From Routine Prayers To Real Relationship

Most of us learned to pray by repeating familiar words at familiar times, but what happens when those words stop reaching our heart? David and Tracy Sellers take us into Matthew 6 and the Lord’s Prayer, not as a script to speed through, but as Jesus’ clear invitation into a real relationship with our Heavenly Father that strengthens a Christian marriage from the inside out. Along the way, we talk about how prayer habits form in families, why routines can turn into empty ritual, and how to regain confidence when praying out loud with your spouse feels awkward. 

We slow down over “Our Father in heaven” and why that single word “our” changes the posture of a couple. We also wrestle honestly with “Hallowed be your name” and “Your kingdom come, your will be done,” because surrender is where control issues surface. If you’ve ever wondered whether God can be trusted with your marriage, your plans, or your deepest fears, this conversation gives language for that tension and a path forward. 

Then we explore “Give us today our daily bread” as both God’s provision and our spiritual hunger for Scripture and Christ as the Bread of Life. We close with the heart work Jesus includes on purpose: forgiveness, battling temptation, and ending with praise that puts everything back where it belongs, with God’s kingdom and God’s glory. If this encouraged you, subscribe, share the episode with a friend, and leave a review so more couples can find biblical help for marriage and prayer.

Transcript

Welcome And Mission

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Welcome to Vows to Keep Radio with David and Tracy Sellers. The mission of Vows to Keep is to help couples develop a biblically healthy marriage through the application of God's Word and a deeper relationship with Him. They desire to help you and your spouse grow closer to each other and closer to the heart of God's design for your marriage. Now, here's David and Tracy with today's broadcast.

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This is David and Tracy Sellers, and we have made Vows to Keep.

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We're so glad you're here with us today on Vows to Keep

Sermon On The Mount Setup

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Radio. As we continue our Bible for Marriage series, last week, David, we were talking about the Beatitudes when Jesus started teaching on the Sermon on the Mount, which is found in Matthew chapter 5.

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And for those that don't know, Beatitudes means blessings. And they can be broken down into four categories. The first three are an emptying and a surrendering process. Next comes the answer to our longings and our needs. After we've been filled, come three ways God works in our hearts to produce the fruit of the Holy Spirit in our lives. And then finally comes how do we handle the sin of others?

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Yeah, if you missed that broadcast, check it out on vowstokeep.com.

Family Mealtime Prayer Habits

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So I'm going to start today, David, by saying something I've said probably like 3,000 times in my life, but I haven't said it for a long time. Are you ready for this? Okay. God is great. God is good. Let us thank him for our food. Amen.

SPEAKER_02 1:24

Really?

SPEAKER_00 1:25

When I was growing up, we'd always bow our heads, hold hands at the dinner table. And a lot of times it was my job to say the blessing. What did that look like in your house?

SPEAKER_02 1:33

Well, nothing like that I can say. Every time we prayed, although we did pray over every meal, it was always different.

SPEAKER_00 1:39

Very interesting. Well, we've got this little friend in our lives. Her name is Olivia. Now she's two and a half years old, and she's just about the cutest thing you'll ever see. So when it's time to eat, her mom and dad will say, Okay, Livia, close your eyes and fold your hands, and her little eyes will squeeze shut and her face all crinkles up. And when I look at her, she's like peeking to see if what everyone else is doing is so cute. But I do love that her parents are teaching her about God through this habit of thanking him for our food. She doesn't know who God is yet, but she is growing in her understanding of the fact that not only is there a God, but he cares. He is near and he listens.

SPEAKER_02 2:15

Tracy, now that our kids are past the peaking stage like Olivia's in during prayers, it's a whole different ballgame. They're 15, 14, and 11 now. But our family prayers and their personal prayers started just like Olivia's did. It was mealtimes, it was bedtimes. As they got older, we started doing family devotions and just taking a short little section out of the Bible, and then we would follow that by some prayer requests and of course prayer. And every one of us would take turns doing it. Well, now it's such a family habit that every night at least four or five of us are going to gather together and we're going to pray. It's just part of the fabric, it's part of the DNA of our family.

