SOG | Still: Becoming More Attentive (Less Distracted) People

 

"Calm and Stars" by Yongung Kim

From the time we were children
we were told to "pay attention,"
as if this were
the simplest thing in the world.

But in fact attentiveness is one of
the most difficult concepts to grasp and
one of the hardest disciplines to learn.
For we are very distractible people
in a very distracting world.

Yet,
God wants us to be attentive people,
as He is an attentive God.

+ Leighton Ford

This is something I'm trying to remember again as I seek to receive each day as a gift full of abundant life. What would life look like if I were less distracted by lesser things than those I am called to love and enjoy right now? How would I inhabit time with God and others, being more fully present in an abundant way of life?

One practical way I try to do is to listen to people provide their answers to these questions:

(1)
History
"Tell me your story."
"Where did you grow up?"

(2)
Heart
"What's your favorite
(team, restaurant, vacation)?"

(3)
Habits
"What are you into?"
"What do you do with your free time?"

(4) Hurts
"How are you doing with
(name the situation)?"

+ B.L.E.S.S. Like Jesus:
Listening Closely & Paying Attention

Another way I enter into the holy wild of questions like the ones above is considering the concept of time in relation to chronos and kairos in order to grow in the qualities of attentiveness:

Chronos & Kairos Time 

The most vital way to measure our lives is not by chronological time – chronos time, to use the Greek word – but in terms of kairos, the word often used in the Bible to speak of those opportune times that become turning points. Kairos is the word Jesus often used when He said, "My time is not yet," or "My time has come." 

To be fully alive is to pay attention to kairos encounters. ... 

Many of the words of God in the Bible call His people to "look," "see," "listen," "give heed." Jesus (as paraphrased by Eugene Peterson in The Message) said in His Sermon on the Mount, "Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now" (Mt 6:34). 

 

The Qualities of Attentiveness 

+ Being fully present in the moment. 

+ Looking long enough. 

+ Looking freshly at what is familiar. 

+ Being available. 

+ Becoming aware. 

+ Waiting with expectancy. 

+ Being mindful. 

+ Being wakeful.

+ Receiving Sabbath 

And, last but not least, in order to see how the attentive way of life is written into the story of humanity, I return again to the Story of God we all get to live into today if we have eyes to see and ears to hear.

Creation
God creates, playfully, purposefully – out of nothing – space and stars, sun and moon, light and darkness, dandelions and donkeys, whales and kingfishers, and a handsome couple. And then He doesn't get bored: He sees everything He has made and takes delight in it. And instead of standing at a distance, He comes to visit His creatures in a garden in the cool of the evening.

Crisis
Sadly, things don't go happily ever after. Still, when Adam and Eve are not mindful of Him and the good boundaries He has set, He doesn't walk away and wash His hands. He walks in the spoiled garden and calls "Where are you" – still paying attention (see also Godspeed: The Path to Being Known & Loved Fully). Later He does wash the whole world He made with a flood. But even then He is paying attention, starting the creation all over again with one man and his family and an ark like a menagerie of animals. Not one escapes His attention! 

Covenant
God pays attention to one nomad, Abraham, and makes him a father of nations. Pays attention to the cries of slaves, and makes Moses pay attention to a burning bush so he will heed the call to lead them out. And this God looks with insight as well as sight. Why does God choose David as the king of Israel? While the people choose leaders because they look attractive on the outside, God looks on "the heart." He sees that this shepherd boy, who pays attention to stars and sheep, also knows that "the eyes of the LORD are on the righteous, and His ears are attentive to their cry" (Ps 34:15 NIV). Fast-forward through the centuries. Wayward as His people are, God never stops paying attention, until He comes up with the biggest attention-getter of all. The lens of the story moves in from wide-angle to close up. It zooms in on one unmarried virgin, who listens with her heart when the angel Gabriel comes to tell her that God is paying special attention to her.

Christ
God pays attention quietly. His Son is born not in a palace with fanfare and flares across the evening sky but in a manger, in the stillness of a Middle Eastern night. God sends His Son to live in His own creation and to seek our attention. He pays attention without clamor – to the fine smoothness of the wood He planes in the carpenter's shop ... to the words of God he learns from the ancient Scripture ... to the stirrings of His own young heart sensing that He must above all be about His Father's business.

When the time comes,
Jesus pays attention:

+ to the bronzed faces of the fishermen He calls to be with Him 

+ to the hardened faces of the tax collectors and offbeat characters He recruits to be His disciples 

+ to the longing face of an outcast woman by a well 

+ to the seeking face of a philosopher who comes to talk by night 

+ to the pleading face of one blind beggar by the road 

+ to the taunting faces of the soldiers who nail Him to the cross 

+ to the pain-wracked face of a thief dying beside Him on the cross 

+ to His mother, whom in His last moments He commends to the care of His beloved disciple John 

Jesus is the Great Attender!

