The Lord's Prayer

So, I started speaking on the topic of prayer to our students and it amazes me how much they know! Kudos to our parents! But every now and then we need to be reminded about prayer and how important it is to us. So as we go along in studying the Lord's prayer, I just want to let you know what God is speaking to me as we learn about an area of Christ's life that so important. Have you ever unpacked what the prayer is all about? We started actually two weeks ago and started off understanding what prayer is not supposed to be: (1) don't be like a hypocrite when you pray (2) don't let anything distract you when you approach your alone time (3) and don't speak meaningless repetitious words just to say something. To be honest I think that many of us have forgotten what prayer is about and the form of it has been lost. So as we opened up the prayer, we had to understand these things and also that the disciples wanted to know how to pray (Luke Ch. 11) They saw Jesus all the time go away from the distractions of he world to pray and the disciples saw this as important and asked Jesus "will you teach us how to pray?" I am sure Jesus was like "oh, snap, Yes I will teach you!" So then He gives us a perfect model of who we are to pray to and how we are to pray and what we are to pray for! So last night the phrase that I wanted our students to leave with was "God is real and God is Holy." We have to understand that these two things are non-negotiable when it comes to Our Heavenly Father. Jesus acknowledged the Father first, this is where I feel that many Christ-followers have got it backwards. We come to God with our needs first without acknowledging Him first. We need to remember that it is God's Glory first, our needs last. God must be the foundation of our prayers and everything else builds off of this. But what is really cool is that when we come to God in faith and believe that He is who He is, God wants to reward us (Heb. 11:6) God wants His children to experience answered prayer and He wants to give us help because let's be honest we all need help in this life. We don't have all the answers. But the cool thing that I had totally overlooked in the process is that when we come to God in obedience because our relationship with Him is important, that we bring honor and glory to His name. How so? Well, hallowed means to "revere, honor, glory, and obey." When we acknowledge that God is real, God is holy and we come in faith believing that God is who He says He is, that He wants to answer our prayers, according to His plans, that we have the amazing opportunity to honor and glorify His name by obeying and trusting in His name! That was a mouthful. But it all boils down to this when we approach God in prayer: God is real and God is holy. "So whatever you eat or drink, do it ALL to glory of GOD." (1 Cor. 10:31) As I challenged our students to change one aspect of their own prayer life, what is it that you can change to make your QuietTime more effective? You never saw Jesus have His prayer time in the middle of a crowded street but on the hillside or as Jesus says, "go get into a closet and close the door!" Let's press on, not just so God will answer our prayers but that we passionately want to spend time with Our Creator and Heavenly Father who loves us!

Press on!