Running to Pray to the Father in Heaven*

What would happen if your first response to every situation was to run to God in prayer? In this heartfelt message, Pastor Chris Teien invites us to deepen our relationship with our Heavenly Father. Drawing from the Lord’s Prayer, John 4, Matthew 6, and personal reflections, we are reminded that prayer isn't a ritual, it’s a life-giving connection to the God who seeks us, knows us, loves us, and rewards those who seek Him. 

Link: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2285086/episodes/16335631

Key Points:

#1 Our Father Seeks Worshipers – John 4:23. God actively looks for those who will worship Him in spirit and truth.

#2 Our Father Knows Our Needs – Matthew 6:4–8. God sees our giving, prayers, and struggles—and invites us to pray with faith.

#3 Our Father Loves Us Deeply – John 3:16. God's love is demonstrated through Christ, who opens the way for us to become His children.

#4 Our Father Rewards Faithfulness – Hebrews 11:6. God blesses and rewards those who seek Him sincerely and trust Him daily.

Personal Stories from Pastor Chris:

• Honest reflection on personal seasons of strong and weak prayer habits.
• Building a deck project and realizing the need for better balance between work and time with God.
• Fun and meaningful dog illustration about genuine relationship over programmed obedience.
• Challenges of preaching topics like marriage or spiritual warfare while navigating personal spiritual battles.

Notable Quotes:

• "We should run to God—not just when life falls apart, but every day we wake up breathing."
• "God doesn’t want robotic worship—He seeks a real relationship with real people who really love Him."
• "You don't have to be perfect to pray—you just have to come."

Actionable Takeaways:

1. Start each day by acknowledging God in prayer, even if it’s brief.
2. Seek God's presence first when challenges or choices arise.
3. Practice worshiping God daily, not just when you feel spiritual.
4. Reflect on God's rewards in your life to build greater trust for the future.

Scripture References:

• John 4:23 – Worshiping in spirit and truth
• Matthew 6:4–8 – Private prayer and giving
• John 3:16 – God's love through Jesus
• Hebrews 11:6 – God rewards those who seek Him
• Psalm 139 – God’s intimate knowledge of our lives

Keywords:
 prayer life, seeking God, Lord’s Prayer, Heavenly Father, worship, God’s rewards, faithfulness, John 4, Matthew 6, Christian prayer habits

Challenge:
 God is not distant—He is your loving Father, inviting you to run to Him every moment of every day. Start today by drawing near, praying boldly, and trusting Him with your life.

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The WELL Faith Podcast offers encouraging, Bible-based messages from Pastor Chris Teien and guests. New sermons are released every Sunday. Replay episodes are marked with an asterisk. Find us online at ChrisTeien.com and Rockwell.Church in Virginia, MN. Email comments to wellfaith24@gmail.com

