"The Lord's Prayer" by John D. Martin

The one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him, and a threefold cord is not quickly broken. Well, it looks like it is time to start. It's four o'clock. I mean, for you, it's six.

Um, so welcome, everybody. It's good to see you all here this morning.

We are honored to have Brother John D. Martin with us this morning from Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, and he's going to be our speaker. Um, some of John's messages on the kingdom have had a significant impact on our lives. Um, most recently, we listened to his message on our world, our wealth, and my wife called me at work at about 10 o'clock in the morning. She had been listening to it, and she was in tears. We have to do something.

Um, so if you haven't listened to that, I would strongly recommend it.

He's going to share this morning on the Lord's Prayer. Um, while he's speaking, uh, be keep in mind that we will be having a question-and-answer period at the end. Um, so think of some good questions for him.

Um, maybe you can introduce yourself, um, John.

Well, I was raised as a conference Mennonite, and, uh, I watched the apostasy that took place in the conferences and, uh, left in 1968. And then in 1984, in 1986, we began Shippensburg Christian Fellowship. Um, it was an effort to, uh, establish a kingdom concept of the gospel rather than a save-me concept of the gospel with implications, uh, about the way we used our money. Uh, it was we wanted it to be a church where everybody functioned. You didn't just have a few people, uh, ministering with the rest sort of going along for the ride. We wanted to recognize all the talents, uh, have brothers preach as they were able to and had the gift to do it.

Uh, so that's, that's what our congregation's vision was. But I, I've been deeply impressed with the Lord's Prayer. But before we get into it, let's, uh, let's bow our heads for prayer. Father, I thank you this morning that you gave us this prayer that is all-inclusive.

It touches every area of our lives. And, Lord, if we could just live this little prayer, uh, we would be, uh, beautiful examples of what you want humans to be. So bless us this morning as we think about this prayer. Help us to internalize it. Help us, Lord, to, uh, put it to practice in our lives and experience the same kind of results the disciples experienced when they learned to pray the way you taught. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

Now, this prayer was given at the request of the disciples. Uh, they never asked Jesus to teach them to preach. They never asked Jesus to teach them to cast out demons. Uh, they never asked Jesus to teach them, uh, uh, any of those things. Uh, this is the only thing they ever said that they wanted Jesus to teach them. And I believe, uh, the reason for that was because they sensed that everything else about Jesus' ministry was because, uh, he knew how to pray. He knew how to make contact with his Father. And, uh, so they asked him to, uh, teach them to pray. You'll find that in Luke, uh, chapter 11.

They saw that, uh, he was praying when the Holy Spirit came on him at his baptism. They saw that he prayed after feeding the 5,000. They saw that he prayed all night before or at least they knew he prayed all night before he, uh, chose his disciples. He was praying when he was transfigured.

He said, "Demons can't be cast out without prayer and fasting." He said, "Men ought always to pray and not to faint." And, of course, his most notable prayer experience was in the Garden of Gethsemane before his crucifixion. And the thing we have to understand about prayer, uh, is prayer is, uh, not just preparation for the battle ahead. Prayer is the battle.

Uh, if you turn to Mark chapter 14, verses 33 and following, or especially verse 33, uh, it says that there in the garden, he began to be sore amazed and very heavy. Now, that word "sore amazed," if you study it, it means he was stricken with terror and horror and was desperately depressed.

Now, we never think of Jesus having that kind of an experience. Now, I know, know if I was going to be crucified, I certainly would, uh, have that. Uh, I'd be horrified. I'd be depressed. Uh, uh, that, that would be the battle I would have to fight. And so Jesus fought that battle in the garden.

And then when he left the garden, we see him struggling there. And, uh, it says he sweat, as it were, great drops of blood. I mean, this was a real struggle. But then he left the garden, and we see him at the crucifixion with perfect poise. We don't see any struggle. We see he had command of, of every word, every action, uh, through that horrible experience.

