Praying is a spiritual discipline...Matthew 6:5-8...2 different ways

 

A couple great things happened this last week.  First is a reunion with a great couple which we have not seen in over 10 years together.  The body of Christ is so wonderful and especially those you have served alongside of for 20 years.  Their encouragement to us was as if it was 1996 and we were talking about planting the church in Gaylord.

I also graduated to the 60's club last week.  The church made me feel special at our monthly potluck with some cakes and a well noted card from them all.  

I don't know what 60 feels like but I'm still hiking each week and riding my bike to and from town a couple times a week.  I do thank the Lord daily for my health and all those who prayed me through my time with cancer 13 years ago.

A good teacher will use techniques to help his or her students to retain what is being taught.  We see Jesus doing this in the passage leading up to the Lord's Prayer.  His instruction on prayer sounds very much like His instruction on giving.  He uses some of the same phrases and images.  This helps with the retention but also with the emphasis that each of these spiritual disciplines is as important as the others.

This helps me so much to teach Jesus' words.  I see patterns that help me communicate reoccurring themes across the passage.  There are 2 ways of giving, corporately (tithes into the storehouse, Malachi 3:10) and privately (consider the poor, Psalm 41:1).  There are 2 ways of praying, corporately (the gathering of Acts 2:42) and privately (the shutting the door in the garden of Matthew 26:39).  There will be another spiritual discipline embedded in the prayer and we will have to talk about the 2 ways of this also that the Bible speaks of.  

These spiritual disciplines require us to reprioritize our lives to be more God-focused than me-focused.  The spiritual disciplines being laid out by Jesus to His disciples on the hillside will distinguish them as followers of Him.  Why and how they give; why and how they pray; why and how they forgive; and why and how they fast will align them with the, "But I say to you's..." of Jesus.  What they are being taught now from Jesus will be very important later when He has ascended into heaven to be at the right hand of the Father.

Jesus doesn't just give instruction but He lives it out in front of His disciples.  This passage is no different.  We find Jesus practicing His own words in the Garden of Gethsemane prior to going to the cross.  He finds His room; He shuts the door; and He has a conversation with His Father.  I find this a challenge also as I teach of God's word.  I teach not just by big screen slides and fill in the blank handouts and cleverly devised talks but by the example of my own life.  A humbling thought that keeps me in check when my mouth gets bigger than my hands.

Adam