The Lord's Prayer (part 2) // Church Weekend at Home

So let me just read for us Matthew 6, beginning at verse 9,

Jesus speaking to his disciples. This then is how you should

pray. Our Father in heaven, hallowed

be your name, your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it

is in heaven. 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. For if you forgive other people

when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also

forgive you. But if you do not forgive others

their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

Father God, we pray that you'd help us to understand this

prayer, that we'd understand more of who you are, more of who

we are, and above all, that this prayer actually would act as the

encouragement we need to actually get us praying to you

and depending on you as our Father.

Please, by your spirit, would you open our eyes to the God

that you are. And the gift that prayer is, we

ask it in Jesus name, Amen. So, yeah, if you were at

Gilmorton with us yesterday and if you weren't just to Orient

ourselves again, that Jesus gave his disciples this prayer in

Matthew 6 to teach them and through them to teach everyone

who reads these words throughout history how to pray.

And the Lord's Prayer we call often, it's recorded for us

twice in the gospel, so Luke Chapter 11 and here in Matthew

Luke 11 · chapter mention Matthew 6 · chapter mention

chapter 6. The wording differs slightly in

Luke and Matthew, but the basic outline is the same.

And it seems likely this is a pattern of prayer that Jesus

would have taught his disciples a number of times.

Tell them understand the heart of prayer, what prayer is really

all about. But more than that, to actually

encourage them to start praying themselves.

That's verse 9. This then is how you should

pray. So the Lord's Prayer, it gives

us an amazing theology of prayer.

But actually more than that, Jesus purpose in this prayer is

to get us praying as individuals and corporately as a church.

The great evangelist and writer John Stott used to say this.

He said the real battle to pray always takes place at the

threshold of prayer. What what did he mean by that?

He basically meant that the struggle is to actually start

praying. Well, if I think about prayers

really difficult, but actually maybe the greatest struggle is

getting started. We don't know what to say.

We don't know how to approach God.

We're, we're just confused by all that's going on.

Just we, we just don't even begin.

And that is where the Lord's Prayer really helps us because

we did see that the devil does everything in his power to stop

us praying, whether by distracting us or keeping us

busy or discouraging us. And, and he knows actually that

when we actually start praying to our Father in heaven, our

Father in heaven welcomes us. He hears us, He helps us, and

actually we are blessed as a result of drawing near to him.

The real struggle is to get started.

I know that's really true. And Lily and my experience, we,

we sort of like, we do marriage prep with a lot of people.

We've done marriage prep with some people here.

We'll say, yeah, you know, you've got to pray together as a

couple. We're, we're pretty bad at it.

We, we try to pray together regularly, particularly in

difficult times when we're struggling, when there's too

many things on, we don't know what to do.

But I can tell you, every time that we think we should probably

pray right now, 10,000 reasons come rushing into our minds to

stop us. Things like, well, it's getting

late, or we're too tired, or it just feels a bit awkward to

suggest praying. We've got other things that we

need to do. And as I've reflected in those

experiences, I think that's true for a lot of Christians

actually. The battle of prayer is the

battle to actually get started praying.

So just to help us, this would be like one of two grip times

going to do this morning. Just if you're if you're able to

just turn to the person actually people around you.

What are the roadblocks that stop you praying in your life?

What reasons do you often find for not praying?

And then when you don't want to start praying, has anything

helped you overcome that feeling?

Anything you could recommend to the people around you?

It's just like it. Take a few minutes.

What are the reasons that you find for not praying the

roadblocks and then when you don't want to start, has

anything helped you overcome that feeling?

Do you want to just turn the people next to you and the

person next to you and just share a bit of that?

Take a few minutes and we'll come back together in a few

minutes time. So I'm not going to ask for

feedback from that, but that's just helpful just to think

through what are some of the roadblocks that stop us and

things that we might have overcome.

Again, we want to look at the Lord's Prayer, not just as

amazing teaching about who God is, but actually as an

encouragement to us. This then is how you should

pray, says Jesus. And we thought yesterday if you

were with us, that the Lord's Prayer actually is a really

short prayer. Jesus said you don't have to use

lots and lots of words when you pray.

You can probably say the Lord's Prayer in roughly about 15

seconds. Jesus doesn't give us a long,

long prayer. He gives us a short prayer.

It's a simple prayer, not lots of big words in it.

It's actually a confident prayer because it begins with the words

our Father remembering the God is our Father.

