The Lord’s prayer is one of the many passages in the Bible most everyone knows, along with Psalm 23 and John 3:16. With this series, I’m going to jump right into it and dig for some of the treasures that can be found. Some of you may never have thought of some of these things while citing it. Some of you may not even know what most of it means. I’m going to try to explain it, for you, and for myself.
What is prayer? You may have never asked yourself this question before, or perhaps it’s just obvious. But if the disciples had to ask Jesus how to pray, I’m sure it’s more than just talking to the ceiling, going through the motions, and pleading to God to fix whatever mess we’re in.
Jesus gave us everything we’ll ever need in the Lord’s Prayer, and the very first words Jesus says are “Our Father.” Let’s pause. Notice that Jesus didn’t say “My Father.” He says “Our Father.” The sad thing is, in our current day and age, so much focus is on us, and on our own needs and desires. It’s all my dreams, and my life, but Jesus didn’t say that, when praying, it would just be you. Prayer and worship weren’t meant to be solo, it was meant to be a community.
Jesus knew how much we needed each other when He began the prayer. Even God Himself isn’t alone. He’s a trinity, a community, and He’s called us into a relationship with, not only His community but with the body of Christ, the church. I hear a lot of people say things like, “I’m not spending my time with him/her. Jesus is all I need.” To say Jesus is all we need is great, but He didn’t call us to live in Him and abandon those around us.
The truth is, we need each other, for a number of reasons, but I think the most important is that without each other, how will we learn to love the way Christ did? How will we fulfill what God has called us to do? How can we learn to live like Jesus did if we’re not forced to love another before ourselves? When we say we don’t need anyone else in our lives, I think it’s because honestly, we’re afraid to lay down our own desires to serve another. For me personally, I know that’s the case. And in marriage between, not only a man and woman but between God and the church, it’s all about putting the other before oneself, which is what Jesus had been doing all along.
I know it’s easier to live for ourselves. To live in our own world and desires. We put ourselves on islands and separate ourselves from the mainland. But as Mike Donehey from the band, Tenth Avenue North said, “To experience the divine, we need to come off our islands, and onto the shore.”
So it’s not just you and God, it’s all of us, and when joined by a union, that’s when the power of prayer begins to take shape the way God planned it to be.
God Bless and let’s come over to the shore today.
Our Certain Joy 