Transcript

Chris T 0:16

All right, we're gonna talk about our Heavenly Father, God our Father. And I fear that sometimes in being familiar with things, we just totally discount stuff and we're like, yeah, everybody knows that God's our Father, and we don't really think about it the way that we should. I mean, from what I understand, Muslims have like 99 different names for Allah, and none of them is Father. And in the Old Testament, God was holy, but he was seen as the Father of the nation, but Jesus is the one that said that we could approach God as our heavenly father, because Jesus has made it possible for us to become part of the family. So not everybody can call God their heavenly father. So the Bible says if you don't know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, that you're a child of the devil, he is the father of lies. But when you receive Christ as your Lord and Savior, you're adopted into the family of God. You're adopted as a child of God, you're born again, you're assured heaven. All of these great things happen when you receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, and then you can call on your heavenly father. And to think about who that is, I mean, that God, the God of the universe, is available to have a relationship with. Now, if you didn't have a great relationship with your father, if your father wasn't existent, if your father wasn't it wasn't caring, if your father played favorites and you weren't the favorite. If there's any reason you don't like the concept of father, don't bring this into your relationship with the Heavenly Father because He's perfect and He is the Creator, He is the one that holds all things together. And yes, so we pray. Jesus taught us to pray to our Heavenly Father. However, you can pray to Jesus and you can pray to the Holy Spirit, the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all God. But when Jesus taught his disciples to pray, he said, to pray to your heavenly Father. So the New King James Version, the Bible, has the Lord's prayer in this manner. Jesus says, Therefore pray, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors, and do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one, for yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen. And this is something that we're going to talk about up until Thanksgiving. And today we want to focus on our Father. So we might get to in heaven, but we might just leave that for next week. So the idea of praying is huge. So as I was thinking about it in this series of praying, and again, praying is something that we should all do, something that's so simple, something that should be so natural, but I'm pretty sure that it isn't in your life. I bet you don't pray as much as you could. I bet if you if we did like a survey thing and everybody filled out something like, How satisfied are you with your prayer life? 1 to 10, know God sees and knows what you're writing down, that we would all rate pretty low. There's different periods in my life where I'm much better at praying than others. Unfortunately, the period of time where my prayer life is the strongest is when my life is falling apart or it seems like it's going to fall apart, and there's like some kind of crisis or difficulty or fear or whatever, that gets me on my knees praying to the Lord. So maybe you need to live in a crisis to crisis existence so you stay close to God. I don't want to be that way. As I look back on the last couple of months or so, my life has been out of balance. So I've been trying to do too much, which has gotten in the way of my quiet time with the Lord. Yeah, I pray as I do things, but I think it was August 1st or so. My wife said she wanted a deck, and I said, I'm gonna get you one by your anniversary, which was Wednesday, last Wednesday. I prayed about it, and when it wasn't raining and when I wasn't busy and I had time, I I made it. I did it on Tuesday, I got it all done right before anniversary of everything but the stairs, and she's happy, and I'm happy, praise God. I'm just really tired. So, anyway, I think my prayer life is gonna be better once I get my life back in balance again. So, currently, when I want to have a quiet time with God, I'm very likely to fall asleep. So then standing and praying or praying out loud is helpful, but we want to talk about prayer, and I want to let you know, as a disclaimer, that some weeks I'm much better at it than others, and this week I do not feel like I've fully arrived. It's kind of like when I have to preach a sermon on marriage, and so I'm doing this message on Sunday on marriage conflict or whatever, and then on Saturday night I do something stupid and get in an argument with my wife, and then I have to come act like I got it all together in my marriage. So that was just hypothetical, too. That's never happened. No, actually, it seems like if I'm gonna preach on spiritual warfare or marriage, that things get interesting. So it's usually my fault. Any argument that I have with my wife is probably something that I cause, because she's a sweet woman. When you pray and we need to pray. I changed the title of the message to running to pray to our father in heaven. To run, do you run to pray? I mean, when when life is good, when life is difficult, when you don't know what to do next, when you're not, when you're not feeling it, when you're not, when you don't feel like you matter, when you don't know what your purpose in life is, when you don't know how things are gonna turn out, when you hate your job, when you hate your school, when you don't know what to school, what to do for school or job next, do you run to pray to your Father in heaven, or do you