Spark Notes (10/29)

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TEACH US TO PRAY INTRODUCTION

To start off our series on the Lord's Prayer, Jen Sandbulte spoke and encouraged to look at the Lord's prayer in a fresh way. HOME is a place that people can come to pray, but do we just innately know how to pray? How can we learn to pray? 

Lord’s prayer is NOT Jesus' Prayer - it is Jesus telling us how we should pray because it wouldn’t make sense for him to pray "forgive us our debts" because he was sinless.

The prayer is brief - Demonstrates for us that it is the quality of our prayer - not the quantity.
He gave us a form of prayer -
  • Brief - short prayer but one of the biggest prayers - you can use it in short gaps during the day
  • Simple - it is for everyone - from little ones to dying
  • Profound - can think about all your life and it will still be fresh
  • Comprehensive - these 6 requests cover our every need
  • Universal - it is prayed all over the world
  • Most Challenging - it is not so much a prayer as it is a way of life, if we pray and mean it
How does this impact our other prayers? Does this structure overflow in to other prayers? 

Prayer is universal; so many other religions pray but Christian prayer is unique because we pray to someone. The person of God, "Our Father in Heaven,"

There is a pattern found in this prayer - 6 mentions of the person of God - 2 lots of 3 each - Father, Son, Spirit - Father, Son, Spirit.

This is a great reminder of the Trinity and how we are taught to prayer to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

In the order of the prayer, we see that there is another pattern in praying that goes as follows: reverence, allegiance, obedience. Notice that obedience is not the first but fear of the Lord, or reverence, is first.

10 commandments also follow a pattern with the Lord's prayer. 
In the first halves of the prayer and 10 commandments, we see that they are concerned with God, but the second halves are concerned with men.
1. You shall have no other gods / vs 1 "Our father,"
2. No image other than me / vs 1 "who art in heaven" - we don’t know what heaven is like
so we can’t create his image
3. Shall not take the name of God in vain / vs 2 "Hallowed be thy name"
The next commandments and second half of the Lord's prayer are focused on how we are to live. 

Jen concluded with encouraging to pray as you live and live as you pray. In the following weeks we will continue unpacking the Lord's prayer - join us Sunday nights at 5 at HOME or online! 

If you would like to watch the video of Sunday's IGNITE service, click here.


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