When Prayer Turns Into Routine

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It seems like we are turning to prayer more often, and I'm grateful for that, but it wasn't always that way. Now, if you look at the Old Testament, there's this man named Daniel. Yes, that's the same one that went in the lion's den, but the reason why he got there is because he had this habit of praying three times a day. It says in Daniel 6.10 that that was his custom. That's something he had always done. Maybe you find yourself praying to God at certain times of the day. For me, a lot of times it's in the morning as I'm getting ready for the day, or at meals, or at the end of the day, or when something comes up that needs attention. I think it's good to have routine. I think it keeps us in communion with God, but it can become exactly that. It can become routine if we only do it at certain times of the day.

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One of the other things that can happen is that we can begin to focus on how we're saying our prayers or what our prayers are about rather than who we are praying to?

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I'm definitely guilty of that. So as we talk about prayer today here on Vows to Keep Radio, is prayer part of your life the way it was for Daniel? And if so, what do you find yourself talking with God about the most? What is foremost in your prayers? Maybe fears or concerns?

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Praises. Maybe it's requests or questions that you have. Are your prayers dependent upon the time of the day? Or do you find yourself talking to God without regard to the routine? Have you ever wondered how do I pray? Am I actually getting this right? Does God even hear me? And why am I praying if God already knows everything that's happening in this world? It's hesitations like these and others that keep us from not only growing in our relationship with God through prayer, but they also keep us from praying out loud with our spouse.

Why Jesus Teaches Prayer

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As we continue the study on the Bible from marriage, and we're in Matthew 6 reading the Sermon on the Mount, we're going to take an in-depth look at the Lord's Prayer. Because the goal of this and what Jesus was teaching was to help us to take it from something that was a ritual to something that was about the relationship. We want to help you gain confidence in praying so that you can pray with your husband or your wife and not feel strange, not feel awkward about it. We're going to be going through this study, this very famous prayer from Jesus, and we're going to break it down phrase by phrase to discover what Jesus wants us to learn about prayer.

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If you know it, say it along with me. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For yours is the kingdom, the power, and the glory for ever and ever. Amen. I bet you could say that with me, and I'm glad you know it well.

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This isn't one of those prayers that you just repeat mindlessly. Like I think sometimes we do. This is Jesus taking the mystery out of prayer for you and I. He's saying prayer is not some secret sauce formula that's mastered just by the super spiritual. We're all invited to talk to my and your Heavenly Father. Now imagine if Jesus hadn't taken the time to teach us how to pray. Like it says in Jeremiah 33, 3, that when we call on him, he'll reveal the great and hidden things that we have not known. Imagine if the only examples of prayer that were in your life were from the eloquent perfectionists, the hypocrites, the Pharisees who put themselves on display. No, Jesus is encouraging something completely different. He is teaching us about a posture which leads to a relationship. It's not about a process.

Our Father Sets Marriage Posture

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Don't skip over that and move on. These powerful words, if looked at closely, do three things for us. They remind us whose father he is, where he is, and what position he has in our lives. Notice the prayer doesn't start with my father in heaven. It starts with our, our father, plural. And that's important for your marriage today because our implies yours and mine together. Recognizing that your spouse has the same heavenly father that you have puts you in a different posture before the throne. We're not ahead of or behind our spouse. We kneel together, both of us as part of the body of Christ.

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Calling God our heavenly Father reminds us that we're his children. Even now on earth, he is our majestic God in heaven. We're not on the same playing field. He's God. We're not. It echoes in Ecclesiastes 5 2, for God is in heaven and you are on the earth. Therefore, let your words be few. God asks us to recognize that we are his creation, here for a moment and then gone. But that he is the forever God. And I think this helps us to say, God, you're sovereign. I'm going to give you the authority in my life, and I'm going to trust you with everything that's happening in my life. But let's be honest here, typically I don't always strive to seek God's authority in my life, because then I have to subject myself to it. If you're like me, I'd rather be my own boss. If you know this is a daily struggle for you, then you should know it's the same for your spouse to seek what pleases us, what promotes our agenda. That is what comes from our sinful nature. And I'm someone who does that. When I'm seeking to please myself, it's hard for me to say the next words in this prayer, which is in verse 9.

Hallowed Be Your Name

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Hallowed be your name. When we pray this, we're lifting up the name of Jesus, a name above every other name. Philippians 2 tells us that God elevated him to the place of the highest honor and gave him the name above all other names. That at the name of Jesus Christ, every knee will bow in heaven and on earth, even under the earth. Every tongue will declare that Jesus Christ is Lord, and to the glory of God the Father.

