Matthew 6:5-15 Step 1 Pray & Step 2 Survey

Matthew 6:5-15 Step 1 Pray & Step 2 Survey

by | Jun 24, 2025 | 5-15, DISO studies, Matthew 6

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Hi there!

Welcome back! As I write this, geopolitical events in the Middle East make me wonder (again!) if this is the conflict to end all conflicts, but only God knows that for sure. Even so, time is running out. In our last online study we saw eternal life comes only from belief in Jesus as the son of God (John 3:16-18). My friend, if you are on the fence about Jesus, I encourage you to seek whatever information you need to decide in your heart that He is God’s Son who died for you. When we pass from this earthly existence, it will be too late to choose Him as Savior (Luke 16:26; Hebrews 9:27-28).

Know also, your decision for Christ doesn’t mean you have to join a church or even go to church. But this earthly walk is so much better when we find a place of sanctuary where we can be with other Christians, learning and teaching among them. Church is simply a place—like this study, really—where you can go to learn more about Jesus and talk with members of the family of God. He will draw you to the right place for you if you let Him. Now, let’s dig in!

Last Week’s Work

MY PRAYER
For this study, I’m praying:

Lord, thank You for another chance to study prayer, and specifically, the prayer You gave us. Open my eyes, heart, and mind so I can: see what Your Spirit—my Helper—wants me to see, understand it as Matthew and his audience did, and make a plan to align with the principle I’ll discover here. In Jesus’s name I pray. Amen!

HUH? and WOW! MOMENTS
These are my questions and discoveries from surveying the passage:

HUH?s

  • What does Matthew mean in v6, “… your Father who is in secret”?
  • Do vv7-8 mean we shouldn’t pray long prayers?
  • What does it mean to “hallow” the Father’s name (v9)?
  • How do I know God’s will (v10)?
  • Referencing the footnote to v13: “For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever. Amen:” what’s the origin of that phrase? Why was it left out of some manuscripts?

WOW!s

  • Don’t pray in public to be seen by others if you want God to grant something beyond people’s attention (v5).
  • Hypocrites (v5) and Gentiles (v7) weren’t effective prayer warriors.
  • Verses 9-10 indicate actual petition should come after “hallowing” God’s name and submitting to His will.
  • The only physical request mentioned is for food (v11).
  • We will be forgiven to the extent we forgive others (v12, vv14-15).
  • The final request is to not be tempted, but “delivered” from evil (v13).

Dig-In Challenges

If you’re studying this passage with me, listen to the Spirit this week, and choose a personal Huh? or Wow! to dig more deeply into. Going forward, I’ll refer to this as your personal treasure. It can be something you noticed in your study, one of the items I’ve listed above, or anything else the Holy Spirit has laid upon your heart as you think about this passage. As we study, we’ll consider everything in the chapter, but we’ll gradually narrow our focus to the verses that talk about our treasure.

  1. PRAY for the Spirit to direct your focus for the remainder of this study. In your journal, record the personal treasure He identifies, along with any verse(s) relating to it from the study text.
  2. MINE: Read Matthew 6:5-15, focusing on the setting (who’s involved, and where and when the action took place). Note anything the Spirit emphasizes about the characters involved, any locations mentioned, and any timeframes discussed.

I hope you’ll check in next week to see what the Spirit is showing me.

GO TO WEEK 3 >

Matthew 6:5-15 Step 1 Pray & Step 2 Survey

Matthew 6:5-15 (The Lord’s Prayer) DISO Study Introduction

by | Jun 17, 2025 | 5-15, DISO studies, Introduction, Matthew 6

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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!

GO TO WEEK 2 >