The Lord’s Prayer, God Wants Us To Talk With Him. Series

The Lord’s Prayer.

Started with wing clip from Noah’s Ark

I remember some of my prayers, Lord if I win lotto I’ll give away ten percent now that was jolly big of me! Or if I get that job, I’ll tell everyone it’s because I’m a Christian and you’ve blessed me. How often in prayer do we have our little bargains with God?

“You haven’t got a prayer”, flying away on a wing and a prayer, “I pray it goes well for you”, I will pray for you”, “and I pray and I pray”, “we pray for those brave service men and women”, the prayer of Saint Francis, the serenity pray, the AA prayer.

So many prayers, how long do we spend in prayer and how do we pray, why do we pray.

What follows is a less used version, of the Lords Prayer, which is called the Lords prayer because the Lord himself gave it to his disciples, as an example of how they were to pray. Some believe it should be called the disciples prayer.

Let’s read from Luke 11:1-4.

One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.”

2 He said to them, “When you pray, say:

“ ‘Father,

hallowed be your name,

your kingdom come.

3 Give us each day our daily bread.

4 Forgive us our sins,

for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.

And lead us not into temptation.’ ”

So Jesus disciples were keen to pray, they were keen to learn how do pray properly; well at least one of his disciples on seeing him pray wanted to understand how to pray properly. He requested that Jesus taught him how it pray.

Jesus answer was to pray in a way that followed this format;

• Honour the name of God

• Ask for the coming of God’s kingdom

• Request daily provision

• Ask forgiveness

• Ask for God’s protection

Jesus has introduced a method of prayer.

Let’s break these points down a bit further. Why honour the name of God?

The Hebrew people and many Jewish people today are of the belief that to mention the name of God is in itself an offence against God as he is Holy and his name is Holy.

Jesus tells his disciples to say “Hallowed is your name” this word hallowed occurs only twice in the Bible, in both cases it is used by Jesus; in what we call the Lords prayer, hallowed means to reverence as holy, or it is holy. The very name of God is holy.

When we come before him it should be as a creation before the creator.

I like to sometimes make a self assessing comparison between myself and God the creator of his universe.

First he created the universe, this is [Power Point: Universe, Milky Way, Solar system, Earth, Earth as it was before Galileo (humour), New Zealand, Christchurch, some where down there is me, one of his creations]

God is Holy, his name is Holy, and Jesus tells us to address him with reverence.

It also is a good thing in prayer to thank God for his creation and his kingdom, which can also be thanks for our part in his Kingdom. Jesus also tells us to address him as Father; we are his children, sons and daughters of the Living God. He is not like an earthly father but a is perfect and Holy Father, an intimate and loving father who knows the smallest details of our being. He even knows the number of hairs on our heads.

Jesus tells the disciples to; ask for the coming of God’s kingdom. It should be remembered that this is a now thing. I don’t know about you, but I want to be part of God’s kingdom here and now. I have seen how earthly kingdoms operate and I don’t fancy being part of one of those. As we have already touched on in the sermons I have just completed on parables, God is a king who sees nations of people as precious treasures, individuals as part of a precious pearl and he would give up everything to bring them into his presence. This King we discovered also treats all of his subjects as being of equal worth, no matter when they started their citizenship. If there is a choice, this is the King I want to serve.

This Kingdom stuff is about us being in relationship with God.

We should remember we can become a citizen of this kingdom here and now.

This is something that is evidenced by the power of God’s Holy Spirit, at work in our lives, it is forgiveness and it is freedom from the weight of our sins.