And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by people. Amen I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your inner room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is in secret. Then your Father, who sees in secret, will repay you. And when you pray, do not babble on like the nations, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. ~ JESUS (Matthew 6:5-8)
BEFORE WE BEGIN: I will make this the last post for this year and look forward to diving into a series on the Lord's Prayer (which is next up in the Sermon on the Mount) in January. In the meantime, please pray for wisdom and courage as we make plans for new things for 1820 in the new year...
SUMMARY: Read this and skip the rest (if you want)
Prayer is our response to the God who has spoken first. Hence, the first step of prayer is listening, that is, paying attention to how God has already been active in our lives.
Corporate prayer (prayer in groups with others) is most powerful when everyone comes already having had private times with God.
Matthew places Jesus' teaching on prayer in the centre of the Sermon on the Mount, which is no accident. Prayer is the centrepiece of our secret spiritual lives. And at the centre of the Lord's Prayer is the theme of receiving and offering forgiveness - because grace, mercy, and peace (reconciliation) are at the centre of the Jesus Way.
Jesus encourages simple prayers that do not become exhibitions of flowery words, repetitious catch phrases, or voluminous Scripture quotations.
All spiritual experiences and expressions can become polluted and imprisoned within institutions. When this happens, spiritual health will become confused with institutional preservation. Jesus bucks the entire system.
Four tips are offered to help us have better times of private prayer: Pray Intentionally, Pray Out Loud, Pray Conversationally, Pray the Lord's Prayer.
CORE
(The heart of the message)
Jesus is Emmanuel, "God with us". Through prayer, we become "us with God".
In short, prayer is a response to the God who has spoken first.
CONTEXT
(What’s going on before and after this passage)
Starting in Matthew chapter 6, Jesus enters a new section of his sermon, instructing his disciples on how to develop a personal, private, hidden, secret spiritual life. He began by saying:
Be careful about your own righteousness. Do not perform a show in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward with your Father in the heavens. ~ JESUS (Matthew 6:1)
Then he moves on to address three examples:
secret giving (right-relatedness toward others)
secret prayer (right-relatedness toward God)
secret fasting (right-relatedness toward ourselves)
In each case, Jesus stresses the importance of cultivating a secret spiritual life that protects us from seeking our value and meaning from anyone other than God.
We are addressing these three examples of secret spirituality out of order: 1, 3, and now 2. This second example is more developed than the first and third and expands into the Lord's Prayer, so we will be talking about prayer in multiple studies, beginning with this one.
Jews and Christians have always been a praying people. While some religions emphasise meditation (also a part of biblical belief), Jews and Christians prioritize prayer, which is a kind of conversational meditation.
Jews at the time of Jesus prayed a minimum of three times each day as did the first generation of Christians. While Christians prayed the Lord's Prayer three times each day (The Didache 8:3), Jews prayed the Eighteen Benedictions facing the Temple in Jerusalem to honour the Holy of Holies when rising, mid-afternoon (around 3pm - see Acts 3:1), and when going to bed. Added to this, at two of those prayer times religious Jews also prayed the Shema - standing in the morning and lying down at bedtime. This three times a day pattern may have been inspired by Daniel (Daniel 6:10) or David (Psalm 55:17). They also prayed at the beginning and end of each meal. Bottom line: biblical faith is a praying faith!
In Jesus' day, some religious folks may have intentionally gone to the most visible places around the time of afternoon prayers to be seen by others. ("Oh is it time for afternoon prayers already? I guess I will just have to pause here at the marketplace and pray in the middle of all the hubbub.") Jesus says they have their reward, and that reward is not intimacy with the Almighty.
There is no record of Jesus following the Jewish patterns of prayer strictly, but he did prioritize personal private prayer in his daily life (Mark 1:35; Luke 5:16; 11:1).
And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed. ~ The apostle Peter via Mark (Mark 1:35)
We should note something about where Matthew places this teaching on prayer, including the Lord's Prayer and its emphasis on forgiving others. Structurally, scholars point out that this section makes up the centre of the sermon, which emphasizes our connection with God and others, and especially the practice of forgiveness. This is likely not a coincidence, since Matthew is methodical. According to Matthew, Jesus puts forgiveness - receiving and giving - at the centre of everything he has to teach us.
