Monthly Archives: March 2013

When You Pray, Say…

Prayer, , ,

WHEN YOU PRAY, SAY…

“Then He said to them, “When you pray, say, ‘Father, hallowed be your name; your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation.'” Luke 11:2-4

I wonder how well the disciples understood what Jesus was teaching them about prayer. Did they grasp the underlying truth of God as their Father?

Unlike Matthew 6, there is no preamble to this version of the prayer. Although Jesus taught them that prayer is not about words, words are used to express the thoughts and emotions of the heart. What a world of meaning is wrapped up in the word ‘Father’! There is no prayer outside of this relationship which was made possible through Jesus. “Yet to all who received Him, to all who believed in His name, He gave the right to be called children of God…” John 1:12.

Prayer is the way sons communicate with their heavenly Father. Prayer is the conscious turning of the attention away from self to the One who is our source and sustainer, changing the focus of our attention from self and its issues to God and His attributes. Whatever words it might take to do this are only the vehicle through which this change of awareness is effected. Therefore, when a son focuses his attention on Father God, that is prayer.

This Father with whom human beings are privileged to have a relationship because of Jesus, is not outside our realm of existence and experience. Heaven is not a place up there or out there but a dimension that completely saturates the physical realm as air saturates the earth. God is everywhere and He is therefore as near to us as our breath.

Prayer is therefore, firstly, a change from my environment to the environment of God, of His presence and nearness. Secondly, it is an awareness of who He is. To hallow His name is to concentrate on His glory, “the sum of His magnificent attributes and the eternal fame of His mysterious works”. Where my attention was taken up by the issues of my life, I deliberately change my focus to the greatness of the God with whom I am engaging in love and trust as a son.

To engage with Him in this way is to put my personal concerns into the context of the bigger picture of His kingdom and will. It is also to put my failures into the context of His mercy. Since He has dealt with my load of guilt and the barrier of sin that separated me from Him, I dare not hang onto the offences that separate me from my fellow man.

Just as I am dependent upon Him for every crumb that passes my lips as a little child, I too, I depend on Him for the “bread” of heaven that nourishes my soul. And, knowing how tainted I am with the self-centred greed that has infiltrated my soul from birth, I look to Him to save me from my self-destructive ways that would ensnare and destroy me without the grace of His Spirit who is constantly at work in me.

This simple pattern prayer teaches me the essence of the attitude and disposition of a son to the Father, submitting to Him and being involved in the things that are on His heart. This is not about putting God first. This is about putting Him in the centre of my thinking and living.

What Must I Do?

Bible Study, , , ,

WHAT MUST I DO?

“Just then a religion scholar stood up with a question to test Jesus. ‘Teacher, what do I need to do to get eternal life?’

He said, ‘What is written in God’s law? How do you interpret it?’
He said, ‘That you love the Lord your God with all you passion and prayer and muscle and intelligence – and your neighbour as yourself.’

‘Good answer!’ said Jesus. ‘Do it and you’ll live.’” Luke 10:25-27 (The Message)

An interesting way of answering a question – with a question. It makes the questioner think. In response to this religious leader’s question, Jesus replied, “You tell me.” Since he had probably been trained in the “Rabbi School”, he came up with the correct answer, also some-thing he had learned at his mother’s knee – the Shema.

The Message translation puts an interesting slant on these words – “passion and prayer and muscle and intelligence…” How and why should one love God with passion? Although love is essentially an action word, it is not without passion. How can one love God without passion? The very word God invites passion because God is about passion. What is passion? Passion implies fervour, energy, heat, enthusiasm, drive, vigour. Without passion, love is bland and colourless.

How can we love God with prayer? Prayer is essentially a shift in awareness, from self to God. To love God with prayer moves Him from the periphery to the centre of my thoughts. Before the Fall, God occupied the centre of Adam’s awareness, but his disobedience brought an immediate change, “I was afraid because I was naked.” Part of the process of being transformed is to restore the awareness of God to the centre of my life by training myself to think “God” instead of me.

Muscle? How do I love God with muscle? Is this a reference to obedience, to responding with action to the communication I receive through my God-consciousness? Muscle conveys the thought of prompt and energetic obedience to God’s will, as Abraham did when God told him to offer up Isaac.

This little cameo concludes with intelligence. How important this is in our interaction with God! We are not robots and He does not treat us as robots. That does not mean that we either question God or choose whether or not to obey, but it does mean that we function with understanding.

What Jesus is saying is that we are to love God totally, with our entire being and function, working with zeal and energy to grow our awareness of God and of the blessing and authority of being His sons and daughters. He is the centre of our lives and we live through Him and for Him.

What If?

Bible Study, , ,

WHAT IF?

“At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, ‘I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure.’” Luke 10:21
Jesus had chosen seventy two men to go into the villages where He was planning to go, to prepare the way for Him. They were to heal and deliver people from demons and to announce the presence of God’s kingdom.

What if Jesus had called and trained Pharisees to be His disciples? What if He had given them authority to do what these men had just done? What if they had gone around driving out demons and curing diseases? Would it have made them more arrogant than they were, more insufferably stuck-up than they already appeared to be? Would they have prided themselves on their spirituality and taken credit for what they had done?

But He didn’t. He chose men who had failed “Rabbi School” – religious losers who had no qualifications to have spiritual “authority”, men who were so ordinary that they could take no credit for what they had done. Jesus called them “little children”.

And Jesus was ecstatic that His Father’s plan was working! God was using the “unqualified” to reveal His power and grace to the poor and needy. In a typical John’s Gospel-like statement, He also rejoiced in the unqualified authority He had received at the Father’s pleasure. God and Jesus were so one that the Father could entrust to the Son the freedom and authority to bring to the Father anyone He chose.

This was a unique moment in history, an experiment that had worked! Imagine Jesus’ joy when these seventy two men reported back on the success of their mission, actually doing the works of Jesus and being an answer to His prayer to bring “up there down here”. Prophets of old who were God’s specially chosen and anointed “advocates” of His covenant, did miracles from time to time but these were sporadic and rare in the scope of Israel’s history. They were often acts of judgment on rebellious and wayward people.

But this was different – the mercy of God lavished on ordinary people through ordinary people. This is what God longs to do most of all, kingdom stuff to show off His goodness to people who don’t deserve it. It was beginning to happen and Jesus was thrilled. He was kick-starting a movement that would never cease as long as this world remains, and the fruit of it would last forever. These men were now a part of a kingdom as big as God Himself, an “upside-down” kingdom that was strong through the weakness of its subjects and alive through their death. This was something only those who connected to Jesus through His death and resurrection by faith could fully know.

What if we really grasped this truth – that God deliberately chooses nobodies to continue the work of Jesus so that the honour and the credit go to Him, not to us? What if we just did what He told us to do, heal the sick, cast out demons and announce the presence of His rule, right here and now? What if?