Welcome to our new site!

Sermon
The Gospel of Matthew

Pray Then Like This

Listen on

February 23, 2025
Matthew 6:9-15
Steven Lee
Pastor for Preaching & Vision

Prayer

The Glory of God

Identity in Christ

Transcript

0:21Keep your Bibles open to Matthew six. We'll be walking through that passage in just a moment. But before we do, let me pray for us one more time. Father in heaven, we thank you that we can seek you and find you and that you answer and that you are trustworthy. So in this moment now, father, would your name be hallowed? Would your name be exalted and glorified? Would you lift it high in the gathering of your saints now so that you would get all of the glory give us spiritual bread to eat in these moments? Now, we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

1:09Imagine that you were given the opportunity to learn how to play the game of basketball by none other than Michael Jordan, the greatest basketball player to ever live. Or if you're younger, you would say LeBron James. Imagine learning how to cook from Gordon Ramsey or Julia Child. Or you could have CS Lewis or Tolstoy or Jane Austin to be your personal mentor in writing. Or Albert Einstein or Isaac Newton teaching you all about science or Warren Buffett teaching you how to build wealth.

1:52I imagine that many people would pay thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of dollars for that opportunity. You can learn from the pioneer in a particular field. You can glean the wisdom of experts. Well, guess what? I have good news for you this morning. The second person of the triune God, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Messiah, the Davidic King, the incarnate Word, the savior of the world, teaches us how to pray. We get a masterclass here in Matthew six, nine through 15 from Jesus himself on how to pray. Two weeks ago, we saw how Jesus warns his disciples against practicing their righteousness in order to be seen by others.

2:53We saw that in Matthew chapter six, verse one. And then last Sunday, we saw how Jesus warned his disciples against praying like a hypocrite or praying like a Gentile either mindlessly babbling or seeking the praise of man. So he had shown us how not to pray, and now he turns in these verses this morning, how to pray. But the Lord's prayer poses a, a unique challenge for us this morning. A challenge that I just feel very acutely. How many of you have heard a sermon on the Lord's prayer before? Show of hands. That's like half of you. How many of you have memorized the Lord's prayer? Almost, not all of you, but pretty close.

3:37We're very familiar with the Lord's Prayer. And you may be thinking, I wonder what he's gonna say that's gonna be new like, wow me, preacher. Well, I don't know if that's gonna happen. Familiarity with something can make it more beloved like a favorite coffee mug. Every time you pull it out, you, it just brings a smile to your face because you love using it. But familiarity can also breed contempt. We can grow dull to its wonder and glory that we take it for granted. And we cannot just take the Lord's prayer for granted. We can take prayer. We can take prayer itself for granted. Like, oh yeah, I could do that later.

4:23Oh yeah, I get to talk to God Almighty. So my aim is threefold this morning. First, for those who are unfamiliar with the Lord's Prayer, maybe someone is studying this passage for the very first time, or my goal is that you would know it and love it, and really ultimately that you would pray it. You will not go wrong if you let the content of the Lord's prayer shape your life. Second, my aim is to help those who have grown dull to the wonder and to the glory of the Lord's prayer, to see it with fresh eyes that God would shine forth the glories of what we have in this passage for us this morning.

5:05And third, for those who love the Lord's Prayer, my aim is to throw one more log on the fire so that it would burn hot and bright. Or as some have said, a mature Christian is easily edified. And so I wanna tread familiar paths so that we would once again see the wonders and the glories of what we have in this prayer. So we're gonna take this masterclass from Jesus this morning, and we're gonna walk through each of the phrases, taking note of its teaching and then trying to draw some applications together at the end. So first that we begin with a paradigm for prayer. We get a paradigm for prayer.

5:43Jesus begins in the beginning of verse nine, pray then like this. So this is a model to emulate, not a mindless mantra that we're to mutter. So the question that would come up is, well, many churches recite the Lord's prayer weekly. It's a liturgical prayer. It's part of their kind of set form of worship. Some Christian traditions do that, and it's not necessarily wrong. Again, what Jesus has been showing us, it's not necessarily what we say, but it's the heart motives behind what we say. But Jesus begins by saying, pray like this. So it's a model for us to emulate. It's not just say this endlessly.

