CPC Sunday School | The Lord's Prayer #1 (3/3/2024)

This is an introductory class on the Lord's Prayer. The speaker discusses the reasons why Christians pray, the obstacles to prayer, and the importance of the Lord's Prayer. He emphasizes that prayer is a means of grace, a duty, a delight, and a means of revival and glorifying God. He also shares examples from Scripture and history to illustrate the power of prayer. The speaker acknowledges that many people struggle with prayer and cites statistics showing a decline in prayer among more educated and wealthier individuals. Lord's Prayer. This is the introductory class to the Lord's Prayer. So here's the the roadmap, if you will. First, just covering, I'm not going to assume anything here, so just covering, asking the properly stupid question, why do we pray? Why do Christians pray? In a sense, what is prayer? Then cover the obstacles. I'm just going to assume you have obstacles to your praying life and maybe even be thinking now about what some of those obstacles are and how we can potentially overcome some of those obstacles. Then a little bit of time of why the Lord's Prayer in particular. Why are we looking at that? And just touching on how to pray the Lord's Prayer, because really from after this class, it gets into the meat and the bones of that and then just a few resources on praying the Lord's Prayer. Okay, but before we begin, one anecdote. I was at Presbytery, should have been about a month ago, talking to a very good pastoral friend of mine. He'd been in pastoral ministry for 30 years plus, seeing a lot of things, as you can imagine, and he said, Mark, I've got not a ton of regrets, but one huge regret I have in my pastoral ministry of three decades plus is I did not teach people, my people, how to pray. Didn't encourage them enough how to pray, didn't instruct them, exhort them enough on how to pray. If I could go back and do anything, I would redo that. Teach my people more and more how and why to pray. I'm going to try and make good on that regret. We all have pastoral regrets. We all have regrets in general, but I think he's probably right, and I think probably most pastors would agree with him that that's something that they, we, tend to neglect. So that said, again, this asks just the properly stupid question. Why do we pray? Why do we pray? What are some, some reasons you would give as to why we pray? Here's some I jotted down. This is not, what's that? Very good, yeah. So I, here's some I jotted down. This is not an exhaustive list. That reason is up here, okay? Let's just roll through these, all right? The means of grace. We are instructed to pray as a duty. It's our delight. The means of revival and glorifying God. So let's just roll through these. It's a, firstly, prayer is a means of grace. What does it mean of grace? Shorter Catechism is great on this. Emphasis on, it's the ordinary means, the usual means, the customary means that Christ communicates to us what he has done for us as our Savior. Now what are those means that he does that? We, I know I'm guilty of this, I sometimes just say, well, word and sacrament. You probably hear that combo the most, word and sacrament. But you're leaving out the big third one. It's word, sacrament, and prayer. Word, sacrament, and prayer are the means of grace. Means of grace, you could just simply say, these are the chosen instruments that God has appointed to grow you up into salvation. And they're the ordinary means. So maybe by contrast, I know for me, I like nature. You know, I like hiking in nature. I like being in nature. And sometimes I think, man, I feel, what's a properly non-pantheistic way to say this? You know, you feel closer to God when you're in nature. That's fine. That's wonderful. That is not a, we would not call that though, a means of grace. I cannot stand up here and say, everyone needs to hike. Because when you hike, you will feel closer to God. No, I like it, and maybe you have your own thing. But that's not an ordinary means of grace. God has told us in his Word, hey, here's how I'm going to grow everyone, all of my people, up into salvation. The Word, reading the Word, hearing the Word, preaching the Word, listening to the Word, sacraments, which are baptism and Lord's Supper, and then what we are doing today and focusing on, and why we're going to spend time on it, is prayer. Through prayer, God shapes us into who we need to be and who he's called us to be. Here's just an easy example. All right, but you, this is Jude, at the end of Jude, building yourselves up in the most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit. Keep yourselves in the love of God. You could just turn that into a question. How do I keep myself in the love of God? What do I do? Well, there's the answer. Build yourself up. How do I build myself up? By praying in the Holy Spirit. Be a person of prayer, right? God, of course, keeps us, but the means he's appointed to keep us is praying in the Holy Spirit. Okay, so that's one. It's a duty. I mean, there's a gazillion verses we could pick. This is probably the most common one. Very, very straightforward. Paul says, you know, rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. In the Greek, it means pray without ceasing, right? Be a person of prayer. In the Greek, that verb is in the imperative form, in the command form, right? God is telling us, be a person who prays always, all the time, without ceasing. Okay, it's also, though, not just a duty. Of course, prayer is a great delight. Again, a gazillion verses