And the mind with which He paid attention was the mind of His Father – the One who had been paying attention all along. "Don't you know," He said (here I paraphrase), "that God pays attention to one broken-winged sparrow when it falls? That He pays attention to the flowers in springtime? That He is so detail-oriented that He can tell you exactly how many hairs are left on your balding skull?" Once he painted a word picture of this God. "Don't you know that God is like a father whose no-account son has demanded his inheritance, left home and squandered it all on wine, women and song? But this father waits every evening at the gate of the village, peering into the distance, never for a moment forgetting that ne'er-do-well. And when the son drags himself home, broke and broken, the father sprints out to give him a huge hug, throwing for him him the biggest party you ever saw, giving him a brand-new wardrobe and the finest jewelry, as if he were the very best son a father could ever have. Don't you know God is like that? (see Lk 15) "No," his amazed listeners would say, "we have no fathers like that in our village. We would either declare such a son as dead to us, no son at all, or if he came back begging, put him on probation for a long time." To which Jesus would reply, so gently, so strongly: "But that is exactly what God is like. God loves like that. His love is focused attention. He does not force His attention on you. But He still longs for you."

Church
It is often been during the darkest hours that God gets our attention and teaches us to pay attention. It sometimes doesn't happen quickly, and the process can often be terribly painful, like groping through a dense fog toward a wavering and distant light. Still the light has burned on. And we are still learning the truth of the old hymn about God who "standeth in the shadows," keeping watch-care over His own. There were those who held on to us at those times when our faith was feeble – sometimes with a brief and honest word, more often just by being present with us. I have learned that God does not do His attending all by Himself. He has set the world up so that He has His "attendants" (i.e. His Church), namely you and me. He pays attention to us human beings so that we in turn may be the tenders of His world.

New Creation
God pays attention and call us to be a people who pay attention. He has put us here in His world as His gardeners, to tend it as He tends us, and as His shepherds, to watch over His people as He watches over us. 

+ "Attentive" Story of God

adapted from Leighton Ford's
The Attentive Life:
Discerning God's Presence in All Things

Bonus:
The God Who Attends to Us

The story of the Bible is not merely the story of a deity who launched the cosmos and then turned His attention elsewhere. Quite the contrary: it reveals a God who is mindful, who keeps paying attention, whose mind does not wander. He is a Father who watches with careful attention. This is the very nature of God, and a truth that touches the deepest longings of our lives. 

Bilquis Sheikh, a Muslim woman, was brought to faith in Christ by coming to know God as a loving Father (see "I Dared to Call Him Father: The Miraculous Story of a Muslim Woman's Encounter with God" for more). She describes the moment after a long search when this truth seized her imagination: "A breakthrough of hope flooded me. Suppose God were like a father? If my earthly father would put aside everything to listen to me, why wouldn't my heavenly Father do the same?" She went to her knees and reached over to her bedside table where she kept both the Bible and the Qur'an. Lifting them, one in each hand, she prayed: "Which, Father? Which one is Your Book?" And then a remarkable thing happened ... I heard a voice inside my being, a voice ... full of kindness, yet at the same time full of authority. And the voice said, 'In which book do you meet Me as your Father?' 'In the Bible.' ... " 

The Qur'an that Muslims read uses many respectful terms to speak of the greatness of God. But it has no name for God as Father: For the devout Muslim to associate God with human beings in an intimate and personal way is to commit the sin of "shirk" – of associating God with what is not God. Yet a friend in Cairo has told me that his Muslim friends are deeply touched when he promises to pray to God for their needs – the Father who, as Bilquis Sheikh wrote, would "put aside everything to listen to me."

Becoming More Attentive:

+ Finding God in All Things

Christ is all,

Rev. Mike “Sully” Sullivan

Email Pastor Mike | Website | Visit Us | Support Us | Facebook Us

Our Father | Reflections on The Lord's Prayer by Pope Francis

How to Pray the Lord's Prayer (Our Father Prayer) on Hallow App

"I hope that in saying the Our Father,
every one of us will feel more loved,
forgiven,
bathed in the dew of the Holy Spirit,
and will thus be able in turn to love 

and forgive every other brother,
every other sister.
This will give us an idea
of what heaven is like."

+ Pope Francis 

The Lord's Prayer
is an abridgement of the entire Gospel.
+ Tertullian, early 200s A.D.

There may never have been
another prayer written
that was not already contained
in the Pater
("Our Father" or "Lord's Prayer").
+ Simone Weil

The real voyage of discovery
consists not in seeking new landscapes,
but in having new eyes.
+ Marcel Proust

Pray to the Father

Father. Without saying this word, without taking it to heart, we cannot pray. To whom do I pray? Almighty God? Too far away. I cannot feel that he is near. Even Jesus did not refer to God as "the Almighty God." Father. We have to pray to the Father! He is the one who accompanies us on our journey. He knows our whole lives, the good and the not-so-good. If we do not begin our prayer with this word, spoken not with our lips but with our hearts, we cannot pray as Christians. We have a Father who is close to us, one who embraces us. All of these anxieties, all of the worries we may have, let us leave them to the Father. He knows what we need. And he is our Father! 

