Praying to Our Father

Below you'll find live stream video of yesterday's 8:45 and 11:00 AM worship services of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. You can also read the text of the message. Because I presently have a light case of COVID-19, thanks go to Mark and Trish for handling the services. Thanks to Mark for sharing my message. Thanks to Trish for bringing the elements of Holy Communion to our driveway, allowing me to consecrate the elements from a safe distance in our garage.]





Luke 11:1-13

In Romans 8, the apostle Paul says: “...the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.” (Romans 8:26)

We do not know what we ought to pray for. As I grow in my faith, I increasingly understand how true this statement is. I often don’t know how I should pray! What is the right thing to pray for?

Some well-meaning people will say, “Pray from the heart.” The Bible teaches us that “​​The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.” (Jeremiah 17:9) Following our hearts, in prayer as well as in anything else, can lead us away from the One we are to follow, Jesus Christ. Others will say, “Just pray what makes sense.” God’s Word also tells us that “There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death.” (Proverbs 14:12) Following our thoughts can also lead us far from God.

We don’t know how to pray, but Paul’s words assure us that as we come to God the Father in Jesus’ name, the Holy Spirit turns our vague yearnings into prayer. Any Christian who has come to the end of their rope and been able to only pray, “Help, Lord!” knows that Paul’s right!

But the Holy Spirit can help us pray in another way. It’s the Holy Spirit Who inspired the Gospel writers, including Luke the evangelist, to record a pattern for praying from Jesus Himself, a prayer we can pray when we have no idea how to pray!

Our Gospel lesson for today, Luke 11:1-13, says that after observing Jesus praying, one of the hundred or so disciples with Jesus at the time, asked the Lord to teach them how to pray. According to Matthew’s gospel, Jesus had already taught the form of the Lord’s Prayer that we use on Sunday mornings. But this is a different group and a different occasion. What Jesus gives us is a slightly different version of the prayer. Although it’s brief, it contains every element needed in our praying.

Let’s look at the prayer briefly this morning, with particular emphasis on just one word, the key to understanding the whole thing. The prayer starts with the address, Father. Jesus often spoke of God the Father as, “My Father.” And now, in the Lord’s Prayer, He wants to share His Father with us.

This is a remarkable gift of love! You remember that Jesus once confronted a group of His fellow Jews Who refused to accept Him as God. They tried to be “holier than thou” with Jesus by claiming Abraham, the ancient patriarch of God’s people, as their father. But Jesus told them, “You belong to your father, the devil and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” (John 8:44) Jesus is describing us at the moments we are born into this world, born in sin. At birth, God is our creator, but not our Father. We are instead, effectively fatherless, since the devil who lured and lures humanity into sin, death, and destruction, bears no concern or compassion for us.

Jesus came into the world to change that! “[T]he Son of Man,” Jesus says of Himself, “came to seek and to save the lost.” (Luke 19:10) Jesus has died for your sins and for mine already at the cross. He has risen from the dead to open up eternity to you and me. He calls us now to daily bring our sins to the foot of the cross and follow Him to become heirs of God’s grace. (Luke 9:23) Today, Jesus comes to us in the Gospel Word and in the sacraments to bring us the forgiveness of our sins and the assurance that we are God’s children. As we receive these gifts by faith, we know that God truly is our Father.

Jesus, of course, presents us with an unforgettable picture of what God the Father is like in the parable of the prodigal son. The Father in Jesus’ story gives both of his sons, not just the oldest, as was common in those days, an equal share in the inheritance. And though the youngest son squanders all, the Father welcomes the son home with open arms. Jesus wants us to know that, for those who trust in Him as Lord and God, that is God’s attitude toward us and our prayers.

The petitions of the prayer are simple and flow from knowing God as our Father. We ask first, that God’s name’s–whether Father, Jesus, God, or Lord–will be hallowed or regarded as holy, set apart, special. Martin Luther says in The Small Catechism: “God’s name is indeed holy in itself, but we pray in this petition that it may be kept holy also among us.” “God,” we’re saying in this petition, “You’ve given us the privilege of calling You our Father for prayer, praise, and thanksgiving. Help us to use Your holy name for its intended purposes.”

