AUG 12 2018 | Stuff Jesus Said S1E2 | Our Father

Sea Change Church · Stuff Jesus Said · "Our Father" Pastor Adam Stadtmiller · August 12, 2018
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Good morning, church. Gosh, that was so beautiful. Love that song. Love that hymn. I'm Jen, and I serve on the greeting team, and I also attend Alpha. It's so rich and wonderful. So I'll be reading the scripture this morning from Matthew 6, 5, 14. And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly, I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door, and pray to your Father who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. This, then, is how you should pray. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today your daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have been forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. The word of the Lord. Thank you, Jen. Wait, remember you told me you were going to clear the pulpit? Remember? She goes, I am going to clear the pulpit for you. I got it. I got you. Good job, Jen. Thank you. Hey, it's good to be here today. I'm really excited about this message coming back completely filled up from a phenomenal time away.

And we're going to continue into the words of Jesus and the stuff Jesus said. Looking at some of the provocative, spiritually and culturally provocative things that Jesus said. And we're beginning with some of the things that Jesus said about childhood, some of the things that Jesus said about children, and some of the things that Jesus said about his Father, and casting us into a mold of the children of God. Jesus' main paradigm for living was as a son of God, and a child of God.

And so he paints this, and when speaking about prayer, the thing that he does is he reframes prayer as a father, as a child speaking to a father. And so in the stuff that Jesus says, today we're going to be looking at the Our Father prayer. I couldn't pack it all into one sermon, so we'll continue next week. But, before we go there, I want you to write something that is not in your notes. And I want you to understand that this is the key framework for which we will be working with today.

And this key understanding. And it has to do with faith. Because prayer is the language of faith. You are praying, the scripture says, to an invisible father. And whenever you pray, you are activating faith. And if you don't have faith for some area of your life, one of the best things that you can do to build faith is not just to ask for it, because God will give faith, and we will have different measures of faith. Faith is something that grows.

You can have different measures of it as you ask for it. But is to pray. Because prayer is an act of faith. It is asking for something you cannot see. It is asking for something that has not happened. Or praying to someone you cannot see. And so here is the thing that I want you to write down. Or at least put into your heart and mind this morning. That faith, the reason for faith, the reason faith exists, is to lead you into reality.

Faith, the purpose of faith, is to be a bridge to lead you into reality. And let me just give you a quick understanding of that. The reason that God gives us faith is so that we can be saved. Faith is a bridge that will eventually lead us into the ultimate presence of God. When you stand in God's presence, faith will no longer exist. Does that make sense? Faith will not exist in heaven. Okay? Hope will not exist in heaven.

There will be no reason for faith. There will be no reason for hope. Hope. And so when the scripture says in 1 Corinthians 13, the scripture we all had at our weddings, that... I have a ban on that. I don't do that scripture anymore. We've overused it. We've tried it. It's like one of those cassette tapes where you just can't hear the music anymore because you've played it so many times. Great verse. Nonetheless, if you used it, amazing.

I think we used it at ours. It says, but for now, if you look at the scripture, at the end of that scripture, but for now, these what? Three what? Remain. For now, these three remain. Faith, hope, and what? But which is the greatest? Why? Because love lasts forever because God is love. Love is not God, but God is love. And so when you get to heaven, the reason, if you've ever wondered why love is the greatest of these three is because it is the one that is eternal.

Faith, it will not be assessed, will not be used in heaven. And so the purpose of faith is to move you from not understanding to beginning to believe in something you were told about to actually using faith to jump from having to resource faith into reality. reality. So for instance, God wants you to live according to faith, but he actually wants you to move beyond faith and move into the assurance of faith. We'll talk about that in a moment.

The assurance of faith is when you're no longer having to access faith over and over again to survive. Oh, is God, I got this bad thing happening. Is God going to save me? Is God going to save me? Yes, yes, yes. He's going to save me. You access faith. You're like, okay, I believe. I believe. I can't see it, God. I believe you're going to save me. But there becomes a moment in a crisis and hopefully where faith will lead you to the assurance of faith, where you are living according to faith, but now you are living in a reality where you know when a problem happens on occasion, God's got this.

