Sunday's Spark Notes

Last week we started off the New Year by spending the month of January revealing how we believe God has called us to continue fulfilling our churches vision in 2015, things that are important to our church because they are important in the scriptures. It’s called… wait for it… Vision 2015! Catchy, right? Straight to the point, the way I like it!

Last week we talked about church membership and how important it is to be plugged into a local body of believers where we can pull together our resources to further God’s Kingdom here on Earth. To have community and accountability as we wait for Jesus’ second coming.

 

Yesterday we talked about prayer (Luke 11:1-13). What if we’ve been praying all wrong?! Then how do we pray if we have been praying all wrong? Luke 11 tells us how.

In Luke 11:1 have you ever noticed how odd it is that Jesus’ disciples wanted Jesus to show them how to pray. These are men who have been raised to KNOW the first five books of the Bible by heart. This was their schooling, it wasn’t an extracurricular class. Prayer is something they should know a little bit about. Who am I kidding? They should know A LOT about prayer. If their confidence in prayer was shaken because they heard and saw Jesus pray, shouldn’t we take a second look into our prayers and how we are praying?

Luke 11:2-4 Jesus shows us how to pray. Yep. You got it! It’s the Lord ’s Prayer. Prayer is supposed to be theocentric. God centered. Not me and my stuff. Let’s dissect verses 2-4. This is going to be fun!

 

² And He said to them, “When you pray, say:
“Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
(Your Glory- May Your kingdom come- May You be made much of!)
³ Give us each day our daily bread,
(Give me everything I need today to hallow Your name- rather than running back to my sinful desires!)
⁴ and forgive us our sins,
(God forgives sins for His namesake- that men will worship Him for His goodness!) 
for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us.
(When we forgive those who have wronged us- who gets the credit/glory? GOD! He empowers us to forgive those who have wronged us!)
And lead us not into temptation.”
(We model Christ when we abstain from our temptations-gossiping, social media, neglecting marriages, lust, greed, etc- Who gets the credit from us abstaining from our temptations? GOD!)

 

There is so much more on Luke 11:1-13. I can’t fit it all into one post (I guess I could, but you probably would be sick of reading it!). I encourage you to go the REVO church website to hear more!

http://discoverrevo.com/sermons#series_38

We’ll never pray theocentric prayers unless we develop a theocentric orientation and begin to love God above all things; and when we begin to desire others to love Him as well. Here are a few passages to meditate on that may help us see the glorious reality of who God is so that we may fall in love with Him.

Isaiah 40, Psalm 84 & 86

Our city will not know Jesus unless we pray theocentric prayers for 2015. That’s how we will spark a revolution of life change through Jesus!