PRAYING LIKE JESUS DAY 11

WILD PRAYER

“The darkest hour often just before the dawn, so we should always be people of hope and prayer, not gloom and defeatism. God the Holy Spirit can turn the situation around in five minutes.” - Os Guinness

“Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

This, then, is how you should pray:” (Matthew 6:8-9)

Jesus taught us how to pray in Matthew 6.  Jesus was and will be forever intimately connected in relationship with his Father.  Jesus gave us a glimpse of the deep love and unity that he has with his Father, and when we pray like he did, we enter into deep connection with God.  The Lord’s Prayer gives us an insiders view of what Jesus’ private prayer times were like.

This isn’t the kind of prayer that is meant for a showy, mystical, religious spectacle to impress people, it is a conversation between a child and a loving Father.

Jesus gave us a framework to build our prayer time around.  Scholars agree that the Lord’s Prayer is not meant to be a recited prayer, rather a guide for how to structure our prayers.  Pastor John Morgan gives us an easy-to-remember acrostic for praying the Lord’s Prayer’s structure—WILD prayer.  WILD prayer is a bold adventure into the unknown, full of the excitement of connecting with the Holy Spirit who is not tame or predictable.

The Lord’s prayer has four major themes:

Worship – loving God

“‘Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name”

Intercession – prayers for others

“your kingdom come,

your will be done,

on earth as it is in heaven.”

Life – prayers for ourselves

“Give us today our daily bread.

And forgive us our debts,

as we also have forgiven our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from the evil one.”

Declaration – faith-filled statements

“For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen” (Matthew 6:9-13)

This week we will go through each of the four themes of the Lord’s prayer as we learn to pray like Jesus.  As we reach for God, our world changes.

QUESTIONS FOR CONTEMPLATION:

How would your prayer time change if you structured it around WILD prayer?

How do you feel about the discipline of a prayer structure?