we could choose, but you can't go very far in the Psalms without seeing something like this, you know. The psalmist is pouring out his heart before God, casting his anxieties, his fears upon God, and then he says, you have given me relief, comfort, when I was in distress. You heard of my prayer. Prayer is an amazing delight, comfort to the saints. Here's what maybe not as often talked about, that prayer is A, you could maybe even argue it's V. V means of reformation, of revival. J. Edward Orr, I don't know if anyone heard of him. He's a pretty, pretty accomplished church historian who focused a lot of his attention on revivals, and he is so bold as to say this, no, not one, not one spiritual awakening has occurred anywhere, anytime in the world without prayer, apart from United Prayer. And if we think we're going to have a revival or reformation without prayer, we are fooling ourselves. As one example, Acts 1, right? The disciples, the saints, the apostles, they're gathered together there of one mind, devoting themselves to prayer. What happens after Acts 1? Yeah, Pentecost? And what keeps happening? Thousands, thousands are added to the church, right? You do see this great revival right after, of course, many things, but not least of which the saints are gathered together and they are united in prayer. Let me give you a historical example, a little more recently, okay? Haystack prayer meeting. Just five guys, they get together in this field and they start praying, and then, I'm probably butchering a little bit, but thunderclouds start to form, storm happens, and we've got to take shelter, so they take shelter under this haystack, and so it's come to be known as the haystack prayer meeting. That meeting, church historians say, of just these five guys, hey, we're just going to pray, they're focused, I think on Asia was their focus at this time, leads to this board of foreign missions, which I think is still around, the name might have been changed, but that foreign board of missions sends out over a thousand missionaries in just 50 years, and that started with just five guys, hey, let's get together and pray. From that tiny seed comes this mustard seed, mustard tree, bigger than all the other trees, okay? Here's an example from Scripture, right? Revelation 8, we don't even have to get into your eschatological views, but very important to see, here are the prayers of all the saints, and it's like those prayers are gathered together, that incense goes up to God, and what happens? God moves, so to speak, right? Pours out His judgment with peals of thunder and rumblings and flashes and so forth, but you get the sense when you read that in Revelation, the prayers of all the saints, not one prayer has gone unheard, not one prayer goes unnoticed, not one prayer goes unanswered, all the prayers of God's people rise like smoke to the incense and before God and before His throne. And then lastly, maybe most obviously, you know, nowhere is our theology more clearly revealed, and perhaps few things glorify God most than just simply prayer, right? In prayer we come before God, we are humbling ourselves, we are showing how completely dependent we are upon God in prayer, making God know, God, You are my King, You are my God, this is why to You and to You alone do I pray. So that's just a small sample size of why we pray and why we should pray. Anything I'm forgetting? Anything anyone want to add? Okay, because with that, just to be realistic, yet we have the problem of prayer. I might be speaking for just myself, but I will say, I do not pray as much as I want to, as much as I'd like to, as much as I ought to. Am I alone in that? Is that just me? All right, me and two other people face the problem of prayer, okay? I think it's probably a systemic problem, though. Gary Miller, I think he's a Canadian mathematician who was formerly a missionary. So this Evangelical Church is slowly but surely giving up on prayer, which could explain the state of the Evangelical Church, right? Okay, here's some convicting stats. I'll just give two. This is the Pew Research Center. It's just a very telling, interesting stat. This is a distribution by way of education. What is your educational level? You notice that big chunk, so going from left to right, uneducated to highly educated. So the least educated, high school or less, is praying the most. The more learning this that you acquire, and I say this because I know many of us, throw myself in here, going further to the right, comes this tendency to pray less. And I'll leave you to guess why, but I think it's probably fairly obvious, right? The more and more you know, you can have a certain amount of self-reliance, self-confidence, rationalism, so on and so forth, as to why you don't need to pray. Here's another one, okay? Pew Research Center. Going from left to right is your wealth, your income status. So those who are the poorest on the left are praying the most often. The middle class gets a little bit of a bump, so good for them. And then the wealthiest are praying the least, according to the Pew Research Center. Again, probably fairly obvious. I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions as to why that is. But let's talk about us, you know. Why don't we pray, or at least pray as much as we'd like to? What are some reasons you don't pray as much as you'd like to, or wish you did? Time, yeah, yeah, absolutely, time. Yeah, right, yeah, yeah, very good, right, right, yeah, yeah, that's good. I jotted a ton. I did not have that reason down. That's