Happy Father’s Day! If you are new to Lakeside, you should know we love families. We see marriage and family as a sacred and holy institution. We have so many first-time dads at Lakeside, and first-time grandparents! We also have quite a few repeat offenders! Today we want to honor fathers past, present, and expectant. The strength and future of our nation, or Christ’s church, rests on the family. On Father and Mother. We’re here to encourage and support you.
For the past few weeks, we’ve been talking about Making Room for God. One of the things I wanted to do in this series is talk about the “mechanics” of prayer. For example, this week I wanted to talk about choosing a “place” of prayer. We know Jesus preferred to pray alone in the wilderness, in the mountains, in desolate places, or in gardens. He would pray in public too. But he frequently unplugged from public ministry to make room for his Father.
One of best books I’ve ever read on Leadership is called “Leadership on the Line.” If you are in any kind of leadership role, especially in the social sector, I highly recommend it. I first recommend the Bible. I especially recommend the Proverbs. But this book distills a lot of Biblical wisdom. The book has a lot to say about the “public” nature, dynamics, even the dangers of leadership. But it has even more about the “private” nature of leadership.
For example, the authors warn about the kind of “hungers” that threaten to derail a leader. A hunger for power and control. Remember how the devil tempted Jesus? He took Jesus to a mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and said, “all of it can be yours if you bow down and worship me!” A hunger for affirmation and importance. Jesus if you’d throw yourself from the high pinnacle of the temple and let the angels catch you, you’d have instant fame and celebrity. It would have made a killer YouTube or TikTok, viral video. A hunger for intimacy and delight. Just say the word and turn these stones into bread. Obey your hungers, thirsts, cravings, and desires. You deserve it! I find it amazing how a secular leadership text so profoundly resonates with biblical wisdom. Beware. Unmanaged hungers can destroy a person’s public and private persona in a New York second.
The authors even offers some unconventional wisdom for staying alive and not going off the deep end. First, they say distinguish between your role and self. To be authentic and effective your identity and self-worth has to be rooted in something deeper than your role. In the vernacular of Jesus, Jesus would remind us that first and foremost, before we are anything else, we are children of God. God is our Father, by his Holy Spirit we cry out to him, “Abba, Daddy.”
Second, they recommend everyone establish a “confidant.” We all need a trustworthy person in whom we can deeply confide. The authors say, “Someone who can help Humpty Dumpty put all the pieces back together when he falls.” Someone who competently guides us through times of loneliness, stress, or pressure.
Ironically, they recommend everyone also establish a place of “sanctuary.” Their description of sanctuary sounds a lot like the Biblical admonition to designate a Sabbath day of rest, refreshment. You need a place to cool off, unplug, process the day and week’s activities. You need a place (like a balcony) where you can regain needed perspective and balance. Jesus retreated mountains. From the perspective of a mountain things that seem larger than life are put in proper perspective. Jesus retreated to gardens. When you’ve spent the day in the concrete jungle, you need to reminded that you’re more than some cog in a manmade machine or program. You are first foremost creature, created by God and for God… not by the man, or for the man.
One of my favorite places of retreat is getting out on the lake, after dark, after all the boat traffic has stopped, getting out under the stars. The vastness of the universe reminds me of God’s vast goodness, and vast greatness. That he is in control. That he is sovereign.
You know Jesus spoke of two kinds of places. First, there are public places. In Matthew 6, we find men doing what men love to do. They are giving, praying, even fasting publicly. They are doing all sorts of religious things to be seen and noticed, applauded and admired, to one-up each other. Who is the greatest, most spiritual, most generous, most godly? I also think of the time Jesus’ brothers urged him to announce himself, to go to Judea, to publicly make a name for himself at a time of peak celebration. In John 7:3-5 they say, “Leave here and go to Judea so that your disciples can see your works that you are doing. For no one does anything in secret while he’s seeking public recognition. If you do these things, show yourself to world.” Jesus tells them that his time hasn’t arrived, but it was always their time!
But then there are also private places, “secret” places. Jesus own brothers became impatient, they mocked and ridiculed his practice of privacy, secrecy. Three times Jesus gives the same basic advice. (1) In Matthew 6:4 he says our giving should be in secret. (2) In Matthew 6:6 he says “when you pray, go into your private room, shut your door, and pray to your Father who is in secret.” (3) His advice for fasting is the same. Don’t let your fasting be obvious to men—do it in secret.
What are we to make of these public and private and secret places?