He wants to hear us pray. And actually prayer always flows

out of recognizing the fatherhood of Gods.

And we thought about that when we're think about this, this

prayer that Jesus teaches us that that the Lord's Prayer

really shows us that prayer at its simplest is a child asking

their father for help. It's just we we need help and

therefore we go to God, we ask him to help us.

And alongside that definition, the the first 3 requests in the

Lord's Prayer, verses 9 to 10 hallowed be your name, your

Kingdom come, your will be done. We thought about yesterday how

they they tell us that prayer is about how we get involved with

God's saving purposes for us and for our world.

God amazingly opens up to us the opportunity to play a part in

his saving purposes. He he says, actually part of you

doing that is that you're going to pray your Kingdom come, your

will be done. You're going to pray.

Would people hallow your name? Would people see God What an

amazing God you are. And we turn to the second-half

of the Lord's Prayer this morning and another key aspects

of prayer to put alongside those first two.

They're really, they're all linked together.

That prayer is a daily dependence on our Father to meet

our needs in Christ. That's those last three

requests. Give us today Our Daily Bread.

Forgive us our debts or our sins.

Deliver us from the evil one. These prayers show us about who

we are and they tell us who God is, who we are.

We are people who are in need of forgiveness and provision and

protection. And who is God?

He's the one willing and able to meet each one of those needs in

Christ. Prayer is about depending on

God. It's about dependence.

And The thing is, dependence can be a bit of a dirty word for

some of us in modern Western culture.

It's not some we find very attractive or appealing.

You sort of slap an end at the beginning of dependence.

That's a different story. We like independence, and the

goal of many of our lives actually is to become more

independent. You think of a teenager wanting

to be more independent of her parents, someone working long

hours to achieve financial independence.

They can stand in their own 2 feet.

A musician or performer looking for creative independence, not

listen to the record label doing their own thing, or a country or

people group fighting for political independence.

We want to make our own decisions.

We actually don't have to argue with people much that

independence is a good thing when it comes to dependence.

Well, none of us really like it. We want to be able to cope on

our own. We want to be able to do things

on our own. And in actually many aspects of

life, that desire for independence is a natural and

right desire. Again, that teenager wanting

more independence, that's natural.

They're coming into adulthood. That's a natural and good thing

according to Jesus in the Lord's Prayer.

Dependence is not something followers of Jesus ever grow out

of. Dependence stands at the very

heart of the Christian life. It stands at the very heart of

what it means to be human. And by finishing this model

prayer with requests asking for God's provision and pardon and

protection, Jesus wants to show us just how dependent we are and

how dependent we should be on the God of grace when it comes

to our relationship with God, when it comes to our life

together as a church family, when it comes to us living as

witnesses for Jesus in this world, we're not meant to live

for Jesus without depending on him in prayer day by day by day.

Prayer is at the heart of walking by the Spirit.

It's at the heart of our witness to Jesus.

It's at the heart of our relationship with God as our

Father. And and the Bible tells us that

again and again and again. I've always loved the way Jesus

puts it. Elsewhere in John's Gospel,

chapter 15, the picture he uses to express our dependence, he

says I am the vine, you're the branches.

If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit.

Apart from me, you can do nothing.

And again in recent years it struck me that the two sides of

Jesus words here, both sides of this promise, apart from me, you

can do nothing. That's the negative side of

Jesus words. You can work as hard as you

like. You can practice all the

spiritual disciplines. You can come up with vision

statements and strategies for your life or as a church.

But without a daily dependence on Jesus, nothing we do will

bear lasting fruit for him. It's a really humbling

statement. Apart from me, you can do

nothing. But then Jesus also lifts us up.

He says if you remain in me and I and you, you will bear much

fruit. It's a really bold invitation.

He says remain in me, depend on me, keep trusting in me for your

life and mission and watch what will happen.

You will bear much fruit, says Jesus.

In terms of the fruit of the Spirit in our lives, in terms of

the fruit of people coming to know and trust in Jesus for

themselves. It's a really bold promise from

Jesus. That's a promise all about daily

dependence on our Father to meet our needs in Jesus Christ.

That's what prayer is about. It's about I I need your help,

Lord. I need your help, Lord.

Let's look at the second-half of the Lord's Prayer together,

praying as God's children. And in verses 11 to 13, Jesus is

so revealing to his disciples just what their top 3 greatest

needs are. And we might feel that we know

what our needs are, we just need a little bit more money.

