In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of immediately obeying God's commands. He contrasts the delay and reluctance of humans to obey with the promptness and joyfulness of angels. The preacher encourages listeners to pray for God's will to be done in their lives and to have a deep desire for God's name, kingdom, and will to be honored. He also teaches about the right way to pray, emphasizing the need to approach God as a loving Father who is both able and willing to answer every prayer and meet every need. The sermon concludes with the example of Jesus, who consistently sought to do the will of His Father rather than His own.

We're going to think about the right way to pray, to talk to God, because when we learn to pray the right way, we can get our prayers answered. A lot of prayers are not answered because they are prayed in the wrong way. Please listen carefully. When Jesus was teaching His disciples how to pray, He said in Matthew 6, verse 9, Praising our Father who art in heaven, think of God as a loving Father, and think of Him as an almighty ruler from heaven who can answer every prayer, meet every need, solve every problem, lift you up from any pit you have fallen into, unwind any mess you have made of your life. There is nothing He cannot do. He loves you enough to help you, and He is powerful enough to solve your problems, to protect you from your enemies. Our Father who art in heaven. We are not orphans. We are children of God. That's why we can pray. And then He said, But if you want to communicate with God, you've got to get rid of this self-centered attitude. Jesus came to save us from sin. And the essence of sin is that I'm centered in myself. I'm thinking of myself all the time. What I can get, what I can get, what I can get. So if that hasn't changed in your life, something is wrong. And the reason for all our problems is because we are centered in ourselves. And Jesus said, Get out of that. Make God the center of your life. That's the way it is meant to be. You know, like people for thousands of years thought the earth was the center of the universe. And all your calculations and all go wrong in astronomy if you think the earth is the center of the universe. It isn't. The earth is just one little speck of dust floating around in space. In the same way, like man got his science right when he discovered that the earth is not the center of the universe and not even the center of the solar system. But the sun is the center of the solar system. In the same way, spiritually, we need to recognize that God did not create us to be centered in ourselves, thinking of what we're going to gain, what our family is going to get. As long as you think like that, you're living in sin. And Jesus came to save us from that sin, to teach us to be centered in God, where we are taken up with what His need is, and with His kingdom and His name. And then the other things will fall into place in our life. So if you're having problems in this area, just consider if the reason is that in all your prayer, you only think of yourself and your family's needs. Change that. Change it from today. I'm not saying don't pray for yourself or your family. By all means, in fact, it's a responsibility for parents, for parents especially, to pray for their children every day. That's important. You should be doing that. So I'm not saying you should stop that, but center everything in God. When you pray for your children, don't just pray that they'll make a lot of money, but pray that they will honor God and seek His kingdom first. That's what I mean by centering it in God. Center everything in God in terms of God's name being glorified. Hallowed be Your name. That's what Jesus taught us to pray. The very first request is, Lord, let Your name be glorified. Let people respect and reverence that name. The name of Jesus Christ is the name that God has given by which all men can be saved. It is the only name through which you can get answers to prayer. When we come to the Father, we are to come in the name of Jesus Christ, His son. We are to pray that the name of the Lord Jesus will be honored throughout the world, throughout our country. Not honored in the sense that they respect Him as a great man. That's not the type of honor God wants. The way the name of Jesus Christ is to be honored is when people bow in total submission to the Lordship of Christ in their lives. Beginning with Christians, those who claim to be Christians, to put Jesus Christ as first in their life totally, completely. So the first thing Jesus said was that we must have a concern for God's name. It's not enough just to pray these prayers with our lips. It must come from our heart. Hallowed be Thy name, Lord. The number one burden in my heart is that Your name will be glorified in my life, in my family, with my children, in our church and in our country. That must be the burden of our heart. And if that's not the burden of our heart, then we must ask God to change us inside. Lord, change me such that my greatest burden at all times will be that Your name will be honored. Even if I have to go through a difficult time, let