“Truly I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven… When you pray, say: Father…”

Prayer is at the heart of what it means to be Christian. In prayer we express our relationship with our heavenly Father, and our privilege of being his children. When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray (Luke 11), he says to start with “Father.” Often I’m overthinking how to start my prayers, what phrases to include and how to get a hearty “Amen” afterwards that I totally forget the point; I am God’s little child, in total need of his provision, and he invites me to come to him as Father.

Why do I try to live independent when Jesus wasn’t? Jesus never lived ‘solo’. He spent mornings, crying out to God. The reality is we constantly work to prove ourselves: to our colleagues, friends and even to our church family. We hate relying on others. And this spreads into our relationship with God. In prayer, we ask our Father to rid us of this pride.

This year the week of prayer has this theme of dependence. To quote John Piper: “prayer is the open admission that without Christ we can do nothing.” This week is going to help unshackle us from the chains of independence and self-confidence. It is going to teach us to take our overwhelming sorrows, anxieties, joys, failures and futures, and lay it all down before our loving Father. We’ll be going through the Lord’s Prayer over the week, using it to come before him each morning in complete dependence.

At Globe Central, our regular prayer meeting we’ll be focusing on asking God for our daily bread; for everything we need each day. But each morning we’ll have opportunities to start the morning in prayer with the church family across the city; in Borough, Westminster and Liverpool Street. We’ll be hosting a prayer walk around the Southbank on Thursday night and on Saturday there will be prayer brunches in different people’s homes.

I’m thankful to God that we never ‘grow up’ in his Kingdom. We enter like little children, and as we mature and progress in our faith, we become yet more childlike! Will you delight in dependence next week? Today? Will you live out the liberating truth of being an adopted child of God?

To commit to this week of dependence in prayer, go to www.globe.church/weekofprayer. There you can pledge a time to pray privately in the week, and sign up for a prayer brunch around the city. You’ll receive more details about the week via email and social media. Let’s expect our Father to work in us powerfully as we come to him in dependence.