Or we need an ideal partner, or we need a perfect body shape, or

we need to know the name and address of the pizza place.

Last night that Don Hay got pizza slices the size of a man's

head. I will ask him later.

We have so many needs, but actually Jesus boils it down to

our deepest needs. Here He says our greatest needs

are for God to provide for us physically, to pardon our sins,

to protect us from the evil 1 So first of all, our greatest needs

is for God to provide for us physically.

Give us today Our Daily Bread. And one level, that's a really

simple prayer request. And yet it's amazing, actually.

Throughout church history, many Christians have struggled to

understand it from any of the early church fathers, for

instance, that it seems so unlikely that this great prayer

of Jesus would contain a reference to something so

ordinary and physical as actual bread.

Many of them said, well, this is clearly Jesus telling us to pray

about the Lord's Supper, the bread we receive then, or or

about the word of God, the bread of life.

And to be fair to them that the word, the Greek word before it

translated daily in the NIV is very rare.

It only happens one other place in the New Testament in Luke 11,

when he says give us today Our Daily Bread.

So, so some churches presumed it must be some sort of spiritual

bread. And the assumption there is that

Jesus, he's the Son of God, he's far too spiritual and important

to refer to actual bread in this prayer.

He must be referring to something else.

But The thing is, there's no linguistic evidence that the

bread Jesus refers to is spiritual bread.

You can translate the phrase in different ways.

Daily bread, Bread for tomorrow, bread necessary for existence.

But the point is, Jesus is actually referring to physical,

actual bread here. Bread that you need and bake in

an oven, Bread you butter and eat.

Bread you may have had for breakfast this morning.

And Jesus tells us to pray for that because he wants us to know

that our Father in heaven cares about our physical needs, and he

wants us to ask God to provide for us.

See, the danger often is in the Christian life.

We have become more spiritual than God is like those church

fathers. Maybe we we presume it isn't

appropriate to pray for the food we eat or for our car to get

fixed or or the clothes we need or the money we need to pay for

a bill. We've been in those things that

are off limits. That's kind of dying to us.

Jesus doesn't say pray about those things, pray about other

things, but those things are dying to us.

But again, we need to see prayer is about dependence.

Our Father loves us and he's concerned for our physical needs

as well as our spiritual ones. God knows this is to survive.

We need food and drink, we need clothing, we need somewhere to

live. And so Jesus urges us, go to

your Father and ask Him to provide for your needs.

There's nothing too big or too small that we can't bring to our

Father in heaven. So give us today Our Daily

Bread. There's at least 2 Old Testament

echoes behind this phrase of Jesus in the book of Proverbs at

which we're I'm going to come back to you next week.

Proverbs chapter 30 verses 7 to 9.

Proverbs 30:7–9

A man called Agur praised the following prayer.

He says two things I ask of you, Lord, do not refuse me before I

die. Keep falsehood and lies far from

me. Give me neither poverty nor

riches. Give me only my daily bread.

Otherwise I may have too much and disown you and say, who is

the Lord? Or may become poor and steal and

so dishonour the name of my God again, that this prayer of Agur

is just like the prayer of Jesus.

Remind us that we're asking God to meet our needs rather than

satisfy our greed. There's a sense actually

material wealth is not the straightforward blessing we

often think it is. If I just had a bit more money

then I'd be content. Actually.

This probably reminds us that having enough actually can cause

us to do rely on ourselves, not on God.

It can cause us actually to sin, says Agur.

Far better to learn dependence on God and contentment with

having our needs met by him. Of course, this kind of assumes

something that God is the one who provides everything that we

need. And that's the truth we actually

struggle to take hold of. Sometimes we think, well, well,

not I provide what I need. And there's a great early

episode in The Simpsons where Bart Simpsons asked to say grace

before meal and he prays this was dear God, we paid for all

the stuff ourselves. So thanks for nothing.

Amen. And and when you think like

that, that's kind of it going well, hang on.

I, I work for this. You know, I went to the shop, I

handed over money, they gave me the goods.

Why am I thanking God? We see this prayer of our guru

and the prayer of Jesus reminds us everything we have,

everything we enjoy comes from God right down to the bread on

our plates. And as a result, we should thank

him for it, and we should depend on him for it.

And that's the second Old Testament echo.

This may be more significant. We heard this preached on a few

weeks ago when George Hawkins was with us.

The manna in the wilderness in the book of Exodus.