6:29So this prayer teaches us what to pray, what to value, and how to live. Now, notice the structure of this prayer before we jump into it. It begins with three God centered petitions, God oriented petitions, and then it turns to three personal petitions. And I think this pattern is modeled after the Lord, uh, excuse me, the 10 Commandments, that first deal with God's glory before it deals with our behavior. Or it could mirror the greatest commandment. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength before it calls us in the second greatest commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves.

7:06And this paradigm is revealed in these opening verses that righteous prayer begins first with God. And I think this is very counterintuitive for many of us. We instinctively think what I need most in my life is for me to be heard, for my problems to be dealt with. I can focus on God and his kingdom afterwards. And yet the opposite is true. What people need more than anything else this morning, what we need more than anything else this morning is to take God His glory and his kingdom seriously. The Lord's prayer is Jesus teaching his disciples to orient their lives according to his priorities. Jesus puts it this way in a little bit later in chapter six, verse 33, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things.

8:04What you're gonna eat, what you're gonna drink, what you're gonna wear will be added to you. So the Lord's Prayer provides us this paradigm for prayer, but also for life itself. Righteous prayer begins with God in many ways. We wanna mirror the words of John the Baptist. He must increase and I must decrease. That's the heart disposition of God's people when they come to him in prayer. Now we're seeing this paradigm for prayer. Now we turn to a personal address. The prayer begins with our Father in heaven, our Father in heaven. This is not a throwaway phrase, this was atypical in the Old Testament.

8:55Father was rarely used to address God. Very often it was Elohim, which is God or Adenai, which is translated Lord or El Shadai, which is God Almighty or Yahweh. Elohim Lord God. Father was sometimes used as a metaphor like Psalm 1 0 3, verse 13, as a father shows compassion to his children. So the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. But what we get in the opening of the Lord's prayer is that Jesus addresses God as Abba Father. He's channeling this familiarity and intimacy and sonship. But not only does Jesus call God Abba, he invites us to call God Father Abba. This is amazing. We were once estranged and enemies of God, and now we can come to him and call him Father.

9:58Those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ have received the spirit of adoption by whom we cry, Abba. Now, how we address or refer to others is really important, isn't it? It it highlights the relationship. So say you're dating. You've been dating for let's say a year. And as the guy, you're gonna introduce your girlfriend and and you're introducing him to her, to your family, and you say, this is my friend. This is my friend Molly. You're gonna hear about that later. What do you mean? I'm your friend, I'm your girlfriend. Right? Remember the first time you introduced your husband or wife, how thrilling that was.

10:39Th this is my wife Stephanie. It might come as a surprise to many of you, but my children don't call me Pastor Steven at home. They call me dad, right? And if some random kid walked up to me and said, dad, I would instinctively say, I'm not your dad. Right? That that's just the nature of how address and titles and names work. But Jesus tells us to address the Lord God Almighty God most high. The Lord of hosts, the one who created all things who rules over heaven and earth, who upholds the world by his power. He tells us to address him as Father. This is a mind blowing reality. And we've lost sight of how wondrous it is because we've lost sight of God's holiness and of his transcendence that God is great and he's in the heavens.

11:41And we can somehow come to him and call him Father. And when we call him Father, he doesn't instinctively say, I'm not your father, but he says, come my sons and daughters, but then he's also our Father in heaven. This points to his power and splendor. But what it also does it is that it corrects our faulty views of fatherhood. 'cause many of us did not have fathers who communicated love. Maybe you never even knew your father. Maybe their, your father was primarily absent. Maybe he was a drunkard or abusive or petty, cruel, passive, inept or unkind. And when you think of Father, it's those terms that come to mind.

12:34And yet Jesus is reminding us that this is our Father, yes, but not our earthly father. This is our heavenly Father, the sovereign, the king of kings, the Lord of Lords. The one who alone is, is immortal, who dwells in unapproachable light. This is the Lord who rules over all things and you can draw near to him. This is the paradox of prayer that we can approach the almighty, eternal holy God, who in Christ has become our Father, who is eager to bestow on us blessings and riches. Notice that he says our Father, this is a communal prayer. So Jesus disciples are part of this kingdom community, this family of faith.

13:24And this invitation is not to just each one of us individually to to do private work just in the prayer closet, but this is an invitation for God's people to pray together. In this way, we're to live in harmony with one another. That's why I think forgiveness is so emphasized later on in this prayer. It's something we pray with our hearts united with others, that we pray for others, that we pray for our church and our community, that these concerns are much bigger than just me and my Bible and God. But it's about God's glory among us as a people. So we learned that prayer begins with God our Father.

