Praying through the Lord’s Prayer, Part 2

Now, if you were with us earlier, welcome back. And if this is your first session, you're right on time. Welcome. I'm going to call your attention to the two circles on your handout. We went through this earlier, so these guys, the guys who were here in the first session, are officially now prayer trainers. You guys are going to help the folks who are here for the first time. All right, you're going to facilitate as we go along.

If you look at the two circles, the first circle that Leslie mentioned is the one that has the darker one that has self in the center, and it's called default prayer. And you'll see under that the default prayers constrict our capacity for God and others, and yet they are our default. Why is that? It's because we have this tendency we looked at in the last session to have our souls curve in on themselves.

It started in the garden in Genesis 3, when the serpent came into the garden and sidled up next to the lady and said, “Hi, pretty lady, how you doing?” And he twisted the truth. She said, “God told us not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” And he said, “What happens if you do that?” And she said, “Well, God says we'll die,” and he's like, “You will not surely die. Come on.”

And she, instead of relying on the word that was outside of her—the truth that she had gotten directly from God—she turned in on herself and made her own self-assessment and said, “The apple looks good, good for food. And the serpent told me it's desirous to make me wise.” Well, wait a minute, she was already wise. Why was she wise? She didn't need additional wisdom. She dwelt directly with Wisdom himself. But she believed the lie, and turned it in on herself.

And so we see that our default position is actually to pray the opposite of what the Lord's Prayer is, unless the Holy Spirit intervenes. So the soul curves in on itself, and Augustine said the idea is—the Latin term is incurvatus in se—constantly turning in on ourselves. Like if you've ever planed chocolate for a cake, you know the coil that it makes. That's us. We just turn in and in: “Make a name for me, my kingdom come, my will be done.”

Now, the other circle shows the prayer that Jesus taught in Matthew 6, and again in Luke 11, when the disciples asked, “Lord, teach us to pray.” They'd been watching this guy, and they noticed that his prayers aren't like the prayers of their religious leaders. Their prayers aren't like the prayers of the leaders when they're in the public square, who are praying to be seen. His prayers aren't like their prayers. They're not focused on the immediate and “this thing that I need, this thing that I need, I must have,” or “this thing I want to do.”

So when Jesus teaches them to pray through His prayer, He begins to reorient them—and us—from this turning in. So we see in the very first . . . we're going to look at this over the course of the next hour, in terms of the seven petitions that God gives us in the Lord’s Prayer.

He gave us this prayer; He reorients us from “me,” even from the very first word: our—our Father. We can be confident, as John writes in his first letter, that when we ask according to God's will, he hears and answers. In Luke 11, Jesus promises that the Father gladly gives the Holy Spirit when we ask. So as we pray, God answers around us and enlarges us in our minds and in our souls and by his Spirit.

So in session one, we traced each petition, and in this session, we'll walk around the same wheel, but this time we're going to do it a little bit differently. We're going to hold it against everyday life—our life-defining, life-controlling concerns and issues. Is there a bigger conversation today, challenged on every point, than the idea of identity, reputation, ambition, decisions, provision, relationships, spiritual conflict?

So for newcomers today, this is your on-ramp. For returners, this is your chance to deepen. Think of this as some kind of spiritual physiotherapy. It's going to retrain your reflexes.

So let's start with the . . . 

First petition: Our Father in heaven—identity and belonging, from isolation to adoption. 

Jesus starts us in a family, both in Genesis and in the new covenant. In Ephesians 2, Christ tears down the dividing wall, making one new humanity defined by Him—appreciating all our cultural differences, all our ethnic differences, all our tribal differences, all our language differences—but He is the center of our identities. Revelation shows that this family, this multitude from every nation, gathered before the throne. These are our people. These are our people. And it's not just around the world today. It's a historical line that goes on and on and on—a gathering in of people harmonized by Jesus Christ.

Paul says in Romans 8 and Galatians 4 that the Spirit teaches us to speak and cry out with family language: Abba, Father.

So the default position, the way the self makes us want to pray: I'm on my own. I got to secure myself. Secure my position. The kingdom reorientation says: I am a daughter. I am held by the Father from Genesis to Revelation. I don't care what you think about anything Jesus has said. If you must accept this one thing, He is going to do what He says He's going to do, and He is going to keep a people for Himself, and we are a part of that people.

