So let me just read for us Matthew 6, beginning at verse 9,
Jesus speaking to his disciples. This then is how you should
pray. Our Father in heaven, hallowed
be your name, your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it
is in heaven. Give us today Our Daily Bread
and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil
one. For if you forgive other people
when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also
forgive you. But if you do not forgive others
their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
Father God, we pray that you'd help us to understand this
prayer, that we'd understand more of who you are, more of who
we are, and above all, that this prayer actually would act as the
encouragement we need to actually get us praying to you
and depending on you as our Father.
Please, by your spirit, would you open our eyes to the God
that you are. And the gift that prayer is, we
ask it in Jesus name, Amen. So, yeah, if you were at
Gilmorton with us yesterday and if you weren't just to Orient
ourselves again, that Jesus gave his disciples this prayer in
Matthew 6 to teach them and through them to teach everyone
who reads these words throughout history how to pray.
And the Lord's Prayer we call often, it's recorded for us
twice in the gospel, so Luke Chapter 11 and here in Matthew
chapter 6. The wording differs slightly in
Luke and Matthew, but the basic outline is the same.
And it seems likely this is a pattern of prayer that Jesus
would have taught his disciples a number of times.
Tell them understand the heart of prayer, what prayer is really
all about. But more than that, to actually
encourage them to start praying themselves.
That's verse 9. This then is how you should
pray. So the Lord's Prayer, it gives
us an amazing theology of prayer.
But actually more than that, Jesus purpose in this prayer is
to get us praying as individuals and corporately as a church.
The great evangelist and writer John Stott used to say this.
He said the real battle to pray always takes place at the
threshold of prayer. What what did he mean by that?
He basically meant that the struggle is to actually start
praying. Well, if I think about prayers
really difficult, but actually maybe the greatest struggle is
getting started. We don't know what to say.
We don't know how to approach God.
We're, we're just confused by all that's going on.
Just we, we just don't even begin.
And that is where the Lord's Prayer really helps us because
we did see that the devil does everything in his power to stop
us praying, whether by distracting us or keeping us
busy or discouraging us. And, and he knows actually that
when we actually start praying to our Father in heaven, our
Father in heaven welcomes us. He hears us, He helps us, and
actually we are blessed as a result of drawing near to him.
The real struggle is to get started.
I know that's really true. And Lily and my experience, we,
we sort of like, we do marriage prep with a lot of people.
We've done marriage prep with some people here.
We'll say, yeah, you know, you've got to pray together as a
couple. We're, we're pretty bad at it.
We, we try to pray together regularly, particularly in
difficult times when we're struggling, when there's too
many things on, we don't know what to do.
But I can tell you, every time that we think we should probably
pray right now, 10,000 reasons come rushing into our minds to
stop us. Things like, well, it's getting
late, or we're too tired, or it just feels a bit awkward to
suggest praying. We've got other things that we
need to do. And as I've reflected in those
experiences, I think that's true for a lot of Christians
actually. The battle of prayer is the
battle to actually get started praying.
So just to help us, this would be like one of two grip times
going to do this morning. Just if you're if you're able to
just turn to the person actually people around you.
What are the roadblocks that stop you praying in your life?
What reasons do you often find for not praying?
And then when you don't want to start praying, has anything
helped you overcome that feeling?
Anything you could recommend to the people around you?
It's just like it. Take a few minutes.
What are the reasons that you find for not praying the
roadblocks and then when you don't want to start, has
anything helped you overcome that feeling?
Do you want to just turn the people next to you and the
person next to you and just share a bit of that?
Take a few minutes and we'll come back together in a few
minutes time. So I'm not going to ask for
feedback from that, but that's just helpful just to think
through what are some of the roadblocks that stop us and
things that we might have overcome.
Again, we want to look at the Lord's Prayer, not just as
amazing teaching about who God is, but actually as an
encouragement to us. This then is how you should
pray, says Jesus. And we thought yesterday if you
were with us, that the Lord's Prayer actually is a really
short prayer. Jesus said you don't have to use
lots and lots of words when you pray.
You can probably say the Lord's Prayer in roughly about 15
seconds. Jesus doesn't give us a long,
long prayer. He gives us a short prayer.
It's a simple prayer, not lots of big words in it.
It's actually a confident prayer because it begins with the words
our Father remembering the God is our Father.
He wants to hear us pray. And actually prayer always flows
out of recognizing the fatherhood of Gods.
