iPray - pt.1

Here are a few quick thoughts from my talk last night with the students at South Harriman Baptist Church about the subject of prayer.

• What if we have been praying wrong all along? What if prayer isn't about us getting stuff from God?


• Matthew 6 is the only place in the Bible that I can find where someone asks someone else how to pray. (The disciples were pretty smart. They saw that Jesus was praying differently than them and they wanted to know how to get it right! Great lesson for us!)


• The first point that Jesus makes about prayer in Matt. 6:5-6 is that location is important!


• We can talk to Go the rest of our lives and not feel connected to Him because we do not spend intentional, intimate time with Him in our room with the door shut.


• The reward mentioned in Matt.6:6 is that we will know...no matter if the answer is yes, no or nothing...that God is with us!


• Matt. 6:7 lets us know that words are important. We do not have to impress God. The pressure is off.


• Matt. 6:8 really messed me up when I first understood what it was saying...God already knows what we need before we ask Him...Most of the time our prayers are telling God the stuff He already knows. Obviously we have missed something.


• The most important thing in the world is your personal, intimate realtionship with God because everything else in life flows from that one thing.

We pick back up next week with verse 9 of Matthew 6. I'll post some thoughts about it next Thursday.