For as
long as I can remember what we call “The Lord’s Prayer” has been taught as a
way to pray as well as used in corporate prayer. Prayer literally is our line of communication
with God. It is a huge part of staying
tied to and close to God.
The
scripture below begins with some direct instruction about how we are to
pray. Prayer happens in all kinds of
locations. It happens in public and in
private. Pray is used before meals and
during public events. These
instructions have to do with how we communicate with God in private.
Spend
time by yourself with God. He knows your
heart, and God wants your heart. Don’t
use all those Bible or church words.
Just speak to God. Make sure your
prayers have meaning. Read on…
But when you pray, go away by yourself,
shut the door behind you, and pray to your Father in private. Then your Father,
who sees everything, will reward you.
7 “When
you pray, don’t babble on and on as people of other religions do. They think
their prayers are answered merely by repeating their words again and again. 8 Don’t
be like them, for your Father knows exactly what you need even before you ask
him! 9 Pray like this:
Our Father in heaven,
may your name be kept holy. 10 May
your Kingdom come soon.
May your will be done on earth,
as it is in heaven. 11 Give
us today the food we need, 12 and forgive us our
sins,
as we have forgiven those who sin against us. 13 And
don’t let us yield to temptation, but rescue us from the evil one.
This
prayer is a standard set by God, and we can use it as a form to fill it. We can also use it as a corporate
prayer. But with in the words that Jesus
prayed were things that are very important to every person.
Within
this prayer here is what we find:
---
addressed to the Father who is holy
---
praying for God’s will to be done
---
asking for God to provide what is needed
---
intercession for forgiveness of sin personally and for others
---
dealing with temptation
All of
us deal with these issues. Because Jesus
prayed like this we know that God cares about all these areas of our lives just
as God cars for us.
Our
prayers ought to be personal and they ought to be direct. Often our prayers are generic and somewhat benign. They are insignificant because we aren’t
really connecting with God because all we are trying to do is mark off our list
that we prayers. God desires our hearts
and not just our words.
I pray
that we will connect to God on the best level we can and do that every
day. Further, I pray that we will pray
powerful prayers that are specific.
Specific as for what we speak to God about and to what God says to
us. The Bible is full of verses we can
use in prayer.
Jesus said,
“pray like this”. We learn much from this
prayer and from all those in scripture.
The fact is we need to pray and to connect with God. If you can’t do anything else, I encourage
you to pray. It might just change your
life.
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