When You Don’t Know How (Lord’s Prayer)

Glad that you’re all joining us this morning. My name is Ben. I have the privilege of being one of the pastors here. And it is my privilege to to share from God’s word with you this morning as we find ourselves in the second part of this series, Pray Like Jesus, which we kicked off two weeks ago. But then of course, last week we had a fantastic outdoor service and now we’re going to continue on in that as well. Also, I want to welcome any guest that may be here in person or those joining online. Thank you for joining us this morning. And it’s good. It is right for us to take a series like this to talk about prayer, whether it be that you’ve been a lifelong Christian and you you’ve had a lot of prayers in your life, and we’re going to be looking at a prayer that you’ve not only heard, but you’ve said likely hundreds, if not thousands of times in your life or if you’re newer to the faith and you need kind of a prayer. 101 A tutorial in how to pray and the beauty of what we’re looking at in God’s Word today is I believe that has something to offer for everyone, whether it be the person who’s just learning how to pray or the person who’s been praying throughout their entire life. 

There’s something that we can learn as we look at the Lord’s Prayer today. Before we jump into the text or what, I’d like to ask you this question how how do you pray? Because that’s what we’re looking at here this week. How do you like what are the mechanics? How is it? What are you supposed to say? And I really need to know, like, do you have to like, do you have to close your eyes and bow your head? If you interlace your fingers or if you actually just, like, make a steeple? I think this gets better reception. Right. It looks it looks slightly holier. So it better it probably does a better job. Right? And practically speaking, a lot of us I mean, if we have a prayer life, it might be brief prayers that the we hear something going on. You get a flat tire, something goes sideways in your life, and you toss up a quick prayer. Or you pray when you hear that someone’s in need. The family member, friend, neighbor goes in for a surgery, goes the hospital, something goes sideways in their life and you pray on their behalf. So you’re praying for others. Or maybe it’s when you’re in need. Maybe it’s just around meal meals. 

Maybe. Maybe before bed. Maybe when you wake up. Maybe it’s a pattern in your life. What we’re gonna actually see today is that there’s not a direct prescription of what prayer needs to be. But before we get to the House of prayer, I want to ask this question. Why don’t we pray? Because I mean, out there. Is there anyone who’s like, got this all figured out and is constantly in prayer? I know there’s a few prayer warriors out there, but my assumption is because I know this to be true in my life. Like there’s a desire to pray more than I do, but there are things that get in the way. And please feel free. You can call it out. I’d love to hear some of your responses. Why? Why don’t we pray more? Too busy. We’re too busy. What else? Stress. There’s distractions out there in life. Tons of distractions. What else? We think we can do it on our own. Absolutely. What? Why bother the big guy with my prayer? Because I can just handle this thing. You’ve already hit on a few of them that I identified. It could be first. 

I don’t know how. How does this thing work? How am I supposed to pray? What is what? What does it actually mean to pray? One that you didn’t say, but I think can be true for some of us is I don’t feel close to God. So if I’m like, I don’t want to approach God because I know, like he’s he’s powerful, he’s mighty, he’s just. And I got stuff over here. I should take care of all this stuff, because in all likelihood, he knows about whatever that stuff is. And so I need to go clean that up. And then I could be close to God. Or you simply believe it doesn’t make a difference. I know that God is sovereign. I know he’s in control of all things. And whatever’s going to happen is going to happen. So what’s the use? Or on the other side of it is that you’re the one that’s really in the driver’s seat about what’s going on in your life. Not only does it not make a difference, he’s not going to change what he’s going to do, but I’m really responsible for the results in my life so I can handle on my own or I’m too busy. 

Is anybody feeling busy right now is coming back. There’s school shopping to do. You have to get back into your routine, all that sort of stuff. I mean, I know both my, my, myself and my wife. We both work well. This one’s going to go to second grade. Our two littles, they’re going to be going to preschool this year. And then there’s stuff that goes wrong. So you got the regular shopping, you got the regular cleaning. Then things go sideways, your dishwasher breaks, and all of a sudden we have a whole bunch of dishes in our single piled up. Right. And so you got that extra stuff to do. And there’s just things that happen, and you need to do, and you have to handle it, and you feel busy and like there’s extra work, things that just pop up left and right, and you’re busy and you’re busy and you’re busy and then like, are you don’t you don’t really have time to pray. And then for a second we have to pause and think about this, that Jesus himself and his earthly ministry, that he found time to pray. And so for me to say, I’m too busy. He’s in essence saying I am busier than Jesus. I’m busier than God in flesh, who came in during his three years of ministry on earth, that he was getting people pressing in from every side to be healed, people pressing in to hear all of his teachings. 

