Beware Of Practicing Your Righteousness Before Men #4

So this morning, we're going to be returning to our study of the Sermon on the Mount in chapter 6 of Matthew's Gospel. This is the fourth sermon under the title, Beware of Practicing Your Righteousness Before Men, and it is the second sermon on verses 5 through 8, which deal with the topic of prayer. Our last sermon two weeks ago focused on what prayer is and how easily we fall into hypocrisy when we pray. This week, we're going to be focusing on verses 7 and 8. where our Lord Jesus warns us away from meaningless prayer, meaningless repetition, and comforts us with the words that our Father knows what we need even before we ask. It's my hope this morning that God will use our time to show us how to pray to our Father, to our Father who knows all of our needs even before we ask. Would you please stand as we read the word of the Lord from Matthew chapter 6, verses 5 through 8. This is the word of the Lord and it is eternally true.

you are not to be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door, and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. And when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do. For they suppose that they will be heard for their many words. So do not be like them. For your Father knows what you need before you ask him. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. The first thing that stands out to us in verse 7 is that Christians are not the only people who pray. That prayer is not exclusive to being a Christian. Everybody prays. Quite literally, everybody prays. Jesus warns us here not to pray like the Gentiles do.

He does not say they do not pray. He says, do not pray like they pray. Who do Gentiles pray to? Well, not to our God and Father, but they do pray to gods. They do look for deliverance. There is an old saying that there are no atheists in foxholes, that everyone has this reality written into their hearts that they need help, and that help needs to come from outside of them. request that help is through prayer. And so everyone prays. I could tell you stories about when I prayed before I was a Christian. One memory that stands out in my mind was when I was a senior in high school and I was at a track meet and I wanted to go to state. I wanted to qualify for state. And I had blown out my, or I didn't blow out my knee, but I had to have arthroscopic surgery at the end of wrestling season, just before track season. And I was really good at discus until I had surgery. And then I wasn't.

And I had to get good at shot put real quick if I was going to go to state. And I remember praying as an 18, 17-year-old guy who'd never been in church in his life. I don't know who I prayed to. I don't remember exactly what I said. All I remember was praying that somehow, some way, I'd be able to go to the state track. Because that's what I'd wanted to do since I'd taken up track and field in seventh grade, six years previous. Who'd I pray to? I don't know. this this concept of a higher power to a god of sorts when i had no idea who was there or what the effect would be i just knew that i needed help and that reality is present in everybody's life we all know we need help unbelievers know that they need help they also know that they need protection they also know that they need provision and in times of trial And in times of trouble and sorrow and danger, everybody prays. Everybody prays. And so Jesus warns us not to pray using meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do. And so he tells us how unbelievers pray. They just rattle on and rattle on and rattle on with words. We have an example of that in Scripture when Elijah is with the prophets of Baal.

And he gives to them, he says, you know what we're going to do? We're going to figure out who God is. We're going to figure out whose God is real. Is Baal real or is the God of Israel real? What we're going to do is we're going to have sacrifice up here. You guys can go first. And so this is in the morning. So Elijah steps back and they take their sacrifice and they kill it and they offer it up and they set it up on an altar. And then they pray. And this is what it says. It says, they called on the name of Baal from morning until noon, saying, oh, Baal, answer us from morning until noon.

This was their prayer. But there was no voice, and no one answered. They leaped about the altar which they made. It came about at noon that Elijah mocked them. And he said, Call out with a loud voice, for he is a god. Either he is occupied or gone aside, or is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and needs to be awakened. So they cried out with a loud voice and cut themselves according to their custom with swords and lances, until the blood gushed out on them. When midday was passed, they raved until the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice. But there was no voice, no one answered, and no one paid attention. So they carried on like this all day. All day. And it was important what they were doing because whoever God answered, the other guy was going to die. The other guys were going to die. So they go on praying all day.

