dont lead us into temptation: If you have a Bible, would you open up to Matthew chapter four? And we're going to read verses one through eleven in just a couple minutes. we are in our our final week of our series, praying like Jesus. We have been spending time since the beginning of September taking line by line through the Lord's Prayer, the prayer that Jesus gave us, teaching us how to pray. Remember in in Luke eleven, there there's two two versions of the Lord's Prayer in Scripture. There's a version in Matthew six, and there's a that's like kind of the more we call that the feature length version. that that's kind of the whole prayer that you're probably most familiar with if you prayed that or I've heard of it. Luke 11's version is slightly shorter, but you can, it's very similar. And it's in that Luke 11 version in particular where Jesus' disciples come to him and say, Lord, teach us to pray. They grew up praying. They grew up praying the scriptures, and yet for some reason they didn't know how to pray. Anyone ever feel like that? It's like I feel like I grew up around this, but I'm just kind of like figuring out what prayer is. And Jesus teaches them how to pray in a way that is so profound, it revolutionizes their lives and changes everything and has changed the course of of history as people have continued to give witness to the good news of Jesus. So As we finish this series, we're going to look at the final line that says, Do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. And to help us understand how we're supposed to learn about prayer in this final line of the prayer. I want to read Matthew chapter 4, verses 1 through 11 to help us get a good grasp of what how Jesus is teaching us to pray here. Starting in verse one of chapter four, we read this Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. That is such an understatement. The tempter came to him and said, If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread. And Jesus answered, It is written, Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. And he said, If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone. Notice that the devil can quote scripture. Verse 7, it continues, Jesus answered him, It is also written, Do not put the Lord your God to the test. Again the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. And he said, All this I will give to you, he said, if you will bow down and worship me. Jesus said to him, Away from me, Satan. For it is written, Worship the Lord your God and serve him only. Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, as we learn from how to pray from this final line of the Lord's Prayer this morning, Jesus, I pray that we would see you and we would see not just you, Lord, but we would see everything that you have given to us that is ours simply because we have said yes to you. And so, Jesus, I pray as we as we take on board the lessons and the teachings of this final line of the Lord's Prayer, that we would be empowered to pray like never before. And may our lives continue to be changed. May the lives of others continue to be changed because we have learned to pray like you. In Jesus' name. Amen. Let me ask you a question. How often do you think about your own sin? I know this is the question you wanted me to ask you this morning. Just like really excited for the pastor to say. How long how often do you think about your sin? Like once a week? Once a month? Hourly. Like every couple of years. When you feel bad about something you did and you're not sure if it was sin or not. When things are not going well in your life and you're like, man, God must be mad at me and that's why things are going bad. Yeah, you ever feel like that? You you yeah, I I have that I have that feeling sometimes too. Now I want to ask you another question. How much time do you spend thinking about other people's sin like that are sitting around you? Don't look at anyone and believe it or not, Jersey was joking in the back. But according to this prayer, Jesus actually teaches us to think about not only our sin frequently, or or the possibility of sin, I should say, but Jesus is also teaching us to think a lot about our brothers and sisters' sin or the possibility of them sinning. Why? Remember this whole prayer is prayed in the plural, right? We've established that from the beginning. It's not lead, don't lead me into temptation and deliver me from the evil one. It's don't lead us into temptation. And deliver us from the evil evil one. See, your responsibility in prayer, as we've talked about several times in this, especially when it comes to living a life faithful to God and not living in giving in to temptation and the power of the evil one. Your life and my life in God and doing that is not the only responsibility we have. The writers of the New Testament actually say you need to bear one another's burdens. You need to bear each other's sins. And there is a common concern that we begin to share with each other where we're checking in on each other, not because we're judgmental, not because we're trying to get dirt on people, but because we genuinely care. That each other, the community, is growing in this life together, coming closer to God. And that's what this final line of the Lord's Prayer, big picture-wise, is doing. Scott McKnight, he's a New Testament scholar, he says this about this line of the Lord's Prayer. He says, These two petitions, don't lead us into temptation, deliver us from the evil one. He says, these at the safest way of interpreting them, they're about our the aching that one's Fellow