And, uh, so that, that's a tremendous lesson that the battle is fought in our, in, in prayer. If we don't fight that battle, we go out like the disciples did from the Garden of Gethsemane, and they were all scattered. And Peter, of course, denied Christ, and, uh, they, they just simply, uh, fell apart. Uh, and, and they weren't the one being crucified. Uh, so I think that's a good example of what happens when we don't prepare ourselves in prayer. Uh, and Jesus said that, uh, demons are cast out by prayer and fasting. That doesn't mean when you're casting out a demon, you start praying and fasting. You don't have time to. Uh, what he meant was that should be your way of life so that when you meet those kinds of situations, you're prepared, uh, for the, uh, for the crisis.

So th-th-this, this is a tremendously important part of our lives. We've heard this, uh, probably all our life that prayer is very important. But I just really want to emphasize from the example of Jesus, uh, how important that was and, and what it accomplished for him. In fact, Samuel said to Israel one time, he said, "God forbid that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you." Now, most of us don't think about, uh, prayerlessness as sin. Uh, but if sin means to miss the mark, which is what it means, uh, then to be prayerless is to be sinning, is, is to be missing the mark. And, uh, that's what Samuel was saying.

So Jesus gave this, this wonderful prayer, uh, which the Anabaptists actually used for instruction. You can actually find some Anabaptist documents where they go through this prayer and use it to instruct their applicants as to what it really means to live the Christian life. So this was a very important, uh, part of our, uh, history. Uh, the Lord's Prayer has always been important to our people, but probably more important to our Anabaptist forefathers than it has been to us even. And the disciples learned to pray, uh, as Jesus taught them because they, they demonstrated by the lives they lived, uh, after, uh, afterward that they had learned to pray. Now, this prayer is all-inclusive. It includes the past.

It asked, uh, God to forgive our sins, the, the, the, the missing of the mark. Uh, it's a broad statement. It says, "God, forgive us for, uh, the imperfections and the sins that we've committed." It, uh, takes in the present. It asks for bread, which I think is symbolic of all the provisions we need, not just the food we eat.

And it also takes in the future. It asks, uh, for deliverance from, uh, temptation and from sin. So it encompasses the past, the present, and the future. It's, it's all-inclusive. So what do we learn from this prayer? Well, I'm going to go through it in, uh, in detail with, with the wording.

The first thing we learned is that we learn as we look at this prayer is we should pray as sons. It does not say, uh, uh, well, I, I, I, I, I shouldn't have said that. We pray as sons. We say, "Father." Okay.

And so right away, we, we have this conception that, uh, he is, as a child regards a father. Uh, a child regards a father as someone who is always right. Uh, a father can be even, uh, abusive. And psychologists will tell you that the child will say that it's their fault. They, they never blame the parent.

Uh, a father can, uh, be dead wrong, and the child believes the father. I mean, that's, that's just the, the nature of children that they, they have absolute faith in their father. Uh, in fact, I had a, a, a, uh, seventh-grade teacher who said that, um, her father read to her a story before she went to bed one night. It was a story about an elephant. And just to be silly, like parents sometimes do, he, the whole way through, he pronounced it "elephant" instead of "elephant."

And, uh, by coincidence, the next morning, the teacher read a story about an elephant. And of course, she pronounced it correctly. And, uh, the first time she said "elephant," uh, my teacher's little hand went up. "Teacher, you're saying that wrong. It's elephant."

And, uh, the teacher tried hard to explain that, no, that she was pronouncing it right. And my seventh-grade teacher, uh, told us that, uh, her teacher never convinced her. Uh, she was sure that the teacher was wrong because her father had said "elephant." Uh, that, that illustrates the, the total trust that a child has. In fact, uh, if you talk to a child when there's a divorce, they say, the child, one of the things children experience when there's a divorce is they experience a tremendous amount of guilt because they, they feel that their, their, uh, little, uh, wrongs that, uh, caused their parents all this, uh, you know, they saw their parents upset because they, they, they didn't always do things right.

So they blame themselves that because of their misbehavior, whatever it was, that's why the marriage, uh, was destroyed. So I'm, I'm just trying to show you the kind of absolute trust that a child has in a father. And so that's what, uh, we say when we say, "Father," uh, and he wants us to be children. He wants us to have that kind of absolute confidence in him that whatever he says is, is right, whether we understand it, whether the people agree with us, whether it's going to, uh, look like a good thing or a bad thing for us to, uh, do what he says. We just do what he says. We believe him absolutely, uh, and don't question.

