Two-Way Monologue I

Though admittedly a bit overplayed. How many of you related just to the essence of that message, which is time's short and when I get with the Lord, I unload as much as I possibly can about my needs and requests, huh? That's That's the core message of that video and that's actually what happens to many of us when it comes to prayer. I want to get right into this today. I'm more than excited about it. I feel as though God has timed this in the life of our church for a purpose. As many of you know, we're praying as leaders, our elders and our deacons have joined us and others are beginning to come to pray on Saturdays and to seek the Lord and this whole area of prayer is something that I think God wants to enlarge in our hearts as a church and teach us about personally but also corporately. And so we're gonna get right into it. I'm gonna encourage you. Actually, you're gonna need your outline this time because you're gonna essentially be taking a little bit of an inventory of yourself. And if you happen to not get one when you came in, hey, jump up right now and get one from the back or put your hand up and and maybe one will fall down from the ceiling into your hands. I don't know how things work. But prayer and and worship as really the prelude to effective prayer should be the best part of your day. When in fact, I think for many of us it's the part that we gloss over or maybe feel guilty about as a little bit indicated in that video. The other thing about this message that's important is I believe if you'll lean into it, two things will happen. One is that you'll understand yourself better and how it is that you approach God and draw near to Him in prayer. And second, the likelihood of us being a little more unified. Friends, we're so diverse. In our backgrounds and and our our spiritual upbringings, we need to ask the Lord to bring unity amongst us in the Spirit. And I believe if you understand a little bit more about the people next to you, then that may well help to contribute to that. So I'm quite excited about that for that reason. Now remember the context of the Lord's Prayer. Jesus' disciples had been watching Him going out and performing miracles and driving out demons and healing the sick and drawing huge crowds and they're pretty up, you know, on the wise of all this because they saw Him sip out sometimes in the early morning and go pray. So they they go to Jesus in Matthew chapter 6. You can read the Lord's Prayer there and they say, Lord, teach us to pray. I don't think it's because they wanted to have a prayer life. I think it's because they wanted to somehow plug into whatever it was that Jesus was able to do. And so the Lord responds to their request and you all know the Lord's Prayer. We don't need to say it all together, but how many of you could recite the Lord's Prayer from heart? Can I see your hand? All right, and if you're not, if you can't, that's fine. That means you're new to this whole faith thing and you're discovering that. Just make sure you don't do it in school. You could get in serious trouble without permission. Lord, teach us to pray. And by the way, the Lord's Prayer was not meant to be just recited. In fact, Jesus warns of vain repetition. So it's okay to say the Lord's Prayer, but that should just be the beginning of a a prayer engagement with the Lord, a dialogue, not a two-way monologue. I best understood the Lord's Prayer as really a pattern for praying. And my most effective times of prayer are when I use the time the Lord gives me to pray, following the pattern as we will go through the next five weeks. You'll see a pattern clearly emerge from the Lord's Prayer. And so let's begin with what Jesus said the first and most important priority was. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Amen. Loved ones, before any requests get laid on the table, before you pull out your legal pad with all the things, before you ask for blessing on Aunt Sally or money for the car or whatever it is, Jesus said the most important thing to do is to hallow the name of the Lord. Now that word hallow is not a word that we use, except Halloween, which has nothing to do with this, but to hallow means to exalt, to honor, to glorify, or to worship. As the Lord is saying, Our Father, we come first and foremost to worship you. That's why we're here. And if no requests get laid on the table at all and we're able to hallow your name, we've opened the door to effective prayer. So the first part of prayer is to understand that the Lord wants us to come and just engage His character, know who He is, think about Him. You know, have you ever noticed that when it comes to worship, I'm going to talk about this a good deal now, people are a little bit different in how they like to worship. Some are expressive, others are not. Some kind of watch things happen, others sort of engage, and what I see, and then of course, I don't know what you do in your personal time of prayer and worship, but I see what you do here, whether it's in the back or sometimes in the front, and I pretty much expect, because this is true of me, what I do privately is what I do corporately. I don't believe, you know, you switch it all up, you go home and get all expressive if you're sitting here with your arms folded for the, you know, time of prayer and worship. So it can be a little bit disconcerting sometimes