A Lent Adventure
“As you listen to birds calling to one another, hear also My love-call to you. I speak to you continually: through sights, sounds, thoughts, impressions, scriptures. There is no limit to the variety of ways I can communicate with you.” Sarah Young, “God Calling”.
One morning while listening to the birds outside my window, I glanced down to my devotional page, and read Young’s thoughts. I was amazed at the “coincidence”. The variety of birdsong outside my window often amazes and sometimes annoys me. I find the sound of mourning doves especially obnoxious, which made me wonder: Do I sometimes find God’s love call equally uncomfortable?
A psalmist describes God’s limitless love:
“Your love, Lord, reaches to the heavens, Your faithfulness to the skies. Your righteousness is like the highest mountains, Your justice like the great deep.” Psalm 36:5-6.
Do I allow that kind of love to reach me? Or do I willingly sabotage God’s advances by ignoring or putting a limit on what He is trying to show me. Am I available to Him? How do I actively limit God’s limitless speech?
After all, I’ve been a Christ-follower for fifty years. I should be good at communing with God.. I’ve had plenty of time to practice. I’m worship leader for my church. I have a daily prayer time which includes Lectio 365. I take seriously my job to allow God to make me a better me… all the time. I retreat. I read. I facilitate events. I pray with others.
But. Am I willing to stop to listen. Am I willing to slow down to hear God’s thoughts and express my own thoughts to Him? Not usually. Normally sometime during the day I pray for my family and friends, praying especially for those who are in crisis. But. Am I willing to stop? Listen? React to what I hear?
Christ, the Son of God, often spent time with His Father; notably in the wilderness before the start of His ministry and in the garden before His ministry’s completion. The gospel of Luke mentions Jesus praying 26 times, also mentioning that Jesus often stepped away from His disciples to spend time with His Father. Jesus’ mission on earth was to fulfill the wishes of His Father. He understood the necessity of prayer in order to receive instructions before His busily went about doing His Father’s will.
Christ’s disciples understood how much time and effort Christ put into His link with God. One of them was jealous enough of this time to ask Jesus to share His thoughts on how to talk with the Father. Jesus’ words, known as the “Our Father” and “The Lord’s Prayer” are passed down to us in the bible, a central part of Christian worship.
If you are my age the LORD’s prayer may have been the third prayer you memorized as a child, after “God, is good, God is great …” and “Now I lay me down to sleep.” Though many of us recite the prayer more often in church than at home, Christ carefully outlined it’s use. Before He spoke it to His disciples, He said,
But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
The prayer is to be an act of devotion: private and rewarding, used as a template for deeper communication between God and us.
When Jesus said, ‘This then is how you should pray,’ He asked his disciples to utilize the prayer more as a guide than a destination, a template for further thoughts and conversation with God.
Our Father, Who art in heaven is a prompt to pause, acknowledge God, and let go of thoughts which may prayer.
Hallowed be your name is an invitation focus deeply on God’s character, acknowledging His majesty.
Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven is an opportunity hear God’s will and to align our will with His.
Give us this day our daily bread invites us to pray about our most practical needs and for the needs of others.
Forgive us our sins is a challenge to name the ways in which we have sinned in order to receive forgiveness.
As we forgive those who sin against us reminds us to acknowledge that we’ve been hurt, pray for the desire to reconcile with those who have hurt us, and ask for the determination to make things right.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, a call to acknowledge our temptations and allow God to make us aware of spiritual warfare happening around us.
For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever reminds us that God is in control and has the power over the world. It nudges us to continue praying unanswered prayers.
Amen
Praying through the Lord’s Prayer in this way allows us to embark upon personal adventures of adoration, petition, intercession, confession and spiritual warfare.
Martin Luther articulates it this way,
“To this day I am still nursing myself on the Lord’s Prayer like a child, and am still eating and drinking of it like an old man without getting bored of it.”
I encourage you, along with me, to “eat and drink” on the Lord’s Prayer during this Lent season. Let’s look at the Our Father phrase by phrase, and thereby increasing it’s power in our lives. We’ll find ourselves connecting directly with God, enjoying times of worship, relinquishment, repentance and forgiveness.
Assignment:
Other than in the Bible, the earliest mention of praying the Lord’s Prayer is in the Didache, written between 70 AD-90 AD; also around the time the gospels were written. After reading claims of which was written first (the gospels or the Didache), which quotes which, etc., my head spins. That is a side note.
It is suggested in the Didache that Christians pray the Lord’s Prayer three times daily. Our first assignment is to attempt praying the prayer the way the earliest Christians prayed it: three times daily. A current world suggestion: Set an alarm for your mid-day prayer time!
Leave a comment