April 12, 2024 • 28 mins
Welcome to another episode of The Harder Way with Scott and Mattie! In this thought-provoking installment, we dive deep into the heart of prayer and its profound significance in navigating life's trials.
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Drawing from personal anecdotes, biblical wisdom, and insights from the Persecuted Church, we debunk common misconceptions surrounding prayer and illuminate its role as a conduit to align with God's divine plan.
Our exploration centers on the Lord's Prayer, a cornerstone of the Christian faith found in the New Testament, revealing its transformative power to cultivate a heartfelt connection with God rather than mere ritualistic repetition.
Embarking on a poignant journey, we share a captivating tale from a Haitian village, showcasing unwavering faith, forgiveness, and resilience amid adversity. We intertwine this narrative with reflections on forgiveness, sin, and the teachings of Jesus, drawing parallels with the experiences of the first Christians and modern-day examples of Christian forgiveness.
Throughout the episode, we underscore the indispensable role of prayer in the lives of devoted servants of God. We share real-life examples, from missionaries to persecuted believers, highlighting the transformative power of prayer and the urgent need for solidarity and support through it.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Music.
(01:04):
Really, we have a situation with a school that we work with where the school
is in dire straits. Things are tough.
And the powers that be kind of want to keep doing things the way they've always done them.
Even though they might be doing new things, they're just rehashing the old things.
(01:26):
And Einstein said, I don't want to quote Einstein, but he was a smart guy.
Guy and you know he made a statement which i think is
so true which is you you if you
if you want to solve a problem you
shouldn't keep making the same decisions that you made that got you into the
problem they kind of quit think a new way yeah and that's hard to do and when
(01:50):
i want to think any way i want to think of i want to come up with ideas that
i can't come up with on my own my first go-to too, is prayer.
That makes sense. I mean, I think if you just want to come up with good ideas,
that's something that you can do in your own strength.
But I don't think that we want to just come up with ideas that are good.
We want to come up with God ideas. Exactly.
(02:12):
Thanks for finishing that.
We just finished each other's sentences. But yes, we want that God idea, Right.
And so if we want that, we're only going to get that through reading the word and through praying.
And, you know, prayer is an interesting thing because I feel like people probably
(02:33):
have a lot of misconceptions about what prayer is or why we pray.
Right. Because a lot of folks kind of have this cosmic Santa Claus prayer.
Here's my wishlist, God. Do this, this, this, and this for me.
Okay, bye. And then if God doesn't come through with your wish list,
there's no God, or I'm mad at God, or what did I do to deserve to not have my prayers answered?
(02:59):
Yeah, I mean, how many people do we know just personally who are in that boat?
And sometimes our prayers are just not in line with God's plan for us.
I mean, I think about times when I was a young man and I prayed for things.
And now I thank the Lord for those prayers not being answered in the affirmative.
(03:20):
Because at the time, you thought that you knew what was best for you.
Right. You said, I want this thing, or I want to be in this place in my life.
But God, being all-knowing, knew that that wasn't what you needed,
that that wasn't what was best for you. And so the answer was no.
And so I think that's a misconception right there.
We think that an answered prayer...
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Is a granted wish, right? It's, you know, oh yeah, you asked for this and you got it.
God answers every single prayer,
every single thing that we ask for in prayer, but it's not always yes.
That is the truth. Sometimes it's not yet, not now, not in this way.
(04:02):
And sometimes it's just flat out no.
And that doesn't mean that God isn't listening. And that That doesn't mean that
that prayer isn't being answered. It just maybe wasn't answered in the way that we wanted.
Well, you know, that's just one dimension of prayer.
And I think when we look at what our Lord taught us to pray in Matthew,
in the Sermon on the Mount, right after the Sermon on the Mount,
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he says, And when you pray, pray like this, Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
So the first thing, hallowing is worshiping and praising.
And so the first thing he does is he worships. in prayer.
And I think that that's something that we neglect in our prayer lives quite
frequently is that worshiping.
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And so my suggestion to folks is go to the book of Psalms, pick a Psalm,
read some of the things that David or one of the other writers of Psalms writes about God.
You are my strength. You are my shield. You're my foundation. You're my hope, right?
When you're reading the New Testament, make note of things that are declared
about God, Lord, you are my rock. You're my foundation.
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You're my deliverer. You're the good shepherd.
You're the bread of life. And you can literally just build a vocabulary of praise
through reading of scripture and then make that part of your prayer life.
I think that's really important, but you know, there's actually one thing that
comes before hallowed be thy name that everyone skips over when they're talking about,
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you know, this is the pattern that we we should follow when we pray, and that is our Father.
So we think, oh, we're just addressing God.
But let's think about this for a second. When Jesus said, let me teach you how
to pray, pray in this way, and he said, our Father who art in heaven,
that was the first written instance.
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Possibly more than likely the first ever spoken instance of God being referred
to as our Father. Thank you.
Wow. And so I think that that says something about the way that we're approaching God in prayer,
because I think we have it completely backwards in that many of us think we
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have to start our prayers in this fancy way and that that's what it means,
you know, our father who art in heaven, we have to come with this eloquence, right?
But in actuality, really what Jesus is saying there is come to him as your loving
father, that you can approach him in that way.
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And that's actually huge. And that's completely opposite of what many people think that that means.
And so everything that we say in prayer comes out of that understanding of God
as our father. That's incredible.
