[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to the leaders notebook with Dr. Mark Rutland. Dr. Rutland is a world renowned leadership expert. He is a New York Times best selling author and he has served as the president of two universities. The Leaders Notebook is brought to you by Global Servants. For more information about Global Servants, please Visit our website, globalservants.org Here is your host, Dr. Mark Rutland.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: The fundamental theological reality of all the basic the greatest truth is this.
God is.
Hello, I'm Mark Rutland. Welcome to the Leader's Notebook. We're in the middle of a series that I'm teaching on this podcast based on my bestselling book, 21 Seconds to Change your World.
I want you to have this book. I want you to have it because I want you to get back in touch with with the Lord's prayer and the 23rd Psalm. The reason the book is called 21 seconds to change youe World is because that's about how long it takes to pray the Lord's Prayer.
So I'm urging you to get this book. At the end of this podcast, someone's going to come on and tell you exactly how to get this book. If you don't have it, I want you to have it. I want you to get it. And you may want to get multiple copies and give them to people that you know who need to reengage with the greatest prayer of all and with the greatest psalm of all. It's almost indisputable that Psalm 23 is David's masterpiece. And the Lord's Prayer is certainly the only prayer that Jesus taught us.
Now in the next few episodes of the Leader's Notebook, I'm gonna be talking about comparisons between the two masterpieces. In the last few episodes, I've been talking about who Jesus was, who David was, how I became engaged, if you will, reengage with these great classics, some sort of preliminary issues about the two great masterpieces. But now we're going to begin to plumb into the language of the two and places in which that language coincides. So the ways in which the two beautiful masterpieces, Psalm 21, Psalm 23 and the Lord's Prayer, how they connect.
So let's begin with that.
What I'm going to talk about is Jesus words and how they align with David's words.
So look at, for example, the very beginning, Jesus begins his prayer.
Our Father who art in heaven.
David begins his the Lord is, in other words, our Father who art in King James language, Our Father who is David says the Lord is.
That's the fundamental truth of all theology. The Lord is the greatest, most awesome, terrifying, healing, shocking, wonderful, thrilling truth ever encountered by humanity.
God is.
David emphasized this not once but twice, stating categorically in other Psalms, Psalm 14, by the way, and Psalm 53, the fool hath said in his heart there is no God.
Once, on the same day, in the same mail delivery, I received two anonymous packages, deliveries, if you will, the senders of which obviously trusted in opposite views of what it means that God is.
One was a letter, unsigned, of course, as such letters always are.
It was a vicious, vituperative, and bitter letter, poison dripped from every word.
The second was a package in which I found a beautiful new sport coat that was actually the perfect right size and a color I particularly liked.
It also was unsigned.
Try as I might, I could not discover who sent that coat.
I even called the store whose manager told me he had been assured by that particular customer that he would never buy anything from him ever again if he revealed the donor's identity.
In the box with the coat was a simple note, typed so I could not even make an effort at identifying the handwriting.
A type note that said, you're doing a wonderful job. Your ministry has blessed me and my entire family.
Receive this and be blessed.
The writer of that acidic attack note believed he was truly anonymous.
The giver of the jacket believed that he wasn't.
He believed that God, who sees and knows all we are, knows exactly what we've done, that nothing is anonymous to Him.
If that is not sobering to you, you have lived a better life than I have.
Which of us is not discomfited by the reality that whatever anonymity in which we may drape ourselves outwardly, nothing is hidden from Him.
He is.
He is, and he sees everything.
On the other hand, it is also liberating, albeit painfully liberating at the point of honesty and confession, because there is no hope of hiding anything from Him.
There is no need to even try.
There is no depravity, no dark corner of my soul that I can shield from his eyes.
So I do well to just say it, to simply lay it out there in front of his holy eyes, to confess. I may as well confess he's already seen it, because all I'm doing is acknowledging the sin I cannot hide from Him. Anyway, God is just that he is.
Despite all the absurd denials of all the poor, sad atheists, regardless of humanity's ignorant sin and inhumanity to itself, the greatest truth of all is that he is.
David's first three words in Psalm 23, as magnificent as they are lack one great truth that Jesus of Nazareth adds with one word. That word is Father, and it changes everything.
Jesus says. Our Father who is yes, the Lord is Yes, God is Yes, God exists and sees all and knows all and is not fooled by all our puny efforts at anonymity. Yes to all that.
But then Jesus makes it even more wonderful. Our Father God is and not only is, he is our Father.
Nothing else in the Lord's prayer or the 23rd Psalm, nothing else among all the words or in any prayer in all of life affords us so much hope as that one great word. Father.
