March 27, 2004



Lord, Teach Us to Pray
(Luke 11:1)

The deepest need of the Church today is not for any material or external thing, but the deepest need is spiritual. Prayerless work will never bring in the kingdom…Prayerless giving will never evangelize the world. (Dr. A. J. Gordon)

Have we called the church to pray for these 40 Days because we are asking God to work in our community? Yes, but primarily we have called the church to prayer because we need to learn more about what it means to pray.

What do we really know about prayer? Many of us were taught to pray at an early age. We were taught that prayer was talking to God…in our own words. Then, as we grew, we listened to our Sunday School teachers, our pastors and other church leaders and learned more about how to pray. We learned how people led in public prayer…but did we learn how to pray?

We’ve been told that we can talk to God about our problems—any problem! We know that we can tell Him anything at any time…but the more we pray, the more we realize that we have much to learn about prayer.

As the disciples watched Jesus pray they realized they knew very little about prayer. The Scripture says that Jesus finished praying and one of the disciples said to Him,

“Lord, teach us to pray…”

Why don’t we make that request together? We have set aside these days to pray. This weekend is a special time for our church family as Dr. Ken Hemphill comes to teach us on prayer. As we listen to the Spirit’s voice, expecting God to speak to our hearts, let’s make the request together:

Father,
Teach us to pray--teach me to pray! I quiet my heart before You; I sit at Your feet and listen for Your voice.
Use Your Word, speak to my heart and teach me to pray.
I make this request in Jesus’ Name Amen