Jesus says, then pray, “your kingdom come.” Jesus, of course, has come into our world to bring the kingdom of God, the reign of God, into this fallen world. Whenever God’s Word is shared and whenever it comes to us in water or bread and wine, the kingdom has come near to us. Here, we pray that this kingdom will continually come to us and that we will never grow indifferent to God’s Word or its call to trust in Jesus.

Jesus tells us to pray, “Give us each day our daily bread.” Even earthly fathers have compassion on their children. Jesus here urges us to recognize that every need we have–physical as well as spiritual–comes from our Father. The Bible reminds us that, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father…” (James 1:17)

Jesus tells us to pray, “Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.” We don’t deserve to be children of God. But because of Jesus’ cross and resurrection and our baptism into Jesus, we are forgiven and made new. Jesus frees us then to pray that we will forgive others as we have already been forgiven–and are daily being forgiven–by God.

Jesus tells us then to pray, “And lead us not into temptation.” Luther points out in The Small Catechism that God, of course, tempts no one into sin. But here, we pray that we would avoid the deceptions of the devil, the world, and our sinful selves, avoiding harm to ourselves or others, avoiding hurting the Father Who sent His Son to save us from sin and death.

Life can throw all sorts of circumstances our way. Grief or the prospect of death may come at any time. Recent years with the pandemic, political turmoil, supply chain issues, severe weather, and others things have shown us how vulnerable we all truly are. It can be hard to know what to pray at times. This simple prayer of Jesus encompasses everything we need and everything we could pray for–reverence for God, citizenship in God’s eternal kingdom, daily and ongoing provision for our needs, the forgiveness of our sins, and protection from temptation. Jesus Christ has made all baptized believers children of God and conferred upon us the right to approach God as our Father and to ask for all these things. So ask. Amen

How to Pray (Back to the Basics: Revisiting the Catechism, Part 3)

[Online worship from Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, continues to be posted on YouTube during the coronavirus epidemic. Here's this week's midweek Lenten focus on the basics of Christian faith.]

Matthew 6:9-15

One phrase is likely to bring silence to even to the most verbal group of Christians. It’s this: “Who would like to offer a prayer?”

This is understandable in a way. In the New Testament, Paul says, “We do not know what we ought to pray for…” (Romans 8:26) And Luke says that Jesus’ apostles, the ones He chose to send into the world with His message of new and everlasting life with God for all who repent and believe in Him, felt incompetent in prayer. That’s why they ask Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray.” (Luke 6:1)

Jesus gives them (and us) what we call the Lord’s Prayer, which is the subject of the third part of Martin Luther’s Small Catechism, our topic for today.

But before digging into the Lord’s Prayer, it’s good, as Luther does in The Large Catechism, to consider why we should pray at all. Luther says that there are two reasons. 

The first is that God commands that we pray. That command inheres in the Second Commandment, “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.” Why would God tell us not to use His name vainly, that is, uselessly, purposelessly, or selfishly--or as Luther puts it, “superstitiously, or to curse, swear, lie, or deceive,” if He didn’t intend for us to use His name, to “call upon Him in every time of need, and [to] worship Him with prayer, praise, and thanksgiving”?

The second reason we pray is because God makes promises to those who do. The apostle Peter, quoting the Old Testament, told the Jerusalem crowd on the first Pentecost after the risen Jesus’ ascension to heaven, “...everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved…” (Acts 2:21) And Jesus, God Himself, tells us, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” (Matthew 7:7-8)

So, God commands that we pray and gives promises to those who do pray. 

That’s why we pray. But how should we pray? 

Jesus gives us the Lord’s Prayer as both a good and useful prayer and as a model for our praying. To those who say that reciting this prayer is “vain repetition,” I would point out that Jesus Himself says of this prayer: “This, then, is how you should pray…”

The Lord’s Prayer is composed of: 

• an introduction, “Our Father, Who art in heaven…,” 
• seven petitions, and 
• a conclusion, “For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.” 