Have you ever gotten to that place where you are no longer accessing faith anymore? Faith was the bridge because we live according to faith, but faith was the bridge that moved you into reality that I believe that God's going to save me. And all of a sudden, the fear is no longer there. You're no longer accessing faith. Faith took you to a place of reality, which is the assurance of faith. Now, I believe we are told that the righteous will what?

Live by faith. And that is actually true. We'll talk more about this in a moment. The reason I'm bringing this up for the Father's prayer and the Our Father prayer is because I believe that Jesus wants you to live in the reality of his Father. In the reality that you have a Father who loves you. In the reality that it becomes real. Faith, it says, is a substance. It's actually a real thing. And so, what I believe that God wants us to do is he wants us to access faith, but he wants us to, and if I can say this word, to live beyond faith to where you are living in reality.

For instance, this is what I mean. If you ever have a person and you have an enemy and all of a sudden that enemy does something to you and you have to say, okay, I have to love them. I have to try to love them. And you are accessing love and you're having to ignite love. You're having to work hard to love someone. But there is another level that once you get to that place where you actually love them and you no longer have to work to love that person.

I realized not long ago that much of my Christian life was living with a shovel in my hand. Meaning, I would have to access love. I would have to access patience. I would have to access all these things. But they were not overflowing. The scripture talks about when you get to a place where it's so overflowing, you don't have to think, okay, I need to have faith right now. Okay, I need to have love right now. Okay, does this make sense?

All of a sudden, it becomes your reality. And you live in a way where it's just supernaturally natural to you. The reason I'm telling you this is because I believe that the Our Father Prayer is meant to thrust you through faith into the reality of you being a child of God. And when you understand that you are a child of God, and you no longer have to, and we will because we'll be growing and maturing and have new levels of temptation, trial, where we'll have to go back to this accessing faith again.

But when you get to the place where you walk in the total identity that I'm a child of God, that I'm a daughter of God, that I'm a son of God, and you live in that, it is your reality, it'll change everything. It'll change absolutely everything. When you live as a son, when you live as a daughter. And so, my understanding, and I believe I can back it up scripturally, is that Jesus wants you to use faith to live to the place where faith is meant to take you, which is in the true knowledge, the true understanding, and the true contentment that comes after you walk the bridge of faith into reality.

And I can show you some scriptures here in a moment. So as we look at this, in this passage, once again, Jesus is using the word Father over and over again. Radical religious concept, Father. In this passage alone, Jesus uses it six times. Last week in the passage that we used, Jesus used it 23 times. Jesus is really into the Father. Let me, let me, um, uh, present to you the idea that knowing the God of the universe.

Okay, big God, right? God, you know, you remember, remember in search of that movie from the night, the shows from the 1970s with Leonard Nimoy. Uh, if you're a millennial, go Google it. Um, they're awesome. In search of, uh, he was Spock, remember? And, um, they had these shows where they would search for God. Think of this massive God concept. Jesus, as you'll see in your notes, dismantles the faraway angry God framework, which the Jews were really good at at certain times and which religion has been phenomenal at.

Although I think it's also been great at sharing the love of God. But we get a bad rap as being judgmental and not loving and just saying all the ways that people sin and how they need to change and not really focusing on the love of a father. That's why the family breakdown matters so much where you don't have fathers who present the love of God in a way that can point their children to the father. And so that's why I think one of the main targets of the enemy is to destroy the family.

Jesus dismantles the faraway angry God framework and reconstructs the entirety of prayer. Everything that has to do with prayer, the entirety of prayer within the assurance of a familial context, meaning he takes it from the faraway angry God and says, when you pray, pray to your pops, pray to your dad, and that you have a loving dad who is approachable, who wants you to come to him as father. This has to be one of the most radical concepts in all of religious thought.