CONSIDER
(Observations about the passage)
When you pray. Jesus does not say "If you pray" or "You must pray" but three times he says "when you pray". Prayer is talking with God, and Jesus assumes his disciples will want to talk with the one who loves us most.
"I believe the most adequate description of prayer is simply, 'Talking to God about what we are doing together.'" ~ Dallas Willard (Divine Conspiracy)
Hypocrites. Greek hupokrités. Meaning "actors", those who perform on a stage, who are behaving to be seen, who put emphasis on the externals, who are playing pretend. Jesus is talking about the human religious tendency to perform theatrical righteousness. As Anabaptist theologian Scot McKnight says, at its heart, all hypocrisy is "the nurturance of image." (For more on Jesus' use of this word, see our early study here.)
You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you: ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.’ ~ JESUS (Matthew 15:7-9; quoting Isaiah 29:13)
To be seen by people. Jesus does not say it is wrong to pray while being seen but to pray in order to be seen, to make the admiration of people the focus of our praying. Jesus prayed simple prayers in public (Matthew 11:25-26; 14:19; 15:36; Luke 24:30) and there are plenty examples of the early Christians praying with each other too (e.g., Matthew 18:19-20; Acts 1:14, 24; 2:42; 3:1; 4:23-31; James 5:16). But these times of praying together should be a group expression of what we are all experiencing privately, an overflow of our secret spirituality. If we find that we only pray when we are with other people, we need to pay close attention to this teaching of Jesus.
Amen. This word is often translated "Truly" as in, "Truly I tell you". It is simply an affirmation of something said. Just like today, in Jesus day "Amen" was usually said at the end of a prayer or a statement, as a way of saying "Yes!" or "I agree!" or "Right on!" So Jesus is being unusual for his time to begin important sentences with "Amen I tell you". He is front-end-loading his own affirmation, as if to say "What I'm about to tell you is so true, you better pay attention."
Babble on. The Greek word used here (battalogeó) means to use vain or unnecessary words and may even be onomatopoeic (say it three times fast and you'll hear the babble). It could refer to: i) an over use of repetition, or ii) the use of flowery words that appear pious but lack substance, iii) the pressure to use special religious words like magic to get the gods to hear you, like the prayer version of "Abracadabra!" Pagans in Jesus' day prayed to multiple gods and each god might have multiple titles or names they wanted used and there was no guarantee the god was even listening or, if listening, would care enough to help. So pagan prayers often sounded more like little children nagging their parents to get what they want. Begging, bartering, and flattery made for long and intricate prayers born out of insecurity and fear of not being heard. Jesus is here assuring us we do not have to use repetition or incantation to get God's attention. God is never too busy for us - we are the ones who are often too busy for God. Using too many words to express a simple idea seems to be at the heart of Jesus' concern here, since he says the pagans think their prayers will be more persuasive because of their "many words" (e.g., 1 Kings 18; Acts 19:34). In an earlier post, we talked about the value of "plain speech" for Christ-followers. Jesus advocates for the plain speech ("K.I.S.S.") approach to prayer as well. Some call this the principle of not-much-ness, where we intentionally counter the religious addiction to excess (or muchism). This isn't the only place where Jesus identifies long-winded prayer as a sign of unhealthy religion (e.g., Mark 12:38-40; Luke 12:46-47). According to Jesus, brevity in prayer can be a sign of faith. Maybe the next time someone asks "How do you pray?" we can answer "Not much". Yet there is more going on here. Brevity by itself is not the goal. Jesus sometimes prayed for an hour or more (Matthew 26:39-40) and expected his disciples should be able to do the same (Matthew 26:40-41), and sometimes he even prayed all night (Luke 6:12). Jesus also told stories about persistence in prayer (Luke 11:5-8; 18:1-8). What gives Jesus? Should our prayer times be long or short? It seems there is a delicious and delightful irony in Jesus' insight on prayer. Jesus knows that when we accept that we don't have to pray with many words to get God to hear us, we may want to pray more because prayer is our conversational time with the One who loves us most. Beautiful. But now a caution: Rather than use this teaching as a club to judge others ("Hey that's like those Catholics saying their rosary over and over!" Or "Hey that's like those Pentecostals babbling in tongues!" Or "Hey that's like my uncle Ned whenever he prays using King James language!" Or "Hey that's like Sister Nelly who always tries to impress with a lot of Scripture quotations in her prayers!" Or "Hey that's like pastor Potter who always tries to preach another sermon in his prayers!"), we should follow the ongoing emphasis of Jesus to check our own hearts first. Do we use words to express our heart to God or to be noticed by others? (For more on this, see the Confession section below.)