Well, and so moving forward in the prayer, and boy, you're making me think about
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Our Father differently.
That's a really thought-provoking comment you made.
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. What does that mean to you, Smarty Pants?
Well, I think it's interesting if we hear, you know, thy kingdom come, thy will be done.
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When we're talking about the kingdom of God, it's difficult because we know
that it's something that we can't fully understand.
Because, you know, if we could understand it, Jesus wouldn't have had every
parable start with, the kingdom of God is like this.
He would have just said, here's what it is, here's what's up.
We know that the kingdom of God is Jesus's ruling and reigning,
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and that is in the spiritual sense, eventually in the physical sense.
But when we're praying for his kingdom to come, my understanding of that is
that that really is a prayer of Jesus.
The advancement of the gospel, of the church, of the mission of Christ.
And I think when we're praying for his will to be done, we're really kind of
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saying whatever it is that we're asking for, ultimately, we want what it is that you want for us.
I think also that one of the things that we miss about prayer is that our mindset
tends to be that we are going to somehow change God. God.
But prayer really- If I ask Him enough times. Right.
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Or if I, you know, use the magic formula of words or say the right things or
quote His promises to Him.
And so I think that when we pray, we have to recognize that the greater always influences the lesser.
In newsflash, you're the lesser. God is the greater.
And so when we when we pray, it changes us to align with His will.
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It changes us to desire His will. It changes us to see His will in things.
And I have to tell you, you know, when you're taking Bibles in as a Bible courier
and you're standing on the border and you're presenting yourself to the guards
and you're wondering, are they going to ask me to open my suitcases?
What words are going to come out of my own mouth? What miracle am I going to
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see? Am I going to see a miracle? And frequently we do even the miraculous.
Well, when you're praying that prayer, I completely lost my train of thought.
Well, and that's fine. And you know, that happens when we pray sometimes,
right? Right. Is we're praying and we completely lose our train of thought.
And it's interesting because if I'm thinking about this idea of God's will being
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done, you know, you're ultimately saying, I don't know what's best for me.
I might not even know what to pray for, what to expect.
Just like you're saying on the mission field, you have no concept of what to
pray for or what to ask for because you don't know what you're going to be going
into. Wait a minute. I just heard some train whistle. The train came back.
So I'm back on the train.
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And it's not coming straight at me. So I'm okay. Here's the thing.
You're right. And so when you are making that border crossing and you're praying,
you're saying, Lord, bring your word through, Lord, do your work here and do
a miracle, and you're praying those things,
that thy will be done is an essential part of your prayer because God's will
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may be that 100% of your Bibles get confiscated.
Yeah. Now, I can tell you that at times we've been able to get some Bibles that
somebody else has tried to ship in or bring in.
We've been able to get them and make up for other Bibles that were confiscated.
Right. It's all God's economy, people.
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And some of them wind up in the dump heap of whatever communist country it is,
but there's frequently Bibles that make their way out of those –.
Confiscation into the black market. And remember, in America,
a black market is an illegal market, but in the communist countries,
they use the black markets because literally they have to have some kind of
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a capitalistic system going somewhere or everything falls completely apart.
So the governments kind of turn, you know, a blind eye.
It's like, you know, private use of gasoline's been outlawed in Cuba for decades,
yet there's all these cars on the road, you know? Right, right. Yeah, exactly.
But yeah, so liking him come, like, well, we've done the prayer changes me.
I learned to look at things through a new lens.
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Our earth is in heaven. And then our next prayer is what? Give us this day our daily bread.
And so I think that comes down to something that is a really important principle
within the persecuted church, which is trusting God for provision.
Because, you know, we hear give us this day our daily bread.
And yes, we can definitely apply that to this is the time we should be praying
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for, you know, our needs, our requests, etc. And I think there's an application there.
But I think more so it's about trusting God for provision.
Because remember, we're living in a society where at any point we can get food,
you know, like you can just go to the store, you can order something.
Something, you're not thinking, I'm going to die because I can't go to the store
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and get bread, you know, whatever.
But back then when Jesus was saying this, if you weren't able to provide for
yourself to make sure that you had the right things and you could make your
own food, all this stuff, you would die.
There was no way to just go and get things.
And so when you're saying, you know give us
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this day our daily bread you're saying god provide for
me today sustain me keep me alive today
right that's really more what it is about and that's something that we see in
the persecuted church is that dependence upon god's provision and realizing
that he's the one who is ultimately responsible for everything that we have
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yeah in fact we are my research has shown Joan,
the quicker you get on board with that thought process,
the better you stand up, the more resilient you are in the face of persecution.
Because it really is a challenge.
As a Westerner, we have a tendency to feel entitled.
I'm entitled to good health. I'm entitled to wealth.
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I'm entitled to feel good. I'm entitled to dress right.
I'm entitled to have the toys or, you know, to some varying degree.
And our unheavenly Father loves us, and I believe that He's up there.
He wants to do good things for us, and He wants to do nice things for us.
But sometimes those things are not...
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The best thing for us at the time i think
about how you would handle having 10 million
dollars as a 10 year old versus having 10 million dollars as
a 40 year old you'd have a different understanding of how they use money and
absolutely and the purpose of it and whatnot i guarantee you i wouldn't be giving
any of it to charity at 10 years old but i'd be like i got babe ruth rookie
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card you know it's ty club's rookie card right you know i'd have i would have
been dealing with doing things like that.