So we can start our day at the top of the Lord's Prayer, saying: I'm a daughter, held by the Father, joined to His daughters and His sons. And we can begin our day by saying, Our Father, and let God's Spirit expose hidden tribalism or hidden superiority and knit us in our minds once again to the church.

Second petition: Holy is Your Name—reputation and worship.

We can move from the default position of self-branding to holy reverence. You know, proving yourself is exhausting. Sometimes we occupy spaces where you’ve just got to keep proving yourself over and over and over and over. It's maddening. Genesis 11 shows Babel grasping to make a name for itself. God answers in Ezekiel 36, saying He will vindicate the holiness of His great name among the nations. And Peter echoes the call. He says, Be holy in all you do, because the Holy One has called us. Psalm 115 teaches the counter reflex: Not to us, O Lord, but to Your name be the glory.

So the default position gets reframed. We move from polishing our own image to magnifying God's character—His mercy, His justice, His faithfulness in the places where I live and move and work and have my being.

Third petition: Your kingdom come—ambition versus mission.

From my platform to Christ's reign, Jesus turns our longing from my kingdom come, my will be done to the King’s saving rule. In Acts 1, He points us to the Spirit’s power and the gospel spread from our Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. And in Matthew 9, He says, The fields are ready, and He urges us to pray for the laborers. And then in Luke 11, He reminds us that the Father delights to give the Spirit so that we can do this work.

So we move from make my life work for me to let Your life work through me. And kingdom prayer names people and places and homes—home addresses, classrooms, offices, councils—and it asks for conversions and reconciliations, eoria and syntax and justice and mercy.

Petition four: Your will be done on earth as in heaven—decisions and desire.

Now we get to decisions and desire. In heaven, God's will is done gladly. It's done promptly, and it's done wholeheartedly, without conflict. On earth, oh, we clutch our own way. We grasp and crawl and move. And we see in Gethsemane in the garden, in Matthew 26, Jesus prays what I called in the last session—I really believe this is the most dangerous prayer of the Bible. Jesus prays, Not my will, but Yours. And as my sweet, charismatic friends say, you pray that prayer—anything could happen. So you better buckle your seatbelt, because God’s going to show up, and He's going to show out, and He's going to do things beyond what our little brains had imagined He would do.

So we default. That is—we treat God as a consultant: What do you think about this, Lord? Well, I may or may not do it that way. The reorientation is trusting Him fully as Lord.

Petition five: Give us today our daily bread—provision and contentment.

Now, now we get to provision and contentment. We move from anxious scarcity to dependent generosity. You know, greed wasn't a part of the garden story before Genesis 3. Everybody had what they needed. They had enough. They didn't have to steal from anybody else, because they had enough. God had given them everything they needed to flourish in the garden.

Listen to the plural in that phrase again, because it brings us back to reminding us that we're a community: Give us today our daily bread. It's not Give me. Give me what I need, Lord. You know, there's a—there's a . . . my husband has a funny translation of the two sisters in the Bible. This—it's their leeches, right, in Proverbs? And his interpretation—this is the Carl International Version, the CIV . . . maybe it's the Carl Standard Bible, I don't know—but his interpretation of the leech has two sisters, and their names are Gimme, Gimme. That's not—that's not what's going on here.

Give us today our daily bread. In the wilderness, God trained Israel with manna. They had what they needed. Proverbs 30 prays, Give me neither poverty nor riches. And James reminds us every good gift comes from the Father of lights. Paul tells the Corinthians, God makes grace abound so that we can abound in every good work. And he tells the Philippians he has learned contentment in plenty and in want.

Look at the redemptive benefits of being in union with Christ in Ephesians chapter one. The Lord says, I have given you all. The church has been given all she needs to live the life that He's called us to live. The Greek word passe—all, everything, all benefits, all of them now belong to us. So He's not miserly.

So we move from the default drift of hoarding and hurry and self-reliance. The kingdom reorientation is asking as children and sharing as stewards, so we can ask God for what we need, name one need of a sister, and ask for the grace to be the answer to someone else.

This one's hard . . .

Petition six: Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors—relationships and reconciliation.

So we move from self-justifying to cross-shaped mercy. Women mentioned in the last session that the cross is hard. Jesus brings us to the cross daily. He says, If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive and cleanse. And yet, how we withhold from each other.

Paul urges in Colossians 3 that we bear with one another and forgive as the Lord forgave us. Jesus is plain in Matthew 6: an unforgiving spirit chokes our enjoyment of the Father's forgiveness. In Matthew 18, He tells of the servant forgiven a fortune who then throttles his neighbor by the neck over pennies.

