Mike Bickle emphasizes the significance of the Lord's Prayer as a profound model for communication with God, urging believers to approach it with fresh understanding rather than familiarity. He highlights that prayer is the primary means through which God's power is released, and that each phrase of the prayer reveals deep truths about God's nature as both a loving Father and a majestic King. Bickle encourages a balanced view of God, combining His tenderness and transcendence, and stresses the importance of engaging in prayer for both personal needs and the advancement of God's kingdom. He also warns against the dangers of neglecting prayer, particularly the pre-temptation prayer, which prepares believers for spiritual challenges. Ultimately, he calls for a deeper commitment to prayer, recognizing it as essential for a vibrant relationship with God.

Father, we come before you in the name of Jesus, and I ask you for living understanding. Holy Spirit, teach us this glorious prayer that the Lord Jesus taught us. In the name of Jesus, I ask you for help and for living understanding. Jesus' name, amen. This will be session 13 on our Sermon on the Mount series, where Jesus pauses after he gave the exhortation to pray, then he gives us instruction on prayer. Now this is a most remarkable passage, and a most important passage, because prayer is clearly the primary way God releases His power through His people. So we have the man with the greatest prayer life, and the man with the greatest teaching ministry in history, teaching us on prayer. Now just consider that. No man has ever had a prayer life equal to Jesus, and no man has ever taught with the clarity and authority, and he's teaching us how to go forward in prayer. My cry is, Holy Spirit, teach me. Even now in this day and this hour, I don't mean just this morning, I mean teach me the Lord's prayer. Now the problem with the Lord's prayer is its familiarity. It's probably the most well-known passage in the Bible. Its over-familiarity has a negative side effect to it, is that we have this, we become content with a superficial kind of broad strokes view of this prayer. Each phrase in this prayer would be like a title in a book in God's library. There is so much to learn about each phrase. There's many applications and many implications involved in this. But because of the familiarity, it's easy to reduce this prayer to like a poem that we teach the children. Kind of like the Pledge of Allegiance. You know, we learn it and then we move on. But I want to tell you, this is the most dynamic teaching in the whole earth. These few verses, these four verses on how prayer works. By the greatest teacher and the greatest man of prayer that ever lived. Ever walked the earth. Paragraph B. So, before paragraph B, my point is, let's approach this with an eager learning heart. I don't mean this teaching I'm talking about for the rest of our life. Approach these four verses. I feel rebuked by the Lord that being a director of a prayer ministry, I have taught so little on this prayer in a specific way. And it's the greatest teaching there is. I looked at it and I thought, Lord, you know, ouch. I missed it. I need to bring, now we've taught principles from it, but we need to see not just the principles individually, but how they are connected together. Because the glory of this passage is the truths all brought together, not just their individual truths. Paragraph C. Jesus said in this manner, therefore pray. He gave us the model. And this model of prayer gives us insight into what God is like, and it gives us insight into the nature of the kingdom. How the kingdom operates and functions. The priorities and the principles of the kingdom are clearly laid out in this simple four verse model of prayer. Jesus is making clear what the central things are. He says, keep these central. And it's easy to approach our prayer life neglecting or overlooking any one of these principles or several of them. Paragraph C. He points out six requests. And these six requests, they have many levels of application. I only hint at just a few. I mean, we could spend a lot of time breaking down the implications. They're vast. It's many layered. Every one of these six requests, Jesus wants them to be a regular part of our prayer life. As I mentioned together, that though each one has many levels of application, there's a, the glory is in the six together. When we see them in relationship to one another, and then in relationship to the revelation of God as the heavenly father. Let's look at Roman numeral two. He starts off with a focus, a strong focus on who God is. Our father who art in heaven, our father in heaven. This little phrase has so much meaning to it. There's two dynamic truths about God with many, many, again, implications to these two truths. They're brought together in his one unified personality. When Jesus says our father, he's talking about the tenderness, the personal involvement, the affection in God's heart. When he says the one that's in heaven, he's talking of his transcendence, his majesty, his indescribable glory, and the greatness of who he is. That's what Jesus meant, the one who dwells in heaven. That's the implication. Now