Our Father

11/17/2007

Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name.
Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

That’s the way I learned the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer. It hung in a large frame in our home when I was a child, having been crocheted by my great aunt, from the King James Version of the Bible. I must have subconsciously read it over and over until I had it memorized, because I can remember a rare Sunday that I spent in church back then…my brothers and I had been picked up by some “church-going folks” who had taken us to Sunday school since our parents didn’t normally go. One of the assignments in Sunday school was to memorize the Lord’s Prayer, and if we could then recite it we would win a prize. I had memorized it, that didn’t seem to be a problem, but what I remember being the problem was that I was too shy to stand up and recite it. So, I never did, and I never got the prize…or did I?

All these years later, I still remember that version of the Lord’s Prayer, with the “art,” and the “Hallowed,” and the “Thy,” but the New Living Translation I now read seems to better fit a more familiar relationship with the Father. It goes like this:

Our Father in heaven,
may your name be kept holy.
May your Kingdom come soon.
May your will be done on earth,
as it is in heaven.

Some slight changes, but with the meaning still intact. The main difference being, it’s personal to me now. When I was a child the only “Father” I knew lived in my home, with my mother. The only thing I really knew about Heaven was that my grandma would pray the simple prayer with me, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” I knew little to nothing about an eternal Kingdom coming soon, or what God’s Will might even be about— and I wasn’t overly concerned with any of it either. Life was good, I was well cared for and loved, and I probably saw little need for anything else. I do remember asking my mom one day if she believed in God, she said she didn’t, and that was pretty much the end of the discussion as I remember it. But I was only about eight at the time, so who knows?

My grandma would have probably been described by most as a religious person—she loved God, she went to church, and she probably bought me the cross necklace I remember wearing until the day I got into a fight with one of my brothers and it broke…that was the end of that. I had a Bible, which once belonged to my aunt, who died when she was fourteen. My grandma had given it to me when I was ten, which if I remember right, was the same age my aunt was when she had received it as a gift from her church. My aunt’s name was written in the Bible, and I remember being more curious about the notes she had hand written in the Bible than the Words of God it contained. I still have the Bible to this day, and I treasure it. It encourages me to give my own grandchildren Bibles, wondering if they will one day discover the precious Words God has left us with as I have—and perhaps they’ll still have it when they have their own grandchildren? So many thoughts and prayers that I have for them…

Prayers…the Lord’s Prayer…the one taught by Jesus to His disciples after He said, “…your Father knows exactly what you need even before you ask him!” (Matthew 6:8 NLT) So, why do we take the time to ask God for anything, if He already knows? What difference does it make? Can we really utter any persuasive words that will change God’s mind about things just because we take the time to pray? Sometimes it seems prayers have great power, sometimes it seems they vanish into thin air… What are we to make of it all, if anything?

There are many examples of prayers being answered in the Bible. In 2 Kings 20, there is the prayer of Hezekiah who had become deathly ill. The prophet Isaiah went to visit him, and he gave the king this message, “This is what the Lord says: ‘Set your affairs in order, for you are going to die. You will not recover from this illness.’” Wow! That seems pretty set in stone, wouldn’t you think? But Hezekiah prayed, weeping bitterly, and God sent another message to Isaiah. The Lord said, “Go back to Hezekiah…Tell him…I have heard your prayer and seen your tears. I will heal you…I will add fifteen years to your life…” As if this wasn’t enough for Hezekiah, he wanted a sign to prove that God had changed His mind!! That’s being pretty bold with God! But, he even got a sign. For proof, Isaiah asked Hezekiah if he’d like the shadow on the sundial to go forward ten steps or backward ten steps. Hezekiah replied, “Make it go backward instead.” And the Lord caused the shadow to move ten steps backward on the sundial.

What about an example of unanswered prayer from a man of God? How about David’s example when Bathsheba’s baby was deathly ill? In 2 Samuel 12, it is written that the Lord sent a different prophet, Nathan, to tell David that his sins had been forgiven, but his child would die. “David begged God to spare the child. He went without food and lay all night on the bare ground…then on the seventh day the baby died.” Why didn’t the Lord change His mind with David’s child as He had with Hezekiah? Both had a deathly illness, both were visited by a great prophet, but the results of their prayers were very different.

