(Preached at First Baptist, Pauls Valley, 9-07-14)
When our son Paul was a preschooler, we went to my mom’s house for a get-together, and we all had a good time. We ate cake, and swam and played outside, and at one point I saw that Paul was smashing some bugs on the back porch. Well, when we put him to bed that night, he prayed, and his prayer went something like: “God, thank You that we got to go to Grandma’s house; thank You for the cake and that we got to swim, and thank You that we got to smash bugs on the back porch”! At first I thought to myself, “What kind of prayer is THAT?!” But the truth is, it was a great prayer, because it came from his heart, and these were the things that he was truly thankful to God for.
But as talked about a few weeks ago, what is cute for a preschooler is not necessarily cute for an adult! Praying almost any kind of prayer is fine for a child, but as we grow in Christ, we should grow in the maturity of our prayers as well.
Jesus’ disciples could see, first-hand, the importance of the role of prayer in Jesus’ ministry, and they asked Him to teach them to pray. Many of us are familiar with the prayer that Jesus gave us in Matthew 6:9-13 of The Sermon on the Mount, which we often call “The Lord’s Prayer.” But this is not really as much “The Lord’s Prayer” as it is the prayer that Jesus gave US as a model to teach us how to pray.
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