14:08So we've seen the paradigm, we've seen a personal address, and now we come to a petition for God's glory. So these first three petitions are for God's glory as we saw earlier. We want to elevate God's priorities, God's values, God's concerns above our own. And yet too often if we're honest, when we pray, the first thing that comes out of our mouth is, God, I need this. This is what's going on. Like, why haven't I gotten this? What what most often comes out is our immediate needs. And I don't think God begrudges that, but we're shown this pattern that what we need is this God-sized vision of prayer and of the world.

14:58Now look with me how this passage flows. Go back to verse eight. It says, do not be like them. Don't be like the Gentiles that pray mindlessly babbling. Why for your father knows what you need before you ask him, well, what is it that I need, Lord? Well then pray like this. So this prayer is not just a model of how to pray, but this is highlighting for us what we actually need. Even if we don't know that's what we need. And these first three petitions perhaps don't often land on our lips. And yet that's what we ultimately need. And the first petition is this, hallowed be your name. This is a glorious and profound prayer that we need God to be magnified or exalted in every area of life.

15:53One's name is their very essence, and hallowed is not a word that we often use, but it could be translated as consecrate or sanctify or set apart or treat as holy. And so in other words, it's saying, God, what would you cause your name to be exalted and lifted, high and glorified? This is probably the one prayer I pray most every single, I wanna say every day, but certainly every Sunday and probably every day, God, we want you to shine forth so that we would see you and your glory all the more. It doesn't mean make your name more holy, but we're asking God to add. We're not asking God to add to the greatness of his name, but to magnify it in the same way the sun is always shining, but sometimes we see the sun more clearly.

16:46We feel its warmth. And in that same way, God's glory is always shining forth, but we wanna behold it all the more and with fresh eyes. And we see this example, this prayer in Jesus in John chapter 12, verse 48, Jesus prays, father, glorify your name. And how does the Father respond to Jesus? The Father says, I have glorified it and I will glorify it again. And so Jesus is saying, this is the moment when I'm going to the cross. I'm gonna lay down my life. This is what we have planned before the beginning of time itself for this moment. And God says, I've, I've been glorifying your name Jesus, and I'm gonna glorify it again in the cross so that you would be lifted high.

17:42And so that all would see the wonder and the glory of what we have accomplished at Calvary. That's what this prayer is, praying God cause your glory to shine forth in a greater way that you would be hallowed in our hearts. It's the prayer that says, Lord cause more people to see the truth of the gospel and to apprehend it with their spiritual eyes and hearts. A second petition is your kingdom come. It's this logical progression. It's this prayer for God's name to be hallowed. And then we know that in our world that many people don't worship or revere or honor God's name and and the reason for that is because sin has blinded their eyes.

18:31And so we need God's kingdom to come. We need king Jesus to come back and establish his rule and reign. So this prayer desires the success of the gospel and the expansion of Christ's kingdom. It's the prayer that says, come Lord Jesus, come quickly. It's a missionary prayer that longs for Christ's return and the kingdom consummated. It's a prayer that eagerly longs for Jesus' return so that every tear would be wiped away. Death shall be no more, no more crying, mourning, or pain. This is the prayer that longs for Jesus to come riding in and to put everything that is wrong, right? Once again, I I, is this the disposition of our hearts?

19:23Do we long for Jesus' kingdom to come, for God's kingdom to come here on earth? Or are we so invested in our own little mini kingdoms? The third petition is your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. So this desire is for God's purposes to be realized in the lives of his people. It's the prayer that says, may our experience on earth increasingly reflect the will of God in heaven? And you might say, well, what is that? What is going on in heaven that should be realized here on earth that his will would be done on earth as it is in heaven? Well, in heaven there is perfect praise and worship.

20:10And so praying this prayer means I want more of that perfect praise and worship to be present here on earth, to be in my own heart. I, I don't want all these divided affections or that there's harmony and forgiveness at work in heaven. And I want that now. I want people to be able to get along and to forgive each other and not hold grudges and be bitter towards one another in heaven. Every knee bows, every tongue confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord. And we're longing for that reality to be increasingly true. Far too many people use the name of God or the name of Jesus merely as a cuss word. And we long for them to have it on their lips as praise.