And we thought about that when we're think about this, this
prayer that Jesus teaches us that that the Lord's Prayer
really shows us that prayer at its simplest is a child asking
their father for help. It's just we we need help and
therefore we go to God, we ask him to help us.
And alongside that definition, the the first 3 requests in the
Lord's Prayer, verses 9 to 10 hallowed be your name, your
Kingdom come, your will be done. We thought about yesterday how
they they tell us that prayer is about how we get involved with
God's saving purposes for us and for our world.
God amazingly opens up to us the opportunity to play a part in
his saving purposes. He he says, actually part of you
doing that is that you're going to pray your Kingdom come, your
will be done. You're going to pray.
Would people hallow your name? Would people see God What an
amazing God you are. And we turn to the second-half
of the Lord's Prayer this morning and another key aspects
of prayer to put alongside those first two.
They're really, they're all linked together.
That prayer is a daily dependence on our Father to meet
our needs in Christ. That's those last three
requests. Give us today Our Daily Bread.
Forgive us our debts or our sins.
Deliver us from the evil one. These prayers show us about who
we are and they tell us who God is, who we are.
We are people who are in need of forgiveness and provision and
protection. And who is God?
He's the one willing and able to meet each one of those needs in
Christ. Prayer is about depending on
God. It's about dependence.
And The thing is, dependence can be a bit of a dirty word for
some of us in modern Western culture.
It's not some we find very attractive or appealing.
You sort of slap an end at the beginning of dependence.
That's a different story. We like independence, and the
goal of many of our lives actually is to become more
independent. You think of a teenager wanting
to be more independent of her parents, someone working long
hours to achieve financial independence.
They can stand in their own 2 feet.
A musician or performer looking for creative independence, not
listen to the record label doing their own thing, or a country or
people group fighting for political independence.
We want to make our own decisions.
We actually don't have to argue with people much that
independence is a good thing when it comes to dependence.
Well, none of us really like it. We want to be able to cope on
our own. We want to be able to do things
on our own. And in actually many aspects of
life, that desire for independence is a natural and
right desire. Again, that teenager wanting
more independence, that's natural.
They're coming into adulthood. That's a natural and good thing
according to Jesus in the Lord's Prayer.
Dependence is not something followers of Jesus ever grow out
of. Dependence stands at the very
heart of the Christian life. It stands at the very heart of
what it means to be human. And by finishing this model
prayer with requests asking for God's provision and pardon and
protection, Jesus wants to show us just how dependent we are and
how dependent we should be on the God of grace when it comes
to our relationship with God, when it comes to our life
together as a church family, when it comes to us living as
witnesses for Jesus in this world, we're not meant to live
for Jesus without depending on him in prayer day by day by day.
Prayer is at the heart of walking by the Spirit.
It's at the heart of our witness to Jesus.
It's at the heart of our relationship with God as our
Father. And and the Bible tells us that
again and again and again. I've always loved the way Jesus
puts it. Elsewhere in John's Gospel,
chapter 15, the picture he uses to express our dependence, he
says I am the vine, you're the branches.
If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit.
Apart from me, you can do nothing.
And again in recent years it struck me that the two sides of
Jesus words here, both sides of this promise, apart from me, you
can do nothing. That's the negative side of
Jesus words. You can work as hard as you
like. You can practice all the
spiritual disciplines. You can come up with vision
statements and strategies for your life or as a church.
But without a daily dependence on Jesus, nothing we do will
bear lasting fruit for him. It's a really humbling
statement. Apart from me, you can do
nothing. But then Jesus also lifts us up.
He says if you remain in me and I and you, you will bear much
fruit. It's a really bold invitation.
He says remain in me, depend on me, keep trusting in me for your
life and mission and watch what will happen.
You will bear much fruit, says Jesus.
In terms of the fruit of the Spirit in our lives, in terms of
the fruit of people coming to know and trust in Jesus for
themselves. It's a really bold promise from
Jesus. That's a promise all about daily
dependence on our Father to meet our needs in Jesus Christ.
That's what prayer is about. It's about I I need your help,
Lord. I need your help, Lord.
Let's look at the second-half of the Lord's Prayer together,
praying as God's children. And in verses 11 to 13, Jesus is
so revealing to his disciples just what their top 3 greatest
needs are. And we might feel that we know
what our needs are, we just need a little bit more money.
