Calendar

Youth Group Notes - 9/24/08

Jr. High Lesson:

"The Who, What, Where, When, How of Prayer!"

Why Do We Pray?

1.It's Communication with God

- It's important, everyday relationships need communication so why would this be different?

2. Telling Him what you Need

- Not what you need

When do we pray?

1 Thessalonians 5:17 "Pray without ceasing"

All the time!!

How/What do you pray for?

- Bulls-eye

1. God (Worship)

2. You (Needs)

3. Others

Who do you pray to?

- God the Father

- Matthew 6:9

Where do we pray?

- Anywhere!!

- Not even heads down!

Sr. High Lesson:

Matthew 6:5-13 "The Disciples Prayer"

Vs 5-6- Our Motives

- Jesus referring to Pharisees who performed their prayers like the account in vs 5-6. Jesus is saying that that our motive should not be to please men! It should be to please God!

- This is not really referring to where we should be praying, b/c we can pray wherever we want. Rather He is referring to again our motives of prayer. Are you trying to please others or God?

Vs 7-8 - Pray Purposefully

- Here Jesus is saying that our prayer should not be ones that are full of misguided words or just ramblings because sometimes people think that adding a lot of words to prayer is a good thing, Jesus is saying the opposite here.

- It's kind of like when you are talking to your best friend, most of the time you get right to point. Same thing here, we need to get to the point of our prayers

Vs 9 - Worship

- We should start off our prayers by addressing God the Father. If we believe/place our faith in the fact that Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins and rose 3 days later, than the Bible tells us that we are forgiven of those sins. But more importantly the wages of death are removed, we do not have die and be separated from God for Eternity. Because of this when we are praying we are addressing our Father God through Jesus Christ.

- We are worshiping Him by giving Him the proper respect and love that He deserves. So this might look like something, "Father thank you for_______" "Father you are so________" You can fill in the blanks for what God has done in your life.

Vs 10 - Come Back Jesus and Do What You Want!

- Here we have want for Jesus to come back to this Earth. When Jesus left this earth He promised us that He is going to come back and get His followers, Christians. We can believe that this will happen because He promised it and Jesus doesn't lie!! So we should be telling Him to come back and get us!

- Another thing that we should want is for Jesus to do His will on Earth and as things He does in Heaven. So basically we are saying that we want this earth to be run by Jesus which will happen when He comes back!! So these two kind of play off of each other

Vs 11 - Give Me what I Need!!

- "Give us this day our daily bread" We have all heard this line before, but now it is in reference to our prayers. We are to be in prayer and asking God for our needs. This would include...

Food

Shelter

Clothes

Relationships

and God's Word

- All of these things are essential for our daily needs. God's Word probably being the most important but most often the one over looked!

Vs 12 - Confession/Forgiveness

- Confession of our sin is one of the most important things we can do in prayer. Why? because it restores our relationship with God!! 1 John 1:9, says that if we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us. So this is something that constantly needs to be embedded in our prayers

- He also talks about us forgiving other people. Our goal as Christians should be to love others and by doing that that means forgiving those people who have hurt us. I am not saying that we need to trust them as must as we did, but we still need to forgive them.

Vs 13 - Deliver Me!!

- We need to ask God for Him to deliver or save us from the trials and tribulations that we go through in our lives. Because in all honesty, a lot of times we do not know where they might come from. God does indeed allow trials in our lives to happen. But somethings might also be a direct result of the sin we have in our lives. So when we are praying for deliverance from these trials, we asking for God to help us through these things He may have put in our lives. James 1:3 "because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance." We should want perseverance.

God Bless and Happy Prayers!!

Trying This Out

Hey Guys!!

I'm going to try something new, A Blog!! Hopefully this will work out very well, but we will see!! Until than!!