And so that's, that's the kind of relationship we're, we're implying when we say, "Our Father." We are implying that kind of trust in God. Uh, so, uh, this is a privileged relationship because our Father, in fact, does own the entire universe. And there's a song in our hymn that says, "Thou art coming to a king, large petitions with thee bring." And so, uh, Jesus encouraged us to continue to ask, to continue to seek, to continue to knock. And by the way, those ETH words in the King James Version often mean that special Greek verb that means continual action. Uh, not, not always, but, uh, that's one of the reasons I like the King James Version because those ETH words, uh, suggest that continuous action.

And so Jesus, we're told, "Everyone that asketh, everyone that asketh continues to ask. Everyone that continues to seek, everyone that continues to knock will receive." So, so you say, "Well, why doesn't God give, uh, what we ask sometimes?" Well, I think he does. I think we always receive, maybe not exactly what we ask.

Uh, parents, uh, sometimes don't give children what they ask. They give them what they know they need, uh, which sometimes is very different from what they ask. And sometimes I think God does not answer our prayers because we don't continually ask.

Uh, it's not that God has to be persuaded. It's that he wants something to happen to us. I give the illustration sometimes if my son came to the table and he said, "Uh, Dad, I want a bicycle." Most parents would let that go in one ear and out the other. Uh, but then the next night he says, "Dad, I want a bicycle," and, uh, with a little bit more emphasis. If, uh, for the next 30 days, every night at the table, he, he asks and it gets stronger and stronger. And finally he says, "Dad, I need a bicycle," and begins to describe the, the need.

Uh, at the end of that, the dad will probably say, "You know what? If I bought this boy a bicycle, I think he really would use it and appreciate it." And, and I think that's a little bit the way it is with God. He knows that we need sometimes to come to terms with how desperately we really do want something. And I don't know about you, but there are many times that there were situations that I prayed for once or twice a week, maybe. And then later I thought, "Well, you know, I, I haven't been praying about that." Uh, and so God doesn't take us sometimes any more seriously, I think, sometimes than we take our own requests.

So we learn to pray as to a father. Uh, the second one is we pray as brothers. This prayer has not one singular pronoun. It's our Father. It's, uh, uh, it never has I, it never has me, it never has mine. It's, they're all plural pronouns. And our Anabaptist forefathers, uh, had a statement. Uh, it said this, "No man can come to God except to bring his brother with him." And I think a lot of people, uh, here's a little visual. Uh, I think a lot of people's concept of the Christian life is that we're individually coming to God. There's just an awful lot of individualism in many people's, uh, concept of, of, of Christianity.

But the Anabaptists, uh, had this idea that here we are and we all come to God together. Now, that doesn't mean that when you pray, you have to go get all your brothers to pray with you. But what it does mean is when you're praying, your brothers are all there in, in focus. And if there's some brother that you have a wrong relationship with, uh, Jesus said, "You need to go make that right before you come to the altar." And so in a sense, if you're in a church and, uh, there's something, uh, that is wrong between you and a brother, uh, you're not going to be successful in your prayer. Uh, and, and that's another thing I think that, uh, we don't take seriously.

Uh, there's so much relationship problems. In fact, we had a little family get together last night and, and, you know, there was various things discussed where people didn't, weren't getting along. They weren't doing, uh, well in their relationships. And I think that's one of the reasons why a lot of prayers aren't answered because God says, "Look, you get all your relationships right and then you come to me, uh, in prayer." So we pray as brothers. The, the in Ephesians, it says that we will comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and the depth and the length and the height. And so God, God takes us very seriously in our relationships with our brother. If you turn to 1 John, chapter 2, uh, it says if we, uh, let me read that.

Uh, I want to get it exactly the way it says it. This really convicted me some years ago when I read this. Uh, it says, "He that loveth his brother abideth in the light." Now listen to this. "He that loveth his brother abideth in the light and there's none occasion of stumbling in him." That's quite a statement. Is it true that all sin stems from some wrong relationship somewhere in one's life? It says, "If we walk in the, if we love our brother, we walk in the light and there's not any occasion for stumbling in us." That's an amazing statement. And so this aspect, this part of the prayer puts tremendous emphasis on having a proper relationship with our brother.

