The Lord's Prayer

Matthew 6:7-15

Jesus said, "When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 'Pray then in this way: 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. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one. For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses."

In contrast to the flowery and lengthy prayers of others, Jesus teaches us to pray with simplicity. Why? Because God is not going to be impressed with the words we use, and, after all, God knows what we need before we ask.

"Then why pray?" you may well ask. Because prayer is one of the ways we stay connected to God. Conversation builds relationship. Prayer also helps us to get to know ourselves, our lives, our needs, as God does.

Have you ever noticed how The Lord's Prayer covers all the essentials?

First, how are we to address God? Not as some distant deity, but as our Father in heaven, because that is who he is.

C. S. Lewis speaks, in Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, about "festooning" The Lord's Prayer. To "festoon" means to adorn with ribbons, garland, or other decoration. In other words, Lewis attaches to each petition of The Lord's Prayer a personal thought, idea, or request.

When my youngest son was small, he often wanted me to carry him around with his face toward mine. At a particularly difficult time in my life, I felt like the Lord was saying to me: "Let me carry you the way you carry Josh. Let me hold you in my arms, and you just look into my face all day." I often festoon "Our Father" with that image of God carrying me and my staring into his face.

"Hallowed be your name." Is God's name special to us? You can tell when a name is special to someone by the way they speak that name. God has many names in Scripture, and each of those names reveal something special, something valuable, about God's character. Which one of God's names in Scripture do we need to festoon on "hallowed be your name" today?

"Your kingdom come." That is a bigee. Jesus says later in Matthew 6, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added unto you." In other words, we will have everything we need to survive and thrive if we put God's kingdom first in our lives.

"Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." How is God's will done in heaven? I imagine it is done perfectly, promptly, and perpetually. That is what we are working toward on earth by the power of the Holy Spirit. When we pray this petition, however, we are telling God that he can work his will in us, perfectly, promptly, and perpetually, here and now. We are saying, "Look God, you can have your way with us, because we know your way is best."

"Give us this day our daily bread." I don't know about you, but I have had times where I haven't been completely sure where tomorrow's meal was going to come from. I remember a time where my bank account was almost down to zero. That experience put this petition about daily bread into perspective. God really does provide our daily bread. He did then. He does now. And not just our physical needs, he provides for all of our needs.

"And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors." This is the one petition Jesus elaborates on and explains. If we forgive others, then our heavenly Father will forgive us. If we do not forgive others, our heavenly Father will not forgive our trespasses. Really, I think what Jesus is saying is that when we do not forgive, we cannot receive God's forgiveness. Why? Because when we refuse to forgive the freezes the conduit between our soul and God. When the pipe is frozen, the life-giving water of God's forgiveness and love cannot get to us.

I guess we better work on forgiving then. "But," you say, "I do not feel forgiveness in my heart towards so and so."

That is when it is important to realize that forgiveness is not primarily a feeling. It is a promise. When God forgives us, he goes on record, saying that he will not hold our sins against us. He won't bring up those sins ever again.

So, by God's grace, we can make the promise of forgiveness even when we do not feel like forgiving others.

The way this has worked for me is as follows. I can think of times when I have had a really hard time forgiving others. During those times I have prayed the Lord's Prayer every day. When I come to "forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors" I festoon on that petition: "Lord, I forgive so and so." And I name the person I am having trouble forgiving. I do that every day until I "feel" like I have let it go.

"And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one."

This is a better translation than "lead us not into temptation". God never tempts us, but he does test us, or try us, to make us stronger. Of course, no one likes tests or trials. So we ask God to not lead us into such. But if God does have to do so, we ask him to deliver us from the evil one, to help us not fall or give into temptation when we are going through a time of trial.

I don't know about you, but I find I need to pray all of these things everyday. And Lewis' idea of festooning the Lord's Prayer has really helped me.

Comments

C. S. Lewis on Homosexuality

Arthur Greeves In light of recent developments in the United States on the issue of gay marriage, I thought it would be interesting to revisit what C. S. Lewis thought about homosexuality. Lewis, who died in 1963, never wrote about same-sex marriage, but he did write, occasionally, about the topic of homosexuality in general. In the following I am quoting from my book, Mere Theology: A Guide to the Thought of C. S. Lewis . For detailed references and footnotes, you may obtain a copy from Amazon, your local library, or by clicking on the book cover at the right.... In Surprised by Joy , Lewis claimed that homosexuality was a vice to which he was never tempted and that he found opaque to the imagination. For this reason he refused to say anything too strongly against the pederasty that he encountered at Malvern College, where he attended school from the age of fifteen to sixteen. Lewis did not rate pederasty as the greatest evil of the school because he felt the cruelty displa...

Fact, Faith, Feeling

"Now Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes. I know that by experience. Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable. This rebellion of your moods against your real self is going to come anyway. That is why Faith is such a necessary virtue: unless you teach your moods 'where to get off', you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion. Consequently one must train the habit of Faith." Mere Christianity Many years ago, when I was a young Christian, I remember seeing the graphic illustration above of what C. S. Lewis has, here, so...