for people. I talked to a first-time visitor a while back. I said, well, what did you think of the service? Husband and wife, and they looked, he said, well, we liked it, but it was really different, they said. I said, well, what was really different? They said, well, all that singing and then the part that, you know, some people put their hands up. I, we never had been in a church where people did stuff like that, and there was clapping, and that's just not part of what we're used to. And I did my best to reassure them that, you know, that's all biblical expression, and it's all appropriate, and to my knowledge, I didn't remember seeing anybody, you know, running across the platform back and forth or doing something that was drawing attention to themselves. But I could tell that, well, let's put it this way. As great as the sermon was, it wasn't greater than their disdain for the praise and worship part that they just couldn't get around. So I said, well, to myself, what the heck? I said, listen, can I be really honest with you? I said, well, yeah, sure. I said, I hate rant stressing. Yes, oh. I said, yeah, in fact, if someone sits down at my table with a salad loaded up with ranch dressing, I can't even enjoy my meal, because it just like overpowers my senses. It's kind of weird, I guess. I said, but that's just who I am, and that's why they make vinaigrette and, you know, Italian and all these other kinds of dressings, so I can have a dressing that doesn't knock me out. I said, see, it's kind of like that with worship. And I explained a little bit more about that, and I said, I think to myself, this is a pretty good metaphor. He said, well, thanks for that, and then he and his wife moved toward the door, and I don't think they ever came back. You know, the pastor was a little off that night in terms of gauging their receptivity to my analogy, but nonetheless, we are different, and we're going to look at that, and we're going to look at it carefully, because some of you hate ranch dressing in worship. Some of you love it. The key is, how do we get along and understand and appreciate and actually value one another in our differences when it comes to drawing near to God in worship and in prayer? Some years ago, I read a book called Spiritual Pathways by Gary Thomas, and in it, he draws out nine basic sort of temperaments, if you will, spiritual temperaments, we could call them. You're familiar with the Myers-Briggs test. There's like, I think, 16 characteristics, and how many of you know your Myers-Briggs sort of profile? Anybody? Yeah, and how many of you know your spouses, right? And how many of you know how your spouse should change to be more compatible with you? And right, and well, these spiritual temperaments are not the only way that everybody is, but I have to say, he does a pretty effective job in covering what I think most of us would find to be, you know, kind of the way we're most comfortable in approaching God. So lean into this. Now, here's what I want you to do. Write down each of these. Borrow a pen from somebody. Write them down, and then when we're wrapping up here, I'm going to have you circle the one or maybe two that you think most describe who you are, all right? So, and the reason is this. If you understand yourself and why you're wired that way, it helps you to know why certain things may or may not affect you. See, if you're expressive in your worship because God wired you that way, and someone else isn't, you tend to look at them and think, you know, I'll pray for them one day, and then maybe they'll receive Jesus, because if they were really believers, they'd get more expressive. Or if you're not expressive, and you see someone that is, or maybe by some unfortunate circumstance, you end up sitting next to one of those people. I've literally watched folks go like four seats over, you know, in between songs, because they're afraid that maybe they're going to get whacked if they put their hand up or whatever. Also, it is true that if someone's been really formative in your walk with the Lord and has been a mentor to you, you tend to try to copy things from them. I remember very, very distinctly the guy in college, I've talked to you about a lot, who influenced my life. His name is John White. And we'll define this in a moment. He was a bit of an ascetic contemplative kind of guy, quieter kind of guy. And I remember one day, he had his backpack, and he was heading off. I said, where are you going? He said, I'm taking a day of prayer and fasting, and I'm going off to be with the Lord. I said, well, are you coming back for lunch? He said, no, I'm taking a day. I'm taking the whole day. The whole day? He said, I won't be back until probably 10 or 11 tonight. And I said, well, okay, great. And I thought, well, you know, because he was a lot more spiritual than I was, and I said, well, I guess I need to try that. So I can't remember, maybe two weeks later, I had sort of an open time on my schedule, and I went off for a day of prayer and fasting and solitude. 