Our Father who is.
Roll it around in your mind. The God who is and who sees is not the cosmic cop waiting for you to step out of line so he can blow the whistle and write you a citation.
He's not the great hockey referee in the sky looking for an excuse to throw you in the penalty box or worse, disqualify you entirely.
The God who is is Our Father.
If both the Lord's prayer and Psalm 23 ended right there, this would actually be sufficient truth to heal us all.
Several times I preached at an inner city evangelistic outreach called the Minneapolis Soul Fest platform. A huge platform was set up in a blocked off street.
Banks of speakers were the size of the pyramids. We blasted music out at several decibels above the level where all the birds in the air died, and I would preach from that same platform.
When seekers came forward at the invitation, the workers would kneel on the edge of that huge platform and pray with them. One young woman came forward and laid her forehead on the platform edge so that her hair fell down on both side of her face and shielded her face.
No one seemed to see her. So I knelt with her myself and I said, would you like me to pray with you? And she said, yes, without lifting her head. I never saw her face.
I said, I'm going to lead you in some words. I want you to just pray with me right out loud. Just pray after me as I lead you. Are you ready? She said, yes. And I began, heavenly Father.
She said nothing.
I said, miss, I want you to pray after me. I want you to understand I'm going to lead you. You repeat what I pray and Jesus will come into your heart.
She said, yes. I began again, our Father in Heaven.
When she still would not follow, I asked her, I said, is there a problem, miss?
At this point she raised her head. For the first time I saw her poor little battered face.
Her left eye was swollen shut, bruised like thick purple fingers stretched across her cheekbone, it was obvious that her split lip needed stitches. It looked to me, and just as obvious that she was not gonna get them.
Tears streaming down her little battered face, she said, look, mister, I need God, but I've got all the Father I can handle.
When speaking of God as Father, Jesus is not summoning any of our painful memories of the way to human weaknesses of our earthly fathers.
He speaks instead of a divine Father whose attributes are our hope and joy. He is never too busy for us, never too tired to talk, never too limited in knowledge or wisdom to be of any help.
And he is never absent. He will never desert us, never disappoint us, never die, never get sick or old or grow senile. His resources are never depleted.
His love knows no limits. His power is boundaryless.
His grace has no frontiers, and he will never, ever, ever abuse us.
When Jesus added our Father who art in heaven, he added those words to comfort us. This was not to say our Father is distant, aloof, far beyond the skies. The statement in heaven is not about distance or geography or even dimension. It's about character. Our Father is heavenly of heaven, like heaven, pure, holy, utterly, without any earthly sins, faults, or failures that have so often stood between us and even the best of our dads.
Our Father, who is that truth, is more than enough.
Without that truth, everything else will never be enough.
That our Father is heavenly is, well, heavenly indeed.
Now I'm going to invite you to pray the Lord's Prayer with me. We're closing every one of these episodes on my book, 21 seconds to change your world. We're closing every episode by praying the Lord's prayer.
It takes 21 seconds and we're gonna pray it together.
If you can stop what you're doing, if you can close your eyes, do. If you're driving, do not close your eyes. Not even for 21 seconds. But you can still pray it with me. If you're out jogging or on a power walk and you've got your earbuds in, if you can stop and pause for 21 seconds and close your eyes, fine. But you can pray it as you walk. I have walked miles and miles and miles, praying the 23rd Psalm and the Lord's Prayer over and over and over again while I walk. Sometime it might be an interesting experiment to you to see how many times in a mile you can pray the Lord's Prayer, not hurrying, not rushing through it, but praying at a steady pace. It takes about 21 seconds and it will change your world.
Now I'm gonna pray aloud. I want you to pray with me wherever you are. So we're praying together in unison, the greatest prayer ever written, the only prayer that Jesus ever gave us to pray, the Lord's Prayer, The Our Father.
Are you ready? Are you where you can pray now? Let's pray together.
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.
Amen.
Now stay tuned. Someone is gonna tell you exactly how you can get this bestselling book. 21 seconds to change youe World. I want you to have it, and I want you to get enough copies for your friends or your cell group or your Sunday school class or other members of your family.
I'm so glad you joined me today. Until we meet again.
This is the Leader's Notebook, and I'm Mark Rutland.
[00:13:50] Speaker A: To order a copy of 21 seconds, please visit the
[email protected] Enter the promo code. 21 seconds to receive $5 off of each book. Or you can call us toll free at 888-823-8772. Thank you for listening to the Leader's Notebook.