I am not an only child; none of us is. And if I cannot be a brother, it will be hard for me to truly be a son of this Father. If I am not at peace with my brothers and sisters, I cannot say "Father" to him. Acceptance is not easy. But Jesus promised us the Holy Spirit. he is the one who teaches us, from the inside, from the heart, how to say "Father" and how to say "our." Let us then as the Holy Spirit to teach us to say "Father" and to be able to say "our," thus making peace with our enemies. Jesus shows us what it means to be loved by the Father and reveals to us that the Father wants to pour forth upon us the same love that he has for his Son from all eternity.

Our Father

The Our Father gives me a sense of security. I do not feel uprooted; I do not have the sense of being an orphan. I have a father, a "dad," who brings me a history, shows me how things work, takes care of me, and leads me forward. He is also a dad before whom I always feel like a child, because he is great, he is God, and Jesus asked this of us, to feel like children. God offers the security of a father, but a father who accompanies you, waits for you. 

I think that today the world has somewhat lost the meaning of fatherhood. It is a world sick with orphanism. Particularly in Western culture, the figure of the father is seen as being symbolically absent, vanished, removed. At first this absence was perceived as a form of liberation – liberation from the father-master, from the father as representative of a law that is imposed from the outside, from the father as censor of children's happiness and obstacle to the emancipation and autonomy of young adults. But now the problem in our day no longer seems to be that of the intrusive presence of fathers, but rather of their absence, their desertion. Fathers are sometimes so focused on themselves and their work, and occasionally on their individual fulfillment, that they forget their families. And they leave both younger and older children to themselves. Therefore, it would be good for everyone, for fathers and children, to listen again to the promise that Jesus made to his disciples: "I will not leave you orphans" (John 14:18). It is he, in fact, who is the Way to be traveled, the Teacher to be heeded, the Hope that the world can change, that love overcomes hatred, that there can be a future of fraternity and peace for all.

Who Art in Heaven

Perhaps one of the beautiful things
about our faith
is that it is not man
who goes in search for God,
but it is God
who sets out in search of man. 

"Heaven" means the greatness of God, his omnipotence. He is the first, he is great, and he is the one who has made us. "Heaven" represents the immensity of his power, of his love, of his beauty. Nevertheless, let us think about the God of Abraham, who draws near to him and says, "I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless" (Genesis 17:1). Keep looking up, move forward, believe, hope, and do not give up. God is very close.

A good father knows how to wait and knows how to forgive sincerely. Of course, he also knows how to give firm correction. He is not a weak father, a pushover, sentimental. The father who knows how to correct without discouraging is the same one who knows how to protect without sparing himself. Without the grace that comes from the Father who is in heaven, fathers lose courage and abandon the field. However, children need to find a father who is waiting for them when they return from their failures. 

Hallowed Be Thy Name

Psalm 131 says, "I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a child quieted at its mother's breast; like a child that is quieted is my soul." This is one of the many ways to hallow God's name: to feel like a child in his hands. 

God's name is mercy ... 
It is the wisdom of the simple
who know they have a father
who is always waiting for them.
God is not waiting for you
to knock at his door;
it is he who knocks at yours,
unsettling your heart.
He is waiting for you first.

I like to say it in Spanish:
Dios nos primera. 
He makes the first move.
God makes the first move.
This is mercy.

There are two requests that Jesus associates with the title Father: "hallowed by thy name" and "Thy kingdom come" (Luke 11:2). The prayer of Jesus, and therefore Christian prayer, is first a matter of making room for God, allowing him to manifest his holiness in us, and also advancing his kingdom through the possibility of exercising his lordship of love in our lives. 

Thy Kingdom Come

The kingdom of God is here and the kingdom of God will come. It is the treasure hidden in the field; it is the precious pearl for the sake of which the merchant sells all he has (Matthew 13:44-46). The kingdom of God is the good wheat that grows alongside the weeds, and you have to fight against the weeds (Matthew 13:24, 40). The kingdom of God is also hope; the kingdom of God is coming now but at the same time has not yet come completely. This is how the kingdom of God has already come: Jesus has taken flesh, he has become man like us, he walks with us, and he gives us hope for our tomorrow: "I am with you always, to the close of the age" (Matthew 28:20).

The kingdom of God
is something that belongs to us,
or rather, it is better
to think of it another way:
we must allow ourselves
to be possessed by the certainty
that it has come.
That is true Christian faith.

But at the same time
there is also the need
to cast the anchor there
and to hold on to the cord
because the Kingdom is still coming. 

