Principles of Prayer

Over the years, I have sat with many people who are in turmoil, stressed in their spiritual relationship with God, and they make statements like, my prayers seem to go no higher than the ceiling. I pray that God doesn't hear me. I pray that I don't even know what it means. I don't even know what to pray about. God doesn't seem to ever answer my prayers. I don't understand. I pray that God never answers my prayers. I never get a response.

Or if I do, it's never what I ask. It seems like God doesn't care. God doesn't respond.

Or, I know I should pray more, but my life is so busy. I hear that all the time. I know I should pray. My life is so busy.

So many times, our prayer life is just before we go to bed, and you fall asleep in your prayer.

The need for an intimate relationship with God is designed at all levels. You and I were designed to have a relationship with God.

When we don't, nothing else in our life basically works very well. We have this need, we have this hunger to have a relationship with God. And prayer is part of how that relationship is supposed to work.

Every once in a while, I try to go back to some basic sermon. That's what this is today. Just a basic sermon.

How you and I can reprioritize our prayer lives. Get re-centered in our prayer with God, or this relationship aspect that we have with God.

It's not just a matter of, and I've seen people who have tried to do this. Well, what I do is I set my clock, and I make sure I pray 15 minutes every morning and 15 minutes every night.

And now I have structured prayer with God.

If you're the type of person that needs that, I suppose that could be good.

Can you imagine having a relationship with you? Okay, honey, it's your 15 minutes.

Sorry, time's up. Got to get to work, right?

Relationships don't generally work that way.

There's something natural about it, and yet there is something structured about it.

So we're going to look at some basic principles of prayer.

It's a simple sermon, simple concepts, but it's very important that we occasionally go back to these things.

Just to refocus, what is this Christian life all about?

Make sure that we understand the need you and I have for daily prayer.

The first point is prayer can't become a ritual.

It must be respectful to God.

I mean, you know, we just can't go to God, and, hey, how you doing today? I mean, we have to be very respectful. So there is a certain amount of decorum to how we pray.

But at the same time, it can't be a ritual.

We just sort of repeat the same things over and over again. Let's go to Matthew 6.

These are all basic verses of prayer. Then I know we need to cover these basics every once in a while just because of the amount of conversations I have.

Now, there are some people that just... prayer becomes natural. They just pray all the time to God. I mean, there are times I think, God knows why do I have to go tell Him?

Well, that's not the point either, is it? Because this is supposed to be our part of a conversation in which we talk to God, we struggle with God, we thank God, we praise God, we cry before God.

This can't be just an intellectual experience of reciting just, you know, a prayer. Look what Jesus says here in the Sermon on the Mount, verse 7 of Matthew 6.

He says, And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Prayer in paganism, and sometimes even in words of Christianity, is simply a matter of repeating the same phrases over and over again.

You know, in our study of what we had to do for these programs, especially with the Protestant Reformation and understanding its break with Catholicism, and how ritualistic Catholicism is, though I do that, but I really know it now. And to believe that, if you just repeat the same words over and over and over and over again, then God, or whoever's interceding for you, Barry or one of the saints, will do what you ask. It's fundamental to the way they approach God, especially in the Middle Ages. And he says here, no, that's not what prayer is. Therefore, do not be like them, verse 8, for your Father knows the things you have need before you pray.

In this manner, therefore, pray. And we have what is known as the Lord's Prayer, which would be better called the Bottle Prayer. Now, we're not going to spend time to go through this prayer, but you need to take time to do that. We all know this.

Most of us can repeat this by heart, right? It's in our minds. We can repeat it. But think about the context in which he said this. Do not just give repetitious ritual prayers. Now, here's the model which how you pray. Now, think about how many times people get together, what do they do? They repeat this prayer as a ritualistic prayer. And I've said, especially in funerals, where this is recited, it sounds like murmuring the way everybody is sort of saying it as a ritual.

And I think, where's the meaning of this? Where's the power in this? So, it's funny that the prayer that's supposed to help us understand not to be ritualistic has become a ritual in itself.