20:53We want more of that in our own hearts and lives in our families, in your extended families, in our workplaces, in our church, in our small group and in our state and in our world. This is the prayer that longs for God's unfolding plan of his kingdom. So that there would be no more murder and abortion and injustice and oppression and corruption and terrorism and poverty and hatred and exploitation and addiction and self-destruction and disease and suffering and death. It's the heart prayer that says, oh Lord, let the earth be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

21:38That's what we're longing for. The pervasive glory of the Lord spread far and wide. So these first three petitions are for us to behold God's great glory. And this is what we need more than anything else. Now we have seen these petitions, now we see this plea for provision. The next three requests are for our own needs, our physical and our spiritual needs. And the thrust of these next three prayers is our dependence upon God in the following verses, we're invited to ask and seek and knock and, and what we're told elsewhere that we, we don't have. 'cause we don't ask. And so we're told here, ask Jesus is saying, ask your father.

22:31Stop wanting but not asking. And so the first thing we're to ask is give us this day our daily bread. And bread is obviously food, but it represents all of our physical needs. And so the this prayer is provide for our needs both today and tomorrow. It's like saying, I rely on you for all of my daily needs. And this would've reflected sort of the precariousness precariousness of a day laborer who, who would you know if they get some work for that day? They have some food to eat, and if they don't get work, they don't have food. And yet, if we're honest, this prayer feels rather foreign for most of us, rather unnecessary.

23:11When you go home, you will have food to eat. You have a pantry, you have cupboards, you have a refrigerator, you have probably money in the bank that can pay your bills. And yet this prayer reminds us that all that we actually have, whether much or little is ultimately from God, Our shelter, our food, our clean water, our clothes are from God. It usually takes a disaster like a fire or a hurricane or a tornado to reveal the true state of reality. If God took it all away in a moment, we would be needy and desperate and dependent. And the reality is we are needy and desperate and dependent upon God every day.

24:03The principle here is that God cares about even the smallest and most trivial details of our lives. What we need is not only our physical needs met, but what we need is to see that our physical needs are provided by God. He gives us air in our lungs and no blockages in our heart so that we would live another moment. And we were designed so that we would give him praise and honor and glory. Jesus teaches us not to be anxious about what we're eat or to drink because he feeds the sparrows and he closed the lilies of the field. This is really remarkable that God cares about even our smallest needs.

24:52Sometimes my wife will ask me something, you know, like, not really, but you know the curtains, do you want 'em blue or pink? Or whatever it may be. And usually when she'll ask me a question like that, I will say whatever is fine. Because deep down what I wanna say is I really don't care. Um, and the reason for that is 'cause I don't have the mental bandwidth to care. I, I, I just don't, you know, what do you want for lunch? Whatever you put before me. Uh, and yet the reality I is that God attends to every single minute detail in our lives. Every single minute detail of your life, he cares. He's orchestrating it.

25:39He's ordaining it for your good. So when you say, Lord, give me my daily bread because this is what I need in this moment. There is no food in the cupboard, there is no food in the refrigerator. He cares for us. And whether we have food in the cupboard or food in the refrigerator, he likewise has put it there for our good. The next verse, verse 12 is, and forgive us, our debts as we also have forgiven are debtors. The word debt here has the meaning of sin or transgression. Uh, other translations, when you recite the Lord's prayer that says, forgive us our sins or forgive us our trespasses, this is something that is owed to God.

26:28And some believe perhaps that this prayer is unnecessary. Well, if we're justified by faith, if our sins are dealt with by God, why do we need to ask for forgiveness? Or maybe as we come to faith in Christ, we become perfect and we no longer sin. Some people believe that. And and to both of these objections, I would turn to one John, one John one A. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. And the truth is not in us. Even as justified redeemed saints, we still sin. And when we sin, we are to confess our sins. And God is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

27:13So forgiveness is our great spiritual need that we need. And what this verse is not saying is that our forgiveness is the basis of God's forgiveness. We'll look at this further when we get to 14 and 15. But rather as those who are forgiven, we must also forgive our experience of forgiveness must so transform us and change us that it would be unthinkable not to forgive others. One pastor put it this way, this certainly does not mean that our forgiveness of others earns us the right to be forgiven. It is rather that God forgives only the penitent. And that one of the chief evidences of true penance, true repentance, is a forgiving spirit.

