationship with the

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God that we had offended. Yet now, despite the fact we offended

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Him, that He's adopted us as His children, and He sent His Spirit into our hearts, so we cry,

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Father! And that makes us forgiving.

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The sixth right request is that we not be led into temptation in verse 13.

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Notice here that even our temptations are under God's control. Notice that. Where we go, our life is under His control.

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So if we go into temptation, it's because He led us there. And we're asking in the prayer, don't lead us there.

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I'm afraid that I'll give into it if I am led there. So our temptations don't come. Ultimately, then, like some people think from Satan, He's got them in control of that.

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And God maybe has enough power to get us through them, maybe. No, that's not the picture at all.

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Our temptations don't surprise God. God is leading all our lives, even the times of temptation.

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And so we pray to the Father, as He's leading us, that He would not lead us through temptation.

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The word temptation could also mean testing, that is to be put to the test, to be experimented on.

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Let's see what He does in this situation. Let's put Him here where He could steal that money and no one would know.

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Let's put Him in this situation where He could have that affair and think He can get away with it. Let's see what happens.

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You pray, no, don't put me there. Don't test me. I might fail. It's to be put on trial or on probation.

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We pray not to be tested because we'll fail. Narcissists hate to be tested.

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That's part of who they are. They just hate to be tested. They hate to have to prove themselves. The narcissist kid has been told that he's the greatest basketball player since Michael Jordan, and he will refuse to try out for the high school team because he's afraid he will be exposed, that he's not that great after all.

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They expect affirmation as they are, even before they've actually achieved anything. But here, our attitude is to be the opposite of that.

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We recognize that we can be tested and that there are things that could tempt us that if we were left by ourselves in the wrong situation and we're so suspicious of ourselves, of our weakness in those situations, we pray,

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God, don't leave me there. I'm afraid of what I will do. We're so dependent and weak and sinful.

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We recognize and confess that the only way we can overcome sin is not being led to where we're tempted by it because we're not in control of our lives.

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He is. We're not in control of what happens when we're vulnerable to sin.

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Well, the Father will test and discipline every child he receives. Even though we're told to pray that the

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Father not lead us into testing, we are shown that sometimes he'll answer that prayer with an,

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I'm sorry, but you need it. We might need to fail a test so that we see that we're not as great as our narcissistic personalities had told us.

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That's why the last, the seventh request is that the Father deliver us from evil.

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Later in the ministry of Jesus, just after he had instituted the Lord's Supper, the Lord Jesus told Peter, you know,

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Peter, Satan has demanded permission. No, Satan has to ask permission from God, like in the book of Job, to test us.

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Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat, but I prayed for you that your faith may not fail.

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You understand what's going on? You're gonna be tested, but I pray that you'll be delivered at the end of the testing.

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The Father decided that Peter needed the testing. Satan could not do it without the Father's permission. It was a test that Peter would fail, famously, but the son prayed, despite failing the test, that he would be delivered from the evil one.

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Satan is not finally victorious because the Father delivered Peter, because for God's true people, there is no temptation that the

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Father will allow to overwhelm them. He will not let us be tempted beyond what we can bear, but will, with the temptation, give us a way of escape.

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It's for that, for that escape, that we are told to seek here that we'll be delivered from evil.

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The prior request to not be led into temptation will sometimes not be granted, but this one, this final one, to be delivered from evil, it will be granted for the

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Father's true children. We might fail our test, but the

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Father will not fail to deliver us. Too many people today come to any relationship, including to the church, even to God, with the assumption,

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I'm in love with myself, and evaluate churches, ministers, truth claims, and God, based on how they make me feel about myself.

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They're consumers, demanding that God give them the things they crave.

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They are narcissists who assume that God exists to exalt them. This prayer is the antidote to that consumeristic, narcissistic, toxic spirituality.

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This prayer is radically, otherworldly different from the self -centered religion being sold today.

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It lifts up our Heavenly Father, our right audience of one, and it lowers us, pulling us down from the thrones that we've been trying to put ourselves on.

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It makes us dependent, part of a family with siblings. We're one of the hour, leaving us begging just for our bread today, totally dependent.

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It makes us admit that we have sinned, that we're in debt, and we're so deeply in debt that there's no use in trying to pay it ourselves.

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We can't. That's a debt we cannot pay. It's too much. We can't earn forgiveness just by forgiving.

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We must be forgiven first, and the only thing we can do is to plead that our debt be erased, and finally, it tells us that if we are one of the forgiving forgiven, one of the children of the

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Father, He might lead us into testing, to discipline us, but in the end,

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He will deliver us from evil. Finally, His kingdom comes, and He holds us fast because He's our

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Father in Heaven, and His steadfast love endures forever.