"The protagonist of history is the beggar."
Perhaps Peguy said it.
The protagonist of history is the beggar,
but not only the material beggar
but ourselves too, spiritual beggars.
May your kingdom come, Lord,
because without you we can do nothing. 

To say "thy kingdom come"
 is to be a beggar.

Our feeble work may appear small
in the face of the complexity
of the world's problems,
but if embedded within God's work
it has no fear of the difficulties.

The Lord's victory is assured:
his love will cause to sprout
and grow every seed of goodness
present on the earth.
This opens us up to trust and hope,
in spite of the tragedy, injustice, 

the suffering that we encounter.
The seed of justice and peace
sprouts and develops
because it is ripened
by the merciful love of God.

Thy Will Be Done on Earth as It Is in Heaven

Perhaps there is an echo of what the world says today: "There you have it: the usual passivity of Christians; they accept everything that comes." In reality, I would dare say that doing the will of God is almost the opposite. It means making room for a God who permeates us, who draws us to himself. Jorge Luis Borges wrote: "In the cracks is God, who lies in wait."

For us there is a salvation history made of yeses and nos. At times, however, we are experts in the "half yes." We are great at pretending that we do not really understand what God wants and what conscience suggests to us. We even get crafty about it, and in order to avoid actually saying "no" to God we say, "Excuse me, I can't," " Not today, maybe tomorrow," "Tomorrow I'll be better, tomorrow I'll pray, I'll do good, tomorrow." These attitudes and decisions distance us from the "yes." They distance us from God and lead us to the "no," to the "no" of sin, to the "no" of mediocrity. All of this leads to closing the door on goodness.

Evil takes advantage
of the withheld "yes."
If we think about it,
we will find many
of these withheld yeses.

Instead, every full "yes" to God
gives rise to a new history.
Sin makes us old inside.
It ages us fast!
But saying "yes" to God
is literally original.
Let us keep in mind what "yes"
we should say to God today.

We will find within us
the voice of the Lord,
who is asking us for something,
a step forward.
We all need to say,
"I believe in you, I hope in you,
I love you;
may your will for good
be fulfilled in me."
This is the "yes."

Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread

All of this, in the kingdom of God as recounted to us in the Gospel, happens while we are seated at table. Jesus uses this image often. The kingdom of God is always a celebration; we are at table, so he gives us something to eat. Whether it is a special occasion or an everyday meal, we are at table. The power of God's presence in the world today is precisely at table, in the Eucharist with Jesus. This is why we ask that he feed all of us. Feed us with that spiritual food that strengthens us, at table in the Eucharist, but also feed everyone, in this world in which the reign of hunger is so cruel. When we pray the Our Father, it would be good for us to linger a bit over this petition – "give us bread today," to me and to all – and to think about how many people do not have this bread. 

Always someone is hungry and thirsty and needs me. I cannot delegate this to anyone else. This poor person needs me, my help, my words, my efforts. We are all in this together. This is also the teaching of the Gospel in which Jesus, seeing the many people who have been following him for hours, ask his disciples, "How are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?" (John 6:5). And the disciples responded, "It is impossible, it would be better for you to send them away. ... " Instead, Jesus says, "You give them something to eat (Mark 6:37). Jesus has them give him the few loaves and fish that they have with them, blesses them, breaks them, and has them distributed to all. This is a very important lesson for us. It tells us that the little we have, if we entrust it to the hands of Jesus and share it with faith, becomes an overflowing treasure. Pope Benedict XVI, in the encyclical Caritas in Veritate, affirms, "Feed the hungry is an ethical imperative for the universal Church. ... The right to food, like the right to water, has an important place within the pursuit of other rights. ... It is therefore necessary to cultivate a public conscience that considers food and access to water as universal rights of all human beings, without distinction or discrimination" (no. 27). Let us not forget the words of Jesus: "I am the bread of life" (John 6:35) and "If any one thirst let him come to me and drink" (John 7:37). These words are a challenge for all of us believers, a challenge to recognize that feeding the hungry and giving drink to the thirsty are a conduit of our relationship with God, a God who has revealed in Jesus his face of mercy.

And Forgive Us Our Trespasses as We Forgive Those Who Trespass Against Us

You will be able to forgive if you have had the grace of feeling forgiven. Once, when I felt that the Lord had forgiven me of so many things, I wept with joy. Still today, when I think back on how I wept and it is my turn to forgive, I say to myself, "There's no comparison; this is a small thing compared with the time God showed you great mercy."