even these two dimensions of God, his tenderness as a father, his majestic transcendence as the one in heaven, we can't even understand those truths properly when they're separated. And it's very easy to separate those two truths. Throughout church history, we have focused on the one who's in heaven, the mighty, the great, the transcendent. Some groups today, they focus on the father but without the transcendence part. And we end up with a wrong perspective on both of them unless we study them and approach God with those two truths together held in tension. I call this phrase the Mount Everest of the kingdom of God. I mean that glorious, grand, unscalable mountain. And it is scalable by the Holy Spirit. What do I mean by unscalable? Even in the age to come, a million years from now, we will still be scaling this mountain, climbing it, grasping new discoveries about God as father and God as the transcendent one filled with majesty and glory. So Jesus starts where we need to start when we approach our prayer life. The principle of prayer starts with the being of God himself. Foundational to a right approach to prayer is a right view of God because with a wrong view of God, prayer is boring. With a wrong view of God, we misinterpret the way God answers or the delayed answers. With a wrong view of God, we end up enduring prayer and paying the price and kind of enduring this dialogue with a boring, distant God. One of the great ways that we begin to grow in prayer is by adjusting our view of the one we're talking to. Tozer's the one that insisted in his well-known book on the knowledge of the holy. He said a low view of God is the greatest problem in the church in every generation. Well, in this phrase, father in heaven, whether a low view of his fatherhood or a low view of his majesty is the one who dwells in heaven, either one of those will cause us to have a diminished relationship with God and it will affect our prayer life. So we need to take time to cultivate this understanding that Jesus sets forth. And we have Genesis to Revelation to draw from. But I want to urge you, don't move on quickly to how to get our needs met and how to have breakthrough in the kingdom. Let's dwell here for a while. While we're praying the six requests, let's continually cultivate this glorious truth of who he is as father and who he is in his majesty as the transcendent one in heaven. Paragraph B. Now in the time of Jesus' earthly ministry, the Jews as a rule saw God as transcendent. They knew he was the creator, transcendent meaning infinitely superior in his power and greatness to anything they could imagine. Infinitely superior beyond the scripture. When they approached God, they thought the transcendent one of Genesis 1. They thought of him as king. They had the testimony of the prophets. When Isaiah saw the Lord a glimpse of his majesty, he trembled. When Daniel, Ezekiel, just a glimpse, they would fall like dead before God. So their view of God is stay at a distance. He is too much. And then Jesus comes with this startling teaching. Your creator is your father. Now this was not technically a new teaching because there are about 15 passages in the where God is declared to be father. The part that was new was the emphasis. Because though it is an Old Testament doctrine, it was not emphasized. Jesus comes along and makes the father heart of God, the fatherhood of God, the premier dominant thought in our view of God. Not to the minimizing of the others, but it's the primary thought from which all of our other views, our other insights into God's attributes, they are formed by this, that he is our father. And it changes the way we view the majestic dimensions of his attributes and character. So Jesus came and the part that was new in his teaching that was startling was the emphasis, the making of the father heart and the fatherhood, the dominant thought from which the other parts of God's, the other dimensions of his attributes were to be interpreted. The next thing Jesus did is he greatly elaborated. He gave a great amount of new information about what God as father meant. So he combines these two ideas. He's powerful. The Jews knew that, but he's deeply personal. He combined heavenly love, I mean fatherly love with heavenly power. He combined transcendence, the infinitely superior one, with tenderness. He combined the most high God with the one who bows so low in his desire for deep connection and partnership with his people, his broken people. Paragraph D, he is father. And in this idea of father, there's many ideas. I mean, in this truth of father, what I want to focus on this morning, he longs for relationship, but more than relationship, partnership. You can have relationship with your four-year-old, but you have a far different partnership with your 20-year-old or your 30-year-old child. He wants more than relationship. He wants partnership together with us. As a father, he provides, he directs, he protects, but he plans as well. Like any good father, he has a plan that he works for our ultimate glory and greatness. Yes, he wants us to enter into the glory of God. He has a detailed plan as a father for your ultimate greatness under his leadership. What