Tuesday, March 5
Scripture: Matthew 6: 9-15
Our Father in heaven,
may your name be kept holy.
10 May your Kingdom come soon.
May your will be done on earth,
as it is in heaven.
11 Give us today the food we need,
12 and forgive us our sins,
as we have forgiven those who sin against us.
13 And don’t let us yield to temptation,
but rescue us from the evil one.
14 “If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. 15 But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.
Some thoughts:
In Jesus’ teaching trilogy of living the Christian life of, giving, praying, and fasting, have you noticed two recurring words? “When you . . . give, pray, fast,” do it in private. Don’t advertise or make a production out of your spirituality. In today’s devotional, right after Jesus talked about the importance of praying, he gave us an example. Notice the similarities between the ancient Jewish prayer the Kaddish and the prayer he taught his disciples. The Kaddish originated during the first century. Jesus may well have known the Jewish prayer which developed not in synagogues, but in the house of study, the beit midrash. It is interesting that Jesus’ is teaching the disciples how to pray in response to their question to learn how to pray. Did you notice how he enlarged a bit on the forgiveness side of things? He knows how hard it is for people to forgive each other and then gives us an example. He begins, “Our Father in heaven . . .” He makes a point of reminding us of whose we are at the same time reminding us of the existence of another world we cannot see. Here is the Kaddish prayer of Jesus’ day.
Kaddish
Magnified and hallowed be His great Name in the world which He created according to His will.
May He establish His Kingdom in your lifetime and in your days, and in the lifetime of all the house of Israel speedily and in a near time. And say ye, Amen. May His great Name be blessed forever and to all eternity.
Perhaps it may be wise to think a little more carefully than we sometimes do in our approach to praying. We’ve all been in situations where someone’s public prayer seemed to be more clever than heartfelt. It might be that “God, we ask you to . . .” may not be the most thoughtful, respectful way to address our Creator. “God” is not meant as a punctuation mark. Notice the way Jesus addresses his Father in John chapter seventeen. He is always mindful of who he is and who his Father is. Certainly, there are times when a prayer is as short and urgent as “Help, Lord!” How we address our prayer can be a great reminder of the one to whom we are conversing. Though Jesus is our friend, he is also our Redeemer, our Savior, our Intercessor, our Master, which does not make us an equal. The Father is our Creator. The Holy Spirit is our Teacher. In his prayers, Jesus was always very aware of the Father/Son relationship. That kind of awareness is perhaps something we can tune our hearts to in our prayers. Just some things to think about,
Music: “The Lord’s Prayer” Andrea Bocelli
Prayer:
Play the Lord’s Prayer again and let Andrea’s voice be yours as you pray.