We're going to Disneyland, you know. Right, exactly.
It would have been just one series of indulgences. Well, I had a friend that
inherited a million dollars when he turned 18.
Really? And it was sad. I mean, all of his friends were around him just because
they wanted to use him for money.
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And he liked me being his friend because I wouldn't let him pay for anything.
I had a job. I didn't need him to pay for anything.
But he blew it on toys. And by the time he was probably 25, all that money was gone.
Wow. Wow. Just back to square one. Back to square one. And none of it did any
good for him or any of his siblings that received that money as well.
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He really wasn't positive. And so we know sometimes God not giving us what we
want is not him punishing us, but it's him actually protecting us.
Yeah. I think that's true a lot of the time. But nevertheless,
give us this day our daily bread.
And so then we can know what we have or don't have, that was God's allowance for us that day.
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You know, I think of these people who live really, really way out in the jungle
in Haiti, had a friend that was going through with a couple of people as a missionary.
And he would, part of his deal was he was taking bags of rice and beans out
to these rural villages and a village.
I mean, in, in Haiti, a lot of times a village would fit like on the property
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of one normal size lot for a house in America.
Oh, wow. You might have like a common campfire, and then you have maybe five
or six huts that sometimes are made of adobe or some version of that or concrete
or something. And sometimes they're just wood and sticks and whatever.
But that's really small. It's really simple. And villages might be,
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you know, a quarter mile apart.
So we got out in the jungle to get a little farther apart. Well,
they'd given away all of their stuff and they came to this village and they
had not been to one village yet that was Christian.
And what they were doing is they'd go in, they'd preach the gospel,
they'd give them beans and rice in the name of Jesus.
And they teach them how to build a water filter using like sand and gravel and charcoal.
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So because they're getting good, healthy, clean water, there's a real problem.
Yeah, cholera runs wild, runs rampant. So they got to this village and turns
out this little village, there was probably 30 people living there and they were all Christians.
Oh, wow. All out in the jungle. Devout Christians.
And he's like, we ran out of beans and rice, the last village.
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We're going to show you how to build a water filter and how to maintain it,
but we don't have anything to give you.
And the old man, they call him Papa, Papa, whatever his name was,
he grabbed onto this missionary's hand and he said, listen, we prayed this morning
and we asked the Lord to give us this day our daily bread.
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Today, our daily bread was not food. It was knowledge.
And it was fellowship with believers that we've never met before.
And we're so happy that you're here. And you're here. And they spent the evening
hungry, worshiping the Lord.
That's really beautiful. Right. But that was their daily bread.
What an attitude change that would be for all of us, right?
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That reminds me of Christians in the persecuted church, you know,
who even are in need of Bibles, right?
Very different than just food, but need Bible. They're desperate for God's word.
But say, hey, if all your Bibles get confiscated or if you don't have any Bibles
to bring us or you can't bring them in, please still come because we want to
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fellowship with you. Right.
Yeah, it's incredible. So give us as they are daily bread.
Forgive us our, and now everybody listening, half the group's going trespasses and half's going debts.
My mind always goes to trespasses. Yeah, mine too.
I went to public school in Tennessee
when I was in sixth grade and fifth grade, well, for a few grades.
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And we said the Lord's Prayer every day before school.
Oh, that's crazy. We did preds of allegiance, the Lord's Prayer,
somebody gave a weather report, and something else we did as well.
But that's where I learned the Lord's Prayer was in public school,
and I learned it in the King James Version.
Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Right. And so, Lord, forgive us the things we've done wrong.
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Help us to forgive those who've done us wrong. Yeah.
That's a challenge, right? That's really difficult. And I think that's something
you have to continue to pray every single day, because there's always obviously
things that we are going to be doing that are going to be sinful,
right, that we need forgiveness for.
But even more so, there are always going to be people that are doing things
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to us that we're going to have to forgive, even just little things.
And Jesus taught us that prayer, and Jesus demonstrated that life,
because on the cross, he forgave.
Forgive them, Father, they don't know what they do. And then in the body of
Christ, you see Stephen forgiving those who were stoning him.
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Yes. And killing him, right? And then you see that when you read the historical
accounts of the early persecutions of the church under the Roman emperors,
you find that the Christians,
one of the core responses to persecution was forgiving those who persecuted them.
And if you read all the way up through Fox's Book of Martyrs and the stories of persecution,
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you read through accounts of horrible, horrible persecutions in North Korea
and then persecutions in China and in Eastern Europe,
and in the former Soviet Union, we find that the common practice of Christians is forgiving.
And so we need to be like that persecuted church. And when we're wrong,
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we have to practice that forgiveness.
And then lead us not to temptation, but deliver us from evil.
And I think that's really important because we've asked for forgiveness for
the things that we've already done.
But then we're saying, not only forgive me for that, but help me not to make those mistakes again.
Again help me not to fall into temptation
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again because you don't
want to get into a place where you feel like i can
just do whatever i want and then ask for forgiveness and we're
all great right you know paul says should i just keep should we just keep on
sinning and let grace abound of course not right right we shouldn't just say
i'm just going to do whatever i want and say hey god sorry about that forgive
me bye but we should earnestly desire to not continue in those old patterns,
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to earnestly desire to not return to that old man, to that old creature.
And I think that's really important because that's a sign of continual growth
and sanctification in Christ is a desire to not sin, right?
It doesn't mean that we're going to not sin all the time.
