Prayer as Worship

Prayer is our invitation to commune with God Himself. In its purest form, prayer begins as worship. Simply by addressing our Father in heaven, we acknowledge His place in the world and our lives.

Transcript

Welcome to our new series—40 Days of Prayer. We’re going to spend the next 6 weeks together, walking through the Lord’s Prayer to draw closer to God and deepen our dependence on him. So, if one of your New Year’s resolutions was to grow your faith, you’re in the right place. This will be a great series for you.

Over these 6 weeks, we’re going to talk about prayer as worship, kingdom partnership, petition (or asking), prayer as confession, spiritual warfare, and an expression of hope.

You’ll hear from me, Pang Foua, Pastor Kong, and others. And since this is a CM&A nationwide campaign, each week, you’ll hear from a leader within the nation Alliance. So, here is our President, John Stumbo, introducing this week’s theme—prayer as worship.

LORD’S PRAYER

Let’s look at the first line of the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father in heaven, holy be your name…”

At first glance, this seems like an inspiring, deeply spiritual beginning to a prayer. But, as you’ll soon see, it’s one of the strangest combinations of words you could ever string together. Its inconsistency and contradictions border on the absurd.

It’s like a prayer Mad Lib. Did you ever play those? You ask someone for nouns, adjectives, names. Then you plug them into a story, and the results are hilarious. I loved those as a kid.

So, at the risk of being sacrilegious, I turned this first line of the Lord’s Prayer into a Mad Lib and asked Pastor Kong and his wife, Pang. And it did not disappoint.

• Here’s Pastor Kong’s: “Our goldfish, which art in Atlanta, shiny be your cat.”

• Here’s Pang’s: Our house, which art in Iceland, snowy be your bomb.” That one actually worked out.

Well, thankfully, that is not our Lord’s Prayer. “Our Father in heaven, holy be your name…” But this is still a strange, perplexing sentence. Let’s break it down.

Our

Our… Father. Our. Not “My Father.” The Lord’s Prayer is not a private prayer. Nowhere do the pronouns I, me, or my appear in it. Only our and us. Prayer is communal. It’s collectivist. It may be personal, but it’s not private.

Jesus assumed that you are part of a community or a group larger than yourself or your family. If you are a believer, you are part of the great family of God. You are connected to one another—and God intended it to be that way.

Western Christianity turned prayer private and individualized. It changed the “Our Father” into “My Father.” But that’s not what this prayer is. The Lord’s Prayer binds the people of God together across time and space.

We say the Lord’s Prayer together in church to unite us, to bind our hearts as one. You don’t pray this prayer for yourself. You pray it for all of us. Because he is our Father.

Father

Father. Dad. Txiv. Hey you (for all the teenagers). This is a term of relationship. We are his daughters and sons. And this is where it starts to get unexpected. The all-powerful Creator of the universe wants us to call him father.

You might have heard that this term in Aramaic is “Abba,” which is translated like a child’s term “Daddy.” Well, it turns out that that isn’t really true. Most scholars believe that it’s a regular term for “Father” used by kids and adults.

But we don’t need “Abba” to mean “Daddy” for the word to be marvelous. The fact that the almighty Lord of the universe has chosen to adopt us as his children and allow us to address him using a familiar term like “father” is truly astounding.

The Lord’s Prayer is a conversation with a close and personal God who loves you enough to call you his own child and have you to call him Father.

In Heaven

Where’s our Father? In heaven. This is where the brain-bending really starts. How can such a close term like “Father” coexist with such a distant term like “heaven?”

Throughout the Bible, heaven is contrasted with earth. Earth is the realm of the visible (people, birds, clouds), and heaven is the realm of the invisible (God, angels, spirits). And only rarely do the two intersect.

At least until Jesus. In Jesus, heaven and earth are not separate but overlapping spaces. And when you pray, you enter into that overlapping space where our Father in heaven is close to us.

Holy Be Your Name

And the last phrase might be the most shocking—holy be your name. We often think of holy as a high measure of moral purity, so it’s easy to see God as holy. But that’s not what it means. Holy is something that is set apart from ordinary use. Holy is something that’s completely different, entirely other.

This line says that God, represented by his name, is unlike anything else in creation.

PRAYER AS WORSHIP

So, is God personal like a Father, otherworldly like heaven, and completely different like holy? Yes. He is all of that. This is the ultimate intersectionality. He is personal like a Father, otherworldly like heaven, and completely different like holy.