So the Israelites were set free from slavery in Egypt under

Moses. They cried out to God for food

in the desert. And God responded by raining

down bread from heaven every day for the next 40 years.

And that bread that manner was the sign of God's faithful

provision for his people. It was given to the Israelites

to teach them to depend on God, not on themselves.

And God told them to collect only as much as they needed for

that day. It was daily bread until it was

the Sabbath, and to trust him that the next day God would

provide the same. If he gathered too much, it

would go off, it would go mouldy.

It was it was, it was a test really a lesson to them.

Will you trust in God for your day-to-day provision?

Because this prayer of Jesus tells us that's all we can ask

God for it. Take one day at a time, keep

depending on our Father in heaven to provide everything we

need to live for him. It's about daily dependence on

God. And amazing.

Jesus doesn't just call us to a life of of dependence.

He modelled that life for us in his own relationship with his

Father. Again, Jesus, He's the eternal

Son of God, the second person of the Trinity.

And but for him, life is all about relying on depending on

God the Father and God the Holy Spirit.

It's a life of dependence, and he calls us to share in that.

Mike Reeves in a really helpful little book called Enjoy Your

Prayer Life, writes this. He says if God was a single

independent person, independence would be the godly thing that

would be hard to be like him. But as the Son always depends on

the Father, that is the nature of Christian godliness.

Being a Christian is first and foremost all about receiving,

asking and depending. It's when you don't feel needy

and so when you don't pray much that you lose your grip on

reality and think or act in an unchristian manner.

In fact, as you grow as a Christian, you do feel not more

self-sufficient, but ever more needy.

Give us today Our Daily Bread. Help me today, Lord.

Provide for me today Lord. And then verse 12, Jesus moves

beyond our physical needs, important as they are, and urges

us to have our great spiritual needs met by Him.

Forgive us our sins. We ask God to pardon our sins.

Verse 12. Forgive us our debts as we also

have forgiven our debtors. That language of debts.

It just tells us that apart from faith in Jesus, we are all

hopelessly in debt to the God who made us, and we cannot pay

that debt off. We have an obligation to God as

people made in his image, to love him with all our heart,

mind and strength, to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.

And the Bible tells us every single one of us has failed to

meet those obligations and a massive debt has built up.

What Jesus calls his disciples to hear is honesty before God.

Confess your sins and your feelings.

But more than that, it's also a call, a prayer to express our

faith in Jesus, the one giving us this prayer and his death and

resurrection for us. Because the only reason any of

us can approach the living gods and pray this prayer without

fear of being punished immediately is because of the

saving work of the person teaching us this prayer.

Because Jesus went to the cross for us, He lived, died, and rose

again. As a result, we can come before

our Father in heaven and have our sin pardoned, our debt

cancelled because Jesus has justified everyone who trusts in

Him. We are righteous in His name

because He's redeemed everyone who trusts Him.

We've been set free from sin and death because Jesus has taken

the punishment on Himself that we deserve.

We are not clean and debt free in God's sight and therefore we

don't hide our sin from God. We confess it to him with

honesty and celebrate the fact that he will forgive us in

Christ. Forgiveness a sin.

It's one of the most precious aspects of the gospel.

But this is actually the one bit of the prayer where it reflects

back on us as well, verse 12, and we discover that we have

been forgiven by God. That needs to transform the way

we relate to people who sin against us.

Again, it was CS Lewis you said everyone loves the idea of being

forgiven by God. We just don't like the idea of

ever having to forgive someone else.

And yet Jesus places an unbreakable link between God's

forgiveness of us and our forgiveness of other people.

We cannot ask God to forgive us, says Jesus, if we are unwilling

to forgive those who have sinned against US.

Verses 14 and 15, the the coder to this prayer, if you like

Jesus says, for if you forgive other people when they sin

against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.

But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not

forgive your sins. And that is a hard saying for us

to hear. Some of us, you may be sitting

here this morning thinking, well, you've been sinned against

terribly by people in your life. And worse than that, maybe those

people have never acknowledged it.

They've never said sorry, they've never been repentant of

it. How do we respond?

Verse verse 12 says if we've been forgiven by God, we must be

ready to forgive whoever has sinned against us.

And we need to be clear, there is a difference between

forgiveness and true reconciliation.

And for true reconciliation, restoration take place actually,

both parties need to acknowledge their wrongdoing, and that may

take a long time in some cases. In fact, true reconciliation may

never come this side of the new creation.

