Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Praying

November 18, 2008

PRAYING

For a very long time in my life, I took the great prayer that Jesus gave us all to pray with frequency and turned it the wrong way relative to what it is really directing.

Here is the prayer Jesus told us to pray:
Our Father in heaven,
Hallowed be your name,
Your kingdom come,
Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but delilver us from the evil one.

Somehow, because the prayer begins in "heaven" and repeats "heaven," and because I understood "kingdom" to mean heaven as well, and for whatever other reasons, I ended up attaching a future sense to the whole prayer...and not expecting anything in the now. It was (hopefully) going to all work out later.

And then along came an opportunity to understand "kingdom" more accurately.

Matthew's gospel uses "kingdom" over 50 times. Read the whole book with this blog in mind for a mind-popping trip into truth.

Someone pointed out to me that a kingdom is basically where the king is ruling. It is where his/or her (congratulations to Queen Elizabeth on her very long reign) kingly authority is supreme and where the will of the sovreign carries. King-domain - the sphere of the king's rule.

So I learned that when I was praying "your kingdom come" I was basically saying, "God, bring your rule, your presence, your will to pass right here and right now." And from there I began to see the rest of the prayer differently - like "hallowed be your name" is actually placing active worship at the start of the prayer....like the prayer for "daily bread" is actually a request for food supply....and "forgive us our debts" hinges on our prior "as we also have forgiven."

Rather than a formal prayer to be prayed in "church" expressing hope in eternal bliss, I came to see it as a prayer for today inviting the presence and rule of God into every area of our lives.

Come, Oh King....and rule in us today!

Selah!

Dave

For extra credit - try praying the prayer (like it really means) each day for a week and journal what happens. Let me know.

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