a good one, yeah, yeah. Brian knows he prays, and God says, you're going to be a missionary in the desert by yourself. Yeah, okay, all right, all right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, 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yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Just as an encouragement as you pray remain teachable to be teachable in prayer I mean one of the things about the lord's prayer is the whole context is You know Christ is teaching them And I think it's a good word from tozer Christ himself is the one who is teaching us to pray and I think even more awesome is that second part We sometimes don't don't think of this as roman says the life, you know the life he lives He lives to god that's talking about christ right now the life christ lives right now He lives to god In heaven, it is still his beloved work. All right. Christ has not stopped praying. He is still praying for us So we are to remain teachable. All right, so that said Let's think about getting started Again, maybe you're thinking okay I know the obstacles. Here's what I need to do. But what do I do? How do I pray there's a second piece of good news is Christ himself teaches us how to pray He tells us here's what to do and here's how to do it And that is in the lord's prayer. I'll share an anecdote. I remember here young young man Came up to me somewhat somewhat maybe newish Uh rein reinvigorated in the faith. He he had open matthew's gospel. He was Looking at the lord's prayer. He just goes He's like hey I read this is like he's thinking it seems like this would like cover Almost everything you would ever need to pray for like and I was like I was like that's actually That is actually a great insight. I mean you're you're right. Like you've got a template right here that covers Any kind of intercession you would need to make and that is in the lord's prayer I love the way muller puts this this prayer can turn the world upside down right dictators here Thy kingdom come right your kingdom is is is not eternal thy kingdom come might will be made right justice will prevail And the kingdom of god will will become the kingdoms of the lord and his christ. All right Where's the lord's prayer found what two places? Matthew yeah matthew's gospel and Luke matthew and luke. All right, so we've got two places matthew and luke luke 11 matthew 6 That it's in two places tells us perhaps this is a recurring theme for jesus, so let's notice a few things here one one just notice jesus assumes We will pray, you know, not if you pray you see there in luke 11 when you pray That's his assumption. My disciples are going to be praying people Secondly he commands us To pray also that on if you look at matthews that greek word there after pray Is in a the imperative form just meaning command Like i'm not suggesting you to pray i'm telling you pray like this Thirdly which I think is very encouraging is jesus assumes we're going to need to be taught how to pray Right. This is going to be an acquired thing for us So it certainly is natural in the sense again the holy spirit gifted to us It's the most easy thing in the world as owen says and at the same time. It is something that we Learn and relearn and relearn and relearn tell the day that we die right for the natural term of our life We are going to be learning more and more how to pray That said we should be praying with courage. This is to go back to brooks and this is I think the beauty of the lord's prayer You know before our prayer meetings We're always saying something the effect of be brief biblical and bold so on and so forth And this is this is one reason why god loves to hear his own words Urging him with arguments taken from his own promises. We just spent weeks on god's covenant keeping grace right God is a god who makes covenants. God is a god who keeps covenants He loves to be pleaded with in terms of his covenant making and his covenant keeping And you know that's leverage if you want to call it that in in prayer like that should give us all the confidence in the world All right. Now let's talk about or maybe clear up some misconceptions. Let me state first um Well, let me just read this. Yeah Bold statement from packard every prayer of ours Should be praying the lord's prayer and key phrase in some shape or form Just hold on to that in your in your uh in your mind. Okay, here's calvin on it We are to examine our prayers by the lord's prayer, you know We look here's what i'm praying and I can hold it up to the lord's prayer How closely are these two things aligned or does one not look like the other right if it's always? My dog is sick. Please heal my sick dog, right? Not that that's bad. But if that's all we're praying Calvin saying hold up your prayers next to the lord's prayer So that's one statement. Let me balance that statement with and joanna and I were just talking about this Pattern of course does not mean parody We don't go the other direction and just repeat verbatim The burden of this class is not we wouldn't need to spend weeks on this if the whole class was just Recite the lord's prayer word for word It's a pattern a model to go off of Which is not to be confused with just parodying the lord's prayer. Okay That's why you want to let's think of it as a template a model It also gives us some guidelines right free to pray Free to express myself to going back to that phrase but staying within these helpful guardrails So i'm not wandering off into areas. I not I ought not to be wandering off into And really here's