But even when the other party refuses to own up to what

they've done or confess their guilt, we must be prepared to

forgive them as God in Christ forgives us.

We are people who've been forgiven so much, Jesus tells

us. We must be willing to forgive

others. We mustn't hold on to hatred or

long for revenge. You mustn't hold on to grudges.

Again, think of the parable The Unmerciful Servant, a story

Jesus tells about two servants. One owes a quite a small debt,

but the other servant refuses to forgive them.

And he says he's he has his hands round his throat.

Give me what you owe me, Jesus says.

You need to be willing to let go of the other person's throat and

forgive them. But how do we do that?

Jesus tells us only through prayer.

Only as we ask God to teach us how to forgive by showing us our

own need of forgiveness, and so overtime teaching us how to

forgive those who have sinned against us humanly.

It feels impossible, but that's why Jesus tells us to pray that

prayer in verse 12. As he puts it elsewhere, with

human beings this is impossible, but not with God.

All things are possible with God, so we're told.

Give us today Our Daily Bread, provide for us physically, Lord,

forgive us our sins. Pardon our sins, Lord, because

of Jesus. And then this last prayer

deliver us from the evil, and we ask God to protect us from the

evil. 1 Again, this is a reminder Jesus doesn't invite us

to pray because it's kind of a nice thing to do or it's a quick

way to feel spiritual, to feel warm and cuddly in the mornings.

Now Jesus says you need to pray because you live your life in a

spiritual war zone with an enemy who wants to get at you.

Prayer isn't about achieving a state of Zen like calm prayers

about facing up to temptation and evil in our lives, in our

world, and depending on our Father in heaven to enable us to

overcome them. Verse 13.

It's fundamentally the same prayer.

It's expressed in 2 slightly different ways.

So lead us not into temptation, deliver us from the evil 1.

With this request, Jesus reminds us that we have an enemy, the

devil, the evil 1, and we need the Father to protect us from

him. Jesus reminds us that the evil

1, the devil, he is real. He's not just a cartoon figure,

product of spiritual paranoia, a figment of our imagination.

Who elsewhere in the New Testament describes the devil as

a liar, a murderer, a roaring lion prowling around for someone

to devour? And he loves to attack disciples

of Jesus. He does that in so many ways, by

lying to us, luring us into sinful behavior and attitudes,

by causing disunity among Christians, by promoting false

teaching, twisting God's word. And in light of all those

attacks, Jesus says, pray to your Father.

Deliver us from the evil one, protect us from him.

Jesus says we can resist the devil.

He will flee from us as we depend on our Father in heaven.

Lead us not into temptation, says Jesus.

We need to be real. Actually, this is not a prayer

for God to free us from ever being tempted, because Jesus

knows temptation to sin will come for all of us.

This time, this side of the new creation, Jesus himself was

tempted to sin. Matthew chapter 4, a couple of

Matthew 4 · chapter mention

chapters before this. He's tempted by the devil in the

wilderness. Temptation will come to all of

us. What Jesus prays here is that we

will not give in to temptation, that our Father will protect us

from giving in. The German reformer Martin

Luther used to put it like this. He said you can't stop the birds

flying over your head, but you can stop them from building a

nest in your hair. Martin Luther had a nice way of

putting things. Temptation will come.

Those birds are going to fly over our heads, but what we need

to pray is that we would not give in to them.

We'd walk away from them. Some people suggest you could

paraphrase this prayer, lead us in the way that is not

temptation, lead us in the paths of righteousness, and deliver us

from the evil. 1 And as with the other prayers, in this prayer

Jesus isn't sharing this to to frighten us or make us anxious.

He's teaching us this prayer because we can depend on the

Father. He's teaching it because the

devil is a defeated enemy and we can share in the victory Jesus

has won and send the devil packing by just saying no, I

will not listen, I'm with Jesus, I trust in what he has done and

who he is. So prayer is a daily dependence

on our Father to meet our needs in Christ, asking him to provide

for us physically, to pardon our sins, to protect us from the

evil one. Prayer is an invitation to come

to God in our need and ask him to meet every one of those needs

in Christ. I know we can see, as we've told

this weekend, praying together. Actually, every one of the

prayers in the Lord's Prayer is a corporate prayer.

We don't pray this prayer just on our own as isolated

individuals. We pray as members of God's

Church of Christ's body, the church.