And we know from Scripture it actually says in the book of Luke, Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed that this was a pattern in his life. The author of creation. And he still found time in all of his busy schedule to pray. But you know what? We’re busier. Because nowhere recorded in Scripture, right? Does it say anything about Jesus? He, you know, feeds the 5000. And then he says to his disciples, wow, I’m beat. I’m sleeping in tomorrow I’m gonna hit the snooze button a couple of times. I’m just going to, you know, I’m just going to push my daily, you know, Bible reading back a day. It’s going to be fine. Now. He still found time. Now, of course, he’s perfect, but he offers us a model of how it is that we should live our life and that he he himself still needed to find the time with all the demands, all the things pressing in on him, that it was still important for him to find time to talk with his heavenly father, to commune with him, to be in relationship with him, modeling that for us. Because you have to recognize this about prayer as we jump into the teaching on how to pray that it is actually, in fact, something God Himself has commanded us to do, we are commanded as Christians to pray. It should be part of our lives, but it’s also connected to a promise.

It’s a command and a promise. It’s something that he’s called us to do because he wants relationship with us. But also there’s promises attached to that. He is going to hear your prayers, he is going to answer, and he is able to do things about the things you pray about. But it might not be the things that you expect. He might not reply in the way that you want him to. So jumping in the text, we going to spend most of our time here in the book of Luke in chapter 11, and it starts off this way. One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples. Now what I find curious about this, and I have to highlight the fact that they asked him, teach us to pray, is that ministry is already been happening. We’re in chapter 11 here. Actually, a few chapters earlier, Jesus had sent the disciples out and they were casting out demons and doing things in Jesus’s name. But now we come to this point, and they’ve seen this pattern that was mentioned earlier in Luke, that he often withdrew to lonely places to pray. And they see him praying. 

They see him in one of these instances, finished praying, and they want to learn, but nowhere else recorded in the gospels, anywhere else in Scripture do the disciples come up to Jesus and ask Jesus to teach them how to do something else, which it would have been so very easy, right? Jesus finishes walking on water and then they run up and be like, Jesus, can you teach us this? I mean, this would really cut down on my commute if I could just walk across the Sea of Galilee like you just did. They don’t have to get in a boat and stuff. Then ask him, Jesus, can you teach us how to teach like you do? Preach like you do Jesus? Can you teach us how to multiply bread? Because that would be really helpful. There’s something unique and distinct about the power of Jesus’s prayer life that causes his disciples to press in. And this thing, prayer that just seems to ask someone innocuous, kind of mundane. It’s just talking, right? But there’s something so powerful about Jesus’s way of prayer that they press and they ask him, how can we pray like you teach us to pray like you? Because he saw something unique and that is when we ask for help, isn’t it? When all of a sudden you come to the end of your rope, you don’t know what to do. 

You see something distinct about someone. You go, how do you do that? There’s a result I want and I’m not getting it. And Jesus is able to do things that they can’t do, and that he’s praying in a way that they can pray. But all of us, and the disciples included, often are puffed up in pride and want to do it on our own. I can just handle it myself. Until you get to that place, you get to the end of your rope and you’re like, okay, well, this person’s getting better results over here, so maybe I can learn something from them. I think I can think of no better example in life than of a three year old, because I have one. And then this three year old right now is in the midst of potty training, in the midst of dressing himself and getting, you know, puffed up in pride because he can do it. Although when he comes out and he had picked out his own pants and picked out his own shirt, the pants are backwards. The shirts on inside out. And if I dare have the audacity to ask him if he needs help, you know you might as well. It looks like a bomb went off. 

Like, how dare I ask him until he realizes, oh, wait a second, I can’t see Paw Patrol. It might be on the back. I might be on the other side. All right, dad, okay, this is what I’m going to ask for help. Maybe you know something about putting a shirt on that I don’t know. in the same way, you know, here in the last couple of weeks of fighting that you’ve been watching the Olympics, maybe. Anybody watch the javelin? Me neither. Well, okay. One, I didn’t watch it either, but this works for my story. So we’re going to use this. So in fifth place this year for javelin was Julius. Julius grew up in Kenya. Kenya, which of course is known at the Olympics and known around the world for javelin throwing. No, for running distance running in particular out of the top 50 fastest times ever recorded for a marathon. I believe it’s around 30 of those times were recorded by Kenyan runners, and he grew up in Kenya, where if you were going to go and be an athlete, it’s likely that you’re going to be a distance runner.