Or we need an ideal partner, or we need a perfect body shape, or
we need to know the name and address of the pizza place.
Last night that Don Hay got pizza slices the size of a man's
head. I will ask him later.
We have so many needs, but actually Jesus boils it down to
our deepest needs. Here He says our greatest needs
are for God to provide for us physically, to pardon our sins,
to protect us from the evil 1 So first of all, our greatest needs
is for God to provide for us physically.
Give us today Our Daily Bread. And one level, that's a really
simple prayer request. And yet it's amazing, actually.
Throughout church history, many Christians have struggled to
understand it from any of the early church fathers, for
instance, that it seems so unlikely that this great prayer
of Jesus would contain a reference to something so
ordinary and physical as actual bread.
Many of them said, well, this is clearly Jesus telling us to pray
about the Lord's Supper, the bread we receive then, or or
about the word of God, the bread of life.
And to be fair to them that the word, the Greek word before it
translated daily in the NIV is very rare.
It only happens one other place in the New Testament in Luke 11,
when he says give us today Our Daily Bread.
So, so some churches presumed it must be some sort of spiritual
bread. And the assumption there is that
Jesus, he's the Son of God, he's far too spiritual and important
to refer to actual bread in this prayer.
He must be referring to something else.
But The thing is, there's no linguistic evidence that the
bread Jesus refers to is spiritual bread.
You can translate the phrase in different ways.
Daily bread, Bread for tomorrow, bread necessary for existence.
But the point is, Jesus is actually referring to physical,
actual bread here. Bread that you need and bake in
an oven, Bread you butter and eat.
Bread you may have had for breakfast this morning.
And Jesus tells us to pray for that because he wants us to know
that our Father in heaven cares about our physical needs, and he
wants us to ask God to provide for us.
See, the danger often is in the Christian life.
We have become more spiritual than God is like those church
fathers. Maybe we we presume it isn't
appropriate to pray for the food we eat or for our car to get
fixed or or the clothes we need or the money we need to pay for
a bill. We've been in those things that
are off limits. That's kind of dying to us.
Jesus doesn't say pray about those things, pray about other
things, but those things are dying to us.
But again, we need to see prayer is about dependence.
Our Father loves us and he's concerned for our physical needs
as well as our spiritual ones. God knows this is to survive.
We need food and drink, we need clothing, we need somewhere to
live. And so Jesus urges us, go to
your Father and ask Him to provide for your needs.
There's nothing too big or too small that we can't bring to our
Father in heaven. So give us today Our Daily
Bread. There's at least 2 Old Testament
echoes behind this phrase of Jesus in the book of Proverbs at
which we're I'm going to come back to you next week.
Proverbs chapter 30 verses 7 to 9.
A man called Agur praised the following prayer.
He says two things I ask of you, Lord, do not refuse me before I
die. Keep falsehood and lies far from
me. Give me neither poverty nor
riches. Give me only my daily bread.
Otherwise I may have too much and disown you and say, who is
the Lord? Or may become poor and steal and
so dishonour the name of my God again, that this prayer of Agur
is just like the prayer of Jesus.
Remind us that we're asking God to meet our needs rather than
satisfy our greed. There's a sense actually
material wealth is not the straightforward blessing we
often think it is. If I just had a bit more money
then I'd be content. Actually.
This probably reminds us that having enough actually can cause
us to do rely on ourselves, not on God.
It can cause us actually to sin, says Agur.
Far better to learn dependence on God and contentment with
having our needs met by him. Of course, this kind of assumes
something that God is the one who provides everything that we
need. And that's the truth we actually
struggle to take hold of. Sometimes we think, well, well,
not I provide what I need. And there's a great early
episode in The Simpsons where Bart Simpsons asked to say grace
before meal and he prays this was dear God, we paid for all
the stuff ourselves. So thanks for nothing.
Amen. And and when you think like
that, that's kind of it going well, hang on.
I, I work for this. You know, I went to the shop, I
handed over money, they gave me the goods.
Why am I thanking God? We see this prayer of our guru
and the prayer of Jesus reminds us everything we have,
everything we enjoy comes from God right down to the bread on
our plates. And as a result, we should thank
him for it, and we should depend on him for it.
And that's the second Old Testament echo.
This may be more significant. We heard this preached on a few
weeks ago when George Hawkins was with us.
The manna in the wilderness in the book of Exodus.
