2002-01-01
Good Morning Dear Friends,
Yesterday I was directed to speak about how God wants us to seek Him out. MT 6: 8 tells us something remarkable, “…Your Father already knows what you need before you ask Him.” So, you might ask then, “why pray?” Christ is quick to follow (8) with a prayer, The Lord’s Prayer, that when looked at carefully supplies the answer. MT 6: 9-13 [which also appears in LK 11: 2-4], “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your Kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For the Kingdom, the power, and the glory is Yours forever and ever. Amen.” Many of us say this prayer by heart in church every week, but have you ever really thought about the meaning of what it says?
The Lord’s Prayer has a specific format, a plan to it. It begins with an address directed at our Heavenly Father. That is followed by three petitions recognizing His intention for the world to follow. The next step is three petitions for ourselves. Then, the prayer closes with a doxology, a prayer containing an ascription of praise to God. You may remember me sharing Bible Study Fellowship’s ACTS format with you in an earlier message. That’s the one where a prayer is structured with adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication in that order. At the time, I mentioned that the ACTS format is not the only one you can choose to follow, although it is a pretty good one. In the Lord’s Prayer, you are first directing the prayer to God, then stating His intentions, then asking Him for specific needs of your own, followed with praise that lets the Father know you are aware of what He deserves. When you go back to the question asked above, why pray, you can see that God wants to know the condition of your heart-attitude toward Him and wants to know how well you understand what He commands. He also wants to know if you understand his attributes and how He relates to you. Now, that doesn’t mean that your requests are unimportant to the Father. Its simply means that He wants you to state your needs so He can compare your view of them to His own. RO 12: 2, “Do not conform yourselves to the standards of this world, but let God transform you inwardly by the renewal of your mind. Then you will be able to know the will of the Father, what is good and pleasing to Him.”
To address God as “our Father in Heaven” is very meaningful. The Aramaic word for father is the one we use when we want to show an extra measure of closeness and warmth, Abba. I often use the phrase, “our loving Abba,” on purpose to lend that warmth to His name. That is because I love Him so much. David expressed God’s name with tenderness in PS 103: 13, a prayer in praise of the Creator. “As kind as a father is to his children, so kind is the Lord to those who honor Him.” What a revealing statement this is of the content of David’s heart! By saying “our Father in Heaven,” we not only suggest the intimacy of a warm, personal relationship with God, but we balance it with a sense of majesty and awe appropriate for One Whose being is not simply earthly but a Heavenly Father. We are acknowledging God as the ideal Parent in whom are balanced authority and loving concern, sustaining power and gentleness, justice and mercy, righteousness and forgiveness.
“Hallowed be Your name” uses an old English word recognizing God as holy. 2 COR 15: 17-18, “When anyone is joined to Christ, he is a new being; the old is gone, the new has come. All this is done by God, Who through Christ changed us from enemies into His friends and gave us the task of making others His friends also.” God wants to know if we recognize this. When we ascribe holiness to Him, we are acknowledging that He alone has the power to affect this transformation in us. I have said before that Hebrew names are particularly meaningful, because they describe either an attribute of that person or say something meaningful about the commission God has for that person. Thus, the holiness of God’s name is the holiness of God’s person, of God’s very self.
The phrase, “Your Kingdom come,” refers to the central core of Christ’s preaching, because He preached the Gospel of the Kingdom. This refers to the reign of God eternally, to a Kingdom that will replace all the man-made ones of the past. DN 2: 34-35, 44-5: “While you [King Nebuchadnezzar] at it, a great stone broke loose from a cliff [in your giant statue dream] without anyone touching it, struck the iron and clay feet of the statue, and shatter them. At once the iron, clay, bronze, silver, and gold [representing man-made empires] crumbled and became like the dust on a threshing place in summer. The wind carried it all away, leaving not a trace. But the stone grew to be a mountain [representing God’s eternal Kingdom] that covered the whole earth.” “At the time of those rulers the God of heaven will establish a Kingdom that will never end. It will never be conquered, but will completely destroy all those empires and then last forever. You saw how a stone broke loose from a cliff without anyone touching it [a supernatural act of which God alone is capable] and how it struck the statue made of iron, bronze, clay, silver, and gold. The great God is telling Your Majesty what will happen in the future. I [Daniel] have told you exactly what you dreamed, and have given you its true meaning.”
Truthfully, there is a lot to say for this all-important teaching. Look at LK 17: 20-21. “Some Pharisees asked Jesus when the Kingdom of God would come. His answer was, ‘The Kingdom of God does not come in such a way as to be seen. No one will say,’ Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ ; because the Kingdom of God is within you.’ “ Think about What is dwelling within you-the Holy Spirit! Recently, I heard the Rev. Billy Graham say that faith begins within a person and then, it can spread to others. Christ’s parables give us a good explanation of what this means. Look at MT 13: 31-33, the parable of the mustard seed. “Jesus told them [His disciples] another parable. ‘The Kingdom of heaven is like this. A man takes a mustard seed and sows it in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it grows up, it is the biggest of all plants. It becomes a tee, so that birds come and make their nests in its branches.’ “ In MT 13: 33, we have the parable of the yeast. “Jesus told them still another parable: ‘The Kingdom of heaven is like this. A woman takes some yeast and mixes it with a bushel of four until the whole batch of dough rises.’ “ Read the parables of the sower, MT 13: 1-8 with its explanation, MT 13: 18-23, and that of the weeds, MT 13: 24-30, with its explanation, MT 13: 36-43. You will see that these shed further light on Christ’s teaching about the Kingdom. We know that some will accept it and others will reject it. While we are on earth, these two groups will live side by side. That will be the case until the Day of Judgment when the final separation will be made by the only One with the authority to judge.
Tomorrow, I will continue our look at the Lord’s Prayer and hope you are finding this discussion illuminating. For now, join me in this prayer:
PRAYER: O Lord, You are our holy Father in heaven. You alone created us and gave us life. When we sinned, You sacrificed Your Son on the cross so that we could be saved from our sinning. We acknowledge Your omnipotence and almighty majesty. You have given us the Holy Spirit to guide and teach us. For Your love and compassion toward us, You deserve the utmost praise and thanks. We dedicate ourselves to making You the Lord of our lives. In Christ’s name, amen.
We are so blessed to have a Holy One as the Lord of our lives. Be encouraged by that and know that He rewards your faith and enriches your lives every day. It is through faith in His Son that you will have eternal life in His Kingdom. A lot of love comes today from our house to yours.
In the Grip of His Grace,
Lynn