What he gives us is a model for prayer. So, if you have trouble praying, take this model prayer, write it down, and then, beside those verses, write out, how do I do this? You know, if you take our Father in Heaven, how would be your name? You start with praising God. Now, that's very interesting, because many times we can go before God, and there's times in life where you're in a crisis that you don't, you start before God with, hey, I'm in trouble here. Okay, that's normal. That's part of the relationship. But we need to regularly remember, we need to go before God, and the first thing we need to really zero in on is who in the world we're talking to.

We're talking to God. And His greatness should be a focal point at the beginning of the prayer, because when we make His greatness the focal point at the beginning of the prayer, everything that comes later after that is going to be changed. Now, we declare and praise God in our very individual ways. Excuse me. Very individual ways.

You may start your prayer by thanking God for something He did for you specifically, or just recognizing that, you know, I've been thinking about your greatness, your power. But we start with this comparison. This is God, and this is me. You take every one of those sections, and you say, how do I do this? And it'll change day by day. So if you have trouble praying, start with, okay, I can't do this in a ritual, or I end up just sort of praying the same things every day, but you could use this as your model.

And there's a point in here that you pray for your daily bread. There's a point where you go to God and ask for the things you want to ask Him for.

So He's not saying, don't come to me with your desires. He's saying, but let's put this in context first. Bet you can be very careful that we don't start every prayer with the gimme's, you know, gimme, gimme, gimme. Gimme this, gimme that. So this is a great place to start, to keep our prayers for becoming ritualistic.

That's the reason for some people, it just depends on your personality. You know, some people actually keep what they call a prayer journal. They write down things for it. I've been talking to people and said, boy, you know, would you pray about that and watch them pull out a little card or pull out a little, you know, tablet or something and write it down?

Sure. That's all my prayer list now. When I pray to God, I'll be sure to bring that up. There's nothing wrong with that. Some people keep prayer lists, some keep journals. The interesting thing about a journal, I talked to a person who kept the journal, I've never done that, is that they go back and look at, okay, what was I praying about three months ago?

And what has changed in my life? Where has God intervened? What has God done? Or was I just saying the same things three months ago that I am now? Maybe there's a problem. Maybe I'm just repeating myself here. Where's God's answers in my life? So prayer journals aren't a bad idea. Once again, so much of that is your personality. But remember, you are not just to approach God as a ceremony. This is where you go to God, and you are given a privilege to tell Him your thoughts and your emotions.

And as we go through this, you'll see there are times when it's okay to tell God, I don't understand. It's okay that there are times you tell God, this hurts, this makes no sense to me. Now, be careful. You don't want to go and insult God, okay? You're not going to go to God as an equal here. But it is okay to go and express at times our emotions. And we're going to go through and show where that's allowed.

It's not allowed to go to God and say, you know what, you're a liar, okay? Now you've got a problem. It is okay to go to God and say, I don't understand. You say, this is happening and I don't know how that fits. That's okay. We're allowed to express before God. But you have to start with, hallowed be your name. You start with, okay, you know what you're doing, I don't. I have a problem here. We're allowed to express that. And that brings us to our second point.

It's not to be just recited ritual, but our prayers, in our prayer, we must approach God with a sense of humility in all. We have to recognize, once again, who we're going before. You know, you read in the Scripture about God's attributes. There's times when we need to go back and read God's attributes or read about the descriptions of the throne of God, or just go look at creation. You know, just try to study a paper on DNA, and you'll say, how does someone think this up? How does this get designed? This is the mind of God. And we need to be humble before the mind and power of God. We need to approach Him with all.

Now, in doing this also, we have to recognize that approaching God with humility actually also involves the way we treat other people. How we approach God is directly connected to how we treat others. Look at Luke 18. Luke chapter 18. I've mentioned this before because I really enjoy the way Luke puts in commentary that Matthew and Mark did not. They just reported what happened. Luke is gathering this information later. He wasn't there. And so what he does is he throws in commentary.

Oh, yeah, the people told me this story about what Jesus did, and here's why He did it. So he says in verse 9, And He spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others. So the motivation here is the people trusted in their own righteousness, and in their trust of their own righteousness, it gave them, in their minds, the permission to despise other people.