And, uh, and I, I, you know, we're, we're really getting into some, uh, practical stuff in this prayer. Our relationship with God, absolute trust, all clear relationships with brothers. Uh, Christians simply do not, uh, tolerate bad relationships in their life. Uh, uh, in our community, there's someone that's a very close friend of mine.

In fact, he's probably one of my closest friends. And he's probably the person that I disagree with the most on one of the most important issues in our lives. But we love each other. And, uh, I'm not sure if we'll ever completely agree, but, uh, there, there's nothing, there's nothing between us as far as our relationships concern. Unfortunately, I, I haven't always been able to say that, but it's something we should take very seriously, our relationship with our brother.

In fact, if you turn to 1 John, you'll find that John, uh, discusses a lot of things. And then three times in the book, he dips down for an illustration. And every time the practical illustration for what John is teaching in 1 John is love, love for the brother. And, and he makes it very clear that if you don't love your brother, you have violated whatever he has taught. That's the practical application. He gives no other practical applications. The only practical application John gives in 1 John is that we must love our brother. And if we don't love our brother, he says, then everything else is out the window. You're, you're really not living the gospel if you don't love your brother.

The third thing we find in this prayer, "Which art in heaven," we pray with reverence. We realize that God is the great other, uh, and that, uh, he is not like us. In fact, in, in Psalm chapter 50, down near the end of the chapter, it says that people who worship idols, the problem is they thought that God was altogether like they are, they were. That was the problem. They brought God down to their level. Now, Jesus came down to our level, but he didn't come down to our level to stay on our level. He came down to our level to lift us up into the level of God. And so, uh, we need to remember that God is in heaven and, uh, he is the great other.

And we don't see anything properly unless we see it from that heavenly perspective. I often think of, uh, the example of the spies when they went into the land of Canaan. Uh, 10 of them, of course, had, uh, they all saw the same thing. They, they all, they all saw the same information. They all looked at the same, uh, settings. But they came back with two very different reports.

The 10 said, "This is a land that eats up the inhabitants thereof." Now, I don't know what was happening in that land. I don't know if they were killing each other. I don't know if there was a plague. But they said, "Look, if we go into that land, we're going to die." We saw it with our own eyes.

The other two saw the same thing. And they said, "Well, you don't understand. These people are bread for us. God is getting this land ready for us, and that's why they're dying. You don't understand. You don't have the right perspective on this, uh, uh, death that's taking place in, in, in, in the land. God is getting it ready for us."

Now, why did they say, why did they have a different perspective? Because they believed that God had told them to go in and take the land. And so that was the only way they could figure it out. That if they were to go in and take the land, then the death of those people in the land didn't mean they were going to die. It meant God was preparing it for them. And I just give that as an example of how the Christian's perspective is altogether different if he remembers that we have a Father in heaven. He has a total perspective. And I say it many times in our, uh, my conversations with people on the telephone from the billboards.

Uh, I say, "Look, I can give you some suggestions about this hard question you've asked me, but don't expect me to completely answer it because my perspective is not large enough. There is a larger perspective that we do not see. And that's why we have to trust in, uh, many areas of our life."

So, uh, the heathen concept of God is to manipulate God. The Christian's concept of God is to explicitly trust and obey God. And I feel that even a lot of Christians, in fact, when I talk to them, you know, they want me to pray that something will happen, that God will do something for them. And I often think that, you know, we get into this thing of trying to manipulate God. That's a heathen, that's a heathen concept of God. Christians do not manipulate God. They try to get themselves in harmony with God. They try to cooperate with God. They don't manipulate God. So it's the God is in heaven. So we, we pray with reverence.

The second thing that we learn is we pray for reverence. We pray that we will reverence God more. Hallowed be thy name. Uh, we will never make any progress spiritually until we come to terms with God's holiness. We go back to 1 John again. John makes a tremendous promise early on in his, uh, uh, book. He says, "I, I wrote this to you that you may have fellowship with us and truly our fellowship with the Father. I wrote this to you that you may be filled with joy." And you read those first verses and you say, "This is tremendous. I want that kind of relationship. I want the joy. I want all this that John is talking about."