followers of Jesus will live morally holy and loving lives, and that we will be rescued through trust in God from temptations and from evil or the wiles of the evil one. The final line of the Lord's Prayer, the prayer that Jesus gave us, it is to help shape us to want to be more like God. And want to be more like God means a few things. It means being free from sin. It means being free from the power of the evil one. It it means that we are delivered out of evil and into the Father's care. This is some of what it means. but but how exactly is that supposed to happen? What is that supposed to look like? because the first line of this prayer says, Don't lead us into temptation. So does that mean if I still am tempted, God's not answering my prayer? Does that mean if I'm still being tempted, maybe I'm not praying right? You ever you ever wonder that? You ever ask that question about this line of the prayer? this prayer, I wanna assure you, is is not a delusional prayer suggesting that you should be able to experience a perfectly blissful temptation or trial-free life. That is not what these words are doing. This prayer is about helping shape our desires to want to resist sin and want to resist temptation and want to resist the work of the evil one in our lives. And it's shaping also our desire to want to see our brothers and sisters who are in our church family to also live like this and have their desires shaped towards God. So, this is a prayer that is inviting us to pray in a few ways. Praying this line of the Lord's Prayer is an invitation to pray, how I'm framing it. It's an invitation to pray for the Father's holiness. It's an invitation to pray in the Father's victory. And it's an invitation to pray by the Father's authority. When we pray this last line of the prayer, do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. We are invited to pray for the Father's holiness in our lives and for everyone else's lives in our church. We're invited to pray in the Father's victory that we experience what it's like. When we're singing that song, Waymaker. Right? That God is making a way, that we are living in that victory of God making a way, and that we're also praying by the Father's authority. That we're not praying and expecting an answer because we have some kind of authority. But we're trusting that the Father who's given us permission to pray this way has authority. So I want to just reflect on these three ideas for the Father's holiness, in the Father's victory, and by the Father's authority with you for a few minutes this morning. So we can understand how to pray like Jesus in this way. First, when we say that this prayer is inviting us to pray for the Father's holiness, what this means is this is a prayer to remain rooted in God's identity. I want you to notice something in the text that we read about Jesus' temptation in the wilderness. Notice what Satan does here, what the devil says. He says, if you are the Son of God, You notice that. Then he says it again in verse 6: if you are the Son of God. And he's immediately trying to get Jesus to do something to prove that he's the Son of God. Now, could Jesus have turned those stones into bread? Yeah, no question, right? Could Jesus have leapt off the highest point of the temple and angels would have taken care of him and protected him from hurting himself? Yeah, Satan even quoted the scripture for it. So we know that God promises it. But but the issue is in the questioning of Jesus' identity. Jesus got nothing to prove to the devil. And Jesus is not gonna give the devil the time of day. As that famous meme said, Ain't nobody got time for that. If you know that one. Jesus doesn't have time for that. Jesus is like, you're not going to question my identity, and I'm not going to give into this questioning. Because for Jesus, he understood how to remain rooted in God's identity that was given to him as the Son of God. You and I, as children of God, remember the very first line of the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray: our Father is not a prayer of us trying to beg and kick and scream to get God's attention. The Father is already looking towards you. You never have to try to get God's attention when you pray. And so here we see the other end of that reality that the Father already is listening. As Jesus said, He already knows what you're going to ask for before you even ask. Because he knows what you need. This is how good the Father is. And so when we when we're in this space of experiencing questions or temptations or trials, it can very quickly come up: am I doing something wrong? Now there might be things we gotta work out, right? Mistakes we've made, absolutely. But the core question is, am I cut off from God? Am I alone now? Does God not actually love me or desire me or want me around because of what I'm experiencing? You can be like on the mountaintop one minute, you know what I'm talking about? And then the next minute something goes really bad and you're like, God's left me high and dry. I I'm on my own, I guess. I don't even think I should show up at church anymore. we I you see how fast we isolate ourselves? We go, no one likes me. There's that song, nobody likes me, everybody hates me. Guess I'll go eat worms. That was a messed up song we learned as a kid, right? Anyway, I'm getting off track. but you hear what I'm saying? So this prayer is teaching us. To pray for the Father's holiness, for his identity, to become our identity. It's a prayer to remain holy like the Holy One. I want you to understand here that we're being invited to pray that