Verse 10, you know the parable? Two men went up to the temple to pray. What a Pharisee! The other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself. God, I thank you that I'm not like other men. Extortioners, unjust adulterers, even this tax collector. Now the truth is, he probably wasn't an adulterer. But he said these things, he probably was an honest man. That's not the point here. He's not accused of being a hypocrite. He was what we would say a good man. And of course, the tax collector is so despised because who does he work for?

The enemy. He works for the Roman Empire. The most pagan, oppressive people on the face of the earth. And this Jewish tax collector works for them. He's a tax collector. He goes around and collects taxes. He says, I fast twice a week and give tithes of all that I possess. And you know what? That was true. He meticulously tithes. He fasted twice a week. He's not saying anything that's not true. But what he's saying is, look at my righteousness. Because he trusted in himself. And the tax collector standing afar off would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast saying, God be merciful to me as sir.

Now the tax collector is a practicing Jew. I want you to understand that. He's in the temple. He's not in the court of the Gentiles. He's in the temple where only practicing Jews could go. So he's a full-fledged member of Judaism. He's a worshiper of God. He's part of the covenant. But to the Pharisee, this was a worthless man compared to who he was. When we approach God with humility, we also have to recognize that this is related to how we approach others.

Jesus says, I tell you, verse 14, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. Justified. Justification is the right to have a relationship with God. How do you and I get to come before a righteous God? We have to be justified. I've already been asked, since justification was a big issue with the project of Reformation, that was part of one of the programs we did, to do a sermon on justification. I said, well, I can't, but you understand. It will take two to three sermons, because we have to go through what is salvation, what is grace, what is justification, what is sanctification.

We have to go through all those things to explain justification. Jesus says, now this man is justified. So that's an important point.

How was he justified? Well, the other guy was a good guy.

It has to do with his humility before God. Look at me, God. It's you and me. We're like this. I'm like this guy over here, who wanders into your temple and probably shouldn't even be here. But you and I, we're like this. It's a lack of humility before God that is exhibited in the way he treats other people.

So our second point is, we must approach God with a sense of humility. And that's going to include in how we look at other people, how we approach other people.

Our third point is, then, that we must believe that God hears our prayers and answers our prayers.

We must believe that he hears them.

So if I've come before God, and I'm pouring my heart out and my mind out before God, and I'm being humbled before him, I've admitted that I'm a sinner, I've admitted that I had this absolute need for him, absolute need for his forgiveness or his mercy, and I'm before God, I must believe that there's a barrier he's removed that I can come before him. In other words, I must believe I'm justified. There's something that allows me now to come before him, and that he hears this. And here's where we have a trouble one at times. We'll come before God, we know we're there, and it's like, but he doesn't answer.

I don't get it. I'm here. I'm knocking at the door. He opened the door. I walk in, and now he doesn't answer me, raising to bring me.

Nothing's working out.

Matthew 21 is very interesting in this context. Because you think, well, this will prove, this is how we will know that God is answering our prayers.

21 verse 18.

What we have is a story here where Jesus and the disciples are walking along a road. He sees a fig tree, and it's supposed to have little beginnings of fruit on it. He was going to eat that, and it wasn't there.

And so he says, let no fruit grow on you ever again. And the fig tree withered up. Now, he's making a point to them.

They don't understand the point. Now, there's a number of points here. We won't go into all of them, but let's go to the specific point that comes out of verse 20. And when the disciples saw it, they marbled saying, how did the fig tree wither away so soon? He said, he curses with this tree, but they thought, well, okay, that means the tree's going to die.

He maybe saw that the tree had a blight or something. No! He says, your curse tree, and it withers up right in front of him.

They're saying, how did this happen?

I find it interesting. They didn't ask, why did it happen?

They asked, how did this happen?

Jesus answered and said to them, surely I say to you, they're amazed, how did this happen? He says, okay, let's talk about the howl for a minute. We're going to get a little bit into the why.

Surely I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what has been done to this fig tree, but also you shall say, did this mount be removed, to be cast in the sea, and it will be done. Now, whatever things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive. Well, this is simple. You can tell who the true Christians are. They're just pulling up mounts and throwing them around all over the place. And they're just pulling up with a tree just like this, because he said, you will do this.

