The Healing Word

Announcer: The Healing Word Ministry on One Place is brought to you by the generous donations of people like you. At any time during today's message, feel free to send a prayer request or make a donation using the links provided. Now, I pray you will be blessed as Pastor Jack Morris delivers a message from the word of God that will encourage and strengthen your faith in him.

Pastor Jack Morris: When God's life comes in, new energy comes in. I feel alive. I can endure things that I didn't have the patience to endure prior to that happening. It comes about as I worship God. I am energized when I worship the Lord.

Announcer: Welcome to The Healing Word. Pastor Jack Morris brings us a message today called Healing Worship. In Luke's Gospel, Jesus shows us that prayer is the pathway into God's presence, where healing, hope, and strength are found.

Pastor Jack Morris: There was a businessman that was very late for an appointment, and he couldn't find a parking space. Did you ever get in a predicament like that? You're late and you can't find a parking space. You're there, but where are you going to put your car?

So he kept circling the block, circling the block, and finally came to a stoplight and he looked up to heaven and he said, "Lord, take pity on me. If you'll help me find a parking space, I promise I'll go to church every Sunday for the rest of my life. Furthermore, I'll stop drinking also." Just then the light turned green and miraculously there was a parking spot. Quickly he looked up and said, "Never mind, I found one."

Prayer. There was this elderly couple. They were in a nursing home. They'd been married sixty years, and they had argued and fought and bickered and shouted at each other all their married life, and they kept up the habit after they went in the nursing home. The people in the nursing home became very irritated with it. From morning till night, you could hear them up and down the hallway shouting at each other, these two old people.

The nursing home threatened to put them out. They said, "We're going to put you out. You're disturbing all the other residents." So the elderly lady, the wife, said to the husband, "The only thing I know to do is pray that one of us dies." She says, "And then after the funeral, I'll go live with my sister."

We know what we want the outcome to be, don't we? And we know who we want affected by that outcome. But we're going to visit the Lord's Prayer, sometimes referred to as the Our Father, again. One of the reasons I'm visiting it today with you is because we pray that prayer every Sunday morning and we could become familiar with it, too familiar with it.

We never want to become casual with the holy. So I need to come back to this prayer again and look at it with you. I've preached from this text many times, but this is not one of the sermons that I've preached before. This is a new one, and I believe given to me by the Holy Spirit to give to you to help you to know how much God loves you and how much he wants to answer our prayers, prayers that are prayed in his name.

Now this is a model prayer and, as I said, we repeat it and we say it every Sunday morning, but it's an outline. I'm not going to go through the whole prayer this morning, neither am I going to do it in a series other than next week I'm going to address it one more time. Only two services, this service, then next week and then we're going to move on to something else.

But this is a teaching prayer. One of the disciples saw Jesus praying and came to Jesus after he had prayed and asked him to teach him and the other disciples how to pray. I knew a man a number of years ago, an old Presbyterian minister who taught me in college, Robert Cummings. He had been a missionary to India.

I don't usually listen too closely to a person's prayer. I'll say amen when they affirm the scripture in their prayer and ask God for in a petition, but this man, very often, I was just a very young minister, I would open my eyes and look at him when he prayed. He would have his eyes shut and he would talk to God, and I knew someone else was there.

I knew he was talking to someone. I could see it from his expression. I could hear it in his words. He would choose his words. He would talk to God and it seemed to me that heaven would move in my soul. Now there was an elderly pastor's wife, uneducated lady. Corinne brought her to my attention many, many years ago when we were just starting out in the ministry. We were in their home.

This minister's wife, with no formal education beyond perhaps high school, would sit on the couch and she would start talking to God. Afterwards Corinne mentioned to me, she said, "Have you noticed how that lady prays?" And then I started noticing, and she too talked to people. We all pray differently. We all have a different approach.

When those people prayed, and neither of them knew the other one, I knew, I felt someone else was there listening. They were talking to God, their Heavenly Father. It touched my heart, stirred my soul, made me to realize that God is a Father, he is present, we talk to him. We don't just speak a lot of words rather quickly and get it over with and stick a name in on the end of it and go our way.

I've been in meetings where they're almost irreverent. Somebody would come in real quick and say, "Okay, come on, let's pray, let's pray. Come on, let's pray." We're in the presence of the Almighty. We don't treat the Almighty with disrespect or casually or with familiarity. We bow down before him. We honor him. We hallowed his name.

