The Lord's Prayer

You know I thought I would be nervous when I was standing up here, but I am almost getting used to being on the spot, and in front of the camera. As most of you know, I am on my school's Television channel. This is similar to our LIVE newscast knowing you cannot mess-up or if you do, you have to recover so no one notices. The only difference is now I see how many people watch where as at school, I know that only those families of the crew are probably watching me. Nonetheless, the drama we just saw fits into my sermon perfectly. I would like to go through the Lord's Prayer piece by piece and translate each verse. My main focus will be on the forgiveness aspect and first off, I want to discuss prayer in general.

Prayer is the main form of communication between God and us. Now I do not know about each of you but I am certainly guilty of rushing through my prayers just to get done them and say I did them. I find that the only real time I have to sit-down and be sincere about it is before I go to sleep. Which lately is around 11, and just a word of advice 11 o'clock is not a good time to go to sleep. It doesn't matter whether you pray at night, in the morning or even when your having a bad day at work, just as long as when you do pray, you lift all of your problems and concerns up to God.

I go to North Penn High School. I know that North Penn probably does not have the best reputation of the area highschools. However, after you subtract those drugees, and smokers, and alcoholics, and those who dye their hair crazy colors, North Penn is a great place to be. I know many of the kids at our school don't pray on a regular basis if at all, and some just say they'll do it later, and we all know never comes in the busy lifestyles of today. Whenever my friends ask em to do something especially on Tuesday and Friday nights I quickly respond, No sorry I have church youth group. Most of them reply why would you miss a new movie and go to church where you pray and sing to organ music. Now Scott, don't get any ideas about singing to organ music but if you guys have been around for our Friday nights, let's just say singing isn't on the schedule. I am not saying that all kids don't pray enough, but the majority doesn't. I am starting to get off track and your all probably getting tired of hearing about me so I will get into it. However before I do so I would like to just add a little side note I found on the internet that was very interesting. It says and I quote,

You cannot pray The Lord's Prayer

And even once say "I".

You cannot say The Lord's Prayer

and even once say "My."

Nor can you pray The Lord's Prayer

and not pray for another,

For when you ask for daily bread

you must include your brother.

For others are included

in each and every plea --

From beginning to the end of it,

It never once says "Me"!

I found this quote amazing because when we pray we should always be praying for everyone not ourselves.

The Lord's Prayer is the most widely known prayer of all Christians. The first part of the Lord's Prayer is, Our Father who art in Heaven. Now this verse is not saying that God is male or female, but it is using father as our maker and as the one superior to us. It also symbolizes our relationship to our father in heaven. We each have our own special relationship with him; this is similar to the relationship we have with our birth father. Now no matter how good of a friend you are with my dad I have a certain relationship with him that no one else will ever have, just like our individual relationship with God our Father. Now when we pray the Lord's Prayer we must think what were saying.

The next verse "Hallowed be your name," simply means recognizing him as our father. "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done." This means that God's will be done on earth as his will is done in heaven. Not to complicated. Next is the start of where we must think of what we are saying.

"Give us this day our daily bread" is more in depth. God is the only maker and giver of bread. No scientist in the world can make bread. God fertilizes the soil, germinates the seed and God controls what is produced. Whatever is good in life whether it be bread or your family or whatever it all came from God. In the book of James it says every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. The next verse; is the biggest verse in the prayer. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Now I want to really focus on this so I am going to skip over this momentarily and go on to the others parts. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, means life is a daily battle. Everyday we battle sickness and failure. In this line we ask God to keep us from failing, and help us decide from the right and wrong thing to do, and to deliver us from the evil that awaits us in our life. The final part of the Lord's Prayer was not originally in the prayer as Jesus gave it. The final part goes; For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever. This was added to the prayer by ancient people in as early as the first century.

Now back to what I want to focus on the verse of Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. This is the only actual verse in which there are different moderation's of what is said. Now whether you use debts, sins, trespasses, or wrong doings, it is all the same thing. I really want to focus on his verse because I know this is the hardest thing to do especially for me at my age. Now first what does this line mean? I have came up with almost a better way of saying this verse. I am not trying to change the prayer but this makes a little more sense. I think that if the verse went Let us forgive our debtors as you always forgive us, because no matter what we do if we come to God and truly ask for forgiveness we will be forgiven by him. Where as in the bible it says forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors, this is asking for God to forgive us how we forgive others. Now in some of your cases that would be a very good thing because some of you can forgive easier than others. Forgiving others is not easy to do at all. We need God's help to do it. However, it must be done, no matter how serious or how minor the offense is if we forgive others. Than we ourselves cannot receive God's mercy. Out of forgiveness, there is joy and responsibility. Joy comes out of knowing that you and the other person are both forgiven and also that God forgives you and responsibility is taking an action to go about forgiving the person. A couple Sunday's ago in Sunday school Mary said something that fit into my sermon perfectly. She said that If your just going to sit around and say that you have no sins or owe debts to anyone that your committing the biggest sin of all. Asking for daily bread and daily forgiveness go hand in hand. Daily bread asks for God's help in doing everything we do, and daily forgiveness shows and reminds us that we are aware of our sins. You cannot try to play around with the words, because you don't fool God. Jesus said in one of his teachings. He urged his people to keep it simple and just come to your Father in faith and ask for forgiveness. Don't think that when you ask for God's forgiveness you are forgiven forever. When you are forgiven you will commit multiple sins again, and again you will go to the Lord and ask for forgiveness. Sometimes a situation comes up in which someone did something so terrible that they have no excuse for what they did and maybe even did it intentionally. Now in these cases the person needs your forgiveness the most. If they had an excuse and didn't mean what they did you would not need to forgive them because they really don't need your forgiveness. It is really hard and in most cases the person who needs to forgive the other person will be torn up inside a lot more because they are the one that thinks about it and gets hurt in the process. The person who needs forgiveness suffers some pain but not as much. Therefore, you should forgive as soon as you can. Don't wait because it may never come. The main people that need your forgiveness are those who, with no excuse and with full intent to bring pain and evil upon you. A quote by William Williman says, "In forgiving and being forgiven we are swept up into God's great adventure called the kingdom. We become part of God's defeat of the powers that would otherwise dominate our lives. If you have ever been forgiven by someone, you know the way in which that forgiveness frees you, releases you in a way that is close to divine. If you have ever forgiven someone who wronged you greatly, you know how such forgiveness is not cheap or easy. You also know how extending that forgiveness is the only way to release that hold that wrong has over your life. You can breathe again. Even more than this freedom and grace that comes from forgiveness is the realization that, in our forgiveness of those "who trespass against us," we are enabled to participate in some of the divine energy that was released in the world when God in Christ forgave us." This is a great quote because it summarizes everything up about forgiveness.

Yes, forgiving others is probably one of the hardest things God asks us to do. But he really does not ask much of us. Jesus told people to pray the prayer as the prayer given to them by God. One of the things in which to pray for is forgiveness of our debts. He did not say that this is the prayer in which sinners ought to pray, but he said this is the prayer all men should pray. By forgiving our debtors we confess our sin and accept the fact that only those forgiving can be forgiven themselves. As Paul said in Ephesians 4 verse 32. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. Just like Paul said and just like what Jesus said. If we would imitate our Lord and if we would be kin to God, we must forgive, and he who forgives will find himself the forgiveness of God. Let us pray,

Lord help us to not only pray sincerely to you, but to focus on what we are saying when we pray. Help us to forgive those people who owe us debts and receive your forgiveness. In your name, we pray.

AMEN