Waching daily Nov 5 2017

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Hope you have your Bibles opened

to the Gospel according to Matthew, Chapter Number 6.

Matthew 6.

I'll read Verse 6 through Verse 9.

Jesus is speaking: "But you, when you pray, go into your

inner room, close your door and pray to the 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

they'll be heard for their many words.

So do not be like them, for your

Father knows what you need before you ask Him.

Pray then in this way: Our Father who art in Heaven,

hallowed be Thy Name..."

Is anyone out there?

Is anyone up there?

Is, when we make a cry, is there any answer?

Is there someone like us out there,

but yet, unlike us out there?

That kind of question has been asked through the ages.

G. Studdert Kennedy,

one of the great men of the last generation

who fought in the First World War, if you know your history

and the First World War; for many, many months, they had the

trench of the allies and the trench of the enemy.

And they fought trench warfare.

One group would charge the other.

One group would charge the other.

They would come out of their trenches;

they would go back in their trenches.

This went on for month, after month, after month.

And Kennedy said, "As a soldier, I was trapped one day between

the trenches in the middle of the night."

He said, "I was lying still."

Said, "As the darkness came in, I saw a wheww-a Presence."

And he said, "I wanted to say, "Who goes there?"

But he said "I didn't know whether my words would be

answered by a bullet..."

He was in no-man's land,

"or a friendly response, or silence..."

and he said, "Therefore, I just continued

to lie there still and did not move."

Kennedy says, "Many years later,

I was in a moor walking at night.

All I could hear was the boom of the waves,

and the whistle of the wind."

And he said, "As I was walking by that moor,

suddenly I felt a Presence... a Presence..."

and he said "It was frightening.

It was overwhelming."

He said, "I didn't know what to do.

I felt just like that between the lines during the war" and he

said, "I wanted to shout out, but I didn't know whether the

answer would be silence, or the Presence would speak."

And he said, "But on that night in the moor, I made my cry and

I asked, 'Who goes there?'

And said, 'I got my answer!'

I've never forgotten it.

It changed my life!"

He said, "Had I not got that answer, my soul would have

been dead" and he said, "I realized then

I was in the presence of God.

Of God..."

Who goes there?

Jesus would answer and say, "Our Father, our Dad, our Abba."

That's who goes there.

Now a lot of people think that when Jesus said, "Abba, Dad"

that affectionate word; that was the first time that anybody

had ever called God Father.

That's simply not true.

The Greeks had a Name, and they would call God "Father"

in the sense He was the Father of all.

In the Old Testament, you have the Name "Father" referred

to by God seven different times.

But it's like God is our Father; God is the Head.

God is the progenitor.

God is our Father.

It's used like that.

But when Jesus here in our passage says,

"Our Abba, our Father, our Dad..."

Oh, that's different.

Therefore, in the New Testament, you have the word "Father"

used two hundred and seventy-five times.

"Our Father..."

Who goes there?

It is that cry that has been offered out in time and history

by gurus, and philosophers, and seekers, and religious leaders.

They have issued that cry,

and they've got a multiplicity of answers.

"Who goes there?

Who is out there?"

So many, many answers we have heard and we have received.

And there we have all the religions, all the creeds, all

the cults, all the philosophies that we know anything about.

It's an answer, basically, to that question.

Is there anybody out there?

Is there anybody alive in this universe?

Are we orphans in this world, or is there somebody

at home here with us, the other?

Who goes there?

Who goes there...?

Let me say something to you: If you can pray

"Our Father" all the "isms" are invalid.

Now understand that.

There are a whole lot of isms running around, a whole lot of

beliefs, a whole lot of doctrines, a whole lot of

ideologies; but if you can pray "Our Father"

-really pray "Our Father" all the isms are yesterday.

They're invalid; they're not true.

For example, atheism.

Now I know there are different levels of these.

I'm going to give you the pedestrian level.

Atheism!

There are people who are atheists.

David Hume is the leading philosopher of atheism.

An atheism belief -there is no God.

They made their cry -"Is anybody out there?"

And the answer was silence.

Therefore, the atheists say, "There is no God."

Richter, the philosopher said, "I had a dreadful dream and

I soared out into the universe, and I went to all the planets.

I went out in the cosmos.

I went out in the bottom of the black hole and I came back, and

I went over the earth, and all the created order" and he said,

"I did not find God."

No God.

Atheism.

It's like the Russian Cosmonaut

who went into outer space the first time.

He came back.

He said, "I didn't see God.

I didn't see God.

There's no God!"