C. S. Lewis Tour--London

The final two days of our C. S. Lewis Tour of Ireland & England were spent in London. Upon our arrival we enjoyed a panoramic tour of the city that included Westminster Abbey. A number of our tour participants chose to tour the inside of the Abbey where they were able to view the new C. S. Lewis plaque in Poets' Corner. Though London was not one of Lewis' favorite places to visit, there are a number of locations associated with him. One which I have noted in my new book, In the Footsteps of C. S. Lewis , is Endsleigh Palace Hospital (25 Gordon Street, London) where Lewis recovered from his wounds received during the First World War.... Not too far away from this location is King's College, part of the University of London, located on the Strand, just off the River Thames. This is the location where Lewis gave the annual commemoration oration entitled The Inner Ring on 14 December 1944.... C. S. Lewis occasionally attended theatrical events in London....

The Shepherds' Perspective on Christmas

On December 21, 2015, the following headline appeared in the International Business Times: “Bethlehem Christmas 2015 Cancelled”. To be fully accurate, religious celebrations of Jesus’ birth went forward last year in Bethlehem, but many of the secular celebrations of Christmas that usually surround it were toned down due to instability in the area. Looking back a decade, there was even one year when Christian Arabs canceled community celebrations of Christmas in support of the Palestinian uprising. However, the Jewish government would have no part of that, so the Israeli military sponsored its own holiday celebrations in the area. It is also interesting to note who celebrated the first Christmas and who didn’t. The first Christmas was not celebrated by the emperor Caesar Augustus, nor Quirinius, the governor of Syria, nor was it celebrated by the lowly innkeeper. But Christmas was celebrated by a few lonely shepherds along with Joseph and Mary and the angels of heaven. How ...

C. S. Lewis on Church Attendance

A friend's blog written yesterday ( http://wesroberts.typepad.com/ ) got me thinking about C. S. Lewis's experience of the church. I wrote this in a comment on Wes Robert's blog: It is interesting to note that C. S. Lewis attended the same small church for over thirty years. The experience was nothing spectacular on a weekly basis. For most of those years Lewis didn't care much for the sermons; he even sat behind a pillar so that the priest would not see the expression on his face. He attended the service without music because he so disliked hymns. And he left right after holy communion was served probably because he didn't like to engage in small talk with other parishioners after the service. But that life-long obedience in the same direction shaped Lewis in a way that nothing else could. Lewis was once asked, "Is attendance at a place of worship or membership with a Christian community necessary to a Christian way of life?" His answer w...

A Prayer at Ground Zero

Does the Bible mention treating animals with kindness?

When I solicited questions to be addressed in this series, a member of the congregation wrote this to me: “Animals are mentioned in the Bible as beasts of burden and sacrificial animals. Is there any mention of treating animals with kindness?” The short answer to that question is: yes. However, it is important to note that what the Bible says about caring for animals comes in the midst of a great narrative. It is a narrative of Creation, Fall, and Redemption. Let’s look at these three great acts in the narrative play of world history one by one. First, let’s look at creation. Creation At the very beginning of the Bible, in the book of Genesis, chapter 1, verses 26 through 28, we read this: Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing th...

Christmas Day Thought from Henri Nouwen

" I keep thinking about the Christmas scene that Anthony arranged under the altar. This probably is the most meaningful "crib" I have ever seen. Three small woodcarved figures made in India: a poor woman, a poor man, and a small child between them. The carving is simple, nearly primitive. No eyes, no ears, no mouths, just the contours of the faces. The figures are smaller than a human hand - nearly too small to attract attention at all. "But then - a beam of light shines on the three figures and projects large shadows on the wall of the sanctuary. That says it all. The light thrown on the smallness of Mary, Joseph, and the Child projects them as large, hopeful shadows against the walls of our life and our world. "While looking at the intimate scene we already see the first outlines of the majesty and glory they represent. While witnessing the most human of human events, I see the majesty of God appearing on the horizon of my existence. While...

Glenmerle

Glenmerle in the 1950s In 2013 I published a biography on one of my favorite authors, Sheldon Vanauken. If you are interested, you can learn more and/or purchase a signed copy here: Signed Copy or an unsigned copy here: Amazon . One of the things that got me writing the book was my search for the location of Glenmerle, Vanauken's childhood home, so lovingly described in his book, A Severe Mercy . A visit to Van's alma mater, Staunton Military Academy, alerted me to the fact that Van grew up in Carmel, Indiana. Then, with the help of a local historian, we identified the location of Glenmerle. Because Van had suggested, in my first conversation with him, that Glenmerle was destroyed, I naturally assumed that the house no longer existed. However, another one of Van's fans recently contacted me to let me know that she believed she had found Glenmerle still in existence. I was able to look up the house on a real estate web site and compare current interior p...

Sheldon Vanauken Remembered

A good crowd gathered at the White Hart Cafe in Lynchburg, Virginia on Saturday, February 7 for a powerpoint presentation I gave on the life and work of Sheldon Vanauken. Van, as he was known to family and friends, was best known as the author of A Severe Mercy , the autobiography of his love relationship with his wife Jean "Davy" Palmer Davis. While living in Oxford, England in the early 1950's, Van and Davy came to faith in Christ through the influence of C. S. Lewis. Van was a professor of history and English literature at Lynchburg College from 1948 until his retirement around 1980. A Severe Mercy tells the story of Davy's death from a mysterious liver ailment in 1955 and Van's subsequent dealing with grief. Van himself died from cancer in 1996. It was my privilege to know Van for a brief period of time during the last year of his life. However, present at the White Hart on February 7 were some who knew Van far better than I did--Floyd Newman, one of Van...

Will Vaus

Search This Blog