The family is a big training gym for the mutual giving and forgiveness without which no love can last for long. Without giving of oneself and without forgiving one another, love does not last; it does not endure. One cannot live without forgiveness – or at least, one cannot live well, especially in the family. Every day we do wrong to one another. We have to take stock of these mistakes, due to our frailty and our selfishness. But what is asked of us is to heal right away the woulds that we cause, to repair immediately the threads that we break in the family. If we wait too long it becomes too difficult. And there is a simple secret for healing wounds and dispelling accusations. It is this: do not let the day end without apologizing, without making peace between husband and wife, between parents and children, between brothers and sisters ... between daughter-in-law and mother-in-law! If we learn to apologize right away and to forgive one another, then wounds heal, marriages become stronger, and the family becomes an ever more solid house, one that withstands the impacts of our wrongdoings large and small. And this is why there is no need to make a big speech. A caress is enough. One caress and everything is over; it is time to move on. But never end the day at war! If we learn to live like this in the family, we will do the same outside of it, wherever we find ourselves. It is easy to be skeptical about this. Many – even among Christians – think that this is an exaggeration. "Yes," they say, "those are beautiful words, but it is impossible to put them into practice." But thanks to God, that is not the case.

In fact, it is precisely in 

receiving forgiveness from God 

that we in turn
are capable of forgiving others. 

This is why Jesus has us repeat
these words every time
we recite the prayer 

of the Our Father, every day. 

And it is indispensable that, 

in a society that is merciless at times, 

there should be places, like the family, 

where we can learn to forgive one another. 

And Lead Us Not Into Temptation

This, "lead us not into temptation," is not a good translation. In fact, if we open the Gospel in the latest edition of the Italian episcopal conference, we read, "do not abandon us to temptation." The French have also changed the text, with a translation that means "Do not let me fall into temptation." I am the one who falls. It is not God who tosses into temptation in order to see how I fall. A father does not do this. A father helps his child get up right away. The one who leads us into temptation is Satan. That is Satan's craft. The meaning of our prayer is, "When Satan leads me into temptation, please God, give me a hand, give me your hand."

In a prison parish
the biggest temptation
with which Satan tries to seduce
the heart every morning
is to whisper, "Give up. 

Your imprisonment
doesn't change anything;
it's all a waste of time."
To despair, for me,
means to stop
looking at the face of Christ. 

It is also true, however, that when I am tempted I realize how much grace God has given me in my heart. Perhaps I would not have become aware of this if I had not been tempted. Where I come from, they always say that no on can boast of being chaste if he has never been tempted.

But Deliver Us from Evil

The Our Father concludes with, "But deliver us from evil." And at the juvenile prison on the island of Nisida, across from Naples, one young man gave me the gift of a touch confidence. "There is only one thing I repeat under the covers before I go to sleep at night: 'Lord, deliver me from evil." Hearing a sixteen-year-old say this made me aware of the real concreteness of evil. There is evil. Evil is not something intangible that spreads like the fog of Milan. Evil is a person, Satan, who is very cunning. The Lord tells us that when Satan is driven out he goes away, but after a certain time, when one is distracted, perhaps after several years, he comes back worse than before.

How did Jesus act with Satan? He drove him away, or, as he did in the desert, he used the Word of God. Not even Jesus ever began a dialogue with Satan, because if we start to dialogue with him we are lost. He is more intelligent than we humans are. He turns us upside down and makes our head spin. In the end we must say, "Be gone, be gone!" In the end, in fact, evil will be removed and eliminated. At the time of the harvest, meaning the judgment, the reapers will carry out the master's orders, separating the weeds in order to burn them (Matthew 13:30). On that day of the final harvest the judge will be Jesus, he who sowed the good wheat in the world and himself became a "grain of wheat," died and rose again.

The Lord's Prayer

As Simone Weil noted,
there may never have been
another prayer written
that was not already contained
in the Pater.

I am always amazed
by those timorous words
that the priest always speaks
before intoning the prayer:

"Obedient to the word of the Lord
and instructed by his divine teaching,
we dare to say."

That "we dare to say"
is wonderful, almost on tiptoe,
in hushed tones.
It is as if only together
could we find the courage
to say "Father."
Christianity cannot exist in solitude.

We do need courage to pray the Our Father. We need courage. What I say is this: we must humble ourselves into saying "Daddy" and to truly believing that God is the Father who accompanies us, forgives us, gives us bread, is attentive to all we ask, clothes us even better than the flowers of the field. To believe is a big risk. We fear. What if this all is not true? To dare, to dare, but we must do this together. This is why praying together is so beautiful, because we help one another to dare.

Excerpts from
Our Father: Reflections on the Lord's Prayer
by Pope Francis

More Posts on Lord's Prayer:

Praying Good News of Lord's Prayer  

+ N.T. Wright 

The Grandest Prayer of All  

+ Dallas Willard 

Ethical Implications of Lord's Prayer  

+ Anna Case-Winters

Soli Jesu gloria.

Rev. Mike "Sully" Sullivan

Email Pastor Mike | Website | Visit Us | Support Us | Facebook Us

Lent | Re-Learning How to Receive & Bless thru Jesus' Prayer

Notice that the prayer
that Jesus taught His disciples
seems to relate to five basic themes
of the human experience:

(1) identity: Who am I?
(2) purpose: Why am I here?
(3) security: How will I survive & thrive?
(4) community: How can I belong?
(5) freedom and peace:
How can I overcome
my temptations & suffering?