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So if we spend our days, David, pursuing us, we see the fruit of that in our marriage, don't we? How I spend my time, my resources, even my thought life is either going to pursue me or it's going to pursue God. When we pursue us and what we want, we see James 4 in real time. Go ahead and take a quick read through that chapter sometime. James 4 speaks to the war that rages in relationships, and it results directly because of our selfishness. So when we say, David, howl be your name, we're saying this. Lord, you deserve to be served, not me. I acknowledge the sin of seeking the glory for myself, and it's only to be given to you. It's not the name of Tracy Sellers or Joe Smith or Lisa Jones that we will be proclaiming on the day we stand before God. It's not going to be the name of your favorite sports team that you're going to be shouting when the King of Kings is there on the throne before you. It won't even be the names of those precious kiddos that squeeze their eyes shut when they're praying. No, there is only one name that's deserving of everything we have.

SPEAKER_02 9:59

And when we acknowledge that Jesus is the only one worthy of our praises, our adoration, it's a mental and spiritual reset that inevitably causes a shift in our life, shifting from pursuing our own popularity, our own fame, shifting from running after the world and all of its wealth. Shifting is said to making it our life's goal to lift the name of Jesus Christ on high. We don't want to be like the Pharisees, just giving lip service. And in order to avoid that, it has to begin in our hearts first.

SPEAKER_00 10:31

Otherwise, we stand the chance, don't we, David, of being like those hypocrites. They were just standing in the public places, praying out loud to be seen, just doing our good works to be seen, acknowledging the name of Jesus has to be done first, I think, in the private places of our hearts where no one else can see.

SPEAKER_02 10:49

To say to him in that secret place of our private prayer lives, you are my Father, you are my God, your name be glorified and not mine. And then coming together with your wife to pray together, to jointly say that you are our God, that you alone do we seek to praise and to please. This is a game changer. This is foundational for your marriage.

Choosing God’s Will Over Ours

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As Jesus continues to teach us to pray in verse 10, he changes topics a little bit. He says, Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Sometimes it's easier to say, hallowed be your name, than your kingdom come, your will be done, right?

SPEAKER_00 11:27

Yeah, I start to squirm just a little bit there. Like, really? I mean, I want to mean that, but sometimes I don't mean it all the way, right? That's when our heart rate picks up a little bit, and I almost feel like this defense began to rise within me.

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And in that, I think we begin to question God's character. Does God really know what's best for me in my marriage? Can I actually trust God? The real question being, if I had to hand everything over to God and ask for His will to be done, will I get the end result that I'm hoping for? Because if I'm honest, I really think that I know the best path for me. I feel like I can plan out the steps that need to be taken to reach my desired end result. And I think that's many of us. That feeling of being in control gives us a very false sense of security.

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So, how do we see this play out in our marriage? Well, I think that as we make plans for the future, sometimes we forget to include God in the process, maybe even just plans for the day or those little decisions. We forget that God's will is better than ours and we need to seek him first. At best, sometimes he's just tacked on to the end of the decision-making process when we go to him and say, Lord, make our plans come together smoothly. I'm gonna guess that you and your spouse have probably been in those exact same shoes. Now, the average person, this is interesting, makes over 30,000 decisions a day. Some people say upwards of like 60,000 decisions a day. And it can be anything from like scratching your head, you're not even really thinking about it, to the bigger ones that determine how you're gonna spend your day and how you're going to act during a fight with your spouse. And then even the bigger ones that have those long-reaching implications for us. It may be hard to think about praying about every single one of those decisions, but what's really at the crux here are the decisions of the heart. And that's what God is concerned with. He, in fact, is so concerned about the condition of our hearts that that's where he starts. He says our hearts can't be right with him unless we believe on the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior. And it's not just believing, it extends into the realm of who is our master, who or what will we let rule us? Whose will will we chase after today? Who or what determines the choices that you're making right now? Is it Jesus? Is he the center of your thought process as a couple? Are you desiring to please him with your choices? Or maybe, like David said, you're ruled by this false security. You feel like if you're in the driver's seat and your will is done, it's gonna work out in the end.

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Jeremiah prays in Jeremiah 10, 23. I know, Lord, that our lives are not our own. We're not able to plan our own course. And I admire Jeremiah. It takes great humility to say that we can't do this thing called life, even this thing called marriage, on our own. Now I suspect he came to that conclusion because of some failed attempts at trying to control his own life. I know that's what brings me to that point. Making Jesus not only our Savior, but our Lord and Master of our life will cause you to be able to pray this portion of the Lord's Prayer from your heart, not just with your lips. When we know his character and we have seen the evidence of his faithfulness, and we know deep in our hearts that he can be trusted with our deepest fears, our deepest wishes, we can actually pray, your kingdom come, your will be done.