Jesus was saying here is that he is a father. It's not just a role that he plays. It's not just a title that he claims. He is a father at the core of his being. He thinks like a father. He plans like a father. He feels like a father. He relates like a father. He uses his power as creator to establish his plans as a father. I mean, imagine, the Most High God uses his power to establish his plans as a father. I mean, this is shocking, startling. This would rock the world. Now, the bottom line in terms of our response, we were to see the father in tenderness, the one in heaven with majestic transcendent power, the combination of the two, we would end up having great confidence to draw near to him even in our weakness. Confidence to draw near him? That was a new idea. We would have awestruck humility as we obey his leadership. We would have adoring love as we considered that the Most High loved us beyond anything we could imagine. And we would have wholehearted obedience. That's what that revelation would produce. And it would actually affect the way we pray the six requests. Paragraph E. Now, some through church history, many through church history, the last 2,000 years, they have emphasized God's majesty and neglected or greatly minimized his fatherhood. And what is the result of that is we end up with a depersonalized God who is majestic, but he's distant. He's a bit cold-hearted and sometimes even harsh. Because of his indescribable power and greatness, they did not see the tenderness and the longing and the enjoyment of his heart of his involvement with his people. Look at the top of page 2. Now, I'm spending most of my time on the opening phrase of the prayer, Our Father in Heaven. And I'm just going to mention the six requests, two or three of them just for a moment, and I'll spend a few moments on two of them. So my point is this teaching is really just to alert you to make this passage a primary passage in your walk with God because the greatest teacher and the greatest man of prayer is teaching us on prayer. And you know there's a lot beneath the surface of every one of these phrases, every one of these truths. Well, paragraph G, Revelation 4, a great passage in the Bible where we see the context of our Father in Heaven. Now, I just imagine this, that as Jesus is teaching the disciples, his young friend John, let's say he's about 20. Jesus is saying, Pray this way, our Father in Heaven. I imagine him looking at John, thinking, John, you have no idea, but in about 70 years from now, when you're about 90, on the island of Patmos, where you will be a prisoner, I'm going to visit you, and I'm going to give you a glimpse of what I mean by Father in Heaven. I can just imagine Jesus looking at John when he said, Father in Heaven, and they're shaking their head. He goes, I'm going to blow your mind. Let's read the passage. Revelation 4, verse 2. A throne is set in heaven. This is the context of the Father in Heaven. Look at verse 3. He's like a sardius. I mean a jasper and a sardius stone in appearance. Now, a jasper in the ancient world is different from a jasper in the modern world. It was a brilliant, radiant gem like a diamond. And a sardius was a deep red color. It was a stone, a precious stone. And these colors were emanating out of God's being, literally. They were expressing the nature of God's majesty and glory that He possesses in His being. John's at a distance. He sees these colors. This brilliant, diamond-like glory, far beyond that, emanating out of God. Saw the deep red sardius color. For our God is a consuming fire of desire for His people. John is awestruck. He looks, and there's an emerald rainbow. I imagine that emerald rainbow's arcing over the throne. That's just how I picture it. Speaks of the way God relates to His people in mercy. The covenant rainbow of mercy. The promise of mercy. Verse 4. But God has more than mercy in His heart for His people. Verse 4. He desires deep partnership with His people. For there's 24 thrones, and there's elders that are sharing in the government of heaven. That was His idea. The Father insisted, the Lord Jesus with full agreement, that the government of God would be expressed to the earth in deep partnership with the redeemed. Some commentaries think the elders are angelic beings, but most that I've read agree that they're saints. They're the redeemed because of the amount of references to the redeemed sharing in the government with thrones and crowns in the age to come. Verse 5. From the throne proceeds lightning, thunder, voices. One verse in Revelation says sounds, music, fragrance, lightning strikes where this divine energy is released. Thunder. I mean, our Father in heaven, He's operating in this way right now. That's the one that we are addressing when we bring these six requests to Him. Let's continue in verse 5. There are seven lamps of fire. They're burning. They speak of the Holy Spirit. They are right before the throne. Now, these are not little table lamps because they're on the sea of glass as well we find later. The fire of God is on the sea of glass. Now, this sea of glass before the throne, it's not a lake. It's not a pond. It's a sea. And it's large enough for several billion