The conclusion, though not taught by Jesus, is a doxology, that is, a word of glory, that comes from King David’s prayer in 1 Chronicles 29:10-11. (You can look it up.)

The significance of the introduction, “Our Father, Who art in heaven,” is this: By teaching us to pray to God as “our Father,” Jesus is sharing all the benefits and privileges of being God’s Son with those who believe in Him. All who believe in Jesus are “co-heirs with Christ” of His victory over sin and death. 

By telling us to call God “our Father,” God, Luther says, “encourages us to believe that He is truly our Father, and that we are truly His children, so that we may boldly and confidently pray to Him, just as beloved children speak to their dear Father.”

The first three petitions of the prayer--”Hallowed be Thy name,” “Thy kingdom come,” “Thy will be done”--are all things, as Luther explains it, that will happen even without our prayer. But we pray that His name will be hallowed by us; that His kingdom will come to us; and that His will is done in our lives. 

In these petitions, we refuse to stand in judgment over or pretend to be superior to the rest of the world. We own that we are in as much daily need of God, His will, and His kingdom, brought by the crucified and risen Jesus, as anyone else!

In the fourth petition--"Give us this day our daily bread”--we acknowledge, as Luther says, that “God indeed gives daily bread to all, even unbelievers, without our prayer.” But we pray in this petition to remind ourselves that everything we need for life--our daily bread--comes from God and to receive it “with thanksgiving.” 

Luther’s insistence that God gives us everything we need to live from day to day, is a good reminder in this time when people are (of all things) hoarding toilet paper, that we don’t have a supply problem in our world; God supplies all. We have a share problem. May God teach us to share!

In the fifth petition--”And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who have sinned against us,” we seek God’s forgiveness for our sin and recognize that we cannot be forgiven by God if we are unwilling to forgive those who have hurt...or who we think have hurt...us. Luther says, “We know that we have not earned, nor do we deserve” the forgiveness for which we pray. But, he goes on to say, we ask for it because of the grace that God extends to those who trust in Jesus. At the same time, in this petition, we “heartily forgive, and gladly do good to those who sin against us.” And for us to do that, we really need God’s grace.

In the sixth petition, we ask to be protected from the temptation to sin that comes from “the devil, the world, and our sinful nature,” that we won’t be led “into false belief, despair, and other great and shameful sins.” 

I find I need to pray this petition the most just after I’ve received God’s forgiveness, right after God covers me with His righteousness, as I repent in Jesus' name. 

That’s because once God has forgiven me, I forget that it’s He Who makes me righteous; I start to think what a righteous, wonderful guy I am all by myself.  

When that happens, I don’t see the bear trap of temptation right in front of me. “...in the gospel,” Paul writes in Romans 1:17, “the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith [in Christ] from first to last…” In the sixth petition, we ask God to help us to remember that our righteousness is from Christ alone and to protect us from the delusion of our own intrinsic goodness.

In the seventh petition, Jesus teaches us to pray, “But deliver us from evil.” Luther’s full explanation is worth quoting: “We pray in this petition, as in a summary, that our heavenly Father would deliver us from every type of evil--whether it affects our bodies or souls, property or reputation--and at last, when our hour of death comes, would grant us a blessed end to our earthly lives, and graciously take us from this world of sorrow to Himself in heaven.”

I planned this series some weeks ago, long before the coronavirus upended our lives. But I can’t help but feel that God had already planned for me to talk with you about the Lord’s Prayer during this week in Lent. If you’ve never seen your need to regularly pray, including praying the Lord’s Prayer, I hope you see it today. 

The public health people say to wash our hands for twenty seconds frequently throughout our day. A friend has reminded me that twenty-seconds are about how long it takes to pray the Lord’s Prayer. So, I invite you in the days ahead to pray the Lord’s Prayer as you wash your hands. Every time you pray it with trust and honest helplessness, you will bless yourself and the world for which you pray. And you will be ready for all that may come to you, in this world or the next. Amen 

Prayer: Simpler is Better

You can trust that the simplest prayer--such as, "Lord, help my friend. In Jesus' name. Amen"--offered with faith in the God-man, Jesus Christ, is heard by God.

