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Praise is the inevitable result in the heart of the person who thus understands God and is actually living interactively with him.
His nature, identity, and overarching purposes are no doubt unchanging. But his intentions with regard to many particular matters that concern individual human beings are not. This does not diminish him. Far from it. He would be a lesser God if he could not change his intentions
Prayer as kingdom praying is an arrangement explicitly instituted by God in order that we as individuals may count, and count for much, as we learn step by step how to govern, to reign with him in his kingdom. To enter and to learn this reign is what gives the individual life its intended significance.
What God gets out of our lives—and, indeed, what we get out of our lives—is simply the person we become.
The main teaching here is that we should expect prayer to proceed in the manner of a relationship between persons. Of course it will be in the manner of such relationships at their best, but the general character of requesting will remain. In fact, the contrary assumption possibly causes more people to “drop out” of praying than anything else. Praying is mistakenly thought to be like plunking your money into a soft drink machine or like dropping a bomb. You do a simple act one time, and then mechanism takes over to produce the inevitable result.
But that is not so of the view of prayer that Jesus gives. To suppose that God and the individual communicate within the framework of God’s purposes for us, as explained earlier, and that because of the interchange God does what he had not previously intended, or refrains from something he previously had intended to do, is nothing against God’s dignity if it is an arrangement he himself has chosen.
When we pray we enter the real world, the substance of the kingdom, and our bodies and souls begin to function for the first time as they were created to function. Indeed, the “transfiguration” of Jesus must be regarded as the highest revelation of the nature of matter recorded in human history.
No one seems to understand that it was not fondness but respect that was expressed by the “Dear Joe” form. The change of form marked the loss of respectful approach, not the loss of hypocrisy—which, from all appearances, remains in a very healthy condition.
These are passages such as Genesis 1 or 15; Exodus 19; 1 Kings 8; 2 Chronicles 16 and 19; Nehemiah 9; many of the psalms (34, 37, 91, and 103, for example); Isaiah 30, 44, and 56–66; Luke 11; Romans 8; Philippians 4.
In any case, when we pray we must take time to fix our minds upon God and orient our world around him. Whatever we need to do to that end should be done.
Unfortunately, the old standard formulation, “Our Father who art in heaven,” has come to mean “Our Father who is far away and much later.” As explained in an earlier chapter, the meaning of the plural heavens, which is erroneously omitted in most translations, sees God present as far “out” as imaginable but also right down to the atmosphere around our heads, which is the first of “the heavens.” The omission of the plural robs the wording in the model prayer of the sense Jesus intended. That sense is, “Our Father always near us.”
That the name “God” would be regarded with the utmost possible respect and endearment. That his kingdom would fully come on earth. That our needs for today be met today. That our sins be forgiven, not held against us. That we not be permitted to come under trial or to have bad things happen to us.
“let your name be sanctified.” Let it be uniquely respected. Really, the idea is that his name should be treasured and loved more than any
This request is based upon the deepest need of the human world. Human life is not about human life. Nothing will go right in it until the greatness and goodness of its source and governor is adequately grasped. His very name is then held in the highest possible regard. Until that is so, the human compass will always be pointing in the wrong direction, and individual lives as well as history as a whole will suffer from constant and fluctuating disorientation.
So when we hear this first request, and indeed the second as well, we want to remember that it is the prayer of an adoring child, somewhat jealous for its parent. And we want to let ourselves sense its longing that “Abba,” who in this case really is “the greatest,” should be recognized as such. We want to dwell on this meditatively and perhaps weep for sadness that God is not so understood. We want to enter into the alarm of the little child who stumbles across those who do not think its father or mother is the greatest and best. And we must transfer that alarm to the lack of admiration and
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Recall, now, that the kingdom of God is the range of his effective will: that is, it is the domain where what he prefers is actually what happens.
This second request asks for those kingdoms to be displaced, wherever they are, or brought under God’s rule.
These are the places we have in mind, and they are where we are asking for the kingdom, God’s rule, to come, to be in effect. Also, we are thinking of our activities more than of those of other people. We know our weaknesses, our limitations, our habits, and we know how tiny our power of conscious choice is. We are therefore asking that, by means beyond our knowledge and the scope of our will, we be assisted to act within the flow of God’s actions.
And, among other things, we ask him to help us see the patterns we are involved in. We ask him to help us not cooperate with them, to cast light on them and act effectively to remove them.
it is quite all right, as earlier noted, to have things now that we intend to use tomorrow and to work or even pray in a sensible way for them. What hinders or shuts down kingdom living is not the having of such provisions, but rather the trusting in them for future security.
It is not psychologically possible for us really to know God’s pity for us and at the same time be hardhearted toward others. So we are “forgiving of others in the same manner as God forgives us.” That is a part of our prayer. We are not just promising or resolving to forgive, however. We are praying for help to forgive others, for, though it is up to us to forgive—we do it—we know we cannot do it without help.
