Tag: Lord’s prayer

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Luke Devotionals

My prayer

Luke

Father.

When others see me today, let them see you. Don’t let your name be blasphemed because of me and my actions. May your name be honored as holy in my life today.

Father, give me your perspective. Don’t let me just think about what I need to accomplish today. Help me see what you are trying to accomplish today.

Help me join in your work. Touch others through me and let your kingdom come in their lives today.

Father, you know my needs. My physical needs. My emotional needs. My spiritual needs. Please provide them.

Give me a humble heart that depends on you each day. May I not have a complaining heart, like the Israelites had in the desert. Instead, give me a heart of gratefulness for all you have provided. And again, a spirit of trust.

Father, what sins have I not confessed this week? Help me see them. And forgive me. Thank you for your grace.

And when I see others around me, let me not judge them, especially those who have hurt me.

Lord, you’ve forgiven me so much. So give me a heart of humility when I look at those who have hurt me.

My Shepherd, lead me in paths of righteousness. I want to honor you this day and every day.

In Jesus’ name. Amen.

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Matthew Matthew 6

Sermon on the Mount: Empty words

Matthew

Prayer is simple. And yet somehow, it is difficult.

At its base, prayer is simply talking to God, just as you would talk to any other person.

If that’s all prayer is, why is it so difficult sometimes then? I suppose it’s because we don’t get audible answers back. It would be so much easier if we could actually converse with God like Moses did.

But because we don’t, we often wonder, “Is God hearing me? Am I even doing this ‘prayer thing’ right?”

So instead of just talking, we often turn to formulas. We turn the Lord’s prayer found here in Matthew and in Luke 11 into our formula for prayer.

But prayer is not a mere formula nor was it ever meant to be.

When we look at the Lord’s prayer, it gives us an idea of what prayer should look like, and what kinds of things we should be praying about. But it’s not meant to be prayed as a magic formula to get God to hear you.

Too often, though, people take the Lord’s prayer and turn it into a formula. They think that just because they say the words, God will hear them. After all, that’s what Jesus told us to pray, right?

But Jesus tells us here in verses 7-8,

And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words.

Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. (Matthew 6:7-8)

In other words, when you talk to God, talk normally. You don’t need special words. You don’t need to pray using long, flowery speech. None of these things impress God. All he wants to hear from you is your heart.

Sometimes people ask, “If God already knows what I need, if he already knows my thoughts, why pray?”

The best reason I can give is he wants to engage with you.

Sure, he doesn’t have to hear our voice to know what we’re thinking. Sure, he could just give us our needs without our asking.

But by praying, we engage with the living God. And that’s what he wants more than anything else.

But it’s impossible to engage with him if we’re just mindlessly repeating words we’ve memorized.

It’s impossible to engage with him if we’re busy trying to figure out the right formula to get him to answer our prayers.

He hears. More than that he will speak if we will just listen.

So let’s stop the formulas and mindless prayers and simply engage with the living God by telling him our hearts and holding nothing back from him.

How about you? Are you truly engaging God in your prayers? Or are you just saying words?

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Psalms

Deliver me from evil

Psalms

And so we come down to the homestretch for the book of Psalms.  It’s taken about 4 months to get this far, and we have just under two more weeks to complete it.

Anyway, as I look at Psalm 140, I’m reminded of how Jesus taught us to pray.  One thing that he told us to pray was,

Deliver us from evil.  (Matthew 6:13)

That’s what David prays throughout this psalm, and for that matter, through the next few psalms.

This psalm was probably written either during his flight from King Saul or his son Absalom.  And he prays,

Rescue me, O LORD, from evil men;
protect me from men of violence,
who devise evil plans in their hearts
and stir up war every day.

They make their tongues as sharp as a serpent’s;
the poison of vipers is on their lips.

Keep me, O LORD, from the hands of the wicked;
protect me from men of violence who plan to trip my feet.

Proud men have hidden a snare for me;
they have spread out the cords of their net
and have set traps for me along my path. (Psalm 140:1-5)

From his prayer, David seems to be in a pretty bleak situation, with people looking to destroy him.  So he prays, “rescue me,” “keep me,” and “protect me.”

Yet in the midst of his trouble, we see David’s confidence in the Lord.  He says in verse 6,

O LORD, I say to you, “You are my God.”

and again in verse 7,

O Sovereign LORD, my strong deliverer, who shields my head in the day of battle.  (7)

He then prays that God would bring justice on those who would destroy him, and he concludes by praying,

I know that the LORD secures justice for the poor and upholds the cause of the needy.

Surely the righteous will praise your name and the upright will live before you.  (12-13)

Some of us are going through trials right now as people, who for whatever reason, are fighting against us and trying to bring us down.

But though people may hate us, let us be like David laying out our problems before God, and letting him deal out the justice, while we ourselves show mercy to our enemies, as David did with Saul, and desired to do with Absalom.

For some of us, we may not have anyone fighting against us right now.  But it would be well for us to remember that we are in a spiritual war.  That there are forces out there that are hostile to us and want to bring us down.

Jesus himself knew this.  That was why he told his disciples to pray, “Deliver me from evil.”

It should be part of our prayers too.  We’re in a broken world, filled with broken people, and the Enemy who first brought sin into the world is still running around loose.

So let us clothe ourselves with prayer.  More than that, let us not simply live in defensive mode, but in attack mode.

As one minister put it, all the armor we’ve been given is for the front, not the back.

So let us always be moving forward with God before us.  As the old hymn goes,

Onward Christian soldiers!
Marching as to war,

With the cross of Jesus
Going on before.

Christ, the royal Master,
Leads against the foe;

Forward into battle,
See, His banners go!