Okay, you've got Vishnu, you've got all the Hindu gods. We had the Hale-Bopp comet back here in the 1990s, and I remember, like, I guess God was coming by on the comet and it was going to save them, and you remember that. You have Norse mythology that had gods and Thor, and some of this stuff is radical. You can look at Stonehenge, you know, you can go to all these different places and look at these incredible God stories.

Look at the Aztecs, study the God stories. But in my humble estimation, in my opinion, the thought that God is actually your dad, think about it, is perhaps the most radical religious concept known to man. I mean, God has always been far off. You look at all these radical religious, you know, things where God is this scary face and this whole thing. But Jesus says, God's your dad. Do you realize how radical that is? And what Jesus is constantly trying to do is to reveal the Father to you as an approachable, loving Father who has got your back.

That is Jesus' entire mission. Now, wrapped up in that mission is the cross. And the cross, and we want to preach the cross, and that's so important. But the purpose of the cross is not for its own sake. The purpose of the cross is that you might be, that the Father might be revealed. Because Jesus loves his Father. And Jesus is the ultimate Son. Jesus lives as a Son always. And he wants to reveal the Father to you. And so, as we start the Our Father prayer in the stuff Jesus says, the question is, do you live like a son?

Do you live like a daughter? Or are you constantly ringing the alarm bells? Are you constantly in fear? Is fear the culture of your heart? Is depression, is fear, is worry? The scripture says, perfect love casts out what? All fear. So if you have anxiety, you don't have an anxiety problem. You have a love problem. Because perfect love casts out all fear. So if you begin to live in an identity as a child of God, the God of the universe, I believe the most radical concept, other than God sending his own Son to die for you, radical concepts that we have normalized, because we don't think about it enough, it'll change everything about you.

If you wake up in the morning thinking, I'm a son. I'm a daughter of the King. I'm a daughter of the God of the universe. It'll change the way that you might, you know, react in your relationships with others. It'll change your dating life. It'll change the way you parent. It'll change the way you go to work. It'll change everything. Jesus would sit on the cross, constantly speaking to his Father, never broken relationship with his Father, saying, Father, forgive them, constantly speaking.

Let's look at this. Verse 9. This then is how you, what? Should pray. Jesus takes the entirety of prayer. God, how should we? They said to Jesus, how should we pray? The entirety of prayer, every time you approach the Father. And God has a lot of identities. My dad was my father before he was a businessman. My dad is a father before he was anything else. And God is a lot of other things. But the scripture says that he's a father first.

And Jesus wants to get us on that page. And so when you pray, Jesus says that he takes the entirety of prayer and he says the starting place, you can go to warrior God, you can go to God of thanksgiving, you can go to God of Jehovah Jireh, all the names of God. But the starting place, the terra firma, the place, the spiritually nuclear place where you begin is that God is your father. And I gotta ask you, that'll change your prayer life.

That'll change your life. It changed my life this week as I continued to say, I'm going to God my Father. Continuing to pray. When I drove to Peach yesterday in the village, and I said, God, there's no parking in the village today. And I said, I need a parking spot, Dad. Now God has a lot of things. He's got India, climate change, world peace to deal with. My dad, my dad loves me. Right in front. Two hour limit. I was like, bang!

Yeah. And the girls were there. I said, thanks, Dad. It just came out of my mouth. And I was like, that's a new reality. Now he could have me park a mile away. He's still in my pops. He wants to teach me another lesson. Then I went into Pete's. I needed some seats because it's air conditioned. It's real cold. I shouldn't tell you all my secrets, but that Pete's is cold. And, like your glasses are going to fog up when you go in.

You know what I'm saying? There's three seats there. It was amazing until that loud family came beside me and then I was upset like Jonah. Why, God, would you give me this seat? Then a loud family. This then is how you should pray. Our Father, who art in heaven. Radical. Your dad lives in heaven. Do you ever think about it? Do you ever think about the scripture? Are, you're, my dad, let's break it down. My dad. Dad, you're in heaven.

