Lord's Prayer

^ “This, then, is how you should pray: “‘Our Father…” (Matthew 6:9)

These 9 words are important to our prayer life. Jesus teaches us how to pray. We call it the “Lord’s Prayer” or the “Our Father”. In some traditions we say it together, at least some variation of it. Sometimes believers repeat it with other prayers and creeds. I don’t besmirch that; I’m just happy people are praying! In Matthew we see the more traditional version; Luke has a more condensed way. Something in me says different wording was intentional. I think the Jesus was not teaching us what to pray but rather how to pray. There a few aspects of the 1^st part of this prayer we should look at that will help us pray:

I think the above verse shows us to pray PLAINLY. Prior, Jesus spoke of not babbling in public but plainly in private. He tells us the Lord knows what we want before he asks. He said in the above verse, “This, then, is ‘how’ (not ‘what’) you should pray”. We need to pray LIKE the Lord. Jesus is the best example. Col. 1:15 calls

him the “image” of the invisible God. That word image in the Greek is “icon”; I kinda wish they left it there for us 21^st century folks. I have an icon on my desktop with the letter ‘G’. I just double click that icon and I get a Google search engine to access to a wealth of resources. Jesus is the ‘icon’ of the invisible God! We should follow hisway. Ever see Jesus pray? He prays so plainly. He’s the anti-pharisee, and sometimes the opposite of you and me. Jesus prays plainly and gets her done!

Not only should we pray plainly but the above verse shows we should pray PLURALLY. Notice the Lord didn’t say, MY Father but OUR Father. We not only pray like the Lord but WITH the Lord. I gave my life wholeheartedly to Christ in my late teens/early 20’s. For some reason I felt compelled to give my heart to Christ at a church. I never intended on going back but they gave me a cheap Bible as a guest. I took it home and read it. Little by little the gospels opened my mind and my world. After a summer of that I was washing my hands in the bathroom, I looked at my face in the bathroom mirror, and realized I was

truly clean, spiritually, for the 1^st time in my life. Something hit me like a ton of bricks. God’s presence was so evident that I balled like a baby with abundant joy. Today I know that was God’s Holy Spirit. Well, after that I had to back to that church. Only those people, not the world, would understand the transformational work that occurred. We can pray and truly say “OUR Father” when we are blessed with God’s Spirit. Paul declares in Romans 8:26 that “the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.  And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will.” One of my favorite words is “Community” – break down that word – Comm = together Unit = 1 Y = ‘ish -- Comm-unity = 'Coming together as 1!' Jesus expressed where 2 or 3 come together, there he is in our midst! When we pray plurally, we get God’s kingdom and pray WITH the Lord through his Holy Spirit.

We should pray plainly and plurally, but there 1 more aspect to the above verse on how we should pray. Try and stay with me, especially if you have had issues with dad/men. I belive the Lord

teaches us to pray PATERNALLY. Notice Jesus didn’t say “Our PARENT”, but “Our FATHER”. I believe there is something good about embracing the fatherliness of God. He is our heavenly Father. One of the schools I went to tried to take out all the masculine references to God. They would have neutered Jesus’ pronouns if he wer

en’t physically and literally a “man”. You know what I observed; they tried so hard to make God all things to all people that they made him nothing to everyone. Both Kerry and I have had challenging paternal relationships. We have some deep aband

onment issues. Thank God we have GREAT step-dads who have helped shape our male-view. If we’re not careful we could have projected our hurts and negative masculine mental-models of fathers onto God. It’s a mistake. God is good. Instead of projecting our earthly images of fathers onto God, we should allow our heavenly Father to transform our images of earthly fathers. Once I got that I allowed the Father to demonstrate his gentle, merciful presence in my life. Thank God I didn’t neuter the Father.

Christopher is in a “daddy” phase. He busts in my home office, curls up on the futon in my arms and snuggles while we watch Yo-gabba-gabba. I FELT Kerry watching and think I could feel her beaming. I looked up and she whispered, “I love that!” I knew exactly what she meant. She didn't need to explain. She didn’t have that relationship with her bio-dad, neither did I. Chip Jr. is going to have a much easier time embracing God’s loving paternity. BUT, he never would have that if I didn’t allow the Father to, in a sense, cuddle me like that spiritually. I was so scared to have a boy but now I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Let’s allow our Father to minister to us instead of we trying to change him.

Jesus words again: “This, then, is how you should pray: “‘Our Father…” (Matthew 6:9). Say the Lord’s prayer but think about what I said while saying the Lord’s Prayer: Pray plainly LIKE the Lord; Pray plurally WITH the Lord; Pray paternally TO the Lord.

May I say a prayer? "Heavenly Father, on behalf of this reader and me; thanks.