Dharius Daniels - Stop Settling in Prayer and Watch What Happens!

How you talk to God isn’t just an indication of what you believe about God; it’s also an indication of what you feel about yourself. When you start going to God, giving Him all these disclaimers before you make a request—"God, I know, Lord, listen…"—you can settle spiritually, emotionally, and financially. However, I believe I’m talking to some people who are tired of settling. A foundational text in Luke, chapter 11, offers us amazing insight. Luke 11 teaches us this: if you settle in prayer, you settle in life.

In this chapter, Luke records an exchange that Jesus has with His disciples. It’s interesting because at the beginning of this chapter, Luke mentions that the disciples are in a certain place, and they watch Jesus pray. After they observe Him praying, they ask Him to teach them to pray. I want to explain why that’s significant: these disciples are grown men, sons of the commandment who have gone through Bar Mitzvah; they understand the holy scriptures. These men have probably been praying for a significant part of their lives.

But it’s worth exploring—this something that deserves our attention. They learned to pray religiously, but then they saw Jesus pray and realized that He was doing something the people in church weren’t doing. Are y’all following me? They looked at what they had been taught to do and compared it with what Jesus was doing. What Jesus was doing wasn’t just different from what they had learned; it produced different kinds of results. When Jesus prayed, He walked on water, trees dried up, and dead men like Lazarus came leaping out of the grave.

What I learned to do is one thing, but I want you to teach me to do it exactly as you do it. Sometimes, it’s easy to stay stuck in an area because you love the person who taught you something so much that you can’t revisit what you were taught. Did you hear what I just said? It’s possible to love the people who taught you something so much that you never reconsider what you learned. It doesn’t mean they were bad people; it just means they were not perfect. Because they weren’t perfect, everything they taught us wasn’t right. Does that make sense? You would hope that each generation gets better.

So my hope is that when I’m in heaven, those I have taught will grow and evolve, recognizing where they need to eat fish and throw out their boats. Watch this: when they say, «Teach us how to pray,» Jesus gives them what’s called the model prayer, or the Lord’s Prayer. He provides them with a pattern for prayer. Now, Luke doesn’t even give us the entire prayer; he just summarizes it because he has a different point to make.

In Luke 11, you won’t see the entirety of the Lord’s Prayer because that’s not what Luke is focusing on. He gives you the first part and says, «When you pray, say: Our Father, hallowed be Your name.» Other Gospel writers say, «Our Father who art in heaven.» Luke knows the prayer, but he is intentionally skipping parts to summarize. However, something he says is significant; he states, «When you pray, say 'Our Father.'»

Now that’s important because the gender of the term «Father» is not necessarily significant; it’s relational. He is saying «Father» because the issue is not gender—it’s about relationship. He wants you to pray like you’re talking to someone with whom you have a relationship. Because how you talk to God isn’t just about what you believe about God; it’s about how you feel about yourself.

When you start going to God, listing all these disclaimers before making a request— «God, I know, Lord, listen…"—where is my church? I need someone in the chat to scream at your boy or something! Come on! When you go to God saying, «Now, Lord, listen to me; you know I had a rough week,» that’s someone who’s talking to a judge, not to their Father.

I pray that anyone watching this message shifts the way they converse with God, moving from the mentality of someone addressing a judge to acting like someone talking to their Father. Your daddy knows you’re crazy! David said in Psalms 103, «As a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear Him. He knows our frame; He remembers that we are nothing but dust.»

When you go to your father, you don’t make disclaimers. With friends, you might just say, «I did something stupid.» But many of us are talking to a judge, missing the revelation in the word «Father.» If we don’t see Him as a Father in Luke, we cannot obey the writer of Hebrews, who tells us to go boldly. You don’t go boldly before a judge; you go timidly. You go boldly before family. Your children come…