Every man has a public and private persona. Publicly, a man wants to be respected. A man wants to be seen as capable and competent. A man vies to establish his value and worth publicly. Publicly, men can seem inappropriately competitive. In Matthew 6, men can even be religiously competitive!
I’ve heard pastors explain it this way: In Matthew 17:5 the Father voice booms from heaven and he says of Jesus, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased. Listen to him!” There is a sense in which every man is on a lifelong quest, a kind of shadow-mission, to hear those exact same words. Deep down beneath his public actions, every man longs to know he is loved, to know he’s done well, to know his life matters for the good of others. Dr. Larry Crabb refers to this as man’s search or drive for significance.
One reason Matthew 6 (And John 7) is so profound, is because Jesus is setting us free not just from the hypocrisy of performative religion— but also the hypocrisy of performative manhood and womanhood. The key to public life isn’t performing to man’s standards, our even outperforming one another… the key to public life doesn’t have anything to do with what’s public at all…but with what’s done in secret!
By the way, men don’t have any more trouble going private and secret than public. Whenever a man’s search for significance hits a dead end. Whenever a man feels unaffirmed in his identity as a man, unaffirmed in his role as a husband or father… whenever he feels unloved, falls short of someone’s expectations, finds himself lacking capability, competence… or even worse character. Whenever a man can no longer look at the man in the mirror and respect what he sees… what does a man do?
I know it sounds cliché to say, but every man has a “cave mode.” Cave mode is when a man runs and hides, as much from himself as others. When a man doesn’t measure up… when he is disappointed or becomes a disappointment… when he realizes he cannot fix himself… he escapes privately, into secret. One of my dad’s places of retreat was the living room—there he would go to watch TV the entire evening. When he sat in his chair, you gave him his space. You didn’t enter that room without taking the temperature. There, his gears would be turning; he’d be working things out, his inner man brewing.
Every man does this—but not only men. Where is your cave? Where is that place where you retreat deeper into isolation? Maybe it’s the TV. Maybe it’s your phone. Maybe it’s a bottle, a vice. Maybe it’s a bedroom, an office, work, your car, maybe it’s a literal closet? You go to your cave to shut everything out around you. Sometimes a person cannot physically retreat—i.e. maybe you have toddlers—in the olden days women had shawls they’d pull over themselves for privacy if they were feeding the baby. But when they needed momentary serenity, they’d pull that same shawl over their head to shut out the distractions!
In cave-mode we often retreat deeper into anger, deeper into depression. We retreat deeper into our anxieties and fears, into our suspicions, into self-loathing, or self-pity, or hurt. In secret, we lick our wounds, nurse our grudges, entertain wayward thoughts and schemes. You can succumb to your hungers just as readily in secret place as in a public place.
What Jesus modeled, and what he actually commands in Matthew 6, isn’t just that we retreat to any old secret place…we already do. What Jesus suggests is that we retreat into secret, to seek intimacy with a God who is in secret, and for whom nothing about us is secret. This is a radical tweak—that instead of seeking some dark cave, we’d seek sanctuary in the secrecy and intimacy of the Father.
Three times Jesus gives the same basic advice. (1) In Matthew 6:4 he says our giving should be in secret. (2) In Matthew 6:6 he says “when you pray, go into your private room, shut your door, and pray to your Father who is in secret.” (3) His advice for fasting is the same. Don’t let your fasting be obvious to men—do it in secret. Again… (1) Matthew 6:4, your Father who sees in secret will reward you. (2) Matthew 6:6, “But when you pray, go into your private room, shut the door, and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” (3) Matthew 6:6. Don’t let your fasting be obvious… your Father who is in secret… and who sees in secret… will reward you.”
Instead of retreating in isolation, to a place of great self-destruction… seek the incredibly rewarding secrecy and intimacy of the Father. In secret, you can lay your greatest secrets before God. You can face any truth about God no matter how great, and any truth about yourself no matter how dark. You can confess your failures, name your demons, admit your weaknesses. You can ponder God’s will. You can confess your most basic needs. You can seek God’s forgiveness. You can seek his deliverance from temptation and snares of the evil one. You can find strength to conquer anger, envy, and bitterness. You can find grace to forgive to the same extent and with the same grace God’s forgiven you. Instead of running and hiding, you can run into the arms your Father and see him face to face.
In the heart of Matthew 6, we find the Lord’s Prayer. We often pray the Lord’s prayer publicly, but Jesus taught us to pray it in our secret places first! Matthew 6:9-13, “Therefore, you should pray like this: Our Father is heaven, your name be honored as holy. Your Kingdom come your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not bring us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.”