This Sunday's Worship Materials can be found in the "Featured Sermon" below. We meet in person at Harper Park Middle School, and the service is also livestreamed on our YouTube channel.

The Prayer of The King (Matthew 6:7-15)

March 17, 2013 Speaker: Rev. Dave Dorst Series: The King and His Kingdom! - A Series in the Book of Matthew

Topic: Sermons Passage: Matthew 6:7–6:15

Let's just get this out early: I don't pray enough. As a pastor that can be hard to admit, but there are weeks where I realize that I haven't sought the Lord outside of praying before meals and at the end of meetings. So the fact that I'm preaching on the Lord's Prayer this week makes me feel slightly ashamed; you'd probably be better off with anybody else because I'm such a failure. But just maybe I have a hunch that some of you can identify with me. You're a doer and praying feels like a luxury task that you don't (or won't) make time for. Or maybe we just blow up the idea of prayer in our minds too much, so we put it off for the "perfect time" that never comes. And maybe, since the Lord's Prayer only takes about 20 seconds, it's not the length but the sincerity of our prayers that God is looking for.

And there are other barriers to prayer, as Sinclair Ferguson has noted: "Prayer involves struggle, but the struggle is not that of persuading our God. Rather, it is the struggle involved in being subdued by God, coming out of the dark and secret places in which we have been hiding the truth about ourselves, and laying the whole of our lives before him... Even as Christians, we have an instinct to hide from the Father, both because he is the Great King and because we are still sinners... coming to the Father will involve us in a strange conflict: the pain and shame of our failure will mix with the joy and relief of his great grace."

More in The King and His Kingdom! - A Series in the Book of Matthew

October 26, 2014

The Commission of the King (Matthew 28:16-20)

October 19, 2014

The Resurrection of the King (Matthew 28:1-15)

October 12, 2014

All is Lost (Matthew 27:57-66)