And when you pray the Lord’s Prayer, you affirm all of that. And the affirmation of who God is, that’s called worship. That’s why all true prayer is worship.

The first line of the Lord’s Prayer worships God as a corporate heavenly Father who is completely different from us.

So, if you struggle with prayer, begin by saying what you appreciate about God’s character or anything you know about God’s character. That way, you’ll always start from a posture of worship.

EVERYONE WORSHIPS

Why is this posture of worship of God important in prayer? Well, because we are all deeply self-absorbed people. And as such, we are always looking for something to help us, give us meaning in life, and to fulfill our deepest needs. In other words, we are always looking for something to worship.

This idea was brilliantly described by author David Foster Wallace in a graduation speech from 2005. It’s rather lengthy, but it’s worth it.

“In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship — be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles — is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.

If you worship money and things — if they are where you tap real meaning in life — then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure, and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you…

Worship power — you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart — you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on.

So, the question is not whether you worship. It’s whether what you worship is worth your worship.

MAKE SURE IT’S WORTH IT

At this point, you might be wondering, “What do I worship? What is most important in my life? Family, money, success, reputation? What do I depend on? What do I use to solve my problems, make me feel better, or ensure my future?”

Some of you have something in mind. So, now, you’re asking, “Is this thing worth my worship?” Maybe the Wallace quote has got you thinking about the cost of worshiping money, beauty, power, or brains. And you’re starting to wonder, “How do I know when something’s not worth my worship?”

We go back to the first line of the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father in heaven, holy be your name.”

If this is what worthwhile worship looks like, then the opposite is worship that’s not worth it. Let’s look at some opposites.

1. The opposite of OUR is MY. Are you worshiping, prioritizing, and fixating on something that is ultimately self-serving?

• You may say you’re working all those hours for your family, but it’s really doing it for yourself.

• You may call it building a brand or being an influencer, but really you’re feeding your ego.

Are you banking your life into yourself? If you are, you will always be disappointed. Why? Because you are a bottomless pit of need, fear, and insecurity. So am I. And so is everyone else. Don’t pour your life into yourself. It’ll never be enough.

Make sure you worship something that is worth your worship.

2. The opposite of FATHER is something DISTANT or IMPERSONAL. Are you worshipping or praying to a God who feels distant or impersonal? When things get hard, you’ll always feel alone or, even worse, abandoned.

Or maybe you’re living out your parent’s goals for you, you will ultimately resent them.

Or maybe you’re putting your hope and trust in some vague goal or sense of accomplishment. You’re serving something that will never give back, never feel personal, and never fill your need for relationships.

Make sure you worship something that is worth your worship.

3. The opposite of heaven is something earthly. This is where it’s gonna hurt. A lot of you have very earthly gods you worship. They are earthly promises, hopes, and dreams. And the only thing they will deliver is earthly salvation.

We are spiritual creatures, and we seek spiritual meaning. We have a spiritual problem that can only be remedied through spiritual salvation. Earthly things will never give you what you deeply want.

Make sure you worship something that is worth your worship.

4. The opposite of HOLY is something COMMON. You are an extraordinary creation of God. There is nothing common or everyday that can satisfy you. Some of you are seeking meaning and redemption through common things, and they will always disappoint… because they’re common.

According to Scripture, you, as a human, are the greatest of God’s creation. There is nothing common about you, but some of you are banking your life on things that are common and trivial. What you are worshiping is so low that it could never possibly satisfy or save.

Make sure you worship something that is worth your worship.

CONCLUSION

In 1559, famed theologian John Calvin wrote, “The human heart is a perpetual idol factory.” That means that you and I are constantly looking for things to worship, to give us meaning. And we don’t always pick the best things.

• We pick things that are self-serving, impersonal, earthly, and common.

• We pick things that over-promise and under-deliver.

• We pick things that, in Wallace’s words, will eat us alive.

That’s why we need the Lord’s Prayer. It reminds us of who God is and why he’s worth our worship.

• He places us in community to pray together.

• He is deeply personal and yet heavenly.

• And he is nothing like the common earthly things that constantly disappoint.

We need the Lord’s Prayer because it reminds us of how remarkable God truly is.

PRAYER REFLECTION

So, we’re going to close this with a time for you to pray the Lord’s Prayer. But we’re just going to pray the first line repeatedly. I want you to spend a few minutes and recite this 10 times. You can focus on a different word each time. Or maybe there’s one word in this prayer that you desperately need to drill into your soul. Then hit that each time.

I’ll close in a few minutes. Take your time. We’re not in a rush. Let’s begin.