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So here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna ask you to ask yourself these hard questions. Ask your spouse to challenge you in this area. And if you come to the realization that you haven't made Jesus your Lord and Master, then take a really close look at what is in his place because that place of authority and leadership in your life, it's never vacant. Something or someone always takes that role. Maybe for you it's security or finances or even the health of your marriage, success in your career. Something is driving you. Exchange those false masters for the one true God, and then ask your spouse to keep you accountable in these areas of weakness that you may have. Ask them to walk beside you.

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God knows that we won't truly be satisfied apart from him. He knows that even if we get everything we want, picture it for a second, if everything goes perfectly for us in every possible way, you and I won't be content. Because that's not how God made us. He made us for something more than to gain our own glory. He made us for his kingdom, for his glory. God knows it's our sinful tendency to try to seek out our own. Look at Genesis 11. Here we see the people desired to build the Tower of Babel. They said, Let us make a name for ourselves. Does that sound familiar? That's the very attitude that you and I take. And I think that's why Jesus put this very important sentence in the Lord's Prayer to test our hearts. This is an invitation for change.

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So, Lord, we pray, Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We pray, not my will. I lay down everything, I make it my one goal to follow you, and because I trust you, I pray your will be done in my life. As you can see, the Lord's prayer is jam-packed full of relevant life application. And as we head deeper into the prayer, we see that that theme continues.

Daily Bread And Spiritual Hunger

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Verse 11 says, Give us today our daily bread. Now, there are many scholars who've debated what this verse means. Does it mean that we should just be praying for our basic daily human needs, the need to eat in order to sustain our life? Or does this verse have a deeper meaning? Is it about spiritual food? If we look down a little bit further in the chapter in Matthew, we'll see a very familiar passage about how God provides for the sparrows. In these verses, Jesus is basically saying, Listen, don't strive, don't go fill your barns in order to provide security for yourselves. He's saying, I care about you, I know what you need. He says, Don't worry about earthly things, don't let them consume your thoughts. Instead, he's saying in verse 33 of Matthew 6, Seek the kingdom of God above all else, live righteously, and he'll give you everything you need. Now it's not wrong to ask God to provide for the needs of your family. He's given us capable hands and a quick mind that would learn to earn a living to feed all those mouths that are around the dinner table. He's the one who supplies the income, who puts a roof over your family's head. But there's a hunger of a different sort that I want to pray for also. It's it's a spiritual hunger that God has placed in my soul, a gaping hole that can only be filled by God.

SPEAKER_00 17:49

Jesus calls himself the bread of life in John 6.35, and maybe you've noticed a hunger in your own heart, I sure have. Or maybe a hunger in the heart of your spouse that makes itself known by what we try to fill our lives with. We all know that bread is basically synonymous with life. Without food, we die. Well, the Israelites knew this firsthand when they were wandering in the wilderness for 40 years. Maybe you know that story. They needed food, and then God rained down this bread from heaven called manna, and as a result, they survived their trial. For 40 years, he provided for them. And I love to study this story in Exodus because in it we can see that this was a foreshadowing of what God would provide to us through the Bible and through his son Jesus. John 6 33 says, the true bread of God is the one who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. I believe our daily bread that Jesus is teaching us to pray about here is Himself. Our daily bread is God's word to us in the scriptures. We are to feast on it. We are to pull up a chair and dine at the table next to our spouse. Are you guys sitting down together to partake of the meal that's put in front of you that's really going to satisfy your cravings? Or maybe you do what we do sometimes. We fill up on everything of the world, and at the end of the day, we're not even hungry for spiritual nutrition.

SPEAKER_02 19:06

As a couple, even as a family, it's so important to talk about God's word. To ask your spouse, hey, what have you been reading lately in the Bible? And then be bold enough to actually sit down together and read God's word and talk about it together. Share with one another passages that you've been reading and then how they are hitting you in your life today. Now, this might be new territory for some of you. It's okay. Start small. Scrunch up your eyes at the dinner table like our little friend Olivia, and resist the temptation to focus on how your words come out or what other people are going to think of you. Instead, know the value of obedience. If you and your spouse take time to read God's word, to feast on that daily bread Tracy was talking about, God will let you dine till you're full.