So what does that mean? So they say, okay, if I just have enough faith, whatever I ask, so if I could just have enough faith, this entire book is written on this subject, by the way.

If you just have enough faith, you could be a billionaire. If you're not a billionaire, it's because you like faith. Because if you ask God, or if you're sick and you're not healed, it's because you don't have enough faith.

I don't know what happened to Peter, Paul, Mary, and Martha, Abraham, and Sarah.

They say they have any faith? That's why they're not alive today.

See, there's a limit to how you can take this. We have to understand this in the bigger context.

You and I must believe, we must believe that God hears our prayers, and we must believe He's going to answer.

Or nothing could happen. But that doesn't equal, I believe, therefore, it happens exactly what I ask.

We can't equate that now. The jump we make is not the point He's making.

He's saying, look, if you believe God's going to do, and you go ask Him, and He's going to be involved, and He's going to answer your prayers.

The point is, God is going to answer your prayers. We take it all. God is going to answer my prayers exactly the way I ask.

As if those are the same things, and they are not.

And of course, the easiest answer to that is, how many of you would answer a three- or four-year-old exactly what they want?

I want a gallon of ice cream. Do you believe? Yes, you can have it.

We would say that's absurd, right? So we can't draw a certain conclusion here, but we do have a certain instruction.

For something to happen here, you're going to have to believe. You're going to have to believe that God is listening to you. You're going to have to believe, okay, this is ritualistic. I'm opening myself up to God, and here I am.

And as I do this, then I believe that I'm going to be justified. I'm humbling myself before God. He's going to now listen to me. He's going to let me come before Him, and He is going to interact with my prayers.

What this is a promise is that God is going to interact with you when you're praying.

Part of the problem we have is, of course, we believe that all answers have to be yes. There's the problem.

Oh, all answers are yes! Now they're not. Sometimes the answer is no. That's where we have problems.

So if Jesus is saying, if you just have enough faith, everything you pray will work out exactly what you want, but He's saying you must believe, what's the next element? That brings us to our step number four, or point number four. These are really steps. They're components that all come together. If we're going to come with this faith, we have to seek, then, the will of God.

Or this is a matter of us just coming before God and saying, I want my will to be done, and since I believe in you, then you're going to do my will.

So we have a problem, don't we? I believe in you, so here's my will. It's almost like a genie in the bottle.

You're my genie. I'm coming here to get one of my wishes here. How many wishes do I have left?

That's not how this relationship works. So if we come in faith, He says, I'm going to answer you, we say, okay, I come in faith, what is it you want? What is your will here? To seek God's will, this takes us back to this faith, is to have confidence in His mercy, love, wisdom, and faith.

There are times in my life I've gone to God and said, I really would like this in my life, and I'm really having a hard time, Father, saying, you will be done because I'm afraid your answer is no. So I just ask it to be done, and just, no, there's a point you have to say, but you know best.

Boy, that's hard sometimes. But God, if you just do this.

So there's times we have to realize that our belief must be, He's listening to me, He's going to answer me, and I have to step back and say, and I realize the answer to this one made me know.

I don't want it. I don't like that. God doesn't ask you to like it. He asks you to believe it. He asks you to trust Him. What He asks is to trust Him.

And there's times if you really understand this, there's times you're going to be before God and say, but I don't trust you.

And He goes, I know. We've got to go left to work this one out.

There's times we have to literally just open up to the point where I don't trust you on this one because I want this so badly.

And we struggle with it.

That is part of Christianity. What we believe is what anybody who does that lacks faith. Anyone who does that is having an honest relationship with God. Those who never have that experience, as far as I'm concerned, I need to judge everybody, but I think they're dishonest.

He says, well, my will is perfectly the will of God. Okay. Matthew 26.

Matthew 26. My will is always... I know what God wants. I know He's going to answer my prayer because I have enough faith.

Matthew 26. 36. This is after that Passover, or the night that Jesus was going to be brutally beaten, die the next day. That Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane and said to the disciples, Sit here while I go and pray over there. And He took with it Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and He began to be sorrowful and deeply distressed. Here is the Son of God that has become flesh. Now deeply distressed is not something He would have experienced this God. Okay. He is now deeply... He's a turmoil. He's an anxiety. Didn't God ever have anxiety? Well, of course not. What does He have to be anxious over?