But then you get to verse, uh, I think it's verse 5, where he says, "This then is the message that God is light and in him is no darkness at all." And then John gets very serious about taking sin seriously and committing ourselves to holiness.

And so, uh, our experience with God is all wrapped up in our pursuit of holiness. Many people think that the goal in life is to get to heaven. Jesus said at the end of chapter 5 in, in, uh, Matthew, he says, "Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect." And we shy away from that word perfect. But the fact is the Christian life is a call to perfection. "Be ye holy for I am holy." Paul says, "I labor to present every man perfect in Christ." Now, we never completely attain that, but that is the passion that God wants to see, that we really do want to be absolutely perfect. And we are keenly aware when we're not, and, and we deal with it when we're not.

But the Chri, the Christian life is a commitment to holiness. It's a commitment to the character of God. And, and I think that we should be very, uh, uh, solicitous about God's character. I think we should be, well, pardon my problem with my suspender here.

I, I think we should be, uh, very careful. We, we don't want in any way to besmirch his character. Uh, people look at us and they get their concept of God from us. I mean, that Westboro Baptist Church, I don't know how many times people bring that up on the telephone, this awful church that, uh, goes, uh, to places and, and says, "God is judging you," and, and gives all kinds of horrible concepts of what, uh, of, of what kind of person God is.

Uh, we, we need to always be careful to, to sanctify the, uh, impression that people have of God. "Oh to be like thee" is a song that I've always enjoyed. Uh, "Pure is thou art." What is holiness? You know, at Easterman and I College years ago, uh, they were trying to, uh, one of the classes was trying to do a motto and, uh, they, uh, couldn't decide whether they wanted the motto to say "wholeness" or "holiness." Uh, I forget what the motto was, but, uh, they could choose one of those two words, "wholeness" or "holiness." Well, the fact of the matter is they both mean the same thing. Uh, the word "holy" is from the, uh, Greek word "hellic," which means health.

And so people shy away from the word "holiness." It's a wonderful word. It means complete liberty. It means complete fulfillment. It means complete success. It means complete power. It means complete peace. It, it means to be completely whole. That's what the word "holiness" means.

And we should have a passion for that. Uh, that should be our, our passion. And the Bible says, "If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another. And the blood of Jesus Christ, his son, cleanseth us from all sin." And there cleanseth, see that ETH word? It's a constant cleansing. And, uh, it's just a blessing to me to know that even the sins I commit never appear on the record. They're cleansed by the blood of Christ if I'm walking in the light. Now, of course, if I'm walking in the light and I realize I've sinned, I go deal with it. I don't get careless about it.

People are a little afraid of this concept because they're afraid if you talk about this continual cleansing so that no sin ever appears on your record, that then people get careless. Well, then they're not walking in the light. So it's sort of a catch-22 verse. You can't play games with that verse. But if you are walking in the light, there is no condemnation to those who walk in the Spirit.

Uh, Romans chapter 8, verse 1, "Nothing ever comes between us and God if we walk in the light." So the Christian life is a commitment to holiness. Uh, and it's a beautiful thing. And, and we should, uh, we should love that word.

The fifth thing we pray for, "Thy kingdom come." We pray for a realization of Christ's kingdom. God's first priority on this earth is his kingdom. Not my personal salvation. It doesn't say, "Seek ye first to get to heaven.

Seek ye first to escape hell." In fact, Jesus didn't say, "Repent if you want to go to heaven." He said, "Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." That was the first thing he said in his ministry. And it is a mystery to me how the Christian gospel, even in our own, uh, circles, got changed into what I call a "save me" gospel, which ended up with a whole bunch of individualism and, and, and I think the apostasy that took place in the church.

Uh, God's first priority is the kingdom. He saves me because he can't have a redeemed society unless he has redeemed people. I don't think God saves us primarily to get us to heaven. I think he saves us primarily because the thing that he wants more than anything else in relation to, to this present time is little colonies of heaven that demonstrate the lost ideals that God had for man and for society. So the world can look in and say, "Yeah, that's what down deep in my heart I know humanity should be. I want to be part of that." Uh, but there's just, to me, there's just so much individualism in Christianity. It's all about me.

It's all about me getting to heaven. And, uh, if there's one thing that I hope my life accomplishes, and that is that it, it, it does something about that problem and begins to change our people to a kingdom gospel.

