So far in our doctrine series we’ve looked a bit at who God is by looking at the doctrine of the trinity. We then followed it up by looking at how God communicates to us by looking at the doctrines of scripture and revelation. This week we look at the other side of the conversation by studying the doctrine of prayer.

Here are several questions we’ll attempt to at least address briefly this Sunday.

1. What is prayer?
2. Who should we pray to?
3. Are my prayers effective? Do they actually make a difference?
4. What should I pray about? How should I pray for difficult things? Can I question God?
5. If prayer is easy, why do I often struggle to do it and feel guilty about it?

Prayer has been in the news a lot the last few weeks with President Obama’s inauguration. Just in case you missed it, here are three of the prayers that received most of the attention. Not saying I recommend all these, just that all 3 men claim to be praying. I do like one of them, I’ll leave it up to you to decide which one.

Gene Robinson

Rick Warren

Joseph Lowery

One thing I did in prepping for this lesson was to do a search on Twitter to see what people pray for. I’ve been checking it occasionally and you can see a lot of interesting stuff. It also seems that Bon Jovi’s Living on a Prayer is pretty popular on Rock Band.

Here are some resources I can recommend:

J.I. Packer’s Praying the Lord’s Prayer

Mars Hill (Mark Driscoll)
Painful Prayers
The Gethsemane Prayer
Pray Like Jesus
The Lord’s Prayer
Prayer and Planning
Prayer and Repentance

Desiring God (John Piper)
What should we prayer for?
A good start on prayer in 2009
Does it matter which person of the Trinity we pray to?