I have a very prayerful friend who prayed over our son, asking for more time when he was deathly ill. She truly believes God’s answer to her was, “You don’t understand, I’ve already given him more time.” I truly believe this was an answer from God—that Phil was given more time here on earth because of prayers said for him. Were we satisfied? Was Hezekiah satisfied with 15 more years? Eventually, we all will die…I don’t know if it’s ever easy for those left behind, or if the time has ever seemed like enough…even when God answers our prayers.

Consider Abraham’s plea over Sodom…listen to this:

…the Lord remained with Abraham for a while. Abraham approached him and said, “Will you destroy both the innocent and guilty alike? Suppose you find fifty innocent people there within the city—will you still destroy it, and not spare it for their sakes?”…And the Lord replied, “If I find fifty innocent people in Sodom, I will spare the entire city for their sake.” Genesis 18:22-24, 26 (NLT)

Abraham didn’t leave it there, he went on to ask the Lord if He’d spare it for forty-five people, forty people, thirty people, twenty people, down to ten people?

And the Lord said, “Then, for the sake of the ten, I will not destroy it.”
Genesis 18:32b (NLT)

Many of us have heard the story then of Lot being told to get out of Sodom with his family so they would not be caught in the destruction of the city. They were told to “Run for your lives!” And, “Don’t look back!” But, Lot’s wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt. (Genesis 19:26)

The strange ways of God…who can figure? Is God listening, is He paying attention, is He truly able to help, or to mend or to fix or to heal? He must be because even Jesus took the time to pray, and He had come down from Heaven to walk this earth. Jesus had been there when prayers ascended to Heaven, He had heard them, He must have known what the sound of our cries were like in the Throne Room and watched our Father’s response to them. He saw it first hand!

It is written about over and over in the Bible that Jesus, Himself being God, still looked to His Father for instruction, for help, for guidance, for comfort. Jesus even prayed for all of us, alive today, as we can read in John 17:20. And throughout the Bible, there are examples of answered prayers, and prayers that went seemingly unanswered. Jesus encouraged us to always pray, and taught His disciples that prayer is vital! During Jesus’ ministry on earth, He had been asked by His disciples why they couldn’t cast out an evil spirit? Jesus had replied, “This kind can be cast out only by prayer.” And yet, even Jesus didn’t get every prayer answered the way He would have liked it to have been—the greatest example of this was right before Jesus was arrested—He fell face down on the ground praying, “My Father! If it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me. Yet I want your will, not mine.”

God’s Will was the Cross for His Beloved Son.

What does this tell us about Our Father Who art in Heaven? Perhaps it tells us exactly what the Lord’s Prayer reveals, but we really don’t want to admit…that our Father is in Heaven, and His name is to be honored. That His Kingdom will soon come, and His will is done on earth, as it is in Heaven. We can plead our case—He gives us that right—and sometimes it will change the outcome, sometimes not. God will listen, and then He will decide, “Yay” or “Nay.” Like it or not…once again, this is HARD!! I think deep down we all realize that God is ultimately in control, but to boldly admit the truth of this is something else… To say we will love and serve a God who will do whatever He thinks is best, despite our pleas, is very difficult, although I believe when we do, it will take us to a new level in our relationship with Him. Are we willing to go there? Are we willing to let go of any and all control we think we might have, even trying to control God through our prayers?

The bottom line of this message really came to light for me through an e-mail I received about prayers being prayed, and how prayers are answered… I share this “realization” with permission:

It brought up those terrible memories of begging God for something that meant more to me than anything and endless nights of praying, days of praying, hours and free moments of praying begging, and He did what he already planned in the very beginning...my prayers didn't change His mind one bit.

How many of us have been there? I’ll be one of the first to raise my hand, as night after night I would lie in bed and pray for God to heal our son, and day after day we would travel the long journey of doctors and medicines and suffering. We don’t like it, and we’d like to throw a tantrum and stomp out of this scene! This is not the life we expected! But what we find is that God’s Will will be done, in Heaven and on earth. He will decide, and maybe it’s time we stop trying to “paint a pretty picture” of our Lord, and realize our prayers might not change His mind one bit. This is not being disrespectful of our Lord, this is coming to an understanding that we are not the ones in control, God is, and He reigns supreme and always will.

Do we want to believe in a God with that much power?
Or the better question might be, “Would we want to believe in a God with any less power than that?”