Lord, teach us to pray. This was the request. A teaching prayer. I can only imagine how Jesus prayed. When I think of Reverend Cummings, who's now been in heaven so many years, I have a picture of him in my study, in my home, this dear old saint of God. Every once in a while, I'll just look at his picture because he reminds me of a man who knew how to talk to the Almighty in reverence.

Now notice point A in your outline: a sacred relationship. That's what prayer is. Write down the word sacred in your sermon outline in your bulletin. A sacred relationship. Notice how Jesus answered this disciple when the disciple asked, "Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples." He, Jesus, said to them, "When you pray, say, 'Father.'"

In Matthew chapter six, the version that we use here on Sunday morning is Our Father, but here Father. When you pray, say, "Father." Remind yourself, Jesus is saying, that you have a father and that you are Father's child. That should be foremost in our mind all the time.

Notice he says, "When you pray, say, 'Our Father' or 'Father, hallowed be thy name.'" Notice name. When we say name or when we use that word name, that represents everything God is. We don't just think in the name Jesus, your name Jesus is wonderful and indeed it is wonderful, his name is wonderful. But God Almighty, his omnipresence, his omniscient knowledge, his almightiness.

Everything that God has been, everything God is, everything that God shall ever be. When we say his name, that includes everything we know about God, everything that God has disclosed about him and everything that he has not disclosed about him. Hallowed be thy name. You and everything there is about you.

I'm thinking, I'm putting my mind in this, I'm putting my thought in this, I'm using my brain. I'm thinking, I'm thinking, I'm thinking when I'm praying. I'm not just mouthing words. I'm talking to Abba Father, and I'm praising him and everything there is about him. Hallelujah, Abba Father, hallowed be thy name.

This is my prayer, your prayer, the prayer Jesus taught us to pray. Then point B in your outline, write down the word worshipping. Prayer is a worshipping relationship. Worshipping is the result of thinking when we pray. When we think of God, when we hallowed his name, his holy, his precious, his majestic name, when we're thinking of God, prayer and praise automatically begins to happen.

We don't have to work it up. We don't have to do anything to make it happen. All we have to do is think God, think Father, think Abba, think majesty. Begin to think those holy and lofty thoughts of God and the outcome automatically will be sincere worship in spirit and in truth. It just begins to happen when you think holy and lofty thoughts about God.

Number one: we worship because God is worthy. Write down the word worthy. He is worthy of worship. I want you to think with me in this message this morning. We do not worship God, praise God, thank God because, listen, because God needs his ego stroked. No, we don't do that. We don't add one thing to God when we worship God, but I'll tell you something, God adds something to us when we worship him.

Yes, God is holy and he's just and he's worthy. He's done so many great and wonderful things. God is incomprehensible by the human mind. He is beyond the field of knowledge. He's entirely beyond anything men on earth may know of him, and any attempt to express his greatness reduces him.

Let me say that again. Any attempt to express God's greatness reduces him because whatever I can say about God, whatever I read about God, whatever I see about God in nature, God is more. God is more. He is greater and it is the most awesome of things that I can call God Father, that Jesus gave me that privilege.

I wouldn't dare do that unless Jesus told me to do it, and he told me to do it, and he told me to call God Father, Abba Father. So I'm going to do that. I'm going to worship the Lord, and I want you to worship the Lord also. I worship him. I know him. I know a little bit about him. I know what the Bible says about him. I know what nature reveals about him.

I know that little bit of God that God has disclosed. But there is so much more. Yet in my soul I cry out to him. I worship him. The Holy Spirit draws me to know him and draws me into a relationship with him. Even though I can't comprehend him, I can still know him and have a wonderful relationship with him.

A.W. Tozer wrote this quote and I want you to look at it on the video screen and read it with me. You read it silently while I read it out. A.W. Tozer a long time ago has been in the presence of God in heaven. But here it is: "Lord, how great is our dilemma. In thy presence, silence best becomes us, but love inflames our hearts and constrains us to speak. Were we to hold our peace, the stones would cry out."

I've got to speak. I feel like coming down in holy awe before him in pure silence, but my soul is crying out to him. The Holy Spirit is drawing me to know him into his presence. I must say something. I must express that worship to him. I must cry out and I do. I speak his name.

Job said this, "Canst thou by searching find out God? Can you probe the limits of the Almighty?" Is that in your bulletin? I don't know what's in your bulletin and what's on the screen today, but is that in your bulletin? No, that's not in your bulletin. Canst, okay, let me read it again so you'll hear it. "Canst thou by searching find God?" This is what Job is saying. God is so much more than anything I can know about him.