Don't worry about how big or strong your faith is; come to God with whatever faith and whatever will to faith you have. The effectiveness of our prayers doesn't depend on the strength or largeness of our faith, but on the strength and greatness of the God to Whom we pray. (Jesus says that faith as big as a tiny mustard seed will do.)

When you pray, don't try to micromanage God's answer. You can't do it anyway and it can be an indication of a lack of faith in God when we try.

Finally, don't worry about being eloquent when you pray. All we need do is place our needs and the needs of those for whom we pray before God through our faith in the only One Who gives us access to God, Jesus. God's "Spirit helps us in our weakness. [Because we] do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans."

In prayer, the simpler, the better. And, the most trusting, the best.

[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]

This song is simple and a bit cutesie...

...but I like it and love its message: "Just say Jesus!"

Paul writes in Romans 8:26:

...the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.

Jesus tells us to pray in His Name, meaning we're to approach God under His protection, His aegis, and in accordance with His will.

I know that most of the time I don't know how to pray as I ought. I don't know what the best thing to pray for may be in many situations. Sometimes, I have the sense I need to be praying for someone or something, but don't know what the needs may be.

But God's Word assures me that when I pray in Jesus' Name, sometimes doing nothing more than lifting up to heaven "the Name that is above all names," the Holy Spirit turns my incoherent longings and my helpless faith into a prayer that moves God, changes the world, and changes me. By invoking the Name of Jesus, I entrust people and concerns to the One Who knows what needs to be done and will do it.

Just say Jesus!

5 Thoughts on Prayer for the New Year

The beginning of a new year is often a time when people resolve to have a more active prayer life. But through the years, I've seen people who make this resolution with sincerity find it tough to pursue. So, here are a few thoughts on prayer to help you have a fulfilling prayer life.

1. Remember that prayer is a lot simpler than you may think. "What should I say?" people have asked me.

Jesus says that He calls those who follow Him and obey Him by trusting in Him for their salvation are His friends (John 15:5; John 6:29).

So, ask yourself, "How do I talk with my friends?" Before you get together with your friends, do you sit down and put together an agenda?

Formal, public prayer may sometimes require more forethought and planning. But if the God made known to all the world in Jesus Christ is your friend, just talk with Him.

2. Remember that prayer is a lot more complicated than you may think.

I love something C.S. Lewis writes in his classic, Mere Christianity:

An ordinary Christian kneels down to say his prayers. He is trying to get in touch with God. But if he is a Christian he knows that what is prompting him to pray is also God: God, so to speak, inside him [God the Holy Spirit, Who comes to us in Holy Baptism]. But he also knows that all his real knowledge of God comes through Christ, the Man who was God--that Christ is standing beside him, helping him to pray, praying for him. You see what is happening. God is the thing to which he is praying--the goal he is trying to reach. God is also the thing inside him which is pushing him on--the motive power. God is also the road or bridge along which he is being pushed to that goal. So that the whole threefold life of the three-personal Being [the Holy Trinity, one God in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit] is actually going on in that ordinary little bedroom where an ordinary man is saying his prayers. 

Every prayer we offer is an instance of God empowering us to militate against our inborn impulse to self-sufficiency and self-will. And that is a complicated miracle of grace. Never lose your wonder at that!

3. Remember that it's likely your most genuine, authentic praying will happen when you are so overwhelmed by your circumstances that you don't know what to pray. 

The Bible teaches that God's power is brought to bear perfectly in our lives when we are strong enough to admit our vulnerability and weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9).

This is why Ole Hallesby, a great Lutheran pastor and teacher of the last century, said that there are two elements that must be present in order for prayer to actually be prayer:

• faith in the God revealed in Jesus Christ and 
• helplessness, the realization that only God and not we ourselves can make happen the things for which we pray.

Don't put off praying if life has you so overwhelmed that you don't know what to say to God! Romans 8:26 in the New Testament says:

...we do not know how to pray as we ought, but...[the Holy] Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words...

Go to God. God will take care of the rest.