O Baal, answer us. And they leap around and they cut themselves. They're doing all of this stuff, but their God doesn't answer. And what's interesting to note is Elijah was faithful to the Lord and there was a remnant of people who had been faithful to the Lord. But it's worth noting that all of the crowds who had gathered up on the mountain to see this, none of them paid attention to their prayers. Why did no one pay attention to their prayers? Because they knew they were meaningless and they were tired of listening to them rant and rave with no answers. with no voice, with no response. What they were doing was meaningless and no one took interest in it. Have you ever been around someone praying and you might think it's an impious thought or inappropriate, but you're like, man, I wish they'd just be done. I've had that thought when I've prayed with people sometimes. They pray, they go on and they go on and they go on and they go on. And I'm like, what are we doing here? What exactly are we doing here? That's a question that Christians ought to ask. What exactly is it that we're doing here?

Why are our prayers so long? Why are they so repetitive? What do we hope to accomplish? Well, in the example of the prophets of Baal, what Elijah points out to them is maybe he's distracted, maybe he's hard of hearing, maybe he's in the restroom or asleep. Speak louder. Make more of a ruckus. Motivate or manipulate your God into answering you. There's a danger in prayer. A very real danger that when we come to God and we make our requests known to him, when we address him and we speak to him, that actually we're speaking not by way of making a request, but in a way of instructing him in what needs to be done. This is what needs to happen. This is what we'll need you to do. This is how we'll need you to respond. Here's when we'll need you to respond by. And there's a way of repeating ourselves and repeating ourselves and repeating ourselves as though our many words, will somehow rise to our Father because of their volume, how many there are. But our text tells us later on in verse 8 that our Father knows what we need before we ask Him. And this is the reason that Jesus gives for why we shouldn't have these long, repetitive prayers in our life. Your Father knows already what you need. Before you speak, He knows what you need. Have you noticed that when you haven't talked to somebody in a while, you have a lot to say to them?

The reason you have a lot to say to them is because you haven't talked to them in a while. Have you noticed with people that you have regular conversation with, you're still polite and you're still pleasant, but you're able to move much more quickly through the conversation because there's a shared knowledge of what's going on. If I'm working on a project with Daniel and we were back and forth, I don't have to call Daniel and say, hey, Daniel, there's this project and here's this thing and here's what I've done and here's what, and I don't have to give all because he already knows. So I can just call Daniel and say, hey, Daniel, here's a new piece of information. Can you please do this with it? Let me know when it's done or if you need anything from me. And Daniel says, yep, got it. Why can't Daniel say, yep, I got it? Because he already knows what's going on. Well, our God already knows what's going on. He already knows what's going on in our lives, even if we haven't told him. He knows what's going on in the details of our lives. He knows how many hairs are on our head. He has acquainted himself.

with the most intimate and seemingly trivial details of our life and carries that knowledge completely within himself at all times. Knowledge of our past, knowledge of our present, and knowledge of our future. No detail of our lives, past, present, or future is hidden from our God. He knows us. And so when we come and we speak to him, we ought to speak to him as though he knows us. The danger is, though, we doubt that he knows us. Because we look at the circumstances in our lives and we say, he must not know something, because if he did, he wouldn't allow this to happen. Things wouldn't be the way they are if he saw things the way I see them. So that becomes the reason why we pray. And it becomes the reason why we repeat our prayers, because we think there's a lack of knowledge here. But there is no lack of knowledge with our God.

He knows every detail of our lives. When our last breath will be taken, he knew before anyone else because he did it when we were conceived. He has perfect knowledge of us. And so when we pray, we don't need to repeat ourselves time and time and time again as though our many words will accomplish something. In fact, when there are many words, there's a distinct lack of substance or honesty or real dealing. I think one of the most obvious examples of this is modern worship music. It's just banal. It's just so repetitive. And if you were to take away the instrumentation and you were just to be handed a piece of paper that had the words written out in the way that it's sung, not like, we'll get rid of the little three or four X that goes at the bottom, we'll just write it out four times, the same thing that's being said.

And if you were to read that, you'd say, okay, what was the substance here? What was actually being said? It was six minutes of a song. What was the substance of what was being said here? You'd find out there's very little being said. But whatever there is, it's being said over and over and over and over again. It's in our prayers many times. We default to repetitive and shallow prayers. I think the reason we repeat ourselves so often is because we're not accustomed to how to speak to God. We don't know what to say. It's almost like when you get around someone you're nervous about, you repeat yourself. That's sort of a normal thing. I do it. Do you guys recognize you fumble over your words and you say the same thing? Have you ever asked the same question twice? How are you doing? And then they tell you, and then you're like, uh, so what's going on?