That's awesome because heaven's better than here. Heaven has more power than here. Heaven can affect the culture of here if you let it. You can access heaven. Your dad lives in heaven. Do you, seriously, do you think that? It is a radical religious concept. It says, God as Father is one of the most radical religious concepts known to man. And Jesus says, our Father, who art in heaven, in verse nine. When you understand and digest God as Father, it changes everything.

Let me say that again because it's true. When you understand, not just understand with your, your mind, there's a heart understanding that'll bring peace to your bones and to your soul. and it takes time to manifest within you and digest God as Father, it changes everything. Everything. Everything you do. And I find, in the midst of the day, when I hit those moments of worry, fear, or concern, if I can access God as Father and get into that mode knowing that my Father loves me and break all the lies that I've been told through high school, through growing up, or perhaps what your Father told you or what you were told by friends or what the world tells you and all these things and get back into a Father, that my spirit within me will cry back out to him, Abba, Father.

And the scripture says that as well. Let me show you two scriptures that talk about, not just Jesus, that talk about the spirit within you that when you ask Christ, when you believe through faith in Jesus Christ, death on the cross, that the spirit of God, it says, will live within you. You will now become the living temple of God. And God lives in you. Scripture says, that the spirit, which searches the mind of God, lives within you and will reveal to you the mysteries of God's heart and mind.

If you have an issue, if you have a problem, do you know that the entire answer is already within you? Because the spirit of God dwells within you. You don't have to go fumble around looking for an answer or panic. You need to access what is within you and say, God, give me an answer here to this. A couple things I was thinking about this week. How are we going to do this at the church? How are we going to do that? And today, through the scripture, I read and I'm reading the Psalms on Psalm, excuse me, Proverbs 12, it said, talked about being diligent.

But like the Lord said, just be diligent. Just be diligent. Just keep plugging away and believe what God is going to do. Romans 8, 15 about the spirit. The spirit, meaning the Holy Spirit that you receive because you believed in Christ through faith, does not make you slaves. This is awesome. It sets you free. So that you live in fear again. Rather, the spirit, the Holy Spirit, you received, brought about your adoption to what?

Sonship. Daughterhood. And by him, the spirit, we cry, Abba, Father. That scripture is saying that your spirit, the spirit that lives within you, is constantly uniting with your spirit and crying out, Abba, Father. Abba, Father. We live in a world that mutes that understanding and that call. And that when we get into the mindset that I am going to seek God and know God through faith as a reality of Father, that you can live in a sonship and that the Holy Spirit then will unite with your understanding.

And that's when things get powerful. When you become in alignment with what the spirit of God is saying within your heart. Romans says that the laws of God or the Ten Commandments, the law of God is written, the entire law of God is written upon human hearts, it says in Romans. And if we live by choice according to the law because there is no more compulsion to live according to the law because Jesus died on the cross and set us free from the compulsion, but through our own free will now we can bless the Father by living according to that, your life will become spiritually nuclear.

You will have thrusters on your life that take you to the next level. As they said in Spinal Tap, this one goes to 11. You will go to the next level. Thank you. Thank you, Eric. Galatians 4, 6. I read the entire book of Galatians this week. It's easy. It takes about 12 minutes. Read the book of Galatians. Binge read the Bible. It says, Because you are his sons and daughters, God sent the spirit of what? His son into our hearts.

The Holy Spirit is the spirit of his son. And it understands itself as a son. So meaning the Holy Spirit is the spirit of Jesus who is the ultimate son or daughter or child. And that spirit, according to this scripture, has been sent into you. Your spirit already understands how to be a son and a daughter. It is getting in alignment with that. Sent the spirit of his son into our hearts and the spirit cries out like it said in Romans, Abba, Father.

Wow. Constantly your spirit is crying out, Abba, Father. Now back to the Our Father prayer. That when you are praying to a father and asking God through the ups and downs of life to perform things, to do things for you, to show you that he loves you, to bring someone to salvation, to bless our camp, to keep it safe, to change the Hoya for Jesus, to bless the nation, to bless the government, all these things, you are praying to your dad.

