More on this book
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
February 26 - April 6, 2025
the only thing the first disciples of Jesus are recorded to have asked Jesus to teach them is, “Lord, teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1)? There is no record of anyone asking Jesus to teach them to lead, or to counsel, or to heal, or to cast out demons, or to preach. They may have asked him, but there is no record of them doing so.
As we pray the Prayer, we are joining the Living God in bringing about the realization of his heart’s desire for the world.
prayer, from the human side of things, moves history. The “movers and shakers” of history are those who pray.
Our Lord’s Prayer can be divided into two halves—petitions one to three, and petitions four to six. The first half uses the pronoun your; the second half uses the pronoun us. Your name, your kingdom, your will. Give us our daily bread. Forgive us our debts. Lead us not into temptation. Deliver us. Jesus is teaching us to first and foremost begin praying God’s agenda, not ours.
Jesus teaches us to begin, “Father, hallow your name, bring your kingdom, do your will.” Why begin here? Because if we begin here, our agendas are then put into proper perspective.
We discover that our real need is to see the Father’s agenda fulfilled.
the prayer “asks for the establishment of the kingdom of God, by God for us, not by us for God.”
We often say, or hear said, “prayer works.” That is only so because of the one to whom we pray works.
We are surrounded by the heavens.
On the throne of the universe is a Father.
Jesus’ open arms are the open arms of his Father. Jesus’ open heart is the open heart of his Father.
we do not know what we need. We think we know. We think we see the whole picture. We think we recognize all the factors involved in our circumstances. We think we understand ourselves, our desires, our longings, our fears. We do not. But our Father does.13
our greatest need is the Father himself.
praying the Lord’s Prayer, and praying it with our whole lives, changes the world.
Jesus teaches us to pray, “Father, hallowed be your name,” because that is what he prays. That is what he lives and dies to see happen “on earth as it is in heaven.”
“Father, you honor your name, you magnify your character, you manifest your personality, you make yourself real on earth as it is in heaven, you enhance your reputation in all the universe. Yes, we will gladly be part of the process. But we cannot make it happen. Only you can display the glory of who you are. O Father, you do it!”
The glory of God shines, indeed, in all creatures, on high and below, but never more brightly than in the cross . . . .
if it does not die, it does not live;
“O Father, be all that you are on earth that you are in heaven.” And the Father answers by pointing us to his Son, Emmanuel, “God with us” (Matt 1:23). It turns out that the one who teaches us to pray so boldly is himself the answer to the prayer. In Jesus the Father’s name is finally and fully hallowed.
Living God is active in history, and is moving history toward its appointed end. That end is the kingdom of God.
Kairos time is that unique moment determined by God for the fulfillment of his divine purposes.
Jesus came on the scene and the first thing he says is that “the time is fulfilled”—the kairos is now!
Jesus unites people the world divides.
In his company are Simon the Zealot and Matthew the tax collector, two arch enemies. One represents an oppressive foreign government; the other, revolutionary insurgency—he’s a terrorist. But in Jesus they become brothers! That is the kingdom of God come near.
Jesus fills ordinary people with the Holy Spirit; that is the kingdom, the blessing of the future breaking into the present.
In Jesus God’s new world order is already present in some form, but not-yet present in the form it will be on the Day of the Lord.
He and the kingdom are one. When the King is present, so is the kingdom. Indeed, the kingdom is present only where Jesus Christ is King.
Jesus Christ is at hand, just behind that thin, permeable veil of hiddenness. If God wanted to, he could pull back that veil and we would all be on our knees.
So, what does it mean to pray, “your kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven”? It means something like “Living God, even before the Day of the Lord, reveal what is invisible, manifest what is hidden.”
We are imprisoned by certain passions . . . and instead of praying for freedom we pray for a Persian rug for our cell. So often we pray for senseless things that have no relation to our needs.
Yes, Jesus does eat normal food; but that which sustains him is doing the Father’s will.
The Father’s will is that we humans join him in his governing of the creation.
the awesome Creator of the universe delights to have us be as creative as he is.
We can cry out for freedom from our addictions because this is the very thing the Father desires and wills.
The commandments are not imposed on the human species from outside us; they expose what is true inside us.
No longer will they teach their neighbors, or say to one another, ‘know the Lord,’ because they will all know me . . . for I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” The word for know (yadah) used in, “They shall all know me,” is the same word used for a husband and wife knowing each other in marital intimacy.
Eternal life is not just long life, life that does not end. Eternal life is the life God has. Eternal life is the life God is. And the will of God—“Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”—is that we receive and experience that eternal life here and now.
creatures alive in the Creator; creatures filled with the uncreated life of the Creator.
Yet not as I will, but as you will. Your will be done.” And it was. So that the good and well-pleasing and perfect will of the Father can now be realized in us.
“Give us this day our daily bread.” That is: be pleased to provide us with all our bodily needs so that we may acknowledge that thou art the only source of all that is good,
He is what I need more than anything else. Nothing else satisfies the ravenous hunger.
Note the pronouns carefully. “Give us, our daily bread”—they are plural. Not “give me, my daily bread.”
Many disciples of Jesus have more than we can possibly use, and worry about how to protect it. Many more disciples of Jesus wonder how to take care of the minimal needs of their families and yet, ironically, seek to share what little they have.
“O God, to those who have hunger give bread; and to those who have bread (give) the hunger for justice.”10
ingredients for the wine were not in the water. It is one thing to pull fish out of the sea for the fish were already there; he just knows how to find them. It is another thing to multiply loaves of bread, for he makes more of what is already there. But it is another thing altogether to make wine out of water, for the ingredients for the wine are not there. Jesus is able to bring into being something out of nothing.
“Today I have God, and he has the provisions. Tomorrow it will be the same. I will have God and he will have the provisions. So I simply ask God today for what I need for today.”
Every time we take bread in our hands we are handling an answered prayer.
Every time we see or hear the name “Jesus” we are seeing and hearing answered prayer, for he is finally that without which we cannot live.
The boldest prayer we can pray is answered because the one who teaches us to pray pays the debt himself—all of it.
“He came to pay a debt he did not owe, because we owed a debt we cannot pay.”9
