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