of the redeemed through history and the great harvest that's coming to gather in God's presence. And these lamps, I picture like the pillar of fire in the days of Moses. Or I picture like in the upper room the Holy Spirit resting like fire, hovering over each individual. I imagine these massive balls of fire on the sea. I mean, they could be so vast. The living creatures, so awestruck by what they see, they can't be silent. For it's a revelation of God that produces a response of worship. Well, my point is this. When we come before the Lord with these six requests, this is the scene for which we are coming into. The tender one is the majestic one. Paragraph H. Jesus set the context of intimacy with God within the context of sovereignty and majesty. But he also set the context of God's sovereignty in context to intimacy with the Father. My point is we need both dimensions to understand the other. They must be held together in tension. Some people set them against each other. One group is for the Father, the tender, the personal. The other group is for the majestic, the transcendent, the eternal. What Jesus is saying, you won't understand either one without the other. I have here in paragraph H, some in recent days, I mean the last few decades where there's been a new emphasis on the Father, which is a glorious work of the Holy Spirit. They see the Father, but they don't see the glory, the majestic glory. Others see the glory, but they don't see the tenderness of the Father. We have to be careful because some have this warm over-familiarity with God with no awe. And he's become kind of a fun-loving buddy. And they mistake that over-familiar approach with warmth as intimacy with God. Intimacy with God involves both dimensions, both of these glorious vast dimensions of who he is. Well, let's look at the six requests. And again, we're going to just make a mention on three or four of them, just say them almost in passing because my real desire is to alert you to the four verses so that you would set your heart to go deep on it in the days to come. Request number one, the prayer that God's name would be hallowed. Now, this is the first request. This is the premier one that Jesus says before. This is one that is easily neglected. Actually, the prayer Ephesians 117, the spirit of wisdom and revelation really is connected to this first request. This is it. God's name would be hallowed. It would be seen and responded to in a proper way. We would see his majesty and with deep, profound respect respond, and we would see his fatherhood and with confidence we would not resist and negate the desire of his heart to bring us near him. We can negate that with our shame and our own brokenness and we cast it off like, Lord, I'm sure you love me, and I'm glad, but we'll sort that out later. I'm broken over here. I love you and I'll worship you, but I don't know. I don't get too close to you. He says, no, no, respond to me. Hallow my name even as it relates to my fatherhood. The petition here is to set our heart to pursue this growing revelation that God would be revealed in us and that he would be revealed to us. That's the first of the six petitions. And, beloved, this petition will form the way we pray the five that follow. And all of our getting and all of our doing and all of our pursuing of the kingdom and of blessing and of increase and of the work of the kingdom, Jesus said first, the primary and first request is that you would hallow my name personally and you would be involved in inspiring others to do the same. Paragraph B, the second petition is for the increase of the kingdom, thy kingdom come. Now this involves the work of the kingdom, but not only the work of the kingdom, it involves prayer for the work of the kingdom, which is different. Well, that's part of kingdom work, but typically we separate the two in our thinking, though rightly we labor in intercession. That's part of the work. Now what Jesus is saying here in the second petition is that we are to be change agents in relationship with him. He's going to use us to change the nations. He would use us to bring people to his kingdom and then to affect the world and the nations. He called it discipling the nations. Now there's a difference between the kingdom and the church. The church is the family of God. It's the community of God. It's who we are in relationship together with the Father. The kingdom, I mean the church is the instrument of the kingdom, the vehicle of the kingdom. The kingdom, as I have written here, is anywhere where God's will is done, his powers manifest. The school teacher in her classroom, she can obey God and establish and be releasing the kingdom in that setting. The woman that works at the bank, the man that works at the gas station, the surgeon, the ditch digger, and everything in between, if they do the will of God and in the relationship with the people they touch, they're obeying God. They're actually declaring and manifesting the kingdom anywhere in society. So God's calling us to his larger purposes. And again, the church is the primary vehicle of the kingdom. Whenever the sick or healed, demons are cast out, the kingdom is present. Now there's two extremes that you