"Pray like this..."

​When Jesus says, “Pray like this…”(as recorded in Matthew 6:9-13), He’s not just giving us instruction on how to pray, He’s giving us insight into the way He – God the Son – talked to God the Father. WOW… We can actually talk to God the same way Jesus did?
So…we don’t need to be afraid to pray out loud. We don’t need to feel like we don’t know how to pray. It is only the enemy of our souls who wants to convince us that our prayers aren’t good enough. Jesus – God with us – has told us exactly how to talk to God.
The model He gives us in Matthew 6 is one we can use every time we pray. In his book, Building a Discipling Culture, pastor and author, Mike Breen, developed a visual that can help us better understand and remember the model of the Lord’s Prayer. It’s a shape – of all things. 🙂

Our prayers can be as simple as one sentence for each of these different parts of prayer. As we continue to pray this way, we will likely find that there is one particular area of prayer that we want to linger in – depending on the day. The important thing is to just start doing it…whether or not we feel like we have time for it, whether or not we feel inadequate, and even if we feel like we don’t know what to say. We can use Jesus’ words until He puts different words in our hearts.
God is not limited by our weakness or feelings of inadequacy about prayer. His strength is made perfect in our weakness. He loves the humble and simple prayer of honesty and repentance. It is only we who are bound to our own limited strength, love and wisdom when we allow the enemy to convince us not to pray.

Angie Stanislowski