Hey everyone – it’s great to be home again. As you think about it, please keep Tom Randles in your prayers, and if you’d like, send him an encouraging email at thomas.randles@gmail.com – just to let him know that others are thinking of him and appreciate what he’s doing now.
Now that we’re back, its time to get back into our study in the Gospel of Luke. This Sunday we’ll be reading Luke 11:1-4, and exploring the model prayer that Jesus provided for us. It’s interesting that guys who grew up in Jewish households would want instruction on how to pray. They grew up with prayers as a major part of their heritage. Why do you think they wanted Jesus to teach them to pray?
As you read Jesus’ guide for prayer, what things strike you about it? What seems to characterize this prayer? If you were to divide it into parts, what part comes first and what comes second?
We need a guide for prayer. Left to ourselves, we tend to make a mess of things as important as this. I hope this Sunday we can gain some insight about the “hows” and “whys” of our communication with God. Hope to see you then!
WONDERWHAT 
I was reading recently that Jews believe that God judges people on how they behave from moment to moment. I believe it was extremely important that the Jews needed to know how Jesus taught them to pray because prayer for them was very ritualistic. They would pray the “Shema” from the Torah which would be a prayer to the Jewish people and not to God. I think they would need the Jewish Priest to be able to commune with God. How amazed they must have been to hear Jesus teaching them to go directly to God Himself! This really makes me see how blessed we are to have Jesus, our Priest, who intercedes on our behalf.