Over eight Sundays, this series walks through the Lord’s Prayer petition by petition. It begins by asking why we even need to be taught to pray — prayer requires an existing relationship with God, restored through the atonement and mediated by Christ, and the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness when words fail. From there each part takes up one line of the prayer Jesus gave His disciples: praying to ‘Our Father,’ recognizing that He is in heaven and that His name is holy, and asking for His kingdom to come.
The later parts move through daily bread and God’s providence, forgiveness of debts and the true dimensions of sin, deliverance from evil, and finally the doxology — ‘for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever.’ Throughout, the emphasis falls on prayer as real communion with a Father who is both transcendent and near, whose greatness is far above human ways and thoughts, yet who looks to the humble and contrite in spirit.