Imagine you're watching Jesus heal the blind, walk on water, and raise a boy from the dead. In Bible times, the three virtuous practices of the Jews at the new year were: giving to the needy, praying in secret, and fasting. Jesus opened up these works to expand them to bringing righteousness and justice to all He came in contact with. If you had been there, what would you want Him to do for you? It makes sense that one of the specific things the disciples asked Jesus to do was to teach them to pray. In the center of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6:9-13, Jesus does just that, saying, "Our Father who art in heaven..." Pastor Mike Patz highlights the teaching of the Lord's Prayer in the continuation of the School of Jesus. If prayer is so important, why do we find it lacking in joy and importance in our lives? The solution to our prayer problem is not religious, its relational; it begins with Father. If we could learn to pray like the early church we would start to act like the early church. The Sermon on the Mount was given to disciples, and disciples are people who reorient their lives around the words Jesus taught. We must learn to walk in the prayer life of Jesus! The reason we don't know how to pray is because we do not know our Father. We have deep father wounds, that need the balm of our perfect heavenly Father, Abba. Our Father! With joy we can come together in prayer to our Father. If we can get this relationship right we have hope that we can get every other relationship right as well. We have a God who wants to know us intimately. In 2025, we invite you to "father" us!