Atheism.

But if you can pray, "Our Father, our Abba"

atheism is invalid.

If you can pray, "Our Father" agnosticism is invalid.

What is that?

It means I don't know.

"Is there a God?"

I just don't know.

I don't have enough information.

It is the "know nothing" belief.

And the father of agnosticism, the philosopher is a man by

the name of Emmanuel Conte.

Isn't that interesting?

Emmanuel means "God with us".

He is the father of agnosticism.

He is saying you can't know whether He's with us or not.

Interesting...

Agnosticism.

But if you can pray, "Our Father", agnosticism invalid.

And then there's pantheism, the idea that God is in everything.

God is, and God is in everything.

In pantheism, you can't distinguish between the

creator and the creation because they are one.

This is basically Hinduism and Buddhism,

that God is impersonal.

God is an "It", I.T.

God is an "It"-not personal.

Therefore, you have pantheism.

But if you can pray "Our Father", pheww!

Pantheism goes away.

And if you can pray "Our Father" also polytheism

-the idea there are many gods.

In ancient Rome, there were over thirty thousand gods and

goddesses for everything!

Can you imagine it?

Sure you can!

There are more than that in the world today.

Pantheism, many, many, many gods.

But if you have narrowed it down to one will, to one Father,

to an Abba; there's no polytheism.

There's no pantheism.

There's no deism.

There's no atheism.

There's no agnosticism.

And then we come to deism.

Let's look at that.

What do deists believe?

Deists believe that God wound up this world, created it, wound it

up like a big clock and threw it out into space-shoom!

And then deserted it, and said, "There you are!

You're on your own!

I'm outta here!"

Shooow!

That's deism.

Benjamin Franklin was a deist.

Thomas Jefferson was a deist.

You say, "Well how did these

intelligent men fall prey to that?

Remember, they lived during the day when the laws of

thermodynamics were being discovered?

They lived in the day when some understanding of gravity was

brought into the scientific world, and they began to see the

symmetry, and the unity, and the power,

and the consistency of all the created order,

and all the galaxies that they could define.

They began to see that this may be God, the created order,

and therefore, they were deists.

But see, if we can pray "Our Father" deism is invalid.

Then what about scientism?

That's a big one.

Scientism says, "I don't believe anything until it can

be proved by the scientific method."

Now the problem with that, there are many scientific methods.

The basic one is truth revealed by experiment.

But there's forensic evidence, etc., etc....

But having said that, that's what the scientists believe.

But scientists today in the modern world, because I think of

quantum physics; they don't think of the world as a great

big mechanical something that's been thrown out in space.

Scientists are not deists.

Instead, most of them who haven't become theists-and many

hundreds of them have-most of them, they would say that the

Creation is a giant thought.

And they move in the spiritual realm.

It's like Arthur Eddington, the scientist said-he said, "We have

seen strange footprints on the shore of the unknown."

Did you get that?

He says, "We have seen, scientists, strange footprints

on the shores of the unknown."

Jesus would come along and say,

"Those footprints are of our Father."

He would say, "The footprints are everywhere!"

He never sought to prove God.

He said God is self-evident.

He saw that every blade of grass that begins to force its way up

through the sod, that's God.

And He saw that the Heavenly Father

observed every sparrow that would fall.

That's God!

He just keeps on working.

He keeps on working...

So we know that when you and I can pray,

"Our Father" atheism, agnosticism, deism, pantheism,

polytheism, scientism, deism-psht!

Invalid.

Invalid when we can pray, "Our Abba, our Father, our Father."

You know, in the Creeds, if you came in a liturgical church,

you would quote it week by week, Sunday by Sunday.

"I believe in God the Father Almighty" right?

That sound familiar?

"I believe in God the Father Almighty."

And the problem with that profession is the word

"Almighty".

I believe in God the Father.

Okay, I believe in God the Abba, that's good;

but the word "Almighty"...

You know, if God is Almighty, why doesn't He

straighten this thing out we call the world, beginning with

you and me, if He's Almighty.

We get Father,

but His Almightiness is what we challenge.

But you see, the secret of understanding that Father

is Almighty is the very title "Father".

Other words, by virtue that God is like a Father,

a Dad; that limits something of what He can do.

For example, if you're a father, you'd like to say to your

son or daughter, "Hey-get with it!

I know you're just one years old,

but let me tell you something!

You gotta grow up!

You gotta get my mind in you and grow on up!

Hurry up!

Hey, get on with it!"

Fathers, we don't conduct ourselves like that.