"We don't need five pages when five words will do."
~ Amy-Jill Levine (Sermon on the Mount)
"Remove from prayer much speaking, not much praying." ~ Saint Augustine (354–430 AD)
Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth. Therefore let your words be few. ~ King Solomon (Ecclesiastes 5:2)
Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with bold confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. (Hebrews 4:16)
The nations. Notice that Jesus is not hesitant to plainly contrast his spirituality with other religions of the world. The nations or gentiles (Greek, ethnos; a translation of the Hebrew goyim) are any people outside of God's family, and would usually refer to anyone who is not Jewish. It is these same "nations" that Jesus calls us to make disciples in the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19). Jesus has already told us not to pray like (some) Jews, and now he says we should not pray like (some) Gentiles. He is forging a new Way. This should give us courage to speak the truth in love regarding the reality of Jesus in comparison with other belief systems. We can always love and honour people while plainly claiming the unique superiority of Jesus and his Way. Ultimately, helping others discover the Jesus Way is the most loving thing we can do for them.
Inner Room. A private, secluded space. In a first-century Jewish home, this "inner room" was used for storage and would be the only room with a door (also in Luke 12:3, 24). Jesus is recommending complete privacy to remove any distractions or performative pressures. Everyone's "inner room" may be different, but finding that space and time of aloneness with our Father is key. Our inner room does not have to be a religious space or pious place but any simple arrangement that allows for secrecy. Here we're encountering another irreligious innovation brought to us by Jesus (more about this in the Commentary section). When we find our delight in sincerity over showiness, we will experience how much God loves us, and will also get to know who we really are as we drop our masks.
Secret. The word for "secret" is kruptos, from which we get our English word cryptic. It refers to something that is hidden. Again, there is nothing wrong with group prayer - Jesus and the early Christians prayed together. But Jesus has a realistic, honest, insightful, and compassionate view of human weakness. If we only pray with other people, we may tend to become distracted by the performative aspects of prayer. Earlier Jesus taught that if our hand tempts us to sin we should cut it off - a metaphor for the principle of radical separation from temptation. So believers who sometimes pray in public better pray all the more in private to make sure we are not slipping into performative religion. And when we do come together for that group prayer meeting, it will be all the more authentic and powerful and potent if we come as people who have already practiced secret prayer. All public prayer should be more than meets the eye - it should be a tip of an iceberg of secret prayer.
Your Father who is in secret. In this sermon, Jesus calls God our "Father" (Greek, patér) a total of 17 times and 10 of those times are in this section (Matthew 6:1-18). The super concentration of Father imagery is meant to bathe this entire discussion in a sense of God's protective, nurturing care. The Old Testament talks about closing ourselves in an inner room the way Jesus does here, but the reason is different: to hide away from God's punishing wrath (Isaiah 26:20). Here Jesus does not say we are running away from something but running toward Someone. As earlier, Jesus refers to God as the Father who "sees" our secrets, yet he also here calls God the one who is "in" secret. Jesus is using spatial language to describe the intimacy of prayer. The closed door of our inner room is designed to keep out everyone except our Father.
Reward/Repay. The two words translated "reward" and "repay" in this passage are different in Greek (worth pointing out since most English versions translate both as "reward"). The first ("they have received their reward") is the classic word for reward, but the second ("your Father... will repay you") is a different word meaning to repay, restore, give back. Humans "reward" us and God "repays" us. Huh. There is certainly overlap since God's "repayment" is also called "reward" in 6:1. Taken as a whole, Matthew's record of Jesus seems to be saying: it pays to invest in our relationship with God. The results are real. The corollary must also be true: ignoring our secret relationship with God will diminish our wellbeing. We really are missing out if we ignore our secret times with God. Apparently, the Christian life is not supposed to be so selfless that we feel the need to say "I get nothing out of it", but rather our focus is on getting the right benefit in the right way from the right Source. God is always with us. Jesus is Emmanuel (God with us). We always have God's attention. But our time and attention is not always with God. If we can change this, being with God will become our ultimate reward. Time with God changes us.