That’s what they excel in. Distance running. Yeah, he wanted to throw a javelin so he fashioned javelin. He started throwing a javelin and then he started watching YouTube videos on him. He actually had the nickname Mr. YouTube because up until the age of 21, he started winning not only national things, but like something called the Commonwealth Games. And he’s getting into this international stage of being able to throw javelin. As a 21 year old who’s never once had a coach, never had someone just show him, here’s how to hold it, here’s how to throw it. Yeah. He went and looked out and sought out help in YouTube, which in all likelihood many of us do. We go somewhere else. We try to seek it out. And that’s what we see the disciples doing here. They see something in Jesus. There’s something distinct about the way that he praised. And so they’re going to the source. They’re going to the one who prays differently. 

And like I mentioned before, it’s worth repeating that this is part of the Christian life. Martin Luther states it this way. It was a theologian from the 16th century. He said, a Christian without prayer is just as impossible as a living person. Without a pulse, the pulse is never motionless. It moves and it beats constantly. Whether one is asleep or something else keeps one from being aware of it. Your heart continues to beat in your chest. Your heart’s been beating your chest all morning, but maybe you didn’t pay attention to it. That prayer in the life of a believer is something that is just continual and constant, whether you’re aware of it or not, but it is good for us to be aware of it. It’s good for us to be aware of the prayer life. And he breaks down here in the Lord’s Prayer as we look at it, not only a model of prayer, but these beautiful, powerful petitions which are statements found in throughout the Lord’s Prayer that have great depth and beauty to each of them. So Jesus turns to his disciples, and he said to them, that is, Jesus said to them, when you pray, say, say this with me, father. 

And it’s worth pausing right there, because what he just did is he broke the paradigm for his disciples of what it meant to pray, because there would be awe and reverence and respect that we should be all do to that our Heavenly Father. But they would not have referred to him in that way. They would not have given that that title. And here what Jesus is doing is showing them it’s not only about praying to God, but it’s also about your relationship to him. Said another way who you talk to directly impacts what you say and how you speak. Think about it for a moment. If your kids come forward to you and they have something in mind, they have some sort of motive. I want a little bit more time to play a video game. I want to watch a show. It influences the way they speak. Oh, mommy dearest, you know my chores are done and my rooms clean and I really would like a little, you know, maybe just 15 more minutes on a video game. Or for any of us. For me, for the most part. Right. You see a newborn infant and something gets, like, crossed in our brain, and all of a sudden we just start to babble at them. Right? But you wouldn’t take that babbling goo-goo for Gaga. Gaga? 

And you wouldn’t translate that to if you were talking to an officer who just pulled you over. I advise you not to do that. If you said license and registration, say, hey there, officer, how you do it, it’s not going to go well. Or what about when you go and visit grandma and then all of a sudden you have to change the way you’re to? Hi, grandma. How are you doing? You know, you change your cadence and you change what you talk about and how, you know, you got to get to a volume. Your relationship to the other person, it dictates. It dictates not only the content of what you’re talking about, but also how you talk to them. A good image for this actually comes from a couple decades ago. But think about this president of the United States, JFK, sitting in the Oval Office. Anyone, anyone in their right mind who would walk into that office and would see that man sitting there knows it’s not just any man, but he holds a position of power and prestige. And so if you’re a dignitary from another country or a senator, like you’re going to walk in there and you’re going to show some honor, you’re going to you’re going to show respect, you’re going to be very clear, you know, if he’s going to speak, you’re going to let him speak like you’re going to he’s the president. But all the while, while any dignitary, senator or anyone might walk in there, all the while, his son sitting at his feet. 

Does the fact that he has a son there make him any less a president? But does the way his son would talk to him with the way the son would ask him? Dad, that kind of a snack? Dad, dad, I need to go to the bathroom. Dad. Like, is there anything too small that he could ask his dad for? No, it doesn’t change his position. It doesn’t change who he is. And this is the tension that you find here, just at the very first word of the Lord’s Prayer, to call God. Father does not bring down His Majesty. It does not bring down his glory whatsoever. It is still to recognize him as the creator of the universe, the author of all things, a holy and righteous and just God. But at the same time, here in the word father, you’re also finding that now he is all of those things, but he also just happens to be your father, that he can do anything, but also he would do anything for you. You’re his child, that there’s a there’s a relationship there. You’re not going to approach God like a senator approaching a president, but rather you approach God like a child approaching their parent.