Here He is in distress.

And He said to them, My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. He said, I think I'm going to die here. You ever been so afraid or so anxious you think, I have a heart's beating, I'm going to have a heart attack. Okay. Jesus says, Guys, I think I'm going to die.

Now, He never experienced that before. No. Never. I'm going to die.

He said, Stay here and watch with me. Be my friend. You know how you're all in anxiety. I need somebody to help. I need somebody to sit with me. He said, Just sit with me for a while. They all fall asleep.

He went a little farther and fell on His face and prayed, saying, Oh, my Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass for me. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will. Not as I think and feel here, but as You think and feel.

So unless you're Jesus Christ, well, even Jesus Christ had a moment.

It was probably the only time in history of this relationship where He said, Are we right here?

He had never asked that question before, ever.

He had a Father in this relationship called oneness, this unity. And He says, Are we right?

This is overwhelming.

Are we right? But, notice the immediate response, I do what You tell me, and if this is what I'm supposed to do, then this is what I will do.

The point is, He never wavered in His absolute faith to do the will of God, like He never wavered. He's explaining what He felt.

So that when you and I feel this way, we have the right to say to God, I feel like I'm going to die here. This is too much for me, but I know You know what You're doing. I'll hold onto that. It's something You actually grab hold of. It's something You grab hold of. You know what You're doing. So I just hold onto you. Sometimes there are points in life, that's all you have. All you have is grabbing hold. It's that level of prayer that we're all going to get to at some point in life. Every one of us, God's going to take us somewhere, someplace, where you're grabbing hold and saying, All I've got is you. I don't know, and I have to trust Your will here.

He came to His disciples, verse 40, and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, Well, could you not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray and let you enter into temptation. The Spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. He said, Peter, I'm going through this turble. You should too, because you have no idea what's about to happen to you. Peter said, I'm tired. That lamb was so good. We washed each other's feet, had a little wine, and I'm just tired. And He says, you don't get it. Again, a second time, He went and prayed, saying, Oh, Father, if this cup cannot, now watch! The process has already happened. Okay, I know. This is what we planned. This is what's supposed to happen. This is prophesied. This is, you know, this is why I emptied myself to come here, was to do this. Well, My Father, if this cup cannot pass from me unless I drink it, Your will be done. He says He came and did it a third time, and it was the same thing. Okay, Your will.

You and I, when we come before God in prayer, must be seeking His will. It must be a motivation. What is You want in Me? What is it You want in Me? What is it You want Me to be? What is it You want Me to do? What is Your, what do You want as the outcome? The problem is, He knew the outcome. You and I don't know the outcome. That's what makes it so hard. He knew the outcome of this. The outcome of this was He was going to save humanity. That's a pretty big outcome. He and I don't have outcomes that big, do we? That's not our outcomes. But we need to understand that the seeking of God's will has to be a core, a core motivation of prayer. Now, as we seek the will of God, we come to another step that's actually part of prayer. That is, once we seek and know the will of God, in order to keep our prayers open before God, we have to do what He shows us to do. 1 Peter 3. 1 Peter 3. 1 Peter 3. I'm going to read a couple of verses here just to set up where Peter goes, because Peter is going to take us to the Old Testament. 2 Peter 3.