In all my searching, I can never attain the knowledge of his glory. "Canst thou by searching find out God? Can you probe the limits of the Almighty?" The answer is no. But he came to us and he disclosed himself to us in the person of Jesus Christ, his only begotten son.

Number two in your outline, write down the word develops us. Number one, worship God is worthy. Number two, worship develops us. We can't add to God when we worship, but God can certainly add to us. Listen, friends, if there is a minus sign in your life, a dimension of your life where there is a feeling of emptiness, by all means, in Jesus' name, listen with your heart to what I'm going to say now.

God wants to add something to your life. He wants to remove the minus and he wants to add a dimension, a plus. Listen to it and as you worship, it'll happen. It happens in worship. Worship is a gift to us. Worship develops us into the person God wants us to be. People today lack self-worth. There's a feeling of self-worth. There's a keen sense of emptiness in people.

I'm talking about American people. Do you know it is now estimated by research, Harvard research, that America is the saddest nation in the world? Did you hear what I said? It's not Mexico. It's not Nigeria. It's not Iraq. But there is more sadness, loneliness, emptiness, and depression in America than any other nation on earth. And we are the most developed, perhaps the most civilized, I don't know. Certainly the most technologically advanced nation on earth.

But there's a sadness there. Now what I'm going to say now, and I almost hesitated to say it, but I hope you understand the context in which I'm speaking. The people of the Largo Community Church, myself included, we drive nice cars, we live in nice houses, comfortable houses, and we dress well. God blessed you with this. I want you to remember that and give thanks to him and remember the blessing of the Lord.

You worked hard, you became educated. This is a well-educated congregation. You are entitled to all of this. God has given you all of this. But there are those today, because of the emptiness and that low self-worth, that low self-esteem, that they are trying to project worth by saying, "Look what I'm worth. See the car I drive? See the house I live in? See the clothes I wear? See the degrees I put behind my name? I'm really somebody and you don't seem to know that."

"I don't know why you don't know that. I've done everything to flaunt it in your face." But that's America. That's Harvard research. Self-esteem, low self-worth. And all the while God is saying, "You're my child. You're worth more than many sparrows. I'll leave the ninety and nine and go after you because you're valuable to me. You're worth something to me. I care for you. You call me Father."

God cares. Self-esteem is thought to be the one or one of the primary causes of depression. That's why there's so much depression in America. I mean we sell so many antidepressant pills. We are pill junkies in America. This affluent, educated, highly technological, perhaps the greatest civilization on earth, and we are sad. We are depressed, and we feel so lonely and empty.

Friend, it doesn't have to be that way. And worship of the Almighty can turn things around and bring glory to God and a great and wonderful salvation to your life. We don't know how really how to worship. Hallelujah. Praise be to God. Worship develops us. Now when we think of God, we think lofty thoughts of God. That's where it begins.

Remembering who he is, that's why Jesus gave this prayer, Our Father. The very first thing, think of who you are and the relationship you have. And then secondly, when you think that, and if you truly think that, there's going to come a hallowed be thy name. It's just one's going to automatically follow the other.

When you think God's thoughts, high and lofty and majestic thoughts, worship will come. And when worship comes, his presence, his love, his life begins to flow into you. And you begin to realize, I am somebody in God's economy, in God's eyesight. God has made me his child. I mean I can pray exactly like Jesus prayed. Jesus said, "I call him Father, you call him Father. You can pray like I pray."

And why did Jesus pray so often? Because God added so much into the very life of Jesus Christ. People feel so down, so low. With all the amenities, they feel sad. And the sadness, when it drops down to another level, it becomes depression. And that's when a person becomes incapable of doing things for himself or herself, things that they used to do. They don't have the energy, they don't have the inclination or the will to begin to do it. But there's a low level of sadness that seems to blanket so many American people and even in the church.

The other thing is, when we have low self-esteem, we read things into what's going on around us and particularly what other people are saying and what they're saying to us. We'll read something into it. A husband says to his wife, "Oh, that's a beautiful dress. You look so beautiful tonight." And then she thinks, "Does that mean I don't look beautiful other nights?"

We project and we read into and we bring about further sadness and further depression on ourselves. He didn't mean that at all. He meant you look beautiful today, you were beautiful yesterday, you're going to be beautiful tomorrow. I hope he meant that. But low self-esteem will read things in. What did you mean by that? I know what you meant by that. You do not know what he or she meant by that. It's not him, it's me and my slow self-esteem that's causing much of the problem that is going on.

Now when God's life comes in, new energy comes in. I feel alive. I can endure things that I didn't have the patience to endure prior to that happening. It comes about as I worship God. I am energized when I worship the Lord.