God has come near to us and brought us near to him, in a special bond, through Jesus.

Jesus died to bring us a new and overwhelmingly better relationship with God. This is called the New Covenant.

Our eternal hope is built upon the perfection of the work of Jesus Christ as high priest.

Do you know what Jesus is doing for you today? He is at the right hand of the Father, always praying for his people.

Jesus teaches us to approach our Father for the daily help we need, forgiveness, and help for holy living.

The greatest Teacher in the world, the Lord Jesus Christ, teaches us to pray to our Father.

Too often we think of prayer as something we do exclusively on our own. Jesus did warn against praying to be seen, or for show. But he never intended that we would only pray in complete privacy all the time! We DO need to learn to pray in our closet, but we also need to learn to pray with our kids, with our spouse. We need to learn to pray with one another. We need to learn to pray in the church.

If prayer is not a delight, it will never truly become a discipline. In the Lord's prayer, Jesus is not merely teaching us how to come to God with a list of things we need his help with. Fundamentally, he is inviting us to enjoy what he has always enjoyed, namely fellowship with the Father.

Our passage this morning is about hope. Hope, in the Bible, is not wishful thinking. It is confident expectation of good. It is spiritual optimism rooted in all that God has promised us! The old hymn says, we have “strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow”. Christian hope reaches all the way to eternity! Proverbs says the godly woman “smiles at the future”. Hope is an outlook on life that affects you, and others can tell if you have it.