Hope, Healing & Freedom Podcast: Episode 119
Transcript
On October 12, 2024, a prayer and worship gathering happened in Washington, DC on the Mall in front of the US capital building. It was called The Million Women march. 250,000 gathered in person on the mall in D.C., and an unknown number of others like Cindi and I watched online. Why am I telling you this? In today’s podcast I want to talk about prayer and my purpose is to inspire you and me to “make your life a prayer.”
I’m Lee Whitman with Restoring the Foundations and I welcome you into this Hope Healing and Freedom Podcast. Today’s verse is 1 Thessalonians 5:17. The New American Standard version translates it this way, “Pray without ceasing.” I really like the way it is translated in the Passion Translation. It says, “Make your life a prayer.”
I started by talking about the massive gathering of people in Washington, DC called The Million Woman March to pray for our nation. Cindi and I love those big prayer events. We have attended many over the years. In fact, we were at the very first Call led by Lou Engle held in Washington DC in 2000 where 400,000 people gathered on the Mall in DC to pray for our nation. Many of the people who attended that very first Call were teenagers and young adults. It was awesome to see people repenting and seeking God’s face for our nation.
Having attended 8 or 10 of these large prayer gatherings I have to be very honest and say I am not sure what was accomplished at those events. I always come away and wonder if our prayers have done any good? My answer is a resounding YES. Our prayers make a huge difference that is not always immediately seen. Many of you have things that you are praying for that you have not seen the answer to. You may have a loved one who does not know the Lord, or you have a prodigal child that is away from Jesus, and you have prayed and prayed but you are yet to see the answer. My friends, keep praying. Our prayers do make a difference.
I will say right at the beginning of this podcast that I am not an expert on prayer. There are many people who have much more experience in prayer than I do. But what I do have is that I have walked with Jesus for a very long time, and I have learned some things about prayer that I want to share with you. The place to start when talking about prayer is with The Lord’s Prayer found in Matthew 6:9-13. Jesus was teaching the disciples to pray, He said, “Pray this way; Our Father, who is in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. Your Kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation but deliver us from evil. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen” I love how revelation from the Holy Spirit works. I have read or spoken this prayer too many times to count, yet when I began to write this podcast, I saw some things in this prayer that I had never seen before. So, you are going to get to hear what God was showing me about this prayer first hand.
The first thing that jumped out at me is the intimacy found in this prayer. Remember that Jesus was teaching His disciples this prayer. These would have been young men who had been raised as Orthodox Jews. They would have memorized vast amounts of scripture, and they also would have prayed many, many times to a God they knew about but could not know intimately. They would daily repeat or recite prayers that they had been taught. Prayers like “Blessed are You Lord our God, maker of heaven and earth who brings forth bread from the ground.” In their religious schooling they would have learned much ABOUT God, but they could not know God intimately. So, when Jesus taught them to pray “Our Father” He was leading them into a totally new relationship with Father God. It is a relationship of intimacy and not religion. He has ushered in a new way of having a relationship with our Father God for each and every one of us. Romans 8:15 says “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry ‘Abba Father!’” Abba is the Jewish term for “Papa” or “Daddy”. Jesus has moved us past a religious understanding about God to a very intimate relationship with God as our Papa or Daddy. This intimacy is the foundation for the rest of this prayer we call the Lord’s Prayer. I had to go and tell Cindi what I had just seen for the first time about this prayer. In this prayer Jesus is inviting us into an intimacy with our Father God we never had before. If you have not listened to our podcast on Intimacy with God, I would encourage you to go back and do so. You can find the complete library of Hope Healing and Freedom podcasts on our website restoringtheoundations.org by clicking on the Resources Tab at the top. You will then see a dropdown for Podcasts.
