A Heart At Home

In Luke 11:1 the desperate disciples asked Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray.”  And thankfully, in response to their plea Jesus gave us the “Lord’s Prayer”.  For a number of weeks, we are going to explore this prayer and Jesus’ instruction as recorded by Matthew, in chapter six of his Gospel.  With one exception, we will be using the outline found in the online resource, The Prayer Course.  Themes will include such topics as adoration, petition, intercession, and even the challenging topic of unanswered prayer.

This course comes out of 24-7 Prayer which started in 1999.  Since then, this movement has touched more than 2 million people in more than 10,000 prayer rooms. 24-7 Prayer participants are seeking God non-stop, night-and-day, from the slums of Delhi to a brewery in Missouri to a punk festival in Germany to churches and cathedrals across Canada and around the globe.

Another important strategy in our own area is Pray Ridge Meadows which has a very compelling purpose:  “To mobilize prayer in the Ridge-Meadows Body of Christ for revival of the church, the awakening of our city to the Gospel, and the manifest advance of the mission of God’s Kingdom.”   But before we engage with prayer organizations and strategies, we need to understand the most essential aspect of prayer.

In his book Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home Richard Foster writes that God “aches over our distance and preoccupation.  He mourns that we do not draw near to Him.  He grieves that we have forgotten Him…He is inviting you…to come home to where we belong, to come home to that for which we were created.”   As we approach this amazing prayer of Jesus, the best to do so is to simply say, “Lord, teach us to pray!”  As we come to Him with a hungry, humble, and honest heart He will certainly teach us to pray.