4. Nothing you pray about, no request you make, is stupid.

As you continue to submit to God, He may show you through His Word, the Bible, and through counsel consistent with the Bible that you hear or learn in other ways, that some of your requests as ill-advised or even contrary to the will of God.

But never be afraid to speak your mind and heart to God!

Someone, Bill Hybels among others, has said that, as Jesus promises, God always answers prayer offered in Jesus' Name. But God may answer our prayers in four different ways:

• God may say, "No"
• God may say, "Maybe"
• God may say, "Wait"
• God may say, "Yes"

Maturity as a Christian is, in some ways, measured by the grace with which we accept God's answers to our prayers. Our spiritual maturity is maybe most challenged when God says, "Yes" to our prayers. (More on that some other time.)

5. It's good to keep God's priorities for prayer in mind. When God in the flesh, Jesus, was asked by His disciples how to pray, He gave as a model what we call, "the Lord's Prayer" or the "Our Father."

The prayer is divisible into sections and prayer petitions, as Martin Luther does in The Small Catechism:

• The introduction: Our Father, Who art in heaven
• The first petition: Hallowed be Thy Name
• The second petition: Thy kingdom come
• The third petition: Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven
• The fourth petition: Give us this day our daily bread
• The fifth petition: And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us
• The sixth petition: And lead us not into temptation
• The seventh petition: But deliver us from evil
• The conclusion (added by the Church, based on Scripture): For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen

Among the sins from which Jesus came to free those who believe in Him is the tyranny of self. He wants to free us from our penchant for allowing our own sin-tinged desires and inherent selfishness to dictate what we ask from God.

The Lord's Prayer represents a way we can ask God to move us away from selfishness to holiness in our praying.

The introduction and the first three petitions are all about God's Name and will being honored by the world and us. It isn't until the fourth petition that Jesus teaches us to pray for something for ourselves and even then, He doesn't tell us to pray for a iPad or a Mercedes-Benz, but what we need this day to live.

Seeking to have our prayer lives reflect the kind of concern for God and for others that Jesus models in the Lord's Prayer is a good goal.

I'm still working on that myself and, because I'm a sinner saved only by the grace God grants to those who surrender to Jesus, I no doubt will have to continue working on it until the moment I draw my last breath on earth.But some goals are worth pursuing no matter how outrageous the odds!

Prayer (Part 2 of a 4-Part Series)

[This was shared during the 10:15 worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

Matthew 6:7-15
Sometimes, at the end of a youth group devotion or during a Catechism class unit, I’ll ask a young person if they would offer a prayer. Honestly, I don’t do this to embarrass anybody. Maintaining any good relationship entails the commitment of time and energy and communication. This is no less true of our relationship with the God we know through Jesus Christ. So, I want to encourage young people to feel that they can talk with God any time without flowery or pretentious language.

The fact is that whenever any of us pray, no matter our age, no matter if we offer our prayer publicly or privately, we may get a little tongue-tied or experience brain-freezes or become totally confused by life. I know that’s true for me!

Fortunately, those who believe in Jesus and approach God in prayer in Jesus' Name know that their prayers don’t have to be perfect. Romans 8:26 says: “[God’s Holy] Spirit also helps us in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us [that means, the Holy Spirit speaks up for us] with groanings which cannot be uttered.”

Whenever we’re overwhelmed by life, knowing that we need God, but not knowing what to pray, we not only have the advocacy of the Holy Spirit, though. We also have a pattern for prayer that Jesus has given to us. It’s what we call the Lord’s Prayer.

Last Sunday, using the version of the Lord’s Prayer found in the gospel of Luke, we looked at what we call the introduction and the first and second petitions of the prayer. Today, we’re going to consider the third, fourth, and fifth petitions, the next three things Jesus says you and I should be seeking from God when we pray.

Please turn to Matthew 6:7-15 in your Bible. Slide down to verse ten of our gospel lesson, where we find the third petition of the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy will [or Your will] be done.”

