BIBLE SHARING – THE DISCIPLE’S PRAYER Mathew Chp. 6:9-15
THE LORDS PRAYER- OUR FATHER The Lord's Prayer is not a child's prayer as it is so often regarded, it is infact not meaningful for a child. The Lords is specifically and definitely stated to be a disciple's prayer, and only on the lips of the disciple has the prayer its full meaning. In other words the Lords prayer can only really be prayed when the man knows what he is saying and he cannot know that until he has entered discipleship. We must know the order of the petitions in the Lord’s Prayer: The first three petitions have to do with GOD and the glory of GOD. That means God is first given the supreme place, then and only then we turn to our desires and ourselves. It is only when God is given His proper place that all other things fall into their proper places. Prayer must never be an attempt to bend the will of God to our desires. Prayer ought always to be an attempt to submit our will to the will of God. The second three petitions have to do with our needs and necessities. The second part of the prayer asks for bread, which is necessary for maintenance of life and thereby brings the present to the throne of God. Secondly it asks for forgiveness and thereby brings the past to the presence of God. Thirdly it asks for help in temptation and thereby commits all the future in the hands of God. In brief we are taught to lay the present, the past, the future before the footstool of the grace of God. That doesn’t mean that it brings the whole of life to the present of God, but it brings the whole of God to our lives. When we ask for bread to sustain our earthly lives, our thoughts are immediately directed to God the Father the creator and Sustainer of Life. When we ask for forgiveness, that request directs our thoughts to God the Son, Jesus Christ our Savior and Redeemer. When we ask for help for future temptation, our thoughts are directed to God the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, the Strengthener, the illuminator, the Guide and Guardian of our way. Thus in all, the lord's prayer takes the present, past, and the future, the whole of man's life and presents them to God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit to God in all his fullness. Our Father in heaven : Who art in Heaven The great value of this word Father is that it settles all the relationship of this life. When we discover that God to whom we pray has the heart of the father it makes all the difference in the world. We can rest in our father’s love. To call God Father, is to settle our relationship to the world in which we live. God is the Father of all the nations. The Lord’s prayer teach us to pray as ‘Our Father” and not as My Father cause Jesus came to take I, me and mine out of life and instead He put we, us, and ours. God is not any mans exclusive possession. STORY – ROMAN EMPEROR – AND HIS LITTLE SON Story: Old Roman story, which tells how a Roman Emperor was enjoying a victory. He was on the march with his troops. The streets were lined with cheering people. His family was also there on a platform. As the Emperor came near his little son jumped off the platform and ran to meet his father. One soldier picked him up and told him that you can’t run to the chariot in which the Emperor is sitting. The boy said he may be your Emperor but HE’ MY FATHER. That’s the way we should feel about God our Father. God is not an easy going parent who shuts his eyes to all sins and faults and mistakes. This God we must approach with reverence and adoration, awe and wonder. When we say our Father in heaven, we place side by side the love of God and the power of God. HOLY BE YOUR NAME A person who is holy is separated from other people. Difference - Church and other bldgs. Altar is holy – table – We should treat God’s name differently from all other names and give a position, which is unique. We should give reverence to God and believe that God exists. So when we pray HOLY BE THY NAME we give God the unique place which His nature and character deserves. We must reverence God not only because he exists but also because He is the God whom we know Him to be Full of Holiness, justice and Love. THY KINGDOM COME, THY WILL BE DONE ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN We find that Jesus spoke about Gods Kingdom in three different ways. 1. He spoke of the kingdom existing in the past with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Luke: 13:28/ Math 8:11). 2. He spoke of the present, the kingdom of God is in midst of you (Luke 17:21). 3. He spoke of the future, teaching men to pray for the coming of the kingdom. To be in the kingdom is to obey the will of God. The most important thing in the world is to obey the will of God, the most important words in this world are Thy Will Be done. Therefore a man should accept the will of God gladly and willingly no matter what that will may be. The Christians can always be sure of 2 things about God. God is the expert in life and his guidance can never lead anyone astray. He can always be sure of the love of God. St Paul said that He who did not spare his own Son but gave Him up for us all, will he not also give us all things with him. (Romans 8:32) No man can look at the cross and doubt the love of God and when we are sure of the love of God it is easy to say thy will be done. GIVE US THIS DAY - Our daily Bread The bread has been identified Firstly as the Lords Supper Secondly as the spiritual food of the word of God and Lastly as Jesus Himself as the Bread of Life- Eucharist God cares for our bodies and Jesus showed us this by healing mens’ diseases and satisfying their physical hunger. This petition teaches us to pray for our daily bread, bread for the coming day. It teaches to live one day at a time and not to worry and be anxious of the distant and the unknown future. This illustrates the story of the manna in the wilderness ( exodus16:1-2). In the Wilderness, the people were allowed to collect only enough Manna for one day and on the SABBATH for 2 days, otherwise it would go bad and worms would form, so that they could not eat it the next day. It is God who gives us food, which is necessary to support life. This petition reminds us of how prayer works. If a man prayed with this prayer and then sat and waited for bread to fall into his hands, he would certainly starve. It reminds us that prayer and work go hand in hand and that when we pray we must go on to work to make our prayers come true. There was a man who had a plot of land, who with great toil reclaimed the piece of ground, clearing away the stones, eradicating the rank growth of weeds, enriching and feeding the ground, until it produced the loveliest flowers and vegetables. One evening he was showing a pious friend around his plot. The pious friend said "its wonderful what God can do with a bit of ground like this, isn’t it? 