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. ~ JESUS (John 14:3)
Your Father knows what you need before you ask him. How can we have a meaningful conversation with an omniscient Being? Why talk to someone who already knows what we are about to say? This question assumes the purpose of prayer is relaying information or finding the right formula to tap into power. But Jesus is reshaping our understanding of prayer as relational connection rather than transactional bargaining or manipulative magic (e.g., if we say the right words we can get God to give us what we want). Prayer, according to Jesus, is talking over our day with God (even though he already shared it with us) and being reminded of his love and care at every turn. Notice Jesus says God already knows what we need, not what we're about to say. Jesus is not giving us a philosophical puzzle but a word of encouragement - God is with us all day and he cares about the details of our lives. We pray to be close to God and to discuss the day we have spent with God, not to inform him.
Your heavenly father knows all that you need. ~ JESUS (Matthew 6:32)
"To live in a hurry means to do much but effect little. We build more quickly in wood, hay, and stubble than in gold, silver, and precious stones; but the one abides, the other does not. If he who feels the world is too much with him will make for himself a little space, and let his mind settle like a bee in a flower on some great word of his God, and brood over it, pondering it till it has time to work in him, he will find himself in the greenwood. He will meet the Lord there, and then quite certainly he will soon be looking with his Lord's eyes upon the world." ~ Amy Carmichael (Gold Upon the Moonlight)
COMMENTARY
(Thoughts about meaning and application)
Jesus is warning us: All religious experiences and expressions can become polluted, perverted, and prostituted to serve human agendas.
Prayer becomes performance.
Giving becomes grandstanding.
Justice becomes punishing.
Teachers and preachers become idols.
Movements become institutions.
And passion becomes killing (or at least cancelling) in the name of righteousness.
Church history shows us how easily Christians can wander off the straight and narrow pathway of grace, mercy, and peace.
But every so often, God may be gracious enough to blow it all up and let us start again. Whether through our own or another's failure, or simply through the slow death of a system or institution, God is always the God of fresh starts and second chances. Whether it's the death of a relationship, the death of a church, or the death of a dream, Jesus reminds us that death is always the precursor to resurrection (see Luke 9:22-24).
Jesus is an irreligious revolutionary who refuses to be trapped within any one system, institution, or tradition. By encouraging every believer to find their own inner room to meet with God and experiences his presence, Jesus has, once again, turned religion upside down and inside out.
Under the Old Covenant, people could pray anywhere, but to really meet with God they had to go to the Temple (before that, the Tabernacle). At the centre of the Temple was the Holy of Holies, where God's presence was thought to dwell in undiluted purity. Only the high priest could enter this place on behalf of the people, and that happened only once each year, on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when the high priest would enter the Holy of Holies to burn incense and sprinkle blood.
Now, in one sentence, Jesus turns religion on its head. It is no longer a special pious place that believers go to meet with God - we are the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 3:16; 6:19; Ephesians 2:21-22; Hebrews 3:6; 1 Peter 2:5) and we turn mundane spaces into holy places. And no longer do we need a priest to be our mediator, since we are all now a kingdom of priests (Exodus 19:6; 1 Peter 2:5, 9). Our entire lives become "living sacrifices" (Romans 12:2). We have become the Temple, the priest who offers the sacrifice at the temple, and the living sacrifice that is offered. Goodbye religion. It's been nice knowing you.
This helps explain why most Anabaptist gathering spaces are kept plain to this day, with no crosses or other religious ornamentation. Anabaptists want to remind themselves that the church is the people, not the building.
[Here's a fun song to help let this truth sink in. WARNING: I first heard this song in the 1990's and now over three decades later and I still can't get it out of my head whenever the topic of the church being the people rather than the building comes up... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcjYBLQYo1U ]
So much good architecture has been inspired by the Christian faith - it's beautiful! But we must not allow ornate cathedrals, traditional church buildings, or any religious gathering place to become our "inner room". Jesus says that every day his followers should participate in a decidedly irreligious act: we turn our backs on the whole system of the professionalization of sacred space and draw close to God directly, intimately, and secretly.
