Family is a blessing God gives to us. It’s through them we learn how to live with one another. Through our family, the worst as well as the best is brought out of us.

Family exposes the weaknesses we have that we may never know. Because these weaknesses are uncovered, we can work on them.

Family is also a blessing because we receive a lot of comfort and support from our family. In times of sadness, we know we have our family members to tell our sorrows to. In times of joy, we can rejoice together with our family members.

The larger community , the church, is a family God has blessed us with.

As we go through the Spiritual Meeting, it’s good to pay special attention to how we treat other people, and what are the weaknesses we uncover in this process, and to work on it.

Matt 6:5-7
These verses falls about the attitudes we ought to have when praying to God:

1. We shouldn’t be like hypocrites
   When we pray, we should focus on the one-to-one relationship we have to God; don’t pray because of others.

2. When we pray, we need to go into the inner room. Shut the door and pray to our Father who is in secret.
   Much has been said about the need to focus in our prayers. How Jesus says we should focus is to go into the inner room. We have to shut the door. What this means is that we have to get rid of all the distractions. And in our prayer, we focus only on our Father. We only focus on God. We can see this evidently displayed by the Lord Jesus when He was in the Garden of Gethsemane. Yes, He knew His disciples were sleeping. Yes, He knew His life was in grave danger. He has many distractions at that point in time. But when He entered the Garden to pray, He only had one focus in His prayer: to submit to the will of God, to do the things He was supposed to do.

The sleeping disciples didn’t become a distraction. He remained focused on God.

Think about this imagery:
Take a time machine and be transported to the inner veil of the temple. You’re able to be right before the throne of grace (which is exactly what the author of Hebrews tells us - we have access to the throne of grace). Within that veil, we’re able to have spiritual fellowship with God alone (just like how Moses talked to God within the veil and had spiritual communion and fellowship with God).

One of the things that makes us really tired in this modern world is the issue of focusing. Our minds are very tired because we have to change context very often. Imagine one moment you’re thinking: ok I’m praying. The next moment: what am I gonna do for my assignment?

As our mind shuttles between these two contexts and we think we can multitask, that’s when we make our brains very tired. Hence one of the things we really have to do is just to focus. Focus on one thing at one time.

Scientific studies show that if you really focus on one thing at one time, you can do that one thing much faster and more effectively.

This is certainly something we should learn in our attitude in our prayer. We have to focus.

1. Don’t make vain repetitions to God
   Pray to God from our hearts. In our prayer, we should have a heart to heart talk with God. It’s a really comforting thing to have a h2h talk with someone we love; a safe zone we can say everything in our hearts. Prayer is that safe zone where we can bear whatever’s in our hearts.

Just like when Hannah prayed. She poured out her heart towards God. She’s able to tell of her deep sorrow. It wasn’t with words (even the High Priest thought she was drunk). God heard her. From her heart, she poured out her sorrows to God. She made her requests made known to God with her heart.

Prayer is that safe zone for us to pour out our hearts towards God.

Matt 6:5-7 thus records 3 attitudes we should have in prayer:

1. Prayer is first and foremost between you and God. The people around you is not of concern.
2. Focus in our prayer. Shut the door. Get rid of the distractions as we pray to God.
3. Focus on what we tell God in our hearts. Don’t just focus on words.

After talking about the attitudes of prayer, the Lord Jesus then tells them WHAT to pray for.

Matt 6:8-13
The Lord’s Prayer ought to be the content of our prayer. In relation to the prayer for the Holy Spirit, what does the Lord’s Prayer teach us?

First and foremost, praying for the Holy Spirit is focusing on God in heaven; to reflect in His holiness; to start thinking about His will, and how His will is going to be fulfilled in our lives and families. God definitely wants us to receive the Holy Spirit.

As we compare ourselves to His holiness, there’re certain areas we certainly fall short of. So when we pray for the Holy Spirit, we first need to focus on God and His holiness.

Thereafter, we can start thinking about our needs. Our needs are described in a few ways: basic necessities we need in life (what most of us will pray for) + our sins.

Our sins need to be forgiven. While they need to be forgiven, we need to forgive others. This is a very important step in our prayer for the Holy Spirit. We need to think what sins we have committed.

When the speaker’s daughter received the Holy Spirit, she testified that she was very sad because his two sons had received the Holy Spirit earlier. She was the only one in the family who had yet to receive the Holy Spirit. She received the Holy Spirit last year during the Bible Sem. When she prayed, she thought about all the bad things she has done and the areas she had fallen short of. This was when tears came down uncontrollably. After that, she was blessed and filled with the Holy Spirit.

One important thing we really have to do is to look at the sins we have committed and to ask for forgiveness, and then to forgive others. We are in the position to forgive others, since they have done something wrong against us. Don’t hold on to that grudge. Learn to let go.

Think about the temptations next. We have many temptations. Focus our attention back to God! “God don’t lead me into temptations”

Then we end off with thinking about the kingdom, glory, power of God.

Jesus hence teaches us what attitude we should have in prayer and what we ought to pray for.