The Lord's Prayer: Teach Us to Pray
Sunday Morning, August 16th, 2026

At the heart of the Sermon on the Mount sits a simple prayer that gathers up the life and mission of Jesus. We call it "The Lord’s Prayer" and it teaches us how to order our lives: our Father, His name, His kingdom, His will and then our lives within that Kingdom.

The words of the Lord’s Prayer have been spoken so much in our hearing that they have become familiar to the point of being unfamiliar.

Let's allow our minds to be reignited as we explore the context, depth, meaning, implication, and application found in this simple but loaded prayer.

Jesus gave us structure in the Lord’s Prayer, a structure that all of life fits into: who God is, our needs, and how we see life.

The Lord’s Prayer was a central part of forming the identity and mission of our early Christian ancestors.

Jesus wasn’t introducing prayer to people who didn’t have prayer experience. Prayer was part of the fabric of Torah-observant Jewish life.

The Shema

from Deuteronomy 6:4: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.”

The Shema included passages from Deuteronomy 6, Deuteronomy 11, and Numbers 15 and was a heartfelt commitment to be devoted to God above all else and to accept His rule and reign in your life.

The Amidah included prayers for God’s holiness, forgiveness, provision, redemption, the coming Messiah, the restoration of Jerusalem, and peace.

Jesus’ disciples already knew prayers for God’s name, His Kingdom, forgiveness, provision, and deliverance. So why this new, familiar, but unique, prayer?

The Lord’s Prayer sums up, though incredibly condensed, the story of Jesus’ own life: His work, His mission, His relationship to the Father, and His dependence on the Father.

The Lord’s Prayer teaches us how to see God, how to see the world, and how to understand our place in the Kingdom movement Jesus came to announce and embody.

What does it mean to be a disciple? An intense commitment to be like your teacher.

The disciples saw the prayer life of Jesus and the actions that came out of it and said, “That’s what we want. Teach us to pray.”

Jesus gives them His own prayer, a picture of His own life, that will identify and form them as His disciples.

The Sermon on the Mount teaches what living under the rule and reign of God looks like. It’s what life looks like when God is King and we are learning to live His way.

Right in the middle of that teaching are giving, prayer, and fasting. The Lord's prayer is the "center of the center"

Before Jesus tells us how to pray, He deals with two ways we can miss the heart of God in prayer: performance and manipulation.

When you pray, it’s not to or for the people around you. It’s to the Father who knows you intimately.

You don’t need to pile up words to get God’s attention. It’s not about a particular formula or word count.

1 Kings 18: The prophets of Baal called out from morning until evening.

Acts 19: The followers of Artemis called out for two hours, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!”

So if God already knows what I need before I ask Him… why pray at all?

The first half of the Lord’s Prayer is about God’s purposes: His name, His Kingdom, and His will.

The second half is about our life within that Kingdom: daily bread, forgiveness, testing, and deliverance.

Left to ourselves, our prayers can start and end with our problems, our wants, and our plans. Jesus teaches us to begin somewhere else: Our Father. Your name. Your Kingdom. Your will.

The Lord’s Prayer turns our priorities inside out. Our needs are still there, but the priority of God and His Kingdom begins to inform what we pray for.

Jesus is teaching us to pray His priorities until they start to become our priorities.

The Challenge:

Pray the Lord’s Prayer every day during this series.

Take it one phrase at a time and let each phrase give direction to what you pray about.

Carry a phrase with you through the day until it begins to become a lens through which you see your world.

Don’t just recite it and move on. Sit with it and let it expose what you want, what you fear, what you’re holding onto, and where your priorities need to be reordered.

Ask the Lord before you begin: Jesus, teach me to pray like this.

Take the Lord's prayer with you this week with this reading plan:

Thanks for being with us this morning.
If you feel God has spoken to you about your prayer life and priorities, we hope you'll allow us to connect with you in the days ahead. Feel free to come talk with us after the service.

You can send in a prayer request on our website:
https://www.TheChurchofJoy.org/prayer

The most important decision.
If you know you've never fully surrendered your life to Jesus, and you feel that you're far from a relationship with Him, we would love to spend some time talking with you about making the decision to follow Him. Come see us after the service or get in touch through our church website.