The Lord's Prayer

God reminds us every day He is our Creator.

Sermon Parkrose Nursing Home    15/07/12  by Geoff Thompson

The Lord’s Prayer  Matthew 6:7-15

The Lord’s Prayer is one of the first and sometimes the only thing most Christians learn to recite out loud.

We do so in Church

In Funerals and on special occasions.

I remember a friend telling me years ago that she and her family were trapped in the middle of Cyclone Tracy in Darwin and they were all very frightened and huddled in their bathroom as the cyclone raged around them.

They were not practicing Christians and probably at best lapsed Christians.

They were so scared that one of them suggested they pray but they did not know where to start.

They stumbled through the Lord’s Prayer and at the end one of them said “make sure you say amen on the end of it as it doesn’t count if you don’t say amen!”

Regardless of their very little faith and only praying because they were in danger they were spared from the  cyclone.

I wonder how many gave thanks to God after wards and whether that incident was enough to cause them to seek more of God.

Have you ever prayed in a situation like that where you were extremely scared.

Sometimes we may not have enough time to think to pray.

The following was one of those occasions.

Some years ago I was in Wallaroo staying in a motel on the foreshore on a work trip.

I had been staying there with my boss and we both had separate rooms.

We had been to visit my brother who was school teaching in Port Pirie and got back about 11pm.

My boss had gone to bed and I was reclining on the end of the bed watching the Don Lane show on a black and white tv alongside the bed.

The tv was chained to the wall.

Suddenly there was a muffled explosion and the tv was moving towards me then it slammed back against the wall.

I did not have time to pray.

The windows had all blown outwards and flames were coming in and had caught alight to the curtains.

I realized I was airborne about a foot above the bed in a reclining position.

All could do was focus on the doorknob and I wanted to get out of there.

I was in underpants and a shirt and I don’t think my feet touched the ground for about 30 yards.

Some men who were at a meeting in the dining room of the Motel told me they saw a sheet of flame fly out from my room and I came hurtling out afterwards.

One told me “You can thank God you are alive.”

I said I already did.

A gas leak under the floor boards had caught alight and exploded.

The Lord’s prayer is a prayer that Lord Jesus taught the disciples as a model for how we are to pray.

It is an extremely effective prayer and model for our prayers if we pray it and don’t just say it.

It is also a prayer in itself, a stand alone prayer.

If we never prayed another prayer this prayer would still draw us closer to God if we prayed it rather than said it.

First of all it opens with “Our Father who is in Heaven.”

This reminds us who God is and our relationship to Him.

We are His children.

It tells us He is in Heaven.

An eternal safe and Holy place.

“hallowed be thy name” reminds us He is Holy.

Through prayer we are entering the Holy of Holies.

“Thy Kingdom Come “ reminds us that He is going to re establish His Kingdom on earth.

It gives us hope for the future when the corrupt and evil world as we know it will be no more.

“Thy will be done.”

This reminds us that God is always wanting that His will be foremost in the affairs of men.

It also reminds us that when we pray we should be seeking His will in the matter and taking the time to work out what His will should be in the situation troubling us.

We can learn what is His will by reading the Bible.

“On earth as it is in Heaven.”

God’s will is 100% followed and obeyed in Heaven.

He  is also concerned about our earthly existence and that which is to come.

Our prayers should be taking into account the here and now and the future and prayed with this in mind.

It is also reminding us that we don’t have to wait for heaven to enjoy the fullness of our salvation now.
In Ephesians 1 it already tells us we are seated in Heavenly places.

“Give us this day our Daily Bread” This reminds us we can pray for our physical needs and God wants to hear our petitions.

We in our household ,have been reminded recently how God can supply our needs and the needs of others as He chooses.

An older friend of ours is in the habit of frequenting a couple of Adelaide Bakery outlets.

He is able through this connection to collect many loaves of bread and associated products each day at no cost.

These are what are called “yesterdays bread” which they are not allowed to keep for sale or they have a policy about this.