It's the same question. And then they look at you funny and they're like, oh, I said the wrong thing. And they're like, well, yeah, you said it again. We're unaccustomed with how to speak to God. We don't know what to say. What I think is most lacking in our conversation with God is simply this, honesty. Just honesty. We are not honest. What do I mean by honest? Do I mean that we are actively telling God lies? That's not what I mean. What I mean is that we conceal the the true nature of our temptations or our requests. We dress it all up. We try to make it sound nice or look pretty. All of us have an intensity about us. Some of us more so than others. Some of us can get there a lot quicker, but we all have this intensity. All I would ask you is, whatever that level of intensity is for you, have you ever spoken to God like that? And of course, we all say, no. Or maybe this one time.

Maybe when there was some tragedy and it was happening right now, at that point, I spoke with intensity to God. At that point, the filters came off and the honesty came out as I asked God to help me. But this is not our custom. This is not what we normally do with God or with one another. We think that being reserved, always being calm, always having the right word, selfish or greedy or angry or frustrated or bitter or scared. We have all of those things stewing inside of us, but when it comes to talking to God, we say, okay, I have to set all of that aside, which is the truth of what's going on inside of us, and then just produce words that are useless, meaningless, untrue.

Now, am I saying that you should be cursing at God? I said two weeks ago, and a number of you noted on it, you said, you know, Dave, you said that we should pray in our vulgar tongue. And what you said was that if we curse in our day-to-day lives, that we should curse when we pray. And people were like, well, you can't mean that. And I said, well, actually, I'm not telling you you should curse when you pray. I'm saying you shouldn't curse the rest of the time. But I was trying to make the point, and you all understood it. It landed, because a number of you came back and were like, wait a minute, are you saying, and I'm like, No, I'm just saying that God sees the truth. He sees the truth of you. And so when you pray, you should just be honest. You should just tell him what you think. And if you haven't got a better word than a curse word for it, then let him know what's going on and ask him to be merciful to you because you're a sinner. I want more than anything for my own life and for your lives for us to be honest in dealing with our temptations and dealing with our sins.

in dealing with our fears, in dealing with our past. I want us to be honest. And it's really stinking hard. It's not just God that we have trouble being honest with. We have trouble being honest with each other. All of us somewhere inside of us have a wall. I have a wall. My wife knows the wall. Anyone who knows me well enough knows that I have a wall. But I'm not unique. We all have them. We all say, you know what? I don't want you in that close. I don't want you. behind the curtain and seeing the things that literally go into the thoughts and the desires. So we build a wall. We are on the inside, everyone else, and we suppose God is on the outside, unaware of the truth. We may be able to deceive one another and pass off our half-truths as whole truths, but with God, that's not the case. He knows our innermost thoughts.

He weighs the intentions of our hearts. The scripture tells us that we will face judgment not just for the things that we do or the things that we say, but even the things we desire. How can we face judgment for the things we desire unless our God knows what they are? We could spend our whole life hiding our desires, even from ourselves, but from everyone around us, and we might succeed. You may get to your grave without people knowing something. But you didn't slip it past God, not for a moment. He knows. He knows. And that's a scary thing to have to do with a God who knows us, who knows us intimately, who keeps a perfect record of the intentions of our hearts, the words of our mouth, and the deeds of our life. These are the things. These realities are what make repetitive, formulaic, robotic prayers.

attractive to us because our hearts don't have to be engaged in that. We can just say the thing, the thing we always say, and that's that. Earlier this week, I taught a chapel for my kid's school. First time I've ever done it, I was nervous, fumbling around, if you can imagine. And so I, you know, it's 25 minutes and I'm done. And then some young man, high school student comes up to me and he says, I just wanted to thank you for what you said. And he indicated that his home life has been very, very bad. That he's come out of substance abuse rehab. He's 15. So you can understand he's had a very, very rough life. And so I'm going, okay, what do I do with this young? I've never met him before. He's new to the school. What do I do? I said to him, I said, I'd like to pray for you. What can I pray for?

