The Essential Knowledge of Christianity

1. The Essential Knowledge of Christianity The Lord’s Prayer Part 1

2. How do you feel about prayer?

3. What Luther says… “First, we must know that it is our duty to pray because prayer is commanded by God. As we have heard in the Second Commandment: “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord, thy God in vain.” What this commandment requires of us is to praise his holy name and to pray or call upon it in every need. For calling upon God’s name is nothing else than praying.In this commandment we are therefore as strictly commanded to pray as in the others we are commanded not to have any other God, not to kill, not to steal, etc.”

4. What Luther says… “whether to pray or not is not left to my choice, but I am required and in duty bound to pray or else incur the wrath and displeasure of God.”

5. What Luther says… “[God’s]Promises certainly ought to awaken delight in our hearts and kindle in them the love to pray. For God by His word testifies that our prayers heartily please Him and will definitely be heard and granted.”

6. What Luther says… “You can hold Him to his promises and say, “I come to you dear Father, and pray not of my own accord or in my own worthiness, but because of Your command and Your promises, which cannot fail me or mislead me.”

7. What Luther says… “The Lord’s prayer has a great advantage over all other prayers that we ourselves might devise. For in their case the conscience might constantly be in doubt and say, ‘I have prayed, but who knows if it pleases Him or whether I have hit upon the right measure or manner of praying?’ Nowhere on earth, therefore, can a nobler prayer be found that the Lord’s Prayer, since it gives such splendid testimony that God delights in hearing us pray.”

8. What Luther says… “Where prayer is genuine, there must be earnestness. We must feel our need, the kind of pressure that drives us to cry aloud. Then prayer will arise by itself, as it should, and we will need no instruction on how to prepare for it or from what fountain to draw a spirit of devotion.”

9. What Luther says… He himself arranges the words and form of prayer for us and places them upon our lips as to how and what we should pray, that we may see how heartily he pities us in our distress and may never doubt that such prayer is pleasing to him and shall certainly be answered. The Lord’s Prayer is a great advantage indeed over all other prayers we might compose ourselves, for in them the conscience would ever be in doubt and say, “I have prayed, but who knows how it pleases him, or whether I have hit upon the right proportions and form?” Hence there is no nobler prayer to be found upon earth than the Lord’s Prayer which we daily pray, because it has this excellent testimony—God loves to hear it. We ought not to surrender that for all the riches of the world.

10. Let’s pray… • Traditional English Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation. But deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen. • Luther’s German Bible Unser Vater im Himmel! Dein Name werde geheiligt. Dein Reich komme. Dein Wille geschehe wie im Himmel so auf Erden. Unser tägliches Brot gib uns heute. Und vergib uns unsere Schuld, wie auch wir vergeben unsern Schuldigern. Und führe uns nicht in Versuchung, sondern erlöse uns von dem Bösen. [ Denn dein ist das Reich und die Kraft und die Herrlichkeit in Ewigkeit. Amen. ]