do it on your own? And then when it's really a mess, then you're like, well, I guess all we can do now is pray. No, we should pray first, and we should keep praying, and we should cry out to God and talk to God and tell Him our every need and tell Him the things that that we're happy about, that we struggle with, that we're concerned about, and we should run to pray to our Father in heaven. What if we changed our habits and the first thing we did in the morning when we when we woke up is we prayed? It doesn't have to be a long hour prayer, but to first go to God in prayer and say, Well, Lord, I'm alive and I must have a purpose for living today. What is it? Help me to accomplish this and do this and to glorify you and to live a sanctified life and to put God first. Because I think a lot of people roll out of bed and they check the news or social networking or look at their to-do list or they do all these things and they don't bring God into it. But what if you brought God into your day? What if you brought him in to every struggle at work or transportation, you know, the ride to the drive to work, and just had a constant open line with your Heavenly Father to run to pray to our Father in heaven. I think it would totally make a difference in your life. I think you'd see God at work a lot more. So many times God waits for you to ask for things in prayer. And when he gives it, then you know that the God of the universe cares about you, and he has opened doors and made things happen and helped you get through. And I'm not saying that if you just pray that you'll never have many troubles or struggles. Sometimes God uses troubles and struggles to help us to grow closer to him. Sometimes he uses our troubles and struggles to help us to reach others. Sometimes it's just the effect of sin or other people's choices. But we should pray about everything and all things we should pray. But to think that we can pray to God not just as some impersonal being or some God creator who doesn't care about us, but as a father who cares, a father who loves. And so I wanted to focus on just four thoughts or four categories of how the Heavenly Father loves us. You can spend a long time reading books and looking at Bible verses and things about God, our Heavenly Father, but I only have time to focus on a few. So let's do that. Number one, our Father seeks. So the God of the universe who created everything, spoke it into existence, can have anything he wants, do anything he wants, seeks you, is interested in you. So when Jesus was talking to the woman at the well on in John chapter 4, Jesus replied, Believe me, dear woman, the time is coming when it will no longer matter whether you worship the Father on this mountain or in Jerusalem. You Samaritans know very little about the one you worship. Well, we Jews know all about him, for salvation comes to the Jews. But the time is coming. Indeed, it's here now when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Father is looking for those who will worship him in that way. For God is spirit, so those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. God cares about you, and he is looking for you to seek him. He is seeking people that will worship him. He is seeking to love people that will worship him, to reward people that will worship him, to be in that relationship. I always use this example. It's probably even more prevalent today with robots, but I really love dogs. And Luigi was even mentioning that I should put my dog on YouTube because he was watching the amazing thing of the dog that we couldn't get to play catch until we got him to watch YouTube videos on how to play catch, and then he started to get a little more. That I sit in my lawn chair, and it's got this little cup holder here. I sit in the lawn chair, he drops the frisbee right there where the cup thing goes. I pick it up, I throw it. He gets it, runs around, brings it back, drops it right there. I don't have to play tug of war, don't have to chase him down. He just drops it, just waits for it, and I throw it again. And I like that a lot. I like the fact that the dog wants to play, I like it that the dog likes me. However, in today's highly technological world, it's very possible, especially now that our high school has a robotics team, and some of the kids in our church are actually part of the robotics team. Actually, I think one of the kids here is one of the kids that lettered in robotics. They could build a robot dog and it could do everything that I just mentioned. It could be programmed to go out and do what I wanted to do and come back and do everything perfectly because it's programmed to do that, and that's the expectation. Would I be happy about that? It'd be okay. I mean, if we're gonna program it, we might as well program it to like rake the leaves and mow the grass and do some more useful things. But in a relationship, I am totally delighted and in love with that dog because that dog has made a choice to be into me, to want to interact, to play, to love, to care, to beg. He's getting really good at begging too. I think he's starting to cry when he doesn't get treats. It just breaks my heart. I would give him everything, you know. Here you go, dog. But you are not a dog. But the heavenly father, who created all, is looking for people to be in a relationship, looking for people to spend eternity with him, looking for people that will worship him and love him in a relationship because he loves you and cares about you. He is seeking you, he cares about you. The Heavenly Father is seeking people who will worship in spirit and in truth, who will look through God's word and his personal letter to us. Learn how to