So the Israelites were set free from slavery in Egypt under
Moses. They cried out to God for food
in the desert. And God responded by raining
down bread from heaven every day for the next 40 years.
And that bread that manner was the sign of God's faithful
provision for his people. It was given to the Israelites
to teach them to depend on God, not on themselves.
And God told them to collect only as much as they needed for
that day. It was daily bread until it was
the Sabbath, and to trust him that the next day God would
provide the same. If he gathered too much, it
would go off, it would go mouldy.
It was it was, it was a test really a lesson to them.
Will you trust in God for your day-to-day provision?
Because this prayer of Jesus tells us that's all we can ask
God for it. Take one day at a time, keep
depending on our Father in heaven to provide everything we
need to live for him. It's about daily dependence on
God. And amazing.
Jesus doesn't just call us to a life of of dependence.
He modelled that life for us in his own relationship with his
Father. Again, Jesus, He's the eternal
Son of God, the second person of the Trinity.
And but for him, life is all about relying on depending on
God the Father and God the Holy Spirit.
It's a life of dependence, and he calls us to share in that.
Mike Reeves in a really helpful little book called Enjoy Your
Prayer Life, writes this. He says if God was a single
independent person, independence would be the godly thing that
would be hard to be like him. But as the Son always depends on
the Father, that is the nature of Christian godliness.
Being a Christian is first and foremost all about receiving,
asking and depending. It's when you don't feel needy
and so when you don't pray much that you lose your grip on
reality and think or act in an unchristian manner.
In fact, as you grow as a Christian, you do feel not more
self-sufficient, but ever more needy.
Give us today Our Daily Bread. Help me today, Lord.
Provide for me today Lord. And then verse 12, Jesus moves
beyond our physical needs, important as they are, and urges
us to have our great spiritual needs met by Him.
Forgive us our sins. We ask God to pardon our sins.
Verse 12. Forgive us our debts as we also
have forgiven our debtors. That language of debts.
It just tells us that apart from faith in Jesus, we are all
hopelessly in debt to the God who made us, and we cannot pay
that debt off. We have an obligation to God as
people made in his image, to love him with all our heart,
mind and strength, to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.
And the Bible tells us every single one of us has failed to
meet those obligations and a massive debt has built up.
What Jesus calls his disciples to hear is honesty before God.
Confess your sins and your feelings.
But more than that, it's also a call, a prayer to express our
faith in Jesus, the one giving us this prayer and his death and
resurrection for us. Because the only reason any of
us can approach the living gods and pray this prayer without
fear of being punished immediately is because of the
saving work of the person teaching us this prayer.
Because Jesus went to the cross for us, He lived, died, and rose
again. As a result, we can come before
our Father in heaven and have our sin pardoned, our debt
cancelled because Jesus has justified everyone who trusts in
Him. We are righteous in His name
because He's redeemed everyone who trusts Him.
We've been set free from sin and death because Jesus has taken
the punishment on Himself that we deserve.
We are not clean and debt free in God's sight and therefore we
don't hide our sin from God. We confess it to him with
honesty and celebrate the fact that he will forgive us in
Christ. Forgiveness a sin.
It's one of the most precious aspects of the gospel.
But this is actually the one bit of the prayer where it reflects
back on us as well, verse 12, and we discover that we have
been forgiven by God. That needs to transform the way
we relate to people who sin against us.
Again, it was CS Lewis you said everyone loves the idea of being
forgiven by God. We just don't like the idea of
ever having to forgive someone else.
And yet Jesus places an unbreakable link between God's
forgiveness of us and our forgiveness of other people.
We cannot ask God to forgive us, says Jesus, if we are unwilling
to forgive those who have sinned against US.
Verses 14 and 15, the the coder to this prayer, if you like
Jesus says, for if you forgive other people when they sin
against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.
But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not
forgive your sins. And that is a hard saying for us
to hear. Some of us, you may be sitting
here this morning thinking, well, you've been sinned against
terribly by people in your life. And worse than that, maybe those
people have never acknowledged it.
They've never said sorry, they've never been repentant of
it. How do we respond?
Verse verse 12 says if we've been forgiven by God, we must be
ready to forgive whoever has sinned against us.
And we need to be clear, there is a difference between
forgiveness and true reconciliation.
And for true reconciliation, restoration take place actually,
both parties need to acknowledge their wrongdoing, and that may
take a long time in some cases. In fact, true reconciliation may
never come this side of the new creation.