And as you pray, the spirit of his son, which is the Holy Spirit, and lives in you, cries along with you and says, Abba, Father, Abba, Father, and puts an exclamation point on every single prayer you pray. If you want to get better at praying, the secret sauce to praying is to pray. If you want to learn how to pray, the way to learn how to pray is just to begin to pray. Make a list, as I said in praying for your elephant, of a hundred things.

Begin to write another hundred things. Ten for every category of your life. Ten for your marriage. Ten for your engagement. Ten for your school. Ten for your wife. Ten for your kids. Before you know it, God will begin to step into that list. And it's good to know what you're praying for as opposed to just showing up. Next thing we see here is an approachable God. Jesus says we go to God as Father, and one of the things that has been hard in religion is we oftentimes present God as unapproachable.

Sinners in the hands of an angry God. And you know, it's actually true that there is an, the anger of God was satisfied by Jesus, but if you don't access it, you are still under the curse. And so that is true, but how do we present God? We can tell people about the curse of the law, but that it was paid for by his son. And we have an approachable God. And so God as Father is meant to be seen as approachable and loving Father.

And this gives us a boldness. Hebrews talks about this boldness. Now, this is not speaking about the Father in Hebrews, but it says in Hebrews 4.16, let us therefore come what? Boldly to the throne of God. To the throne of what? Grace. The throne of grace. Do you, when you go to prayer, and this, I hope this is revolutionizing your prayer life right now. When you go to prayer, is your dad there on a throne, and on the throne it says grace?

Or do you come timid, trembling, oh, I've messed up again. God's mad at me. Oh, he doesn't have time for me. You come as a child to the throne. I gotta say, there is, in my human understanding, very few things I could think of, if any, that my children could not do or repent and come back to me crying where I would not receive them with grace. That is the God that we serve. And in our prayer, what are you praying for?

And maybe your biggest prayers are too small. Tweet that. Put that, put that in your notebook. Maybe your biggest prayer is too small. What's your biggest prayer? Seriously, what's your biggest prayer? And maybe it's too small. God wants you to come to the throne of grace. Now here's the problem. Let us come forwardly, it's Hebrews 4, 16, let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

And through prayer, we are accessing faith and God's resources. So when you have a time of need, it's faith time again. You do not have reality. You are living in fear. You are living in worry. You are living in lack. You are living in want. And you're like, whoa, this is a new level. And like they say, new level, new devil. And all of a sudden that reality dissipates because we have not been perfected yet in heaven.

And when that reality of faith dissipates like it does every single day, it feels like for me, I've got to go back to the faith well. And I've got to resource that faith until I get to the place where there is an assurance in me that, you know what, my dad has got this. This morning, that welled up in me. And I got here today and I thought, this church is going to change the world. And it was real to me. It was real.

Whereas other times in the week, I'm like, oh, I don't know, man, what's going on? Oh, just like everybody else. You're on that tightrope of faith. But as I studied this scripture, I realized that God wanted to say to me, I don't want you to constantly live resourcing faith. I want you to live in the assurance of faith. I want you to live beyond faith. And I hope that makes sense because we are never dismantling faith, but it will be dismantled by God when we get to heaven because we will see him as if faith to face.

Now here's the problem as you'll see in your notes. You're praying, as it shows in verse six, to an invisible father. Yikes. All that good father stuff, but where is he? Right? Jesus says that when you pray, go in to pray to your father who is invisible. And this is why it takes faith to pray. Because God's not there. He's hard to experience. He's hard to see. He's hard to sort out. And it's so easy to give up. And this is the biggest thing about faith.

Faith. Although I would say to not believe in God takes as much faith as well because you cannot disprove God any more than you can prove him. Prayer though, now I wrote this down. I was happy with this sentence. Prayer, I sit and think through these things. Prayer transports you, and this is for all my sci-fi fans, transports you through the wormhole of faith to a place of spiritual possibilities. Prayer is always faith.

