| < Jesus Taught Us To Pray > |
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Shalom, It is certainly good to be back after 11-day break away from Singapore with the family. It was a good time for me to spend time admiring the beauty of God's creation and to enjoy some colder weather. That sort of explains why you did not receive any weekly sharing last weekend. Well, before all of us get too carried away with all those year-end and Christmas shopping, I would like to snatch a few moments of your time to share what the Lord had been telling me to share this week. It is a rather familiar passage of scriptures that I believe a lot of us had memorized and recited for umpteenth times. Yes I am referring to the 6th chapter of the Book of Matthew - The Lord's Prayer. The prayer was a special teaching by Jesus when His disciples approached Him one day asking Him to teach them how to pray and most people associate that as The Lord's Prayer. But really, is it the Lord's prayer as in - did He pray that prayer for us? If you examine the contents of the prayer (which we will do shortly), you will notice that it is basically steps/ instructions on how and what to pray. The Lord never prayed for us using that prayer. In fact He prayed The High Priestly Prayer and you can find the contents in the Book of John chapter 17 (whole chapter). Now, if the prayer mentioned in Matthew 6 should not be referred to as The Lord's Prayer, then what should it be called? I would suggest that a better name for that prayer is "The Family Prayer" because it talks a lot about family life - not just blood relation family but family as in a human family.
Interestingly, the prayer starts with the pronoun "our". It did not start with the definite article "the". Also notice that the pronoun is in the plural sense. Why? I would like to point out that the Christian life is not a life of solitude but one where he / she is expected to learn to live together as one family, bearing and forbearing each other's idiosyncrasies and be at peace with each other. Differences among individuals will definitely be there. As long as there are two persons, there will always be differences of preferences, behavior, and priorities. So when Jesus taught His disciples to start with the pronoun "our", He laid down the most important foundation - the unity of the Church, the Body of believers. Next, Jesus taught us to call God, "Father" thus laying yet another important foundation - that God is our Father and we are His children. He did not ask us to address God as "God" or "Lord" but simply "Father". By acknowledging God as "Father" we establish yet another important fact. God has a father's heart and because He is our Father, He would want the best for us, His children. In fact read all the four gospels and you will realize how much the Father loves us and wants to bless us. So by just acknowledging Him as "our Father", we establish a sure foundation which Satan the deceiver hates for us to learn and grasp a hold on; that God, as the Father has a father's heart and would not hesitate to shower His favor on us His children. The devil wants to keep us in the dark on this all-important truth so that we continue to live in fear and in anxiety of the future. You see, once we know that God the Father is our Father, we will always learn to depend on Him and we will not want to carry our burdens, our fears, our worries, with us at all. We learn to leave them all at the Cross and trust the Father to provide for all our needs. The third truth to be learnt is in the next two words "in Heaven". Because God lives in Heaven, He is eternal. You and I will leave this Earth one day - whether we are being raptured when Jesus comes back for us, or if Jesus tarries we will die physically. However, God is eternal and His habitation is in Heaven, so we can depend on Him. Also because God is in Heaven, time is of no value. God does not live in a "24hours x 7days" time-period. He is beyond that; in fact He is the Creator of the whole Universe - time included. By acknowledging God in Heaven, we are also acknowledging that His reign is forever; it has no beginning and it will not end. "Hallowed be Your Name" Hallowed is an old English term to describe holiness. Indeed, God's Name is holy. So holy is the Name that the Jews would not even pronounce or even write the name of God. The scribes in Israel would take a bath before and after writing the Name of the Lord and even the pen that they use to write that Name had to be thrown away because it had defiled the Name of God. The Jews would substitute the Name "YHVH" with simply the word "Hashem" or "Name" and they would not pronounce the Name. God reminded the children of Israel of the holiness of the Name; that they were not to take the Name of the Lord lightly (Commandment 3 - Exodus 20:7). When Jesus came and died for our sins, He carried that principle one step further; His Death superceded everything else. And the Bible teaches us that the day is coming when everything in Heaven and on Earth and in Hell below will acknowledge Jesus and bow at the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ. "Your Kingdom come. Your will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven". When