we have the capacity to resist sin. That that's what's happening here. Not in a do any of you get like nervous or neurotic about like anxious, like, I don't want to sin. I'm gonna I'm afraid I'm gonna sin. If you get anxious and neurotic, I wanna just say this to you. This is not an invitation to encourage your neurosis. when we say that we're invited to pray that we have a capacity to resist sin, what we're being invited into is to have our desires to be perfect like our Heavenly Father formed. This is about shaping our desire. You've heard me use this word about a million times already this morning. Because so much of prayer is about shaping us to want what God wants. That's why Jesus showed us this is how you pray. If you want be shaped to be like God, you need to pray like this, because this will shape you into the life of God. And so when we're praying, our Father in heaven, and when then we come to this prayer of Father, don't lead us into temptation. We are doing what Jesus said earlier in the Sermon on the Mount, right before the Lord's Prayer. He says, Be perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect. He's quoting something from Leviticus that says, Be holy even as God is holy. Did you know God's will for your life is to be holy just like God is? Say it over here just make sure we heard. Did you know God's will for your life is for you to be holy just like God is holy? I didn't say just be holy just like the Pharisees were holy. The religious people who are get really like, man, it gets rough sometimes when you're trying to live up. The striving and the and the being that overwhelmed, and you're constantly anxious. Am I messing up? Am I messing up? The Father says, be holy as I am holy. And and so what we're praying for in this is look, don't lead us into temptation. It's like saying to your friend, man, don't ever stop hanging out with me. your friend's not gonna hang out, stop hanging out with you, right? They're always gonna be hanging out. This is like a rhetorical flourish to the father, just saying, Let's just always be together. Make me like you. I'm your child. I I want to just be drawn into this. I want a desire to have this capacity to resist sin and temptation and always be faithful to you. And you might think, man, is this even possible? But this is actually. How God created us. We're wired to to cultivate desires. And cultivating this desire through prayer is how this works. Let me let me give you another example. How many of you watched or had your kids or little ones, you know, watching the World Cup at all this summer? Yes, we got one. Yeah, thank God. We got two. Watching the World any of you watch the World Cup this summer? Alright, we need to work on that. yeah, I I'm a huge fan of the true football, the beautiful game. I know everyone's gonna hate me now for saying that. but but when a kid in particular sees one of those games, you see the stars playing in the World Cup, right? There's just something about it where you're like, I wanna do that. It's like nothing else, right? Especially because it's only once every four years, you're just saturated in four games a day. It's glorious. and you're just like in it. So here's what happens: you have one choice, you have two choices as a kid at that point. You can either cultivate that desire by going and kicking a ball around in your backyard every day, by learning more about the players, by understanding how the game works, by joining a team, by doing all of these and putting these practices in place, and it just shapes your desire for the game even more. Do you see what's happening? You know that like when you got in. To something as like a hobby. You weren't waiting for an authentic kind of burst of inspiration for you to start doing all the things for that hobby, right? You say, well, I I don't really know how to do that, so it'd be inauthentic for me to start. None of you do that, do you? You see something, you go, there's something about that I want to grow into, and you start ordering your life to do that thing. This is literally what happens when we're meant to be holy as the Father is holy. We see something in God, that that spark of, what is that? And it's an invitation to begin to order your life, your prayer, your thinking, your imagination, your conversations in such a way where it just begins to shape your desires and cultivates a desire to just want to be holy, to want to avoid temptation, to want to, I shouldn't say avoid, but resist temptation. It becomes what you just want to do. Are you playing in the World Cup yet? Definitely not. But your trajectory has been set. Do you hear what I'm saying? And this is how this prayer invites us to pray for the Father's holiness. When we pray, do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. We are praying a prayer and learning how to pray in a way where we are asking the Father, Lord, will you shape in me a desire to want to be holy like you are holy? And so this is an invitation to pray for the Father's holiness. But second, it's also an invitation to pray in the Father's victory. I love this so much. This is a prayer to trust in God's integrity, that God can be trusted. There's two parts, there's two things that we're asked that we're asking of the Father in this prayer. Do not lead us and deliver us. Right. And I already mentioned how that do not lead us into temptation isn't literally about never experiencing temptation. It it's this way of saying, Man, let's always hang out. Or as I would say to my wife, don't ever leave me. I'm not worried my wife is gonna leave