I believe even if God is standing in front of you and you can see him like Moses did, you're still asking yourself, is this bush really burning? Am I asleep? Is this a dream? There's still, even if God was there and went away, you would still ask yourself, did that really happen? It would still take faith. But I believe that prayer is the language of faith and will transport you to a world of possibilities that do not exist without prayer.

Without prayer, there are so many territories that you will never experience. Places, levels in your marriage that you will never go to. That are there for you if you want them, but they will not have, you will not get them because it says, you do not have because you do not ask. There are levels in your understanding of your children, in your understanding of scripture, in what God is doing, because it says that the spirit of God lives within you and also searches the mind of God that wants to tell you and reveal to you the deep mysteries of God.

The scripture says in that same passage that who knows what a person's mind is thinking. But it says except for the spirit within that person. But it says the spirit of God knows the mind of God and that spirit lives in you and he will tell you what's in the mind of God. Imagine the mind of God. How radical is that? For you guys working up here with surfers in Pacific Beach and that group. If you don't pray, God is not going to give you opportunities that might be available if you ask.

Are you asking for enough? Whether it be at Casa de Mignonne or if you live there or in the Maryland or at Maryland as an elementary school or excuse me, a junior high student. As we pray, it opens up a world of possibilities. What are you missing out on because you have not asked a father? Well, let me say this. While God might not be seen, he will be experienced when he is sought. Jeremiah 29, 13. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all of your heart.

That's powerful. That's a promise of scripture. This weekend, this week, we sent kids, the junior high group, middle school group, out into the forest, meadow, and we said, go find a place and ask God a question or ask him to show himself to you. We had multiple kids come back and say to us that they either heard an audible voice of God or saw either the presence of God or an angel. Now, super easy, right? To just say, come on kids, that's, come on, can we just get real?

Unfortunately, on Monday, when I read the Bible, it said in the scripture that if you don't want to harm a child because it talks about you put a milestone around your neck, but it also says that each one of those has a guardian angel which protects them, which is an interesting scripture to start my week off and then have that happen. Now, you also don't want to hype up all this stuff as well, but I know, as you saw in the video, that after that first morning, these kids dove into the deep end of spirituality, so many of them.

I mean, everyone had different experiences, some deeper than others, but it was so powerful because we gave them the opportunity to seek him and if you seek God through faith, you will find him, says that and how are you seeking God? I will say this, the more you come to know and experience God as father, back to the understanding of the father, the less you will need to resource faith. Let me say that again. That could be a controversial statement, but once again, God wants you to live in the assurance of faith that you have resourced it and it has moved you into a reality so you're not having to think, okay, I need faith for this.

You don't need faith for it anymore because you have used faith. It exists. It still exists in what you're doing, but you are moving into the reality of that understanding. Have you ever prayed for somebody and you knew they were going to get healed? Have you ever had that in your life where God spoke and all of a sudden you go from being worried to just having this complete confidence where it no longer feels like faith because it's become concrete in your heart?

The more you experience God as father, the less you will need to resource faith. This is due to the fact that your faith has become a substance according to Hebrews 11 and an assurance. Does God want you to ultimately live by faith or the assurance that that faith brings? It's a great question. Let's look at Hebrews 10, 22. Let us draw near. I love this. Are you drawing near? Do you feel comfortable to draw near to God?

God's there. Draw near. With a sincere heart in what? Full what? Assurance of what? Faith. We have an assurance of faith. Having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with a pure water. How do we know that we are saved? The Bible wants you not to just believe you are saved. It wants you to know that you are saved. That you can have confidence of your salvation. To move into the reality of your salvation.

That faith will move you to that place of confidence. 1 John 5, 13. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you might what? Know that you have eternal life. Do you see the bridge right there? Do you see how you went from belief and faith to knowing? See, that is the purpose of faith. Faith. And I believe that God doesn't want you to constantly be living resourcing faith. He wants you to have moments every day and you'll be back and forth because we will need faith until we're perfected.