It reminds me of a story my daughter-in-law was telling me the other day… when she was a child and her mom needed to run some errands, she would tell her daughters to, “Grab a book and let’s go!” In the car they would climb, not always knowing the destination, but having to be there with their mom because things needed to be done. Perhaps our Lord is saying, “Grab My Book, and let’s go!” There are places He needs to take us, things that need to be done, and the only way to have patience on the journey is to have something to read that will comfort us when we would much rather be somewhere else—when it seems we are not being heard, but we’re simply along for the ride… Another friend just wrote this to me about praying:

My roller coaster comes and goes still, but when I remember to pray…the ride is smoother. How silly I still need to be reminded.

But don’t we all need to be reminded? Paul traveled extensively encouraging believers to continue in the faith, “reminding them that they must enter into the Kingdom of God through many tribulations.” In Acts 19, Paul is preaching in the synagogue. It says in verses 8-9, that he preached boldly for three months, arguing persuasively about the Kingdom of God. But some rejected his message and spoke against the Way, so Paul left the synagogue and took the believers with him. Paul then went on to preach at the lecture hall of Tyrannus for two years. Paul didn’t quit preaching because some didn’t like what he was saying…he believed God. Paul didn’t quit on God when things got tough, when he was beaten and jailed and persecuted and abandoned. He remained faithful; probably not understanding why God would not rescue him from all these terrible things, after all, he was devoted to GOD!! In Acts 19:11 it says that, “God gave Paul the power to do unusual miracles.” Did these miracles balance out the difficulties? We can only hope that they helped to encourage Paul when discouragement came to him…as it will to all of us.

The very same person who wrote to me about God not changing His mind one bit, also just called me last night, right after our 5.7 earthquake here in California. As she watched the clock tick towards the hour her son was born just a year ago, only to leave this earth very soon after, the earth shook just at the moment he had been born. Of course, she was not alone in feeling the earthquake, but she was alone in her thoughts about how God answers prayers when a child still dies—God knew the exact timing of her son’s birth and He caused an earthquake just at that moment one year later…what does this mean? We can’t really know, not here, not now, perhaps not until all things are revealed in Heaven one day, but we can know that God is in control, and we can be encouraged instead of discouraged through that. It is always good when thoughts turn towards God, as ours did because of this earthquake, and when she reminded me of this verse in Matthew:

At noon, darkness fell across the whole land until three o’clock.
At about three o’clock, Jesus called out with a loud voice,
“Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” which means “My God, my God,
why have you abandoned me?” Some of the bystanders
misunderstood and thought he was calling for the prophet Elijah.
One of them ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, holding it
up to him on a reed stick so he could drink. But the rest said,
“Wait! Let’s see whether Elijah comes to save him.” Then Jesus
shouted out again, and he released his spirit. At that moment the
curtain in the sanctuary of the Temple was torn in two, from top
to bottom. The earth shook, rocks split apart…
Matthew 27:45-51 (NLT)

We serve a powerful God! A God that doesn’t always do what we’d like Him to do…but then again, we don’t always do what our Father would like us to do either. I wonder why? Could it be that we were created in His image? We know we were, so perhaps God has given us the same privileges to change our minds, to be stubborn, to be both severe and kind as is written in Romans 11:22 (NLT) in describing God. Sometimes, especially with our own children, we make decisions that they despise!! They think we are being completely unfair, unreasonable, cruel, and that we just don’t understand!!! “Why do we have to go!!?” But, other times they see us as loving, kind, generous and more than fair when the journey is a trip to Disneyland! In all of it, we love our children and we want the best for them. It’s a strange mixture of elements that make up our parenting roles.

I think we’re all familiar with the statement, “This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you!” It sounds ludicrous to a child, but is it? Why would our Father make the earth shake when His Son died?

In walking and talking with a friend the other day, she was describing how pottery is formed on a wheel. She was taking a class to get a better idea of the Scripture that talks about God being the Potter, and all of us being the clay. She said that the clay that she was using was rough at first, and as she placed it on the wheel, and it spun around to be molded, it sort of hurt the sides of her hands. In attempting to shape the clay into something beautiful, it had to first have a lot of pressure put on it, and it was a bit painful for the potter. After a while, as the clay started to take shape, it became easier to mold and to trim and to sculpt into a vessel that could be put to some use.