So our default is to nurse our grievances and rehearse our injuries, but the kingdom reorientation: forgive as we are forgiven—we practice reconciliation. We tear up the old invoices of the ledger of our hearts. And don't get me wrong here, don't misunderstand: forgiveness isn't pretending that the wound never happened. Wounds must be tended to. Wise boundaries may need to remain, but bitterness will separate us from the forgiveness that we understand we've already received.

It—our debt has been canceled. We can release those who we feel owe us. You know, the Lord took care of both of these realities at the cross. We call what I would call alien sin—those are the sins that are heaped on us, the sins of others that are thrown on us unjustly. But there's also indigenous sin—there's the hurt that we have placed on other people. And we both, all of us, have both sides of the same coin. Why? Because we're human. But He took care of both realities at the cross.

Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Or, if you're traditional: Forgive our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. He wiped them both clean. I'll use today's sociological parlance: there's hope for both the oppressed and the oppressor in God's kingdom. There's freedom for both realities.

Petition seven: Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil—vigilance and perseverance.

Here we get vigilance and perseverance. We move from naivete to watchful courage. And I sang this last one, so I'll sing it here. Jesus knows our every weakness. Take it. Take it to the Lord in prayer, right? And He knows we are weak. He knows our frame. He made us.

In Matthew 26, He tells His friends, Watch and pray so that you will not enter into temptation. He doesn't say, Pray so you won't enter into temptation. And He doesn't say, Watch. He says, Watch and pray. They are active—both active. And if somebody tries to tell you that prayer is not active, you tell them: prayer is action.

James explains that God never tempts us, and the lure rises from our desires. We get to John 17, and He asks the Father to keep His people from the evil one. So He's already prayed—actively prayed—for us to be able to resist, and then He also has mercy and forgiveness when we can't, and we repent and we come back.

Paul assures the Corinthians that with every temptation, God provides a way of escape. And in Ephesians 6, He sets out the armor that God supplies.

So the default position is: I can handle it. I can get close to it. I can take this fire in my lap and not be burnt.The kingdom reorientation is: Father, guard me, because I know I can't.

So this is the horizon of the prayer, and most of us close with the ancient doxology: For yours is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever. Whether we say it or simply live it, that sentence is the horizon. It's the atmosphere of Christian prayer.

So do you see the movement? Do you see how the petitions reorient us away from self and put our focus on Christ? It's not that we're ignoring the mundane—everything, everyday things of life. Those things are tangible. Life hurts. Life affects us. We can have hopes in life. We can have hopes in the earthly realm, but we see them better when we first look up and then look outward.

That's what the Lord's Prayer accomplishes for us. And when we pray, as Jesus taught, we move from that heart curled in on itself to the heart opened upward and outward to our neighbors. So we practice not to earn God's ear, but because in Christ, we already have it.

So let's practice, shall we?

All right. This is where the folks who were here at the first session get to be the facilitators. If you find yourself, we're going to break up into groups of three or four, no more than four. And here's the instructions: we're going to give quick first names. If you're new, pick the petition that most tugs at you. If you stayed from session one, either choose a different petition or revisit the same one and go a little bit deeper—no crime in that. Choose one petition. You only have to choose one—you don't know.

Some of the folks were trying to work through all seven, and I was like, Oh, God bless you. You can work through them. From the handout, choose one petition in your group and talk through it—what you're thinking, what the Lord is showing you. You're going to have 15 minutes. I'm going to put 15 minutes on the clock.

My friend Carolee—she's already a certified prayer trainer with us—she's going to walk around and just sort of drop into your small groups. Get into groups of three or four. Just turn around, right where you are. Do your quick introductions. Here are your ground rules: wait a minute now, don't love each other yet. Hold on. Hold on. Stop. Stop it. Stop the love. Stop the love. Hold on.

Got to have some ground rules: sentences, not speeches. Okay? No counseling. This isn't a counseling session. Pray more than you talk. When we get to the prayer time, remember confidentiality. Okay, you can pray the backstory rather than telling it. God already knows the details. But we're going to talk with each other for 15 minutes about where we see this curved-in default in these petitions—whatever petition you've chosen today—and what would a kingdom reorientation look like for you this week.

Okay? Okay, now you can love each other.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow.
Praise Him, all creatures here below.
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host.
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
Amen.