30 minutes into it, I'm just not making this. I mean, I'm looking for, and this is long before the days of iPods and any kind of, you know, portable devices, friends. You know, it was like the radio, and I ended up, I remember thinking, I lasted a couple of hours, and I said, you know, Lord, if this is what it takes to be spiritual and holy, I'm in a lot worse shape than I thought, and I came back really discouraged. And I talked to John about it, and he walked me through it, but nonetheless, be careful about that, because the person you might really think is tremendous could be an entirely different temperament than you spiritually. And finally, parents, your little ones, they're going to copy you, right? Unless you help them understand that God's wired them to be just a little bit different. And so you don't want them to feel like they have to be just like you, but you want to help them discover their sort of biblical wiring pattern. So let's take a look. And here's what's going to happen. I promise you, at the end of this time, we're going to appreciate one another a lot more, and be a lot more tolerant of one another than maybe we've been. Now, there's no order of these in terms of value to God, I don't think, but since we normally do this first, I put it first. The first one is the enthusiast, the enthusiast. And the scriptures are noted here. We'll put them up on the screen quickly. You'll have to take time later to look up the references and just really study them. Here's Psalm 100, for example. It says, Shout to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness. Come before Him with joyful songs. Now, that's a very clear description of expressiveness, is it not? Here's Psalm 9, verse 11. It says, sing praises to the Lord, enthroned in Zion. Proclaim among the nations what He's done. These along, there's hundreds upon hundreds of psalms and verses throughout all the scriptures that say things like that. To shout, to clap, to proclaim, to declare, to lift your voice, to do all those kinds of things. In fact, in the Old Testament, there are three feasts that the Lord instituted that the people of Israel set aside a whole week to celebrate. Now, wouldn't that freak out some of you? This is the week that we really get enthusiastic, a whole week, meeting every day. But that's what they did. Jesus even said to the disciples at one point, listen, if you keep quiet, even these stones are going to cry out. Now, how many of you were here when we sang and clapped with, oh, happy day, and how great they are? How many of you were here for that? Okay. All right, the 25% or so that weren't here, that's why you didn't like it. That's why you come late. Because that first, you know, 15 minutes, you just as soon not be here. I mean, really. So why come and be miserable? Just wait till that part's done, you know, and you can always say, I had took me longer to get my child into like kids ministry or whatever. But the reality is you'd rather not even be part of that. It's just so uncomfortable for you, especially if you get near someone that's expressive. See, the enthusiasts can't imagine stuffing all that joyful stuff back in their heart. They want to come and give expression to it. And here's a little secret. There are people regularly who let me know that we're not expressive enough. Oh my gosh. Because you imagine how wacky it could get. And they're just wondering, when are we going to finally open up and really get into it? I'm serious. Now, not all of us are wired that way. I understand that. And some enthusiasts do get kind of, well, out of control expressive, almost distractingly expressive, especially in a corporate setting. I think if you're an enthusiast and you're at home and you just want to jump up and down and the Lord calls you to twirl and spin and do whatever, that's fine. But when we're together in a corporate setting, unless that's something the Lord leads us all to do, it just draws focus away from the Lord and puts it on you. That's why those kinds of things don't generally happen. So, enthusiasts, we're glad you're here. You lift us up. You help give energy to our time. And you know what my sense of heaven is? My sense is that heaven's going to be louder than most of you like. Um, you say, no, well, I'll just take, you know, the the back 40. I'll take my little, my little mansion in heaven will be in a little quiet pond. Well, maybe. But the Bible says day and night the angels give praise and glory to God. So I don't know how to get away from it, but maybe you'll figure out a way. Okay. So that's the enthusiasts. Then there are the sensates. These are people who love God, draw near to Him. They worship Him. They come to pray and seek Him through their senses, visually, through art and um, maybe sometimes they'll, um, you know, they like incense and things like that. The word awe, just by its very definition, implies your senses are engaged. You know, when you think of something that fills you with awe, it engages all your senses. This isn't naturally who I am, but I remember the time that I was most captured by this was about eight or nine years ago. I had the opportunity to go into the Duomo, which is the large largest cathedral in Milan, Italy. It's 1100 years old. It took 150 years to build. Imagine, you know, that contractor. How's it going? Keep it up with the timeline here. 150 years to build it. Coming in under budget. I walked into that Duomo and I remember seeing it's so large. It's expansive. I mean, Jerry Jones might even be jealous. Dallas, you know, a couple sports fans got that one. But there was a mist coming through. I mean, and the sunlight coming through the stained glass windows and sort of a mist in there and