We pray as people who belong to Jesus, who give us today Our

Daily Bread. That's a prayer for God to

provide for all his people. If God has provided for you, you

need to be praying for believers in this country and around the

world for whom they are not being provided for.

Praying for God to meet their needs, playing our part to do

that, forgive us our sins. A prayer that God's people

throughout the world will be people transformed by God's

grace. That as people forgiven by God

through Jesus, we will offer God's forgiveness to others

through Jesus and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us

from the evil. And I pray for all of us to

fight the good fights together, to encourage one another, pray

for one another, love one another, weep with one another

when it's hard, help one another to see through the lies of the

evil one. We pray all these prayers

together. The follower of Jesus doesn't

pray alone in this world. We pray as part of the community

of God's people, and we pray alongside the community of the

Trinity. God the Father invites us to

pray. God the Son intercedes for us,

praying for us at the right hand of the Father.

God the Holy Spirit equips our prayers and we don't know what

to pray for. He he interprets for us.

We never pray alone. That's where the Lord's Prayer

reminds us. The Lord's Prayer tells us, ask

your Father for help. Depend on Him as a child with

their Father. Prayer is about getting involved

with what God wants to do in our lives and in our world.

Your Kingdom come, Your will be done.

Prayer is a daily dependence on our Father.

Give us Our Daily Bread. Forgive us our sins.

Lead us not into temptation. This is a beautiful prayer that

gets us aware of who we are and aware of who God is.

And that is at the heart of prayer.

We we thought yesterday about that quote from CS Lewis.

True prayer is the real me speaking to the real God.

It's about being genuine about who we are and being truthful

about who God is. The real God is our loving

Father in heaven. The real me is someone who needs

God's grace and help every day of my life.

And when we get scared about the admission, about our need, we go

back to the first thing. Who's the real God?

He's our loving Father in heaven, and He wants to help us.

He is near to us. So to be finished, there is.

I've quoted from CS Lewis a few times to them and a CS Lewis

mood. And there's a great moment in

the Chronicles of Narnia in one of the lesser known books, The

Horse and His Boy. And someone pointed out to me a

few years ago and I just, it's amazing.

And Lily reminded it reminded me of it this weekend.

So the boy of the title is a boy called Shasta.

And in the book, at this point, he's been travelling a long way.

He's in a desert, he's weary, he's frightened, he feels alone,

he starts crying. And then suddenly he senses A

presence nearby. That's right.

Someone or somebody was walking beside Shasta.

It was pitch dark and he could see nothing.

At last he could bear it no longer.

Who are you? He said, barely above a whisper.

One who has waited long for you to speak, came the answer.

In the story, it's Aslan the Lion, the Christ figure standing

next to him, ready to help. We open by saying the struggle

of prayer is often the struggle to start praying.

We maybe don't know what to say. We feel God is distant.

We just things are too much. But actually, just as in that

story, when we open our mouth to speak to our Father in heaven in

the name of Jesus, trusting in all that Jesus has done, we

discover that He's just waiting for us to speak.

He wants to hear from you. He wants you to ask Him to help

and He wants to bring glory to His name by helping.

Give us today Our Daily Bread. Forgive us our sins.

Deliver us from the evil 1. Just invite you to take a moment

or two again, maybe turning to the person next to you.

Just looking at those 3 requests, just what has stood

out for you? And then I'm going to lead us in

praying through the Lord's Prayer in a little bit.

But give us today Our Daily Bread.

Forgive us our sins, deliver us from the evil. 1.

Which of those encourages you the most?

Which of those challenges you the most?

Which of those actually encourages you to start praying?

Just maybe turn to the person next to you, share what stood

out for you. And they'll call us back

together in a minute to pray before we sing each other.

And what we're just going to do, ask us already where, where

we're seated. We're going to pray the Lord's

Prayer together. I put it on the screen.

There's various different English translations of it.

So when we try and stick to the words on the screen.

But if you want to pray a different version, go for it.

There's we actually prayed in our pre service meeting for

years of the Kingdom, the power and the glory forever and ever,

Amen. And people think that's not in

the original text, but the early church prayed it from very early

days. So we're going to include that

bit as well. But let's, yeah, let's pray the

words of the Lord's Prayer, this model prayer of Jesus giving us

words we can always use to approach our Father in heaven.

Let's let's pray, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,

your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in

heaven. Give us today Our Daily Bread

and forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against

us. Lead us not into temptation, but

deliver us from the evil one, For yours is the Kingdom, the

power, and the glory, forever and ever.

Amen.