hear today in the body of Christ that are both non-biblical related to the kingdom. Extreme one is that the increase of the kingdom comes after Jesus returns. You know, it's not going to happen anyway. Let's evangelize, leave it there, although that is part of the work of the kingdom, and let's not try to bring influence to any sphere of society. Why polish brass on a sinking ship? It's not going to happen until after Jesus returns. That's a biblical error. It's a common one. We are to disciple the nations now, knowing there's continuity in our work now with the age to come. The second error, first one is being too pessimistic. It doesn't matter. Let's not do nothing. Let's evangelize and leave it there. The Lord says, no, bring my kingdom to every sphere of society, every work assignment I give you. The second error is that we're going to fully Christianize society before Jesus returns. That's too optimistic. That's non-biblical. We're not going to complete the task of discipling all the nations before Jesus comes. We'll preach the gospel in every nation, but we won't transform every sphere of society to fullness. Number two, top of page three. Now here's the point Jesus is making. He says, pray for the kingdom to break in. We're to labor in prayer along with the work we do in the kingdom. But the common thing, it happens to all of us, all through history, is that the work goes forward and the prayer gets diminished. In the Lord's Prayer, He's actually not saying go do the work, although that's implied and said directly in many passages. But here He's saying, don't forget to do the work of praying for the kingdom. Do the prayer part. Don't do service separated from prayer. There'll be more effectiveness in the prayer. Now the great heir of the mighty church of Ephesus, we see it in Revelation chapter two, the greatest missionary church in the first century, Ephesus, which is modern day Turkey. They affected more people and did more work of the kingdom and the gospel. And when Jesus appeared, told John in the book of Revelation, He goes, tell them, I do see their work in it. It is remarkable, their diligence and the way they pour themselves out, but they're doing it disconnected from me. Tell them to change that. It's very easy to slip into being change agents separated from the prayer mandate. Paragraph C, the third petition, your will be done. There's no substitute for personal obedience. My point is that some people get captured by the work of the kingdom. They want to be a missionary. They want to be involved in justice issues. They want to throw their being with all their heart into being a change agent in the hand of God. But when it comes to their personal life, they're not diligent about doing the will of God in their own lives, in their own hearts. And the will of God has many levels. I'm only highlighting one very important one. They're committed to changing the nations, but they're not committed to personal purity. They're more captivated with the task than they are with the person, Jesus, and obeying him. And Jesus said, be a change agent. Do the work of my kingdom and pray, but the work is no substitute for your personal response to me. Do my will in your individual life. And again, we could talk for a long time on all the implications of God's will. It's not only the issue of personal purity. It's also being faithful with our personal assignments. Many people in the kingdom that I know, they're not faithful in their personal assignments because they're hard and they're small. They live longing for a big and a different assignment, and so they're idle for many years waiting for a big one, and they actually cast aside that which is right in front of them. Because it's hard, and it's small, and they get no attention for it. That's part of do my will, but that's for another day. Roman numeral four. Let's now move to the second three petitions. The first three are related to the glory of God. The second three are related to the needs of people, our own personal needs. Paragraph A, Jesus commands us to bring our personal request to Him in prayer. Now this is similar to praying for the kingdom, bringing our personal requests, our daily bread, our daily needs. And what I mean is it's similar. God knows our needs. He says it in verse seven and eight, right before this, right just a moment before. He said, I know, my Father knows it all. Well, then why are we praying for our daily needs if the Father knows it? We're not giving God information. That's not what we're doing. He wants the dialogue. He wants the relationship. He wants the interaction. When He says, pray, thy kingdom come, He can do the work of the kingdom without us praying. He wants the dialogue with us. We often get focused on the end result. He's focused on the process and the interaction with us. The end result matters to God, but the interaction is the priority to Him. I'm always amazed that somebody so interesting and smart as God wants to talk to me more. Like, Lord, I don't have that much to say that that's so interesting to You. I want Your heart. I love You. I want the interaction. You don't really know how I feel about You and the enjoyment I have in the interaction. I