And he looked at me and he said, I don't know. And that was the honest truth. He's not a Christian. I don't think he would say he's a Christian. He's brand new to the school. And he's like, I don't know. He has no idea what prayer is. So when I ask him, you know, if anyone asked you, how can I pray for you? You would understand that you need to come up with something that they can pray for. You know, it can be like my grandma, you know, in the hospital. There's going to be something. You're like, you're going to reach back into. in, you know, get ahold of something and say, pray for this. He says, I don't know. I don't know. What was he saying to me? He's saying my life's a mess. Like it's a big mess. What'd you say? Yeah. Well, like, I mean, he, I don't think he was actually saying, where do you start? He's just like, I don't know that he had a concept of what, of, of praying, of asking God for anything because he's only ever had hard, difficult things and he's never had anyone connect or teach him anything about, about God. That's my, that was my.

You know, that's the thought going on in my head. I said, well, I'd like to pray for you. And he says, okay. And so I put my arm around him and I prayed for him. But his answer was honest. He had no idea what to pray for. And so he just said, I have no idea what to pray for. And I appreciated that young man and his honesty. And it would be good for us to have that sort of honesty in our own lives, in our own prayer life. I don't know what to say. I don't know. I don't even know how to, there's this mess, this stinking mess that I made or someone else has made, and I don't know how to clean it up. But Lord, we need you to help us and fix this and straighten out and untie all the knots we've made and help us to accept the difficulty of the work ahead for us and help us to be faithful. Truth is, I don't want to clean the mess up. Truth is, I don't think I should have to clean the mess up. The truth is, that mess is not my fault.

I've cleaned this mess up before. Am I the only one who has those thoughts? I don't think I'm the only one who has those thoughts. Do we ever say those things to God? Not as often as we should. It's a weird thing. We hide our wills. We've come to a place as Christians where we've cultivated this habit of suppressing our wills. Romans says that we suppress the truth in unrighteousness. And you think, oh, that's those bad people out there. And I say, yeah, but Christians do it in this way. They suppress their wills and act like they're not opposed to the things of God. When in fact, they have a will inside of us. We have a will inside of us that says, I don't want to do that. We're just like, but I can't say I don't want to do it. And so then we live our lives becoming the son who says yes, but refuses to do it. Far better to be the son who says, I am not going to go out in the vineyard today because I don't want to. And then is convicted of our own sins and says, I'm going to go out. I need to go out in the vineyard today. That's honest. That's how we should pray.

For us to set the bar lower than that and to say, well, I'm going to say nice things to God and I'm going to fill my prayers with all these truths. If the truth of what's going on in your heart is missing from all of those truths, then your prayer is meaningless. It's not gotten traction with God yet because we're not dealing honestly with it. And what you'll find is that if you pray like that, a few things will happen. One, you won't pray very often. And when you do pray, you will not expect God to answer you. even as you pray. And it won't be because God isn't willing or able or desirous of answering your prayers. It'll be because your prayers have become this accusation, this blasphemy, this curse. That should not be true of us. It is true of us. Lord, help us not to have that be true of us in the future as it has been in the past. We should be honest when we sin and when we struggle, when we fail.

We should acknowledge those things. What do you want your children to do when they speak to you? Do you want them always to say, yes, mommy? Yes, daddy? Yes, mommy? Yes, daddy? Is that satisfactory to you as a parent? It's not satisfactory to me. That only is important to me. That's only encouraging to me if they do the thing that they said yes, mommy about. If they don't do the thing that their mother told them to do, but they like that, like clockwork, yes, mommy, then I wouldn't give a plug nickel for their yes, mommy, because they're not. engaged in it. I want their hearts. God wants our hearts. So when we pray, we ought to pray from our heart. And what you'll find is that when you pray from your heart, you will not constantly say the same things over and over and over again. You'll find that there are times you don't have words. And then the Word of God that says that the Holy Spirit intercedes with us, for us, with groanings, will become a comfort to you.

that even when you sit there and you say, okay, the honest truth is my heart is a mess. It's just a mess. I'm not looking at it and saying, look at that mess. I'm going, I know it's a mess, but I need to bring this mess to my Father in heaven. And I don't know what to say about it. And there you'll sit there in silence, wondering why you can't pray and why you're so stupid and what the point of all of this is anyway. It's a far better prayer than some meaningless words that you learned somewhere. Because it's honest. It's real. And God hears those prayers. And he's not offended that his children have weaknesses. If he was, we would never be his children because there's not any among us who are strong. And so our weaknesses are not a surprise to God. We may be surprised when we find that we're weak, where we thought we had strength, spiritual strength, physical strength, mental strength, whatever. And we realize, oh, I'm not as strong as I thought I was.

We're surprised by that. God is not surprised by that. He knew that. He already knew that. And with that knowledge, he's not afraid to call us his sons and daughters, to send his son to save us from our sins. He knows us and what our weaknesses are. And so when you pray, don't pray with meaningless repetition, with heartless words, words that are devoid of what's actually going on in your heart. Speak the truth to your Father in heaven. One of the things that comes up in relation to this about using meaningless repetition is the question of the widow who perpetually went back and went back and went back to the unrighteous judge and kept making her requests and kept saying, I need justice. I need justice. I need you to do your job. They say, oh, well, we're supposed to do that. We're supposed to just be repetitive in the things that we say. And I'd say, okay, what is going on there? One, to say that we shouldn't have meaningless repetition is not to say,

that you should only make your requests to God once and then never again. Actually, here's the difficulty. You should make your requests known to God all the time, but it shouldn't be meaningless words. They should be meaningful words. That parable about the unrighteous judge and the widow, I think one of the failures, probably the biggest failure that we have when we read that parable is that we don't pay attention to the widow, we pay attention to the judge. and we attribute that judge's behavior to God. And we think that that's how God is with us, that he's unrighteous, and that he doesn't answer our prayers, that he's uninterested in doing what is right. And that's not what that parable is meant to teach us. That parable is meant to teach us that we should be persistent in bringing our requests to our Father in heaven. The one thing it doesn't tell us, or there's no indication of in that passage, is that the widow ever was bitter or angry as she came to the judge, but simply that she repeatedly asked for him to do what was right.

And that as she lived her life, there's no indication how long in the parable she came to the judge. Long time. But undoubtedly, the circumstances of the injustice changed over time. And she repetitively came and said, be just with me. Protect me. Do your job. Give me justice. And you can't help but assume that when she's making those requests, it's when the next injustice happened. And she said, okay, again, will you be just? Will you be just? Will you do what's right? In Psalm 42 that we sang this morning, you want to talk about a song that's full of content? There's like no chorus. It's just this road trip through life of thoughts and feelings, and it starts and then it goes, and it doesn't circle back around. But there's a point in which the psalmist cries out, how long are you going to forsake me? That's an honest question that Christians have. How long will you forsake me? How long will you hide your face? How long will you...

wait, how long will you be silent? These are the words of faithful prayers. How long, O Lord? How long? Don't hide your face from me forever. Day and night, my enemies are after me. They seek my life. Their words cut me to the quick. Why won't you rise up and vindicate yourself and your people? This is what prayer, good, godly, faithful, meaningful prayer sounds like. It's the kind of prayer that the widow would have been offering. Not a prayer, but a request to this judge. It's how we ought to pray. And so when you find yourself, one of the things I think about where I run into this idea of meaningless repetition is at dinner. How do you pray for dinner? What do you say at your dinnertime prayer? Same thing every time? Oftentimes I do. And you know, I've got this little thing in my head that goes, you're not supposed to do the same thing every time. So then you have like your fallback prayer. It's like the other prayer that you pray. You have two of them.

You know, you have the one, and then when you're like, I've come to the point where I don't think I could say that one again. I'm going to, you know, go to my other one. I don't know what to tell you about praying for dinner and how to pray, actually, other than it should be heartfelt. Whatever it is you're saying, it should mean it, even if it's the same thing. So Jesus here is not getting at saying these meaningless prayers, this vain repetition, as saying you can't say the same words more than once. Or that you can't say the same words often or frequently or daily. In the text just after this is the Lord's Prayer. And he says that you're supposed to pray like this. Give us our daily bread. How often do you ask for daily bread? Daily. How many different ways do you know to ask for your daily bread? Inevitably, there's going to be repetition. The heart of this issue is that you would speak to the true God and that you would tell him what's in your heart.