Humans are made in God's image and therefore are naturally social, relational, and designed to be loving and loved. So it is understandable that we are always paying attention to others, reading their read of us, and making untold micro-adjustments throughout every interaction.
This sensitivity to how others are viewing us is like finding our way through the depths of human relationships using a kind of social sonar. We are always sending out signals that ping off others and then reading the response.
Paying attention to others is a healthy part of a loving life, but it is not the only part. Jesus is telling us that at least once every day we should take some time to turn off our social sonars, silence the relentless pinging, and just be ourselves in God's presence.
Intimacy > Publicity
We all want our lives to matter. But if our sense of self worth does not come from life with God in our "inner room", the consequences can be dire. As discussed in a previous study, we need attention to feel valued. But our desperate neediness for affirmation can wreak havoc on our psyches, creating a kind of dependency on regular hits of external affirmation as a kind of drug. And because of the law of diminishing returns, we will always crave more. Our social media selfie culture feeds this need, and over time we become master manipulators of our own image, curating how our lives are viewed by others in order to win their recurring approval, affirmation, and admiration.
Imagine the healing and wholeness we can experience when we develop an awareness that the One whose opinion matters most actually cares about the details of our daily lives. God is paying attention! He knows when we get up and lie down, when we are hurting and happy. Now imagine who we can become when God's affirmation becomes enough. Imagine how we can move into the world wanting to focus on and bless others, rather than use others to boost our sinking self esteem. All of this begins with secret time with God.
You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. ~ King David (Psalm 139:1-3)
In the sci-fi love story "her", society attempts to solve the loneliness and esteem epidemic through Artificial Intelligence. In truth, this is already happening to some degree. But God's intelligence is not artificial, his wisdom is always right, and, best of all, he loves us infinitely, unconditionally, and powerfully.
Don't you want to spend time with this Person?
CONFESSION
(Personal reflection)
I suck at prayer. My channel surfing, doom scrolling, easily distracted brain struggles to be in the moment and stay focussed. Over the years I've picked up some helpful ideas that I'm happy to pass along to any of you who are fellow strugglers.
Some things that have helped me pray privately:
Pray Intentionally
Pray Out Loud
Pray Conversationally
Pray the Lord's Prayer
If you are a fellow struggler when it comes to prayer, then I am excited to share these things with you. If prayer comes more naturally for you, then move along, there's nothing to see here.
a. Pray Intentionally
Yes, Jesus undoes any religious rules about praying at specific times. But he does assume we will want to set time aside at least once a day to pray (note the "daily bread" portion of the Lord's Prayer). It is good to know that we can "pray without ceasing" (1 Thessalonians 5:17), which is more like practicing an awareness of the presence of God everywhere we go. But let's not fall into the trap of using the "my life is my prayer" excuse to never actually pray. Real prayer is not just living with a sense of God, but actually finding words to express our hearts in conversation with God. Sometimes we won't find the right words, and the Holy Spirit will help us (Romans 8:26), but normally, words are meant to be a part of prayer.
b. Pray Out Loud
I was raised Pentecostal and we were world experts at praying out loud, really loud. But since I had also heard that it was okay to pray in my head, I tended to always pray silently. Sometimes I had good times of prayer with God, but often my mind wandered and before I knew it I was thinking, but not praying.
But wouldn't you know it, those dang Pentecostals knew what they were doing. I remember the time where, as an adult, a spiritual mentor encouraged me to try praying out loud again. They explained that it didn't have to be LOUD out loud, but just enough for me to hear my own voice or even my own whisper.
See, there is something about engaging our bodies, including our mouths, to help our minds stay focussed. As we work to form the words, we are more fully engaged than I was with my old "praying as thinking" approach. Our mouths help our minds. And when we hear our own words re-enter our heads, our ears are helping too. And all of this reinforces the meaningfulness of the moment.
