Sunday, March 5, 2023 - 11am Traditional Service - God Gives Good Things To Those Who Love Him

In one paragraph

This message from Ray walked through Luke 11, the short form of the Lord's Prayer and the passage that follows it immediately, looking at what it means to ask God for what we truly need and to do so without embarrassment or hesitation. To understand the passage, Ray pointed back to the three stories that come just before it in Luke: the Good Samaritan, Mary and Martha, and then the Lord's Prayer...

Read together

1. Luke 11:1-4 the short form of the Lord's Prayer, read and expounded as the anchor text of the sermon
2. 1 John 1:9 quoted as the mechanism of confession and forgiveness, called Bob Wells's favorite verse
3. Psalm 67 referenced briefly as the passage about being blessed to be a blessing to others
4. Numbers 21 the people were bitten by venomous snakes and God told Moses to lift up a bronze serpent so all who looked on it would be saved
5. John 3 Jesus calls back to Numbers 21 when speaking to Nicodemus, connecting the lifted serpent to his own being lifted up
6. Psalm 140 quoted concerning the wicked sharpening their tongues like a snake and viper venom under their lips
7. Genesis 3 the Lord God cursed the serpent, quoting the words about going on its belly and eating dust
8. Matthew 5:6 used as the benediction, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be filled

Talk about it

1. Pastor Ray pointed out that the Good Samaritan and Mary and Martha stories sit right next to each other in Luke, and that the pairing matters. How does Mary sitting at Jesus' feet change the way you read the Good Samaritan story on its own?
2. Pastor Ray described the man knocking at midnight as shameless, and said that word carries a positive meaning here, something like unembarrassed boldness in carrying out God's plan. Where in your own life do you find it hardest to bring that kind of boldness to God in prayer, and what holds you back?
3. The sermon walked through the Lord's Prayer phrase by phrase, and Pastor Ray connected 'give us each day our daily bread' to asking only for what we need to do what God wants us to do, not for extravagances. How does that framing change the way you think about what is and is not a reasonable thing to pray for?
4. Pastor Ray used the story of signing his father's name at the gas station to explain what it means to pray in Jesus' name, saying it is not a magical phrase tagged onto the end but a matter of acting within a mission you have been authorized to carry out. How does that picture affect the way you approach prayer day to day?
5. Pastor Ray closed with the beatitude, 'Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled,' and said that hunger and thirst are themselves a form of asking, seeking, and knocking. What would it look like practically, this week, for you to hunger and thirst for righteousness rather than simply for things to go well?