The Lord’s Prayer 2 - A personal relationship
Do you know that there are two sounds, one that I love and the other I hate which ironically come from the same source!
There is nothing more wonderful and lovely, a joy to the ear than to hear a baby laugh.
But there is nothing worse than to hear that baby scream or to cry, we do whatever we can to console and comfort the baby to stop it crying.
This is true of any parent, grandparent or anyone closely connected with young children.
Our human instinct, our parental instinct.
And that’s what God is like and why we call Him, Father ‘Our Father’, the opening words to the Lord’s prayer.
So how does the Lord's Prayer encourage us to relate to God?
Previously we started to look at the Lord’s Prayer and realised that when the disciples asked Jesus how to pray:
• He actually gave them his own personal prayer that He used.
• And when we pray we literally pray the Lord’s prayer with the Lord
• That this prayer is not specifically Christian as it can be used by any believer in praying to a loving god
• The Lord’s prayer is a framework to use to develop our own prayers:
> addressing God as Father
> the holiness of God,
> yearning for the coming of God's kingdom,
> the need for forgiveness and
> daily sustenance—
Jesus gave this prayer to His disciples, He gave it to us so that we can use it to its full advantage:
• as a prayer in its own right to be used reguarly, and
• as a framework for all our prayers, a liturgy of worship
But to do this we have to understand what the prayer is saying to us and understand our relationship with God and how the Lord’s Prayer reinforces this relationship.
When St. Paul visited the city of Athens he was overcome, not with the beauty of the city but exasperated to see how the city was given over to IDOLATRY.
Paul saw the city as a city of souls groping in darkness searching for the truth, for a spiritual dimension to their lives.
It was easier in that city to find gods than to find people! The place was full of shrines, temples, gettoes…
Paul felt that this was something to weep over, so distressed was he at what he saw!
Until he came across an altar which was dedicated ‘To the unknown god’
The Greeks were covering all options and didn’t want to leave any god out, just in case!!
But Paul like any good teacher used this as an illustration to try and reveal to the people of Athens the One TRUE GOD.. the Christian God.
To them this was a complete revelation, a totally new concept of God…… A God of Love and a God they could call Father.
But even more personal than that, Abba which means Daddy.
At the pop concert at Buckingham Palace, which was part of the Queen’s golden Jubilee, Prince Charles gave a tribute to the Queen.
The part of that tribute that moved those who heard it the most was when he referred to the Queen as MUMMY.
It is this personal relationship that we have with God as a loving Father that unites us with Him in a very strong bond of Love.
And it is this personal relationship that is reinforced in the opening words of the Lord’s prayer.. Our Father.
That opening address, 'Our Father', immediately draws us into a unique and personal relationship.
This doesn't necessarily mean Jesus envisaged God to be a bodily person inhabiting heaven, but it does confirm He related to God personally as His Father.
This insight is fundamental, defining the very nature and orientation of all prayer rooted in Jesus' experience of God, His Father.
It confirms that God cannot be known in an abstract or theoretical way - God isn't something to be investigated and proved.
Nor is God some sort of anonymous source of energy to be discovered and harnessed.
Rather, God is a personal God who can only be encountered personally - through the dynamics, commitments and risks associated with relating to other people.
We can read all about God in the Bible, but they are mere words written on paper, it takes the step of faith and belief to make God real.
To believe that He exists and that He is working out His plan in our lives.
Yet it is so tempting to see prayer as something else!.. like the contest between Elijah and the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18:20-40), to break through and disrupt nature and the natural order of our lives.
To believe that if we pray hard enough or repeat the right formula or put together a convincing argument;
• we can 'persuade' God to act on our behalf or
• we can gain access to divine power.
And there are times when we could make good godly use of such techniques; but they belong to the world of magic NOT of prayer.
For the invitation to relate to God as Father in the Lord’s prayer is rooted in mutual respect and seeks neither to exploit nor abuse, nor to diminish the dignity and freedom of either party.
Such an approach of mutual respect and a loving relationship is incompatible with the language of coercion or manipulation.
Nor does it sit comfortably with attempts to interpret prayer as a form of therapy - a means of 'getting things off our chest'.
Even though sharing your problems and concerns with Our Father through prayer very often makes us feel a lot better, it is NOT a means to an end.
In other words we pray regularly not just when we have a problem!!
The scene of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane encapsulates all of this so memorably (Mark 14:32-42) – Your Will be done not mine!
Prayer doesn't make us other than we are, and prayer doesn’t make reality other than it is.
But prayer does enable us to become more authentically the people of God, the type of person God longs us to be:
Spirit- filled sons and daughters of our heavenly Father, invited to participate in the privileges and responsibilities of:
• 'being family' – being part of the family of God,
• as children of God, inheritors of the kingdom
• as members of that kingdom a quality of life which only belongs to God.
All this comes through prayer which gives us this unique relationship with God and is encapsulated in the words Jesus gave us to pray with Him…….. OUR FATHER.
