Opening:   Brothers and sisters,

Our Father knows what we need before we even ask.

Let us turn to Him with open hearts.    I confess, etc.

The Gospel:  Matthew 6:7-15

Jesus said to his disciples:

“In praying, do not babble like the pagans,

who think that they will be heard because of their many words.

Do not be like them.

Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

“This is how you are to pray:

Our Father who art in heaven,

hallowed be thy name,

thy Kingdom come,

thy will be done,

on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread;

and forgive us our trespasses,

as we forgive those who trespass against us;

and lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from evil.

“If you forgive men their transgressions,

your heavenly Father will forgive you.

But if you do not forgive men,

neither will your Father forgive your transgressions.”

After the Gospel:

Deep down, we know we’re a praying people, that prayer is our intimacy with God,  it’s our lifeline.

We also know that our prayers reveal our personal theology, they show what we think of God and ourselves and how we think God relates to us. Our prayers reveal our priorities and our assumptions.

But if we are careless in our prayer life, our prayers can turn into a laundry list of personal wants and selfish ambitions.

To combat this, Jesus taught us the “Our Father.”

We’re so familiar with it that we can say it without thinking, but when the disciples first heard these words from Jesus, the prayer was a thunderbolt, a radical new way to pray.

The first two words set the tone.

“Our Father”  because we are a group of people who consider themselves children of God, because our prayer is not a private affair,  but a corporate one in which we come together  to focus our minds and hearts on praising God for who He is and yearning for Him to fulfill all that He has promised in Jesus concerning His will and kingdom.

We are Children of God, humbly approaching Our Father in praise and petition — seven petitions, seven requests, each petition a theology lesson in itself.

We’ll always be students in the school of prayer.

If  prayerlessness settles in, then we need to learn to pray as Jesus taught us.

The Lord’s Prayer is the most powerful prayer in the Bible, it was given by Jesus to those closest to him. We desperately need to relearn its power just by practicing it more.