Hi! Thanks for joining me in this Digging into Scripture Ourselves (DISO) study of Matthew 6:5-15. I can’t wait to see what the Holy Spirit will reveal to us here!
If it seems we’ve studied this passage before, we have. This is the fourth of seven studies I’m calling Restoration. I explored the Lord’s Prayer five years ago (!) in this blog using my original “20 Questions” version of DISO. Unfortunately, the online version of those posts was destroyed a few years ago. Late last year I felt called to bring back the studies of widely recognized passages like this one. Rather than simply republishing those old posts, though, I sensed the Spirit leading me to study those verses again, this time leaning more on Him as we walk through the five steps of Praying, Surveying, Mining, Refining, and Aligning.
Let’s Study Matthew 6:5-15!
This week, I’ll begin by praying and surveying Matthew 6:5-15. If you want to study on your own with me, here’s what I recommend you have ready:
- A copy of Matthew 6:5-15, plus access to the entire Gospel of Matthew.
I like to refer often to the text I’m studying and sometimes make notes on it, so I copy the passage from https://www.blueletterbible.org, paste it into a word processing program like Google docs or MS Word, change the formatting to suit my preferences, and print it out. If you want to use the ESV translation, here’s a pdf of my Scripture study sheet with lots of room for doodles and notes. - A study journal.
We’ll spend the next seven weeks immersed in and learning about Matthew 6:5-15. And the work we’ll do each week builds on what came before, so plan to record at least some highlights from your work over the coming weeks. I’m old-school and like the pen-and-paper method for journaling my studies, but it’s okay if that doesn’t work for you. If you don’t have time to write out or type your notes, consider dictating them into a notes app, or recording audio files, instead.
Or, you may decide to just read the posts I publish here. That’s good, too, because you’ll become familiar with the process and see how the Spirit speaks to my situation. You may find that’s enough to make it worth your while to keep checking in with me, even if you can’t dig into Matthew 6:5-15 yourself this time.
Dig-In Challenges
So, here’s how I’ll be studying this week:
- PRAY: I’ll be creating a prayer with which I’ll start each of my weekly study sessions. If you’ve studied with me before, you know I usually just adapt a previous prayer. Though I’ve almost memorized the bones of my prayer, I still write it in my study journal to remind me to pray it each time I open the notebook.
- SURVEY: Then I’ll read Matthew 6:5-15, noting anything that makes me say, “huh?” (as in, “I wonder what that means?”) or “wow” (as in, “that is so awesome!”). I’ll record these and later ask the Spirit to direct me to the one I should dig deepest into right now.
If you’d like more information about these steps, check out this printable summary of the process I’ll be using over the next eight weeks. Or, you can always reach out to me with your questions through my contact page or at [email protected].
I’m looking forward to sharing what I discover in this process with you, along with relevant snippets of my previous Lord’s Prayer study from 2020, so I hope you’ll keep checking in with me each week!