Rhythms of Peace | Week 3 | Message

So we're in the middle of a series right now called Rhythms of Peace. And if you haven't caught the last two, I'd really encourage you to go back and catch pastor Bill's messages on these rhythms that are so important in your relationship with God. The idea really behind it is that God has given me and you

these amazing rhythms or practices or habits that allow you to better experience him. We live in a world that's crazy, and stressful, and anxiety laden, but God's given us these regular practices or rhythms,

that if we participate in these things, they they can bring us peace even in the midst of the craziest set of circumstances. The idea is, like, rather than waiting until we run out of peace, what if we put these rhythms into place beforehand?

So that regardless of kind of what we're going through, we'll be in tune with what he's got for us. And he can kind of speak into these particular moments and situations. The rhythm that I want to talk about today, though, is the rhythm of prayer. This is an absolutely

key rhythm for me and you in in any sort of relationship with God, whether you've been walking with him for a long time, or you're still trying to figure him out. I think prayer is one of the key rhythms. It's a tool that God's given for you to experience him, any time of the day, anywhere that you are.

When you go to him in prayer, you can experience God. You can experience his peace. I I went over to Walmart and picked up this hula hoop. $12, by the way. When did that happen? I went in fully prepared for like a buck 98, and when I rang this thing up, I like kinda threw up a little bit in my mouth and

but you people are worth it, so here we go. Here's your $12 illustration.

You know, this just picture for a moment that inside the hoop picture just represents God's God's will, his general will inside the hoop. And inside the hoop is is is where you best experience the heart of God. Now, God is in control

of everything out here. He's in control and sovereign over all the stuff outside the hoop too, but his will, the true experience of his kingdom and his heart for you is found when you're walking with him inside the hoop. Now, if you're like me, I have spent far too much time outside the hoop.

You spend too much time outside the hoop, and you're gonna be stressed and broken down and beat up and hurt and damaged. Sometimes it's because of stuff you have done, sometimes it's because of stuff that's been done to you. But inside is where you find peace. Inside is actually where you best experience who God is.

And what I propose is, is that prayer is really one of the most powerful practices, one of those powerful rhythms that you and I have. Prayer has the ability to pull us in to the heart of God in a very unique way.

Prayer has the ability to pull you in to be reminded of who he is, and what his kingdom is really about, and his will for you, so that you can experience peace. It pulls you in, and as you pray, it also keeps you in. If you're in constant dialogue, constant conversation with God, then there'll be this continued sense

of his heart in your day to day. I think it's massively needed today. First Thessalonians chapter five, verse 17 says,

never stop praying. Another translation says, pray without ceasing. Now it's easier said than done, right? But that's the invitation. You've got an invitation from God Almighty to just have an ongoing conversation where you can pray any time. You can pray out loud. You can pray silently.

You can pray on your knees. You can pray standing up. You can pray deliberately. You can pray spontaneously. You can pray in public. You can pray in private. You can pray with every emotion, the good, the bad, the ugly, the sad, the happy. You can pray in the middle of every single circumstance. That's the invitation.

But it's not always easy, is it? How many have ever had any trouble praying on even a semi regular basis, let alone without ceasing? It's tough. Right? It's hard. There's probably a number of reasons why it's hard. You know. God's invisible, so that makes it difficult.

You can't see him or talk to him the way that you can people in your life. You can't hear his voice in the same way that you hear the voices of people in your life. It's tough to pray sometimes because maybe maybe you tried before

and stuff didn't work out the way that you wanted or in the timing that you wanted, so you've just kinda given up on prayer. Maybe it's tough to pray because you're too busy, too distracted. How many ever had a moment where you try to pray? Oh, mothers. How how do you even make it? Like, that opening five years?

I know some of you, you lock yourself in the bathroom because you've got like 17 toddlers outside all waiting to pounce right on you, and you're just like, I'm gonna sit here on the toilet and pray because this is the only silence I can get for like the briefest of moments.

Our our world is loud. It's distracting. Maybe it's hard to pray because because, you're too prideful. Or maybe there's just too much, like, sin or disobedience going on in your heart where you're like, I don't I don't really know that I could or should talk to God, that he wants to talk to me right now.