In instructing us to pray in this way, Jesus isn’t asking us to ask God for anything that He Himself wasn’t willing to pray for or live with. You remember that before He was arrested, tried, and murdered for our sins, Jesus prayed in the garden of Gethsemane: “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.” Even when He knew with perfect clarity all of the suffering that the Father's will would bring to Him, Jesus prayed that God's will would be done.

Jesus is teaching us here that there’s more to being a Christian than cashing in on His promise to give new and everlasting life to those who believe in Him.

That's because believing in Jesus is more than accepting the propositions that He is God the Son or that He died for human beings or that He physically rose from the dead. As the New Testament book of James says: “You believe that there is one God; you do well: the demons also believe, and tremble.”

When Jesus says that all who believe in Him will be saved, He means that all who entrust their whole lives to Him will be saved. Those who trust Jesus are the people who can say (or are willing to ask God to help them to pray) things like this:

• “Here is a sin of which I’m really fond and over which I feel I have no control, God. But I accept that when You and I disagree about what’s a sin, you’re right and I’m wrong. Help me to resist temptation to sin in this way.” 
• Or, “Lord, I really want this job or want to keep this job. But if You have some other plan, Your will be done.” 
• Or, “I want to be with this person. But if You say, ‘No,’ I’ll do what You want.” 

Sometimes, of course, God’s will may not be entirely clear to us. But know this: God will never will us to do what is contrary to what He has revealed about Himself in the Bible.

When we feel unclear about God's will for us, we also have a promise from Jesus. As we live in relationship with Him, seeking His will in prayer, and reading God’s Word in the Bible, Jesus says in John 16:13 that the Holy Spirit will guide us in truth. In fact, the closer we grow to Christ, the more God’s will and our will get in sync.

The fourth petition of the Lord’s Prayer represents a shift in emphasis in the prayer. Up to this point, Jesus has instructed us to pray for things that are helpful to us both today and in eternity. Here, we begin to ask God to things that are important to us today. In Matthew 6:11, Jesus teaches us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.”

Martin Luther reminds us in The Small Catechism that Jesus has in mind here more than just the bread or food we need day in and day out, but everything we need to live every day.

But, we may wonder, why should we have to ask God for what we need each day? When I was a kid, I didn’t have to go to my parents and say, “Hey, Dad! Hey, Mom! You remember those three square meals you gave me yesterday? I’m going to be needing something similar today.” They knew I needed food, water, shelter, an education, medical care, love, and other things every day. They didn’t have to be reminded.

God doesn’t have to be reminded of our needs, either. He knows them better than we do ourselves. Jesus teaches us to pray in this way, I think, for three reasons:

First: So that we will remember and acknowledge that no matter how hard or ingeniously you and I may work, all that we have comes from God.

People may say (as I've sometimes heard them say), “I work hard for everything I have. What does God have to do with it?”

The answer to that question is simple: Where did the brain and the brawn you use to do that work come from? And who is the ultimate source of all the things you work so hard to attain?  These are gifts from God! James 1:17 in the New Testament says: “Every good and perfect gift is from above, and comes from the Father...”

Second: We pray, “Give us this day our daily bread” to teach us contentment.

There’s nothing wrong with ambitions, wanting to achieve great things, living up to our God-given potential, or trying to provide for our families’ needs.

But it’s also important to remember, as the New Testament tells us, “we brought nothing into this world and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and clothing, with these we shall be content.”

How much of what we work so hard to get can be categorized as “needs” and how much as “wants”?  So often, the reason we focus on our "wants" is because of a basic insecurity we have about ourselves, a need we feel to justify even taking up space in the universe. At other times, we focus on what we want because, like Adam and Eve, we want to "be like God" and feel a sense of entitlement to superiority over the "normal people" of the world.

In the prayer from the book of Proverbs that made up our first Bible lesson for today, we read: "Give me neither poverty nor riches—Feed me with the food allotted to me; lest I be full and deny You, and say, “Who is the Lord?' Or lest I be poor and steal, and profane the name of my God" (Proverbs 30:8-9)

A third reason I think that Jesus teaches us to ask God for our daily bread is to remind us to share our abundance with others.