28:04We'll look at that further when we get to 14 and 15, verse 13. Now Jesus turns to this third request and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. So these two petitions are the same side of the one coin. I'm gonna call it one petition here. And the reason many find this particular prayer odd is because of a verse like James one 13 that says, God cannot be tempted with evil and he himself tempts no one. So why in the Lord's prayer are we asking God to do the very thing tempt people, not to tempt people, the thing that he doesn't do right? The second problem is that James one, two to four tell us, count it all joy my brothers, when you meet trials or testing of various kinds for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness and let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete lacking in nothing.

29:03So if trials and testing and even temptations test our faith, produce steadfastness leading us towards spiritual maturity, why would we ask to avoid temptation? How should we understand this? Well, first, the word for evil there is proceeded by an article which makes it the evil one. Some of you might have that in the little footnotes there in your ESV Bible. And so it's referring to Satan. This request to deliver us is to deliver us from Satan's grasp. The request is, please don't let us succumb to temptation so that we would sin against you. This would echo passages like one Corinthians 10 13.

29:46God will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation, he will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it. So we're to fight temptation by going to God's promises. So that and with his help, so that we would endure it and as a result, cultivate steadfastness and be moved towards greater maturity. And this prayer is that we would not give way to the overpowering sense of temptation. And I think this is best illustrated in Jesus' words to Simon Peter in Luke 22. And any of you remember this? This is in verse 31 and 32. Uh, Jesus is saying to Peter, and he says this, Simon, Simon, behold last night Satan demanded to have you that he might sift you like wheat.

30:40Satan wanted his way with you like he had with job. But I Jesus, I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen the brothers. This is an incredible passage. Jesus is saying, Satan wanted to take you and when you were gonna deny me that you would fall away forever and lose your faith. But I prayed for you so that after you deny me, you would turn once again. And when we're on that beach and I'm restoring you and asking you, do you love me? Feed my sheep, feed my lambs, that you would then become uncommonly bold and you would stand up in the book of Acts and Acts four and preach like no one has ever preached before.

31:28Jesus says, I did that. I was praying for you. And that's what Jesus calls us to pray like. Now, pray that the Lord would not let our faith fail. Pray for God to keep and protect us. That's a good prayer to pray. Lord, keep me. Don't let me fall away. Don't let me lose sight of who you are and all that you've done. Now, as we come towards the end of this, at at the end of verse 13, you might see a little footnote there, and chances are if you've been in church for some time, you've uh, recited the doxology that goes a little bit like for yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever.

32:15Amen. And we don't see that here in Matthew's gospel or in Luke's gospel. A few manuscripts have this doxology at the end, but it's probably not in the original. But churches probably added this just to help kind of bring some balance to kind of concluding it. And it's modeled after the language of first Chronicles 29 11, which goes like this, yours, oh Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. So you can kinda see some of the resonance between that doxology and what many in the early church put together.

32:52So I don't think it's wrong to pray this doxology at the end, though it's not in the earliest manuscripts. So we've seen this paradigm for prayer, this personal address, this petition for God's glory, this plea for provision. And now we get this postscript on forgiveness verses 14 and 15, for if you forgive others, there's trespasses. Your heavenly father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others that are trespasses, neither will your father forgive your trespasses. So this repeats pretty much the same idea from verse 12, that we need to live out our faith with our brothers by forgiving one another in the same way that God forgives us.

33:32Otherwise, there's gonna be some serious fractures at work in our church family. It's like a broken bone that refuses to heal. So you, you might wonder, why do we get verses 14 and 15? He just talked about this in verse 12. I think there's two reasons. First, it highlights the importance of harmony within the church family. When we are angry at one another, when we are bitter and holding a grudge against one another, when we are hurting one another, when we are refusing to forgive one another, it creates this trickle out and ripple out effect so that everyone is affected. Some of you remember some of this.

34:19I don't know what that was, but we'll keep going. I think this thing must have exploded. Where was I? Um, some of you remember back in 2021 when we experienced some of this, when one person is refusing to forgive someone else, we're all affected, aren't we? And it has this cancer gr gangrene like effect in the body where we're just feeling the pain of this all together. And, and so I think that's the first reason we're to be peacemakers who leave our gift at the altar so that we would be reconciled to our brother. And so this morning, I'm gonna press in on a sore spot for some of us. Is there someone here in this church body that you have not forgiven?

35:21They, they hang out on this side of the building. So I'm gonna hang out on that side of the building. They go to second service. I'll come to first service. Let it not be so second. I think the reason this is repeated is because it's so important. And it's really, really hard, isn't it? It's so easy to offend each other. It's so easy to feel overlooked and ignored and minimized and underappreciated. So easy to misinterpret someone's look or glance in my direction, or why didn't they say hi to me? Or, or why didn't they shake my hand?

