As far as I can recall, I have never heard a sermon on the Lord’s Prayer. Yes, I’ve heard the prayer recited many times in church but I have never heard it expounded on and taught in-depth in order to teach and equip believers. A disciple asked Jesus, “Lord teach us to pray…” (Luke 11:1), and Jesus gave them this prayer, hence the name “The Lord’s Prayer”. The more accurate title really should be “The Disciple’s Prayer” because it was given to us by Jesus to in order to teach us how to pray correctly.
Prayer is essential to a believer’s spiritual life. Therefore, a believer should learn how to pray and the logical starting point must be the Lord’s Prayer. Unfortunately, that hasn’t been the case. It isn’t surprising then that there is a lot of confusion, wrong application, prayerlessness, and teaching of “prayer styles” that are not Biblical. The Lord’s Prayer has been relegated to mindless recitation or a doxology to be sung at the end of the service. Even worse, it has become to some a prayer to be repeated several times in order to pay penance for sin. Ignorance and lack of knowledge of the great truths found in the Lord’s Prayer has led to wrong theology and wrong application. Conversely, the right theology leads to right application and right thinking.
This is the next topic in our Tuesday Bible Study group. We’ll go through and unfold Matthew 6:5-13 verse by verse. I will blog about what we learned, the points of discussion or debate, and what truth was revealed to us that night. At the end of our study, my hope is that our desire to pray will be stimulated and that we will understand what a great privilege it is to pray to the one true God.
These are the main references that I have used for my preparation :
1. The Prayer of Our Lord by RC Sproul
2. The Lord's Prayer by RT Kendall
No comments:
Post a Comment