Week 3 Day 1

Matthew 6
9 “This, then, is how you should pray:
“ ‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
10 your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us today our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation, s
but deliver us from the evil one.’ [1]
 
 
We often make prayer to mystical, as if it is to be driven by a particular emotion or motivation.  Too much of the time we make prayer about how we feel.  We think prayer will happen to us, like it should be something we don’t have to work at.  None of that is right.  Prayer, like all the other things we are talking about in this series, is a discipline.
 
Jesus when he prayed in the garden sweat blood, imagine that.  I doubt you have ever sweat blood, I certainly haven’t.  That doesn’t sound like Jesus was just motivated to pray that night in Gethsemane, it sounds like it was work.  But maybe we simply don’t know how to pray or what to pray for. 
 
In the text today Jesus was giving instruction about the things we should pray for.  Many people might have this prayer that is often called “The Lord’s Prayer.”  It gives a basic outline for how to pray and it can guide us in our prayer lives.
 

• First, we start by recognizing who we are praying to, and we give Him honor.
• Second, pray for the kingdom of God to com and for His will to be done.  This can take a lot of forms.  We can pray for the return of Jesus, for God to bring justice, for the gospel to be proclaimed. 
• Third, we pray for provision for our needs.  That is not to be confused with praying for extra blessing, but for God to provide our needs. 
• Fourth, that we would receive forgiveness and forgive others.  Forgiving others is often very difficult, but when we start praying that we would forgive others our heart and mind changes.  Our attitude changes. 
• Last, we pray that we would avoid temptation and be able to resist the temptations of the devil.  That includes all the lies we find in culture. 

 
Billy Graham, the late and famed evangelist as well as the former president of my alma matter the University of Northwestern St. Paul, preached about the work of prayer a long time ago.  Take just a couple minutes to watch and listen to what he says about prayer here. 


[1] The New International Version (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011), Mt 6:9–13.