1 Peter 3.

It gets shut. We find ourselves like the tax collector. We go back to, okay, this can't be original. Point number two, we have to be humble before God. That's why, as we look through this process, you realize, oh yeah, there's different times I've been in different parts of this process. Sometimes, when we find ourselves, now we're not doing the will of God. We've sought the will of God. We're not doing the will of God. We have to go back and be like the tax collector. We have to go humble ourselves before God and say, I really messed up. And I'm weak. I can't do this. And then you get justified. God opens the door and says, glad to hear it, come on in. I've been waiting for you to figure that out. It's been pretty miserable, hasn't it? It's been pretty miserable. Yeah, okay. The door gets open. Christ opens the door. Now, you and I walk back in, and there we are before the throne of God. It's in that humility. So we have to be obedient. God shows us the will. We have to do it. We have to step out. So in our prayer, as we seek this will of God, it's like, no, I have to do the will of God. I have it carried out in my life. So now I say, okay, I've got this down. I'm not being ritualistic. I'm being humble before God. I'm doing all these things. I believe that He hears my prayers. I believe that He responds. I'm seeking His will, and I'm trying to be obedient. So here I am. So I went and said, God, I lost my job. I need to do a job. And it's three months later, and I don't have a new job. I don't understand. Well, there's another point to that. This will be point number six. You and I have to be patient and persistent in what we do. God's sense of time is totally different than ours. His timetable is totally different than ours. God has a vision, a purpose for your life that is the more of us, and we're trapped in these little moments. We're trapped in little moments. And God's vision and purpose for your life is eternal. So He's looking at us in this huge, huge vision that we're looking right here. And so many times we don't understand that. But what God may consider immediate response, or what we consider immediate response, is not exactly the same. I consider myself patient when I'm going 30 seconds. I'm patient, God, I waited 30 seconds. God says, no, I've been like 30 years. Then I'll answer. It's like 30 years? Yeah, but we're talking about eternity here. That's like a nanosecond. Come on, that's nothing. His timetable is so much different than ours. And that's why Luke 18 is sometimes misunderstood. Luke 18.

Luke chapter 18, verse 1. And you know the parable here. Verse 2, it says, There was a certain city of judge who did not fear God, nor regard man. Now there was a widow in that city, and she came to him saying, Get justice for me and for my adversary. He would not for a while, but afterwards she said, He said with it himself, Though I do not fear God nor regard man, Yet because this widow troubles me, I will avenge her.

Lest by her continuing, she weary me. That's a sort of strange parable, isn't it? Verse 6, Then the Lord said, Hear what the unjust judge said. Now, we have to be very careful here. He's not saying the unjust judge is a type of God. He's using a very negative situation to say, Now let me tell you something much more positive.

That shall God not avenge his own elect, Who cry out day and night to him, Though he bears long with them. The point is, you have to keep at this, Because you cry out day and night, And he's not responding, he's bearing a long tongue. There's times when what happens to God, When we answer something, it's like obedient. And there's times when he goes on and on and on, And there's a reason. I tell you that he will avenge them speedily, Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, When he finds, really finds faith on the earth, That question is hard to be in time.

I think our faith is so weak Compared to the faith that we're supposed to have. Or even faith. We have to be patient. We have to keep going. Remembering the context of time, And we just have trouble with that. We have trouble with time, because we're trapped in it. He's not. So he speaks differently. There'll come a time when we're outside physical time as we know it. I don't know what time means in the spiritual realm.

I have no idea. I know what it means in the physical realm. It's the rotation of the earth around the sun, moving around the earth. That's time. I know what time means outside of that. Every time I read something and try to explain that, I think, How do you know? How do you know what time means outside of physical time? Because I know what that means. People say, well, there is no time. What does that mean? He gets pretty ridiculous after a while.

But we have to be patient because we have to realize he lives in a different realm. Once again, we're back to believe that he's doing what's best for us, in spite of what we're going through. And then our last point. Our last point is John 16. So as you can see, this is just, you know, this is basically seven sermonettes put together. You can spend ten minutes on each of these, which is basically what I've done. Putting them, trying to put the ball into a package. You can see how all this relates to each other, the things we're supposed to do. John 16.23. This couple little sentences here are very, very important.

You know, when we pray, we always pray in Jesus' name. Right? In fact, we don't even think about it, in Jesus' name, in the name of Jesus Christ. But you say it. It's like, it's sort of like going to God and saying, I'm done now. It's like saying goodbye. Right? Okay, God, in Jesus' name.

Okay, God, see you later. But I want you to notice why we're supposed to pray in Jesus' name. Jesus says that in that day, you will ask Me nothing. He says, when I'm resurrected, you will be coming and asking Me directly for things. Most certainly I say to you, whenever you ask the Father in My name, He will give you. In My name. We must recognize Christ is the door to the Father. That's explained in the book of John. He opens the door. But the Father says, you must do it in His name if you want to relate to Me.