I laughed as we talked, using that old phrase, “This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you.” But perhaps it is something to think about…how can it not hurt our Heavenly Father to have to discipline the children He loves, causing pain in our lives that we don’t fully understand…a pain that results in our thinking that He is a big meany! In Revelation 3:19, it is written, “Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline.” (NIV) That can’t be fun for God, any more than it is fun for us as parents!

We all probably thought our parents were big meanies at different times growing up. I remember when I was dating in high school; I was given a rule that I thought was unfair. I was not allowed to go to the drive-in movies. Of course, those were the passion pits of our day, and a “dangerous” place for teenagers to be. I remember arguing my case with my mom one day. I explained to her that if I wanted to do “something,” I wouldn’t need to go to a drive-in since the bottom line was that it wouldn’t stop certain behaviors if I chose them. I asked that I be allowed to go. My mom listened, and when I was finished, she said she would talk to my dad about it. A few days later she told me that the drive-ins were no longer off limits for me. This change in the rules must have been HUGE, and a rare occurrence, because I have never forgotten this!! I’m sure there were many, many times when I pleaded my case about things and I was given a NO answer, with the, “Because I said so!” emphatically tagged onto the end of it!! Sometimes with our parents, sometimes with God, our pleadings, our prayers, do change things. Sometimes they don’t! They are still our parents, and God is still God.

We don’t want to think the God we believe in is a big meany! We don’t want to think that He is unreasonable, or that He would ever hurt us, but sometimes in life when what we pray for is not answered the way we think it should be, it sure feels like we serve a mean, uncaring God, and then we can start to question why we should serve Him at all? Do we really want to serve a God who sometimes answers our prayers with, “No,” and the only reason for us right now might be, “Because I said so!”

When we begin to understand that God is going to do what God is going to do, does that mean we are to stop praying? No! It means we are to pray even more, so that we can come to know the One who is in control—only through prayer can we come to love and to trust our Father through all things. Only through prayer can we find His comfort when the world is bearing down on us. It’s in our times of prayer that we begin to understand that everything God is doing in our lives, and in the lives of others we pray for, is in preparation for meeting Him face to face one day. We want to be ready, just as a bride who prepares herself to meet her groom. It’s a process—as appointments are made, as beautification techniques are worked through, but as a bride walks down that aisle, it will resemble when we walk through that Heavenly Gate, we will be ready to meet the One we love and adore! Without that time spent with God in prayer, arriving in Heaven might seem more like an arranged marriage, instead of one decided upon after a long and devoted courtship.

In reading a devotional this morning, I came upon a writing by the Rev. Jean Pierre de Caussade. I decided to look into just who this man was, and I read that he was a deeply spiritual man who practiced what he preached - abandonment to God. He was a Jesuit and a Frenchman who died in 1751. He wrote to the Nuns of the Visitation at Nancy, and was their spiritual director. It said, “Typically a nun would write to de Caussade in despair, describing how all her previous faith had left her. And typically de Caussade would write back saying that he was so happy for her! Yes, she had entered the religious life full of 'spiritual consolations,’ full of enthusiasm fuelled by ecstasy and visions, but though these experiences had been appropriate for her then, they were not the essence of the spiritual life. In fact she was now in danger of confusing the fruits of the spirit with the essence, with God Himself. And she was mistaking the loss of these good feelings with losing God. According to de Caussade, God was now taking away these 'consolations' so that she would come to love Him solely for Himself - and not for the gifts He had given her. Acceptance of this would mean a great step forward in her spiritual development.”

This commentary went on to say, “de Caussade's perennial advice was to welcome whatever was given in the present moment as flowing directly from God. Such abandonment to God is the heart of the spiritual life. And though we might not always get the things we want, we will have peace. Why? For God is peace, and we will have God, who is our innermost being. And, trusting in God, we will know that what we are experiencing, though mysterious and perhaps incomprehensible to us, is what God wants for us, and so is right.”

De Caussade talks about having a “wow” experience of some sort, and yet inevitably it fades. He said, “Then we think we have lost the vision, lost God, but the great and saving truth is that our true nature does not come and go. Always present, always accessible, we cannot lose it. Awakening to and trusting in God is a letting go, a recognition that the self is not central, not in charge. Normally we live as though it is we who sit on the throne at the centre of our lives, but this is an illusion. Really only God abides here. But seeing this truth is a kind of death - the deepest of deaths into absolute emptiness. No wonder we resist it.”