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It doesn't mean that we're never going to fall into temptation,
but it means that that should be our our goal and praying that we would have
the strength to not fall into temptation because we never want to get to that
point where we have so much pride in,
oh, I'm such a good Christian. Oh, I know the Bible so well.
I'm not going to be tempted by anything. Because if you get to the point where
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you say, I am not going to sin.
I can't be tempted.
I would never do this. I would would never do that.
Pride cometh before the fall. That's all I'm going to say. You were in so much danger.
You know, I look at, I look at, from a ministry perspective,
I look at pastors who've fallen into sin.
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They've committed adultery. They've embezzled. They've done all kinds of things,
you know, just been guilty of
phoning in their sermons or guilty of just making stuff up and all kinds.
You think there's a pastor somewhere that's done it.
From the smallest thing all the way up to the worst thing. And one of the things
that stops me, I might come to them brother to brother and be like,
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you shouldn't be in the pulpit.
Get out of the pulpit. You know, you're a bad example.
But I wouldn't outwardly just judge them because I have to always keep in mind,
but for the grace of God, there go I.
That's really important. And I rely on the strength of the Lord to keep me straight.
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Rather than just counting on my own strength and my own abilities,
because of my own strength and my own abilities, I'm going to fail.
Guaranteed. You know, and the higher you are in ministry, and I'm not talking
about the bigger your church, but the more important your role.
I mean, I shouldn't say more important your role.
The more visible your role is, the bigger target you have on your back.
And you have an enemy who will be gleefully pursues you and wants to throw fiery
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darts at you and wants to tempt you and wants to get you, wants to sift you
like sand, as the scriptures say.
And we know that the Bible also tells us that those who teach the word are held
to a higher standard. Yes.
And so the enemy wants to do whatever he can to make sure that you're not meeting that standard.
So beyond, we've talked through prayer. We've talked through some different
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ideas about prayer. But I want to transition more to being the recipient of prayer.
You know, on the mission field, you usually have a team of people who are committed to praying for you.
And they usually last about a week.
And if you're on a two- or three-week mission, you can almost mark the moment
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when the last person kind of stops praying.
Really? Something shifts in the spirit. And I'm not trying to be really,
like, you know, weird or touchy-feely.
But you can just feel like you
feel like you feel like you have a force field
around you and all of a sudden the force field dissipates and all
of a sudden you start getting bombarded so you still have the lord and you still
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have the you know the holy spirit in you and you can you're still praying but
now i have to be suddenly much more conscious of spiritual things and what's
going on in the spiritual now i'm seeing the enemy have much more access to
our situation now i'm starting to hear the lies of the enemy?
Is it worth it? Are you really making a difference?
Why are people not praying for you? The game changes a little bit.
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And so I think we never want to underestimate our importance of praying for
your local pastor, praying for your church, praying for Bible colleges.
They're struggling right now, all of them, every single one, they're struggling.
Except maybe not like Liberty University is not struggling, I don't think.
Think, but just most of them are struggling.
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They're either struggling with finances or enrollment, or they're struggling
with theological drift into liberal theology that denies the inerrancy of Scripture
and the sufficiency of Scripture and the authority of Scripture.
Which really is a spiritual attack, if you want to be straightforward about
it. It really is. So really, you need to be praying.
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We all should be praying for Christian education.
We should be praying for our churches, and we need to be praying for our persecuted
brothers and sisters specifically, and finally, for our missionaries who are
either on the field serving them or going there to train or to deliver Bibles.
Because they need it. And if you don't have enough time to pray for anybody,
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just pray for your persecuted brothers and sisters. Remembering those who are in chains.
Right. We're told to do that. Yes. The Lord says it's like visiting Him.
So let's serve those who are in chains. Let's serve that persecuted church.
And one of the great ways we can do it, the first way we can do it is through prayer.
Right. Prayer should be our go-to, our first thing, our continual thing.
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We don't want to fall into that mindset that's so common where we say things
like, well, all we can do is pray.
That prayer is somehow the last resort or prayer is not as good as something
else that you would be able to do. And it's not a decision you make once.
Because I find that if you ask me a thousand times, a thousand times I'll tell
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you prayer should be your first resort.
And then it is my first resort. And then all of a sudden it'll start creeping to a backwards.
And it's something that you have to maintain. It's not something that just happens
by itself. It gets easier.
But it's a choice you make every day. And each time that you make the choice,
it becomes easier to continue to make that choice again.
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And I would say as an action step, if you're receiving the Courier Update,
when you get the Courier Update, pray through the Courier Update.
If you're reading the Bible every day, pray through what you read.
Right you know if you're if you are
listening to this podcast pray for the things that we talk about
pray for us pray for the the
those who have not yet heard right pray that we would have good topics and it
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would be interesting and we would be able to really rightly divide scripture
and really share the message of the persecuted church and share the wisdom from
them to the folks here in the U.S.
Absolutely. Yeah. So we want to encourage you to pray. We want you to join us in praying.
And please know that we pray for you.
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And in the words of my grandmother, that's all I got to say about that.
And we will see y'all next week. And we will be back with another new episode
of the Harder Way podcast next Friday.
And until then, we're praying for you. You guys pray for us.
We'll catch you next time.
Thank you for listening to The Harder Way Podcast. If you were encouraged by
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this episode, please consider sharing it with a friend or leaving us a review.
To be the first to know when we publish new episodes, subscribe to The Harder
Way Podcast on your favorite platform.
