Month: August 2021

An Introduction to the Lord’s Prayer

  The past few weeks I’ve been writing about the new Bible study, Teach Us to Pray: Learning to pray from the Lord’s Prayer and teachings of Jesus. The first two lessons in the Bible study are preparatory to studying the Lord’s Prayer. Lesson 3, however, is where we begin to dig into the Lord’s Prayer itself. But first, we open with a short introduction to the study before getting into the first of five Focus Points identified in the Lord’s Prayer. 

Most recognize Matthew 6:9—13 as a Model or Pattern prayer. In it, Jesus teaches us principles by which to pray. Consistent with teaching principles, the prayer is short and to the point. We are given a framework made of the principles, which correspond to each focus point below; through praise and petition, we fill in the prayer with the personal details of the joys or burdens on our hearts.
 
‘Our Father who is 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 also have forgiven our debtors.
‘And do not lead us into temptation but deliver us from evil.
[For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.’] (Matthew 6:9—13)

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Five Focus Points

In this study, Five Focus Points of The Lord’s Pattern Prayer have been identified, corresponding to each phrase of the prayer. The study is built around looking at the Lord’s Prayer through the lenses of those five points of focus.

Lessons 3-8 address each of these five Focus Points. What are these Focus points? Why are they important to studying the Lord’s prayer? How might the application of these Focus Points change our prayers, and our lives? Searching the Scriptures for the answers to these questions is the meat of this Bible study.

Teach Us to Pray

Jesus intended this prayer to teach us, his disciples, to pray, in answer to the disciple’s request. With biblical insights and built-in times for prayer in each lesson, this Bible study teaches us how to view and to use Jesus’ pattern prayer; it teaches us to pray.

In our next post, we dive into the Lord’s Prayer itself and give a taste of what is in store in the Bible study Teach Us to Pray.

To read all the blog posts related to the Bible study, Teach Us to Pray, scroll down “Archives” on the Blog page.

The first two lessons of Teach Us to Pray—Learning to pray from the Lord’s Prayer and teachings of Jesus, do not start out teaching about the Lord’s Prayer. In the last two blog posts we revealed that Lesson 1 considered two necessary Prerequisites for Prayer as preparation for a study of the Lord’s Prayer: Relationship and Fellowship.

In this post we back up to what Jesus taught just before he said, “Pray, then, in this way” (Matthew 6:1, 5-8, 9).

Prayer is Doing What is Right

Jesus told his disciples prayer was part of doing righteousness (doing what is right). Based on what he said, we can deduce that a prayerless life is incompatible with a righteous life. Prayer is assumed behavior for the believer in Jesus Christ. It is our mode of communicating with God, it brings us into his very Presence.

Watch Out

But then Jesus gave warnings about how not to pray. We might think prayer is fairly straightforward; how can you go wrong by praying? Jesus thinks otherwise. He gives us a view of prayer from a perspective we don’t have in our own abilities: he instructs us from his perspective. We only see the exterior; God sees our hearts.

What does Jesus warn us against in prayer? What does it mean to pray aright? Lesson 2 of Teach Us to Pray unpacks what Jesus means by doing right (praying) and doing it (prayer) right.

Once we work through Lessons 1 and 2, the stage is set for our study of the Lord’s Prayer proper.

Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash