Jesus was teaching His disciples in Matthew 6 how to pray. He said, "In this manner, therefore, pray." He didn't say that we have to say the exact words, but He gave us an example of a prayer that would be good for us to follow. It is interesting that in this prayer He starts with praise to the Father, then gives 3 requests, then concludes with praise to the Father. This is the outline of this particular prayer. To me, this is a powerful outline to follow, one that we can use effectively in our prayers.
He starts with praise: "Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." The beginning is all about God; none about us.
Then the three requests:
"Give us this day our daily bread." Not tomorrow's bread, or next week's, just today, Lord.
"And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtor's."
"And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one." God can do this; He
can help keep us out of trouble. We must truly want that and ask Him.
Then the prayer concludes with praise again. "For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen."
The more I think about this simple outline, the more I start, and end, my prayers with praise to God, with nothing about me; just Him! The more that we can make our lives about Him, and less about us, the better. Let us make Him the emphasis. Praise God!
Thank you for reading. See you next week!
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When Bad Things Happen --
ReplyDeleteThe earthquake in Haiti prompts my post question today. Bear with me as I try and ask my question as to what you believe the Bible says.
A couple of things prompts my question. First, one TV show that I enjoy a lot is the History Channel's program on "How the Earth was Made". This week's shows included about how the Sahara Desert and the Rocky Mountains were formed through the movement in the Earth's tectonic plates over billions of years.
Where these plates hit each other, earthquakes occur. This is science fact that has occurred over billions of years. When humans live on one of these fault lines, eventually they will experience an earthquake.
A second thing that prompts my question is an Op/Ed in Today's New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/opinion/24wood.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print
This article is entitled "Between God and a Hard Place", which I am asking you to read. The Op/Ed poses the question, when bad things happen is this God's vengeance?
The third thing that prompts my question to you today goes back to when I was in college studying micro-biology and looked under an electron microscope for the first time. I remember the first thing that popped into my head seeing for the first time the complexity of biology cell structure was "How great our God is!"
OK -- now to my question. From my perspective of faith, there are things in our lives that we will not be able to understand until we get to Heaven. Not everything that happens in our lives is simply a battle between God and Satan and the free will of man.
Our faith in Jesus Christ provides a road map in how we should lead our lives, including how we cope when bad things happen where sometimes there is no human answer as to "why" this bad thing happened to us.
Please give what you think the Bible says about this.