me, but I'm saying it in a way to say, I just love Being with you. I love sharing this life we have, right? It's a way of saying that. And so to say, don't lead us into temptation, God, is a way to say, God, I trust that you are good and that you will only lead me where I need to go. And you have a victory and a life and a power over evil and over sin that's just in who you are. And I trust that you want to work that victory out in me too. And and so we just begin to trust God. And notice that the enemy, the devil, with Jesus in the wilderness, is always trying to get him to doubt whether the father cares about him. If you're the son of God. Make this these stones into bread. The big one is the final one when he says, You know, I know what you're here to do, Jesus. But if you just bow down to me now, I'll just give you all of the kingdoms of the world. This was all an issue of who has authority over the world, by the way. This is how the book of Matthew ends. Jesus says at the very end: all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples. Adam and Eve lost authority over this world to the evil one, and Jesus, the new Adam, the scriptures call him, has taken back all authority. And now he's saying, Go, make disciples of all nations. Teaching them to obey everything I've commanded you. So there is a victory that Jesus has made available to us, and he's saying, Go walk in this, go live in this. I want you to see this. This does not mean that we will never experience temptations or trials or hardships. In fact, we should expect it. How do we know that? Jesus, look at what happened with Jesus, the very first verse in chapter four. It says, Then Jesus was led. You hearing this? Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. Is anyone confused by that? I feel confused by that. Lord, I'd like you to lead me away from problems. Lord, I want to have a very blissful life now that I'm following you. But for some reason, God in his wisdom knows that the very thing that we're now here to do because we're praying this prayer is we're supposed to walk out the Father's victory. And that means he leads us to temptation, not to be overcome by temptation, but to trample over the works of the evil one. Are you following me here? Are you following me? God wanted Jesus to go into temptation because God, we can trust God, and Jesus trusted God to be led into temptation because God knew that Jesus was going to be empowered to overcome every single temptation. And every time we overcome temptation, we are defeating the devil. And the devil's purposes. This is probably a good time to just name what I have been skirting around. some of you might be familiar with a version of the Lord's Prayer that says, Do not lead us or deliver us from evil. And I have been saying, Deliver us from the evil one. Have you noticed that? The the Greek word is incredibly ambiguous. You can actually either say it's evil, but it's also evil one. And the point of doing that is to say this. There is evil in the world, right? But evil is also personified in spiritual powers of darkness. There are powers, the scriptures call them principalities and powers, demonic forces, evil spirits that are all at work against the people of God, against God, against humanity, whether they follow Jesus or not. And the scriptures are clear that God has come in Jesus to completely destroy the works of that darkness. And for us as followers of Jesus, when we get led into trials and challenges and situations that are that are hard, we need to pray this: do not lead us into temptation. Not because we're trying to stay away from problems, but we're trying to say, Father, I need your holiness. I need a desire to resist and walk in your victory in this, because I am going into a season that's going to be challenging. And in the challenges I'm going to face, it's going to be very easy for me to be tempted. Some of you are dealing with very difficult health situations with loved ones. Some of you are dealing with conflicts in your workspaces, with your spouses. And man, are you tempted to do things and say things in those seasons that would lead you into sin? And so the prayer is not that all of the problems go away. The prayer is to take us through and del use us to be an agent of victory and deliverance over the evil that is in that situation. I I last year our daughter's birthday is in January and we ordered pizzas for a little party and it just happened to have this freak snowstorm. It came out. It feels like that was everything last winter, right? Just freak snowstorms every day. and and this snowstorm came down and it just out of nowhere and it was all of a sudden very, very tricky to drive for most people. this is why I'm joking a little bit, but I'm from New England and I have a very, very high tolerance for okay, I can't go outside in the snow. that's just me personally. That's not everyone's bar. Sometimes a struggle when I'm like, yeah, we don't need to cancel church today. It's fine out there. I'm meanwhile, I'm driving in my all-wheel drive Subaru, going like, this is fine. And someone else is trying to get here in a little Corolla or something, and it's just it's just not there. It's it's not gonna happen. so I ordered all these pizzas. We got we're trying to get everything ready for her party, and I'm like, ordered them for delivery, and and then like it's going and the pizza's not coming, and I'm like, what the heck's going on here? And and and and then they called us back and said. Pizza's not gonna be able to be delivered. The the the driver was just too worried out