What we find here is this unique, wonderful relationship between the Father and the Son, but how that relates to us, look what He says now in the next sentence, verse 24. Until now, you have asked nothing in My name. Ask and you will receive that your joy may be full. We are required, if we understand who Jesus Christ is, we're required to ask the Father in His name. These things I have spoken to you in figurative language. The time is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figurative language, but I will tell you plainly about the Father.

In that day you will ask in My name, and I do not say to you that I will pray the Father for you. That's very fascinating. He says, understand, I'm opening this door. You know, Christ's intercession is a very interesting process. One thing about our study of Catholicism and these programs, the need to go to Mary so that she can go to Jesus and Jesus to go to God for you. It's primary to the whole system. You've got to get the Mary because Jesus will listen to her and that Jesus will go to the Father and He'll listen to you.

And what Christ says here is, understand, I opened the door so you could go right to the Father. But we have to acknowledge that He's there. And we're going to find out in a minute why we have to acknowledge that He's there. So this is a fascinating way this works. And He says, so understand when you come who you're talking to, yes, both of them, but you're directly before the Father. You're right there before the Father. For the Father Himself loves you. So He wants to understand, He says, understand, the Father loves you individually.

You have this chance to come before you. For the Father loves you, and now the next statement is what's so amazing in all this. Because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God. To say in Jesus' name is to tell the Father, I love that one. I love you and I love that one.

I love Him because He came from you, because He is the Word. Because He is the eternal Word, and He came here and returned to you. And I'm allowed to come here because I love Him. For us to ignore Jesus Christ is to shut the door between us and the Father. I tell you what, I'm just going to confess this because there are times I have been praying and then, you know, well, I've got something else to do in Jesus' name and I jump off the road.

In Jesus' name I did, and I've gone back and dealt back down and apologized. I've done that. And apologized. Because what I did was wrong. It was sin before God. And I do. Uh-oh. I might get the door shut here. And I'm going to go back to being the tax collector. So I could be before God and be justified because the one who made me justified is saying, Hey! Well, it's interesting here. No, it's the Father's.

No, no, no, no. You've got all of Him. So we have to understand our love of God with all our heart and all our blood and our soul includes the love of His Son, who is God. And if we do not, and it says here, the Father listens to you because you love Me.

What's the reverse of that? If you don't love Me, the Father will not listen to you. If you do not love Christ, the Father will not listen to you. That's fascinating, isn't it? So we all say, in Jesus' name, not recognizing what we're actually supposed to be saying.

We're before God saying, and Father, basically what we're saying is, And I thank you and I thank your Son, and I thank what you have done through Him, and I thank His willingness to struggle with His will and say, No, your will be done, to just empty Himself, to become like us. I thank you, and is it His name I pray? Because without His name, our prayers don't have the same relationship with God. So don't forget this last one. This last one is very, very important. Now sometimes, because we have rejected, sort of the Pentecostal way of emphasizing Jesus and ignoring the Father, because we have rejected that, we have to be careful not to do the other.

Where we only emphasize the Father, and forget how we get there. And that Scripture won't let us do that. And every time we pray, and we end in the name of Jesus Christ, you can tack on a little bit there, but that really means a thankfulness, an acknowledgement of who He is before the Father. And it says, then He'll hear your prayer.

God has initiated a personal relationship with every one of you. It's between you and Him. That's amazing that you and I get to go before God. It is His mercy and His grace. And He wants you to talk to Him. He wants you to talk to Him. That's sort of amazing to stop and think about. Of all the things God wants in life, He can't be much. He has everything. He's made everything. What He wants is a relationship with you. With you. And we say, oh, with us, with you, man, with you.

You personally. He wants a relationship with you. That's why He's called you. He wants you to come talk to Him. He actually wants you to come talk to Him. And that's why spending time in prayer is so important. It is His will and His ways that we need carried out in our lives and that we must be carried out in our lives, have carried out in our lives. And this is what you can know. Is that in any time, in any place, because of this relationship God has initiated with you, we didn't issue with Him, He with you.

And any time or any place, you could call on Him. And He will listen and He will answer.

Thank you.