We are hopefully, prayerfully patient.

Great fathers are fathers who wait, who love, who forgive,

who challenge, who discipline, who pick up, who forgive,

who push much like our Abba Heavenly Father.

It's with infinite patience that He sees things get all mixed up

in the world, but He knows His sovereign hand is there.

It's comforting to you and I who can pray "Our Father" that

everything that comes to pass in your life and in my life and in

this world comes through the hand of God, through the mind of

God, through the wisdom of God to make sure that all things are

working out for good for those who love Him.

It goes through His hand.

We don't see it now; it's impossible to see.

But He sees all the way, all the way.

So we pray "Our Father" everything is changed.

Remember the first Scripture that I read?

Psht!

That was a long time ago.

What did that teach us about prayer?

It teaches us two kinds of praying.

You've got the praying of the pagans, the gentiles,

and they pray so they could be heard.

They go in public places, and they mumble their prayers over

and over, or they go before God and they go through all their

rituals, and they pray and they pray and they pray, and they

think by their much praying, you know, they've got an entrée

with God; they've earned a place with God.

And then there's Christian praying,

which is entirely different.

Has a different basis upon which you pray.

For example, do you pray to God as if you're a renter?

You're renting?

And He's the landlord?

Is that how you pray to God?

That's what this is teaching us.

"Now what are you talking about?"

Do you pray to God as if it's

some kind of business relationship?

If you are renting with your landlord,

you have a business relationship.

You'll pay your landlord this much rent for you to stay in

this place for a prescribed period of time, and his

responsibility is, he kind of keeps the

place up and maintains some basic stuff, right?

That's a renter paying to a landlord, and that's a business

relationship, is it not?

Some of us pray to God like that.

"God, I want You to, or I want You not to, or I want You to..."

And when God, we feel, doesn't show up-whooah!

"I've been good!

I go to church!

I pray!

I read my Bible!

Wait a minute, God!"

That means that you're treating God as if He's your landlord.

"I've done my part, God.

Now You do Your part."

We're treating God as if it's a business deal.

Lot of us pray like that, and therefore, when our prayers

don't come out the way we want them to come out

-"Oh man, my mother died anyway and I prayed!

My goodness, God, what in the world?"

You're praying to God as if it were a business relationship.

That's pagan praying, Jesus says.

What is Christian praying?

Christian praying is you pray to God in a family relationship.

If you are in a home and you're not paying rent, you're family.

You're a son or a daughter.

Relationship is entirely different, isn't it?

Entirely different.

And we're to pray as Christians, we're family.

What is the first words of the Lord's Prayer?

"Our Father..." they're words of adoption.

You and I have been adopted into the family of God, and Jesus

said, "Father, as You treat Me, I want You to treat those

who've come into your family through Me.

We are family."

And therefore, we do right, not because of what we're going to

get; we do right because we're family.

We're in the house of God.

We have the keys to the house.

We have a right there.

When someone is adopted, they don't suddenly become "Oh, okay,

perfect, just like everybody in the family..."

Oh no!

When they're adopted, their legal status has changed, see?

Now they're legally a member of the family, and we pray like a

family, and therefore when God hears our prayers and answers

our prayers and works in our lives, we say,

"Lord, we thank You for this miracle!

We thank You for Your grace..."

And we go to I John, Chapter 3 Verse 1.

It says, "Behold, I am amazed at how much You love me..."

That's family praying, isn't it?

"Behold, I am amazed that You worked this out in my life.

Behold, I'm amazed with the patience you show for me..."

See?

Therefore, when we pray "Our Father, Our Father..."

All the isms are-ptt!

invalid.

When we pray "Our Father" everything is transformed.

When we pray "Our Father" our prayers are powerful.

Powerful...

You see, Jesus lived the life that you and I did not

live, and died the death that you and I deserve to die so you

and I will be able to pray, "Our Father,

our Abba" and be a member of the family.

Let me say that one more time because to be a Christian,

you have to in some level understand that.

Jesus lived the life that you and I did not live, and He died

the death that you and I deserve to die so that you and I will be

in family and able to pray, "Our Father, our Abba".

He didn't teach us to pray

"Our King" though He could have.

It works.

He didn't teach us to pray, "Our Creator".

No, but He could have.

He didn't teach us to pray, "Our Friend"

though that would be accurate.

He taught us to pray, "Our Abba", intimate.

"Our Father", intimate.

"Our Dad", family, family, family...

It was a worship service.

They invited a well-known actor to come and recite for the

congregation the Lord's Prayer.