Until next time, remember the words of Christ. Blessed are those who are persecuted
for righteousness' sake. For theirs.
Music.
Music.
(01:04):
Really, we have a situation with a school that we work with where the school
is in dire straits. Things are tough.
And the powers that be kind of want to keep doing things the way they've always done them.
Even though they might be doing new things, they're just rehashing the old things.
(01:26):
And Einstein said, I don't want to quote Einstein, but he was a smart guy.
Guy and you know he made a statement which i think is
so true which is you you if you
if you want to solve a problem you
shouldn't keep making the same decisions that you made that got you into the
problem they kind of quit think a new way yeah and that's hard to do and when
(01:50):
i want to think any way i want to think of i want to come up with ideas that
i can't come up with on my own my first go-to too, is prayer.
That makes sense. I mean, I think if you just want to come up with good ideas,
that's something that you can do in your own strength.
But I don't think that we want to just come up with ideas that are good.
We want to come up with God ideas. Exactly.
(02:12):
Thanks for finishing that.
We just finished each other's sentences. But yes, we want that God idea, Right.
And so if we want that, we're only going to get that through reading the word and through praying.
And, you know, prayer is an interesting thing because I feel like people probably
(02:33):
have a lot of misconceptions about what prayer is or why we pray.
Right. Because a lot of folks kind of have this cosmic Santa Claus prayer.
Here's my wishlist, God. Do this, this, this, and this for me.
Okay, bye. And then if God doesn't come through with your wish list,
there's no God, or I'm mad at God, or what did I do to deserve to not have my prayers answered?
(02:59):
Yeah, I mean, how many people do we know just personally who are in that boat?
And sometimes our prayers are just not in line with God's plan for us.
I mean, I think about times when I was a young man and I prayed for things.
And now I thank the Lord for those prayers not being answered in the affirmative.
(03:20):
Because at the time, you thought that you knew what was best for you.
Right. You said, I want this thing, or I want to be in this place in my life.
But God, being all-knowing, knew that that wasn't what you needed,
that that wasn't what was best for you. And so the answer was no.
And so I think that's a misconception right there.
We think that an answered prayer...
(03:41):
Is a granted wish, right? It's, you know, oh yeah, you asked for this and you got it.
God answers every single prayer,
every single thing that we ask for in prayer, but it's not always yes.
That is the truth. Sometimes it's not yet, not now, not in this way.
(04:02):
And sometimes it's just flat out no.
And that doesn't mean that God isn't listening. And that That doesn't mean that
that prayer isn't being answered. It just maybe wasn't answered in the way that we wanted.
Well, you know, that's just one dimension of prayer.
And I think when we look at what our Lord taught us to pray in Matthew,
in the Sermon on the Mount, right after the Sermon on the Mount,
(04:25):
he says, And when you pray, pray like this, Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
So the first thing, hallowing is worshiping and praising.
And so the first thing he does is he worships. in prayer.
And I think that that's something that we neglect in our prayer lives quite
frequently is that worshiping.
(04:46):
And so my suggestion to folks is go to the book of Psalms, pick a Psalm,
read some of the things that David or one of the other writers of Psalms writes about God.
You are my strength. You are my shield. You're my foundation. You're my hope, right?
When you're reading the New Testament, make note of things that are declared
about God, Lord, you are my rock. You're my foundation.
(05:07):
You're my deliverer. You're the good shepherd.
You're the bread of life. And you can literally just build a vocabulary of praise
through reading of scripture and then make that part of your prayer life.
I think that's really important, but you know, there's actually one thing that
comes before hallowed be thy name that everyone skips over when they're talking about,
(05:29):
you know, this is the pattern that we we should follow when we pray, and that is our Father.
So we think, oh, we're just addressing God.
But let's think about this for a second. When Jesus said, let me teach you how
to pray, pray in this way, and he said, our Father who art in heaven,
that was the first written instance.
(05:52):
Possibly more than likely the first ever spoken instance of God being referred
to as our Father. Thank you.
Wow. And so I think that that says something about the way that we're approaching God in prayer,
because I think we have it completely backwards in that many of us think we
(06:13):
have to start our prayers in this fancy way and that that's what it means,
you know, our father who art in heaven, we have to come with this eloquence, right?
But in actuality, really what Jesus is saying there is come to him as your loving
father, that you can approach him in that way.
(06:35):
And that's actually huge. And that's completely opposite of what many people think that that means.
And so everything that we say in prayer comes out of that understanding of God
as our father. That's incredible.
Well, and so moving forward in the prayer, and boy, you're making me think about
(06:58):
Our Father differently.
That's a really thought-provoking comment you made.
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. What does that mean to you, Smarty Pants?
Well, I think it's interesting if we hear, you know, thy kingdom come, thy will be done.
(07:20):
When we're talking about the kingdom of God, it's difficult because we know
that it's something that we can't fully understand.
Because, you know, if we could understand it, Jesus wouldn't have had every
parable start with, the kingdom of God is like this.
He would have just said, here's what it is, here's what's up.
We know that the kingdom of God is Jesus's ruling and reigning,
(07:41):
and that is in the spiritual sense, eventually in the physical sense.
But when we're praying for his kingdom to come, my understanding of that is
that that really is a prayer of Jesus.
The advancement of the gospel, of the church, of the mission of Christ.