in the parking lot and I'm sitting here rolling my eyes. I I want you to know this is not my finest moment. rolling my eyes as he's talking to me on the phone. I'm just like this chump, like what's going on with this guy? I'm sorry, I w it was bad. I was I was stewing in sin at this point. And I I confess. And I and I and I was like, Who's wrong with this guy? Like and and and so I had to go drive if I wanted the pizzas to the pizza place and pick them up. And I'm sitting there complaining, and Jillian's like, Bring the tip for the guy. I'm like, I'm not giving him a tip like he didn't drill everything. And he's like, It's probably some like young kid who's you know, what's he gonna do? Like this is his money. And I'm sitting there being all curmudgeony and I'm Complaining, I find I take the tip money, but I'm like, I'm not giving them the tip money. And I'm just driving down and I'm complaining and I'm in a bad mood. I confess, I'm not saying this is good. I'm saying I'm in sin. and I'm really trying not to make light of this. I'm just letting you know this is honest. and and so I'm driving and we get there, and and I'm like, you're supposed to deliver this pizza to me. I'm not supposed to go in there and and get this pizza. And my attitude is basically what we do with God all the time. God, you're supposed to do all the work here. Come on. What what am I doing going out in this snowstorm? Yeah, I'm fine and I can nab you, but it And the Father wants to tell us over and over, I do the deliverance through you. I do the del. You are not gonna get zapped and a sudden, everything's fine. The deliverance happens through you, empowered by the Holy Spirit, God's very life-giving presence and source. And so, friends, this is why we need to pray. Do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. Because Jesus wants to use you to destroy the works of the devil. Turn to your neighbor and say, Jesus wants to use you to destroy the works of the devil. And if you don't believe in Jesus or you don't believe in the devil yet, it's okay. But it's still true of you. Humanity was made to oversee and care for this whole created world that God made, right? God made us to make sure that this whole world was taken care of. This is what we see in the creation account. And then we go, thanks God, we got it from here, and that's where the mess starts to happen, right? But thank God that Jesus has made a way through to victory so that you and I can be agents of deliverance in the world and help God trample on the works of the enemy. This is what the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15. He says that Jesus is ruling and reigning on the throne until all of the works of the devil are. Put under his feet. And you and I, as the body of Christ, are participating in that work. But we must be shaped by a prayer that says, Do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil work. And when we recognize that we are praying for the Father's holiness and in the Father's victory, then we are able to begin to pray by the Father's authority. And this is a prayer that you and I will begin to be agents of the kingdom of God and release the kingdom of God in prayer. th this is i in the the Greek text I already mentioned it it's very ambiguous about that word evil, evil or evil one, right? And and we are faced daily with problems that are just kind of the problems of a broken and evil world and sinful world because it's been fractured and separated from this life-giving God. and and the the agents of evil, the devil and the principalities and powers and the demonic and all these things. Happen in the world, and they are often the animating forces behind the problems that we see in the world. Now, if your car breaks down, I don't want you to start going, there's an attack of the enemy. Sometimes your car just dies because this world is broken and imperfect. Okay? But we have to grow in our spiritual discernment and rely on one another to be able to recognize times when we say, okay, that's not just a car breaking down, for example. Or that's not just someone getting sick. There's something else going on. Do you understand what I'm saying here? and so we we recognize that because Jesus teaches us to pray for deliverance from the evil one, then we need to recognize that we really have to take seriously that we are in a spiritual war. I want you to hear me. We are not in a physical war. You might have differences of opinion with people in your neighborhood or around the world, but you they are not your enemy ever. This is why the Apostle Paul said, our battle is not against flesh and blood. It is against the principalities and powers in the spiritual realm. And you and I, as part of the family of God, are now working to resist the adversary. The powers that want to destroy and rip apart humanity and the world. And as one of my my professors once put it, we are fighting a war of attrition against the demonic forces. And I thought this is a great way to put it. You know what a war of attrition is? It's basically two sides that are fighting until one of the two sides runs out of resources. Whoever has resources left is gonna win. Guess what? God don't run out of resources. The enemy has a finite amount of time remaining. And the Father knows what that time is. And until that time, we are praying: deliver us from the evil one. Trample on the works of darkness. Partner with God and bring the kingdom into dark places. So that the enemy of our souls is put under the Lord Jesus' feet. some of you were here Friday night, we had a a night of