"Our Father"

2-3-19 Sermon Notes "Our Heavenly Father"

A man took a new job at a sock factory. On his first day, he noticed a big sign up on the wall that read, "If your threads get tangled, send for the foreman." Later on that day, he was working at his machine, and his threads got tangled. He tried and tried to untangle the mess himself, but the more he worked at it, the worse it got.

After a while, the foreman came by. He said, "Have you been trying to fix this yourself?" "Yes," the man admitted. The foreman pointed to the sign and asked, "Why didn't you follow the instructions?" "I did my best," the man said.

"No, you didn't," the foreman replied. "Remember...doing your best is sending for me."

The "threads" of our lives are going to get tangled up on a regular basis. That's just part of life! It's important to remember that doing our best in this life is only doing our best if it includes prayer...and lots of it. The Lord loved us enough to give us a pattern for prayer. That pattern is what we all know as "The Lord's Prayer." For the month of February and leading up to Lent, we are going to focus on "Praying As Jesus Taught Us." As we take a close look at the Lord's Prayer each week, we will keep in mind that The Lord's Prayer isn't as much about telling us what to pray as it is telling us how to pray. Here's the pattern Jesus gave in Matthew 6...

9 "Pray then in this way:
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
10 Your kingdom come.
Your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us this day our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And do not bring us to the time of trial,
but rescue us from the evil one. (Matt. 6: 9-13 NRSV)

Join us this Sunday as we dig deep into the first three phrases of The Lord's Prayer: (1) Our Father (2) In Heaven (3) Hallowed be your name.

See you Sunday!
Pastor Sam