Month: September 2021

In Lessons 4 and 5 of Teach Us to Pray: Learning to pray from the Lord’s Prayer and teachings of Jesus, we see more Focus points of the Lord’s prayer based on the phrase, “Your Kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). A peek at these lessons reveals the following focus points:

Living the Kingdom

Lesson 4 is titled Focus on God and His Kingdom Priorities in Life, the subtitles of which read (with my bracketed notes):

• Defining the Kingdom of God [Just what is the Kingdom of God? What is it like?]
• The King of the Kingdom and His kids [Say who? What does the Kingdom of God have to do with me?]

Praying the Kingdom

Lesson 5, titled Focus on God and His Kingdom Priorities in Prayer, deals with topics like:

• Praying Your Kingdom come, Your will be done [Just what does that mean?]
• Seek the will of God in prayer [It really isn’t about us.]
• Taking the Kingdom, Fighting the good fight [What’s your purpose in life?]

Jesus’ statements about God’s Kingdom and his will begs these questions, and more, dealt with in these two lessons: What is the Kingdom of God? What does it look like? What are the values and characteristics of the Kingdom of God? In what ways does the Kingdom of God affect how we live and how we pray?

Where to find the answers to those questions? As in every lesson, we go to Scripture, of course. And at the end of each lesson, we have an opportunity to pray according to Jesus’ words.

Teach Us to Pray: Learning to pray from the Lord’s prayer and teachings of Jesus, a Bible study, soon to be offered on Zoom. Stay tuned for more information on that. In the meantime, I’ll keep blogging about each lesson.

To read each blog post about Teach Us to Pray, go to  Blog – Jacqueline G Wallace.com and check out the Recent Blog Posts on the right of the page.

In the last blog post we were introduced briefly to the Lord’s Prayer, recognizing it as a model or pattern prayer that Jesus taught his disciples. Lesson 3 begins with “Focus on God,” the first of five Focus points identified in the Prayer.

Our Father

“Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be Your name.” (Matthew 6:9)

How does the Lord’s prayer open? “Our Father.” Obviously, this assumes a relationship of Father and child. As stated before, this prayer is for Jesus’ disciples, those who follow him in faith and commitment as their Lord and Savior; those who have been born anew into the family of God by faith.

This is not an ordinary Father—child relationship though, for he is “Our Father who is in heaven.” And as such we are to acknowledge his worthiness to be worshiped. “Hallowed be Your name.”

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Asking Questions

Since Jesus made such bold statements about exalting God, it is incumbent upon us to ask some pertinent questions:

To whom do we pray?

Who is our focus in Prayer?

Who is this God?

What is he like?

What does he do?

Finding the Answers

We not only ask these questions, but turn right back to Scripture to answer them. This is exactly what Lesson 3 leads us to do. A “Bible Study” should be an exercise in studying the Bible. It is in God’s Word that the answers lie. And our subsequent actions will be based on what we discover in God’s Word.

Interested in finding out what God says about these questions, and more? Contact me at jacqueline@jacquelinegwallace.com for more information about the Bible study Teach Us to Pray.

To read all posts about this Bible study on the Lord’s Prayer, look under “Archives” to the right on the Blog page.