"Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation."
Familiar words. Even people who did not grow up in the church recognize the words of the Lord's prayer. But how many of us (yes, even the church brats among us) really understand what the words mean--much less how to pattern our lives on them?
Last week my small group discussed the Lord's prayer, and one of the members brought up the acronym ACTS: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication. Although the formula certainly sounds pious, I'm convinced that ACTS has it all wrong. Let me elaborate.
Despite the seeming innocence of ACTS, the acronym makes a mistake that plagues Christianity: a failure to read the passage in context. If you read Luke 11 you'll see a fascinating progression. I don't know why I've never noticed it before, but directly after calling His Father holy, Jesus makes a stark contrast between His holy Father and evil, earthly fathers. Notice His words: even the evil fathers know how to give gifts despite their depravity. But God is not like them. God is good. Jesus was not opening the prayer with praise or adoration; instead, He recognized God's goodness as the basis for gift-giving and grace.
But the parallels between Jesus' prayer and His subsequent actions don't end there. Jesus had prayed in verse 2, 'Your kingdom come'. I find that exciting! God's rule, His authority and power, are coming to earth. Now look at verses 14 - 23, paying careful attention to verse 20. After casting out a demon from a man--evidence of the healing and wholeness inherent in the Kingdom--Jesus says, 'But if it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.'
God answered imediately, without hesitation. Further, He answered positively. Why? Because He is good. And His goodness is overwhelmingly for us! I'm amazed at God's tenderness. Because He is a good and gracious Father, He gives gifts to His children. How do we know this? Because He demonstrates His power and mercy by bringing the Kingdom to earth! The Kingdom of God and its focus on justice--emotional, physical, spiritual, communal, and even universal--is the ultimate demonstration of God's character. It is, indeed, as the Matthew 6 version of the prayer records, God's will on earth.
Jesus didn't give us a model prayer for the purpose of exactly copying what He said. His prayer shows us instead how we ought to pattern our lives; the Lord's prayer is significant precisely because of what happened after Jesus prayed. And so it is with us.
We must live every day following after the heart of God, obeying the mandate to seek first His Kingdom. And in God's Kingdom
- Andrew
8 comments:
Well, well, well I do believe you are onto to something young grasshopper. :-) I agree that his prayer was a model for our life. I have believed that for awhile. And I still believe that is the case. But you phrased it so well.
Maybe giving praise to the father was so natural to Jesus, that's why he did it first.
One other prayer "system" to consider is the "prayer cloud". After all, God wouldn't hear the prayers of Israel until they had repented with sacrifices. So does he still -answer- our prayers when we've not repented? I've no doubt he still hears our prayers (or maybe God's standing up in heaven with an enormous baseball bat, ready to hit all the prayers of the unrepentant saints into the metaphorical outfield) but I don't think he will respond to our prayers unless it's with chastisement or withdrawal, until we repent. But say we repent a few minutes AFTER we've praised God/interceded for others. Are our first prayers still out in the outfield or aught we to pray them again? (heh... you don't need to answer that. I think I'm staunchly against systems of prayer that throw us into routines. And I am highly susceptible to routines)
Happy birthday again, Andrew. :)
Why must we (Christians) exigete and speculate so much? Why not simply follow Jesus' mandate on our life freely and liberally, responding directly to each word as it is given?
What is even up with this?
Why did I bother subscribing to updates?
(I believe this is, in it's own way, a useful response and entrance into this discussion..)
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also, to gallia..
do you think God answers prayers based on such a system of organization? I'm still thinking about it, but I do know that God would be like "I'm not going to answer any prayers until there is repentence." My thinking behind this is that... well.. okay, so I'm having trouble putting this down solidly. When we live in unrepentance, there are definitely life consequences, major repercussions, to that, and one of them would be that your prayer life would be damaged, but we need to be asking God for, like, everything in our lives... even repentance. If we're unrepentant even though we know something is a sin, and we ask (even grudgingly) for God to give us repentance.. then what?
Heaven forgive me this (most likely pointless) ramble...
So will this blog be resurrected after the end of Nano?
not all of us subscribe to the devil of NaNWRM... whatever.
Giv, I know, God will forgive me for my ramble too. I agree, if we chose to live in sin, of course there will be consequences, and naturally we will be cut off from God. But I was mostly poking fun at systems of prayer... hopmh.
(This response is a little late in the game, but - oh, well.)
My friend, who is the pastor of my Mom's church - the one I grew up in, let me in on some really cool contextual meanings of the "unrighteous fathers" passage a couple years ago. It says who would give a stone to a child who asks for bread? A scorpion if he asks for an egg? An eel if he asks for a fish. Apparently, those all represent things that looked similar to the real deal, but were not the same: A stone could look like a loaf of bread. There was a type of scorpion that curled into a ball when frightened and looked like an egg. And an eel was similar to a fish, but an eel was considered unclean. I've considered these actually a warning to many people who would discount spiritual gifts as "from Satan." This makes sense, as Jesus says in the next verse(Lk11:13), "If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!"
God wouldn't deceive us by giving us something that LOOKS like what we ask for, but has an unclean source.
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