live a life that totally transforms our relationships and can even change the world if we would put God first. It glorifies God, and then we have all eternity to spend with him. But the Father is seeking worshipers, the Father wants us to have a relationship with him and to be involved in that. And that is a totally wonderful thing. I mean, because our family relationships are temporary, and sometimes they're not even that great. And our work relationships are temporary, and our friends are temporary, our friends they die, they move away. Sometimes they're better friends than others. But here we're talking about the God of the universe wants to be in eternal relationship as your Heavenly Father, and that is awesome and huge. And we should embrace that and pursue that and seek the Lord because the Father is seeking, is looking for those who will worship him in that way. What an awesome thing. What an awesome opportunity we have. So, number two, our father knows. There isn't anything that gets past him. Some of us, we don't want to run to the Heavenly Father in prayer because we know what we did and we assume that He did too, that He does too, that He knows what we thought or what we did or the thing that we did that we shouldn't have done, or the thing that we lied about or covered up or whatever. Father knows everything. Yet He still cares, He still wants us to be in that relationship. I mean, it made it possible for Jesus died on the cross for our sins so we could be in this relationship and we're not perfect. So we walk like the prodigal son sometime back to the Heavenly Father and say, I really messed up. And that was wrong, and help me not to do it again, and then you move forward in that relationship with your Heavenly Father. So, what are three things the Heavenly Father knows? Number one, he sees when you give. So, Matthew 6, 4 in this passage, give your gifts in private, and your father who sees everything will reward you. So now I just actually told you that I was gonna text message give while Dan was talking to actually show you that you can text message give and how fast and easy it is and everything. So I didn't tell you how much I gave or whatever. But the idea here is giving your gifts in private is that you don't announce to everybody how much you give. We don't put up a chart of who gives what. I mean, it's good for a pastor to tell people that I want to lead by example and I tithe and I put God first with my finances, but you don't tell people amounts. Actually, sometimes if people give a percentage, for some people to tithe 10% is a lot of money, and for other people, 10% would be nothing. So the Bible in the Old Testament talks about the tithe, which is good and awesome. It's interesting that Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University talks about the importance of tithing. And a question that often gets asked of pastors and of Dave Ramsey's organization and stuff is should I continue to give if I'm in debt? And some people say, oh no, if you're in debt, you shouldn't give anything until you're out of debt. But in this world that we live in, that day is never. I don't really know people who are not in debt, but I've I found this on the Dave Ramsey website. The Bible never mentions anything about hitting the pause button on tithing. Now it doesn't say we'll go to hell if we don't tithe, but the tithe is clearly a scriptural command from God. In fact, in Malachi 3.10, God actually promises to bless us if we faithfully tithe. Here's something, this is from Dave Ramsey now, or Dave Ramsey's organization. Here's something else. Many people have noticed when they stop tithing, their finances seem to get worse. Whoa! That's why I would never suggest pausing it to pay down debt. You can probably find other areas to trim if you try. If we can't live off 90% of our income, we probably can't live off 100% either. So when I say tithe, I don't say that we should legalistically just give 10%. And if actually you tried to give what the Old Testament givers gave, it'd be a bigger percentage. But we should give back to God, and God sees when you give. And that's a huge thing. So, I mean, Jesus pointed this out that give your gifts in private, and your Father who sees everything will reward you. So when we give, he can reward you. Actually, the in the Old Testament says the purpose of tithing is to teach us to put God first and to honor Him. And when you put God first with your finances, sometimes that makes a little bit of a shortage where you have to pray about your finances and prioritize them. But giving is huge. So he sees when you give or why you don't give, or when you don't give, what you what you spent it on instead, and how you prioritize them, or if you do give the sacrifices that you made. So the Heavenly Father sees what you give when you're generous, when you're not, when that beggar on the street corner is asking for something and you choose to give them something or not, or maybe you choose not to give them cash, but you run out and get them some kind of gift certificate or something like that that they can't use to buy something that could be harmful to them. But he sees when you give and when you don't give, and he cares about that. And he, it says, will reward us for what we give or what we don't give. So we should pray about giving. So in Deuteronomy 14, 22, again, and again, this is the Old Testament, but Jesus didn't say don't tithe, he told the Pharisees, when you give, when you tithe, anyway, you must tithe of all your crops of every year, bring this tithe to eat before the Lord your God at the place he shall choose as a sanctuary, supplies to your tithes of grain, new