For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
Jesus. Matthew 6:9-13. Hi, it’s Nathan, and this is Day 8 of 30 Days of Prayer. “In this manner, therefore, pray.” Just before this prayer, Jesus knocked out the two big prayer-killers: praying as a PR stunt and praying as if God were a gum ball machine dispensing answers for the right number of quarters. Then. He opens his heart and share’s what prayer actually looks like—from personal experience. We love Jesus’ prayer—we often refer to it as ‘the Lord’s Prayer’ or the ‘Our Father’. And then it quickly becomes obvious we haven’t learned the gum ball machine lesson—these are no magic words, this is no magic formula. It’s just a lesson. If every time somebody asked you about math, you repeated your 1st grade teacher’s lesson on adding 2+2 word for word, they’d look at you really strange. Jesus’ gave us an example. The order is insightful, but not magical. The contents fundamental but not required. It was an example. Every addition problem does follow the same rules your teacher shared in first grade—but rarely the same numbers in the same order. The same is true with prayer. Through the Lord’s prayer, Jesus opened the doorway into the living, breathing world that knowing God through prayer is meant to be.
