The Lord's Prayer (It's Yours) - 4 Day Devotional With Matt MaherSample

Day 1 – What is Prayer Like?

Don Whitney, writer of the “Scriptural Disciplines for the Christian Life” explains that there are various crucial spiritual disciplines including: absorbing scripture, worship, fasting, etc.. and of course, prayer.

However, as crucial as prayer is to our lives, it’s often the most elusive discipline. You can open up the Bible and read. You can turn on a song and worship. But prayer? Prayer requires vulnerability. Prayer requires faith. Prayer requires a moment of surrender.

And those are difficult things to do.

However, the heart of prayer is found in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6. During that time, prayer was for “show” - especially for the religious elites of the day. So often, these people would spend time praying out loud to show others their holiness. However, this wasn’t the heart of Jesus “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others,” (Matthew 6:5).

There wasn't any messiness. There wasn't a personal connection. There wasn’t surrender. But these are such important components of prayer.

If you’ve never been told before, your prayers are allowed to be messy. Vulnerability isn’t a tied-up package with a bow on it. It’s deep, it spills out, and it ebbs and flows.

If you’ve never been told before, if you are praying even for a moment - you have faith. We don’t pray to things that we don’t have faith in. And even if you are praying for faith, your prayers are a mark of faith itself.

And if you’ve never been told before, you cannot come to prayer with pride. There is no pride in prayer. It requires a surrender and a humility to ask for help - especially from the Lord.

When Jesus teaches what we call today, “The Lord’s Prayer”, he begins like this, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,” (Matthew 6:9).

The first step of prayer is recognizing God’s heavenly nature. It’s pouring out honor upon His name. Even if you are coming to His feet angry, accusatory, or frustrated - there is still an essence of submitting to who He says He is. We must begin with understanding where our God dwells and how we are coming to Him.

Reflect:

Listen to “The Lord’s Prayer (It’s Yours)” by Matt Maher and ask yourself what lie has the Enemy tricked me into believing?

1. For God to hear your prayer, it has to be perfect - not messy or vulnerable.
2. You can’t pray to Him because you don’t have enough faith.
3. Prayer doesn’t require surrender or humility.

Prayer:

God, I pray that this week you grow me in understanding the truth about prayer. Help me to know that I don’t have to be perfect to come to you. Help me to see that the faith of a mustard seed is enough to pray the boldest of prayers. Help me to surrender to you completely when I pray. Lord, I feel expectant that you will grow me in prayer and I am excited to grow closer to you and Your kingdom. Hallowed be Your name Lord, Amen.