Jesus' disciples asked Him to teach them to pray, like John taught His disciples to pray. Here is what He taught them, broken down into segments like Martin Luther taught.

The Lord's Prayer can be seen as an outline of all the things fathers in general, and Our Father God in particular, does for us:
He gives us His Name
He makes sure His plans for us are carried out
He provides everything we need
He teaches us how to have good relationships with one another, based on the relationship we have with Him
He protects us from harm of every sort
He does everything He can to make sure we can enjoy all the blessings He has to give us
We'll see all these things in these slides and in the other Lord's Prayer sections

What do your parents tell you?

What do your friends tell you?

What do you think television is telling you?

What do you think the movies are telling you?

What have the Sunday School teachers been telling you?

What have pastors been telling you?

Draw all of this information together and tell us what YOU think of God.

Some signs of people who are afraid of God:

They don't want to talk about Him
They don't want to go to church
They don't want to read the Bible
- because they want to avoid Him

OR

They DO want to go to church A LOT
They DO want to lots of good things
They DO want to suck up to Him in lots of ways
- because they don't want to make Him angry

Some signs of people who feel that God doesn't care =>

They point to tragedies and ask "why didn't God do something?"
They ask how a loving God can permit childhood cancers
They get discouraged and depressed again and again and say "God must not love me"

They think He's like the weather in Ohio - warm and sunny one day, cold and rainy the next day

They think He likes to mess with them, just for fun

They think He likes to find out what they want, then do the opposite

They say things like "man proposes, and God disposes" or "the best-laid plans of mice and men gang aft a-glay" - meaning that it's useless to make long-term plans because God will usually mess them up

For them, it's just easier not to believe in Him than to put up with all these problems and questions and issues

They feel that their faith in God should obligate Him to demonstrate His sovereignty over the universe to their satisfaction on a daily basis. In other words, for such folks faith is not a matter of trust in God but a demand they place on God - "prove yourself to me or I'll stop believing in you!"

We've got some surprising news for you!

God is not like any of these!

He wants us to know that God is like a Father who loves us!

He's like the Father we all wish we had!

He's a Father who considers us to be His dear children, and invites us to call Him our dear Father!

Other portions of the prayer are in other slide decks. When you finish one you'll be directed to go to the next one, like on the next slide

See how easy? Just close this deck and go to "Hallowed be Thy Name."

Thanks!