wine, olive oil, the firstborn of your flocks and herds. The purpose of tithing is to teach you always to put God first in your lives. Now, 2 Timothy 3.16 says that all scripture is God breathed and useful for teaching and correcting and rebuking and training in righteousness. And so all scripture includes the Old Testament. So I do not have any grain, I do not have new wine, I do not have new oil, I do not have firstborn of flock and herds, but I do have the first fruit of income, I do receive something, and what am I going to do with that? If I give it back to God, if I put God first with my finances, then that is an act of worship. And we just saw that the Father is seeking worshipers who will worship him in spirit and in truth. So an act of worship is giving. And here it says, if I give in private, if I give, not showing everybody, telling everybody how much I give, not blowing a trumpet and saying, Look, everybody, here's ten$100 bills right now. Bring that offering plate over here. I'm gonna put it right here. Everybody see that? Look at me. No, you get your reward from the people then. Oh, isn't he awesome? No, give your gifts in private, and your heavenly Father will reward you. Repeatedly, the Bible talks about God rewarding, God blessing as you give, God sees when you give. I encourage you to pray about that. Again, you don't get barred from heaven because you didn't tithe, but you also don't get blessed on what you give and the finances for it. I mean, just think about it for a second, okay? If you were gonna tithe, you got 10% going to God and 90% for yourself. Now, a better way to do that is to say, okay, I received this income and I need this much for myself. So I need to pay my bills and I need to do this, this, and this. And so I have this much left. So that means I can give this amount, which probably way more than 10%. But what if I did give 10% and somehow I saved through the course of the week or whatever, I saved money here, I saved money there, and I saved and I saved and I saved all these things. And at the end, you came out ahead. Yesterday I had my little coupon, went bought in dog food, got half off, 50% off at the hardware store because it was their celebration thing. And then I needed a different computer, and my wife found one on clearance, and I said, Hey, it's been on clearance for a month. Tell them that it should have a lower price because it's been on clearance for a month. So she talks to them and they're like, Yeah, we'll knock another$150 off of that. So if you keep adding that up all the time, you can come out ahead just with God's blessing in your life. But anyway, the idea is that God sees when you give. You should give something, and you should pray about that, study that. Maybe Financial Peace University would be a good thing for you to go through. You can watch it online. So for us to get together as a church and do it probably isn't going to work because of all your schedules and everything. But God sees when you give. God sees when you pray. When you pray, go away by yourself. Shut the door behind you, pray to your father in private, then your father who sees everything will reward you. So we pray to the Lord. And what do we pray? Do we pray the same thing over and over again? Do we pray in such a way that is just from memory and it's not really us interacting with God? Or do we pray our heart and our needs and our cares and our concerns? And do we pray for other people? Are we intercessors? Do we pray that we wouldn't just be happy but we would be holy? Do we pray that we would be part of God's plan and that we would give up those things that are in the way? He sees when we pray. He sees what we pray. He actually knows our heart, but he wants us to pray. So he knows what we need before we ask, but he wants us to pray. And the coolest thing to do is to have a prayer list. I don't have an organized prayer list. I didn't go to the store and buy a journal and everything's neat and orderly. I do have like a big stack of papers and napkins and little post-its and stuff that have prayer requests on it that sometimes I threw in the file and that are answered now. And I guarantee you that as you're praying about stuff, when you write it down, you'll be able to look at that list and you'll be like, wow, three years ago I was so concerned about this, I thought we were gonna be homeless, and that wasn't gonna work out, and everything was gonna be terrible. And God got us through that, and God answered that impossible prayer, and God did this, and I really wanted that, and God showed me I didn't need it. I don't have it, and I'm just fine with that. Actually, I'm glad I didn't get it. And all of these things, when we pray and we ask God, God sees, God knows, God rewards. That's what it said on there right there. Your father who sees everything will reward you. He sees when you fast, so I'm running out of time, so I'm gonna talk about that in the future. So when we fast. So, but the idea is that when you fast, but when we fast that we shouldn't like let everybody know we shouldn't go, oh, I'm so hungry. What are you doing? I'm fasting for the Lord. It's like God doesn't look at you and go, oh man, you look really hungry. I'm gonna answer your prayer because you are so hungry. Instead, it's like you put off eating because you're so concerned about this prayer. You are so concerned about praying that you just wanted to focus and obey me and follow me. And another thing about fasting, I mean, you can fast from media, you can fast from sugar, you can do all sorts of different fasts. Elmer Towns has this book on nine different types of fasting, and Campus Crusade or Crew does a good job