The great British preacher Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote: “Prayer is beyond any question the highest activity of the human soul. Man is at his greatest and highest when, upon his knees, he comes face to face with God.”
(SOTM, p. 45)
And indeed, prayer CAN be THE single most important thing you can do in a day. I say it CAN be — IF you approach it rightly! But at worst it can be a total waste of time, if you are doing it the wrong way, or for the wrong reasons. That’s a big “swing”, isn’t it — either the best thing you can do, or a total waste of time!
The bottom line is: it is important that we get prayer right. As we saw last Sunday, the basic topic Jesus is addressing in the first half of Matthew 6 is hypocrisy; and He gives examples of it in our giving, praying, and fasting. But as He addresses hypocrisy in praying, He knows that prayer is so important, that He takes a few moments to give us some principles on how to pray, and then He gives us an outline to help us pray for the right things. So we are going to follow along with Him, and take a couple of weeks here to look at the “principles of prayer” that Jesus gives us here this week, and then after David Burleson shares about Burke United Christian Ministries next Sunday, the following Sunday we will review the Model Prayer Jesus gave us in :9-13, and how using it as an outline for our prayers can revolutionize our prayer life.
So for this morning, let’s look at some of the principles Jesus gave us to help us with this vital activity of prayer: Continue reading
shawnethomas 