[There is an accompanying booklet for our series with the 5 studies, weekly prayer challenges, places for notes and more. If you have not yet, you can download it here]

Let’s check in to see how everyone went last week.

• How did you go with those arrow gratitude prayers throughout the week? Was there anything you ended up feeling genuine grateful to God for that  surprised you, or that you felt you had been taking for granted?

• Has there been any answers to the prayers for God’s provision that we prayed at the end of last week’s time together?

• Was there anything that particularly stood out from the message on Sunday that you felt God was speaking to you through?

Forgive us our debts (sins)

Read the Lord’s Prayer aloud together from Matthew 6:9-13 

• How does praying through the Lord’s Prayer naturally bring us to an awareness of our own failings and our need for forgiveness?

• How much of what we need to confess has to do with not properly honouring God’s name, failing to seek first his kingdom or neglecting to do his will?

Throughout the Bible we have recorded for us, some raw and personal prayers of confession. For example, read Daniel 9:4-10, Psalm 51:1-6 and Luke 18:9-14. 

• Do you think it is important for us to see our wrongdoings not just as personal slip ups, but as sins made against God?

• What are the damaging consequences of being too prideful to admit our wrongdoings or of being confident in our own self-righteousness?

• What role has confession had in your own personal prayer life?

Read together the promise of Scripture in 1 John 1:8-10

• What assurance do we have as believers for when we truly confess and turn from our sins through prayer?

• What role should thankfulness and awe (that Jesus would paid the price for our sins in full so that we would be freely forgiven) have in our prayer life?

[Bonus question] How do you think we can have this element of confession (and thanksgiving for our forgiveness) in communal settings like Sunday services? 

As we also have forgiven 

The clear implication of being forgiven much is that we have no real right to withhold forgiveness from anyone. So important is this, that Jesus offers a strong follow up in the verses following the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:14-15) to reinforce the point.

• What role has prayer played in helping you to forgive others in the past?

Read Ephesians 4:31-32 and Colossians 3:12-14

• How is forgiving others a natural extension of our new identity in Christ?

• How does the difficulty we have in forgiving others give us a greater insight into how amazing it is that our God, in Christ, has forgiven our sins?!?