Uh, that verse in Philippians says, "Our citizenship is in heaven." Uh, I like that. Uh, it pictures a colony. And Philippi was an example of that. Philippi was a Greek city in the mid--I'm sorry, a Roman city in the midst of a Greek culture. If you walked to Philippi, you walked, you saw on the way, you saw Roman law, you saw Roman dress, you heard the Latin language. But the minute you stepped inside of the city, it was Greek. It was Greek, uh, law. It was Greek custom. It was Greek, uh, uh, dress.

And did the people in that city, like many Christians, say, "Oh my, I, I have to be so different in the midst of all this, uh, surrounding culture?" No. They, they took it as a matter of honor that they could be Romans in the midst of this Greek culture. Romans were superior to the Greeks.

Everybody else was barbarians except, except the people in Philippi. And, uh, and I think that, that should be our concept, that, that we have the opportunity to be part of the ideal society that God always intended, that Jesus now made possible by removing the problem, which is selfishness. And by the way, that's, that's--I've come to believe that the word selfishness is a synonym for sin. That's really what sin is. It's selfishness. That's what we have to do to get rid of it, put self on the cross.

And to me, it's such a privilege to live with the genuine antidote for selfishness and sin and be able to live out this ideal that God always had for humanity. Most Christians do not think about that. They don't think about that as a tremendous privilege to be holy, to have holy relationships, and to enjoy what humans were always intended to experience.

So, so we pray for a realization of his kingdom. I hope you're getting this, that this prayer really does zero in on, on, on the, all the important aspects of life. And so we come to the next one, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, or in earth as it is in heaven."

Uh, we pray for obedience. God has no plan of salvation for the unsurrendered will. "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." For someone to be willful against God or against, uh, reality, uh, there's no place; God has no place for that in, in his, in his plan.

So people say, "Well, how do I know the will of God?" Well, I, I've come up with three, three things that I always say. First of all, and this is axiomatic, it's not the will of, it's, it's not, uh, the will of God if it contradicts anything that God said.

Uh, the Anabaptists had a, a statement, "No understanding of the scripture is the proper understanding if it contradicts anything Jesus said or did." And that, that, that's important. Well, you say, "Well, we all know that." Well, I'm not sure we all know it. Uh, we sometimes, uh, uh, pray for God's will, uh, for things that we should know better. I mean, it's sometimes it's a little bit like, uh, you're, you, you go to a bank and you see a man, uh, uh, in front of the door on his knees just praying his heart out. And you say, "What are you praying for?" And he says, "Well, I'm, I'm praying to find out if it's God's will for me to rob this bank."

And you would say, "Come on." But people do that all the time. I, I, you know, I prayed and God told me that, uh, I didn't need to wear my covering anymore. I, I prayed and God to, uh, get, I, I prayed, uh, all kinds of prayers that people pray. Uh, I prayed and God led me to go to the army. I mean, you know, uh, nothing is the will of God if it contradicts anything that, that God has said, especially what Jesus said.

Uh, the second thing that I think if we're gonna know the will of God, we need to commit ourselves to doing it before he shows it to us. It says, "If any man will know, uh, if any man will do his will, he will know whether my doctrine is of me or whether it comes from the Father." I sometimes illustrate it this way. Uh, some people say, "Well, God, I want you to, uh, to show me your will. Here, here's a piece of paper. Would you write your will on it for me?" It lists it down here. And God says, "Well, first of all, do you see this little line at the bottom? Well, when you sign your name to that line, then I will start writing what I want you to do."

And so I think we know, we'll know God's will, uh, to the extent that we've committed ourselves to do it before he shows it to us. Because often he shows us things we really don't want to hear. After having done them, we're glad we did them and we see some wisdom in it. But often they don't look like something, uh, that we would have ever wanted to do. And the last thing, so the first thing is nothing's the will of God if it contradicts anything that God has said. Number two, God probably isn't gonna show us his will unless we are committed to do it before he shows it to us. And the last one is he shows his will to people who are committed to pleasing him.

There's a difference between obeying and pleasing. Uh, and we talk a lot about obedience, but I think we should be talking more about pleasing God. If, uh, if I go to town and I tell one of my children, "Now when I come home, I want the dishes washed and I want your room straightened up," and they do that, that's obedience.