That was sort of his specialty.

He traveled, and once in a while, he would go to places

and recite the Lord's Prayer.

He was a brilliant actor -Broadway, film,

just had all bases covered, wonderful reputation.

He'd been in all kind of movies, all kind of plays,

and they asked him to come to church.

And in the middle of their worship service,

they introduced him, gave all of his credits.

Everybody applauded.

They were so thrilled to see this famous,

well-known actor there.

And he was going to recite the Lord's Prayer.

And he stood up with great dignity and deep resonance voice

from the huuuh-the diaphragm and he quoted,

"Our Father Who art in Heaven!

Hallowed be Thy Name..." and it was magnificent.

It really was.

I mean, "Hallowed" had fifteen syllables when he pronounced it.

I mean, "Halloooowweed"

I mean, and the people were just overwhelmed.

"Aaahh!"

And when he finished quoting the Lord's Prayer, they just stood

and cheered and cried!

Boy!

They'd never seen anything like this.

It was wonderful.

And they were seated and they went on with their worship

service, and they took the offering and had the

Lord's Supper and had a time of singing and praise.

When they got through, the presiding pastor asked everyone

to stand and said, "You know, many times,

we've heard Uncle Billy Johnson pray here.

Uncle Billy, would you come up and

just lead us in our benediction?"

And Uncle Billy, you might just pray for us.

We'll listen to you, and just pray for us the Lord's Prayer.

And Uncle Billy residently slowly walked up

front, and he prayed, "Our Father Who art in Heaven,

hallowed, hallowed, hallowed, be Thy Name..."

and he prayed the whole prayer.

When he was finished, everybody was weeping,

and they left the place of worship.

One guy there who was a pagan, kind of crass, and he'd been

invited by one of his buddies to come and see this famous actor.

And when he walked out, he walked out with his buddy,

got out to his car.

He said, "I don't get it."

He said, "I missed it."

He said, "There he quoted the Lord's Prayer magnificently and

everybody responded with cheers and applause."

Said, "Then this old guy gets up and he says the same words,

and everybody weeps.

What's the difference?

I don't get it?"

The Christian man said to his friend, "You see, the actor knew

the words, and as he quoted the words, it was magnificent."

He said, "Uncle Jimmy, he knew the Father,

and as he prayed the words, it was humbling."

Can you pray "Our Father?

Our Abba?"

If you can, Heaven's in the middle of your life.

As a thank you for your support of the Winning Walk,

this month Dr. Young would like to send you his

prayer journal as a gift to you.

Prayer is an essential part of our spiritual lives.

Even Jesus went away from His disciples

to talk with His Father.

(Dr. Young) "It doesn't matter what's happening in your life.

Get on your knees!

He said in every situation we are to pray, pray, pray, pray."

Spending time with God in prayer everyday

can change your life forever.

And this beautiful prayer journal

will help guide your time spent with Him.

It features a practical design that lays flat for easy writing,

with plenty of space to write down prayer request

and the answers to your prayers.

It's the perfect size - easy to carry with you wherever you go,

and it makes a great gift for someone you love.

Request your prayer journal today at winningwalk.org

or call the number on the screen.

Know God more intimately and invigorate your prayer life

with this beautiful prayer journal.

In the Bible, Jesus teaches us to pray "Our Father".

It is a personal thing.

He is our Father, our Abba, our Dad, our Daddy.

We are in His family.

Jesus also tales us that no one can come

to the Father except through Him.

So in order to pray to God, our Father, we must have a

relationship with His Son Jesus.

This is why we pray in Jesus name.

Just to say a prayer to God doesn't get it.

Understand, our only entrée to God, the only way you and I can

talk to God is because we're in Jesus Christ.

Therefore we always pray to the Father, through the Son,

Jesus Christ, in Jesus name.

Here's the question: do you want to have a relationship with God?

You can.

Right now you can ask Jesus Christ to come into your life,

and He will make you a new creation.

Somebody says, "well I'm going to try to be a Christian".

Quit trying, relax.

Invite Jesus into your life, and then just relax and surrender.

And you will have a personal relationship with God and you

can pray with assurance in Jesus name to the Father.

And you can call Him, He's your Dad.

Let me ask you to call the number on your screen right now.

There are mature Christian men and women waiting to talk to you

about what it really means to have an ongoing, daily,

personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

It's liberating.

It's fun.

It brings life to your life.

Call now, and let me personally thank you for

worshiping with us today.

And do not forget to tune in next week, as we open the book,

as we study His word with you, right here on The Winning Walk.