am not like a father. I am a father. Well, in this first paragraph, He commands us to pray for our personal needs. Now, this throws off some people in church history. I've read books about this. I mean, in my studies over the years, some of the kind of the ancients, you know, the fathers through history, they would conclude that we only focus on things pertaining directly to God. That's how they imagine. In our own personal needs, we don't want to do that. We want to forget those and be lost in God. We don't want to do anything selfish. Well, the problem with that wrong idea or that wrong application is that we're commanded to interact with God on our personal needs. The reason, when we do it, it expresses our dependence on Him. But there's more than dependence. When I ask the Lord for my daily bread, my daily provision, it's more than an expression of humble dependence. What happens is the discovery of delight. Meaning, God so enjoys the involvement with us because He's a Father. And He so enjoys our discovery of His involvement. He has passion to be deeply involved. Beloved, He knows the number of hairs on your head and the number of sparrows that fall anywhere in the earth. He is intricately involved with our lives and He has passion and enjoyment with it. He is a Father. And He so enjoys when we're wowed. He loves to see the response. We offer our prayer and when the timing comes and a way we can connect, and it's like, Oh my goodness! Oh, I love it when you respond that way. Look at the joy. Now, any father feels that way. When their children are overwhelmed and wowed by His interaction and generosity, any father says, I want to do more. I mean, I'm really in a mess because I have two granddaughters and they have figured this out. I mean, they're eight and nine and they have it down. They are so wowed by everything. I give them everything. I mean, I've got rules. Grandpa rules. You can't give them this. You can't do that. You can't do this because I overdo it. Typically in the sugar department and things like that down in the back room. They come with their twinkling eyes. I get up to go look for a book in the office. Wow! It's not just that. There's ten ways. But I understand that and Jesus said, if you being evil feel that way, how do you think my father feels when he's involved with you? And being evil would mean our diminished capacity to love. If you with a diminished capacity feel that way, that enjoyment when your children are wowed, how much does your heavenly father enjoy you enjoying the interaction? His glory is expressed in our discovery, our delight, our participation in the process with Him. One guy says, Oh, Lord, just forget me. The Lord says, No, I will never forget you. Never. You're the apple of my eye. I've written your name on the palms of my hand. I will never forget you. I sent my son for you. I will never forget you. Well, just forget me anyway. I just care about you. Beloved, don't be more humble than God is. If we have a thought of humility that goes beyond the Word of God, I want to be nice about it because I've had the problem. It's called a religious spirit. No matter how we frame it out. It's the revelation of the Father heart that corrects this. Bernard of Clairvaux said it beautifully. He said, We love ourself for God's sake. And there's more to say than that principle, but that's just a good one-liner to throw out there. Paragraph B, the fourth request. Daily bread. You can read that on your own. Again, he gives more because he wants the dialogue. He wants the discovery of our delight. He has delight in the process. He doesn't need the information. It's the process and the dialogue. But he withholds it till we dialogue. Now the only word I want to focus on here is the word daily. You know, I more prefer monthly bread or yearly bread. This five till twelve provision, I prefer it a little bigger portions. But it keeps that dependence. It keeps that interaction. It keeps the gratitude. It keeps the delight of discovery. There's so many dynamics in this. Number five, praying for forgiveness. This is interesting. There's two points we have to clarify here. Why does a born-again believer that has the gift of righteousness pray for forgiveness? We already are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. It says our legal position, we are as righteous as God is. It's his righteousness he gave us. He's not talking here about the prayer for salvation to be delivered from hell. That's not what he's talking about. He's talking to believers because he's talking to the group that he said, say my father who art in heaven. He's talking to that group. They call God father. What he's talking about is restored communion. We don't lose our standing before God when we sin. But when we sin, it quenches our own spirit. Not just the Holy Spirit, it quenches our spirit. It defiles our mind and our thinking. And it's the acknowledgement of that disagreement with God when we confess our sin and ask him to forgive him. We're not blame shifting and we're not rationalizing our sin. We're acknowledging it and that's key to cleansing it so the communion, it's restored. God doesn't love us more. He doesn't forgive us more in that