of teaching you how to fast. I've got like a little booklet that I could get you. But one of the things about fasting when you're denying yourself is it helps you to have a stronger resolve against giving in to temptation. It helps you to be more disciplined. He knows how to give good gifts. He knows how to give good gifts. Matthew 7 11. If you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him? God knows how to give good gifts. He knows how to give gifts that you need, gifts that are good for you, gifts that won't lead you into temptation or into trouble or to distraction. He knows how to give good gifts. Number three, our Father loves. He loves us so much that he sent Jesus for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. Verse that my granddaughter just memorized the other day. He sent me a little video. It's so awesome to see my grandkids memorizing scripture. She's not a Bible quizer yet because she's not old enough, but she's working on it. Pre-Bible quizzing. But our Father loves us, He loves us enough to correct us. So God will discipline us. God will correct us. My child, don't reject the Lord's discipline and don't be upset when he corrects you. For the Lord corrects those he loves, just as a father corrects a child in whom he delights. You ever seen these kids that never get corrected? They're like at Target or Walmart or whatever, and they're like doing all sorts of stuff, and their mom's just like, don't, little Billy, stop. Come on now, you're embarrassing us all. It's like, come on, get in there, grab your kid. It's terrorizing the place. But God loves enough to step in and correct you and discipline you. Hebrews 12 talks all about that. Have you forgotten the encouraging words God spoke to you as his children? He said, My child, don't make light of the Lord's discipline and don't give up when he corrects you. For the Lord disciplines those he loves and he punishes each one he accepts as his child. As you endure this divine discipline, remember that God is treating you as his own children. Whoever heard of a child who is never disciplined by his father? If God doesn't discipline you as he does all of his children, it means that you are illegitimate and are not really his children at all. So God will step in and correct you. Sometimes you go through difficulty, maybe even sickness can be a form of discipline. But as God steps in, he wants you to change your behavior. He wants you to stop doing that thing. If you want to avoid the Lord's discipline, as soon as you realize you've fallen into sin, confess that to the Lord and run to your heavenly father and say, I did that, that was wrong. Please forgive me. Help me not to do it again. I'm gonna make these changes to make sure I don't do it again. And sometimes that will hold off the Lord's discipline. But if you're gonna live in unconfessed sin, sometimes God steps in to get your attention, to help you to change your behavior. Because he's not so much interested in your comfort as he is in helping you become a true Christ follower in holiness and sanctification. Number four, our father rewards. Our father rewards. It is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him. He rewards when you are walking in a relationship with God, you can just look back and see all the different things that he's done to answer prayer and to help you to live a life and experience life in a way that you've never experienced before, to help you have insight and wisdom that you wouldn't have otherwise, to live a life of purpose and meaning. Even if your job doesn't change, even if your circumstances don't change, even if your health problem doesn't change, God can still reward you, God can use you, and there are those heavenly rewards that someday when we're done here, the Lord is going to evaluate our lives and reward us for our faithfulness. And the Bible even talks about storing up treasure in heaven and receiving crowns and all these different rewards, our Father rewards. I'm gonna show you a quick video and then Dan is gonna come up. But again, it's really easy to talk about prayer. It's like talking about basketball and saying, you talk a good game, but I've seen you on the court. Some days I'm a better prayer than others, but I do know how to pray. And I have seen God answer amazing prayers, and I promise you, my amazing answer to prayers weren't because I saw a prayer book and got the right lingo or said the right words or had the right posture. It wasn't that God looked at me and said, Wow, he has really got it together when it comes to prayer. I'm impressed. Let's give him this now. Watch this video.

SPEAKER_00 26:29

What is prayer? Stale tradition, ritual, a good luck charm, part of some religious checklist, done to appease a higher being so we can get what we want, or at least avoid the lightning bolt. Prayer has been redefined and twisted and confused, but at its essence, prayer is simply talking to God, the God who spoke the universe into creation, who gives us life and breath, who holds all things together. This God wants us to talk to him in the vastness of all that exists. He actually cares about us personally, individually. How can we not pray to such a loving God? Wherever we are, how can we not thank him for what he's done? Or cry out when we need help, when we need forgiveness, when we're afraid, when we give thanks for our blessing, or question where our next meal will come from? Why would we live a life apart from him? It's not about for me. How could any pastor or well-than word impress the author of time and stuff? And so we ask that his kingdom come. His will be done on earth and in our lives as it is in heaven. That is prayer.