we pray those two sentences, we acknowledge that God's Kingdom will prevail and that everything exists as part of that Kingdom plan of God - nothing falls outside of that. And when we pray that God's will be done, we are acknowledging our part in that Kingdom plan. "Give us this day our daily bread". Notice our acknowledgment that God is the rich provider and that we ask God to give us this day what we need. We do not ask for what we need tomorrow because there will be other needs tomorrow and we do not know them yet (although our Heavenly Father already knows them). Also, Jesus wants to teach us to focus on the Provider rather than the provisions. If God were to give us everything in one go, then we might focus our attention on what He had given and forget Him Who provided for us. I used to wonder when I was a younger Christian why Jesus taught us to pray that God will provide us with bread and not "something more". You see, a person can survive on just bread for his physical nourishment but not just meat or just vegetables and his sustenance can stretch for quite a while. The reason why Jesus taught us to ask for bread is because He is the Bread of Life Himself. So when we pray that sentence, we are in fact saying, "Jesus, be with us in our daily walk" - one step at a time; we do not need to be able to see the whole plan before we start our daily venture with the Lord. We need to trust the Lord to lead and guide us each step of the way. "And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors". An initial reading would render that our forgiveness from God is dependent on our willingness to forgive others. That was how I used to think when I was younger and I used to feel very lousy day-in and day-out because I used to refuse to forgive a couple of people for what happened to me; for causing my bitterness. And then one day it dawned on me that I had misread that sentence. I should read the line as "just as you have forgiven us our debts, we will forgive others theirs". You see, whether we like it or not, all our sins had been forgiven when Jesus hung there on the Cross bleeding and dying for our sins. All our sins were in the future when He died so we are covered - past sins, present sins and future sins. Nothing is left out. So completely have we been forgiven that it will be a shame if we do not forgive others. Release that bitterness in our hearts towards others who had committed any sins against us and our circumstance will change. We will no longer be bitter, burdened but we will feel the release and the lightness when the burden have been lifted off our backs and believe you me that we will look and feel younger. Maybe that is the secret for youthful looks - throw all your burdens on Jesus and He will take care of them. "And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us
from the evil one" Does God tempt us? No. Never! Please remember
that our English Bibles were translations from the original Greek for
the New Testament and from the original Hebrew for the Old Testament.
Blame it on the language because in the Greek language (I have been told)
there are two tenses of actions - causative and permissive. When the Bible
mentioned that God parted the Red Sea in front of the children of Israel,
it is in the "causative" tense, that it was God Who actually
parted the Red Sea so that the children of Israel could walk through the
sea on dry ground. In another tense when we read in the Book of Job of
how he was tested, please note that it was the permissive tense that Job
was tested. God allowed Job to be tested but He did not cause Job to have
all those bereavement, losses of wealth and diseases on his body. "For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever." The finale in the prayer simply lays praise and worship acknowledging the sovereignty of the Lord. Indeed, all power and glory do belong to Him. He is the mastermind behind all creation and everything was created and done for His good pleasure. Nobody can deny that. And God is a jealous God - jealous for His Righteousness. He is the Only Constant that ever be - everything else changes around Him. His words never fail and His love is everlasting. "Amen." which means, "I agree".
When we end the prayer with the word "amen" we are saying to
the Lord, " I agree, so be it". It is like casting our vote
in there and once it is cast, you cannot withdraw. So think carefully
in future before you even utter the word "amen" at the end of
a prayer that you really agree and ascribe to what had been prayed because
by agreeing to what had been prayed, it has strengthened the prayer. The
angels who operate at the command of our Lord will love to obey and make
it come to pass. So when you say "amen" at the end of a prayer,
especially if you have been praying with someone else, your agreement
has just fulfilled the condition for what Jesus promised in Matthew 18:
19-20. What a prayer the Lord Jesus taught us for there is indeed power in every word that we utter in that prayer. So let us exhort one another to pray The Family Prayer knowing the wealth of our inheritance in Jesus as Children of God. The Lord blesses you and keeps you; Have a Blessed Christmas.
Dated : 15 December 2001 |