sense of our salvation. But it restores us to that active communion. And the second part is, well if we love, forgive, God forgive us as we forgive. Somebody says, that sounds like God will forgive us only if we forgive. As though we're earning our forgiveness by forgiving. And that's not what Jesus is saying here. Paragraph C, the proof that we have been forgiven is that we are compelled to forgive others. And if we don't have gratitude and compelling to release others, that is an indication we are not clear we've received it ourselves. So it's not earning God's forgiveness, but it's rather proof of a repentant spirit and a grateful spirit having received his forgiveness. Final petition, number six. This is a very important one. This is, I think, possibly, the most neglected prayer in the Bible. It probably is. I don't know what other one would be more neglected. It's the prayer, I call it this, the pre-temptation prayer. It's the prayer for deliverance and the prayer to be even delivered from temptation before the temptation happens. It's pre-temptation prayer. That is a biblical principle. It's a very important one. Paragraph H. This principle gives us insight into the pre-temptation prayer. Deliver us from temptation. Deliver us from evil. Lead us in a way contrary to that. Luke chapter four. Very insightful to how Satan operates, what his schemes are. The Bible says we are not ignorant of his schemes. We know how he operates. It's a very important insight into the way he schemes and plans against us. He tempted Jesus and then departed until an opportune time. That's the key phrase. Satan is planning an opportune time to destroy you, destroy your faith. This is not a reference to the general temptations we all experience in a fallen world. This is the occasional, I mean it happens just here and there, but it's a very important moment where Satan is setting us up that he would destroy our faith. And those moments only come occasionally. I don't know how often, but they're not common. That's what Jesus is talking about. Paragraph I. Jesus urged the apostles to pray while they're in the Garden of Gethsemane. Right before Jesus died, he said, I'm telling you now to do that. Lead me not into evil, but lead me into deliverance. I'm telling you now to engage in that prayer. In the garden in Matthew 26, 41, he said, watch and pray. Because you're about to enter temptation. This is not a general temptation. This is that, what I call, that specific storm of temptation that comes at the opportune time that Satan has planned. Jesus said, if you will pray, you will avoid or minimize the intensity of that moment. To enter into temptation, paragraph I is far more, far more tense than general temptation. Here's what I call, here's how I describe what I call the storm of temptation. Three components come together and Satan is searching this out. It's those moments where there's not just the general harassment of the devil, but there's a heightened demonic activity. We've all experienced that. It's those moments where the attack is far more severe, where it might be something like a fear that is heightened, it's irrational. Does it make sense? The next day it's not even there. You think, what was that about? Or that lust, and there's many types of lust, not only sexual, comes to, it could be covetous, it could be bitterness. Those are all forms of lust. It could be anger, comes to a high pitch for a few hours, and then later it's like, the next day or two, you think, oh, what was that? That was a bizarre thing. Ephesians 6 called those fiery missiles where Satan strikes in a heightened way. Well, the storm, three things come together. The heightened activity, that flaming missile strikes, and the exaggerated heightened fear or the stirred up desire. The second thing, our lust, fears and lusts are stirred to a high pitch beyond normal, and then the circumstances are optimum for our failure. Sometimes the circumstances, everybody's gone, and a crazy idea comes into our minds. If it was the next day or day after, we wouldn't even be in this situation, but the circumstance is perfect. Or it's not that everybody's gone, but all the right people are present, and the environment is conducive in an unusual way. When those three come together, what Jesus said to Peter in Luke chapter 22, he goes, Satan has asked permission to sift you like wheat. When Jesus talks about praying to be led out of temptation and led into full deliverance, he's actually talking about these moments, because that's a very intense one right here, where Satan has schemed and wants to sift us. And in the garden, he tells Peter and the rest, you need to be praying. You don't know what's coming. Your fear will be exaggerated. Demons will be breathing on you, and an army will be surrounding you, and I will be taken out of sight, and you will be in an optimum environment to fail. But if you pray, it will be minimized. And they went on and said, Peter, I've prayed for you, that your faith would not fail, and the prayer was successful, because he said, when you return, he prophesied you will return. Now, our faith failing has several different ways that can happen. The ultimate thing Satan wants is