“When you pray…” Jesus said.
When you pray…
How often do you pray? Do you pray? When do you pray? Does it work? Do you think God will answer? What do you pray? Is it magic?
These are the questions that go through my mind whenever prayer comes up. I know they shouldn’t, after all, I’m a pastor. I can tell you theologically what prayer is. I can explain how prayer works within the context of the God’s sovereignty and man’s free will. I can describe prayer for you with confessional language or with modern cool lingo.
Jesus didn’t say “When you explain prayer…” He said, “When you pray…”
Apparently Jesus assumed we would be a praying people. As you look around our site you will see strategy, you will see practical ministry stuff, and hopefully you will receive some vision. However, something you don’t see much of, is us talking about prayer.
Prayer is like the red headed step child of our faith. Many of us talk about it but when it comes time to pray we just don’t.
Prayer is something that we must do. It is something we act our way into. We simply must pray.
Everyone that knows me, knows that I need to lose weight. To lose weight you have to do two things. The first is you have to eat less. The second is that you have to exercise. I am pretty good at changing my eating habits. But, I am really good at talking about exercise. I have a gym membership. I have workout clothes. My key-chain even has a little thing to check in at the gym. I am terrible at exercising.
Prayer, for many of us, is like me and exercise. We are good at talking and really struggle at doing.
So Jesus says, “When you pray say,
Father, hallowed be your name.Your kingdom come.Give us each day our daily bread,and forgive us our sins,for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us.And lead us not into temptation.”