Today we sometimes speak of people who cannot forgive themselves. Usually, however, the problem is much deeper. More often than not, these are people who refuse to live on the basis of pity. Their problem is not that they are hard on themselves, but that they are proud. And if they are hard on themselves, it is because they are proud. They do not want to accept that they can only live on the basis of pity from others, that the good that comes to them is rarely “deserved.” If they would only do that, it would transform their lives. They would easily stop punishing themselves for what they have
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This is because only pity reaches to the heart of our condition. The word pity makes us wince, as mercy does not. Our current language has robbed mercy of its deep, traditional meaning, which is practically the same as pity. To pity someone now is to feel sorry for them, and that is regarded as demeaning, whereas to have mercy now is thought to be slightly noble—just “give’em a break.”
If my pride is untouched when I pray for forgiveness, I have not prayed for forgiveness. I don’t even understand it.
In the model prayer, Jesus teaches us to ask for pity with reference to our wrongdoings. Without it, life is hopeless. And with it comes the gift of pity as an atmosphere in which we then can live. To live in this atmosphere is to be able simply to drop the many personal issues that make human life miserable and, with a clarity of mind that comes only from not protecting my pride, to work for the good things all around us we always can realize in cooperation with the hand of God.
The “temptation” here is not primarily temptation to sin. Trials always tempt us to sin, however. And temptation to sin is always a trial, which we might fail by falling into sin.
It expresses the understanding that we can’t stand up under very much pressure, and that it is not a good thing for us to suffer. It is a vote of “no confidence” in our own abilities. As the series of requests begins with the glorification of God, it ends with acknowledgment of the feebleness of human beings.
This is precisely the attitude of self-confidence we must avoid, and the final request in the model prayer is designed to help us avoid it. Once again, we are asking for pity, this time in the form of protection from circumstances. We are asking a Father who is both able and willing to extend such pity to not let bad things happen to
It is precisely this experience-based assurance that is expressed in the great psalms, such as 23, 34, 37, and 91. These and similar passages in the scriptures trouble many people because they seem to promise too much—to be, frankly, unrealistic. But they do not promise that we will have no trials, as human beings understand trials. They promise, instead, totally unbroken care, along with God-given adequacy to whatever happens.
We should understand that God will usually spare us from trials, especially if we are living in the Lord’s Prayer. And we should also understand that, when trials are permitted, it only means that he has something better in mind for us than freedom from trials.
The last request in the Lord’s Prayer is the revelation of a God who loves to spare his children and who will always do it upon request unless he has something better in mind, which he rarely does.
It is a powerful lens through which one constantly sees the world as God himself sees it.
Dear Father always near us, may your name be treasured and loved, may your rule be completed in us— may your will be done here on earth in just the way it is done in heaven. Give us today the things we need today, and forgive us our sins and impositions on you as we are forgiving all who in any way offend us. Please don’t put us through trials, but deliver us from everything bad. Because you are the one in charge, and you have all the power, and the glory too is all yours—forever— which is just the way we want it!
In his presence our inner life will be transformed, and we will become the kind of people for whom his course of action is the natural (and supernatural) course of action.
“Rethink your life in the light of the fact that the kingdom of the heavens is now open to all”
What they do will be the unerring sign of who they are on the inside. Trees and plants manifest their nature in their fruit: figs by bearing figs and not grapes. And what people do reveals, when thoroughly and honestly considered, the kind of person they really are (Matt. 7:16–20).
The narrow gate is obedience—and the confidence in Jesus necessary to it.
The fruit of the good tree is obedience, which comes only from the kind of person we have come to be (the “inside” of the tree) in his fellowship.
The great Pauline, Petrine, and Johannine passages, such as 1 Corinthians 13; Colossians 3; 1 Peter 2; 2 Pet. 1:1–15; 1 John 3:1–5:5, all convey exactly the same message in so many words, one of an inward transformation by discipleship to Jesus.
The law is not the cause of personal goodness, as we have said before, but it invariably is the course of it.
preferred way is to speak, to communicate: thus the absolute centrality of scripture to our discipleship. And this, among other things, is the reason why an extensive use of solitude and silence is so basic for growth of the human spirit, for they form an appropriate context for listening and speaking to God.
The answer is found in the Gospels: he lives in the kingdom of God, and he applies that kingdom for the good of others and even makes it possible for them to enter it for themselves.
I need to be able to lead my life as he would lead it if he were I.
My discipleship to Jesus is, within clearly definable limits, not a matter of what I do, but of how I do it. And it covers everything, “religious” or not.
Brother Lawrence, who was a kitchen worker and cook, remarks.
What they, and God, get out of their lifetime is chiefly the person they become.
To be a disciple of Jesus is, crucially, to be learning from Jesus how to do your job as Jesus himself would do it. New Testament language for this is to do it “in the name” of Jesus.
PROCLAIMING. The first was simply announcing God’s new move forward in human history.
MANIFESTING. The second phase of Jesus’ work, in which his disciples were therefore to be apprenticed, was the manifestation of God’s rule from the heavens. This was done by words and deeds whose powers lay beyond, or even set aside, the usual course of life and nature (as well as the effects of evil spirits).
TEACHING. The third phase of their apprenticeship was in teaching about the nature of God and about what his rule among human beings was like.