God has engineered this planet so that there is more than enough of everything that all six-billion of earth’s inhabitants needs. Jesus teaches that God “makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” Those with plenty--including plenty of knowledge on how to create sustainable agriculture in inhospitable soils and climates--are told by Jesus’ commandment to love God and to love others as we love ourselves, to share our plenty with those who have little. There’s plenty of daily bread to go around if we will simply share with one another.

In the fifth petition, Jesus teaches us to pray, “Forgive us our debts [or trespasses], as we forgive our debtors [or those who trespass or sin against us].”

Of all the petitions in the Lord's Prayer, this one may be the most counter to the ways our culture thinks. The prevailing thinking of the world is illustrated by the title of the best-selling album in the United States this past week: God Forgives, I Don't by hip-hop artist Rick Ross.

If being told to pray, “Thy will be done” (“You take control, God”) makes us wince, being told to pray, "Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us," may absolutely make us want to throw our hands up in despair!

Does Jesus want us to pray that God will forgive people who have hurt us, robbed us, gossiped about us mercilessly, lied to us? More than any of these things, actually, Jesus commands us to forgive people like these who have made our lives miserable!

Look at what Jesus says in Matthew 6:14-15 of our gospel lesson: “...if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”

Jesus isn't saying that if people have hurt us, we have to keep placing ourselves in situations in which they can hurt us again. He is saying that if we want the forgiveness and new life that His death and resurrection can secure for all who repent for sin and believe in Him, we must forgive, we must let go of our resentment and bitterness.

It’s a homely illustration I’ve used in sermons before (and even during the Bible study at Von Bora Circle this past week), but think of what Jesus tells us here in this way. Imagine that you’re going through your life holding onto all your grudges and resentments. As long as you’re holding onto those, refusing to forgive others, you cannot grasp the hand of Jesus offering you forgiveness for your sins and pulling you to eternal life with God.

Letting go of our resentments does not come naturally to us. You and I are born in sin, which means that if there is anyway that we can lord it over others, feeding our fantasies of being morally superior, to being “like God,” in some way, we’re inclined to exploit those opportunities. But that’s the way to death.

We think that by holding grudges we’re in some way imprisoning or hurting the people we refuse to forgive. But the opposite is true. Someone has said, “Bitterness is like drinking poison and waiting for another person to die.”

Unforgiven sin kills. Jesus has opened up the possibility of forgiveness and new, everlasting life to all who will repent and believe in Him. So, why would we want to throw away eternal life just for the momentary--or even lifelong--satisfaction of feeling superior to someone who has hurt us?

Sometimes bitterness, an unholy superiority complex can sneak up on you.

I may have mentioned the experience I had one day while praying. Something just didn’t seem right. I felt physically and spiritually exhausted. “God,” I said, “what’s wrong?”

At that moment, I refused to fill the silence with my words and instead just waited on the Lord. You know the promise of God in Isaiah 40:31: “Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength...” Or the words of Psalm 46:10: "Be still and know that I am God."

After a few moments, God whispered to my soul in the silence. I knew what was wrong. Bitterness had infected my relationship with someone. I asked God to forgive my sin and to help me forgive the person with whom I was bitter.

Like everyone, I suppose, I still find bitterness and an unforgiving spirit sometimes welling up within me. But I’ve found an effective antidote, a supernatural cure for my natural impulse to sin. Whenever I find myself harboring bitterness toward anyone, I pray for them. I ask God to bless them. I ask God to show Himself to them that day and to help them to feel loved by Him. I militate against my sinful orientation and ask God to help me see things His way and to live His way.

I’ve heard that you can’t hate someone for long if you pray for them. I’ve found that to be true.

And Jesus says that you can’t claim the love of Christ if you’re not willing to throw away bitterness. That’s why Jesus teaches us to pray, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

An authentic prayer life will include the elements Jesus teaches in the third, fourth, and fifth petitions of the Lord’s Prayer. We pray to God:

• “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” 
• “Give us this day our daily bread,” and 
• “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” 

May God teach us all to pray in these ways.

By God’s grace, we’ll talk about prayer more next Sunday.