Trust me. Because God will have these different things that come up where you'll have to go back into the faith. Let me read 1 John 5, 13 again. I write these things to you who believe. That means who have faith. You believe. In the name of the Son of God so that you might what? Know that you have eternal life. God doesn't want you to be questioning that you have eternal life all the time and constantly have to be resourcing faith to believe it.

Now, there will be moments where you'll have to go back and do that. He wants you to live in reality and that's a big difference. He wants you to experience love in such a way that you don't have to resource love. Love's there. It's overflowing. You have more than you need. You don't even think about it. He doesn't want you to resource patience. You're driving. You're once again, you're trying to get through La Jolla Shores and there's people from El Cajon and Uber drivers and they're everywhere and they're looking on their phones and there's canoe people and kayaks and how many kayaks?

And you're driving through La Jolla Shores and you just need to get patience. God, give me patience. Or you've been with the Father that day and He has downloaded patience to you where it just exists and you live in the reality of it. You don't even have to think about patience. Why? Because you have the overflow of your heart. That's what I'm talking about and that was so new to me because I have been living by the skin of my faith for years.

I need, oh God, I just gotta, I gotta have more faith. Oh, this is happening. Oh, I gotta have faith. I'm constantly living in faith. Okay, I believe. And it was good and it kept me alive but I thought to myself, I wanna live in peace. And I find that when I'm struggling with faith, which you will, we struggle with our faith because we live in an incomplete, perfect world. When I'm struggling with faith, I have moments of peace, moments of worry, moments of fear but when I, when I access faith and get that download from God's love, all of a sudden I'm not struggling anymore.

All of a sudden there's a confidence. My feet get bigger when I walk. They don't need to get any bigger. They're 15 and a half but you know what I'm saying? I get stronger in that faith and I realize that's a different level of Christian maturity. That God doesn't want me to live constantly, we're living by faith because I don't wanna, you know, misquote scripture because we're living according to faith but he doesn't want me constantly living in fear having to fight that battle.

He wants me to live in the terra firma of his love often. I hope I've made my point. Does this nullify faith? We're ending right now, circling the tower. God forbid for it is by faith we are saved but it is God's desire to perfect your faith until the day when you stand in his glory and no longer need faith. 1 Corinthians 13, I already spoke about that. The ebb and flow then of faith in your life comes back and forth as God perfects our faith because he is perfecting your faith.

He will give you that reality but then he'll say, you know what, this is an eternal reality. You're not gonna have it all on earth. I'm gonna allow some trials. I'm gonna allow some things to happen. Our Father, you know, that's why the Our Father prayer says, lead us not into temptation. God doesn't lead into temptation but help us when we're in our temptation. That God will allow some trial because he wants you to go deeper in that reality.

So then again, you're back in the faith camp. Okay, God, I'm believing. I'm gonna take this step of faith. I don't have the money to give to this thing but I'm gonna give it anyways because I believe in you or I, whatever it is. And then all of a sudden God proves himself again and you're like, oh, God's so good and you're living back in that reality. This is the ebb and flow and it says that prayer is the tool that builds that maturity in your life because when you have problems, it says your Father knows your needs before you even ask and it says in the scripture here that we ask our Father when we're in need and he will give and provide and so prayer is the language of heaven that builds faith to understanding God as Father.

James, two verses will be done. James 1, 2 through 4, consider it pure joy my brothers and sisters whenever you face trials of any kind because you know the testing of your faith, right? Produces what? So faith, when you use it, produces something. It produces perseverance which is a reality. Let perseverance do what? Finish its work in you that you can be complete mature, complete, and not lacking anything. Prayer to a loving Father is the pathway to this perfection which comes as our faith is tested.

This then is the essence of the Our Father prayer. God wants you to be perfected in your knowledge of him as Father so that you can walk in the assurance of faith. Amen? Amen?