+ Mark Scandrette
Practicing the Way of Jesus

A Vision for Life in the Kingdom of Love

Do you think it's possible that Jesus may have taught His disciples to pray in relation to identity + purpose + security + community + freedom and peace because of the vision it gives for the life we were made for? 

Here is a picture of life that we get from the instructions of Jesus:

Identity 
"Our Father in heaven,
hallowed by Your name." 

Our Creator is present and caring. Who are we? We are intimately loved by a Creator who is closer than our very breath. We are not alone and we have not been abandoned. We are beloved and cared for simply because we are God's children. We don't have to earn, beg or appease God. We may have called another "Mother" or "Father," and they were a gift to reveal a glimpse of our true parent and our real home in the eternal Abba. We were created for intimate union with our eternal parent, sourcing our life from God's life. Nothing else can ultimately satisfy us. In faith we surrender to Jesus as our Savior and Teacher, trusting that the one who made us always has our best interests in mind. This is why we are invited to live and pray the words "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name." An apprentice to Jesus learns to find their primary identity in communion with God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

Purpose
"Your Kingdom come,
Your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven."

We were created to serve the higher purposes and healing heart of the eternal God. Why are we here? Look! All around us the Creator is at work liberating and restoring what is broken and inviting all people to return to their source. You and I were made to find our deepest joy and greatest satisfaction not from doing whatever we want, but in surrender to the Creator's desire and imagination. As Jesus said, we are the light this world needs (Matthew 5:14-16). We are agents of God's healing, justice and love – especially for the poor and weak and those who suffer. We don't have to be concerned about becoming the greatest or getting credit. The Father sees and knows the good work we do to serve in love. We can ask for God's reign to come to every place and person in our path and expect to see freedom multiplied. This is why we are invited to pray and live the words "Your Kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." An apprentice to Jesus learns to make the realization of God's creative and restoring work their highest priority.

Security
"Give us today our daily bread."

God's abundance supplies everything we need. How will we survive and thrive? We are sustained through the Creator's abundance. Our Maker delights in giving us what we ask for. We don't have to be greedy because the resources we need will always be provided. We can share what we have and what we receive. We don't have to worry or be afraid of anything, including the future or what will happen to us after we die. We don't have to be jealous of people who hoard things, thinking that we live only by what we can see. Knowing where true provision comes from, we are free to live generously with content and grateful hearts. This is why we are invited to live and pray the words " Give us today our daily bread." An apprentice of Jesus learns to rely on the resources the Creator provides.

Community
"Forgive us our trespasses | debts | sins,
as we also have forgiven our debtors."

Access to an infinite source of love can transform our relationships with one another. How can we belong? We are infinitely loved, having received an eternal source of love to share with others. We are forgiven by God, and are empowered to forgive whenever we are wronged. Broken relationships can be restored. We can live at peace with one another. Love frees us to live without anger, bitterness, lust or judgment. We can be authentic and honest with each other and keep our promises. We can love and bless the people who take advantage of us or even hate us – because love wins over all. This is why we are invited to live and pray the words "Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors." An apprentice of Jesus learns to love as we are loved.

Freedom and peace
"Lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one."

We can have victory over temptations and peace in suffering. What can we do about our temptations and sufferings? Be awake to God's presence and power here with us. We have the strength to overcome any obstacle. We don't have to be dominated by our feelings or impulses or the tyranny of rules and regulations. When we are weary, tired, stressed or sad we don't have to give in to habits or compulsions that we are destructive. We can overcome any temptation and endure any difficulty. Grace will meet us in the moment of our greatest weakness. We can have peace when we suffer. Nothing that happens can separate us from the eternal source of love. This is why we are invited to live and pray the words "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one." An apprentice of Jesus learns to practice self-denial and endure the difficulties that come from living in a divided world. 

One step toward experiencing
life in the Kingdom

is to pray for a vision

for what is possible

and to want what is possible.

It might help to speak these intentions:

I want to taste the intimacy

of being God's beloved child.

I want to collaborate

with God's creative and redemptive

work in the world.

I want to live without

worry, jealousy or lust.

I want to forgive and love

as I have been forgiven and loved.

I want to experience victory

over the temptations I struggle with

and feel God's peace when I suffer.

Faith Practice
Pray the Our Father + Lord's Prayer
for Someone 

If the Our Father | Lord's Prayer provides a summary of the life we have been created for, praying this prayer for another person can be a powerful way to train and express our desires for life in the Kingdom. 

Pray with someone through the phases of the Our Father | Lord's Prayer, working to personalize the words to fit their situation. For example, "God, you are ______'s true parent. Help ______ embrace their identity as Your beloved child, learning to be constantly aware of Your presence in each moment of this day."