There's a lot of reasons it's difficult to to pray. What I what I feel is is we tend to go to prayer only when we get in trouble. I I found that in the worst moments, that'll make a praying man or a praying woman when the stuff gets really, really hard.

Really, really scary. Really, really tough. All of a sudden, you'll pray if you never have before. Why? Because you get to the end of yourself. You go, I got I got no other resources. I might as well tag team and see if God will help me out in this particular situation. I was flying into

Quito, Ecuador a number of years ago, and it's a city that sits, the airport sits, like some 10,000 feet elevation, surrounded by mountains on all the sides that are 14,000, 15,000, 16,000 feet elevation. And so even in the best weather, you kind of have to dive mom into this airport. It's a little bit scary.

And on this trip, the weather was horrible. I mean, was raining, and thunder, and lightning. There was thunder and lightning so bad at one point on our approach into Quito, that it rattled the plane so badly that overhead bins opened up, and luggage started to fall out.

At that point, the pilot said, hey, we're getting ready to make our landing in Quito, Ecuador. You guys know how rough the weather is right now, but we're gonna give it a try anyway.

That's not ever anything you want someone to hear. You don't wanna have a pilot say, well, give it a try. I'll tell you what it did though, it made a praying man out of me. I

started praying right away. I was praying just for forgiveness and stuff. I I knew I was gonna die. I just wanted to make sure I'm going the right direction. But what if you and I made a regular rhythm of prayer even when the plane wasn't going down? What if we're missing out

on a tremendous amount of his heart and his wisdom and his will and his kingdom because we're so disconnected and living outside the hoop that we never even talk to him. We never consult him. We we never interact in that fashion. If so, then we're really gonna be missing out. The the challenge is is

most of us were were never really taught how to pray. I wonder how many of you were taught when you were young or when you were a young Christian, how to pray. Most of us were never taught. I was not taught how to pray. And so most of us, we just close our eyes and ask for stuff.

And not that there's anything inherently wrong about that, asking for stuff is a part of prayer, but there's so much more to it than that. But I wasn't taught. In fact, my first experience with prayer was like a horrifying experience

when I was a little kid. Maybe some of you had this similar experience. I had a grandma. I'd go spend the night at grandma's house. It was always the best.

She'd tuck me in at night, make sure that the covers were all cozy and wrapped around me, and then grandma would lean down and give me a kiss on the cheek with lips that were way too wet. And then she'd say, I'm gonna pray. Join me in praying. Pray with me. And then she would pray this horrible prayer. Now

I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.

Good night, Ronnie. I'm four. I'm laying there in the bed. Okay, grandma. I just hope hope he doesn't take my soul tonight. It was the worst. I was never taught how to pray. But thankfully thankfully, the Lord the Lord teaches us how to pray.

There's a passage I wanna take a look at that might be familiar to a lot of you, but in Matthew six. Matthew six, if you've got your Bible, can turn there in your New Testament. Matthew six, Jesus is teaching his disciples how to pray. He's telling them what prayer is and what prayer isn't,

and then he gives him this model prayer, and the Lord's prayer that's a model for for me and you in how to pray. The the Lord's prayer was never meant to be a formula.

Jesus already addressed it in Matthew chapter six. Hey, prayer isn't meant to be this thing where you just repeat these words over and over again mindlessly like that does anything. And the Lord's Prayer was never meant to have to be using the exact same words. Because if you look at Luke's account of the Lord's Prayer,

it's the same themes, but slightly different wording. But what the Lord's Prayer is is a model that gives us some some really amazing ingredients of prayer. These ingredients of prayer that if we come to the Lord and are reminded of these things and talk to him through these different ingredients,

I think it'll make your prayer life and experience of who God is so much more robust, so much more stronger and meaningful, way more than just close your eyes and ask for stuff.

And so take a look at it, you will. Matthew chapter six verse nine. Jesus says, pray like this. Our father in heaven, may your name be kept holy.

Our father in heaven, may your name be kept holy. Right out of the gates, Jesus draws us in to the who of prayer. And I would venture to say, you guys, that the who of prayer is maybe more important than the what we end up praying for. If you forget who you're praying to, all bets are off. His name is to be kept holy,

set apart. Why? Because he is God Almighty. He's our maker. He's our creator. He's holding the universe together. He's all powerful. He's all knowing. He is very nature God, and there's no one like him. And yet, at the same time, you guys, He invites me and you to come to Him and to address Him as friend, as father.