So if you were to evaluate just for a moment before we move further, what does the way that you talk to God or the way that you have been talking to God, the way you’ve been praying to God, what does it tell you about what you believe about him? Because if you don’t, pray could say a lot of things. It’s not worth the time. I don’t think he can do anything anyways. Or when I do pray, I just, I kind of pray, but I don’t really actually believe anything is going to happen. I don’t have any faith that anything could actually change. So like what that says to me? What you believe about God is, well, he’s not powerful, he’s not good, or I don’t pray to him, but I know he’s powerful and I know he’s good. But he’s not going to take he’s not going to take my call. Maybe he doesn’t love me in the first word. It addresses both of these things. All powerful, heavenly father. But father, there’s a relationship there, moves forward in these other petitions. So when you pray, say, father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. This are already looks different than some of my prayers. Maybe some of your prayers as well, because it might be, dear God, Father, God, Heavenly Father, and then we get right to it. Here’s what I need. Here’s what’s wrong. Can you help me with this? 

Can you help me with that? But what Jesus is showing the disciples is we know we’re lingering on this for a moment. We’re going to focus on the father before we get to our request, before we get to all of our petitions about ourselves, we’re going to focus on him and to say something like Hollywood meaning holy, Holy be your name, God, and to pray that out loud. Think about that. We’re praying. And that’s an easy thing to pray outside God, we pray that your name be holy in this nation. It’s much more difficult to pray. God, let your name be holy in me. God let let my actions, let my words. Let me let those things reflect your character. Let the way that I treat my family and treat my coworkers. Let that your name be holy in my actions and let your kingdom come. Let your kingdom breakthrough because I know you’re going to conquer everything at the end in your kingdom surely will come. But in that petition you’re also praying, God, I pray your kingdom would come here and now. And then it moves forward to the things that we ask. You say, give us each day our daily bread and all my gluten intolerant friends despise this one. I’ve got to replace this with something else. 

Or they just have in mind as that one special bread in the freezer and it costs $12 for a loaf. That’s what you do need to pray for each day. Our daily. How often should this be prayed? Daily. What’s been provided for each and every day for us from our Heavenly Father. Everything. The car you drive, the clothes you have, the roof that’s over your head, the money that’s in your bank account, the spouse you have, the children you have, all the things that you have that is included in this statement of daily bread. And there it is, good and right for us daily to come to God. And before we get to any other petition just recognizing, give us you do give us. You do give us these daily things. Let us recognize and thank you for the daily things that you provide. And there needs to be that repetition. It’s a it’s an ongoing relationship. Think about it this way. I’ve been married 13.5 years, I believe, give or take, somewhere in there. Right. And if I was to tell you, my brides right up here that the last time I spoke to Stephanie was 13.5 years ago. And on that day, I told her everything she needs to know I love you. Are you married? I do even gave her a kiss that day. What more does she want? And we’re married, right? And that’s our relationship. Marriage is significant. It’s one of the most significant relationships you could ever have. 

And this side of eternity is marriage. And, you know, we just don’t talk. You have a heavenly father who’s providing you with everything that you need to live and move and to have your being here in this world. But I believe sometimes we could treat it like that kind of bizarre silent marriage. We’re like, well, God already knows God already forgave me. God knows how I feel about him. It doesn’t matter what I pray anyways. But we would never apply that to any of our closest personal relationships. Not to a spouse, not to children. That that you would want to converse, that you would want to have a relationship, that you not have a dialog, whether it be big things or small things that you would want a close relationship or a daily relationship, your heavenly father is no different then it moves forward to the request. Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation. There is something unique, something that we can’t do for ourselves because oftentimes we can. We can pray like, I can handle this myself, but we come to this place where we talk about forgiveness of sins and resisting temptation. And immediately what we should realize is we’re not talking about material stuff that we can by our own will and might figure out.

We’re talking about spiritual realities here, that we have no ability, no strength, no will to move the needle at all. And so these are prayers of desperation, but trusting again, going back to the relationship to the father, the father who loves you, but the father who’s powerful and coming before him and asking him, God, will you forgive me my sins, my greatest and most desperate need in my life? Whether I see it as that or not, it doesn’t change the reality that that is in fact your greatest need and my greatest need. And asking God that after our sins are forgiven, that you would hear, he would not lead us into temptation, but rather in that we’re praying, God, strengthen me, embolden me by your spirit, that I might be able to resist temptation, that it might not come my way, and that when it does, I can stand up underneath it.