Our Father in heaven

God, how do You want this person

to know the assurance
of Your love today?

Your Kingdom come,
Your will be done
God, what will it look like
for Your Kingdom to be revealed
in this person’s life today?

Give us today our daily bread
God, what specific provision
are You pouring out on this person today?

Forgive us as we also have forgiven
God, what are Your words of grace
to this person today?

Lead us not into temptation
What is the right path
You have laid out for this person
to walk today?

Deliver us from the evil one
How can I pray Your protection
over this person today?

Learn more about the Lord's Prayer:

+ Praying the Good News

by N.T. Wright 

 

+ What Heaven Is Like

by Pope Francis

 

+ Ethical Implications

by Anna Case-Winters 

 

+ Bold Missionary Focus

by John F. Smed 

 

+ Prodigal Comes Home 

by Wesley Hill

Christ is all,

Rev. Mike "Sully" Sullivan

Email Pastor Mike | Website | Visit Us | Support Us | Facebook Us

Persistently Bold Prayer | Practicing Jesus' Faithful Way

God is eager to give Himself to us. + John F. Smed, Disruptive Prayer

Luke 11:1 Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when He finished, one of His disciples said to Him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John also taught his disciples.” 2 Jesus said to them, “Whenever you pray, say, Father, Your name be honored as holy. Your Kingdom come. 3 Give us each day our daily bread. 4 And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves also forgive everyone in debt to us. And do not bring us into temptation.” 5 Jesus also said to them: “Suppose one of you has a friend and goes to him at midnight and says to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, 6 because a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I don’t have anything to offer him.’ 7 Then he will answer from inside and say, ‘Don’t bother me! The door is already locked, and my children and I have gone to bed. I can’t get up to give you anything.’ 8 I tell you, even though he won’t get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his friend’s shamelessly bold persistence, he will get up and give him as much as he needs. 9 “So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened to you. 10 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. 11 What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead of a fish? 12 Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? 13 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?”

When Jesus teaches His disciples how to pray, He assures those who do pray that God will give them the Holy Spirit: "How much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?"

The central answer to our prayer is God. 

Jesus taught, "Ask and you shall receive" after the Our Father | Lord's Prayer (Luke 11:1-13). When we pray using Jesus' guide to prayer, God's first answer is the gift of Himself, His Holy Spirit. As we pray, He increases our capacity for the gift of Himself and expands our hearts with a growing love for others. + John F. Smed, Disruptive Prayer

" ... I began, haltingly but really, to give up my confidence in any human adequacy and my own abilities. I tried to rely more exclusively on 'prayers and the supply of the Spirit' (Phil. 1:19 Miller) for the power to serve Christ effectively. Increasingly I saw myself as a desperately needy person, like the man who goes to his friend at midnight and says, 'I have nothing' (Luke 11:6). Before this, my problem in praying was that I had something – namely, reliance on myself, my training, my study, and my work. But the man at midnight has no bread for himself or for others. In his total need he forgets all sense of dignity. The standard translations of Luke 11:8 speak of the man's 'persistence,' but that is hardly what the original language indicates. A better translation would be 'shamelessly persistent' or even 'shamelessly pushy.' Once I began to pray boldly like this man in my hunger for God and His help, He began to impart to me in a new way the presence of the Holy Spirit. 

And that is the whole point of Luke 11:1-13 that compares bread and food to the Holy Spirit after the Lord's Prayer. God promises in Luke 11:13: 'If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!' What came home to me with power is the centrality of the Spirit's working for all of the Christian life and service. In my need I came to appreciate what Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck stresses in his excellent essay 'The Gift of the Spirit' in Our Reasonable Faith. He says that all the promises of Scripture – for protection, healthy, daily physical bread, etc. – find their root in the one supreme promise: the commitment of the risen Christ to impart the Holy Spirit as the power source for the Church in answer to prayer.  

In practice this meant for me that I began to pray for the Spirit's presence to be with almost everything I did. I especially began to pray with 'shameless boldness' for His working in our corporate prayer times (i.e. Sabbath gatherings, City Group prayer meetings, SLT meetings, DNAs, etc.). I also prayed for each person who was likely to come, for anyone who had a part in leading the prayer meeting, and for my own leadership during the prayer time. I asked God to give us His Spirit that we would know how to pray, that our hearts would be surrendered to His missionary will, and that we would leave the prayer meeting freed of guilt and fear and ready to witness fearlessly for Christ. In brief, my plea, based on the promise of the Spirit given in Luke 11:13, was for Him to meet with us and change us into a community of faith working through love. Frequently I asked the Father to visit us with His Spirit to equip us with three things:  

1. His self-forgetting love for others, 

2. His wisdom for praying specifically and intelligently, 

3. His boldness for prayer and risk-taking witness. ... " 

+ pgs 96-97, "The Praying Local Church" from Outgrowing the Ingrown Church by Jack Miller

North African St. Augustine said it best, "Prayer increases our capacity for God's gift of Himself." Our hearts expand until we share Christ's own passion for His Church and His sacrificial love for a lost world. 