The the word here for father is is more like dad. I remember the first time that just in a moment between me and him in prayer, I remembered, I I prayed, dear heavenly dad, and it felt almost weird. I didn't wanna be disrespectful, but there's this invitation to say, hey, I I am your heavenly father.

Now, when you begin to think about God as father, sometimes you make those immediate associations to earthly father, and if you had a great one, then that's a good association. But if you didn't, then you go, oh, I I don't know how comfortable I feel with that. I understand that. If you had an absent father,

or an abusive father, or something like that, then it makes it challenging. Just be reminded, God is none of those things. He's not absent. He's not abusive. He is adoptive, however. He has made everything possible to adopt me and you into his family. He wanted you to be his kids. And so Jesus came

to make it possible for you to be adopted into his family, so that you could call him father. He is our healer. He is our provider. He's our reconciler. He's our rescue. But he's also our heavenly father. He's our heavenly dad.

Why that's so important is when you talk to him, you could talk to him and approach him just like the best, most loving dad that's ever existed. When I was a young dad, and my kids were little,

you know, they're running up, and they don't have full words or full sentences yet, but I'm sitting on the couch, and they'd run up, and they'd go up. And I would grab them, and I'd put them up on my lap. And then they would kind of just babble.

They would just chatterbox babble. And half the time, it wasn't complete sentences. Half the time, they were using wrong word or made up words, or I didn't even know what they were saying. And I didn't care. I didn't stop them and go, well, son, that's incomplete grammar. Don't talk to me until you have proper grammar,

until you can figure out complete sentence, until your vocab is correct. I didn't say that. I just love that they crawled up on my lap and were talking and spending time. Do you know your heavenly father feels the same way? Crawl up on his lap.

I I don't know. I don't know if I got the right words, or I don't know if I'm as eloquent as other people that I've heard pray. He doesn't care about that. Crawl up in his lap and start talking to him. Just pour out your heart as best you can. Now, as you grow, as you mature

in your experience of him, in your knowledge of him, as you grow up in Christ, your your prayer life will change too. And it'll be better and and more robust conversation between you and your heavenly father. But he is your dad that cares so much for you, and he just wants to have you on his lap and spend time talking.

You know what to talk about? Bring it right to him. You don't know what to talk about? Tell him that. He cares. Our father, may your name be kept holy. Verse 10, he says, may your kingdom come soon. May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

A part of what prayer includes here from Jesus is not just the who of prayer, but the kingdom of God and the will of God. Jesus says, okay, when you come to him, be reminded that you are to be seeking his kingdom and his will, not just your kingdom and your will.

If you're like me, you got do you know how much energy I expend on a regular basis thinking about and pursuing and praying about my stupid little kingdom? How much energy I expend thinking about and pursuing and even praying about all the stuff that I will, it's a lot. But what Jesus is saying is, hey,

I know you've got a life that you're building, and that's fine, and you have desires, you've got your own will, but don't make it separate from my kingdom. Don't make it separate from my will. When you pray, it's an opportunity for your kingdom and your will to be pulled into and reminded of his kingdom and his will.

That is key. You see it in Jesus. Jesus modeled that. You know, Jesus prayed. Jesus prayed, which is one of those like theological things that just like makes me blow a fuse. If Jesus thought prayer was important, how much more so important it is for me. Jesus prayed. There's a moment where he prays

shortly before he's gonna go to the cross. He knows the suffering that's coming. And he goes to the Garden Of Gethsemane, and he gets down on his knees, and he praying to the father. Luke records that he's actually so stressed that he began to sweat blood. The humanity of Jesus is really seen in this moment. And

there, as he's praying to the father, he's very honest. And he says, if there's any other way that we could go about this, I'd be open to it. Take this cup from me. But then he prays those powerful words, but not my will, but yours be done. He could feel the temptation was there to just pursue his own will,

separate from the will of his father. And it was prayer that brought him back to the father's will and brought him back to the peace that he really needed in a miserable moment in his earthly life.