The next thing that jumps out from this prayer is that it aligns our priorities to God’s priorities. It says Hallowed be Your Name. We begin by Hallowing Father God’s name. To hallow means to show reverence and honor. What a great way to align our priorities with heaven by giving God the reverence and honor that is due Him. Next, we state that we want His Kingdom to Come, His will be done on earth. In this day and age of entitlement where everything is about us and what we want and think we need; it is awesome to align ourselves with the priorities of heaven. The facts are that when God’s Kingdom comes and His will is done on earth as it is in heaven, we will be blessed more than if we could get everything that we think we need. The best thing that could ever happen is for His Kingdom to come to earth, for His will to be done in our lives.
Then Jesus invites us to ask Father God for the needs we have. I love this. “Give us this day our daily bread”. It is ok and appropriate to ask you Father God for what you need. In doing so we are recognizing that everything we have comes from Him. It is aligning ourselves with who God is as our provider. We are so blessed to be able to go to our local grocery store and find an unlimited amount of food available to us. Yet in this prayer we are recognizing that it really is God that is the provider of our daily bread. People receive a paycheck that comes from the company they work for. But it is not your company that is providing for you. It is your Father God providing for you through your employer. God invites us to bring our needs to Him. Philippians 4:6-7 says, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” In fact, right before Jesus taught them this prayer he says in verse 8 of Matthew 6, “For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him.” If God already knows what we need before we ask, then why do we pray? We pray to experience intimacy. We pray to experience more relationship. Remember that God wants relationship with you so badly that He sent Jesus to die on the cross so that you can become His child.
The prayer goes on to say, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” There is an interesting verse in Matthew 6:14-15 that says, “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” This verse used to really trouble me. The grace of God should cover my unforgiveness, right? Then I began to understand what unforgiveness does to me. When we hold on to unforgiveness we are leading ourselves down the road to bitterness. And the bible is clear that a root of bitterness defiles many. Hebrews 12:15 says “See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble and by it many become defiled.” So, it is out of the grace and love of a really good Father that He says forgive as I have forgiven you. He forgave us when we did not deserve it. The second thing about the power of forgiving is that if we don’t forgive others, I don’t think we really understand the debt we have been forgiven. Ephesians 4:32 says “And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.” When we realize how much we have been forgiven, we will more easily be able to forgive those who have offended us.
Then Jesus teaches us that we are in a battle with our enemy satan. “And do not lead us into temptation but deliver us from the evil one.” Many of us were raised with lies about the evil one. One lie that the church was taught is that there is no devil. There are many churches that will say that there is no devil and there is no hell. The second lie is something like this, “If you leave the demons alone, they will leave you alone.” Neither of these are true. When Jesus taught us this prayer, He knew there is a very real evil one who wants to take you out. Jesus said very clearly in John 10:10 “The thief (the evil one) does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy.” To say that he does not exist is simply wrong. We have a very real enemy who we are in battle with. Much of the language of the New Testament is cloaked in battle terminology because we are in a battle. It is the Kingdom of God verses the kingdom of darkness. Notice how Jesus finishes this prayer. “For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.” He is reinforcing two things. One we are in a battle. Two God’s Kingdom is coming and will overcome the kingdom of this world. Amen?
I started off by talking about the Million Woman March. I believe those large prayer gatherings are an outgrowth of the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray. One of the reasons I love going to those large events is the sense of intimacy that happens when 100,000 or more of your closest friends get together and focus on the One Who sits on the throne. It is releasing in a corporate setting this prayer. Your Kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. It is powerful and I believe it changes the atmosphere. Are we always able to see the changes right away? No. But I have to wonder what it would be like if we did not gather and seek God’s face and turn from our wicked ways. What would it be like here on planet earth without the prayers of the saints?
We are approaching one of the most critical elections in my lifetime here in the United States. The statistics are that only 50% of Christians vote. That means that people who do not have a Christian world view are electing our leaders and setting the direction for our country. I am asking you to please vote. Early voting is open, and it is usually not very busy so you can get in and get out. We need to have Christians vote according to Biblical values in order for this country to remain the beacon of light to the world.