But the Lord’s Prayer just changes this whole paradigm of prayer. It changes the fact that we’re praying to a father. It’s not once said one way. It’s not just a model of prayer, the Lord’s Prayer. It models prayer. It does. And you could break down each of these petitions, and you could pray each of them individually. And I encourage you to do that actually. In fact, if you don’t have a vibrant prayer life or maybe even even if you do, if you were to go through over the course of the next week and take one of the petitions, one of the each of the statements, we just looked at and prayed just that each day and just start, start tomorrow, start today. 

Father. Slow down and contemplate the gravity of that relationship. Because there’s so much depth to be plumbed from, from the beauty of this prayer. It’s not just simple prayer that we often can treat is something that we just have memorized, and we just recite and we reciting it because we’re supposed to recite. But there’s so much depth to it as it teaches us about our relationship to God. It teaches us about our greatest needs. It also teaches us about God’s will. Jesus thing goes forward, and he goes forward in his teaching, because he realizes that his disciples need to see even more. He gives them this example. Then Jesus said to them, suppose you have a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say, friend, lend me three loaves of bread. A friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have no food to offer him. And suppose the one inside answers don’t bother me. The door is already locked. My children are in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything. I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity, he will surely get up and give you as much as you need. I love that phrase and I wish you could apply to my prayer life. I think that would be something great to aspire for, to have shameless audacity in the way that we pray, to be audacious in how we approach God with whatever is on our heart and expect, as we hear in this example, that an answer will come. 

Because even if you’ve prayed and you feel like it’s failed you before, I need you to hear this. That when you pray, you can in fact expect an answer. And that’s because that’s what God’s Word in fact tells us about prayer. In the book of Isaiah. It says this before they call, before they pray to me, I will answer while they are still speaking. I will hear. And so if we go back to the beginning, the reason why you don’t pray is because you don’t think it matters. You don’t think God hears it. It’s God’s word tells you. He in fact does hear each and every one of your prayers. And he does answer them. Although what we’re going to see, it’s it’s perhaps not in the way that you think it moves forward. Jesus goes on in his teaching. He says this. So I say to you, ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives the one who seeks finds, and the one who knocks. The doors will be open. It’s so easily misquoted and misused. Piece of scripture because you can look at this and you go and you take it out of context. You take it away from the Lord’s Prayer. In the verses that follow and you go, well, I’m supposed to ask, I’m supposed to seek, and I’m supposed to knock. And so if I just set an alarm five times a day and I just pray, God, can I have a red Corvette? God, can I have a red Corvette? 

God, can I have a red Corvette? I’m asking, I’m knocking, I’m seeking, I’m asking, I’m knocking, I’m seeking. And all of a sudden he doesn’t show up. Well, that’s what God’s word said, isn’t it? It’s a slow down and evaluate. What is it that you’re asking for? Because God is going to answer your prayer, but it’s not going to be in the way that you expect. Even with a prayer like that, what I believe is actually going to take place and is promised and can certainly be the benefit for each of us, is that when we pray that the change that’s going to come is a change of heart. All too often that we are expecting a change of circumstance. God. God, I want this to change. God I want God. Grandma’s sick and grandma has cancer and I feel like it is your will. It’s your will. God right that all people be well, it’s. I’m going to pray boldly because I know I mean, Pastor Ben just said it. He’s powerful. He can do anything. And here this too. This is a bit of an aside, but whether it be a blown out tire or someone’s cancer, you have to recognize that every single prayer request before that you bring before God is, in fact a small request, given his very nature.

The one who spoke stars into being. Anything you ask of him is a small request. But then you come to this place where you’re like, well, I expect a change of circumstance. God, cancer’s bad. Death is bad. I’m praying against those things, and I expect you to answer in the way I think it should be answered. But what yet has not happened is your will is not aligned with God’s will, necessarily. Good God, do that? Absolutely he can. Could God also answer it by calling home your loved one who dies in faith and closes their eyes here in this world and opens them in the next? And that is an answered prayer. Absolutely. Oftentimes, we’re looking for the wrong answers. We have to allow God through prayer to help align our wills with his. If you were with us two weeks ago, you saw that even Jesus in the garden, as he’s on his knees, as he’s praying shamelessly and audaciously and fervently and sweating drops like blood. And he’s asking for this cup to pass from him. That eventually comes to the place that God’s will ultimately needs to be done, not his aligning his human will with his divine will to go forward. And we are no different that we can come forward to God with anything, and we can come forward to God with our will and our agenda and how he thinks things should go. 