Father, may your name be kept holy. May your kingdom come. May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Verse 11 says, give us today

the food we need. Give us today the food we need. Now, that's literal, like we've got a need for physical food, but we've also got a whole bunch of other needs. We've got physical needs, we've got emotional needs, we have got relational needs, we've got spiritual needs, and what is so key here, that when we pray,

Father, give us what it is that we need, it's acknowledging like anything that we need, God is gonna provide for it. God is our ultimate provider. Rather than thinking, hey, I got this. I'll stay outside the hoop. I'll meet my own needs, thank you very much. I don't really need you to provide for me. I'll take care of it.

Now that's one thing when it's just a work ethic thing, and you're like, I'm gonna work really hard and not make me make me able to provide for my family. I mean, that's all well and good. I think that is actually part of God's will for you. Where I've noticed the trouble is that there are other needs that I have

that only God can provide, that I have found. My temptation is to go meet those needs. I'm feeling, like, unhappy. I'm feeling angry. I I'm feeling needy, and I go meet those needs on my own outside of his will. You don't need to raise your hand, but anybody ever done that before? How well that work out for you? It doesn't.

You might do that multiple times before you realize it doesn't. But all the while, in prayer, if we're in constant conversation, it's just the ability to say, I've got some needs, and God, I've got a temptation here to go just kind of operate independent of you and try to meet every need myself,

forgetting that you want to meet my needs, especially the deepest needs of my heart and my soul that nothing or no person could ever meet. God, I want to talk to you about that, and I wanna ask you to provide for me in tangible ways and intangible ways. Give us the food that we need.

But did you notice too in that in that phrase, it's plural. It says, give us today the food that we need. I think that's also really instructive. Actually, a lot of the Lord's prayer is plural. Our father, give us the food that we need. Reminding us that, like, there's other people

that our prayer life can be contending for. See, in The United States, most of us will never ever struggle with with where our next meal is gonna come from. Even the worst of us, the worst off of us will never ever struggle to figure out where our next meal's gonna come from.

But that isn't the case for literally millions of people across the globe, Christians and non Christians, many of whom do not literally have enough food to eat. And so when they come across this prayer, and when they pray, give us today the food we need, they're meaning it literally. Somebody in Africa,

for example, that she runs an orphanage, and there are times where she puts the orphans down to bed knowing that there's literally no food for those orphans when they wake up. You gotta think that she's praying all night long, give us, by the morning, some food that all of these kids will desperately need.

And when I pray, it's not just for my own needs, it's give us today. You might be doing fine. You go, you know what? Honestly, all my needs are kinda met. I'm kinda doing good. Well, great. Good for you. Would you be praying for people who aren't in your position?

Couple of things might happen. Either it'll turn your heart toward those people that have some needs so that you can provide, you could be a part of the solution, or God will work through your prayers in miraculous means and spark the heart of someone else, maybe on the other side of the globe.

I know that orphanage, for example, sometimes she's woken up miraculously, and there's bags of food on the doorstep the next morning that they'd never seen in months and months and months. Well, how's that happen? Well, because God's God's responding to prayers. God's still providing for people.

Give us today the food that we need. Our father, may your name be kept holy. May your kingdom come and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today the food we need and forgive us our sins. Verse 12, as we have forgiven those who sin against us.

Forgive us our sins and help us forgive other people when they sin against us. Why would forgiveness be such a key part of our prayer life? Why why does Jesus include that? Because God values relationships, you guys, and sin wrecks relationships. Our sin separates us from God. It breaks our relationship with him. Our sin

separates us from people that we sin against or who have sinned against us. And when we we invite the forgiveness of God into our own heart or extend it to other people, that brings reconciliation,

and God loves that. That is his will for me and you. His will is not that we'd be fractured and distant from him or from other people, but praying forgiveness forces us to put our grudges before him. It forces us to put our own sin before him and not ignore it so that it festers and grows and keeps wrecking things.

But rather, we put it before him and say, heal me, forgive me, heal my relationships, forgive me or help me forgive them. And in so doing, you'll find so much peace. I wonder just how much anxiety you're dealing with on a day to day that's a result of, like, relational tension in your life.

