What has been the highlight of your week?
What has been the low of your week?

Did you practice the liturgy at some point this week? How did it go?

Father God, creator of heaven and earth, 
God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob, 
God of Israel
God and Father of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ,
True and Living God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
Have mercy and hear our prayer.

How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?
Look on me and answer, Lord my God.
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,
and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”
and my foes will rejoice when I fall.
But I trust in your unfailing love;
my heart rejoices in your salvation.
I will sing the Lord’s praise,
for he has been good to me.

–Psalm 13 (NIV)

In the Beginning, humanity was invited to be God’s co-laborers and image-bearers, intercessors called to freely and joyfully partner with him to cultivate our good world. Unfortunately, humans have the habit of contributing to the chaos of the world instead of cultivating a good one.  However, in Jesus, God once again invites us to be His collaborators in pushing back the darkness.

The first move in accepting this invitation is to clasp our hands in prayer. So, to learn what it means for us to pray, we look to the instructions of Jesus. 

In Matthew 6, at the center of the Sermon on the Mount, our Lord says, “when you pray…” And what follows is both a pattern and a script for prayer, a guideline for prayer, and a prayer we regularly recite. 

Simply, The Lord’s prayer summarizes Jesus’ teachings and opens by reorienting our allegiance and attention to God the Father and his advancing Kingdom. It is the place we go when we wonder, “Jesus, how do we pray?”  This is not just another prayer; this is THE prayer. 

Normally we read the Lord’s prayer together towards the end of the liturgy, but today, it will be our scripture reading. So let’s read it. 

“And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then like this:

“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day 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 evil.

For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
–Matthew 6:7-15 (ESV)

The Message Paraphrase

1. What do we learn about prayer from this passage?

2. What component of this prayer is the easiest for you to do?

3. What component of this prayer is the hardest for you to do?

The idea of intercessory prayer has roots in both the Old and New Testaments, but maybe the most helpful definition comes from the Latin root ‘intercedo,’ which means to “come in between.” Simply, intercessory prayer is praying for someone else. It is an intentional choice to look outside the endless temptation to voice my needs, desires, and wants and to lift up the needs, desires, and wants of others. 

In praying “Your kingdom come,” we pray not just for ourselves but for our whole world. This prayer begins with love for one another and ends with partnering with God to see his Kingdom revealed in the lives of others.

Let us pattern our prayers after the prayer of our Lord, a prayer that starts with love for someone else and ends with inviting God’s power to partner with that love. As Richard Foster puts it, 

"If we truly love people, we will desire for them far more than it is within our power to give them, and this will lead us to prayer: Intercession is a way of loving others. Intercessory prayer is a selfless prayer, even self-giving prayer. In the ongoing work of the Kingdom of God, nothing is more important than intercessory prayer.”

As a microchurch community, let's become a community of intercessory prayer for our world, families, friends, coworkers, and neighbors. If Jesus’ kingdom is truly pervading every aspect of our lives and transforming us into the person we have always wanted to be, don’t we want that for others? Don’t we want this microchurch, this community for others? 

Pray over the needs of the group this week and pray for others in your life. Create a list and place it in a visible place to remind you to intercede on behalf of others regularly.