In the 5th century, Saint Prosper of Aquitaine wrote these words: “Ut legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi” or “The law of praying establishes the law of believing”. In other words, your prayers reveal and shape what you believe.
It’s for this reason that Jesus, in His Sermon on the Mount, turns to His disciples and teaches them how to pray. In doing so, He is not teaching them a formula to recite or a chant to memorise, but rather a pattern around which their whole lives and priorities must pivot.

Jesus is calling us to be shaped by this prayer both now and forever.

The beginning of the new year is the perfect time to re-calibrate the compass of our own hearts in a Godward direction. As we study the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6:9-13, we will together be challenged to assess the year ahead and lay our priorities at Christ’s feet, that He might make us men and women who enter 2017 with Him at the centre, for now and forever.