Through our friend, who is really an angel unawares, we are able to help many families each week with their daily bread.

We did not pray for this to happen but often God is wanting to and does enter into, the affairs of Men, as Jesus is praying constantly on our behalf in Heaven and alongside His Heavenly Father.

He does engineer circumstances.

It has given us contact with lots of  people who we can share God’s love with.

“Forgive us our enemies as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

This reminds us of the absolute necessity to forgive our enemies however much we have been wronged.

Would we want God to forgive us the way we forgive others?

“And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil”

Often in the urgency of a moment we may not have time to pray.

God is telling us to pray for protection in advance.

Here is a prayer that I have in my Bible that helps us to do that.

If anyone wants a copy please see me afterwards.

http://geoffthompsonsblog.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/prayer-of-protection.html 

“for Thine is the Kingdom ,the Power and the Glory, for ever and ever amen.

Yes indeed .

Prayer reminds us and brings us into the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory for ever.  t means we can have a relationship with our Heavenly Father.

And what about Amen?

That means :

amen |äˈmen, āˈmen|

exclam.

uttered at the end of a prayer or hymn, meaning ‘so be it.’

• used to express agreement or assent: amen to that!

noun

an utterance of “amen.”

ORIGIN Old English, from ecclesiastical Latin, from Greek amēn, from Hebrew ' āmēn ‘truth, certainty,’ used adverbially as expression of agreement or consent, and adopted in the Septuagint as a solemn expression of belief or affirmation.

Praying in agreement and authority with each other and in line with God’s will is very important in seeing our prayers answered.

Amen?

It will be appropriate I think after our final Hymn and benediction to sing the 3 fold amen. Not just sing it but pray it in agreeance  with our message this morning!

Matthew 6

King James Version (KJV)

6 Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven.

² Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

³ But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth:

⁴ That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly.

⁵ And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

⁶ But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

⁷ But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.

⁸ Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.

⁹ After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.

¹⁰ Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

¹¹ Give us this day our daily bread.

¹² And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

¹³ And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

¹⁴ For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you:

¹⁵ But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

¹⁶ Moreover when ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

¹⁷ But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy face;

¹⁸ That thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret: and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly.

¹⁹ Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:

²⁰ But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:

²¹ For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

²² The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

²³ But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!

²⁴ No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

²⁵ Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?

²⁶ Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?

²⁷ Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?

²⁸ And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:

²⁹ And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

³⁰ Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?

³¹ Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?

³² (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.

³³ But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

³⁴ Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

The Absolute Essential Need to Forgive

By Geoff Thompson

To be delivered at Parkrose Village Service on Sunday 22/10/11

These last few days I have been pretty much incapacitated with a  very knotted up back.

Only now as I write this is it starting to free up a little.

Consequently I haven’t been able to do too much but I have watched a couple of movies on my computer.

One was about 4 Photographers in South Africa who documented the atrocities of things hapenning in South Africa up to the  change in that Govt’s policy on Apartheid

ie. The discrimination against black people in that country.

The movie was pretty horrible and these photographers seemed driven by different forces.

One force was to expose the atrocities to bring about change

 and the other seemed linked to their own needs for adventure and danger and winning awards for their work.

Indeed one of them, not long after he won a pullitzer prize for his depiction of a young starving girl in Sudan kneeling in the sand with a vulture threateningly waiting in the background , committed suicide from a build up of the many times he had witnessed man’s inhumanity to man.

This movie and others I watched led me to again thinking about the need we have to forgive.

Just this week we have once again seen the terrible scenes on television which   brought about the assassination of Colonel Gaddafi.

Only a few months ago it was Osama Bin Laden who had been executed without any sort of trial.

These men committed horrible atrocities in their lifetimes and we all would look at their lives and say “how could they have done that? , we could never behave like that.”

And yet consider the following devotional piece: It’s called

        

“How Good are you?”

“Don’t feel satisfied

With the apparently good life

You are living,or

ever feel superior to someone

not doing as well as you are

in the business of living.

Jesus,

who knows more about

the human heart

than anyone else says

there is nothing good in you.

