Conversations with God - 3

The Lord's Prayer

Once when Jesus was asked to teach people how to pray, He responded with what we have come to call the Lord's Prayer.  What is so striking about His response is that suggests a different understanding of prayer than many who might ask this question today might have. 

If we see prayer primarily as a way to present God with our situation and then to ask Him to change things for us, we will likely find this prayer somewhat less than helpful.  The purpose of this prayer seems to be much less about inviting God to come and work on our behalf, and much more about expressing a desire to join with God in the work He is already doing.  In other words, prayer is much less like placing an order, and much more like stepping to a stream* and entering into the flow of what God is seeking to do in our world (Your Kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven).   In other words, the prayer Jesus teaches us to pray is less about inviting God to step into the stream of our lives, and more about us being more willing to step into the stream of God's life!

Take a moment or two to read through the Lord's prayer, and notice how each phrase is either an expresses something about Who God is and how we depend on Him, or an expression of how our lives need to be drawn into the life of God.  How might listening carefully to the way we are invited to pray change the way we understand how and why we pray?  Praying in the way Jesus taught us to pray keeps us in the current/flow of God's grace/activity, and deeply grounded in the eternal reign of God, both now and in the future.  Not only is this prayer structurally and theologically the center of the sermon on the mount, it is to be at the center of our lives as well.

These questions and more are what Pastor Jon explores with us in the sermon.  If you would like to listen again, or perhaps for the first time, you can access our sermon library by clicking here.**

As you take the time to pray this prayer, can you sense the way it draws you into the life that Jesus invites us to participate in?  Can you sense why this is the way Jesus invites us to pray?  Let us pray . . .

*Click Here for some additional thoughts on what it means to step into the stream of worship in an article on the worship scene in Revelation chapter 4.  Prayer is one of the ways we step into the stream in worship.

**Sermons are generally posted to the website on the day they are delivered, but they sometimes take a little longer to get there.  If you don't find it right away, please check back later.  Thanks :-)