Praying out loud doesn't have to be loud - a whisper will do. So long as your mouth and your ears get to participate in prayer.
c. Pray Conversationally
All prayer is a kind of two-way conversation because prayer is a response to the God who has spoken first. God speaks to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and the conversation continues straight through all of the Bible. God is still speaking through Scripture to our hearts and so one way to begin prayer is to take time to listen. We can pause to ask God to show us how he has spoken to us recently through Scripture, nature, circumstance, experience, art, science, emotions, intellect, intuition, dreams, or other people.
But how can we know what is God's voice? We can learn to recognize God's voice through the teachings and example of Jesus, the Word of God in flesh (John 1:1-18). That's one more reason why studying Jesus' teaching like we are doing in this series is so important - we are not only learning how to live, we are learning how to recognize the voice of God. Whenever we experience an intuition, emotion, thought, or conviction, and wonder if this might be God striking up a conversation with us, we can first ask the question: Does this voice sound Jesusy?
Conversational prayer makes the most sense to my mind. I was first introduced to this kind of praying when I was a young pastor at my first church. An elder invited me to spend an entire day in prayer together. It sounded like a lot, but I was up for it. After we chatted a bit, we began our prayer time and I bowed my head to think of what to begin saying in prayer. That's when I heard the pages flipping. I tried to focus on prayer, eyes closed head bowed, but those pages kept flipping. I looked up and the elder had opened his Bible to a passage. He read it out loud and began to pray about what he had just read. And throughout the day, the prayers kept ascending while the pages kept flipping.
After that day, there was no turning back for me. Now I pray with my Bible open. I read a verse and pray, then read the next verse and pray. God talks, I talk, God talks, I talk. Instead of me trying to figure out what topics to bring up in prayer (that's a lot of pressure with an omniscient being!), I let God set the pace.
Recently I was talking with one of my sisters who told me that when she was little she walked in on my Dad while he was praying with his Bible open. She asked him how he prays. And my Dad answered, "I read one verse and then I hold my Bible up to my heart and ask God what he wants to teach me. Then I listen. After I feel like I've understood something I can apply to my life, I ask God if I can move on to the next verse. Sometimes he says yes and sometimes he says no and I read the verse again, hold the Bible to my heart, and listen some more." My Dad was a pretty cool guy.
d. Pray the Lord's Prayer
In our next study we will begin a series on the Lord's Prayer. So for now I'll just say that combining Conversational Prayer with the Lord's Prayer is my go-to default form of private prayer. The Lord's Prayer takes less than thirty seconds to say, but easily thirty minutes to pray.
My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. ~ JESUS (John 10:27)
CONCLUSION
(One last thought)
This study concludes our look at Jesus' three examples of secret spirituality: giving, fasting, and praying. Jesus uses extremes to make a point about a deeper reality, so we shouldn't read his teaching and say, "Well, at least I'm not that bad. I'm not like those hypocrites. I don't blow a trumpet when I give or pray loudly on street corners." Jesus is a caricature artist. He is drawing caricatures of our hearts. We should see ourselves in these vivid pictures and say, "Oh wow, that does capture something of who I am."
The good news is that Jesus offers us a simple and gracious way to be real with ourselves and with God. We might paraphrase Jesus this way:
"The desire for attention and affirmation and acceptance is within you. You don't need to deny it or minimize it. You were made this way by my Father and your Father, our Father who is in the heavens. He created you to crave intimacy, to be driven toward relationship to find your significance. But sin is separating you from the Father, and from each other, and from your true selves. I'm here to help. I want to save you from the sin that separates, and I will. You can take your first step by finding time to let the Father love you, and for you to find your true selves there. Drop the masks - you don't need to perform. Drop the stones - you don't need to judge. Drop the doubts - you don't need to be afraid any longer." ~ JESUS (A Paraphrase of His Teaching in the Sermon on the Mount)
CONTEMPLATE
(Scripture passages that relate to and deepen our understanding of this topic)
Psalm 139; 1 Corinthians 4:1-5
CONVERSATION
(Talk together, learn together, grow together)
What is God revealing to you about himself through this passage?
What is God showing you about yourself through this passage?
When was the last time you prayed? What was it like?
What is one thing you can think, believe, or do differently in light of what you are learning?
What questions are you still processing about this topic?
