This week we’ll pray through the Lord’s prayer as an outline, one line at a time. Today, read the first line, verse in Matthew 6:9:

“Our Father, in Heaven,
Hallowed be your name.”

Think about each word and what it teaches you as you pray it.

“Our Father”
Jesus calls God his father, an unusually intimate term for his culture. What does “father” mean to you? What would it mean for you to see God as a good father in your life? How does this affect your concept of God?

“In Heaven”
Jesus didn’t mean Heaven the way we tend to think of it – as a distant cosmic place. Rather, Heaven was the realm of power in which God was fully in charge; Jesus, and all of the Old Testament scriptures, depicted heaven as the place where God’s rule and reign were unspoiled and uninterrupted by sin, disease, violence, and death. God occasionally broke into the present earthly realm, but he lived and worked from heaven. Given this, what does the concept of God being from heaven mean to you?

“Hallowed be your name”
Hallowed means to revere or honor. In the culture of the ancient near east where Jesus and the other Jews lived a person’s name was more powerful and meaningful than it is to modern Western societies. A person’s name was their identity. It reflected their character and purpose. Likewise, the name of God throughout scripture reflects His character and purpose. There are many names for God in the Old Testament, and each depicts, in some way, his divine character as witnessed by the ancient Hebrews. Here are a few:

• YHWH-Yireh — “The LORD will provide” (Genesis 22:13-14)
• YHWH-Rapha — “The LORD that healeth” (Exodus 15:26)
• YHWH-Niss”i — “The LORD our Banner” (Exodus 17:8-15)
• YHWH-Shalom — “The LORD our Peace” (Judges 6:24)
• YHWH-Ro’i — “The LORD my Shepherd” (Psalm 23:1)
• YHWH-Tsidkenu — “The LORD our Righteousness” (Jeremiah 23:6)
• YHWH-Shammah — “The LORD is present” (Ezekiel 48:35)

Prayer Exercise:
Find a quiet place to pray, uninterrupted for 20-30 minutes. Begin by addressing God as your father, then pray through some of these names of God listed above, asking God to be your “provider,” your “healer,” your “peace,” etc. Pause with each one as consider what this might look like in your life and pray for the specific situations that come to mind. Thank God for the ways in which He has already acted in this way for you.

Afterward, share a bit of your experiences in the comments below. Was this a good exercise? Was it easy or difficult? What did you experience?

During our Sermon on the Mount Series last Fall I was particularly struck by the fact that at the very heart of the Sermon of the Mount is the Lord’s Prayer. If we don’t get prayer, I fear we won’t get the Kingdom.

So, what is prayer? What did Jesus teach and demonstrate concerning prayer? How can we pray effectively as individuals and as a community of faith? Whatever you’ve learned thus far, I want to challenge you to set aside your assumptions and learn about prayer afresh over the next 5 weeks as we explore what scripture teaches. Here’s how this will work:

• Prayer will be our topic of study and meditation during our next 4 Sunday night gatherings.
• Between those gatherings, we’ll use this website as a community “gathering place” for meditations on prayer every Monday through Friday.
• Each day we’ll post scripture readings and exercises in prayer for you to experiment and leave your comments.
• Please be sure to leave your comments. We learn from each other and we can’t do that if you don’t participate.
• We’ll explore prayer from an individual and group perspective during the coming weeks, and experiment with different forms of prayer.

Also, I’m excited to announce that Christ Church, a new missional church community in Fort Wayne, Indiana will be joining us for this journey (or, maybe we’re joining them!). Their Pastor, Ben Sternke, will be sharing blog posting duties with me during this time – so some of the posts you see here will be from him. Take some time to visit their site, welcome them, and perhaps even engage in their conversations on prayer!

Today is the last day of our journey through the Sermon on the Mount. You’ve spent almost 2 months reading and reflecting on the most important teachings of the most important person to walk the earth. Now is your chance to reflect on the big picture:

• What are some of the most important lessons you took from this?
• How did this change your perception of Jesus and his teachings?
• How will The Sermon on the Mount affect your practice of Christian faith from here on?
• Find someone to partner with and share your reflections. Talk about how you can help each other continue your journey of following Christ.

Again, continue the prayer exercise we started Wednesday using the Lord’s prayer as an outline (Matt 6:9-13) but today do it in a group. Find at least on other person to pray with (feel free to gather a larger group of people if you like). Set aside 20-30 minutes together and start by reading the Lord’s prayer out loud. Then, pray freely through the model of the points and themes of the Lord’s prayer in your own words together. Pay attention to what the other person prays and use each others words and petitions as a catalyst for adding to one another’s prayers. Group prayer can becomes like a group conversation, a group brainstorming session, or a musical collaboration – complete with a life and rhythm of its own. Try to find that rhythm together.

Continue the prayer exercise we started yesterday using the Lord’s prayer as an outline (Matt 6:9-13). However, today take one line or phrase from the Lord’s prayer that captures your heart most and use it as a starting point for your prayer. Spend 15-20 minutes praying. Try to dig a little deeper than normal in your prayer time.

We’ve just completed the middle portion of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew Chapter 6), which compellingly portrays the central life of one who lives squarely in relationship with God – who is Himself the “blessing” and the “reward” that Jesus speaks of.

At the very center of this middle piece of Jesus’ great Sermon we find the chief activity of the people of God: Prayer (v9-18). If the blessing and reward of the Kingdom is God Himself, then there can be no activity that can replace prayer as the chief duty and delight of Kingdom people, for prayer is where we join with God through a conversation of the heart.

Read Matthew 6:9-15 and do the exercises below:

• The first lines of the Lord’s prayer begin with “O father in heaven, we revere your name.” By doing this Jesus characterizes God as both more accessible (”O father”) and more holy (”we revere your name”) at the same time. What does the concept of fatherhood, at it’s very best, mean to you? Who do you know that embodies good fatherhood?
• What does it mean to revere or honor someone?
• Take time to pray through this first line of the Lord’s Prayer: pray to God, imagining him as a great and good father and bring him your honor, reverence, and praise in whatever way seems fitting. Consider reading Psalm 145 out loud as a prayer.

Read Matthew 6:5-8 and do the exercises below:

• How is your private prayer different from your public prayer?
• Jesus says “do not keep babbling” (v7). In Jesus’ day a common pagan belief was that the gods could be worn down or overcome by incessant words in prayer. At the heart of this belief is the idea that we can gain control over God by praying the right way. What other approaches to prayer have you heard that basically teach this same idea (that if we’ll only learn to pray the right way God will do what we want)?
• What do you think Jesus means by, “I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full” (v5)? What is the “reward” he’s referring to? What does this teach us about God and the spiritual life?