Maybe what you should do when you pray for dinner is you should say, you know what, there's some at the table who really don't like this meal. And I pray that you'd help even those children or parents to receive this food with gratitude and not with a grumbling heart. Maybe that should be your prayer sometimes. Because inevitably, that's the truth that's happening at the table sometimes, isn't it? Yes. John says we need God's grace. Yes. Like, honesty in your prayers. Honesty in your prayers. Jesus says, don't be like them, those who pray vainly, those who pray repetitively, whose prayers are meaningless, who aren't talking to the true God, who are unbelievers. Don't pray like them. Do not be like them. That's all I've been trying to get at you this far is to say, don't be like them. I'm trying to explain to you, this is what they're like. This is what our temptations are like. Lord, deliver us from these things. Help us not to be like this, but rather to pray.

To our Father who knows what we need even before we ask. This is meant to be a balm for our souls. But it's only a balm for our souls if we trust God. Because inevitably in our lives, we are not going to have everything that we think we should. In fact, as we live our lives, we're going to realize we have more and more things. We are without more and more things that we think we deserve or need. And it's God's way to deal with us to keep us needing Him. John Owen said when he was talking about unanswered prayer, he says, I'm convinced that part of the reason, the primary reason God does not answer our prayers is that if he answered all of our prayers right away, we would cease to pray and we would wander away from God. And that he uses unanswered prayer to keep us needing him day by day. And I thought, that's someone who knows my heart. He knows that if I have what I want, I'll move on. And the chances of me moving on to something more godly than bringing my request to the Lord,

is not likely. That I actually need to feel on a daily basis my need of the Lord. And it's his kindness in this life to keep me in that position. Because it's a position of dependence, it's a position of humility, and it is the only position that will actually produce contentment, gratitude, and joy. You remember at the beginning of this section, I mentioned to you that Jesus makes a point of constantly talking about God is our Father. And here again, he says the same thing. He doesn't say, do not be like them, for God knows what you need before you ask. He says, your Father. He didn't say my Father. Your Father. Your Father. Your Father knows what you need before you ask him. It's very easy for us to think that we know better than our fathers, our earthly fathers, children, that we know better than our dads what we need.

My dad doesn't understand. My mom doesn't understand. One of the things I said to the kids at that chapel is I said, listen, your parents are way smarter than you and have way more experience in this life, and they love you. They know better than you do what you need. The same is true with our Father in heaven. He has perfect, complete knowledge of what it will take to bring us to heaven's gate. We don't. That's the simple truth of it. We don't know what it will take to bring us to glory. And if we did know what it would take for us to bring us to glory, I'm afraid that many of us would lack the faith to walk that path. We would step back and say, you know, it's too hard. It's too long. I can't do it. I remember reading a story, the biography of Bob Kaplowitz a while ago. Some of you guys know Bob.

He passed away about a year ago down in Bloomington, had cerebral palsy. And one of the stories in the book was about his mother and how they took care of her as she had a terminal illness. I don't remember, some sort of cancer, I think. And one of the things, the thing that stood out to me was that they never told her she had terminal cancer. They never told her she had terminal, her family never told her. And they'd go to the doctor and they'd agreed with the doctor not to tell her. Now we would say that that's a monstrous, terrible, awful thing to do, to never tell her. But what they knew, was that if she was told that she had terminal cancer, that she would die sooner and that her quality of life would deteriorate much more quickly. And so they told her day by day with the knowledge that she was dying. They asked her how she was feeling and if she was doing okay and if she'd like to do this or that the next day as she was able. Would you like to go out today? Would you like to come to the dinner table today? Whatever she was capable of doing. And they walked with her with full knowledge of what was happening.

and cared for her, and that care and love for her manifested itself in them never telling her, you're going to die. And I'm convinced that that was a very loving and kind thing for them to do because they knew that she couldn't handle it, that it would have had a negative, a terrible impact on her. And these weren't Christians. Now, that's a crazy idea, isn't it? That you wouldn't tell somebody something that you didn't think they could handle. But I'm convinced that God often deals with us in just that same way. He doesn't tell us the things that we can't handle, and he keeps us away from the things that we can't handle. All the while, we're kicking our fits and throwing our tantrums about how it's not fair or right or good or true. And we're foolish when we do it. Your father knows what you need before you ask him. He keeps you from things that are harmful. He gives you things that are difficult to prepare you for what's ahead. But we'll only see it this way if we get beyond our pride that says we know best.