the nature of the class is that each phrase? Absolutely begets deeper prayer. So the moment we say hallowed be thy name Man, that is a prayer unto itself All right, and so we'll talk a little bit about about that but that is the nature of this class so for example We say this every sunday. We're saying it today. We pray hallowed be thy name Well, just think of how many offshoots rightly come From this phrase. Okay, and this is just I mean, I just jotted this down and this could go a million different directions But you could be praying god may your name be hallowed in my life individually As a husband in our marriage our family wherever I work You know, your name is not honored in my workplace I want it to be honored in my workplace. How about this country? Uh in redemptive history as in as in like you're reading through your bible and your bible reading that morning you could pray Oh, man, I you know lord. I see what you did through the prophet jeremiah Hallowed be your name and the way you worked through jeremiah You could do it even in history man lord. I see you are the author of all history Hallowed be your name in history and so on and so on and so forth. So just from that one this one phrase And this is just one example. There's a gazillion offshoots that we would be right and good to pray to pray. Uh with confidence So here's kind of the road map of where we're going. Here's the lord's prayer So we're going to take each each uh Week will be a session on these phrases these seven phrases So we'll spend next week Who's it paul or who's up dan paul? Paul's gonna show us what it means to pray Hallowed be thy name if you're wondering. I don't even know what the word hallow means come next week And you'll know what the word hallow means What does it mean to say thy kingdom come right and to earnestly mean that I think it's very noteworthy What do we start with? What are the first three phrases? Petitions all have to do with or not have to do with Yeah, right. The first three phases are all Glory be to god in some sense first table of the law. Let's call it and then what does the final three have to do with? now it's Now it's us give us our daily bread And so on and so forth. Okay So the glory of the lord's prayer is it really does cover? These more even more than this but these two things one how should we approach god? What is the christian's approach to god I get to come before god as my father So there's an amazing amount of intimacy and freedom That I as much as a child Comes to a father. That's how close I get to come to god So the theologians were called imminence how near god is and what keeps that from being? uh irreverent Is it's our father who art in heaven? So how transcendent god is he is my father who is in heaven who is to be feared and worshipped? And stood in awe of and the lord's prayer every time you pray it uh is showing you that as well as Again, going back to the question. What do I say? What's what are the what's the content of my prayers? I find it Phrase by phrase petition by petition in the lord's prayer That's it. I know for me like I for instance, I love praying through the psalms You of course could pray and I would commend it pray through the psalms. But when you're doing that You are matching up with the lord's prayer. You would not be doing something different, right? You can't read through the psalms and not hallow god's name You can't read through the psalms and not pray give me my daily bread, right? Does that make sense again? This is not verbatim. This is not verbatim repetition here. Okay So I would encourage you start now Uh this class we have curriculum, but this is a practicum class. I mean the whole point is that We are digesting material and then go in doing so I would encourage you start now Kids truly. I mean this is a prayer easy enough simple enough for any child to pray and yet deep enough For the godliest saint to take his whole life To uh to master so to speak and even master obviously is probably the wrong word. Okay because The lord's prayer the moment you start praying it it does challenge us. Here's just a few questions think of it this way, right? The moment you say hallowed be god's name, right? Is that The controlling purpose of my life right come whatever may come whatever suffering may come come whatever i'm called to So long as god's name is made great in my life I am content I am a joyful christian. That's a very challenging thing to pray So give it this way, okay For when we're praying god's kingdom come. How has god kingdom advanced? How's it advanced in revelation? By the saints who hold to the testimony of the word and who love not their life unto death All right. So when we pray thy kingdom come if you're praying in you know may come through in and through me Uh, that is a very challenging prayer to pray How about this the moment you get to thy will be done Two ways one You know god your revealed will write what you tell me in scripture I want that to be the the very uh heartbeat of my life, you know Husbands love your wives wives respect your husbands work diligently flee from sexual fornication Uh pray without ceasing rejoice always These things that god has revealed to us When we are praying that's what we're saying god. I want to be that person Make me that person and And so not just that god's will over our God's, uh decreed will his sovereign will over what happens to me, you know guy I was driving home I got in a horrible car accident mom has cancer Uh dog is sick, whatever it might be right you are