35:59Is am I being overlooked because of something else? And we live in an age where everyone is offended and aggrieved over everything. And so I think the challenge of this text is that we with all 1200 of us are to live in harmony with one another. And that is an impossible work. Unless we have the spirit of God working in and through us for his purposes and for his glory, that we all submit ourselves to the lordship of Jesus and say, Lord, help me to be one who forgives Psalm 66 18 puts it like this. If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened to my prayers. So is there a spirit of forgiveness present in your heart?

36:49Do you see the infinitely great debt that we have been forgiven against a holy God, true believers wage war against the spirit of unforgiveness? And so if you're a true believer here this morning, God will not relent. If he has your attention, he will get your attention. If he doesn't have your attention, he will get it. He, he will not relent until he gets you to a place where you're willing to forgive others. And how is this forgiveness possible? Only through the blood of the cross of Jesus? And that's what this prayer is all about. It's looking forward to what Jesus would accomplish. How can we ask God Almighty to forgive us our sins?

37:35How can we possibly call him Father? How can we possibly know his will? It's because Jesus did what we could not do in living a perfect life, dying on the cross, reconciling mankind so that we would be baptized into his death, raised with him in new life, brought into union with the Lord Jesus Christ, so that we would be his beloved children. And the curtain was torn into so that we would have free unfettered access into the holy of Holies. And at any time, we could go to our Father who is in heaven and we can call upon him. And so how can we forgive others when it's so hard? When some of us have been harmed in some of the most grave and heinous ways possible?

38:23It's because Jesus has taken that in his own body and he's lavished his grace upon us, that we have offended a holy God and he has made us his children. So the main point this morning, if we're to summarize what we've seen is that the Lord's Prayer teaches us to draw near to our Father in heaven, seeking to behold His glory, depend upon his provision as we live in submission to his will and to his commands. Or to put it much more simply conform your prayer life to this prayer. Pray this prayer. Let Jesus masterclass on prayer teach you how to pray, what to pray. And ultimately it teaches us how to live.

39:17None of us would tell Michael Jordan, that's not how you shoot a fade away jumper. And so when we come to this prayer, let's receive Jesus teaching and pray. 30 years from now, are you gonna say, I spent way too much time in prayer. I could have been doing so much more stuff. No. We're gonna say, oh, I wish I would've not neglected that sweet communion with my heavenly Father who knows all my needs. I wish I was less anxious, less worried about the future, less worried about my children and what I was going to eat or what I was gonna drink, or thinking about the next week. I wish I would've just brought these things to the Lord.

40:06We have the greatest privilege in all of the world. Don't lose sight of that. So go to our father in heaven in prayer. We're invited to call upon him as our father. We have unparalleled, unimaginable access into the holy of Holies. And then as we pray increasingly become God-centered disciples, let the Lord's priorities inform how we go about the work of prayer. So let your hearts cry. Be those first three petitions before you get into anything else. Lord, we, we want your name to be hallowed in my life and in the lives of those around me and my family. I want to treasure Christ more. I wanna see you more.

41:01I wanna love you more. I want your will on earth as it is in heaven. So let this prayer reorient us to his greatness and to his rule and to his reign in our hearts that our hearts cry would become Lord Jesus. Come quickly. So to close this sermon, I want us to pray the Lord's prayer together. I'm gonna invite the worship team to come back up and the words are gonna be on the screen, and we're gonna pray it slowly and meditatively in unison. So follow my lead, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Oh, give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.

42:00And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For yours is the kingdom, the power, and the glory now and forever. Amen.

Jump to live

Jump to live

Sermon Text

Matthew 6:9-15

Previous
NEXT
Phone
(612) 455-0800
Email
info@thenorthchurch.com
Address
5151 Program Ave,
Mounds View, MN 55112
AboutI'm NewBeliefsLeadershipSundaysWednesdays
ConnectMinistriesEventsNorth UpdateGroup Finder
ResourcesBusiness DirectoryLibrarySeminars & ConferencesWeddings & FuneralsJob Opportunities
AccountHouseholdGroupsGivingLog Out
Copyright © 2026 The North Church. All rights reserved.
Staff LoginPrivacy PolicyTerms & ConditionsSite by Volente

Connect

Submit

Thank you!
Your submission has been received.
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.