The Greatest Prayer (Adolescent and Family Curriculum)

When Jesus first spoke the words we now know as the Lord's Prayer, it was in the context of a teaching on practical piety. His first hearers were deeply concerned with how they might express their faith. As in many of the stories we have received about him, Jesus was in the midst of compare-and-contrast rhetoric. In speaking about prayer, he suggested that prayer is best done in private, implying that the public prayer of hypocrites was less about communicating with God and more about communicating with those who observed the prayer. Similarly, Jesus pointed out how the Gentiles hoped that through their wordy phrases they would capture God's attention. In contrast, Jesus taught that God knows what we need even before we ask.

​What is The Greatest Prayer, you ask? Well, there might be some great competitors, and any prayer is a great prayer, but one prayer in particular was given to us straight from Jesus. The Lord's Prayer is given to us so that even when we feel like we have nothing to say, we always have something to pray. This adolescent and family curriculum dives deeper into this prayer and its meaning for our lives.