Your name be honored. There was a time when Jesus was on earth, when He was facing a time of pressure just before He went to the cross. And He was honest and He said in John 12, 27, My soul has become troubled. Now what shall I say? Think of this verse when you are in a very difficult, difficult situation and your soul is troubled. What are you going to say? He said, shall I say, Father, save me from this hour? No, I will not say that. I will say, verse 28, Father, glorify Thy name. So you see, when Jesus was in that difficult situation where His soul was under such tremendous pressure and He was tempted to pray, Father, save me from this hour. But He said, I am not going to pray. And He prayed what was proper, even though it meant pain and suffering and the death of the cross. Father, glorify Thy name. That was just before He went to the cross and He could have said, Father, please save me from this hour. And He could have gone straight up to heaven without going to the cross and we would all be lost in our sins. Isn't it a good thing that He did not seek to save Himself there, but sought the glory of the Father? And that teaches us that when we seek the glory of the Father and not our own comfort or gain, our life can be a tremendous blessing to others. So even when we are under pressure, follow the example of Jesus, who taught us to pray, Hallowed be Thy name. And then He said, from there you go on to Thy kingdom come. See, our next request also has still got nothing to do with our problems or family problems, but Lord, at the moment the kingdoms of the world are ruled by the devil and his agents. But I want Your kingdom to come on earth, a kingdom where righteousness is at home. I want Your kingdom to come quickly. Your kingdom means, the word kingdom is not understood so much nowadays because we don't have kings. A better word would be government. Lord, let Your government come. That means the government which You are heading, which You are controlling. The way You run the universe, Lord, we pray that You will be able to run this world and this church and my life in exactly the same way. Your kingdom come. And then He taught us to pray, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. So there we see a desire for God's name, God's kingdom and God's will, to be done on earth exactly as it is done in heaven. Now Jesus once said in John chapter 6 and verse 38 that He had come from heaven to do the will of His Father. He said, I have come from heaven not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. Throughout His life, Jesus never did His own will, but did the will of His Father. However much pain or difficulty it caused. And Jesus taught us to pray, whenever you pray, pray this for your life, that God's will will be done in your life, not your own. All the misery and sorrow and problems in the world have come because man has wanted to do his own will. Whatever he thinks is good, that's what he wants to do. But Jesus taught us to pray for the Father's will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. In other words, first of all, we've got to begin with our own life. In my life, Father, let Your will be done. Now how is God's will done in heaven? Think of how the angels obey God. Angels obey God immediately. They wait for hearing what God has to say and they obey immediately. They obey joyfully and they obey totally. If God says something to an angel, the angel will not say, hang on God, just wait a minute, I've got something more important to do. Man behaves like that. If God tells him to do something, go and apologize to someone or go and get baptized or go and do this particular thing, return that money you took wrongfully, and man waits and waits and waits, sometimes for days and weeks and months before he decides to do. But no angel in heaven waits like that. As soon as God says something, they do it immediately. We are praying that God's will will be done in our life like that. That means as soon as you see something in the Word of God, you're going to do that immediately. You're not going to wait and you're going to do it joyfully. You see, the angels don't go around with a long face and complaining and grumbling that their lot in life is so difficult. They're joyful, they're happy. And they obey God totally. So, Jesus was teaching us there that that's how we must obey also, totally, completely, joyfully. Thy will be done on earth as exactly as it is done in heaven. There we have the angels as an example for how it is done in heaven. So if we get this right, first of all in our prayer, that we think of God's name and God's kingdom and God's will, and apply all that to our own life, that in our life the name of God will be honored by the way we live, that in our life God's government or rule will come. He's going to rule our life. And that in our life God's will will be done exactly like it's done in heaven, unquestioning, joyful, complete, total, immediate obedience. Then we can say that we've got our priorities right. Self is no longer at the center. Then we are beginning to learn how to pray right. And then we shall find our prayer's answer.