Learn to pray with the Lord’s Prayer – part 4: what does it mean to pray ‘your will be done’? Does it mean giving up everything we want? And how do we know what God’s will is for us anyway?
See more courses, including the Apostle’s Creed and Ten Commandments, on the courses index.
Learn to pray with the Lord’s Prayer – part 3: what is the kingdom of God, and how can we pray this today?
In this session we start by looking at what the kingdom of God actually is, then we think about how that works out in the church and then society.
The session from the creed I refer to is #11 – Eternal Life.
See more courses, including the Apostle’s Creed and Ten Commandments, on the courses index.
Learn to pray with the Lord’s Prayer – part 2: what does ‘Hallowed be your name’ even mean, and how can we pray it today?
In the video we think about what a ‘name’ is, what it means for it to be ‘hallowed’, and how we can learn to pray from it. In particular we think about praying for ourselves and praying for others.
The session I referred to from the Ten Commandments series is Misusing God’s Name.
See more courses, including the Apostle’s Creed and Ten Commandments, on the courses index.
Learn to pray with the Lord’s Prayer – part 1: should we use the Lord’s Prayer as a set prayer? And what does it mean to say ‘Our Father in heaven’?
See more courses, including the Apostle’s Creed and Ten Commandments, on the courses index.
As I promised at the end of the Ten Commandments course, in this new term I will be starting a new series on the Lord’s Prayer. Through the last 2000 years, countless Christians have learned how to pray using the Lord’s Prayer: although there are many prayers in the Bible, there is only one prayer which is given as a model to us by the Lord Jesus himself.
You can find the prayer in the Bible in Luke 11 or Matthew 6 (in the Sermon on the Mount). The prayers are slightly different to each other and probably a little different to the version you might be familiar with.
This is the version of the prayer from Matthew. Here Jesus uses ‘debts’ instead of ‘sins’ and ‘the evil one’ is used instead of ‘evil’:
“Our Father in heaven,
Matthew 6:9-13
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.”
For many people throughout the world – Christian or not – these will be familiar words. But, despite their familiarity, they still have much to teach us about how we should pray. This short prayer helps us to know how we should relate to God every day.
Starting next week we will be working slowly through the prayer, line-by-line, to see what we can learn about how to approach God and how we should pray.
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If you can’t wait until next week, you might like to watch this session on prayer as part of the How to Live as a Christian course.
In this interview with Andy Brown, we talk about the practicalities of prayer. When and where, and how do you begin?
This is an extract from the How to Live as a Christian episode about prayer.
All about prayer – the what, why, how and when of prayer! In this session we see how we can use the Lord’s Prayer as a template for prayer. Also an interview with a special guest to talk about prayer.
Also check out Andy Brown’s website, where he blogs regularly with Christian reflections and thoughts.
This is an updated version of the video course I recorded last year, based on the written series.
Jesus’ words here are appropriate for a social media generation! He warns us against hypocritical religion, and shows us what we should be like instead.
The previous Sermon on the Mount video on “Misusing the Law (Matthew 5:33-48)” is available here.
In due course this series will replace the existing Sermon on the Mount series.
A lot of people think the only way to pray properly is for everything to be spontaneous. But I think there are good reasons to use services and prayers which are written, as well as spontaneous prayers. Here are four reasons why it’s important to use liturgy.
Part two of the How to live a Christian course is about prayer.
Part three of the Heidelberg Catechism course goes through the Lord’s Prayer – starting with session 45 on prayer.
This is the fourth video for the Your questions answered feature. See the rest of the series on that page.
If you have a question about Christianity or the Bible, please send them in or comment below.
The sixth part of our Get to know God series looks at God’s omnipotence – the fact that he is infinitely powerful. I don’t know about you, but I’ve found the last couple of sessions have dealt with some pretty tough concepts. This week is, I hope, slightly less tough in that respect. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty here to get your head around – and plenty to be encouraged by. Let’s look into it. We’ll start out by drawing out a few points from the Bible, and then we’ll think about what it means for us.
No one is like you, Lord; you are great, and your name is mighty in power.
Jeremiah 10:6
The Bible often describes God’s power as being incomparable. Nothing else in all creation could come anywhere close to matching his power. His power is often seen in the things that he does.
Continue reading “God is… infinitely powerful (omnipotent)”
