THINK TOGETHER.
Have you ever felt like you do way more chores than your siblings?
READ TOGETHER.
Luke 11:1-4. 1Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” 2And he said to them, “When you pray, say: “Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. 3Give us each day our daily bread, 4and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation.”
The prayer in our scripture passage today is often called The Lord’s Prayer. Have you ever heard of The Lord’s Prayer before? This is a shorter version and in Matthew’s gospel there is a longer version. Both are great!
What’s cool is that the disciples have asked Jesus to teach them how to pray. Did you know that praying is something you have to learn how to do? Sometimes Christians think that just because they believe in Jesus they automatically know how to pray. But that’s not totally true. Yes, we can talk to God There are some good ways to pray, and Jesus is teaching them to us here.
First, when we pray we can call God, Father. This was a pretty big change that Jesus was making. The Jewish people never called God Father or Dad. They called him Lord or King. Yes, God is our king, but he is also our dad, and we can call him that.
Next, Jesus tells us to pray for God’s kingdom to come to earth. We should be asking our heavenly Dad to make the world around us like it is in Heaven – full of love and kindness.
Then, Jesus tells us to pray for our daily bread, or our bread for today. Bread is a person’s basic need, nothing fancy, just enough for today. That’s what we should ask God for – what we NEED today, not what we WANT tomorrow.
Jesus then tells us to pray for forgiveness. Forgiveness comes to us through Jesus, and God will never say no to us when we ask for the forgiveness of Jesus.
Lastly, Jesus tells us to ask our Dad to lead us not into temptation. This might be the strangest sounding thing to pray for. Why would God ever lead me into temptation? It’s important to know that God will never try to get you to sin, in fact, the Bible says that God can’t tempt us to sin. So we might pray God, keep me away from temptation, or help me to run away from temptations.
Remember, prayer is something you are learning to do and it takes practice. So keep practicing prayer!
Because of Jesus God is now our Dad when we trust in him.
With Jesus we can pray to God anytime and anywhere.
DO SOMETHING TOGETHER
Practice praying together. Use the ideas from The Lord’s Prayer as a guide. Try memorizing the Prayer too.
PRAY TOGETHER
Dad, help me to always trust you for all I need, and help me to be able to run away from sin as I wait for your kingdom to come. Amen.
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