the, you know, the beautiful original Italian art. And I have to say there was a sense in my heart of the presence of God in those moments. And it came from just sort of that the engagement of all my senses in this this massive place. Not that God is housed in it, but I was aware of the presence of the Lord because of all those things. Sensei people touch is important to them. I know at least one man I know, and I think there's probably more than that, they'd carry a little nail, you know, not a sharp nail, but a nail in their pocket with their change as a reminder of the cross. And every once in a while, they'll stick their hand down in their pocket and they'll touch that nail and they'll be reminded that Jesus went to the cross for them. And it'll remind them to pray and to worship. Third is the activist. You know, the activists may like to celebrate and they might be, you know, willing to sing along and so forth, but primarily for them, they express their love. They draw near to God by getting involved and demonstrating their love. These are people who willingly confront injustice and these are people who go out of their way to take a stand against evil. These are people who like stories like in John chapter 8 where Jesus is confronted with a woman caught in adultery and we won't read the whole passage, but at the end, you know, Jesus said, well, those of you without sin cast the first stone and they all walk away. See, that kind of thing where people take a stand for righteousness. You know, there's been some great writing about this. Francis Schaeffer, Charles Coulson, more recently, Francis Chan and some others. But you know what? Here's an interesting thing. The next generation worshipers who are with us today, there's a lot more of you that fall into this category than even five or ten years ago. It's real important to you to worship God by being involved in something, taking a stand for something. And for you, listen, listen, some of you, some of you are judging, you're not listening. For you, the time that you feel closest to God is when you're taking a stand on behalf of someone who's oppressed. And it's a very important thing. James 1.22 might be your favorite verse. Be a doer of the word, not just a hearer. The fourth group are the ascetics. And now these are people like my friend who I mentioned before who enjoy quiet, solitude, long periods of undisturbed time when they can really communicate and sense that they're hearing back from God. You know, ascetics are people who are generally unhurried and they don't like a lot of busyness in their life, if at all possible. But how many of you agree with me that in our culture, it's almost impossible to not have a lot of people in your life and not to be in touch with a lot of people? Pastor Scott was bragging about his Facebook this week. I'll let you know that Pastor Scott has less than four figures of followers in his Facebook, but not by much. And that 98% of them are from Munhall. That's the amazing thing. I mean, it's an incredibly narrow band of people but they're all just in touch with him on Facebook. And so he has to pull back once in a while from that. You know, Jesus, the Bible said, took 40 days and went off in the desert to be undistracted. Have you ever taken more than an hour or two? I referenced on your outline Galatians 1, 18 and 2, 1 and Debbie, who types this up for me, says she wasn't sure that was the right passage. But here's what Galatians 1, 18 says. Then after three years, this is the Apostle Paul, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Peter and stayed with him 15 days. I want you to notice, friends, for three years Paul didn't travel or do mission work. He just sat with the Lord and was instructed by the Holy Spirit. And then Galatians 2, 1, I think says, 14 years later, I went up again to Jerusalem. And I believe there's strong evidence that Paul was quite an ascetic. He took a lot of time and that's why he wrote a third of the New Testament. He was more than willing to be still before the Lord and to listen to the heart of God. I don't, that's not naturally me but I'm making more and more time because I found that if I don't, I get dry. So I just want to nudge some of you to think about that even if it's not your natural DNA. The fifth one is one that I think you'll warm up to. It's called the contemplatives. The contemplatives. Psalm 46, 10, be still and know that I am God. I picked out a few verses out of Psalm 63, if we could put those up. Here's the heart of King David, the greatest worshiper in the Old Testament. Let's put up those verses from Psalm 63. Oh God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you. My soul thirsts for you. My body longs for you in a dry and weary land where there is no water. Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you. My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods. With singing lips, my mouth will praise you. And on David goes, giving expression to his intimate love for his Lord. Contemplative people know that there's no greater love than God's love to us. And they look for ways to deepen their intimacy and their fellowship. And I have to tell you after 40 years of following the Lord, I still feel like I'm in the foyer of this one. I still like there's, there's just feel like there's so much more to learn about being face to face with Jesus. And adoring him and loving him. Now some of you might say that's kind of soft and sappy and you know, that's not like for me. But Jesus calls us his bride. So somehow in this all there is an element in my heart of intimacy that we really need to cultivate. Now happily many of you have learned how to be a much more contemplative than maybe you've been naturally wired to be. And you really kind of enjoy when we slow things down and worship a bit. And so the band's going to come now and we thought we'd just pause right here in the message and take some moments as as the band comes to worship the Lord together and and just focus on the beauty of who he is. And allow Jesus maybe just to stir our hearts and and draw us into a place of real communion with him. So let's just stand quietly to our feet and as the band comes to lead us let's worship. Now my guess is we've covered many of you, but some of you are still thinking well, not me yet. Haven't gotten my main wiring pattern yet. Well, the next is an important group. It's probably smaller than it thinks it is. This is the intellectuals. Jesus said Matthew 22. Let's put that up, please. Matthew 22. Love the Lord your God with all your, say with me, heart soul and all your mind. Your mind is a very important part of drawing you to God in worship and in prayer. The intellectual believes that the mind is the gateway to the soul. The intellectual believes that if you don't understand something you really can't love it the way you should. I'm not sure I fully buy that thesis. Little show-and-tell time in all the campuses. How many of you love your pets? How many of you really love your pets and care for their comfort? Hands went down. How many of you allow your pet to sleep in your bed? Oh my gosh. I did not expect that much honesty. I appreciate that. More than half the people put their hands up here in the main auditorium. It's very moving actually, but it's a little freaky now. Help me understand that, okay? Intellectuals, maketh no sense to moi. Hundreds of people sleep with their animals in their bed. Now see the intellectual they're the concerned that somehow they're going to get pulled up into the emotion of it all. And so they come in somewhat defensively to a worship service and if they see something they don't understand or doesn't, you know, they haven't found a category for it in their mind, they push back. Now I'm not saying this looking at anybody specifically at all, please. But they're often the people that had their arms folded and are saying, you know what? You're not going to change me because I'm not convinced yet. And I understand that. I think it's a very good thing. I remember as a student in seminary wanting to know that my faith had intellectual substance and could be trusted. And I was so blessed when I discovered that some of the smartest, most intellectually imposing, if you will, capable people in all of history were believers, were followers of Christ. See, you intellectuals, I mean, you're always kind of on your game. You're the ones who check the references. You're going to go back and make sure all these references work. You're the ones that say you forgot blank number four, you know, when I do the outlines. You're the ones who you know have read this statement of faith over and over and over again. You're the ones who wonder, you know, what does this church really believe? Because if I'm going to be involved in it, I have to know that it's right. I mean, do you believe like things like the Apostles' Creed? Yes. In fact, why don't we say the Apostles' Creed? I didn't even know they had that here. Did you know that? We have it. Yes, we do. We're going to do it. Let's stand and do the Apostles' Creed wherever you are. It's going to be up on the screen. And when I say let's all read it out loud. This is the real thing. Okay, this is not, you know, the Rocky Balboa version. Here we go. And he will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen. And every intellectual said but you're not really intellectual because intellectuals don't usually say amen to anything. So uh, very well done. You may be seated once again. By the way when it says the holy catholic church, it doesn't mean roman catholic. Um for those of you who are just wondering, wow, are we going catholic? No, it's catholic has a broader meaning than than roman catholic. So intellectuals thank you for challenging us and thank you for keeping us honest. It's very important. What you bring um is very very important. But may I just caution you intellectuals, you tend to be the most judgmental. If something isn't just right, you're the ones that fire off the emails or stomp and fuss or make some kind of deal about it. So try to keep that in balance. Next group are called caregivers. These are people that want to worship the Lord and demonstrate their love by loving others. The greatest commandment, love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and your neighbor as yourself. So they kind of see these things going together. Your favorite passage would probably be James 127. Let's put that up, please. James 127. This would be a place where you would be drawn. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and flawless is this, to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. See caregivers, you love passages like when Jesus said I was in prison and you visited me. I was hungry and you fed me and so on. That to you is is putting substance to your faith. And I've had people say I never feel closer to God than when I serve somebody in some way without drawing any attention to myself. I appreciate those hearts. And that's worshipful. And that's a wiring pattern that is much needed in the church. The next group is probably a much smaller group. It's the naturalists. It's the people who something gets sparked in you when you just see the grandeur and the glory of God. You go out on, you know, if you've ever been away from the sea and ideally out in the ocean or in the desert where there's no lights at all and 7,000 or so visible stars coming to the sky and you're reminded of the scripture that said God hung every one of those up there and knows them by name and you know, I brought a little token for you naturalists. I don't know if you can zoom in on this or not, but it's pretty much my favorite season coming up. How about you? And just I mean just the beautiful and the one who designed, you know, everything that was in this leaf to make it this beautiful color was in there all summer long when it was green. And then God just decided by the processes He put into motion when one chemical would be released and all this color would come and we in the next couple of weeks will be struck by the awe of it all. Naturalists are just drawn to those kinds of things and your heart just gets stirred when you see it. Finally, and I saved this one for last because it's a lot of us. That's the traditionalist. This is the group that well, you just love things to sort of be done, right? You most likely grew up in a church setting of some kind. Could have been Catholic, could have been Protestant, maybe even some other religion, but whatever it was you had things like liturgy. You'd stand up and sit down in certain queues. You like an order of worship. It bothers you when you open your bulletin and it doesn't tell you what you're going to do next. We tried that for a few years and it didn't seem to affect anything. So we stopped doing that. You're the folks that like it to be a little bit more predictable. You're the folks that you find symbols very important for traditionalists. You're the people that will likely stop me on occasion and say, where's the cross? Where's the cross? I mean, is this a real church? That's when I walk outside with it and I show you the top of the roof where the cross, the building anyhow, here in Wexford, is above everything. There's a statement to that. And occasionally we'll have a cross up on the platform and the places where we have campuses. But see, traditionalists, we don't worship symbols. We worship a living God who's not on the cross. And though we value some of those things and we understand them, we even gave you an extra sort of prop by putting up our version of stained glass windows here. I don't know if you picked that up, but that's what that is. Just to let you know that we value you and we understand. I think traditionalists find it most difficult to make change because you've been used to doing it some way for so long. And honestly, you're the ones that just don't know why you keep coming here. And may I suggest this, 2 Corinthians says, where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. And you come because there's a liberty that you found here that you never found in the church that you grew up in or worshipped in before. Not because it was a bad church or bad people, but because the Spirit of the Lord was not welcome there. And actually, vain repetition can become deadly. And so you choose to come because you encounter God in a living way. We love you traditionalists, but we're not going to go to all hymns and we're not going to have an order of worship. And we're just going to kind of keep going with the flow of the Spirit. And I hope you'll come along with us. So, how many of you have seen yourself now in one of these? Excellent, excellent. How many of you know which one your spouse is? Okay, maybe you ought to have a little conversation about that. And if you're married, see if the two of you agree about that. And then one final word just before we wrap up. I wanted to say something just about corporate worship, and as it is really an expression of the entree into prayer as we hallow the name of the Lord. And it has to do with two things. The first one is probably one of the expressions that people find like most disruptive of their their sense of peace and calmness, and that's the lifting of hands. On your outline, that's the little blank. Four reasons to lift your hands in worship. I am not going to take the time to go through this in detail. How many parents do we have here? And I'm sure there's a lot of parents in the other campuses and venues as well. Do you remember the time when your little one needed help out of the crib? How did they get your attention besides crying? They put their hands up. They didn't need to get up off the floor. They put their hands up. You see, what lifting hands is first and foremost is it's an expression of trust and dependence. That's what it is. It's saying, I need help. I need help. And Lord, I'm not too proud to say I need help. It's these other things as well. For some, you know, by the way, I mean, how many of you hope tomorrow or if you're watching and participating later on in the game on Sunday evening that