Teach Us to Pray
Every week at our church, we share the praises and prayer requests that are voiced at the beginning of the service. Prayer is a big deal to us, because we know that God hears our prayers and that He is able to answer them. We don’t know what the answer will be. We don’t always like the answer we get. But we know that we can trust Him. Jesus died and rose again so that we could have this open avenue of communication with the creator of the universe. That is too awesome for words!
Knowing that, we pay special attention to His instruction on how we should pray. We are all familiar with the “Lord’s prayer” in Matthew, chapter 6, but there’s a shorter version in Luke, chapter 11. There we learn that Jesus answered a request from his disciples, “Teach us to pray…” Did he mean for us to recite the prayer? If so, then why are the two versions we have slightly different? Jesus is teaching us the attitudes an principles that should guide our prayers. Let’s learn together from Matthew 6:5-15.