And I think when we're praying for his will to be done, we're really kind of
(08:04):
saying whatever it is that we're asking for, ultimately, we want what it is that you want for us.
I think also that one of the things that we miss about prayer is that our mindset
tends to be that we are going to somehow change God. God.
But prayer really- If I ask Him enough times. Right.
(08:25):
Or if I, you know, use the magic formula of words or say the right things or
quote His promises to Him.
And so I think that when we pray, we have to recognize that the greater always influences the lesser.
In newsflash, you're the lesser. God is the greater.
And so when we when we pray, it changes us to align with His will.
(08:50):
It changes us to desire His will. It changes us to see His will in things.
And I have to tell you, you know, when you're taking Bibles in as a Bible courier
and you're standing on the border and you're presenting yourself to the guards
and you're wondering, are they going to ask me to open my suitcases?
What words are going to come out of my own mouth? What miracle am I going to
(09:10):
see? Am I going to see a miracle? And frequently we do even the miraculous.
Well, when you're praying that prayer, I completely lost my train of thought.
Well, and that's fine. And you know, that happens when we pray sometimes,
right? Right. Is we're praying and we completely lose our train of thought.
And it's interesting because if I'm thinking about this idea of God's will being
(09:35):
done, you know, you're ultimately saying, I don't know what's best for me.
I might not even know what to pray for, what to expect.
Just like you're saying on the mission field, you have no concept of what to
pray for or what to ask for because you don't know what you're going to be going
into. Wait a minute. I just heard some train whistle. The train came back.
So I'm back on the train.
(09:57):
And it's not coming straight at me. So I'm okay. Here's the thing.
You're right. And so when you are making that border crossing and you're praying,
you're saying, Lord, bring your word through, Lord, do your work here and do
a miracle, and you're praying those things,
that thy will be done is an essential part of your prayer because God's will
(10:18):
may be that 100% of your Bibles get confiscated.
Yeah. Now, I can tell you that at times we've been able to get some Bibles that
somebody else has tried to ship in or bring in.
We've been able to get them and make up for other Bibles that were confiscated.
Right. It's all God's economy, people.
(10:39):
And some of them wind up in the dump heap of whatever communist country it is,
but there's frequently Bibles that make their way out of those –.
Confiscation into the black market. And remember, in America,
a black market is an illegal market, but in the communist countries,
they use the black markets because literally they have to have some kind of
(11:02):
a capitalistic system going somewhere or everything falls completely apart.
So the governments kind of turn, you know, a blind eye.
It's like, you know, private use of gasoline's been outlawed in Cuba for decades,
yet there's all these cars on the road, you know? Right, right. Yeah, exactly.
But yeah, so liking him come, like, well, we've done the prayer changes me.
I learned to look at things through a new lens.
(11:26):
Our earth is in heaven. And then our next prayer is what? Give us this day our daily bread.
And so I think that comes down to something that is a really important principle
within the persecuted church, which is trusting God for provision.
Because, you know, we hear give us this day our daily bread.
And yes, we can definitely apply that to this is the time we should be praying
(11:50):
for, you know, our needs, our requests, etc. And I think there's an application there.
But I think more so it's about trusting God for provision.
Because remember, we're living in a society where at any point we can get food,
you know, like you can just go to the store, you can order something.
Something, you're not thinking, I'm going to die because I can't go to the store
(12:12):
and get bread, you know, whatever.
But back then when Jesus was saying this, if you weren't able to provide for
yourself to make sure that you had the right things and you could make your
own food, all this stuff, you would die.
There was no way to just go and get things.
And so when you're saying, you know give us
(12:34):
this day our daily bread you're saying god provide for
me today sustain me keep me alive today
right that's really more what it is about and that's something that we see in
the persecuted church is that dependence upon god's provision and realizing
that he's the one who is ultimately responsible for everything that we have
(12:55):
yeah in fact we are my research has shown Joan,
the quicker you get on board with that thought process,
the better you stand up, the more resilient you are in the face of persecution.
Because it really is a challenge.
As a Westerner, we have a tendency to feel entitled.
I'm entitled to good health. I'm entitled to wealth.
(13:16):
I'm entitled to feel good. I'm entitled to dress right.
I'm entitled to have the toys or, you know, to some varying degree.
And our unheavenly Father loves us, and I believe that He's up there.
He wants to do good things for us, and He wants to do nice things for us.
But sometimes those things are not...
(13:36):
The best thing for us at the time i think
about how you would handle having 10 million
dollars as a 10 year old versus having 10 million dollars as
a 40 year old you'd have a different understanding of how they use money and
absolutely and the purpose of it and whatnot i guarantee you i wouldn't be giving
any of it to charity at 10 years old but i'd be like i got babe ruth rookie
(13:56):
card you know it's ty club's rookie card right you know i'd have i would have
been dealing with doing things like that.
We're going to Disneyland, you know. Right, exactly.
It would have been just one series of indulgences. Well, I had a friend that
inherited a million dollars when he turned 18.
Really? And it was sad. I mean, all of his friends were around him just because
they wanted to use him for money.
(14:19):
And he liked me being his friend because I wouldn't let him pay for anything.
I had a job. I didn't need him to pay for anything.
But he blew it on toys. And by the time he was probably 25, all that money was gone.
Wow. Wow. Just back to square one. Back to square one. And none of it did any
good for him or any of his siblings that received that money as well.
(14:40):
He really wasn't positive. And so we know sometimes God not giving us what we
want is not him punishing us, but it's him actually protecting us.