saying, you know god i'm making me content rejoicing Faithful in the midst of your sovereign will over my life knowing that both of course are supremely good Yeah, right, yeah, yeah exactly right very good Right, yeah, I mean I think it's very real I mean, I think we're right to say like hopefully as it becomes obvious as to how important prayers I mean the enemy goal, of course would be to keep us from praying. That is the enemy's goal in every way So we're right to think of warring against it. I mean i'll share this anecdote I remember So I think you all know we as a session we get together to pray for for you all i'm praying for you all name By name one of the first times we got together I'm driving to meet to meet up for prayer Not one two flat tires. I don't even know how you do that two flat tires on the way We did not get to pray that night Oh, that's right, we prayed a little bit Yeah, we did not get to pray as much as we had hoped you the second time the very next time Dan was driving to it. He gets a flat tire We did not get to pray as much as we had we had hoped to so i'm not one to say satan is behind every flat tire But I do think he was this time. Yeah Yeah All right, let me skip over this because we're running short here, all right All right Okay, let's recover a few things on what not to do in prayer because that is the context of the lord's prayer You're probably familiar this there's two two things of what not to do two or three Right. Jesus says don't be like this is them asking. How do we pray? Don't want don't be like the hypocrites And here's what he means by that praying to be seen by others I think we just generally say any kind of self-righteousness that we would carry in our prayers Is not received by god Uh, and then secondly down there do not heap up empty phrases as the gentiles do and he explains why the gentiles are doing this Uh, they think they'll be heard for their many words so we could summarize those Empty phrases vain repetition. I mean, you know, we pray the lord's prayer every lord's day. My hope is There's no reason you can't also recite that meaning it as you recite it, right? But it's avoid it being vain repetition And then the gentiles it would have been common in that day as it's common today Um, it's certainly common in paganism that you're manipulating the god, you know i'm going to do these things and if I do this sacrifice or Move just this right way. Um, I can manipulate god which varies close to the definition of of magic in the classical sense of the term So we want to of course avoid that when it comes time to pray All right, one thing that's interesting I thought about this and there's probably more things you could think of It is interesting that that some things are missing. For instance, you read all those petitions. What's not what's kind of conspicuously absent Is there's no explicit. Hey be thankful Give give thanks to god And as paul says, you know rejoice always pray without ceasing and in everything give thanks And so it is, you know, it's really interesting You know, here's jesus's moment to teach on prayer and he doesn't mention thanksgiving But I think that goes back to our original point Is that every phrase? implies Deeper prayer. So for instance the moment we say give us this day our daily bread Just as much becomes Thank you god for daily bread. Thank you god for Our house and our provisions and all all the all the things we have to be thankful for. Okay So Yeah Right, yeah, yeah Right, right you could just as easily turn. Yeah, that's right. Yep So yeah, so that's just good reminder, right? We don't don't want to think of ourselves as confined to Explicit the explicitness of the lord's prayer All right. Uh Okay, yeah, so The reason I said starting now and why this class is a curriculum followed by practicum You probably notice we do our sunday school series. Then we conclude with a prayer meeting. We're going to do that for this Series, and so on april 28th, we'll have a prayer meeting who can guess What we'll be praying on april 28th The lord's prayer Man, we're a sharp bunch So we'll meet we'll pray the lord's prayer Not as performance not to be seen but praying sincerely as they did in acts one praying thy kingdom come, okay All right. So just a parting word and then we'll talk about resources So that said pray The here's just some ways we ought to be praying. This is all uh, watson thomas watson's words on prayer Right pray in faith without faith. It is just speaking not praying All right, we ought to be praying with sincere humble faith confident that god will receive our prayers Praying in the spirit. It's right out of ephesians, right pray in the spirit God sends his spirit to us spirit carries us to god I've tried to really hammer home pray with confidence All right, when you say the word father, I mean just consider Consider we're saying you're talking to the father who has created all things created you redeemed you saved you giving you jesus christ, right? There is there's nothing he has withheld from us So how much more are we to be praying with a tremendous amount of confidence Okay, lastly And then we'll do any questions just some resources on prayer That on the lord's prayer in particular, okay that I think are worthwhile You could order these books if you wanted to and read through them concurrent with the class I would say this is going from left to right This would be an order in my mind. So this is my opinion in terms of uh depth Length and in some degree excellence um So thomas watson probably