That were it to be pulled into God's will or God's way of operating, it would bring some healing, and it would bring some peace, where right now you're just finding an anxious situation or an anxious heart. It's like a year ago this weekend, Mother's Day weekend, and I was with my mom on on Saturday, and

we went into one of those big box stores doing a little shopping, picking up a couple of things. And we were in the back next to the bikes, and while we were back there, my mom saw this beach cruiser, and she immediately fell in love with the bike.

And I said, mom, do you want that bike? I'll get you the bike for Mother's Day. And she said, really? I said, yeah. And we looked up at the price, and the price was, like, great, and we're like, let's let's do it. And she was so excited, like a crazy person. She got on the bike and then rode it up

through the aisles and stuff up to the cash register. It just cracked me up. And we got up there, and I go to pay for the bike. I scan the ticket, and the price that came up was like $50 more than what we had seen listed as the price.

So now, like, oh, this is a bummer. What's going on here? Well, come to discover, we find out that what we had seen was the online price. If you buy it online, it's $50 cheaper than if you go to the store. The problem is, my mom's now seated on the bike, we're in the store.

Another problem is, I don't wanna spend the extra $50. I should have, but I but I didn't. Then I had an idea. Oh, I know how to get around this. I can still buy it online through my phone. So I pulled my phone out, I opened the website to the store,

and I found the bike, I purchased the bike, they took my money, and then they gave me the receipt. And we're like, oh, problem solved. I got the bike, my mom's happy, my mom's on the bike, let's go, mom. And we start to make our way outward, and the nice, greeter people that are normally there suddenly weren't nice.

And there were, like, seven of them. They all came out of the woodwork and and built a wall around us. We said, what what's what's the matter? They said, oh, we we we could track what happened right there. You can't buy that online. That's an online purchase, and you're in the store.

And I said, well, I I get that, but I I did buy it online. Like, I had gone outside the store and bought it online, that would have been okay? They said, yeah. You can't do it at the register. I said, okay. Well,

my mom's it's it's Mother's Day tomorrow. My mom's on the bike. You're gonna make my mom cry, and if you make my mom cry, I'm gonna make you cry. That's just the way this thing is gonna go. I didn't say that, but that's what I was thinking. And they said, well, unfortunately,

we can't let you take the bike, so here's what we're gonna have to do. We know you've already paid for the bike. We have to take the bike back to the online holding bay area in the back, and tomorrow, we'll send you a text, and you can come back and pick up the bike tomorrow. Now, people of God,

Bad words began to form in the back of my head. I will not repeat those here, but I started to get really upset, but I was also too tired, we're not gonna get in an argument, and so, okay, just I'll come back tomorrow. That's fine.

We we got home, and my mom and I are complaining about the whole time. I went to church the next morning, and I'm driving home from church, and my phone pings, and I look, oh, it's the text from the store. The bike is ready, and it gives me the instructions.

Just pull into this parking spot with this parking number, and someone will wheel the bike out to you. Okay. That wasn't too bad. So I pull into the store, pull into the parking spot, sitting there waiting, excited for the bike, and I surprised my mom with the bike.

I look in the rearview mirror, and I see them wheeling out. Not a bike, but a box with a bike in it. Hey, this wasn't the deal. I am the least handy human being

on the entire planet. I can't fix stuff. I can't build stuff. I'm horrible at it. And so I'm thinking, oh no, this is not good. I get out, and I said, hey, what's what's the deal? And they said, this is your bike. I said, no, this is not a bike. This is a box with a bike in it.

And he said, no, you you could put it together. I said, no, you don't get it, because last night we were here, and we bought the bike, and it was assembled,

and they said they would hold it in the online holding bay. He interrupted me, he said, oh, I know. We saw that bike back there. We just gave it away five minutes ago. I said, okay, I said, okay. The bad words came back. They have not left my mouth at this point, but now I'm like so irritated,

and I begin to sense, I'm gonna have plenty to seek the forgiveness of God for, like in my heart, and if I stay too much longer, it's gonna be also my words and my actions here on this poor guy. And so I'm so irritated, and then it gets worse. He says, okay, also, you're gonna have to go build this thing,

but first, you should probably take pictures of the box, because I noticed wheeling it out here, it's really beat up, and you might wanna take pictures to prove that it was this beat up before you got it, in case you open it up and stuff's damaged inside, you could return it. He spun the box around,

and it looked like someone had taken a chainsaw to the box. There were bike parts jutting through the box, and I thought, oh, this is not gonna go good. He said, I said, how long does it take to put these together? And he said, oh, I see the guys do it all the time. It's not bad. Fifteen minutes? I said, okay.