We become what we pray. ... With the Our Father | Lord's Prayer, God lifts us and our prayers from the narrow confines of present urgencies to the majestic vision of the world reborn through answered prayer (Isaiah 66:9). 

The King's Strategy for Prayer by John F. Smed

"Our Father in heaven" | Increasing our capacity for God (less focus on self)

As we pray our Father in heaven, God answers, and it brings childlike love and trust to our soul. We begin to treat all people as created equal, having one God as their Creator. We are praying against tribalism, nationalism, and racism. Because God is the Redeemer Father of all believers, we become passionate for the unity of the Church. We call every believer in Christ brother or sister, and we gladly pray for them.

"Hallowed be your name" | Giving reverence to God (banishing idols, not needing to make a name for myself)

When we pray Hallowed be Your name, we gain a humble sense of awe at God's holiness. We are renewed in reverence and become jealous for His name to be honored and His fame to spread throughout the world. With this fuller vision of God, we experience new depths of repentance and new fillings of joy. We focus our resolve on proclaiming the fame and glory of God to those who do not know Him (Psalm 96).

"Your Kingdom come" | Rejoicing in Jesus' name and announcing the Good News of His Kingdom (instead of building my kingdom or merely blessing my plans)

As we call out from the heart Your Kingdom come, we rejoice in Christ's rule and reign, and we are captured by the majesty of His mission. As we go deep in prayer, Jesus gives us His heart for those who do not know Him. Our prayers are filled with zeal for His mission: "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest" (Matthew 9:37-38). As we pray, we move from being spectators to becoming participants in His mission. “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent Me, I also send you. ... 'Receive the Holy Spirit'" (John 20:21-22). As we pray, His purpose becomes ours: many people repent and come to Christ and renewal in the Church and renewal for our towns and cities follow (Zechariah 12:10-13:2).

"Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven" | God's will becoming ours including mercy and justice (from relieving just our struggles to relieving the world's struggles)

When we pray Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, a miracle happens within. God's will moves into our hearts. From within, we strive to accept His will, no matter how difficult things get. We learn to approve God's will as good and right and just; we resolve to act on His will in loving obedience. As we faithfully pray Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, we feel our souls burn with God's love of righteousness and justice: "What does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and walk humbly with your God?" (Micah 6:8). We move from being overwhelmed by the injustice of the world to becoming agents of its renewal. Our Kingdom prayers bring justice and mercy to realization. We become God's answer to our own prayers. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry, and He will say, ‘Here I am.’ ... If you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted ... you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in (Isaiah 58:9-12).

"Give us this day our daily bread" | receiving contentment, simplicity, generosity (releasing worry for present urgencies)

As we request of God to give us this day our daily bread, we trust in firm assurance that we will have enough supernatural and natural resources for ourselves and plenty to care for the poor and needy. Our hearts become generous, and our needs modest. We are filled with the Spirit of wisdom, revelation, and thanksgiving. We learn from Him contentment and generosity. We don't just talk about helping others in need, we start doing it, giving our time and releasing our resources and opening our homes to the poor, displaced, disabled, immigrant, or otherwise outcast.

"Forgive us our trespasses, debts, sins as we forgive others'" | releasing grudges and debts against others (stopping quarrels and conflict avoidance)

When we humbly pray forgive us as we forgive others, we are asking God to impart His Spirit and grant redemptive community. God gives us a deep inner peace as we accept and enjoy His forgiveness. Whether in the Church or in the world, we begin to treat others with humility and grace. As we bow in humble repentance, asking God to forgive us, He makes us agents of reconciliation.

"Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one" | receiving guidance and power in spiritual advance (overcoming challenges and defeat)

When we pray lead us not into temptation, God fortifies our soul against the incessant temptations of the world and the devil. We do not pray about spiritual warfare. Prayer itself is spiritual warfare. We are not overwhelmed or fearful because Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8), and indeed He did. At the cross, He dealt the death-blow to the evil one. We join others praying against the predatory and immoral actions of those who deceive others, who use all manner of schemes to exploit people, from dishonest marketing to human trafficking. We cultivate godliness.

Read previous posts on the Our Father | Lord's Prayer:

+ Simply Good News | Praying the Good News of the Lord's Prayer by N.T. Wright 

+ Our Father | Reflections on the Lord's Prayer by Pope Francis 

+ The Lord's Prayer | God's Will on Earth in Us and through Us as it is in Heaven by Stanley Hauerwas 

 + Praying Jesus' Prayer | Receiving & Giving Abundant Life by Mark Scandrette

Soli Jesu gloria.

Christ is all,

Rev. Mike "Sully" Sullivan 

Email Pastor Mike | Website | Visit Us | Support Us | Facebook Us