our faith to fail, to quit the faith. Peter didn't do that. The second thing Satan wants, down the list, to quit our assignment. Peter almost did that. John 21, when he went fishing, after he denied the Lord, that wasn't a recreational fishing. He fished all night. He was saying, I'm cashing in my occupation as the apostle. I can't do it. I'm a failure. I'm going back to business as usual. He was actually quitting his assignment. Jesus appeared to him, but Jesus' faith operated. But another way that our faith fails is we quit our passionate pursuit. One of those dark moments where the storm of temptation mounts, flaming missile, our lust or fears arouse, and just the exact opportune moment, and the shame, the failure, even the acknowledgement of others, it sets us back, and we can't get back. That's what Satan wants. And Jesus said, if you will pray, you will completely cut it off, or you will minimize it. He told Peter, Peter, I'm praying, but I'm not alleviating you of your role in the relationship. Peter, you must pray too. Just read the passage we just looked at. Matthew 26, 41. He said, Peter, I'm praying, but you've got to pray too. My prayer will keep you ultimately from failing and quitting, but your prayer can actually even bring another dimension. You have to, and Peter fell asleep. Paragraph J. The pre-temptation prayer. Beloved, we have a dynamic role in the relationship. It's not just the great intercessor praying. His prayers cover so much. He wants us involved. K. Psalm 19. David had an Old Testament version of this prayer. Look at verse 13. Keep me back from presumptuous sins. What he meant by that, he goes, I'll be in a setting. It's presumptuous. I'm not alerted to its danger and to its significance. I'm just kind of walking into it, completely unalerted to how this could set me back or change my life, negative. He goes, keep me from that. He's actually praying, lead me not into temptation, but lead me into full deliverance. Paragraph L. I'll just end here in the next one moment. Paul says, let him who thinks he stands take heed. Let's default. And what he's actually talking about is the believer that thinks they're okay because things are going normal. And he's not engaging in those pre-temptation dialogues. He thinks he doesn't need it. He says, you think you're okay without that interaction with God. Down the road, you will stumble, but it's unnecessary for you to do it. Why do you have this confidence that you can live a successful Christian life without these prayer dynamics? We all know it. I call it the pride of prayerlessness. Prayerlessness is pride at the end of the day. I'm busy. I have people to meet. I have things to do. I have money to make. I have jobs to do. I have people to help. I'm too busy to attend to this issue. And the Lord says, no, you're not. The issue's bigger. Really is. Then the final thing in paragraph M, the same thing, take heed. In other words, be alert. Verse 35, he's talking about the end times, the generation of the Lord returns. He goes, there will be a snare on the global level. That snare is that hour of temptation globally, though it will have individual expression. There's a snare coming on the earth. What we've been talking to up to now is the snare, which means the trap of Satan. There's a trap we're praying not to enter into called don't enter into temptation. But Jesus said it's going to be really intense at the end of the age. Because there'll be a global trap or snare with individual application. That's a terrifying verse. I mean, in terms of sobriety. Terrifying's not the right word. Sobering is the word I'm saying. But look at verse 36. It's the same solution. Enter into the prayer dynamic before the snare. Pre-temptation prayer. Again, I believe it's the most neglected prayer in the Bible. And it actually is pride at the end of the day that we think we're okay, that next week will be fine because last week was fine. We don't know what presumptuous situation will happen that we're not alerted to its significance that's waiting in Satan's plan for next week. Where everything comes together. Maybe a year from now, I don't know. Amen and amen. Let's stand. This is such a marvelous, weighty, remarkable prayer. Lord, I don't know hardly anything about prayer. When I read this, I go, I want to study this all my days. I mean, studying that me and the Lord talking with an open Bible spirit. Teach me, I need to know this stuff. So many layers to every one of these phrases we didn't look at. Let's just ask the Lord just to touch us right now. I trust that all of you in the room, you're saying, I want my prayer life to go up a few notches. You can be an IHOP and sit in the prayer room and do email, Facebook, and never pray. Don't think because you're an IHOP or you're in this community that your prayer life is strong because we all know. We know how that works. Lord, I need help. I want to give you a chance to talk to the Lord for a moment. Just ask Him. Say, Lord, I want to do this. I'm not good at prayer. I want to do this. Help me. It starts with a view of God being right. Help me. Help me see you rightly. Holy Spirit, I ask you, release your presence on us right now. All over this room.