Teach Us to Pray: Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread

This is part of an occasional series of posts on the Lord’s Prayer. You can read the previous entries in this series here, here, here, here, here, and here. Today’s post looks at the phrase “Give us this day our daily bread” from the Lord’s Prayer. This is the first in a series of three […]

Teach Us To Pray: Your Kingdom Come

This is the sixth article in a series of blogs posts on the Lord’s Prayer. You can read the previous entries in this series here, here, here, here, and here. In this post, we will discuss the second request Jesus encourages us to present in the Lord’s Prayer: “Your Kingdom Come.” So what does it […]

Teach Us to Pray: ‘Hallowing’ God’s Name in Our Lives

(This is the fifth post in a ten post series on The Lord’s Prayer) As we continue looking at the second part the verse, “hallowed be your name,” we see this is a prayer for God to work through His Spirit in us to reveal the name of Christ. So when we pray “Hallowed be […]

Teach Us to Pray: Our Father Who Art in Heaven

(This is the third post in a ten post series on The Lord’s Prayer) The Lord’s Prayer—given by Jesus as a model for how the disciples should pray begins with what seems like a typical phrase: “Our Father Who Art In Heaven.” Today we might not be as formal, but we’d use a similar line […]

Teach Us to Pray: 6 Reasons Why We Should Pray

(This is the second post in a ten post series on The Lord’s Prayer.) As a Pastor, a question that I am often asked goes along the lines of, “well, I know I should pray, but why?” When I give them an answer, they usually follow up with “but how do I pray? The simple […]

Teach Us to Pray: Introduction

The Lord’s Prayer is one of my favorite passages of Scripture. I love reading it, reciting it, and preaching through it. So today I am starting a ten-post blog series, Teach Us To Pray, where we will look in depth at the Lord’s Prayer. The first two posts will be an introduction to prayer and what […]

The Lord’s Prayer and the Self-Made Man

In America, we pride ourselves on our rugged independence. We’re a self-made people. There is much good in this kind of pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps way of life. Hard work and ingenuity are hard-wired into the Creation mandate by a God who gave man the gift of work in the garden and who commanded him to “subdue” the […]

Thy Kingdom Come

I’m currently in the midst of a series on The Lord’s Prayer. This past Sunday I preached on the phrase: “They Kingdom Come.” I came across some great quotes in preparation: From Ray Pritchard‘s excellent book, And When You Pray:  Consider the matter this way. Every time you pray you must say one of two things. […]

Embracing The Tension of God

This last Sunday we continued our series through The Lord’s Prayer. We examined the phrase, “Our Father in Heaven.” As a model for prayer, this doesn’t look too different from the way we might pray today. Perhaps we begin our prayers with something like, “Heavenly Father . . . ” But to the disciples who […]

Prayer That Starts With God

On Sunday I started a brand-new series on the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13) entitled, “Teach Us to Pray.” Let’s remember that this is not a prayer Jesus prays, but that a prayer He offers for his disciples to pray. One of the things that really strikes me about Jesus’ model prayer is just how God-centered this […]