Prayer as Relationship
This is the sermon I preached on Sunday at St. Timothy Lutheran Church . The text was Luke 11:1-13 . Long ago and far away, when my children were tiny, we frequently got together with other young couples from church for fellowship. One such couple was captivated by what was called the prosperity gospel . The husband said we should call him “Millionaire Mike” because he had given so much, He figured that since God gives a hundred-fold, God owed him a lot of money, so much so that he would be a millionaire. Mike seemingly had scripture to back him up, but it was wrenched out of context. Within these few paragraphs Luke gives us a context to know that we shouldn’t get the idea that God will give us everything we want if we only ask. We must be discerning about everything people teach, supposedly from the scripture. Scripture gives us parameters. Paul told the Corinthians, “… I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). To the Galatians he wrote