Going to School on Prayer

In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus addresses the three practices or disciplines that form the foundation of the spiritual life: giving, praying and fasting. And giving, remember, referred specifically to giving to the poor. Those were foundational to the righteous life of Judaism, and they are foundational to kingdom living. Jesus did not negate them, in fact he assumed that we would do them. He doesn’t say, If you give to the needy, he says when you give to the needy; he doesn’t say if you pray, he says when you pray; he doesn’t say if you fast, he says when you fast. His concern was not if we do them, but how and why we do them. It is the second of those that we return to again this morning, when you pray, by way of Matthew 6:7-9, in a message entitled: “Going to School on Prayer”.