But if we remain in prayer and we remain in relationship with him, that eventually our heart’s going to start to look more like his, our will is going to start to align with his. And it’s not by our effort and not by our strength, because the answer that we ultimately needs comes in the following verses says this Jesus continuing to teach. He says, which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, we’ll give him a snake instead. Or if he asks for an egg, we’ll give him a scorpion. If you then, though, say this one with me, though you are evil. I love that Jesus just telling the disciples they all they asked was teach us how to pray. And then here at the end of this teaching, he goes, you’re evil, but you’re evil. And let me tell you why that’s good news. You’re evil, you’re sinful, you’re imperfect. They all should already know that. If you didn’t know that, well, newsflash. You’re evil. You’re sinful. Our hearts are contrary to God’s will. But even though we’re evil, we still know how to give good gifts to those that we love. And if we’re evil, know and know how to give good gifts to our children. How much more will your father in heaven give you? The Holy Spirit to those who ask him that he’s going to give you the helper. He’s going to give you the comforter. He is going to give you the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, who will then reside in you, guide you, lead you, and pray and intercede, even as Romans eight intercede with groans too deep for understanding. 

And he prays for you, so that if you go forward and you pray and you’re not sure what to pray and how to pray, that you can still pray, God, give me the Holy Spirit to guide me. God just put these words and thoughts together in such a way that’s pleasing to you. Because me, in and of myself, I can’t even pray rightly. I need a helper to come along. And that’s promised to us. And that’s something that you haven’t prayed for. Then there’s something you surely should, because it is promised that those that pray for the Holy Spirit, not for a Corvette, not for this, not for that you pray for the Holy Spirit. He is a good father who will give you what you need. And then through the Holy Spirit and then through the prayer, this self, what we should recognize is that God has given you in this Lord’s Prayer, the words that he desires to hear from you, the words that he desires for you to pray to him have been placed on your lips. The words he wants to hear from you are now in your mouth by God in flesh, Jesus Christ talking to his disciples. 

By that being recorded, you now get to hear from God Himself, telling you, this is how I want you to pray. More than just a model, this is the heart of prayer. I want you to see the father for who he is.

I want you to see yourself for who you truly are and the me that you really have, which is the need of a Savior as he is the Savior that’s literally standing right before them. These are the words that have been placed into our mouths as well. And now we can come to him as children, just like if you had children and they had any request of you, you would want them to come forward. You would want that request to be made known to you. Now you have a Heavenly Father who gives you the words to make these requests known because you don’t know how to pray, but you need the spirit. You need these words. I need these words so we know how to come to our father rightfully. And in just a moment, we’re gonna experience this in a different way and invite the band to come back forward as we’re going to slow down the Lord’s Prayer. 

In just a moment, we’re going to sing, and then we’re going to break down the Lord’s Prayer petition by petition, not following the regular cadence, the regular rhythm in which we pray about praying slowly and thoughtfully, giving a pause and a break after each statement to create space and time for us to reflect on the beauty and the depth of each of these statements and hear this, and recognize this as well. That these are the very words that are given to us by Jesus. We can have confidence that these words are heard not only because they’re given by Jesus, but they’re given by Jesus, who is our Lord and Savior, the one who went to the cross that each of us deserved, the one who suffered in the ways that we deserve, the one who died, the death that we deserve, the one who left the empty tomb, the tomb that we should all be laid in is now empty because of him. And so in that empty tomb, we actually see this. We see a God who is powerful and who can do things and is mighty. But we also see a God who’s loving, loving enough to lay down his life so we can approach the throne of glory. Now, in Jesus name. And as we pray in a few moments together with all confidence that we are heard because we’re praying this prayer in the shadow of the cross. So let us remain seated for the next few moments as we sing and recite this prayer together. Oh, my brother, he did in I Love You. You can. Don’t.

Leave. You will be done for us. We. Love as it is in heaven. Did you come to earth as it is in heaven? Let me live on. It in. Other. He did. Hallowed be your name. Know. Call me. Will be done. The sea. Could have me this way. But every in his name. You. It’s time I invite you to pray with me. The Lord’s Prayer. Slowly, deliberately, with time to reflect on each and every one of these statements. Let us pray together. Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses. As we forgive those who trespass against us. It’s here on this petition, God, that we come before you and pray to you, that by your Holy Spirit that you would call to mind for each of us the various ways that we have sinned against you in thought, word, or deed and desire, and that we know that you are a loving and powerful God who will hear our confession as we bring it forward to you. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.