Living on a Prayer: Week 1

Introduction

Good morning!

Kicking off our series “Living on a Prayer”.

Over this month we will examine Matthew 6:5-15 what we call “The Lords Prayer”.

What is prayer?

If you’re like me, You would probably say: “Prayer is simply conversing with God”.

That made sense to me before I prepared this sermon.

Conversing with God is an element of prayer, but not its essence.

John Piper defines prayer as “Intentionally conveying a message to God.”

I like that definition more, but personally still thought it was lacking.

With Pipers definition I reasoned that “Hey God, I'm just chilling. Whats up with You?” would be able to constitute a full and complete prayer.

So I did more studying and found that we translate a few different Greek words as “Prayer”.

The word that's used as the sort of all encompassing core of prayer is “proseuchomai” (Pro-sek-O-may)

Its a conjunction with the preposition “pros” which means “to/toward”

With the root “euchomai” which means “to wish/to desire”.

Put them together and we can say that prayer is wishing or desiring toward something or someone.

Stanley D. Toussaint, a pastor and professor at Dallas Theological Seminary put it well when he said: “Prayer is nothing more or less than asking God for something.”

Now both Piper and Toussaint are far more brilliant, experienced, and educated than I am but I still found something lacking.

You see I'm a detail person. I like specifics with carefully crafted wording.

“Asking God for something” seemed like the core component of prayer, but not the totality of it.

And so I developed this minor obsession with crafting what I would consider an adequate definition for Christian prayer.

Prayer is Personal

The NET Bible (Second Edition) Chapter 6

5 “Whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, because they love to pray while standing in synagogues and on street corners so that people can see them. Truly I say to you, they have their reward!

6 But whenever you pray, go into your room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you.