But even when the other party refuses to own up to what
they've done or confess their guilt, we must be prepared to
forgive them as God in Christ forgives us.
We are people who've been forgiven so much, Jesus tells
us. We must be willing to forgive
others. We mustn't hold on to hatred or
long for revenge. You mustn't hold on to grudges.
Again, think of the parable The Unmerciful Servant, a story
Jesus tells about two servants. One owes a quite a small debt,
but the other servant refuses to forgive them.
And he says he's he has his hands round his throat.
Give me what you owe me, Jesus says.
You need to be willing to let go of the other person's throat and
forgive them. But how do we do that?
Jesus tells us only through prayer.
Only as we ask God to teach us how to forgive by showing us our
own need of forgiveness, and so overtime teaching us how to
forgive those who have sinned against us humanly.
It feels impossible, but that's why Jesus tells us to pray that
prayer in verse 12. As he puts it elsewhere, with
human beings this is impossible, but not with God.
All things are possible with God, so we're told.
Give us today Our Daily Bread, provide for us physically, Lord,
forgive us our sins. Pardon our sins, Lord, because
of Jesus. And then this last prayer
deliver us from the evil, and we ask God to protect us from the
evil. 1 Again, this is a reminder Jesus doesn't invite us
to pray because it's kind of a nice thing to do or it's a quick
way to feel spiritual, to feel warm and cuddly in the mornings.
Now Jesus says you need to pray because you live your life in a
spiritual war zone with an enemy who wants to get at you.
Prayer isn't about achieving a state of Zen like calm prayers
about facing up to temptation and evil in our lives, in our
world, and depending on our Father in heaven to enable us to
overcome them. Verse 13.
It's fundamentally the same prayer.
It's expressed in 2 slightly different ways.
So lead us not into temptation, deliver us from the evil 1.
With this request, Jesus reminds us that we have an enemy, the
devil, the evil 1, and we need the Father to protect us from
him. Jesus reminds us that the evil
1, the devil, he is real. He's not just a cartoon figure,
product of spiritual paranoia, a figment of our imagination.
Who elsewhere in the New Testament describes the devil as
a liar, a murderer, a roaring lion prowling around for someone
to devour? And he loves to attack disciples
of Jesus. He does that in so many ways, by
lying to us, luring us into sinful behavior and attitudes,
by causing disunity among Christians, by promoting false
teaching, twisting God's word. And in light of all those
attacks, Jesus says, pray to your Father.
Deliver us from the evil one, protect us from him.
Jesus says we can resist the devil.
He will flee from us as we depend on our Father in heaven.
Lead us not into temptation, says Jesus.
We need to be real. Actually, this is not a prayer
for God to free us from ever being tempted, because Jesus
knows temptation to sin will come for all of us.
This time, this side of the new creation, Jesus himself was
tempted to sin. Matthew chapter 4, a couple of
chapters before this. He's tempted by the devil in the
wilderness. Temptation will come to all of
us. What Jesus prays here is that we
will not give in to temptation, that our Father will protect us
from giving in. The German reformer Martin
Luther used to put it like this. He said you can't stop the birds
flying over your head, but you can stop them from building a
nest in your hair. Martin Luther had a nice way of
putting things. Temptation will come.
Those birds are going to fly over our heads, but what we need
to pray is that we would not give in to them.
We'd walk away from them. Some people suggest you could
paraphrase this prayer, lead us in the way that is not
temptation, lead us in the paths of righteousness, and deliver us
from the evil. 1 And as with the other prayers, in this prayer
Jesus isn't sharing this to to frighten us or make us anxious.
He's teaching us this prayer because we can depend on the
Father. He's teaching it because the
devil is a defeated enemy and we can share in the victory Jesus
has won and send the devil packing by just saying no, I
will not listen, I'm with Jesus, I trust in what he has done and
who he is. So prayer is a daily dependence
on our Father to meet our needs in Christ, asking him to provide
for us physically, to pardon our sins, to protect us from the
evil one. Prayer is an invitation to come
to God in our need and ask him to meet every one of those needs
in Christ. I know we can see, as we've told
this weekend, praying together. Actually, every one of the
prayers in the Lord's Prayer is a corporate prayer.
We don't pray this prayer just on our own as isolated
individuals. We pray as members of God's
Church of Christ's body, the church.
We pray as people who belong to Jesus, who give us today Our
Daily Bread. That's a prayer for God to
provide for all his people. If God has provided for you, you
need to be praying for believers in this country and around the
world for whom they are not being provided for.