You are capable of doing

the same things you see anyone else doing.

The reason you don’t do what some others do

is because there have been all sorts of safeguards round you that have kept you from doing what they do.

Remove those safeguards

And you can do

What anyone else has done.

Jesus says:

“ for from within,

                  out of the heart….”

It is all there,

All the evil

This world has ever known

In the hearts of men.

And, we are men(and women)

If you are not doing the evil of other men,

You will be wise to recognise

The reason.

You are being saved

By THE GRACE OF GOD.”

So we say to ourselves

“I could never forgive that person, look at what they did to me.

I am now in such a mess because of what they did!”

It is true they may have done something terrible but Jesus does not ask us to forgive with out good cause  for these reasons;

(1)  He will always gives us the power through His Holy Spirit to forgive someone unconditionally if we will to do so.

(2)  He does not say we should forgive because what that person did was of no consequence, but;  because we are just as capable of doing the same to someone else during similar circumstances. That’s why he went to the Cross for all mankind.

(3)  He knows, and as His command for us is to forgive, that if we don’t forgive we will never know the joy of the Lord.

As in Matthew 18:32-35 we are going to be bound in our own prison of bitterness for the rest of our lives if we refuse to forgive.

V35” This is how my Heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from the Heart”

Our prayers are not going to get too far while we harbour bitterness.

Well you might say but I just cannot forgive  it was too bad, too cruel!

 well consider this example.

Also this week I have been listening again to Dr Helen Roseveare tell her story of life as a missionary doctor in the Belgian Congo during the civil war that erupted there in the 1950’s.

She tells how many of her colleagues were put to death and also raped.

She was captured and raped.

During this ordeal she prayed to God and asked why He was expecting her to go through this.

She got an answer that enabled her too deal with it and even forgive.

She says the Lord Jesus made it clear to her that He was thanking her for allowing Him the privilege  to use Her body to work out His Grace in the situation.

Not to be thankful for what was happening to her but that Jesus had entrusted her with this experience.

It wasn’t until sometime later talking in a Christian convention for women that she learned why He had allowed this to happen to her.

There was a young attractive women sitting in the audience whose face was blank of expression and life during the whole talk.

Afterwards she found out that this young woman had not talked anyone for 2 months and was in a state of shock.She had shown no emotion in that time.

She too had suffered rape.

But this young woman was able to come forward and embrace Dr Helen as the words and experience of Dr Helen who had been through a similar ordeal was able to set her free from the bondage she was in.

God does not give our need to forgive others as an optional extra.

We have read in the Lord’s prayer and prayed it many times.

“ forgive us our trespasses as we have forgiven those who have trespassed against us.”

Do we really want God to forgive us how we forgive others?

 If you need help in knowing how to forgive someone from the heart, whether they be dead or still living ask someone such as one of your Chaplains or a Christian who you consider to be mature in their Faith to help you to do that.

I will finish off today with some of the wonderful words from the other Lord’s Prayer found in John 17 v 24-26

It is part of Jesus  prayer for us and on that continues for us as He intercedes

   

John 17:24-26

New Living Translation (NLT)

²⁴ Father, I want these whom you have given me to be with me where I am. Then they can see all the glory you gave me because you loved me even before the world began!

 ²⁵ “O righteous Father, the world doesn’t know you, but I do; and these disciples know you sent me. ²⁶ I have revealed you to them, and I will continue to do so. Then your love for me will be in them, and I will be in them.”

 Today's Bible Reading

Matthew 6:9-19

New Living Translation (NLT)

⁹ Pray like this:
   Our Father in heaven,
      may your name be kept holy.
   ¹⁰ May your Kingdom come soon.
   May your will be done on earth,
      as it is in heaven.
   ¹¹ Give us today the food we need,^[a]
   12 and forgive us our sins,
      as we have forgiven those who sin against us.
   ¹³ And don’t let us yield to temptation,^[b]
      but rescue us from the evil one.^[c]
 14 “If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. ¹⁵ But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.