I threw the bike in the car, and I drove home mad. Two hours and forty five minutes later, I've got 30% of the bike done. I'm drenched in sweat. I'm super irritable. I I hate, like, mankind. I hate the box store that I'm not gonna name, but you can figure it out. And

so I'm going, okay, this is this is ridiculous. I grab the tire now. I'm gonna put the tire on. I pull the tire out of the box to discover that the all of the spokes are snapped and broken outward. So okay, I'm done. I'm done. I'm mad. I'm mad at the store.

I'm mad at the individual from last night. I'm mad at Jesus for letting this happen. Throw the box in. Throw the bike half assembled in. I drive angrily over to the store, and I am just like fuming, and I can sense the spirit of God tapped me on the shoulder and went, dude,

my heart for you and this situation's way over here, and you are sprinting that direction. And in that moment, in that short little drive, I just felt that prompting from the Lord, hey, maybe you ought to pray. And I just started to pray. Okay, Lord,

pull me back into your heart. Pull me back into your will. This is an absolutely silly situation with a stupid bike. This is not worth getting that worked up over. What happened was, by the time I got to the store, in prayer, God had already changed my heart. He hadn't changed any circumstances yet, but my outlook,

my perspective, my heart was changing. And then I pulled up, and an entirely different worker came out. He came out to the car. I opened the trunk, and he said, oh, what do you got here? I said, I got a mess, is what I got here. This is a nightmare.

The bike's all messed up. Been trying to put it together, but I need to return it and get a refund. He said, no problem. I can do it right here. He pulled out a little keypad thing, and he said, I can refund you. And we just started chatting. I asked him, your day going Okay? And he said, no, man, really, it's not.

And he then just kind of started oversharing. And he shared about the job situation, and he shared about a relational thing. And I said, what's going on? And he said, well, my wife just filed for a divorce yesterday. And in that moment, we just got to talk, and we got to pray

in the parking lot of this store that I still hate, by the way, but I don't hate him. And it was just kind of a divine appointment. It was that reminder that so much of life operates outside of the hoop. But when I'm in constant communication

with my heavenly Father, like I'm just tuned into different things, he's working on me in different ways, I'm experiencing things at a whole different level. Jesus closed out this instruction by prayer on verse 13 saying, don't let us yield to temptation, but rescue us from the evil one.

The other reminder about prayer is that it is a it's a spiritual weapon. You guys, you and I are in a spiritual battle on a day to day basis. There's an enemy that just would love to rip you and everybody you know to shreds. And we better come into a spiritual battle with some spiritual weapons,

Not just our own strength, our own smarts, but prayer along with the word of God is a rhythm whereby you can experience the kingdom of God and the will of God and the provision of God and the forgiveness of God and the protection of God Almighty. And so would you step in?

Would you make that ongoing conversation a regular practice? Crawl up on his lap. Let it remind you of who you are and what he's really up to. Let him change your heart, and then let him flood through your prayers to bring change, to help build his kingdom, expand the scope of his will across this planet for his glory's sake.

In the name of an Almighty God, our heavenly Father, do it. And so gracious heavenly Father, we thank you. We thank you that we can call you Father. We thank you that there is no one like you. We thank you that you are building a kingdom, and yet we know a lot of your kingdom has not fully come. So,

Lord, use us however you see fit to continue to build your kingdom more than our own kingdom. Help us be tuned into your will, and then pursue your will more than our own will. Father, thank you for providing for our needs. We pray right now for for those that got needs that maybe we can help with

or needs that are very tangible and real. Even in other places that we can't reach right now, would you do a miracle and provide for those that are starving or don't have a place to live or need a friend.

Forgive me, Lord, for the times that I sin against you. Help me forgive the people that come across my path that have hurt me. Father, protect me and protect my friends and family here from all the plans of the evil one.

Lord, we'll be quick to give you all the praise and the glory for who you are and what you do. It's in the powerful name of Jesus that we pray. Amen. Amen.

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