Yeah. I think that's true a lot of the time. But nevertheless,
give us this day our daily bread.
And so then we can know what we have or don't have, that was God's allowance for us that day.
(15:00):
You know, I think of these people who live really, really way out in the jungle
in Haiti, had a friend that was going through with a couple of people as a missionary.
And he would, part of his deal was he was taking bags of rice and beans out
to these rural villages and a village.
I mean, in, in Haiti, a lot of times a village would fit like on the property
(15:22):
of one normal size lot for a house in America.
Oh, wow. You might have like a common campfire, and then you have maybe five
or six huts that sometimes are made of adobe or some version of that or concrete
or something. And sometimes they're just wood and sticks and whatever.
But that's really small. It's really simple. And villages might be,
(15:44):
you know, a quarter mile apart.
So we got out in the jungle to get a little farther apart. Well,
they'd given away all of their stuff and they came to this village and they
had not been to one village yet that was Christian.
And what they were doing is they'd go in, they'd preach the gospel,
they'd give them beans and rice in the name of Jesus.
And they teach them how to build a water filter using like sand and gravel and charcoal.
(16:08):
So because they're getting good, healthy, clean water, there's a real problem.
Yeah, cholera runs wild, runs rampant. So they got to this village and turns
out this little village, there was probably 30 people living there and they were all Christians.
Oh, wow. All out in the jungle. Devout Christians.
And he's like, we ran out of beans and rice, the last village.
(16:30):
We're going to show you how to build a water filter and how to maintain it,
but we don't have anything to give you.
And the old man, they call him Papa, Papa, whatever his name was,
he grabbed onto this missionary's hand and he said, listen, we prayed this morning
and we asked the Lord to give us this day our daily bread.
(16:52):
Today, our daily bread was not food. It was knowledge.
And it was fellowship with believers that we've never met before.
And we're so happy that you're here. And you're here. And they spent the evening
hungry, worshiping the Lord.
That's really beautiful. Right. But that was their daily bread.
What an attitude change that would be for all of us, right?
(17:12):
That reminds me of Christians in the persecuted church, you know,
who even are in need of Bibles, right?
Very different than just food, but need Bible. They're desperate for God's word.
But say, hey, if all your Bibles get confiscated or if you don't have any Bibles
to bring us or you can't bring them in, please still come because we want to
(17:33):
fellowship with you. Right.
Yeah, it's incredible. So give us as they are daily bread.
Forgive us our, and now everybody listening, half the group's going trespasses and half's going debts.
My mind always goes to trespasses. Yeah, mine too.
I went to public school in Tennessee
when I was in sixth grade and fifth grade, well, for a few grades.
(17:55):
And we said the Lord's Prayer every day before school.
Oh, that's crazy. We did preds of allegiance, the Lord's Prayer,
somebody gave a weather report, and something else we did as well.
But that's where I learned the Lord's Prayer was in public school,
and I learned it in the King James Version.
Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Right. And so, Lord, forgive us the things we've done wrong.
(18:20):
Help us to forgive those who've done us wrong. Yeah.
That's a challenge, right? That's really difficult. And I think that's something
you have to continue to pray every single day, because there's always obviously
things that we are going to be doing that are going to be sinful,
right, that we need forgiveness for.
But even more so, there are always going to be people that are doing things
(18:41):
to us that we're going to have to forgive, even just little things.
And Jesus taught us that prayer, and Jesus demonstrated that life,
because on the cross, he forgave.
Forgive them, Father, they don't know what they do. And then in the body of
Christ, you see Stephen forgiving those who were stoning him.
(19:05):
Yes. And killing him, right? And then you see that when you read the historical
accounts of the early persecutions of the church under the Roman emperors,
you find that the Christians,
one of the core responses to persecution was forgiving those who persecuted them.
And if you read all the way up through Fox's Book of Martyrs and the stories of persecution,
(19:27):
you read through accounts of horrible, horrible persecutions in North Korea
and then persecutions in China and in Eastern Europe,
and in the former Soviet Union, we find that the common practice of Christians is forgiving.
And so we need to be like that persecuted church. And when we're wrong,
(19:49):
we have to practice that forgiveness.
And then lead us not to temptation, but deliver us from evil.
And I think that's really important because we've asked for forgiveness for
the things that we've already done.
But then we're saying, not only forgive me for that, but help me not to make those mistakes again.
Again help me not to fall into temptation
(20:12):
again because you don't
want to get into a place where you feel like i can
just do whatever i want and then ask for forgiveness and we're
all great right you know paul says should i just keep should we just keep on
sinning and let grace abound of course not right right we shouldn't just say
i'm just going to do whatever i want and say hey god sorry about that forgive
me bye but we should earnestly desire to not continue in those old patterns,
(20:38):
to earnestly desire to not return to that old man, to that old creature.
And I think that's really important because that's a sign of continual growth
and sanctification in Christ is a desire to not sin, right?
It doesn't mean that we're going to not sin all the time.
(20:59):
It doesn't mean that we're never going to fall into temptation,
but it means that that should be our our goal and praying that we would have
the strength to not fall into temptation because we never want to get to that
point where we have so much pride in,
oh, I'm such a good Christian. Oh, I know the Bible so well.
I'm not going to be tempted by anything. Because if you get to the point where
(21:21):
you say, I am not going to sin.
I can't be tempted.
