When I first started to explore this theme back in the summer of 2018 - in those days when we were still able to go on summer holidays (we were camping in Cornwall at the time) - I remember being struck by how different Paul's prayers, perspective and priorities were to mine.This new series isn't the culmination of two years of study in which I am going to share what I have learnt - rather it is an opportunity for us to explore some of these prayers together and to open our ears and our eyes to what God might want to show us.
Paul's prayers are recorded in his letters and we find these letters in the New Testament. Romans to 2 Thessalonians were letters written by Paul to churches, and 1 Timothy to Philemon were letters written to individuals (Timothy, Titus and Philemon!)
Obviously, when you read someone else's mail, there's going to be a whole load of stuff that you don't understand, or potentially misunderstand because you have no idea about the background to the letter. Paul was writing to specific people in specific contexts - people and contexts which he knew. So there are going to many things that he simply assumes that they know - because they were there when they happened or were said etc.
We're not going to have time this series to go into any depth regarding the context of each letter that we look at. So instead, I would encourage you to look at the Bible Project videos for the upcoming passages before each Sunday morning. To help with this, each week I will post the relevant videos here on my blog.
So let's start with one of their newer videos, on how to read New Testament letters.