I will tell you that no matter how angry you get with the Lord and how frustrated you are, if you're one of his children, he will never leave you or forsake you, though you will feel as though he has. I can also tell you that he will not give in to your temper tantrums. He will not. Many of us, when we have children, we get tired and weak and we say, fine, if you don't want to listen, go figure it out yourself. But our God is not so weak and short-sighted as we are. And so he doesn't give in to our fits. And how many times in your life have you been, Helped by the fact that God didn't give in to your fits and give you what you wanted. Good thing to remember. A good father does what he knows is best for his children. He knows what they need even before they ask. And he gives them what they need, not necessarily what they ask for. And so in the end, we'll either be comforted by these words that our father knows what we need before we ask him. We'll either be comforted by those words because we're seeking to trust him.

or these words will sting, and they will become the foundation of our cursing. This is the point at which we have to fight, to take God at His word, to believe what He has said, even if we don't understand it completely. In doing that, we'll find comfort. We'll find His provision and His care, even if His mercies are severe or difficult for us to bear. You have to remember that when we pray, we're not simply asking God, We're telling God or reminding God of the things he may have forgotten. He doesn't forget anything. He doesn't lack any knowledge. One of the primary purposes of our prayer is to reorient our own hearts to God and to his will. That's why we pray. And so even when we pray and ask God to meet our needs, we ask in humility, in the way that Jesus did, nevertheless not my will but your will be done, we ask.

But we ask, trusting that if God has a different answer than what we were intending, it will be a better answer for our souls. You remember I said at the beginning, the old saying that there's no atheists in foxholes? Here's the thing about Christians. When they suffer and when life is very hard for them, that's often the time that they're closest to their Father in heaven. When tragedy is struck, when everything's falling apart, when trials are raging, when hardship surrounds them, these are the times when they feel closest to their father. And it's interesting the things they feel when they're close to their father in heaven. One of the things they feel is how merciful God's been to them and how much worse they actually deserve. But they never feel that way until things get really, really bad. We don't feel that way as often as we should. But when we've got nowhere else to turn, which is, you know, not actually the truth, but it's how we live. When we feel as though we've got nowhere else to turn and finally we say, I have no strength or wisdom.

or anything left of myself to give, I guess I will ask God to help. We find comfort. Our perspective changes. Because in that prayer, we are finally willing to have our hearts worked on by God. We can all wish that it didn't take such difficult circumstances for us to come under His scalpel. That's often what it takes. Trials and tragedies are the circumstances in which God grows us the most. because it's when we feel our need of him the most. And it's when we're most willing to acknowledge the truth, where we've given up the practice of hiding and manipulating and smiling and acting like everything's fine. We just go, well, here it is. We all know what it is. There's no sense hiding it. There it is. I need help. I'm a mess. And if God doesn't help me, I don't know where my help's going to come from. There is nowhere else for it to come from. And I'm going to content myself with God to send the help.

It's exactly how Elijah prayed when he was up on the mountain. You remember his life, his physical life was in danger. Here he was, one man. There they were, hundreds, with the king and the people, majority of them anyway, on their side. And here he comes out and says, I've got an idea. God cared for him. God provided for him. And God will do the same for you. God will do the same for you. And even after Elijah has this great work of the Lord up on the mountain. His life didn't go, oh, Elijah, we're going to carry that guy around on a throne. What was Elijah's life like after he did all this? It was really easy, right? No. Right back to being very difficult. But God was merciful to him, and God disciplined him through the process. Elijah wasn't what you would describe as being eager to go do these things. But God was merciful to him.

And God will be merciful to you as well. And so your father knows what you need. He knows what you need. You don't know what you need, but God knows what you need. And so ask him to give you the things you think you need while having this little thing in your mind that's like, sometimes I'm an idiot and don't know quite what I need. So if I'm wrong, just scratch it out and put in the right thing. And that's what I want. That's what the Holy Spirit does for us when we pray. And so we ought to pray. Let's pray.