But if while I'm in town and they wash the dishes and they straighten up their room, and then they say, "You know what? Dad said he wanted me to, uh, uh, weed the garden. Now it's a hot day and I hate to weed the garden. It's the last thing on my list to do that I would want to do.

But I want to really make mom and dad happy when they come home from town. So I'm gonna weed the garden, even though they didn't tell me to." That's the kind of obedience that God wants. He, he loves people who please him. David one time said, "I wanna build God a temple." And, uh, God sent Nathan and Nathan said, "Yeah, go ahead." And then you know what happened in the night? God said, "No, no. You go tell David tomorrow that, uh, uh, he's not gonna build the temple." But it's interesting what, what Nathan said to David. He said, "Did God ever tell anybody he wanted a temple?" Now you look at what God told the children of Israel.

He never gave them plans for a temple. He gave them plans for a tabernacle, and he was perfectly happy to dwell in that tabernacle. He never, there's, there's nothing in his commands to Israel that he wanted a temple. And so what God says to David, he says, "It really makes me happy, David, that you wanted to build a temple. I never said I wanted one, but you understood that that would please me. And because you wanted to please me, I'm not gonna let you build me a temple, but I'm gonna build you a house." And that's where God made the promise that David would always have one of his descendants sitting on the throne of Israel.

Uh, that pleased God so, so completely that he made that tremendous promise to David. And so I think we should think in terms of pleasing God. What will put a smile on God's face? We should understand David was a man after God's own heart. David wasn't interested just in obeying God. He wanted to know the heart of God. He wanted to go there and please God. He wanted to, to, to, uh, uh, put joy in God's heart.

The next thing we pray for is necessities. Give us, notice that plural word. So you brought your paycheck home. What is it your paycheck? No, it's our paycheck. And that's another thing we don't think about. We tend to think that what we have is ours.

I mean, mine. No, give us this day our daily bread. When you bring that paycheck home, that belongs to the entire brotherhood. It's not your paycheck. And it's daily bread. So if you wanna talk about non-accumulation of wealth, there it is. Give us this day our daily bread.

Uh, the Bible says we're, uh, uh, to go to the ant. Well, you say, "Well, the ant lays up for the future." But where's the ant's future? It's on this earth. We're supposed to lay up for the future too.

But where is our future? It's not on this earth. In fact, he says, "Lay up treasure in heaven." It's not wrong to accumulate wealth. We're supposed to accumulate all the wealth we possibly can, but we're not to accumulate it here.

And so we pray, "Give us this day our daily bread." So you bring the paycheck home. It doesn't belong to you. It belongs to the entire brotherhood. And how should you feel about that? Well, if you go to First Corinthians chapter nine, verse eight, Paul's giving a lot of teaching there on, uh, uh, giving.

And, uh, he says that we're supposed to be cheerful givers.

Well, if you look that word cheerful up, it's the Greek word hilaros. It's the word we get hilarious from. Uh, God wants us to be hilarious givers. Uh, I tell people that when the offering basket is passed at church, you should hear chuckles all up and down the pews as people are putting their money in. Uh, that should be our attitude toward giving. And the interesting thing is the very next verse says, "If you're a hilarious giver, this is how God responds. God is able to make all grace abound towards you that you always, having all sufficiency in all things, may abound unto every good work." Now that's a fabulous promise, but don't take it out of context.

It's in the context of people who are hilarious givers. If you're a hilarious giver, God is a hilarious giver. We often hear the statement, "You cannot give God." He, he opens up to the person who is a, is, is a, is a joyful giver. He opens up all the resources he has lavishly. Uh, the word about means no limits.

So, uh, so we pray that God will give us our daily bread. Us, our daily bread. And we, we, we, and if every Christian practices this, there would be no need for accumulation on this earth because my resources would be your resources. And likewise, every, you know, there would be a constant, uh, giving and, and, and meeting all of the needs, and nobody would need to accumulate anything.

One of the dreams we had when we started our church, which was never realized, is that all of us would get out of debt. And if somebody needed housing, we would all just take up the money and, and, and pay cash for it.

