The Lord's Prayer

Acts is getting boring ... Paul is so predictable: share in the synagogue, share in other spiritual places, make tents, heal people, see many join 'The Way', almost get killed, leave because of persecution, come back to encourage believers, constantly mentor new leaders, and then repeat.

So I'm moving on for a day to another thought ... a thought about where Jesus might have said something that ties it all together, some words where he might have given us some condensed view on how to orient our life. My mind drifted to the Lord's prayer, and the more I thought about it the more it made sense. I've always viewed it as instructions on how to pray, but never taken it to the next step. If it is how we should pray, it would also logically be how we should orient our lives before God. Our communicating with God should be a reflection of real life ... not just pretty words.

In short, the prayer orients life this way: 1) God's nature, 2) God's purpose, 3) Our nature, 4) Our purpose. The order is important. If you skip steps by putting our purpose before his or our nature before his, life doesn't make sense. Also, if we put purpose before nature, we get screwed up. But, in this brilliant order, everything makes sense.

So here it goes ...

First, God's nature:

Our Father who art in heaven ...
We must start with the fact that God exists, that he was before us, that he lives in the heavens which are the air around us. His presence is here, as near to us as the air we breathe and the sky we look at. If we don't know this, there is no use in moving on.

Hallowed be thy name ...
Second we must know that God's nature is to be glorified. Life does not make sense unless we realize it is all about God. Everything is about his honor, his name, his glory. This seems contradictory to a loving God at first, until you realize 'who else would you want God to be all about?'. Being primarily concerned with His own glory is the most loving thing he could do for us, because He is himself love.

Then God's Mission:

Thy Kingdom Come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven ...
His mission is to expand his kingdom (the place where what He wants done is done) in the lives of men and women. It is to see men and women transformed into the people he designed them to be, and at the same time to see this transformation spread across the face of the earth to people everywhere.

All of that and we just now get to us! Our Nature:

Give us this day our daily bread ...
Just as God's nature is to be self-sufficient and glorified. Our nature is to be dependent. We are very needy. It is so clear that life can not possibly be about us. We also see that physical needs matter on this earth.

And forgive us our trespasses ...
Just as we are dependent physically on food. We are dependent spiritually on God's forgiveness. It is interesting that our spiritual nature is summed up by forgiveness. We so easily want to turn that into something else.

And finally, our purpose:
As we forgive those who trespass against us ...
We finally get to our mission. Our first mission is to take the love and forgiveness of God and to join in His mission by expanding where his will is done. We do this by showing love and forgiveness to others.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil ...
The rest of our mission ... to be transformed individually and corporately into His will - to be delivered from evil.

So that's it. I don't know if it will help you, but it has helped me. Jesus was so simple. When we are confused, we can go back to this, pray it, but more than that, we can use it to reorient our life step by step to the orientation that matches with the way things really are.