I received a phone call just now where the question was discussed, “Are we hypocrites if we praise God when we’re angry with Him?” The answer is, “Of course not, we’re supposed to praise Him at all times.” Bible teacher Beth Moore recently said, “I want the glory of God to come down so heavily and with such weight on my circumstances, as I praise Him, that when He puts that thing under His feet, the world begins to split in two right where He is standing.” She called this a “God-quake!”

It takes me back to the time when I was on the floor, drowning in my tears—the pain of grief so intense I didn’t know if I would survive—and yet in being defiant against the enemy, Satan, I said, “I don’t care, I love You God! I don’t care! I praise You God!” Was I being a hypocrite? Of course not!! In doing that, I was defying our enemy, Satan—burying him under the mighty weight and glory of God! I have learned that by doing the opposite of what seems most natural, supernatural things takes place. When we look to the Light, the darkness must recede, the devil must flee—he has no choice! The power of God within is greater than all the evil this world contains.

“It is impossible to perfectly understand anything that
experience has not taught us, by suffering or by action.”
Jean-Pierre de Caussade

So you see, all these many years later, I eventually did “stand up” to the devil’s antics and I recited the “Lord’s Prayer,” as we all can! The words may be very different, but through our tears the sentiments can be the same…

Our Father in heaven,
may your name be kept holy.
May your Kingdom come soon.
May your will be done on earth,
as it is in heaven.

We can all win the prize, because as I’ve heard preached, “God is our Reward!” The Reward is ours because it belongs to all of God’s children who will “stand up” and say, “I don’t care how mean You look. I don’t care how awful this feels! I don’t care how unfair it seems. I may hate this part of life, but I love You! I praise You! May Your Will be done on earth, as it is in Heaven! May Your name be kept holy!”

Beth Moore went on to say when talking about God-quakes, “Shall I defend my flesh or demonstrate the Spirit?” By demonstrating the Spirit, our Rewarder brings His peace to our soul—sometimes immediately, sometimes after a time, sometimes after a long, long time, but it will come because God’s Word “says so” and His rules will prevail throughout eternity. “…because Jesus Christ, the Son of God, never wavers between yes and no. He is the one whom Timothy, Silas, and I preached to you, and he is the divine Yes—God’s affirmation. For all of God’s promises have been fulfilled in him.” 2 Corinthians 1:19-20 (NLT)

Our Father doesn’t say it’s fun, easy, likeable…accepting what’s happening in our life can be a hard pill to swallow—we don’t want to, you can’t make us, we won’t!!! And praising God in the midst of great difficulties doesn’t seem like the “medicine” we need to help us in our pain…we don’t think it will work, but God promises us that it will. Will we love Him and trust Him enough to open wide and let Him in to soothe our hurting soul?

Jean-Pierre de Caussade writes, “Maturity is neither more nor less than the faithful cooperation of the soul with the work of God…just as a medicine taken obediently will produce health, although the sick person neither knows nor wishes to know anything about medicine.”

We don’t know what’s best for our eternal future and for the eternal future of those around us, but our Father does. And we can ask Him to change what we see and are experiencing, and sometimes He will, but sometimes He won’t. Sometimes we are just called to cooperate, to swallow His medicine and be still and rest…the side effects from knowing God aren’t heart palpitations, stomach aches, loss of weight, fever, constipation, rash… When we cooperate with our Father, praying “Thy will be done in earth as it is in Heaven,” the side effect will be His peace.

The Lord says, “I will rescue those who love me.
I will protect those who trust in my name.”
Psalm 91:14 (NLT)

We can’t even know what that “rescuing” will look like or how long it will be before it takes affect. We can’t even know what that “protecting” will look like, or how it will feel. The only thing we can know is that Jesus is coming back one day, and we are to be ready and waiting for His return. Jesus says, before all this occurs, “Nations and kingdoms will proclaim war against each other. There will be great earthquakes, and there will be famines and epidemics in many lands, and there will be terrifying things and great miraculous signs in the heavens.” Luke 21:10-11 (NLT)

“But by standing firm, you will win your souls.” Luke 21:19 (NLT)

And now the prize awaits me—the crown of righteousness,
which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me on the day of his return.
And the prize is not just for me but for all who eagerly look forward to his appearing.
2 Timothy 4:8 (NLT)

Until we meet again,
Diane