Uh, that was a rather radical concept that we got a lot of interesting press on. Uh, but anyway, uh, that is how it would work. You know, if nobody's in debt, then in the next six months, we probably, not a very large congregation, could, could come up with the money to buy a house for somebody, uh, with cash.

Uh, but unfortunately, uh, we had so many people come into our circles that had so much debt that, uh, we spent a lot of time paying off debt and never were able to realize that, that ideal. The next thing we pray for is for forgiveness. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Now, forgiveness is the basis of all human relationships.

I want you to think about this. We're all human. We're all imperfect. We're all gonna disappoint each other. We're probably all gonna hurt each other till it's all done. And if we don't let, if we don't learn to forgive, human relationships will suffer.

And the reason why we don't so readily forgive is because it is so unjust. If you forgive somebody, it means you took all the hurt, you took all the indignation, and you let the other person go free as if it never happened.

That's what Jesus did for us. Now, that doesn't mean you can't challenge the other person. Uh, Joseph did. He put his brothers through the paces because he wanted reconciliation. He did, he had already forgiven them. There was no question about Joseph's forgiveness. But reconciliation is, is something else.

Uh, you can forgive, but unless the other person takes his responsibility, the relationship will never be what it should be. So we sometimes have, uh, uh, a responsibility to find very creative ways to bring that other person to a sense of his responsibility. But we never do it by putting hurt on the other person, uh, uh, out of revenge. And so forgiveness is the basis of all human relationships. And I say this in every wedding message. I know you people are standing in front of this altar with all kinds of fuzzy feelings, and you have no concept that you'll ever hurt each other, but you will. And you might as well make up your mind before it happens what you're gonna do.

You're just gonna let it go as if it never happened. And, uh, that's a hard thing to do. My children would say to me, "But dad, you don't know what they did to me." And I said, "Well, that's what forgiveness is, what they did to you." I mean, if, if they hadn't done anything to you, you wouldn't need to forgive. I mean, that is precisely what it is. It's, uh, learning to take it, uh, and, uh, let the other person go free. And Jesus makes a tremendous statement here in the Lord's Prayer. He says, "Forgive us just like we forgive others." Now, the, the, the concept of forgiveness is to set somebody free, not to hold them in, in, uh, uh, to blackmail them because they did this wrong.

It's to let the other person go free. So the concept of forgiveness is freedom. And Jesus says, "If you don't let other people go free, you won't be free." And I honestly believe that a lot of people's addictions, depression, loneliness, insecurity, inferiority is based on their inability to set other people free. And God says, "If you're gonna keep other people in a cage, then you're gonna stay in the cage." Corey Ten Boom tells the story of a dream she had one night where the, uh, her worst enemy was in a cage, and she was going around this cage punching him with a stick. And of course, he couldn't get away. And God told her in the dream to let him out of the cage.

And of course, she didn't want to do that because it was just too good to have him under her control. But finally, she said, "Okay, Lord, I will." And he gave her the key. And this is in her dream. She opened the cage and out came Corey. She was the person in the cage.

And I really think that's, that's, that's a tremendous metaphor as to what happens when we don't forgive. And if we really believe this, we would go and be desperate to make all our relationships the way they should be by forgiving people.

Uh, this is our most powerful testimony. When the Nickel Mines, uh, situa, uh, forgiveness situation took place, I had a friend who, who, uh, had a grandmother in Britain, and he'd gone there to visit her, and he was there for a year. And he was there during the time that this happened. And he called me and he told me, "John," he said, "this incident of the Amish at Nickel Mines has been front page news in the London newspapers for a whole week.

People just could not believe that somebody could let so something so terrible just go, not seek any way to put any hurt back on anybody else." Uh, and there could be many illustrations. You know, it's interesting, but when we hear those stories, it warms our hearts because somehow forgiveness is just such a beautiful thing.

So then why don't we, why don't we so readily, why don't we readily do it? Why do we have this tendency to hold grudges? When we hear of people holding grudges, it gives us an ugly feeling. We, we don't, we don't feel happy about that.

And, uh, so, uh, we pray, uh, for that we will be able to forgive and be forgiven. The next thing we pray is we pray against temptation. Now, we don't pray to be delivered from trials. We are promised we're going to have trials.