'Yes" said the man, who had put in such toil, "but you should have seen this bit of ground when God had it with himself!" God’s Bounty and mans toil must combine. Prayer like faith without works is dead. When we pray this petition we are recognizing 2 basic truth 1. That without God we can do nothing. 2. That without our effort and our cooperation God can do nothing for us. It is not only through prayers that we receive our daily bread but also that we share our daily bread with others. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us (Mathew 6:12,14 and 15) The trouble is that most people have a wrong conception of sin. They would readily agree that the drunkard, adulterer, burglar, the foul-mouthed person is a sinner. But they are guilty of none of these sins; they live decent ordinary and respectable lives. They therefore feel that sin has nothing to do with them. Jesus says in the plainest possible language that if we forgive others God will forgive us but if we refuse to forgive others, God will refuse to forgive us. Therefore if we pray this petition with and unhealed breach, an unsettled quarrel in our lives, we are asking God not to forgive us. Forgiveness would be very much easier for us if we tried to understand before we allowed ourselves to condemn. Sometimes it is difficult to forget a particular event that has happened in our lives and whenever we think of that event thus saying that I can’t forget of what that person has done to me can be dangerous cause we can in the end make it humanly impossible for us to forget. We can print the memory inedibly upon our minds. To forgive is the sign of a great mind and to forget is sublime. Nothing but cleansing spirit of Christ (Holy Spirit) can take away these memories of ours and the old bitterness we must forget. We must learn to love. That love can come to us only when Christ, who is that love, comes to dwell in our hearts and he cannot come unless we invite him. To be forgiven, we must forgive and that is a condition of forgiveness which only the power of Christ can enable us to fulfil. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from all evil - To modern ears to tempt is always a bad word, it means something eveil. New Testament usage to tempt a person is to test his strength and his loyalty and his ability for service. (Gen 21:1). (Math 4:1). Temptation is not designed to make us fall; instead it is designed to make us stronger and better men and women. We are meant to emerge stronger and finer. Satan comes to stand for everything, which is anti man and anti God. It is from this ruining power that Jesus teaches us this pray to be delivered. If a man wakes up and finds his house on fire, he does not sit down or read a treatise on the origin of fires in private houses, he sets out to try to extinguish the fire to save his house. Thus the bible equips us to fight the battle against evil which is unquestionably there. Sometimes the attack of temptation comes from outside us, whose influence is bad. In a tempting world a man should be very careful in his choice of friends and of the society in which he will move. It is one of the tragic facts of life that temptations can come to us from those who love us and from all types of temptations this is the hardest to fight. But temptation not only outside us, it comes from inside us also. In every one of us there is some weak spot and that weak spot temptation launches its attack. At our weakest and our strongest points we must be upon the watch. There is simple defense of self-respect. A man may escape many things but he cannot escape himself, he must live with his memories and if he has lost his self-respect life becomes intolerable. A man sat by the door of his house smoking his pipe and his neighbor sat besides him and tempted him telling that man that he was poor and without a job and he had a way of bettering his job. He tried tempting him to do some evil ways of earning his living. Just at the same time the man's wife gave the small baby in his hands as she had some other work to do. And as the man was holding the baby at his knees, the baby’s eyes was speaking to the man saying ‘ I am the flesh of your flesh, I am the soul of your soul; where you lead I will follow, lead the way my father my feet comes after yours. Then said the man to the neighbor Go away and Come no more. A man may be perfectly willing to pay the price of sin but if he remembers that the sin will break someone else’s heart, he will have a strong defense against temptation. There is the defense of the presence of Jesus Christ. Jesus is not a figure in the book; he is a living presence. The whole point of Christian faith is that Jesus Christ is besides us and he is a guest in every home. His is the inescapable presence and therefore we must make our life fit for him to see. We have the strong defense against temptations in the memory of the continual presence of Jesus Christ. _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp **************************************************************** This mail is generated from JOYnet, a Jesus Youth mailing list. To unsubscribe, send a mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe to this mailing list, visit http://www.jesusyouth.org/joynet For automatic help, send a mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] In case of any issue related to the mailing list contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] ****************************************************************