Praying for God to meet their needs, playing our part to do
that, forgive us our sins. A prayer that God's people
throughout the world will be people transformed by God's
grace. That as people forgiven by God
through Jesus, we will offer God's forgiveness to others
through Jesus and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us
from the evil. And I pray for all of us to
fight the good fights together, to encourage one another, pray
for one another, love one another, weep with one another
when it's hard, help one another to see through the lies of the
evil one. We pray all these prayers
together. The follower of Jesus doesn't
pray alone in this world. We pray as part of the community
of God's people, and we pray alongside the community of the
Trinity. God the Father invites us to
pray. God the Son intercedes for us,
praying for us at the right hand of the Father.
God the Holy Spirit equips our prayers and we don't know what
to pray for. He he interprets for us.
We never pray alone. That's where the Lord's Prayer
reminds us. The Lord's Prayer tells us, ask
your Father for help. Depend on Him as a child with
their Father. Prayer is about getting involved
with what God wants to do in our lives and in our world.
Your Kingdom come, Your will be done.
Prayer is a daily dependence on our Father.
Give us Our Daily Bread. Forgive us our sins.
Lead us not into temptation. This is a beautiful prayer that
gets us aware of who we are and aware of who God is.
And that is at the heart of prayer.
We we thought yesterday about that quote from CS Lewis.
True prayer is the real me speaking to the real God.
It's about being genuine about who we are and being truthful
about who God is. The real God is our loving
Father in heaven. The real me is someone who needs
God's grace and help every day of my life.
And when we get scared about the admission, about our need, we go
back to the first thing. Who's the real God?
He's our loving Father in heaven, and He wants to help us.
He is near to us. So to be finished, there is.
I've quoted from CS Lewis a few times to them and a CS Lewis
mood. And there's a great moment in
the Chronicles of Narnia in one of the lesser known books, The
Horse and His Boy. And someone pointed out to me a
few years ago and I just, it's amazing.
And Lily reminded it reminded me of it this weekend.
So the boy of the title is a boy called Shasta.
And in the book, at this point, he's been travelling a long way.
He's in a desert, he's weary, he's frightened, he feels alone,
he starts crying. And then suddenly he senses A
presence nearby. That's right.
Someone or somebody was walking beside Shasta.
It was pitch dark and he could see nothing.
At last he could bear it no longer.
Who are you? He said, barely above a whisper.
One who has waited long for you to speak, came the answer.
In the story, it's Aslan the Lion, the Christ figure standing
next to him, ready to help. We open by saying the struggle
of prayer is often the struggle to start praying.
We maybe don't know what to say. We feel God is distant.
We just things are too much. But actually, just as in that
story, when we open our mouth to speak to our Father in heaven in
the name of Jesus, trusting in all that Jesus has done, we
discover that He's just waiting for us to speak.
He wants to hear from you. He wants you to ask Him to help
and He wants to bring glory to His name by helping.
Give us today Our Daily Bread. Forgive us our sins.
Deliver us from the evil 1. Just invite you to take a moment
or two again, maybe turning to the person next to you.
Just looking at those 3 requests, just what has stood
out for you? And then I'm going to lead us in
praying through the Lord's Prayer in a little bit.
But give us today Our Daily Bread.
Forgive us our sins, deliver us from the evil. 1.
Which of those encourages you the most?
Which of those challenges you the most?
Which of those actually encourages you to start praying?
Just maybe turn to the person next to you, share what stood
out for you. And they'll call us back
together in a minute to pray before we sing each other.
And what we're just going to do, ask us already where, where
we're seated. We're going to pray the Lord's
Prayer together. I put it on the screen.
There's various different English translations of it.
So when we try and stick to the words on the screen.
But if you want to pray a different version, go for it.
There's we actually prayed in our pre service meeting for
years of the Kingdom, the power and the glory forever and ever,
Amen. And people think that's not in
the original text, but the early church prayed it from very early
days. So we're going to include that
bit as well. But let's, yeah, let's pray the
words of the Lord's Prayer, this model prayer of Jesus giving us
words we can always use to approach our Father in heaven.
Let's let's pray, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,
your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in
heaven. Give us today Our Daily Bread
and forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against
us. Lead us not into temptation, but
deliver us from the evil one, For yours is the Kingdom, the
power, and the glory, forever and ever.
Amen.