Lenten Discipline: The Lord’s Prayer

What do you do when you feel swelling emotions which overwhelm you? Perhaps they are emotions of fear or anger, joy or gratitude, sadness or grief. Hopefully, you can express these feelings in healthy ways, ways that do not harm you or your neighbor but instead build one another up in love.

This Lent, we will consider something the faithful have done for generations to effectively express their feelings: pray. The book of Psalms exists as a prime example of this in scripture. When we pray the Psalms we join with voices of the faithful sharing their laments, gratitude, questions, fears, supplications, praises, confessions, and hearts with God. As we pray these prayers, we not only unite with faithful generations past, we unite in prayer with Christ himself, who also prayed the Psalms, often in dramatic ways (see Mark 15:34 and Psalm 22:1). When we pray the Psalms, Christ prays in and through us.

One prayer, however, undergirds all others: the Lord’s Prayer. Found in Matthew 6:9-13 and Luke 11:2-4, the prayer Jesus used to teach his disciples how to pray remains foundational. Each Wednesday evening during Lent, we will gather for a simple worship service that includes song, prayer, and reflections on the different petitions of the Lord’s Prayer. Afterwards you are invited for fellowship and perhaps some delicious dessert. And for those who faithfully join us in prayer through livestream, we will conduct these worship services in the sanctuary to be able to effectively share in worship with you.

While fasting and other Lenten disciplines remain fine examples of refocusing on Christ, few ways of connecting with God surpass the power of prayer. Thank you for your prayers and for the prayers you offer for one another. They make a profound difference for good.

In Christ,

Pastor Stephen Haverlah