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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.

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

Prerequisite – something that is necessary to an end or to the carrying out of a function.[1]

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Did you know there are prerequisites for prayer, or specifically, for what we term a “prayer life”?

Anyone can call on the name of the Lord at any time to seek salvation through Jesus Christ. The only prerequisites for that are humility, repentance of sin, and faith in Jesus Christ as one’s Lord and Savior, as the gospel of God teaches us. And this is the starting point.

But from that point on, to develop a lifestyle of prayer as a disciple of Jesus, one must meet the prerequisites for it. Without these two prereqs, there won’t be such a thing as a “prayer life” in one’s life.

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Disciples Only Need Apply

The Lord’s Prayer—the prayer Jesus taught his disciples in response to the request, “Teach us to pray”—was not meant for those who do not yet know Christ as their Savior and Lord. It was and is meant for disciples, learners, followers of Jesus Christ. We’ve already bowed the knee to him in repentance and faith and want to continue on with God.

Relationship: the starting point

The first Prerequisite then, should be obvious from what we’ve just said: it is Relationship. When we come to Christ for salvation, the starting point, we enter a new relationship with God: he becomes our Father in heaven, we become his children. Everything is different. As the Scripture says, “All things become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17). And that newness anticipates further growth and change. We don’t stay the way we were before. This is where the second Prerequisite comes in.

Peter said, “like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the word [God’s Word], so that you may grow in respect to salvation” and “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:2; 2 Peter 3:18, bracket added).

These are not simply nice sounding options; these are commands to obey.

Fellowship: a new lifestyle

Growing and changing, just like babies do, involves a more intimate level of communication with God. We call this Fellowship, the second Prerequisite. And it has nothing whatever to do with coffee and donuts after the church service.

Fellowship with God has to do with what Peter said about growing in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. Learning and obeying his word, doing his will, daily seeking him, and depending on him. It is submitting to the Holy Spirit’s teaching and guidance, developing a heart for God. And so much more.

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This is just a taste of what we are calling Prerequisites for Prayer (Lesson 1). These characteristics must be present and growing in your life. We show you how to start and maintain that process as we unpack these prerequisites more completely in Lesson 1 of Teach Us to Pray, a study of the Lord’s Prayer. 

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Where are you on the continuum of faith? Do you have a Relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ? As a child of God, are you growing in your Fellowship with him?

If you want to pray as Jesus taught us, these are the starting points.

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[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prerequisite

Photo by cbcs BibleRead-2 via Morguefile

Where have I been all this time? I’ve been busy but I’ve been a long time away from my blog. I ran out of words, or so it seemed. After launching the Brokenness to Beauty Bible Study, my writing muse skipped town on me; it needed a rest, I think. I needed a kick start (also called inspiration). Then, surprise surprise, a puff of wind …

A New Challenge

It all started when Debbie, the Women’s Ministry Director at church, asked me and my friend, Naomi, to present a workshop on prayer for the upcoming women’s retreat. I had written several other short Bible studies and the two of us had co-presented them for past retreats, so we had some experience under our belts. Usually, it took a few days to nail down the specifics of the topic given us so I could start writing the material.

A Breath of Inspiration

This time, however, I knew immediately what we should present: a study of the Lord’s Prayer, with built-in times of prayer. Over the prior year I had facilitated a women’s Bible study and we studied the Sermon on the Mount. I had learned so much from our study, which included studying the Lord’s Prayer, I knew I wanted to share these truths.

Obviously, since the workshop was only one-hour long, I wrote the study of the Lord’s Prayer to fit into that timeframe. Squeeze into it might be more accurate. Talk about “so much to say and so little time”! Both Naomi and I were also committed to integrating a time of praying into a study of prayer. Makes sense to me; you learn about prayer, then you pray. But fitting all that into one hour is an almost impossible feat. I was hoping against hope we could present it in its entirety, prayer time included.

Now, this women’s retreat has been an annual event at the church for years and we were all looking forward to it; women signed up online, ticked the boxes to choose a bunk room or motel type accommodations, ticked more boxes for the activities offered, and paid their fees. Anticipation was in the air!

Setback

Unfortunately, COVID-19 crashed our party-to-be. The pandemic hit the States, like it did the rest of the world, and suddenly there was no women’s retreat.

The manuscript for the workshop on the Lord’s Prayer that I had labored to write was tabled, indefinitely.

A Bigger Challenge and a Better Bible Study

But what’s that saying about change? “…the only thing constant is change” (Unknown author).[1] Change can be a good thing. As the pandemic began to abate and vaccinations abounded, changes for the good blossomed.

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About six months after the “women’s retreat-that-wasn’t,” Debbie suggested resurrecting the study on the Lord’s Prayer. She had reread the manuscript and liked it so much she wanted to pursue presenting it in another format, perhaps online. It was then I decided the Bible study needed to be busted out of the constraints of a one-hour timeframe, expanded, and redesigned. I wanted to give the Lord’s Prayer more of what it deserved in the way of time to study it and time to put it into practice, with a prayer time integrated with the teaching. Six months later I had written—from one, one-hour lesson—eight lessons with prayer times incorporated into each lesson. Of course, there’s always so much more that could be said ….

Read It for Yourself

I’m getting my feet wet again blogging after so long a time away. I’ll start by sharing parts of my new Bible study on The Lord’s Prayer so you can read it for yourself. I think you’ll like what you read. Pass along the word to your friends to read it too.

I’m getting good feedback that this Bible study is speaking powerfully to those who read and study it. I pray God use what I’ve written to encourage and challenge people, helping them become stronger in their walk with the Lord. That’s what it’s all about; that’s the only reason I write.

Watch for the first installment of tidbits from Teach Us to Pray—The Practice of Prayer: Learning to Pray from the teachings of Jesus, with practical application; a study of the Lord’s Prayer. These posts will not be “the whole enchilada,” just a taste to whet your appetite for more.

We are working toward an autumn online presentation of Teach Us to Pray. I’ll keep you informed about when we will offer it!

[1]https://www.searchquotes.com/search/Change_Is_Constant/#ixzz6xu5pKdmS