worship and prayer. And during these nights, these are nights where we spend time paying attention to the spiritual realities that we we need to pray into. And sometimes the spiritual reality means we need to confess our sin to each other and receive forgiveness. And at one time last year, I remember we we didn't plan it, but just like confession of sin and forgiveness broke out. There were people in the room who had issues with each other that were unresolved, and there was repentance and forgiveness and reconciliation that just happened. I want you to understand that that is significant. Significant spiritual work. When there are issues within the body, the body is broken and needs spiritual renewal through confession of sin and forgiveness of sin, and we receive reconciliation. But this year it was something different. We were in a different place this year, and when we gathered to just have this time of prayer, as we were praying slowly through the Lord's Prayer, we came to the line of your kingdom come and your will be done. We are praying that God's will and God's kingdom would become, not the works of Darkness or the or the enemy. And so so some of you might be aware that we partner with some international workers in in France. you may not believe this, but France is actually one of the most unreached regions of the world with the good news of Jesus. it's not quite in what we call like a low access, but it's almost there. It is so kind of post-Christian that if you said, Hey, do you know Jesus, they'll be No, I think he's in the next town. it's like almost to that point, legitimately. They have no idea what you're talking about. Or if they know who you're talking about, they're like, they'll start swearing at you and say, get out of here. The church has done nothing but hurt our country. And so there's deep pain in some older generations and in younger generations, they just have no idea what you're talking about. They look at you like, who's that? I no, I've not met him. and and so so that's the situation. But many of you may be aware that over the last few weeks there's been very intense demonstrations among young from young students in all over the the country of France. there there is a big crisis, something we can relate to a little bit in West Milford, there's a big crisis with their education system to the point where like students are showing up to class and there's no teacher there because they can't afford it. And and this is happening with kind of like high school or like college age folks and they just can't afford it. And and and And and so it's a huge problem and so they are taking to the streets. There are demonstrations all over the country and and this is a real need. Obviously it's a huge, significant, real problem. but mixed in with the demonstrators, there are a lot of people who are vandalizing, taking the opportunity to rob places and loot places. I mean, if you've seen the news, there'll be these beautiful old, hundreds of years old buildings and towns and and town halls and stuff in different towns and cities, and they're being burned to the ground. Like it's it's it's really it's really disastrous. So our our international worker partners are in Bordeaux, France. And and and they reached out to us ahead of our our prayer night and we had asked, hey, is there anything we can pray for? We know what the situation is, and they're like, Man, young people are hungry in France for change, and may Jesus be the change. So we're like, okay, great, sounds good. And then the day of our our worship and prayer night, he texts a bunch of people and and he he just sent us a screenshot of like a group group thread in French and we're like, What are we supposed to do with this? So I had to like, you know, pull out my phone and like translate app and put it on the screen. Okay, what are they talking about? And And they were saying their their neighborhood is usually pretty quiet. It's it's a little bit of an underserved community out of the way, and they're trying to serve people through a little cafe there. A lot of houseless neighbors on the streets and everything in that area. but it's usually kind of away from any kind of demonstrations. Well, they got word that the demonstration, a very, very large demonstration, was coming right through their neighborhood, and that the buildings and all the shops and businesses should plan to board up and barricade everything. they should get their cars out of the area so they can't be damaged or or destroyed. and so we gathered for prayer that night. And and several different people had this picture of there was one person had a picture of a a big dove with big wings, like a white bird, covering that neighborhood. Other people had pictures of a like almost like a bubble like covering their neighborhood. And so we just began to pray that God would do what we were seeing in these pictures and and that the that the the evil one would be resisted and that any violence or damage would not happen in that neighborhood. And we got a text yesterday. That said this. All the businesses in Ginkgo, which is their neighborhood, closed early and they barricaded their doors, though our volunteers did not at the cafe. They left it unbarricaded. We had sent them this message of what we saw and what we were praying into. other people were praying as well, and and and we so we we sent that. And he said that. And in response, it actually dissipated the protesters and they stayed in another part of the city. So nothing came through. He said a few hooded masked people who ran through Ginkgo