I would never do this. I would would never do that.
Pride cometh before the fall. That's all I'm going to say. You were in so much danger.
You know, I look at, I look at, from a ministry perspective,
I look at pastors who've fallen into sin.
(21:41):
They've committed adultery. They've embezzled. They've done all kinds of things,
you know, just been guilty of
phoning in their sermons or guilty of just making stuff up and all kinds.
You think there's a pastor somewhere that's done it.
From the smallest thing all the way up to the worst thing. And one of the things
that stops me, I might come to them brother to brother and be like,
(22:02):
you shouldn't be in the pulpit.
Get out of the pulpit. You know, you're a bad example.
But I wouldn't outwardly just judge them because I have to always keep in mind,
but for the grace of God, there go I.
That's really important. And I rely on the strength of the Lord to keep me straight.
(22:22):
Rather than just counting on my own strength and my own abilities,
because of my own strength and my own abilities, I'm going to fail.
Guaranteed. You know, and the higher you are in ministry, and I'm not talking
about the bigger your church, but the more important your role.
I mean, I shouldn't say more important your role.
The more visible your role is, the bigger target you have on your back.
And you have an enemy who will be gleefully pursues you and wants to throw fiery
(22:48):
darts at you and wants to tempt you and wants to get you, wants to sift you
like sand, as the scriptures say.
And we know that the Bible also tells us that those who teach the word are held
to a higher standard. Yes.
And so the enemy wants to do whatever he can to make sure that you're not meeting that standard.
So beyond, we've talked through prayer. We've talked through some different
(23:09):
ideas about prayer. But I want to transition more to being the recipient of prayer.
You know, on the mission field, you usually have a team of people who are committed to praying for you.
And they usually last about a week.
And if you're on a two- or three-week mission, you can almost mark the moment
(23:30):
when the last person kind of stops praying.
Really? Something shifts in the spirit. And I'm not trying to be really,
like, you know, weird or touchy-feely.
But you can just feel like you
feel like you feel like you have a force field
around you and all of a sudden the force field dissipates and all
of a sudden you start getting bombarded so you still have the lord and you still
(23:51):
have the you know the holy spirit in you and you can you're still praying but
now i have to be suddenly much more conscious of spiritual things and what's
going on in the spiritual now i'm seeing the enemy have much more access to
our situation now i'm starting to hear the lies of the enemy?
Is it worth it? Are you really making a difference?
Why are people not praying for you? The game changes a little bit.
(24:16):
And so I think we never want to underestimate our importance of praying for
your local pastor, praying for your church, praying for Bible colleges.
They're struggling right now, all of them, every single one, they're struggling.
Except maybe not like Liberty University is not struggling, I don't think.
Think, but just most of them are struggling.
(24:37):
They're either struggling with finances or enrollment, or they're struggling
with theological drift into liberal theology that denies the inerrancy of Scripture
and the sufficiency of Scripture and the authority of Scripture.
Which really is a spiritual attack, if you want to be straightforward about
it. It really is. So really, you need to be praying.
(24:58):
We all should be praying for Christian education.
We should be praying for our churches, and we need to be praying for our persecuted
brothers and sisters specifically, and finally, for our missionaries who are
either on the field serving them or going there to train or to deliver Bibles.
Because they need it. And if you don't have enough time to pray for anybody,
(25:21):
just pray for your persecuted brothers and sisters. Remembering those who are in chains.
Right. We're told to do that. Yes. The Lord says it's like visiting Him.
So let's serve those who are in chains. Let's serve that persecuted church.
And one of the great ways we can do it, the first way we can do it is through prayer.
Right. Prayer should be our go-to, our first thing, our continual thing.
(25:46):
We don't want to fall into that mindset that's so common where we say things
like, well, all we can do is pray.
That prayer is somehow the last resort or prayer is not as good as something
else that you would be able to do. And it's not a decision you make once.
Because I find that if you ask me a thousand times, a thousand times I'll tell
(26:09):
you prayer should be your first resort.
And then it is my first resort. And then all of a sudden it'll start creeping to a backwards.
And it's something that you have to maintain. It's not something that just happens
by itself. It gets easier.
But it's a choice you make every day. And each time that you make the choice,
it becomes easier to continue to make that choice again.
(26:33):
And I would say as an action step, if you're receiving the Courier Update,
when you get the Courier Update, pray through the Courier Update.
If you're reading the Bible every day, pray through what you read.
Right you know if you're if you are
listening to this podcast pray for the things that we talk about
pray for us pray for the the
those who have not yet heard right pray that we would have good topics and it
(26:56):
would be interesting and we would be able to really rightly divide scripture
and really share the message of the persecuted church and share the wisdom from
them to the folks here in the U.S.
Absolutely. Yeah. So we want to encourage you to pray. We want you to join us in praying.
And please know that we pray for you.
(27:18):
And in the words of my grandmother, that's all I got to say about that.
And we will see y'all next week. And we will be back with another new episode
of the Harder Way podcast next Friday.
And until then, we're praying for you. You guys pray for us.
We'll catch you next time.
Thank you for listening to The Harder Way Podcast. If you were encouraged by
(27:42):
this episode, please consider sharing it with a friend or leaving us a review.
To be the first to know when we publish new episodes, subscribe to The Harder
Way Podcast on your favorite platform.
Until next time, remember the words of Christ. Blessed are those who are persecuted
for righteousness' sake. For theirs.
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