Prayer is one of two daily spiritual practices that are key to keeping spiritually fit. We learned in our last post that prayer is a two-way conversation with God that involves both listening and speaking. We already covered silence as the listening aspect of prayer, this week we will look at our part of the …
Tag: Lord’s Prayer
Lead us not into temptation
James the brother of Jesus writes this concerning temptations that we face. James 1:13-14 When tempted, no one should say, "God is tempting me." For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. God never …
Forgive us our debts
England was not in a forgiving mood as German bombs indiscriminately rained down on the terrified residents of London. It was in this atmosphere of fear and anger that CS Lewis was asked by the BBC to give a series of talks on what he called "Mere Christianity". One of his most poignant talks dealt …
Give US this day OUR daily bread
I never realized how self-centered my prayers were until the pronouns in the Lord's Prayer were pointed out to me by the author Scott McKnight. The Lord's Prayer never says 'I' or 'me' or 'my'. It is always 'we' and 'us' and 'our'. My version of the Lord's Prayer is quite jarring in its selfishness …
Our Daily Bread
"Dear God, put me in a position where I won't need you anymore." I was startled when a mentor suggested that was what my prayers were like. I didn't like what he was suggesting, but I saw that he was right. Deep down I think we all hate being dependent on someone else. I know that …
Your Kingdom Come, Your Will Be Done
Disappointment and the fear of disappointment are probably the biggest reasons I struggle with prayer. Either I look into the past and remember the litany of "unanswered prayers" or I don't ask for fear that it won't happen. Better to rely on my own strength and deal with life as it comes than to put …
Our Father
In our previous post we explored the idea of the Lord's Prayer as a pattern for our prayers. This week I'd like to begin taking a closer look at each piece of the Lord's Prayer, beginning with ... Our Father in heaven. I don't think we can begin to appreciate the audacity of addressing God …
Praying the Lord’s Prayer
Throughout my young adult life (now far in the past) I made the fatal mistake of believing that spirituality came naturally. I say fatal because it nearly killed my prayer life. I thought real prayer was simply a matter of closing my eyes and pouring out my heart to God. I considered learned or "rote" …
A Roadmap for Praying the Psalms
This quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's classic Life Together radically changed my understanding of the psalms and prayer itself. ... the whole sweep of the Book of Psalms was concerned with nothing more nor less than the brief petitions of the LORD's Prayer.” (Life Together, 50). In other words, if you were to summarize all that …