all afternoon, but because there wasn't a crowd there, they didn't break anything because they couldn't do it hidden. So he said, our volunteers instead were able to be out there giving food and coffee to our houseless neighbors during a vigil that was going on. Prayer answered. You were releasing the kingdom of God when you were praying that on Friday night. That's what it looks like. You know, you can say, Well, they just cut the tram service. That's not God answering prayer. God, didn't we just say God works through us to do deliverance? He's working through the tram authority to do deliverance. It doesn't matter how it is, that the prayers are answered, and it's just blew my mind. I was so excited to share that with you. We need to recognize, friends, that God is doing that kind of work all the time. And if we are open and attentive to praying like Jesus, we will be invited into praying by the Father's authority to be able to say, this ends now. In Jesus' name and by Jesus' authority. So when we're praying this prayer, do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. I want you to recognize that this is cultivating a desire in us that we would pray for the Father's holiness. And this is cultivating a desire in us that we would pray in the Father's victory, that God actually uses us to do the deliverance. And when we're praying like this, it's shaping and cultivating in us a desire to pray by the Father's authority. This is your inheritance, if you will, as children of God. This is what you get to do. So what are the the things in in your neighborhoods, in your families? The things in your life that as John was leading us in in worship a little while ago, and he said, just what's that biggest challenge you're facing in your life? That we were singing that that God that's who God is. He's a way maker. He makes a way through these situations when there's no way. What about if God was saying, I want to use you to do that work? But we've got to cultivate a desire to join him in that work, yes? And so we have to be people who learn to pray. Do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. Would you stand with me? I want to do two things here as we as we close. and and this is what I want to do. First, I I want to just lead you in a prayer to God the Father for a second. And then after that I'm gonna ha I'm gonna set up one more thing I want you to do, okay? But but here's what I want us to do in response. If you're saying, I want to begin to cultivate this kind of prayer where I'm praying for for the Father's holiness and I'm praying in the Father's victory and I'm praying by the Father's authority. And would you do this? Because I I had our our everyone that was gathered, all our teams were praying this this morning. We put our hands out in front of us with our fists closed, like we're grabbing Jesus by his garments. And and and the phrase that was in my head is we're just Apprehending Jesus. Because remember what we said in the very first week of this? Prayer is not to just make our lives a little bit more tolerable and a little bit more faithful. Prayer is about shaping us into the very life of God. And so, in order to do that, we need to apprehend Jesus' very life. Because Jesus has given it to us. This is why the scriptures say that it is Christ in you that is the hope of glory. Through the Holy Spirit, Jesus' very life makes it capable for us to pray in this way. Because we have taken on Jesus' life, not just the way he prays. And so if you're if you're willing, I want to invite you, just put your hands out in front of you, like you're grabbing hold of Jesus. And we're going to pray these three things to the Father. Would you just pray this after me? The first one is this: Father, I want to cultivate a desire for your holiness. Father, I want to cultivate your victory over sin and trial in my life. Father, I want to cultivate praying from your authority over the evil one. In Jesus' name. Amen. Would you stay standing? I'm going to have you do one more thing. You'll remember that there's one more part of this Lord's Prayer we've been praying. It's often called a doxology. It's not in either Matthew or Luke, but very quickly within within the first generation of of Jesus followers in the early church, this was added. It actually comes out of Second Chronicles, I believe, in in in the Old Testament. And and and it's a way of publicly kind of wrapping up and declaring. It's this final part that says, Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever, amen. and and it this reminds us about what we've been talking about today in particular, right? What we've been praying through the this whole prayer, even that the Father is the one who reigns and rules. It's his kingdom that never ends. And and it's also a final declaration that the father is the The all-powerful one who provides everything we need, who forgives us of our sins and delivers us from the evil one. And it's also a way of declaring that the Father is the glorious and holy one who wants to make us like himself. And that He's invited us to share God's life in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit forever. This is the joy, friends, and the delight that we have been invited to pray in always. That we can receive the very life of God as we pray. So would you just lift your hands and again, as we declare this, about who the Father is and who God is and the life that he has given to us as we come to him in prayer? And would you just pray these words afterwards? Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen. Amen. Amen.