A Surprising Number of Christians Struggle With This... // M-Note 9.6.25

Churches talk about prayer a lot. But many of us are embarrassed to admit that we really don’t know how to pray? It's challenging to find time, we struggle to stay focused, and we don’t always know what to say. If you have felt that way, you aren’t alone. Prayer is something we have to learn.

Jesus knew this. During his sermon on the mount, he taught his disciples how to pray and even gave them a prayer that they could repeat. We now know it as The Lord’s Prayer, and it is the most repeated prayer in history. Those of you that have grown up in church undoubtedly know it, we teach it to our kids, and we say it every week at The Gathering. Because it is so familiar, we don’t always stop to think about what it means, and what it teaches us about praying.

Next weekend, I am going to start a three week series on The Lord’s Prayer. We are going to take some time to explore this familiar prayer, learn a few things that I bet you don’t know about it, and hear how this prayer can teach us to have a better prayer life today.

This is a simple but important series to help us grow in our faith, so I hope you will plan to be there. This is also an easy series to invite friends to. Please share the word about our church and invite someone to join you for worship.

Lastly, many of you know that I wrote a daily devotion and prayer book called The Methodist Book of Daily Prayer. It is a simple guide for creating a habit of daily prayer in your own life. I would love for you to check it out and try creating a new prayer discipline for yourself. We will have a few copies available at our sites during this series or you can order it online.

This weekend will be a lot of fun as each site pastor shares a message specific to your site. I hope you will plan to be there. Have a great Saturday, and I will see you in church.

Peace,
Matt

P.S. Don’t forget that you can worship online and catch the message anytime you are out of town or miss worship. We hope you will do that to stay connected even if you travel or can’t make it in person. Also, each series stays online for you to watch or share with others. We just finished a really fun series Boomers to Zoomers: Bridging the Generation Gap. If you missed one or want to share it with friends or family, you can do both right here.