one of my favorite puritans wrote a great book on the lord's prayer It's everything you'd expect from thomas watson Why we pray it how to pray what you're doing when you pray So that's a great book if you want to read that that would be longer though And a little I mean it's by puritan. So it's what you'd expect from a puritan Packer's got a great book on it, too. It's short. I think it's maybe 110 all the 110 pages And he's walking through phrase by phrase with the pray you could probably read that one pretty quickly And then moeller also has a great book on it That would be the most modern Most recent out of all those up there That's also quite good and each each three of those would give you a different flavor Of praying the lord's pray all of them very good all of them very useful uh and helpful Okay, a few minutes any questions or comments on prayer Obstacles to prayer praying the lord's prayer Well, my question is really about You know, we're emphasizing the corporate prayer, correct? I mean we're praying as a body This class Praying as a family. I should have clarified that. Yeah, this would be for all all of it as in our individual prayers Praying together as a family corporate prayers. Okay. Yeah all all of it. Yeah, I mean and that's just telling about the lord's prayer All those prepositions are not, you know, my it's are Which doesn't mean you can only pray it with someone but it just reminds us. Here's the corporate nature of of prayer Yeah, yeah, right Yep Right Start you know, if we don't have a consistent prayer life to do more like pray as a family. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, yeah good question Yeah, I would I would say to not make that an either or To make it a both end. I think a general principle of prayer is that prayer Always begets more prayer when we are praying you'll find oh i'm already praying more As i'm praying as an individual that creates more prayer as a family that hopefully creates more prayers corporately and vice versa Praying as a family hopefully creates more prayer individually and they're kind of symbiotically related to one another Now, I think we do tend to maybe maybe some of us tend to lean one way more than the other But I would just I would say don't make it any either or make it make it a both hand Thank you All right, so i've heard this i'm making a guess I need to pray good class over Yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah, I mean we're said 15 minutes 10 minutes five minutes Five one minute prayers throughout the day 10 30 second. Yeah, right Right, right Yeah Right, right Something's better than nothing right Right 10 10 30 seconds a day one minute prayer day five minute prayer, right? I mean this is again. We're coming to the father as his children through the spirit well, the other thing too, I would just say you can you know, I think that's something very practical pray that you would pray Right pray that you would be more prayerful. I mean that is a prayer that god loves to honor, you know god I don't pray to you as I know I want to and ought to Make me more prayerful draw me closer to you From the trackers Yeah, right, I mean for me I know like writing those down you know is is At least for me personally the the way that's that's been most obvious is to jot those down wherever that is for you You know journal computer so on and so forth. Yeah um Yeah, go ahead Prayers Yeah, yeah That's yeah, and I jogged my memory. I was gonna say too is I think it's I think it's helpful too And you don't do this every time right? Sometimes our prayers are spontaneous before you pray Just just a brief like preparation, you know, I mean, I mean like maybe that's five seconds 10 seconds 15 seconds Okay, i'm going to pray here's what i'm going here's what i'm about to pray Somewhat formulated in our minds again, not with a notion of that. My words must be perfect I'm coming before my father, but just a like five to ten second preparatory to prayer. I think is very helpful Okay nigel Yeah No No, yeah, no, no and perhaps it should be uh, so i'll leave that to you to the other teachers. Um, So You guys are on the hook. You heard nigel's request. Yeah, because right it is it Yeah, that's the point. I was trying to intimate right? I mean, it's not like we pray once and done This is a lifelong discipline joy duty delight That carries with us, you know, like the psalmist says even our old age The fruit are still full of the older still full of sap and evergreen I think a lot of that of course would be prayer right no matter how old you are for the most part you can you can pray And how honoring to god that that is, you know more than more than we even realize All right Let's pray Heavenly father we do praise you we are thankful that here we are as your children And we get to come Before you before the throne of grace and we get to receive grace find help in our time of need We are thankful that you know our frame that we are so often weak that the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak You know, we are just frail children of dust And so we are thankful that you Receive our prayers that sometimes our prayers are in strong faith. Sometimes they are in weak faith But we know that you still receive and hear us And because of the covenant of grace because of who christ is as our mediator And so we are thankful that we can pray with confidence And know that we are heard We're thankful for now for this time of worship help us to worship you in spirit and in truth and indeed to hallow your name