"...He gave us the Lord's Prayer...What I hear him saying is, stop babbling all your requests as if God needs persuading to be generous. As Archbishop Trench once said, 'We must not conceive of prayer as an overcoming of God's reluctance, but a laying hold of His highest willingness.' Get to know your heavenly Papa. Realize He's unapproachably holy and lives far away in heaven, but He is closer to you right now than you are to yourself." (Crabb, The Papa Prayer)
I just read and prayed the Lord's Prayer and then prayed it again. I'm astounded by its simplicity and by the pleasure it brings to my spirit. I grew up with a King James version of the Bible and in comparison, the Message version of the Scripture is stripped of all formality, it's short and to the point. This teaching of Jesus to the disciples does not complicate nor fussy up nor demand anything. It is freeing, it is unlocking the door (Luke 11:52) to a relationship with our Papa.
"...Jesus wants us to be crystal clear about who it is we're coming to. Our Papa is the holy God of heaven. If it weren't for Jesus we'd never even imagine conversing with God and calling Him Papa. Rather, the scene would resemble a courtroom.... But Jesus changed everything.
"We cry out, 'Give me the bread I need to strengthen me to carry out Your mission.' With His bread and His mission on our minds, we realize we really don't need our son to turn his life around or our spouse to love us well. We don't need to fully recover from the recent stroke we suffered. We don't even need a job in order to do our part in showing others the way God relates to people. All we need is bread from heaven, the bread of life. We want those other blessings, but they're all second things. We don't need them to satisfy the deepest desire of God's heart and ours, or to achieve our mission....
"We don't always think that way, but when we do, we see that second things have become first in our affections. And our prayer life has been all about petitioning God to give us those second things. That realization leads to purging.
"We pray, 'Papa, I've not valued You as I should. Like the prodigal, I've wanted Your resources at my disposal more than I've wanted You.... Forgive me, I'm not worthy to sit on your lap.
"Then, with a clearer focus on who our Papa is and what He's up to, and with a humbling awareness of who we are and what we've been up to, we realize that a battle is raging in our hearts.... We know there is something in us that's attracted to the idea of promoting our kingdom, of doing whatever we can to change our spouse to treat us as we want to be treated, and of protecting ourselves from looking or feeling bad in all our relationships. And yet we say, 'Thy will be done, in this relationship, in the middle of this argument.' That's what we want to want. But we're not there....
"The Lord's Prayer shows us how to pray in a way that honors the purpose of prayer. It moves us toward abiding in Christ, toward becoming aware of His life in us, with its heavenly rhythm and purpose.... We want different things. We want what God wants. And we pray in the Spirit, as Christ did." (Crabb, The Papa Prayer)
Thank You, Jesus, for unlocking the relationship with Your Papa and ours. For not just giving us the knowledge and the how-to, but introducing us to the only satisfying relationship there is.
3 comments:
This is beautiful, Staci. Thank you for the reminder of the simplicity of the Lord's Prayer. And how we subtly turn it around to focus on ourselves, not God.
Two other passages stood out to me from this chapter:
"This is war, and there is no neutral ground. If you're not on my side, you're the enemy; if you're not helping, you're making things worse."
How often do we see "neutral" Christians in our culture...me included! But I'm realizing that Christ's call makes it clear - you're either helping or you're the enemy. Yikes! Convicting!
Also, loved Jesus' response to the woman who said "blessed is the mother who bore you":
Jesus commented, "Even more blessed are those who hear God's Word and guard it with their lives!" (Luke 11:23, 28 MSG)
Jesus acknowledges it is not about Him or His lineage that is important here...but about those who HEAR and OBEY His word.
Lord, help me to hear Your word and guard it with my life! Your Word is LIFE to my soul!
Staci - random question - would you be able to email me that entire quote from Crabb's book on Prayer. I have a friend who needs to hear that passage. I tried to copy and paste from the blog, but I'm not able to. If you have a sec, that'd be great. Thanks!
so beautiful. thanks for pointing us back to who God is and remembering the God that we are praying to as we pray, petition, thank, praise, adore, confess and worship Him! reminds me that i don't need my many words. He knows.
Hey Amanda! Yes, I'll send the passage to you from Crabb's book, Papa Prayer. We just got back into town last night so I'll try to get it to you as soon as I can.
Post a Comment