Forgiveness And Fighting Temptation

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As we begin to wrap up today on Vows to Keep Radio, let's explore the last two main points Jesus wants us to focus on in our prayer life here. He says in verse 12, forgive us our sins as we have forgiven those who sin. And it doesn't surprise me one bit that Jesus addresses this because this deals with the condition of our hearts. It's all about the cross, right? What God did for us and that we can do for others. It's called forgiveness.

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People, especially our spouses, have sin, our sin, their sin, in full view of each other every single day. We're sinners. We live with sinners who are bound actually to even sin against us. So there's much to forgive. As we pray, like Jesus taught, we have to address that forgiveness. But remember, these aren't just words to be set out of habit, like, oh yeah, I forgive you. We have to actually stop, camp out there a little bit, and really ask God to show us what's going on in our hearts. What is it that we need to really be seeking forgiveness for? Remember in this time of prayer that God is faithful. He'll be just to forgive us of those sins and cleanse us from the unrighteousness. And if you see a sin there, don't convince yourself that you're just going to deal with it at another time. Ask him right there and then to forgive you. Help you to turn from that sin. And as you do this, you'll be able to extend that same kind of forgiveness to your wife or to your husband.

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And then finally, in the last directive in Jesus' teaching on the Lord's Prayer, he addresses the ongoing issue of sin in our lives. Verse 13 says, And don't let us yield to temptation, but rescue us from the evil one. Every single day we're gonna face one kind of temptation or another. Remember from James chapter one, though, that God cannot and does not tempt anyone. So in this petition to God, we're saying, God, I can't rely on myself to stay true to your course. I'm gonna get off of it in some way. I need you, Lord. Help me here. Here we're asking God to protect us, to protect our eyes and our hearts and our mouths so that we can stay honorable before him. We're remembering here as we say this that God is always near. We can thank him for that gift. And remember this promise from 1 Corinthians 10 that says God will always provide a way out of the temptation so that we can enjoy. Endure it and stand up under it. And all the passages that we've read today in the Lord's Prayer, David, I think they lead us to this culmination in verse 13 For yours is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen. The prayer ends with this praise to the God of our lives, a declaration that everything belongs to him. And it gives us a firm stance in our hearts that everything we just prayed and every part of our lives is for his glory and his kingdom.

SPEAKER_02 22:27

Praying this prayer from your heart as an individual and as a couple is like restarting your computer, updating the files and the apps to do what they're intended to do. We're not designed to go to sleep or be in hibernation mode. Don't choose that setting. Instead, make this the prayer of your life and for your marriage. It in essence is freshening your relationship with God and helping you to evaluate what do you believe, not only about yourself, about your life, about your marriage, but most importantly about God. Our motivation to pray shouldn't be because we want God to give us what we want. We shouldn't pray just to stay in God's good graces. We even need to get past the point where we're praying just because we were taught that that's the right thing to do. We need to pray to praise God. We need to know God's will. We need to pray to ask for forgiveness. We need to pray to remind ourselves who God is and who we are in Him. We need to pray to intercede for other people. We need to pray to know God. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.

Reset Your Heart With Praise

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Like what you heard today on Vows to Keep Radio. Listen to more life-changing broadcasts at vowstoke.com.

SPEAKER_00 23:40

What an awesome prayer to incorporate into our days, David. I hope that you take that challenge to do that with your spouse or on your own on a daily basis. It's a great place to start and a great evaluator. Join us next week here on Vows to Keep Radio as we continue the Bible for Marriage series and we'll still be in Matthew 5, 6, and 7, living upside down lessons from the Sermon on the Mount right here on Vows to Keep Radio.

Listen More And Support Vows To Keep

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Vows to Keep is supported by a team which includes biblical coaches, writers, and pastoral advisors. If you have a desire to serve marriages in your community, we would love to hear from you. Vows to Keep is a not-for-profit marriage ministry designed to bring God's encouraging truth to the marriages of our area. As a not-for-profit organization, our commitment to Christ-like marriages includes providing much-needed services regardless of a couple's financial ability to offset the cost of Vows to Keep operations. If you are unable to donate your time or abilities, but would like to help support Vows2Keep financially, visit VowsToKeep.com and click on the donate link. This program is sponsored by Vows2Keep of Zanesfield, Ohio.