Christ PCA Temecula

The Lord’s Prayer has been teaching us to pray in a way that is God-centered, pulling us out of ourselves so that we can be oriented in God’s goodness and greatness. This Sunday we come to the first petition addressing our needs, as we pray, “give us this day our daily bread.” This petition is striking as we go from exalting God’s name, longing for his kingdom, and seeking his will, to a reminder of God’s care in tending to our basic needs as human beings.

The prayer for God’s kingdom to come has meant one of two contradictory things; an over-spiritualized emphasis on escaping this world in order to be with God in his heavenly kingdom or an activist spirit seeking to usher in the kingdom through our own good works. Yet it is best seen as a confession of clear-eyed realism that acknowledges this world is not as it should be and a prayer of concrete hope longing for God to make right what has been disrupted by sin.

The prayer for God’s kingdom to come has meant one of two contradictory things; an over-spiritualized emphasis on escaping this world in order to be with God in his heavenly kingdom or an activist spirit seeking to usher in the kingdom through our own good works. Yet it is best seen as a confession of clear-eyed realism that acknowledges this world is not as it should be and a prayer of concrete hope longing for God to make right what has been disrupted by sin.

This Sunday we come to the first petition of the Lord’s Prayer, where Jesus teaches us to pray, “hallowed be your name.” It sounds so formal to our modern ears. And yet this petition draws us into the greatness of God over all creation and our lives. We always risk our prayer lives becoming too mundane; just a list of needs. But this prayer begins with the crucial, prayer oxygenating recognition of our need for God and for Him to be God in our lives and world.

This week, we will explore what it means to pray to our God who is in heaven. If praying to our Father reminds us of the God to whom we have access and intimacy because of the work of the Son, we will see how praying to our God in heaven reminds us of the power and presence of the God who is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think according to the power at work within us (Eph 3.20).

This week, we begin our new series through the Lord’s Prayer which contains the very heart of the gospel from the beginning to the end. When we approach God as Father, our prayer life is necessarily shaped by God’s loving, faithful presence toward us, who stand beside his Son, our elder brother Jesus. To pray to our Father may be easy to speak and yet is a reality that takes a lifetime of growing in Christ by the Holy Spirit to grasp deeper in our hearts.

When the gospel gets twisted, the church is in trouble. In Acts 15:1-35, we’ll consider an error confronting the early church and how Scripture set things straight. This early gospel error has been on repeat throughout church history—adding works of the law to the finished work of Jesus in order to be saved. But Jesus said not even the gates of hell can stand against His church. Acts 15 provides clarity concerning the gospel and a model and principles for the church to confront such errors.

We’re all looking for rest and satisfaction; contentment. The problem is that this deep-rooted can’t be met by the things of this world and a society that bombards us with suggestions and demands of how to attain contentment. Psalm 16 reminds us in order to reorient us. There are paths that lead to folly and sorrow. King David’s beautiful poetic reflection on finding rest in our hearts offers tremendous hope for you and I who place our hearts in our Savior Jesus, the perfectly satisfied One.

What is gospel hope in “this present evil age,” as Paul described in Galatians 1:3-5? In the wake of the recent tragic events, we must allow the gospel to take us out of the grip of news and newsfeeds. This week we’ll consider three aspects of gospel hope centering around those incredible words: “Christ gave himself" speaking to man’s greatest problem of sin, the purpose of Christ’s sacrifice, and the Father’s plan to give grace to sinners through his Son.

James concludes with the message that the wise life is the praying life, casting prayer in the category of wisdom because to pray is to confront our own propensity to be self-reliant and independent of our need of God. Praying reminds us that we are...